- anton1792
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- Noble Legendary Member
"Find where the liar hides, so that I may place my boot between his gums!" - Rtas 'Vadum
Posted by: Traxus 04
It would spoil the (supposed) plot twist though. If we knew the cure came from the Captive, then Bornstellar/Forerunners would know, so there could be know plot-twist. Even if there was just a bigger clue rather than explicit knowledge, it would immediately point to why the Forerunners weren't studying the Captive for the cure, making the plot-twist (that the humans were trying to smokescreen them) too obvious.
Let's not use a plot twist as justification because let's face it, we do not know if that is going to happen or not; We are not the author.
If we knew that the Captive was the source, then one could imagine that it would be obfuscated by Humanity, thus revealing why the Forerunner never found out about it. However, one would still have to concoct the idea that the communication device was in fact fake, the conversations fake and that the captive ultimately said nothing; The Human scientists therefore committing suicide to prevent the Forerunner from obtaining the knowledge about the cure. Given the fake communication device or the captive being the source then it would be a solid idea I think.
Now let's just agree to disagree on this next part, because it is down to matters of opinion. Whether or not knowing about at least one of these (The Captive I'll say, as it points to your theory less than the device being fake) spoils it depends entirely on you. You would still have to connect that to the other things by concluding that the device was fake and the Didact's conversation being programmed. Then you would know whether it was a trick or not.
You asked me earlier whether or not I would appreciate that over the alternative: Not really. The idea that this captive holds knowledge of the Flood so deeply horrifying adds a whole new level to the Haloverse, I think.
Posted by: Traxus 04
The one clue that we do get is that the Captive doesn't communicate freely: he usually talks jibberish, is incapable of actual 'real' conversation, can only be reached via a mysterious human device (think about it: why introduce the human device at all? the author could have just written a Precursor communication device into the story), and only has anything intelligible to say on one subject, the Flood. That's enough to infer/predict future revelations from.
If no one ever talked to it, and it never really spoke to them by being behind a (supposedly) impenetrable Precursor barrier, then this is a null point. If it cannot speak, then it does not talk gibberish, it does not say anything about the Flood; It does not say anything. For Humanity to known about it talking gibberish, they had to have had a means to communicate. The thing I cannot get my head around is why Humanity would draw attention to it like that by saying that it knows something about the Flood. Now, the Forerunner know that they can get a lead on the Flood by beginning with the Captive. If Humanity wanted to keep the source of the cure a secret, they would not want the Forerunner to know this. In trying to drive someone away you make them more curious.
About the Human device: The author is perhaps wishing to show the theme of the intuitiveness of Humanity that 343I/Bungie has been shovelling around for the past 10 years. Also, a Precursor device would make very little sense: Why would the Precursor leave a way to breach the containment of something that they wanted incarcerated?
Posted by: Traxus 04
So now we have the Occam's Razor tangent. Sadly it is no more insightful. Occam's Razor only works when you give each hypothesis an equal starting point. In this case what we need to establish is the irrefutable parts of the scenario:
- Didact remembers hearing the Captive speak
- the words delivered were to the effect that Captive was the last Precursor, the Forerunners betrayed the Precursors, and the Flood is their revenge/answer
It does not say that the Flood is their answer. That is not irrefutable, the other two are though.
Posted by: Traxus 04
What you immediately do is make the two unwitting assumptions that a) it really was the Captive speaking and b) the words were true. Those then lead to more assumptions, such as that the humans had developed methods that circumvented Precursor tech, that the Forerunners could really destroy the tier-0 Precursors, that the Precursors would release an indiscriminate weapon as revenge against one race, indeed that the Precursor is still alive after millions of years in a box. All of which are rather problematic.
My version, on the other hand, makes a different, simpler, more plausible assumption to start with: that Didact was tricked. From there everything else flows naturally: the humans have good reason generally to mislead him/Forerunners, and could have had a special motive in the case of the Captive.
To say that the simplest hypothesis is that 'what the character/narrator said is correct' is beyond puerile. For a start, we don't have an omniscient narrator, we have a 1st person narrative, and here an account relayed through another character, partly drawing from stories he'd been told elsewhere. By that logic, if Gravemind said 'I am Santa Claus,' Occam's razor would say this was most likely true, and not a)lying or b)metaphorical.
That analogy is not accurate because there exists evidence that says otherwise, thus giving one a reason to deny its absolute truth. There is no assumption.
As this is fiction, there is no reason to doubt anything that the narrator says as there is no evidence in contrast to it. If you start calling into question the truth of certain parts of the novel then you may as well throw the entire thing out as there is no reason to pick and choose: Why this part and not that part? etc.
Posted by: Traxus 04
Hehe, I was wondering when someone was going to point this out. However since they definitely can see the Captive in his cage, without any extra technology, why wouldn't they be able also to scan him? It's the communicating back and forth, messages originating from inside the prison, that appears to be the impossible part.
A scan requires information to be sent back to the point of origin. Thus a scan will go in, and go back out. Communication is entirely possible.
Posted by: Traxus 04
Alternatively, you could postulate that the humans did figure out how to open up the cage, and they did so and took a sample from the Specimen, but they didn't want the Forerunners to gain access, so they resealed the prison with a fake communication device inside it. That fits well with my theory without changing anything else i think.
Which is in contrast to the second point of your argument in that it seems unlikely for Humanity to breach the capsule, thus meaning that the device must be fake. If they can get in, then a device that can communicate inside the capsule is possible, so the device does not have to be fake.