McFarlane Toys made Halo fans wait just a little bit longer for their Halo 4 Promethean Knight deluxe figure, but the big daddy of all the Forerunner A.I.s has arrived and is ready to wreak some havoc on the Master Chief! People are going to hate me for saying this, but even at a “high” suggested retail of $25-$27, this outstanding Knight figure is a total steal. Well, unless you’re really looking forward to the much-promoted ability of the Promethean Knight to store and deploy a Watcher…

The Right:

The Promethean Knight is a massive enemy in-game, and I’m pleased that McFarlane Toys took the high road and made him a huge action figure, to-scale with the other Prometheans. Some companies might have taken the cheap way out and shrunk the Knight’s height (a la Hasbro and their recent mini Slave-I and so forth), but McFarlane Toys did right by the Knight.

Because the Knight is always standing slightly hunched, he’s noticeably shorter than the McFarlane Hunter figures were, but still plenty large and impressive. The immensity of the Knight’s stature gives the Master Chief something to really be afraid of!

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the deluxe Halo Knight action figure is the incredible amount of articulation built in–40 total points! The Knights aren’t the most dynamic characters in Halo 4, so I wasn’t sure there was even that much room to integrate articulation into the figure, but it has moving parts everywhere. From his little ball-jointed arms sticking out of his armor, to all the ball-jointed appendages on his back, to his ball-jointed legs and weapons, the Promethean Knight is practically exploding with articulation.

The sculpting on the Deluxe Boxed Knight is awesome, plain and simple. The sculpt is 100% brand-new, as the design necessitates, and manages to perfectly capture the sleek deadliness of the Knight. I particularly love the fear-inducing, creepy grin etched onto the Knight’s face.

Some Halo fans have complained about the execution of the floaty bits on this figure, which are connected via transparent plastic, but short of perfecting anti-gravity technology I don’t know what McFarlane Toys could have done to make those floating bits of Forerunner look any better.

I’ve also seen a tiny bit of criticism of the paint deco on the McFarlane Halo 4 Promethean Knight figure, but I think all the applications are fantastic. I love the yellow-orange gradient highlights on the figure, and I feel like the silver paint McFarlane chose for the Prometheans figures works far better here than the more grey color of the Halo 4 Crawler figure.

There is a running-change paint variant of the Knight figure with a lot more grey paint on his back appendages, as opposed to the first shipment which had all-silver appendages. This color scheme is more accurate and likely to be the more mass-produced version of the figure, I really like and prefer it to the straight-up silver Knight. Your mileage may vary.

The Knight comes packing two weapons: his integrated hard light blade arm, and the powerful Forerunner Scattershot. The Scattershot is easily removable, and this is the current only scheduled release of the weapon, so you’ll have to liberate it from the Knight if you want to outfit your Halo 4 Master Chief figure with the Scattershot.

I suppose you could rip off the blade arm if you wanted to as well, but I don’t see much point as that weapon can’t be scavenged and utilized in the game.

Oh, and one more thing: you’ll notice that in none of these photos am I using the included figure stands that attach to the Knight’s feet. When I saw the official photos in the McFarlane Toys website, I was like “Here we go again.” But once I got the Knight out of the package and learned the physics of his center of balance, I really didn’t have much trouble getting him to stand stably. So if you want the support stands they’re included, but I’m happy to say that I didn’t need them.

The Wrong:

There’s only one thing I truly hate about this Halo 4 Knight figure, and it’s not just “Wrong”, it’s…

The Ridiculous:

The much talked-about feature of being able to insert the Promethean Watcher figure into the Knight’s back is pretty much the crappiest, worst-executed feature in the history of McFarlane Halo figures.

As you may have heard, you can’t exactly just insert the McFarlane Watcher Halo 4 figure into the back of the deluxe Knight action figure as-is. There isn’t enough space in the Knight’s back to fit the whole Watcher–he’s just not designed that way. Instead, you have to do a bit of, uh, surgery.

In essence, you have to rip the Watcher action figure to pieces in order to get him into the Knight. He needs to be completely pulled off from his lower body and all of his appendages before he’ll fit inside the Knight at all. This is no small task–I practically had to break the Watcher to separate him. And frankly, I felt like some sort of cannibal dissecting the poor Forerunner A.I.

Worse, once the Watcher is inserted into the Knight, it’s not especially tight in there and it never looks quite right. In addition, adding the Promethean Watcher to his back throws off the Knight’s balance and makes it far more difficult to get him to stand. And unfortunately, I don’t have the strength or patience to force the pieces of my McFarlane Halo 4 Watcher figure to snap back together now.

In short, this action feature is no fun. At all.

“Where Can I Buy It?!”
The Halo 4 McFarlane Knight figure started to hit online retailers in late December, and is slowly hitting retail stores like Target and Toys R Us in early 2013. If you can’t find the Knight in your local stores, there’s plenty available online for just about retail price.

Overall: If you have your heart set on storing and deploying your Watcher figure from this Knight, prepare to have your heart broken. But other than that, this McFarlane Toys Halo 4 Knight deluxe action figure is all-over excellent. The Knight has vastly more articulation than you could have possibly imagined that it would (an insane 40 points!), a killer sculpt, better balance and stability than I was expecting, cool weapons, and well-done paint deco. I don’t like the design of the Knight as much as I do the Crawler, so he isn’t my favorite Halo 4 figure, but he’s pretty terrific regardless. I can’t quite bring myself to give the Knight any kind of ‘A’ because the whole Watcher storage and deployment feature is such a disappointing flop, but this is otherwise a sensational action figure.