Sangheili Faces

Ah, yes. The Sangehili. The coolest and most iconic aliens in video game history. You may know these dudes as the "Elites" from the game franchise Halo. The Sangheili are one of the best species in the whole series, even though I like the Kig-Yar just a little bit more. As much as I like the elites, there is just one aspect of their design that bothers me a little.

Their mouths.

Now don't get me wrong, I like that the Sangheili have such an unearthly jaw structure. A Sangheili without quadruple-hinged mandibles isn't an elite at all. The real problem is that they can never fully close their mouths. Even when their mouth APPEARS to be closed, there's just a huge gap underneath their head where a large part of their mouths is still exposed to the elements. How the hell do they keep their mouths from drying out? How do they form proper consonants without tongues or a full lip? If they were to try and speak, it would sound more like a dental patient trying to talk while the dentist is at work. From an evolutionary standpoint, the designs of their mouths are an extreme disadvantage. But then I remembered the Halo Legends animated short, "The Duel". The short contained the best and most biologically sound interpretation of the Sangheili mouth I had ever seen; the Sangheili in the short (with the exception of Haka's warriors for whatever reason) are depicted with all four of their mandibles being surrounded by a muscular set of lips, and rather than them talking with their mouthparts flapping about everywhere, they spoke moving just their lower mandibles in unison, giving the illusion of them having a more human-like mouth. They could actually close their mouths, and the only times in which you see them spread all four mandibles is when they shout or scream. I loved this interpretation of the sangheili mouth, so in the end, I applied it to the drawings here. I'm normally a bit of a canon supremacist when it comes to some aspects of a franchise, but don't care if the mouths shown in "The Duel" are just artistic liberty; in my mind those mouths will always be canon to me. (And yes, I gave them tongues, too. Ya wanna throw hands, pal?)

And on the subject of 343's elites? Well, they ain't THAT bad. Yes, I completely agree that they are way too bulky by sangheili standards, but I don't hate them enough to want them to be retconned out of the franchise forever. In fact, in a weird sorta way, I kinda welcome them. 343 did mention something regarding different sangheili phenotypes, so I believe that the 343 elites are supposed to be a different racial group or ethnicity of sangheili. Not quite a distinct subspecies like you would see in Kig-Yar, though. The differences between each type of Kig-Yar are taxonomic, not racial. Id like to think that the relationship between 343 and classic elites is similar in nature to the relationship between humans of different racial groups.

Halo ( c ) Microsoft and 343 Studios