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Subject: The answer to Halo 3. READ. *POTENTIAL SPOILERS*
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Posted by: Suffix
Theorizing certainly does exercise the mind, but it wouldn't hurt to go back over the fiction (FoR, FS) in light of your ideas. Assuming it is maintained as canon, recall that the Chief is not the first reclaimer. In First Strike, Guilty Spark identifies the corpse of an Officer as a failed reclaimer. The Chief grabs his tags, amazed that he made it in so deep. The thought-narrative is something along the lines of, "he must have been one mean S.O.B. to have made it this far."


thats actually from Halo The Flood (the second book). and in that same book it says the halo rings were at first built to conceal the Flood, but that failed and as a last resort they activated the halo rings and died.

other then that, this is probobly the best theorry I've heard on these forums yet, nice job.

  • 05.14.2006 5:29 PM PDT
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Maybe Gravemind is an Infected Forunnner

  • 05.14.2006 5:40 PM PDT
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Huh, maybe that is something else we could look into. gravemind is supposedly an advanced flood inteligence, so wouldnt it be safe to say that he could possibly be as old as the forerunner? maybe he is the last remnant of a forerunner, just taken over by so many flood that he grew to a tremendous size. the size maybe because the flood needs all the intel on its enemy to take them out effectively. maybe it gained more intel when it absorbed the prophet and that monitor.
EDIT:
or even this: maybe the forerunner tested it out on one of their own, to see what kind of effects it will have on their species. When it got out of control, they fired the rings and hoped it would take out any food for the flood, thus killing off the flood.

[Edited on 5/14/2006]

  • 05.14.2006 5:56 PM PDT
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i will never think about halo the same way again

  • 05.14.2006 6:01 PM PDT
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you relise the Forunners built the Halos themselves right? 343 said so.

  • 05.14.2006 6:05 PM PDT
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what if the whole war ende as the humans becoming part of the covenant.......... that would be so freaking stupid, so forget about it...lol

  • 05.14.2006 6:16 PM PDT
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Posted by: CANNON 117
Posted by: Willis
Wrong,Wrong,Wrong....The Movie where fighting humans WAAAAY before the Spartans were made.


See ladies and gentlemen? The above is what happens when you don't read the books, or simply don't know what the hell you're talking about.

The SPARTAN program started quite a few years before the Human and Covenant war. Their original purpose was to put down rebellious groups trying to break the UNSC apart. Then the Covenant came along and destroyed Harvest and a battle-group sent to investigate the loss of communication with the planet. Admiral Cole lead a huge assault force that outnumbered the Covenant greatly and managed to retake the planet.

The Spartans were put into action soon after the initial contact with the Covenant. While they may not have had their MJOLNIR armor, the Spartans were used in military operations before and at the beginning of the war with the Covenant.

Pick up Halo: The Fall of Reach for more information. It's a good read.

-Cannon117
BUT if you had thoroughly read the book you would have read about the colony that was attacked by an "unknown force" just before the children for the Spartan program were chosen and taken. There for the Covenant couldn't have been provoked by the Spartans. What I personally think (from reading the books and playing the games) is that the Forerunner were all about the galaxy and unfortunetly uncovered the flood or created them. Upon the Flood discovery the forerunners built the halos for containment and studyof the flood and killing of the floods food. They thought the Flood wouldn't be a problem but they were so they activated the rings (which might explain the extinction of the dinosaurs). So the life cycle started again and thus the humans and the covenant were born. The humans interested in colonization and the Covenant interested in finding and activating the Halo rings because they THOUGHT it would make them gods. The Covenant were told by the prophets that the humans wanted to destroy the rings ( even though they didn't ). In the book the fall of reach the Covenant came into possesion of a stone which had cordinents to the first Halo. Then they later on came into possesion of another stone which had coordinates to Earth and the second Halo. The Covenant came to Earth not to wipe out mankind but to find and activate the ARC. The humans just happend to be in the wrong galaxy at the wrong time and got caught up in the Covenant's search for the Halo rings which inturn started a big intergalactic war.

