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This topic has moved here: Subject: Can the Flood get smarter?
  • Subject: Can the Flood get smarter?
Subject: Can the Flood get smarter?
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I was poking around on halo.bungie.org and while reading some of the different things people have thought up I came up with my own question/idea.
Can the flodd get smarter? I mean them seem to be these mindless beings, zombies. But the whole Keyes blob would prove different (yes that has been talked about a lot.)

I'm refering to something else though. From 343 Guilty Spark to The Maw all the flood use are human and Covie weapons. All of them except gernades, the sniper rifle, or the hunters plasma cannon (no idea what it's called, I've only played on the Xbox.) They have no shields or armor of any sort. But one (maybe a couple) flood use stealth cloaking in The Maw, and ONLY in The Maw. Why? Did they learn how to use it after making the Keyes blob? Are they like the Borg in Star Trek? Are they ALL linked somehow and when one learns something they all do? I just found it very interesting that that use it only after capturing Keyes.

Thoughts?

  • 06.09.2004 1:12 AM PDT
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Always seen them more on an evolution system rather than, once one knows something they all do. As like with the cloak, they would all be cloaked now. Yet if it was more an evolution system one would learn how to cloak, and all its "off spring" would have that ability then. Or the carrier form ability, or combat form ability etc. The Flood are odd, they seem to just want to consume everthing, and only really absorb new things when its in there interest too, such as with Keyes so they can control a ship and get off Halo. But that all kinda points to some kind of behind the scenes control style intelligence, rather than just the must consume/reproduce system we've seen mostly. As others have said, whats creating the smaller infection puss ball Flood, whats controling them, is it something big like a Queen Flood or is it something on a molecular level like a ultra small, ultra intelligent parasite.

What I do wonder about though is Flood Hunters. Never seen one (yet) but surely they must be able to be infected also? or are they naturally immune...how about Flood Brutes also...some quite scarey possibilities with more Flooded creations....even a Flood Grunt.

[Edited on 6/9/2004 4:33:53 AM]

  • 06.09.2004 4:31 AM PDT
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I thought in HALO: The Flood it said somehting along the lines of that Grunts were simply not hearty enough to merit being used as hosts.

  • 06.09.2004 4:40 AM PDT
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Here's the deal:

Anything below an Elite or a Marine is used for Carrier Forms.(The Flood novel) Once a combat form is rendered useless for it's initial purpose, it is then turned to a Carrier.(First Strike)

The flood are indeed extremely adaptive - the very reason we had such a tough time finding Keyes in the 9th level was because the Flood were trying to capture the Truth and Reconciliation and get into space.

We read in The Flood how Silva and Lt. McKay try to overtake the T&R and get it back to Earth - and how McKay's and Wellsley's incessant worries about the possibility of Flood infection on the ship further fuel Silva's ambitions. Eventually, McKay sacrifices herself and detonates a grenade by the optical fibers that tell the engines what to do as they are taking off, and the T&R crashes, all hands presumed dead.

Wellsey, Before they go down: "You taught her well, Sargeant."

The Flood could NOT be allowed to leave Halo, for just how smart they could become and how extremely dangerous they are.

Hell how hard could it be for THEM, if all WE do is step on it, and we turn invisible, right?

[Edited on 6/9/2004 5:35:25 AM]

  • 06.09.2004 5:34 AM PDT
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They do get smarter, but they only do so to feed their hunger. I think they comunicate with each other, but only through word-of-mouth (or garble, whatever it is they sound like). They don't steal technology and adapt it to themselves like the Cov do, or they would have armor (elite, gurnt, marine). They are not very strategic either. They learn but they don't test things, or set up laboratories, build structures. They were locked inside a stucture for how many years??? 200,000?? You would think they would get bored or something and try to find a way to get out. Maybe try to build something out of scrape metal or find wiring to short cuircut the locking mechanism. I don't know what they could have done, but the books didn't say anything about Flood technology or of them making anything at all, just that they existed in the structure...waiting. There evolution doesn't seem to advanced either. Personally, I think, that the Flood are a failed experiment from the Forerunner days of old that they eventually couldn't control. The fact that 343 GS said "You should be wearing Mark XII armour for this mission" (I think it was something like that) when the MC is actually wearing Mark I (is that right?) means that the Forerunners weren't that different from us - if at all different. Maybe the Flood was a Spartan program that went terribly wrong?? Sorry this topic has been on my mind for a while, and I just don't think the Flood is an alien race bred to devour the universe.

  • 06.09.2004 8:05 AM PDT
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I always thought of the flood like the bugs in starship troopers (sweet moive). Like all the flood guys who you usualy confront are just workers or soilders kind of like an ant colony, then theres like only a couple of "brain flood" who controls the rest. Like a hive brain. anyone who saw the movie can understand it better than i can explain it.

  • 06.09.2004 8:10 AM PDT
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From the Library level

343GS:

"As long as any hosts remain, the Flood is virulent."
the flood is not always a virus, only when other hosts are available, hmmm.... interesting

"Your environment suit should serve you well when the Flood begins to alter the atmosphere. You are a good planner."
the flood are capable of altering the atmosphere, possibly making them more stable and non virulent.

"The Flood are already hard at work repairing your vessel. Its parasitic nature belies the Flood's intelligence."
The flood aren't mindless parasites. They are apparently able to repair the Pillar of Autum. And Guilty Spark says in the above quote that the flood are indeed intelliegent

more pondering to do

  • 06.09.2004 11:03 AM PDT

I'm not that active, but never dead.

You people just don't get it do you? You keep on thinking of the flood as idividuals, when they are really all just one being. I assume that the big one on T&R was someting like a central itellegnce. Your not looking at the big picture. If you looked though a microscope and watched white blood cells attacking bacteria, you think the white blood cells to be stupid. The same philosiphy can be applied to the flood forms attacking MC. They protecting main body from a paristie to him.

  • 06.09.2004 2:02 PM PDT
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Food for Thought (no pun intended):

Bungie intended the Flood to fight much more intelligently. That they mindlessly throw themselves at us and continually attack with no apparent intelligence is only a sign of how much Bungie was rushed to get the game out on time. I wish I knew what article/interview I am remembering this from, maybe someone else remembers this and could add to it? The interviewee was implying that the Flood will not only be in Halo 2, but Bungie will be able to make them fight and be smarter as they had originally intended.

The Flood takes over a body(host). I'm going to assume its quite able to delve into and probe the brain for any information it needs. Therefore, the Flood individual would be as smart as its host; i.e., capable of using the host species' machinary, reparing it, etc. etc. That the Food would mindlessly throw themselves into battle simply says they value life a little less than the host did (that, and if you could shoot off my head and I'm still gonna be alive, I'd be more willing to charge recklessly forward too!).

my two cents.

-Jäger

  • 06.09.2004 8:35 PM PDT