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  • Subject: Forerunner theory (long read)
Subject: Forerunner theory (long read)
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Um, no.

While we may have lost a few thigns from our past, i would expect that the Forerunners whould have some way to keep records, being more technologically advanged than we are over 500 years from now

  • 06.02.2006 3:30 PM PDT
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I am...whimsical today.

Interesting wording, 'as planned'. I'd have thought 'inevitably', or 'unfortunatly' would have fitted better.

But aside from that, you have convinced me that time travel will feature in the next game :)

  • 06.02.2006 3:37 PM PDT
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pretty sweet dude, i just posted something similar, but yours blew mine away

  • 06.02.2006 3:40 PM PDT

If I were perfect then this would be easy.

A lot of what I've read in this thread really doesn't make much sense. But anyway...

I don't think that the Forerunners would have simply destroyed themselves in a last ditch effort to destroy the Flood. With the technology they had they surely had some method of containing the Flood. It's like being in a house and saying that the only way to get rid of these darn bugs is to nuke the house we're in! Yea! Sure it'd be hard but the Forerunners were smart and stuff.


And if some of what has been said is true than where did the Covenant come from? Or rather, when did they come? Did they have any contact with the Forerunners other than what they found of them?

Well, I doubt the Forerunners would make a showing in Halo 3. Maybe they left the galaxy for another but not before setting a timer on the Halo system. I think this is a more reasonable situation than the Forerunners time travelling, because if they did then why not go back in time to when the Flood were "born" or created and destroy them then?


As for the structure on the Earth, I think it's Covenant. Why else would so many Covenant capital ships be gathered around it? It's not something that the Covenant would do with their wartime tactics and technology. Har! It ain't no time travellin' machine!

  • 06.02.2006 3:58 PM PDT
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GamerTag-SpartenSoldier:Come Get Some!!!

The Covenant will never win....Unless I play on thier side.

Ill be friends with anyone who 1. Likes Halo games and 2. Hates Sony!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Join the UNSC spec ops

Good theory but I don't think the structure is Covenant made because there are so many ships around it. Look at it this way if you don't know what something is and your in a group doesn't the whole group go look at it together? Thats what the ships seemed to be doing. The Covanant wouldn't be clustering around in the air above the structure if they knew what it was they probably would have landed. Also I dont think the Covanent built the structure on Earth because 1. its ancient as the review of the trailer tells us and 2. if they built it a long time ago why did it take them so long to get 2 Earth. In the books it says they don't know where Earth is until the very end. If they knew where Earth was wouldn't they just have launched thier fleet directly there instead of destrying the colonies first. The Covanent can be stupid but they're not THAT stupid.

[Edited on 6/2/2006]

  • 06.02.2006 4:10 PM PDT

Posted by: Vipralion


As for the structure on the Earth, I think it's Covenant. Why else would so many Covenant capital ships be gathered around it? It's not something that the Covenant would do with their wartime tactics and technology. Har! It ain't no time travellin' machine!


THIS is soooo dumb why would the structure be covenant. if it was convenant they would have know about the location of earth all the time. how do u have a structure u forget about what planet its on but rember where exactly it was buried.yea right i can see u didnt think this one through

  • 06.02.2006 4:12 PM PDT

If I were perfect then this would be easy.

Maybe it's the Forerunner ship that Truth rode in on to Earth. They landed the structure on Earth.

It'd be stupid for the Covenant to gather around the structure if it wasn't their's. What if it was a bomb? It's simple wartime tactics. If they didn't know what it was then send in smaller vessels or probes and what not. As for it opening and the ships flying away, maybe they didn't know it was going to open and were like, "oh man get away it's opening!". Yea.

  • 06.02.2006 4:19 PM PDT
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Posted by: Vipralion



As for the structure on the Earth, I think it's Covenant. Why else would so many Covenant capital ships be gathered around it? It's not something that the Covenant would do with their wartime tactics and technology. Har! It ain't no time travellin' machine!



yea, they all gather around it, but as soon as it opens they haul ass the other way..which says that they were not expecting that, which says they arent controlling it, which says its not covenant!!!!!! pwned!!!!! lol

  • 06.02.2006 4:25 PM PDT
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The Covenant will never win....Unless I play on thier side.

