Halo 2 Anniversary Cutscenes - '30 - Delusians and Grandeur' HD (Blur Studios)

-Tartarus tries to get Keyes to reunite the Index with the Core... Arbiter and Sarge work to stop him. All learn the purpose of the Halos.

[Halo 2 Anniversary Cutscenes - "30 - Delusians and Grandeur" HD (Blur Studios)] was created under Microsoft’s “Game Content Usage Rules” using assets from [Halo: The Master Chief Collection], © Microsoft Corporation.

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[picklenick]

"Tartarus, the prophets have betrayed us." That always gets me.

[Wallie]

I love how, despite everything, the arbiter still tried to show tartarus and the brutes the truth. He didn’t hate them, and recognized that the brutes has been fooled just as the elites had been. Even in the end, the arbiter didn’t hate Tartarus. Really a great character.

[Varan]

You can hear the pain in Arbiter's voice.

[Southhs]

It is NEVER easy to accept that everything you've devoted your entire life to is nothing but a lie.

[HiveQun]

Arbiter was such a strongly written character, stronger than Chief for sure. It's tragic that the initial fan reaction made Bungie diminish his role in Halo 3. There was so much more potential for great scenes like this.

[LMVStudios]

And that's the moment where Arbiter fully accepted the truth of Halo. You see throughout the game he denies it. He is devoted to the prophets when battling the Heretics, but after killing their leader he begins to question. Then when the Brutes replace the Elites as the guard he still follows their orders. He still refuses when confronted by Gravemind. Then it's here that he accepts the truth and realizes everything he believed was a lie. That's some deep stuff.

[zillafire]

What makes this scene all the sadder is that you can see that Tartarus is willing to hear at the Arbiter, even before Johnson pointed an energy rifle at his head, and wanted to hear the Arbiter out despite his "heresy", stopping his warriors from attacking him. The Arbiter, however, was willing to realize everything he had lived for was a lie, where's Tartarus was to frightened and ashamed to admit as much, despite deep down, now knowing the truth.

[stormbringer]

Tartarus....the Prophet's have betrayed

[tristanjorritsma]

I think Tartarus deep down knows that he is being used, but is unwilling to accept that fact, given how him and every other brute has given their lives to the covenant.

[SighingDm]

I love the scene so much. The Arbiter didn't want to believe halo was a weapon. Upon hearing it from an oracle though you can see the moment his world shatters..

[cinders]

I think Tartarus knew he was being used, he just didnt want to admit that he was wrong.

[mcolln]

I love the remastered cutscenes, you can see the emotion on the Arbiter's face throughout this cutscene.  The hesitation admitting the Prophets are wrong, the difficulty asking Spark the questions about the Forerunners and Halo, and the soul crushing defeat after hearing Spark's explanation.  He just had his entire world, his entire way of life, turned upside down and we can finally see it.

[o_o-]

Imagine you are a sangheili soldier;
Trained to fight from the day you could stand as a toddler. You were raised by your uncle with little-to-no contact with your parents. You were taught about the forerunners and their technology. You were told to worship this ancient extinct race.

Your future was decided for you to become a warrior against your own consent, but you did so anyway. You trained for years since childhood to impress your peers and fight for a polytheistic religion you didn't know was built & based on racism.
As the training got more severe & dangerous, more of your fellow students lost their lives as you were forced to watch the deaths of your comrades, your cousins, your brothers. Many - if not all - of them died before they could make it into the Covenant ranks.

You slowly and steadily rise through the ranks but with each victory, you lose the lives of your friends, your cousins, your brothers. Fighting "heretics" or humans who your "prophets" tell you are a threat to The Great Journey. Through blood, sweat, and tears, you finally become a Zealot, but not just any Zealot, a shipmaster. You then go on to become a supreme commander where you command your own fleet consisting of dozens of ships. And your influence within the fleet grows with each victory over the humans.

But after a spectacular failure, you become the new arbiter, and strange shit goes down. Your name is Thel Vadam. And then after some time, this scene happens. YOU ARE THEL. And after hearing Guilty Spark explain everything.
Your two hearts shatter upon learning that after all those years of false worship & beliefs. Everything you ever fought for. Everyone you fought with. Everyone who died in training & sacrificed their lives in battle, your comrades, your friends, your cousins, your brothers, your family. The thousands of years & thousands of generations of your people who lived & died on what they believed was true.

It was all a lie. All these years were wasted on a lie. Billions of your people's lives for countless generations and thousands of years were wasted on a lie.

One lie claimed the lives of billions of your people, and over a billion innocent humans.
It was all a lie. The expression on Thel's face at 1:30 says everything above. Everything above from the start of this comment was reflected in Thel's mind in just 4 and a half seconds.


It was all a

[benbrady]

The irony that the most human character in Halo is an alien...

[itzgav-o]

Keith David doesn’t get enough credit for the voice acting he delivered in this game. He truly brought the character of the Arbiter to life and gave him the personality we all love so much. An absolutely stellar performance.

[LennoxParsec]

0:25 With that music, you can tell ''Shit, Arbiter is the good guy''.

[MrRed]

after all the stuff tarturus and the brutes did to arbiter and the elites arbiter still tries to reason with him to see if tarturus will come to his senses damn sometimes us human's need to value reason more then straight up revenge

[jacknagel]

I love what blur did with Johnson here. In the original he was more so kinda static in the back and was just there for backup. But here they did something that speaks miles for his character. At 1:30 you can see him look over to Thel with what looks like remorse, looking over at the Arbiter and lowering his gun, which leads to him being caught off guard when hit with 343 Spark.

That scene and the mission does miles for the Sarge as a character. He had seen the bloodier parts of the war. Coveis killing civilians, glassing planets, the destruction of Reach. Most people would have nothing but distain for the Covenants followers, especially after seeing that. But this hardened loud-mouthed vet of the UNSC lowers his gun and looks at Arbiter with sorrow. Empathetic for the alien who's devoted his life to a lie.

Makes it even more understandable when you remember that the Johnson was a religious man himself.

[trial_with_an_error]

I loved the emotion in these scene. Arbiter coming to terms with the war he sacrificed countless lives for being based on a lie. It hits so hard

[SethTheArcanine]

At 1:31, my heart just breaks for Thel Vadam.


You can just see every emotion hitting him all at once, as he finally learns the truth about the Halo rings. So many of his brethren were slaughtered, in a war that never even needed to be fought, to maintain a lie that never needed to go as far as it did. I can imagine him ruminating about it all, how the Prophets surely must've known of Halo's true purpose, and how they clung to their lie despite the Rings's extreme and radical purpose.


I can imagine him thinking about every warrior that fell, in the Human-Covenant war - Sangheili, Unggoy, Kig'Yar, every species of their "Covenant" if it could even be called that any more, and even the Jiralhanae, despite their betrayal. But beyond that, I can imagine him wallowing with internal agony and guilt, over the genocide he's been the cause of - BILLIONS of human lives, combatant or civilian, were ended by his command, and it was over a war that didn't even need to be fought to begin with.


So many planets were glassed in the name of the Covenant, innocent humans and brave soldiers alike, and many of his brethren, among countless others, were enslaved, indoctrinated, and were killed for the Covenant, and all of it - every bit of it - was a bitter lie, and the Prophets' apparent ignorance in regards to the Rings was proof enough of this, and was only reinforced when they were willing to allow the Jiralhanae to openly slaughter the Sangheili, and lead their "Great Journey".