arbiter

The Arbiter
The Arbiter in Halo 3.
Game series	Halo series
First game	Halo 2 (2004)
Voice actor(s)	Keith David

The Arbiter is a fictional ceremonial and political rank bestowed upon special Covenant Elites in the Halo universe. In Halo 2, the rank is bestowed upon a disgraced Elite as a way to atone for his failures during Halo: Combat Evolved. Subsequently, the Arbiter allies with his former enemies, the humans, and stops the ringworld Delta Halo from being fired. The character is one of two playable characters in Halo 2 and Halo 3, and is voiced by Keith David in both games.

Role

The rank of Arbiter is bestowed upon a Covenant Elite by the High Prophets during a time of extraordinary crisis. The Arbiter acts as an agent of the Prophets, going on missions specifically dictated by the Prophets to resolve whatever difficulties the Covenant is experiencing. During incidents such as the Taming of the Hunters, the Grunt Rebellion, and most recently, the threat of heresy^[1], and everything up to, but not including, the Covenant Civil War, the Arbiter of the time has emerged to lead the Covenant to victory. Many, especially Grunts, see the Arbiter as their savior or protector, presumably because only Elites of extraordinary skill and leadership attain the rank. The Arbiter is commonly referred to as "The Will of the Prophets" or similarly "The Blade of the Prophets". The Arbiter wears ancient armor that differs from that ordinarily worn by Covenant Elites, resembling ornate and archic plate armor fitted for a Covenant Elite.

Every Arbiter has been martyred in the undertaking of their momentous tasks.^[2] The corpses (or perhaps only memorials of some sort) are housed in identical caskets stacked upon each other in the great Mausoleum of the Arbiter, located on High Charity. In the center of this room a floating pod contains the sacred armor of the Arbiter, highly decorative and fully functional (although some subsystems such as the active camouflage are out-dated) despite its apparent age. The mausoleum houses 168 visible caskets (and more may be set underground), reaching high into the air, and references of Arbiters settling the Grunt Rebellion and aiding the Taming of the Hunters would indicate that the office has existed for quite some time - at least before the Covenant was fully formed and its castes defined. The Arbiter can only be an Elite (the characteristic armor is tailored to Sangheili anatomy), as they are traditionally seen as the guardians and protectors of the Covenant.

As a member of the Covenant, it is believed that the Arbiter is held in the capacity of maintaining the integrity of the Covenant, and his creation is necessitated only in momentous events like those mentioned above.^[3] Of course, he also serves as a political tool, an embodiment of the Hierarchs' power as well as an example of true faith, a warrior-martyr showing loyalty at times of division.

Gameplay

The Arbiter is playable in the campaign of Halo 2, along with the Master Chief. The controls and handling of both characters are identical, but in place of a flashlight the Arbiter can make use of a temporary active camouflage feature. Unlike other Elites in the game, whose camouflage persists until they are killed or attacked, the Arbiter's outdated camouflage system is nullified if he attacks or is attacked and it only lasts for ten seconds (five seconds on Legendary difficulty). The only other game play differences the Arbiter possesses are purple head-up displays and a different character model.

In Halo 3, the Arbiter is not playable in single player. However, when playing the campaign mode cooperatively, the second player plays as the Arbiter. This fits with the game's storyline, which features the Arbiter fighting alongside Master Chief. The Arbiter's active camouflage is no longer available to the player in Halo 3 (though under CPU control he can use it), but the pickup versions of the ability are still available.

Appearances

Halo: The Flood and First Strike

Halo 2

The Supreme Commander (left) prior to becoming the current Arbiter, from the Halo graphic novel.

The Arbiter in Halo 2 was previously an Elite Supreme Commander, having commanded the Fleet of Particular Justice, the fleet that destroyed Reach and followed the Pillar of Autumn to Alpha Halo in Halo Combat Evolved. The reason the ship was even allowed to land in the first place was due to the risk it might pose to the ring; a minor Prophet onboard one of the first ships to engage the Pillar of Autumn refused to allow the ship to be destroyed with plasma torpedoes, instead ordering it to be captured by boarding parties.^[4] This error allowed the Pillar of Autumn to land on Halo's surface, and events spiraled out of control, leading to the Master Chief and Cortana detonating the Pillar of Autumn's fusion drive and destroying the ring. In Halo: First Strike, it is also hinted that he was responsible for the loss of the Ascendant Justice during a hand-to-hand fight with the Master Chief.^[5][6]

Looking for a scapegoat for the destruction of the "Sacred Ring", and unable to blame the Prophet, the Covenant High Council turned to the Supreme Commander, branding him a heretic and stripping him of his rank. To signify this, he is branded with the Mark of Shame over his left pectoral by Tartarus in front of a large crowd. Though his execution (hung by his entrails and his corpse paraded through the city as an example) was soon to follow, he was spared by the High Prophets.

During a meeting with the Prophets of Truth and Mercy within the Mausoleum of the Arbiter, they reveal that they were quite aware that the council only wanted a scapegoat, and that branding the Supreme Commander a heretic was the only way to quell their malcontent. Rather than have him slain outright, the Prophets of Truth and Mercy gave him a chance to regain his lost honor and serve the Covenant again; he would become the Arbiter and be set loose against the true 'heretics', lead by one Sesa 'Refumee, and quell their uprising before it caused further division amongst the Covenant. As they explain to him, the council will get their corpse one way or another, as he is likely to die in the face of the overwhelming odds they are pitting him against.

