No Arbiter
Posted May 17th 2008
As you may know, I'm not exactly the Arbiter's greatest fan. In fact, the less I see of old squid-face the better. So I'm mightily grateful to fellow cyborg Nerd Boi for emailing me on May 8th 2008 about how to eliminate him from The Storm altogether! In particular this should be a great help in setting up AA gun megabattles with really high enemy numbers, because Arby won't be thinning out the enemy before the battle even starts. Plus, you'll always be able to fight the battle in your own good time (assuming the Marines and factory workers are eliminated); no Arby rushing ahead to attack before you're ready. Excellent!
The trick
Nerd Boi's basic observation was that if you whizz through into the next section after destroying the Scarab, Arby is never seen. I did some experiments to try to get a clearer picture, and here it is. A few metres into the second small room, you trigger a Cortana interruption. As long as you do that before Arby emerges from the incoming Pelican, the Pelican will vanish (you stop hearing it; I think everything outside has gone) and Arby will remain absent for the rest of the level, with none of that sneaky teleportation business he's so fond of. He's due to emerge about 23 seconds after the Scarab blows, which is namely about 5 seconds after you see the onscreen order to "Neutralize the anti-air cannon", so there's loads of time to trigger the interruption.
Significant flaw?
In fact, that's so much time that this seems like a significant flaw in the game design. Countless players must have whizzed on ahead after destroying the Scarab, and thus failed to get accompanied by the Arbiter. Heck, I'm surprised I never noticed it myself. Have I been dawdling so badly all this time? I can't believe Bungie intended things so the Arbiter was optional, so it looks like they messed up. But in this particular case I'm not complaining!
Moving spare weapons through
You'd even have enough time to move a few spare weapons indoors if you've already moved them close to the door; e.g. extra rocket launchers for the megabattle. Even easier however, you can move weapons indoors before destroying the Scarab. Once you've had the loading point preceding the Scarab's arrival, approach the door in a vehicle and it'll open; and it'll stay open if you leave the vehicle there.
Before triggering the Cortana interruption though, any spare rocket launchers you've assembled will need to be quickly transferred to Marines else they'll disappear when the interruption starts. I think that applies to other weapons too, but seemingly not sniper rifles. To give yourself as much time as possible for this transferring, be at or through the door when the Scarab blows. I suggest using a Ghost to deal the final blow to the exposed Scarab core, so that as soon as you see it go critical, you can get to the door fast. There's enough time to transfer 4 launchers and pick up a 5th if you're quick, thus making 5 launchers available for later. Fortunately there's a checkpoint as the Scarab blows, so you can easily make repeated attempts at quick transfer work.
I discovered that door opening trick by accident. Previously I thought the door always stayed locked until the Scarab blew, but that must have been because I'd only ever approached it on foot. But why on earth would it be programmed to open merely due to the proximity of a vehicle? Weird. There are no Marines inside when you open it early, but you can potentially watch them spawn when the Scarab blows. Also, if you then trigger the Cortana interruption you'll probably see weird psychedelic glitchiness in the doorway, which I'd explain as follows. The Scarab area has been unloaded but the door has remained open because of the vehicle - something the game wasn't expecting. So, you're able to look back into glitchy nothingness.
More please…
Anyway, thanks again Nerd Boi! I just have one more remark. Please can you tell me how to eliminate this sword-wielding buffoon from the other levels too?