[Edited on 5/14/2006]

  • 05.14.2006 6:30 PM PDT
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Posted by: Demon_117[quote]thats actually from Halo The Flood (the second book). and in that same book it says the halo rings were at first built to conceal the Flood, but that failed and as a last resort they activated the halo rings and died.

My mistake! You're totally correct: It's from 'The Flood.' On another note, further to my previous post and inspired by yours, it's not so much the activation of the rings that strikes me as something in conflict to humanity, but the very creation of such a massive weapon.

I truly do appreciate the fiction that accompanies the Halo series, but I have a really hard time finding plausable believability in the creation of a weapon that could wipe out life across several solar systems by anything less than a race of cold, calculating, warmongering fanatics.

It's one thing to realise the potential devastation of the Flood, and wish to protect the universe from it, but between Guilty Spark's explanation of the logic behind Halo's purpose (destroying host life forms), and simply leaving such a destructive tool as your species' legacy, waiting to fall into the wrong hands, I'm going to be really ticked off if the big surprise in Halo 3 is, "we're the Forerunners!"

  • 05.14.2006 6:44 PM PDT
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Posted by: maddog 06
The Covenant came to Earth not to wipe out mankind but to find and activate the ARC.


Thank you for calling it ARC and not Ark. I really feel it's arc, like part of a circle (halo), not ark as in a boat.

  • 05.14.2006 7:09 PM PDT
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You face an opponent who has never known defeat, who laughs in foreign tongues at your efforts to survive. This is Reply suicide.

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While you think it's "Arc", the subtitles say "Ark". Ha ha. Turn them on!

And I think the game follows somewhat in the lines of "Starhammer".

In the book, this race of amphibian-people were technologically advanced...

They had never lived beyond their own planet, however.

But during some of their explorations, they found the "Vang". The "Vang" are some kind of alien race that was looking to take over the planet... But they used the weird parasites (which are not identified in the book as the Vang, but as simply parasites) in order to attack the amphibians. Well...

The final solution was the creation of the Starhammer. It was a tank that blew up the stars of the enemy homeworlds. This would eliminate the threat...

But the amphibians ALSO somehow built a time machine of some sort and sent the majority of their race into the future, to a time when maybe the Vang did not exist. It is not known in the book whatever became of them, however.

But in the book, the Starhammer even destroyed the star of the amphibian homeworld. This burned the planet to a crisp and sent it off to find it's own future in a new solar system.


Perhaps the Halos work somewhat in this fashion? Explode the stars!


Bungie has said they took some inspiration from the book, so p'raps this is what they have in mind?

And as long ago as the rings were activated... you wouldn't find ANY remains of them left. Any particular remains would've been toasted long ago. Especially if the Flood had hold of them.

And if you recall from the book "The Flood", the parasites eventually DO take you over completely. They consume your identity until there is nothing left of you. Until you are no longer sentient and your body is no longer your own. You basically die. And your DNA is turned to that of the Flood.


I do wish some people would read the books, turn on the subtitles, and try to memorize the dialogue in the games. It would clear up a LOT of junk you guys say if you tried that. TRUST ME.

  • 05.14.2006 7:41 PM PDT

The life and world you see is just a cheery toped and sugar coated version. You know nothing of Hell. Unknown to you and everyone around you is that there is a war going on that you can't see. Now that you know, you are part of it. And if you are going to survive, your going to need to learn to pull the trigger.

