Halo 4 enemies: how Promethean Crawlers will make Master Chief suffer

Of all the new Promethean war machines we've met in Halo 4 thus far, the Crawlers are the least imposing. They're just quadruped Grunts with a tinfoil finish, right, 343? Wrong.

"Promethean Crawlers are impressively armed Forerunner machines, capable of both close-quarters and long-range combat," writes community hero Jessica Shea over at Halo Waypoint. "They generally travel in large packs, are engineered to ferociously hunt down and eliminate any foreign threats, and represent the most extensive and abundant 'native' enemy on Requiem."

As with the Covenant's rank and file, Crawlers exist in tight relation to the other, more powerful Promethean unit types. "Crawlers can be spawned by Watchers, who literally conjure the Crawlers' raw forms from the material of the planet beneath their four little feet," Shea goes on.

"While Watchers protect Crawlers, Knights treat them as fodder, relentlessly spawning them at a rapid-fire rate. Crawlers act like a skirmishing unit, harassing the player at the Knight's bidding."

Expect the Crawlers to attack from every direction, at several ranges. "As [343 founder Frank O'Connor] so eloquently said at E3, killing them is like popping bubble wrap... until there's a thousand of them. Then it's deadly bubble wrap."

There are three subtypes of Crawler - the basic unit, a heavily-armed variety that likes to get in close, and a sniper. Their animations, which you can marvel at in the video below, are modeled on those of wolves with just the faintest dusting of insect.