Talk:Mjolnir Powered Assault Armor/Mark IV

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Many of you may know how I feel about this particular issue, but for the moment, I'm going to have to ask you to suspend your own opinions for a while and listen. The issue I'm talking about is of course what the Mk IV really looks like. I know you all have your own theories and whatnot, but because of those theories, you're all missing the point. In the event of a canon conflict, we at Halopedia don't decide canon. We decide which canon is more well supported within the realm of the Halo universe.

So to begin. The dispute settled initially on the cover to the Cole protocol which was later revealed to look completely different from the Spartans of Halo Wars fame. This made people argue. Somehow, people settled on the CP version. I'm going to fight for the other side.

First off, the Cole Protocol armor is a piece of concept art. That's it. It wasn't divinely handed down by Bungie. It was painted by an artist with a very loose set of guidelines in order to capture the feel of the book. That said, I still believe its canon. But not for all Spartans. No. You see the Spartans in the book were VERY different from other Spartans with a very different mission profile. They likely had different armor, just as Halo 3's Mk VI armor permutations were made for different jobs. Of course this is conjecture but as I'm about to explain, that explanation is likely the only way that the Cole Protocol version can be counted as canon.

You see, our current policy on canon clearly marks games as higher canon than books. (Halopedia:Canon Policy - go there, it's great!) Yet we still hold the Cole Protocol image above Halo Wars. First off, that's incredibly stupid and un-halopedian. Secondly, the Cole Protocol cover has nothing to do with the book's canon, it's ARTWORK. It is separate from the book's information, story, and canonicity (I think you spell it that way?). Many of you people say that we should trust Bungie's book (via Subtank: "Bungie's is slightly higher than Ensemble's"). And to many of those people, I wish to inquire about your mental state. The book came from a (relatively new) author who had access to the Halo Bible. Halo Wars also had access to the bible (via Frankie). The art came from a contractor hired by Tor to paint a Halo picture. Where is Bungie involved? NOWHERE. That's the beauty of my argument. And since when does canon have to do with a book's art rather than its story anyways?

Yet even though we have this hammered out, for the sake of argument, I'm going to concede to the fact that HW is a third party game, just as the books are third party literature. Yet even thought that theoretically puts them at the same level at BEST, our policy still makes no distinction that a third party game is less than a Bungie game. It groups all games as one. One place higher than literature that is. You see, Subtank had a conversation with me earlier about whether Halo Wars information about a vehicle or the Encyclopedia's contradictory information should be kept. We decided that even if both sets of information were from third party companies, what mattered was that games have always ranked higher than books. Always. Halo is a game first and foremost after all.

Anyways, moving on. It's interesting to note that the Spartan silhouettes in the Halo: Reach poster have Mk. IV armor more like that of the Halo Wars armor. This is concluded by finding the placement of the vents. On all armor suits in the series (including the ones on the Reach poster) the cooling vents are on the shoulders. Yet Cole Protocol shows Mk. IV armor to instead have vents on the chest, contradicting *GASP* official Bungie concept art. And I think Bungie concept art beats not-Bungie art!

The last piece of the feud is that Halo: Legends keeps the Halo Wars suit in mind when introducing its main character Cal. She has (almost) exactly the same armor as red team from HW. I think this is the nail in the coffin folks. We have a cartoon AND a game AND some Bungie teaser art supporting the HW armor. And we don't even have a BOOK describing the Cole Protocol version, we instead have a piece of concept art on its cover.

Thank you friends for hearing out my well-meant rant. I'm sorry it took so long but please discuss your opinions below. It is my dearest wish to rectify this situation ASAP. --Nerfherder1428 01:20, November 9, 2009 (UTC)