What makes the Prometheans of Halo 4 tick? The heart of Voltron apparently...

What makes the Prometheans of Halo 4 tick? Postmortem found out when he attended the 2013 Game Developers Conference.

Here's a snippet from his really interest post on HBO:

"Warner stated that the Prometheans were initially heavily inspired by Voltron fromVoltron: Defender of the Universe, the T-1000 from Terminator 2, the titular creature from The Thing, and Cranium Rats from Planescape. What the team was particularly attracted to was the modular behavior of all of these examples, how together they create one dynamic, while when separated they form an entirely different one.

From an early point, they had 6 characters, based on a chess analogy of a King, Queen, Rook, Knight, Bishop, and Pawn. For the sake of scheduling and focus, they ultimately stripped this down to just the three that made it into the game, but Warner said that the other three may come back at some point. The Pawns became the Crawlers, and the Bishop eventually became the Watcher."

Perhaps we may see some Kings and Queens in Halo 5?

Here's some footage Postmortem took at GDC which features some working protoype Promethean knights in action. 

343 talks about the in game limitations of the Prometheans of Halo 4

While everyone was talking about Joe Staten's Destiny panel at GDC, the lads from 343 Industries were also having a post mortem on Halo 4. An intruiging story has come out from Scott Warner about the challenge of designing the Promethean enemy and the success of it.

"We had a number of concerns about the Forerunners that we thought went not completely according to plan and could be improved upon"

IAn apparent "absence of high level vision" on the various Promethean creatures' gameplay mechanics caused 343 to pursue design ideas that were ultimately canned: "It would have been easier for us to understand if we'd had more definition around these characters early on, as far as who they were." Warner gave the example of a prototype build in which two Promethean Knights balled themselves up and attacked Master Chief.

On game play level , Warner mused his view that Halo 4's enemies were shipped with damage tuning and gameplay mechanics that were less than ideal. "The Watcher often encourages a one dimensional approach to those encounters," Warner said, "which we saw develop over time through using research and our own play testing. We knew it'd be a problem, [but] we didn't have a great solution for it before we shipped."

"The damage tooling for the characters," he explained, "we felt like we went a little bit too aggressive with this. When you fight the Watcher, there isn't really a good way to circumvent that interaction with him fast, you have to put a bunch of bullets in him – same way with the Knight. So that, over time, can tip the scale to where it's less fun to interact with him."

Warner explained further how the Prometheans gave they player little in the way of 'tells' as to what they were up to. "The Covenant do a good job of telling you that you've surprised them, or they've got the drop on you, or they feel proud that they've taken you out; that they're scared," he said.

"Our Prometheans don't do that very well, they're very – I hesitate to use the term 'robotic', but they tend to not show a lot of emotion or communicate their state very well in terms of what we'd like to do, what we think would be ideal for those characters. So that's one big area of improvement we're looking for as we move along with our character development in future games."

I've played Halo 4 through twice now and would have to agree with the Watcher observation - if anything should have been cut from Halo 4, it was the Watchers. They offer little of the classic Halo excitement prior games have offered!

The best ways to take down a Promethean Knight

The best ways to take down a Promethean Knight from Halo 4 and 5 and 6

It's my humble opinion that never has the Halo universe faced a foe that is so difficult to take down as a Promethean Knight. 

My take is that basically the Knights are the new “Elite” for the Halo franchise but have magical transportation powers and dude that hovers over their shoulder with a light shield when things get a bit too heavy. 

Did I mention they also an auto sentry just to add into the mix?

Playing Halo 4 and 5 can be quite daunting on Heroic and Legendary modes, particularly near the end of the campaign where Knight numbers seem to crank up.

If you’re the kind of player that likes to stand their ground and kill everything in sight, here’s some tips on taking out the Knights.

Up Close and Personal

The scattershot is a wonder weapon. Three or four well place shots with the scattershot will likely turn your foe into a cloud of yellow digital ash. Shotguns are nearly as effective. The drawback is that Knights have a melee that make’s a Hunter’s melee feel like a soothing Thai massage.

Fear the Pink Mist

In what almost feels like a cheap shot, a well-placed volley of pink mist will drop the shields of a Knight very well. A follow up death shot with a Light Rifle or BR will finish the job.

Light Rifles and other comparable weapons.

A barrage of light rifle headshots will eventually take out the Knight. Having a BR to add more firepower is almost crucial.  To make an effective use of this strategy, your shots must be head shots other wise it will take forever to kill your foe.

A combo of a pistol and a light rifle is pretty useful too – a fully charged plasma blast will help lower Ivanhoe’s shields, leaving you free to follow up with a headshot from your BR or Light Rifle.

And so I creep

Sneaking up on an enemy to land a melee punch to the back of the next is a classic Halo move. You can apply this to the Knight by firmly holding down the RB button and you will be rewarded with a pretty cool assassination animation. You could also try using a Halogram* to trick the Knight by drawing his attention, thus giving you an opportunity to creep up and go all Black Hawk on his ass.

There are plenty of other ways to take kill Promethean knights, the above tips and tricks are just a few of the ways you can take them down efficiently. Using grenades and some of the other weapons in the sand box are options. 

I find a well-placed rail gun blast to the body of a Knight very satisfying. 

You can always use the sword as well!

* that was a typo which I've left in as a terrible pun.