BCM294 - Wandering Banshees, circling break-up and Banshees playing

(7:56) Level 2 ('Halo') on Heroic. This second instalment on the wandering Banshees topic is mostly a showcase of lost Banshees 'playing', interacting with each other in highly watchable fashion. Circling is a particular case, very stable, but it can be broken up with a grenade if they notice it. Then things might get more random, with criss-crossing, mutual spiralling and more. The last three minutes are an action montage from several replays I did, from the exit checkpoint seen in the movie.

Released June 24th 2018, gameplay recorded June 18th 2018.

Commentary

00:02 (Original play) The save I'm using here was a modification of the save seen created in BCM293. I'd obtained a later checkpoint by leaving the trigger zone after a while and re-entering. With that modification there was much less time to wait before the Pelican was flying over (the movie starts about 5 seconds after the save start), and I found that when I hid down the slope, the Banshees would invariably end up circling.

00:34 After cautiously getting sight of the Banshees and seeing the expected circling, I throw a frag and subsequently find that it broke up the circling as desired (it got noticed by at least one of the Banshees, causing deviation). I see one Banshee wandering away, and soon the other comes into view on the same heading. After hitting the wall though, they start playing. They spiral a long way down, then up, then settle into some new circling.

02:20 When I exit the survivor area here, this was actually the third time I was heading for the waterfall area to try and break up the circling from there. The first time, I failed with all five grenades so I returned to the survivor area to get more plasmas. But I failed with those too, so I returned and managed to find another four - and you see my exit. I haven't bothered to show anything of the two unproductive visits, as it wasn't important and would've used up valuable movie time better spent on seeing Banshees playing.

02:32 I stand right on the point, which is rather precarious! After a throw which goes long, I disrupt the circling with another plasma, and the Banshee get into some more random playing, of which I show some portions - including some cute criss-crossing. It lasted about three and a half minutes but then I got spotted, which ended their playing of course.

04:53 (Replay montage) After that I did some replaying from the last checkpoint. This is an eight clip montage from five of those replays. Assorted nice clips of the Banshees playing, viewed at various magnifications. I'll remark on a few.

05:52 In this interesting dynamic the Banshees seem to have roughly the same orbit, except they're going in opposite directions. 'Counter-orbiting', you might call it.

06:06 At the start of this replay I actually tag one of the circling Banshees. That's got to be the longest Banshee tag I've ever shown. The other Banshee takes the blast too, leaving both of them smoking. Nice! The subsequent clip shows the Banshees about two minutes later.

07:19 This last clip shows the amusing conclusion of one of my replays, and was the obvious best way to end the movie. I appear to get spotted (at a range of around 300m I think, which is pretty extreme), and after I tag the attacking Banshee, I clumsily step off my perch and end up going down the waterfall with the dead pilot. Whoops!

Closing remarks In total I kept recordings of seven replays in which I got the Banshees playing. In five the Banshees ended up wandering their separate ways, in another they ended up circling, and in one I got spotted (as shown). Those seven replays plus the original play amounted to about 53 minutes of gameplay, and a whopping 12 gigabytes of recorded footage. Now that I've made the movie, I can free up some space on my hard drive again!

In one replay, three clips of which were included in the montage, the Banshees played randomly for over five minutes. Eventually one Banshee got a wing stuck in the invisible wall and slid down along it for about 30 seconds, which resulted in separation for a while. They actually got back together for some brief criss-crossing a few seconds later (they were down at sea level by that point) but then wandered off separately.