- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
I know that this isn't 100% on topic for the forum. Hopefully it has enough relevance to not be locked.
I have noticed that a fairly popular theory is that at the end of Halo 3 the chief's half of the frigate was engulfed by a wormhole or some other cosmic oddity, and by the Halo laws of physics ended up back in time to the initial reach conflict.
I believe that instead of that, the chief ended up in a shield world.
A shield world is an artificial planet that the forerunners built outside of the fabric of the halo universe. Basically to serve as a safe zone in case they ever had to fire the halos in order to kill off the flood. They used their super advanced, cool, instead nerdy word here, technology to bend the fabric of space in order to ensure that it would be completely safe.
In the book halo:onyx I believe it is. The characters stumble upon a shield world somehow. This may not be accurate as I have never read any of the books, but am simply relying upon my friend who claims to have read them.
Nevertheless it's a fact that there is at least one shield world. However I don't think it is too much of a stretch to say that there are other shield worlds out there. With the huge expanse and general huge-ness of the universe the forerunners would want multiple shield worlds to ensure that the maximum amount of forerunners would survive no matter where they were in the cosmos.
If the assumption that there is more than one shield world is accepted then it is pretty logical to assume also that they would put one by the ark. With such a devastating piece of technology, if the forerunners activated it then they would want out of there asap.
So if everything above happened. Then the chief is in an alternate dimension. Meaning that their homing beacon will not be picked up by the UNSC (sad face).
In the interest of having a plot then perhaps the world would actually have forerunners on it who would discover the frigate and the chief. He would then either fight them, or help them from a threat, presumably the flood. After all the gravemind is pretty smart, and can be remade by a large mass of flood grouping together. Who knows, maybe there is a different gravemind already there with new and more developed strains of flood trying to wipe out the forerunners.
The gravemind did refer to the chief as the son of the forerunners, or the heir, or something I have not played through campaign in a while. But the point is he alludes to a connection between John, if not all humans, and the forerunners. If you read all of this, I commend you for your patience.