The sacred armor of the Arbiter

Like the Arbiters before him, the Prophets expected the Arbiter to die early in his tour of duty, completing his apparent "death sentence", but he survived both the destruction of the heretics and the storm that followed. Thus, they send him on another suicidal mission, this time to retrieve the "Sacred Icon" (Halo's Index) from the Library on Delta Halo. To be sure it would kill him, they secretly order Brute Chieftain Tartarus to do so in the unlikely event that he survives the attempt. When the Arbiter succeeds, Tartarus throws him down the central shaft of the Library. Though Tartarus is convinced that he succeeded, the Flood Intelligence Gravemind rescues the Arbiter for his own purposes.

During the game, the Prophets slowly begin to replace the Elites with Brutes, a species that has shown to be both stronger, more resilient, and more blindly devoted to the commands of the Prophets than Elites. Once there are enough Brutes in place, they instigate a bloody genocide, wiping out the Elites. This sparks a massive civil war, disguised as a Brute insurrection to the Elites and their allies, and as an Elite revolt to the other Covenant factions (excluding the Brutes). On one side, there are the loyalists: the Brutes, the Drones, and the Jackals, covertly sanctioned by the Prophets. On the other, the Elites lead the Hunters and the Grunts.

The Arbiter, after meeting his human counterpart, the Master Chief, while being held captive by the Gravemind, discovers the Brutes' massacre of a number of his fellow Elites and receives word that the Elite High Council members have been murdered. He joins forces with the separatists and becomes a central figure in the Covenant Civil War.

In order to keep Tartarus and his Brutes from activating Halo, the Arbiter forms an uneasy alliance with their enemies, the human United Nations Space Command, to stop the mutual threat. At the end of the game, the Arbiter confronts Tartarus in the control room of the installation. While he had originally, and perhaps stubbornly, refused to believe the truth about Halo, the common belief of the heretics, Master Chief, the Gravemind, and Sergeant Johnson that Halo would bring devastation finally convinces him to ask 343 Guilty Spark the truth about the rings. Though the Arbiter accepts this truth, Tartarus does not, activating the weapon anyway. The Arbiter triumphs in killing Tartarus and the humans stop the activation of Delta Halo, though the others are armed as a result. In the final scene, Guilty Spark explains to the Arbiter and the humans that the Halo network can be activated from the Ark, but when asked the location of it by the Arbiter, the scene ends.

Halo 3

The Arbiter appears as an ally of the Master Chief during the campaign, and is playable by the second player in cooperative play. The Arbiter does not retain his active camouflage ability when controlled by another player, but makes use of it when controlled by the AI.

For much of Halo 3, the Arbiter assists human forces in their fight against both the hostile Covenant forces and the Flood, including multiple instances of humans who are being tortured and killed by the Brutes. He makes a number of bitter remarks concerning the Prophets and the Covenant during gameplay. After the Flood arrive on Earth, he is the one that advises Ship Master Rtas 'Vadum not to glass the entire planet, but rather only the local area of infestation. Later, on the Ark, he confronts the Prophet of Truth as he lays dying, becoming infected by the Flood. After a brief exchange, he kills the Prophet by plunging an energy sword through his chest. Shortly thereafter, he comes to the assistance of the Master Chief during his rescue of Cortana from the Gravemind. When Sergeant Johnson is killed he expresses his regret over it and offers his condolences to the Master Chief. Presumably he gained some level of respect for Johnson after the second game. During the escape from the new Halo, the frigate he and the Chief are in is damaged, with his portion of it crashing on Earth. He attends a ceremony on Earth afterwards, honoring the fallen (including the Master Chief, who is believed dead) and shaking hands with Admiral Hood. After the memorial the Arbiter leaves Earth with the rest of the Elites for their own home planet, free from the influence of both the Covenant and the Flood.

Reception

The reception of the Arbiter as a playable chracter in Halo 2 was lukewarm. The character was described as a "brilliant stroke of a game design" because it provided an unexpected storyline but also offered the player new options by allowing stealth gameplay.^[7] The fact that this game's storyline is explored from both the UNSC and the Covenant perspectives was refered to as a plot twist that "no one saw coming".^[7] Alternatively, publications like Gamespot thought that while the Arbiter and Covenant side added "newfound complexity to the story", it nonetheless distracted the player from Earth's fate.^[8]The missions where the player controls the Arbiter were described as "anything but easy", but the fact that the character is accompained by Elites rather than human Marines has been descrived as reducing the ammount of time that the player has to play without backup characters.^[7] The elimination of the Arbiter as a playable character in Halo 3 was met with lukewarm reception; IGN decided it took away the "intriguing side-story of the Arbiter and his Elites", in the process reducing the character's role to that of "a dude with a weird mandible and a cool sword".^[9]

References

External links

• West, Steve. Halo 3 Campaign Review. cinemablend.com. Retrieved on 2007-10-10.
• Goldstein, Hilary (2007-10-01). IGN: Halo 3 Review. ign.com. Retrieved on 2007-10-02.

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