Posted by: williz
Wrong,Wrong,Wrong....The Covie where fighting humans WAAAAY before the spartans were made.


false...read the books

  • 05.14.2006 7:47 PM PDT
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I saw some argument over this earlier, so I'll just put it to rest; when the HALO's fire, it kills all life in the galaxy (here's the important part) with sufficient biomass to sustain the flood. It has nothing to do with how sentient you are, simply how big you are. Therefore, if you're a fan of evolution theory, it's entirely possible that the Forerunner knew that eventually, somewhere a race could develop from single-celled organisms (or an organism however small that a Flood couldn't liveon it). In fact, I'll go as far and suppose this: what if the Forerunner implanted some sort of genetic code around Earth and that code ended up being what flags Humans as Reclaimers?

P.S. One thing I'm curious about; if you kill the Flood by killing it's food, that indicates it can starve. Following that logic, once the Flood consume everything in the galaxy, they would no longer have food and would starve themselves to death. That makes no sense; either way the Flood loses. Could somebody shed some light on this? Maybe the flood would create some sort of system where they breed living species so they can consume them (think the Matrix and keeping humans alive for energy)?

  • 05.14.2006 7:50 PM PDT
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I find that kind of hokey

  • 05.14.2006 8:03 PM PDT

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Posted by: maddog 06
BUT if you had thoroughly read the book you would have read about the colony that was attacked by an "unknown force" just before the children for the Spartan program were chosen and taken. There for the Covenant couldn't have been provoked by the Spartans.


I've read the book well over nine times and have yet to find anything remotely related to your ramblings other than the initial contact with the Covenant at the colony of Harvest. I would have to overlooking something extremely small.

True, a Harvest orbital platform made a long range radar contact with an mysterious object, consisting of material unknown to them. Contact with the object was soon lost and the UNSC sent a scout ship to investigate. After reporting Slipspace coordinates, contact with that ship was lost as well. Then a UNSC battle-group came in, blah, blah, blah. You know the rest.

Unless you give me an actual page number, I really don't believe you.

-Cannon117

[Edited on 5/14/2006]

  • 05.14.2006 8:06 PM PDT
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Posted by: Yossarian
I saw some argument over this earlier, so I'll just put it to rest; when the HALO's fire, it kills all life in the galaxy (here's the important part) with sufficient biomass to sustain the flood. It has nothing to do with how sentient you are, simply how big you are. Therefore, if you're a fan of evolution theory, it's entirely possible that the Forerunner knew that eventually, somewhere a race could develop from single-celled organisms (or an organism however small that a Flood couldn't liveon it). In fact, I'll go as far and suppose this: what if the Forerunner implanted some sort of genetic code around Earth and that code ended up being what flags Humans as Reclaimers?

P.S. One thing I'm curious about; if you kill the Flood by killing it's food, that indicates it can starve. Following that logic, once the Flood consume everything in the galaxy, they would no longer have food and would starve themselves to death. That makes no sense; either way the Flood loses. Could somebody shed some light on this? Maybe the flood would create some sort of system where they breed living species so they can consume them (think the Matrix and keeping humans alive for energy)?


Implanting Genetic information into the earth? Thats one of the first sound theories I have heard on this thread. It would make sense, ya know, two of each animal and all that were put on the arc, maybe a protection area or something for those organisms to be created and grow.
I have a different theory. I believe the Ark is named so because it is a "Safe Zone" From the firing of the Rings. I think the forerunners chose a planet to create it on to hide from the flood until the ring was activated. All remaining forerunners they could get there safely arrived. They knew the Rings wouldn't hurt the flood, and the flood still had ships and such. So they needed to be sure that all the flood would be either starved or put into a dormant state. In order for that they had to make sure there was no chance at all that the flood could find earth. Thus they destroyed all of their technology, such as their means to go into space and communicate, other than the main Ark facility, which would be hidden until such a time that enough time passed and they had enough strength to go out and reclaim their lost technology.
Oh and to you yuppie idiots sounding about how humanity wouldn't do that kind of thing... SHUT UP. Do you choose to ignore all the horrible things humankind has done? Terrorists, crazed dictators. There have been countless wars and slaughters in the history of man.
And as for why they would do it? Simply put to survive. They had no other choice other than to die at the hands of the flood. Since everywhere was already doomed to die at the hands of the flood, it would be choosing the lesser of two evils.

  • 05.14.2006 8:14 PM PDT
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look, i think the forerunners had built the rings to contain the flood and with the power to destroy them. However i think when the time came to activate them they were to afraid to die and tried to live somehow. Maybe this something worked, but the flood managed to infect it as well so also partly survived. Then maybe they infected the living forerunners and thus gravemind was created. This is the only way i can find that gravemind would be able to live for so long, seing as the flood were supposed to die out.
Tell me what you think.
-EDIT-
i just noticed the guy's above me.
Some of that i agree with.
but not the knew the flood would survive thing.
how would they know? and i think the reason they survived was infecting the ark.

[Edited on 5/14/2006]

  • 05.14.2006 8:22 PM PDT
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Posted by: m1racul1x
look, i think the forerunners had built the rings to contain the flood and with the power to destroy them. However i think when the time came to activate them they were to afraid to die and tried to live somehow. Maybe this something worked, but the flood managed to infect it as well so also partly survived. Then maybe they infected the living forerunners and thus gravemind was created. This is the only way i can find that gravemind would be able to live for so long, seing as the flood were supposed to die out.
Tell me what you think.
-EDIT-
i just noticed the guy's above me.
i agree with all that plus mine.


Well, from that the flood still exist at all, it is safe to assume that they can go into a dormant state nearly indefinitely, I'm thinking that because gravemind is still alive, I think most of the flood spent their time trying to find remaining life forms, and thus degraded and died, but the intelligent flood (gravemind) Immediately went into a dormant state, which was only disturbed recently by the arrival of the Covenant and the Humans at Delta Halo. It may be that humans just got lucky exploring space and the Covenant didn't running into a few of the dormant forms. Its plausable that the only flood left alive were the ones the Forerunners were experimenting on, but I'm not so sure thats right.

In response to above
Well, they had been experimenting on them for quite some time, since Cortana knew from their databases "The Ring doesn't kill the flood, it kills their food" Its safe to assume they had the tidbit of knowledge.

[Edited on 5/14/2006]

  • 05.14.2006 8:30 PM PDT
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Posted by: Yossarian
...
In fact, I'll go as far and suppose this: what if the Forerunner implanted some sort of genetic code around Earth and that code ended up being what flags Humans as Reclaimers?

P.S. One thing I'm curious about; if you kill the Flood by killing it's food, that indicates it can starve. Following that logic, once the Flood consume everything in the galaxy, they would no longer have food and would starve themselves to death. That makes no sense; either way the Flood loses. Could somebody shed some light on this?


This is an interesting theory (first sentence), and one which I have tossed around my own head. We have no real clues (that I am aware of) as to the time frame of the rings' previous activation, though logically, it would have come before the appearance of sustained, sizeable multicellular life on Earth (and covenant planets within reach of the Halo blast radius).

There is an interesting possibility here, in that Bungie may be playing off of our own mysterious pre-history. We had a mass extinction of species at the end of the Paleozoic era, this preceding an explosive proliferation of multicellular species, where only a small number existed (and vanished) before. Scientists are still struggling to explain the mass extinction (meteor?) and the subsequent rapid rise to dominance of multicellular and developmentally advanced animal species. There are tons of fun possibilities in here for the ambitious science-fiction (game) writer.

In the Halo world, this mass extinction may well be linked to the activation of the rings, followed or preceded by seeding of Earth with the genetic material required to rapidly respeciate the planet. Hmmm...

As for failing to destroy the flood through starvation, I don't see the problem, but then again, I'm an overly analytical biology geek. There are a number of proliferative parasitic species that consume massive numbers of hosts at utterly horrific rates. There are life forms that target specific insect species for egg laying, while the creature is still alive, and its young literally eat the critter alive from the inside out until they are able to wander off and repeat the process. Nature is just disgustingly unmerciful at times, and this is not pretty to watch.

The mechanism that prevents these parasites from causing their own extinction is the dispersal of hosts that results from thinning out host numbers with this activity and the activity of species that prey on the host species. The parasites' reproduction rate is drastically slowed by the inavailability of hosts, until the host population recuperates, falls under heavy parasitism again, and the cycle repeats. These are normal parasite-host population oscillations, which have been keeping real parasite species around for millenia. There's no reason this "reality" can't be transplanted into the world of Halo fiction.

Add to that an ability to exist in a state of dormancy (i.e. the little Flood bulbs on Halo), as many real creatures are able to do, and you have an extremely efficient parasitic species able to cope with its devastating effects on host populations, simply through its ability to go dormant while host populations recover - then the next mass-invasion begins again.

If that is the case, then the scary take home message is that the Flood are virtually unstoppable, unless a way is found to kill each and every Flood organism. MC has some serious Flood-whoopin' to do, or Bungie has another story arc to get going on.

  • 05.15.2006 6:25 AM PDT
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Posted by: ChiefEater99
Its plausable that the only flood left alive were the ones the Forerunners were experimenting on, but I'm not so sure thats right.


Sorry to double post, but... It's very plausable. Much in the same way that, were the human race to disappear tomorrow, we would leave a dormant but extremely healthy sample of small pox in a nicely labelled dish at the CDC in the United States. Because of course, we needed it for research purposes, despite the danger it would present to any curious being who may unearth our extinct civilization in the distant future.

  • 05.15.2006 6:34 AM PDT
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Posted by: Tai MT
And I think the game follows somewhat in the lines of "Starhammer".

In the book, this race of amphibian-people were technologically advanced...

They had never lived beyond their own planet, however.

But during some of their explorations, they found the "Vang". The "Vang" are some kind of alien race that was looking to take over the planet... But they used the weird parasites (which are not identified in the book as the Vang, but as simply parasites) in order to attack the amphibians. Well...

The final solution was the creation of the Starhammer. It was a tank that blew up the stars of the enemy homeworlds. This would eliminate the threat...

But the amphibians ALSO somehow built a time machine of some sort and sent the majority of their race into the future, to a time when maybe the Vang did not exist. It is not known in the book whatever became of them, however.

But in the book, the Starhammer even destroyed the star of the amphibian homeworld. This burned the planet to a crisp and sent it off to find it's own future in a new solar system.


Perhaps the Halos work somewhat in this fashion? Explode the stars!

That series did provide alot of inspiration. I would also suggest reading of The Vang: The Military Form and The Vang: The Battle Master. It gives great insight into the different forms, from the parasite, Combat, to the Keyes blob (a Host Master). From the books you could also have predicted the inclusing of Gravemind (one of the Gods of Axeone-Neurone) and the flood juggurnaut (possibly the Battle Master).

As far as the Halos blowing up stars I don't think so. The Starhammer worked by creating a singularity at some point in space, so you could even target it at the center of an enemy armada to kill most of them. Using a star is just a more efficient way of using since the star will go super nova. If Halo blew up every star through out the entire galaxy then that would not just kill all sentient life, but all life.

The flood are still alive because of the infection forms. If they are like the Vang, they can go into hibernation almost indefinitely.

  • 05.15.2006 7:19 AM PDT
Subject: bla
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u guys are all -blam!-s

  • 05.15.2006 7:41 AM PDT
Subject: The answer to Halo 3. READ. *POTENTIAL SPOILERS*
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Thanks for clearing that up Suffix. I had though of it as a one-way reaction (the Flood would end up simply destroying all of Humanity). After reading your post, it makes sense that the parasite and host would find some equilibrium to live at; otherwise, all parasitic organisms would be extinct!

  • 05.15.2006 3:25 PM PDT

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