Ill be friends with anyone who 1. Likes Halo games and 2. Hates Sony!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Join the UNSC spec ops

Thats exactly what I said b4 u.(see above ur post)

  • 06.02.2006 4:28 PM PDT
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The Covenant will never win....Unless I play on thier side.

Ill be friends with anyone who 1. Likes Halo games and 2. Hates Sony!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Join the UNSC spec ops

Posted by: Vipralion
Maybe it's the Forerunner ship that Truth rode in on to Earth. They landed the structure on Earth.

It'd be stupid for the Covenant to gather around the structure if it wasn't their's. What if it was a bomb? It's simple wartime tactics. If they didn't know what it was then send in smaller vessels or probes and what not. As for it opening and the ships flying away, maybe they didn't know it was going to open and were like, "oh man get away it's opening!". Yea.

Ya but the Covanant have a supreme facination with Forerunner crap they are drawn to it like moths to light.

  • 06.02.2006 4:30 PM PDT

Twelve Large ²

An army of sheep led by a lion would defeat an army of lions led by a sheep.

Can someone figure out a solid timeline for how this would go down?

It would have to start from the beginning - Flood Breach 100,000 Years Ago.

100,000 Years Ago = Forerunners Forced To Activate Ring (First Activation)
2552 = MC Travels Back in Time To Activate Ring 100,000 Years Ago (2nd Activation)
(HALO)2552 = (Guilty Spark REMEMBERS CHIEF GOES HERE!!)

ONE BIG PROBLEM. The rings have only been fired ONCE! So why doesn't Guilty Spark remember the first activation? Was he awakened and cloned after the first activation by the Forerunners? If so, and their story takes place after the first OG activation, then how did they exist when the rings were being built? Did they build the rings a second time through the memories of an ancient AI? It's a giant cluster -blam!- of a theory.

To me, that doesn't make sense.. But whatever..

I think this theory sucks just like every other theory. You can hate me all you want. But just know that I hate all theories equally.


Posted by: Wejneh
However time cannot be repeating itself now in the fact that installation 04 was destroyed, and while the monitor is a smart machine I doubt he and the sentinals could ever rebuild a Halo.


I wouldn't be so sure about that. Have you ever seen the movie Contact? I think all 343 would need to build another Halo is a monkey capable of doing the dirty work.

  • 06.02.2006 5:55 PM PDT

Twelve Large ²

An army of sheep led by a lion would defeat an army of lions led by a sheep.

The only thing I can think of would be memories lost. Like say in Marathon, Tycho would claim he's this bad ass that remembers everything. Then say in Halo something clones an AI, uses it to delay their inevitable demise, but erases some of it's memories and turns it into a tool that believes it was created by their masters - Forerunner. And maybe there's the original AI still out there that really remembers what's going on. And how it really went down. This theory still sucks. And these games try way too hard to be funny.

[Edited on 6/2/2006]

  • 06.02.2006 6:00 PM PDT

Twelve Large ²

An army of sheep led by a lion would defeat an army of lions led by a sheep.

The Forerunner could easily be Covenant now. They could have existed in the middle of my timeline. And did everything I said. Power hungry -blam!- tards that lie and create false beliefs. They want back to power. It would just leave me to question who really built the rings. Jjarro?

[Edited on 6/2/2006]

  • 06.02.2006 6:02 PM PDT
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I dont think so, the covenant arent nearly advanced enough to make the rings. of course i could be wrong, because the covenant could have forgotten the technology. maybe they (bungie) will bring the forerunners into halo 3 as a race, and a three way war could occur or something.

[Edited on 6/2/2006]

  • 06.02.2006 6:38 PM PDT
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if one is so advanced the only thing left to achieve is imortality

  • 06.02.2006 6:52 PM PDT
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this theory is simplay amazing. the time travel theory is the best theory that i have heard yet. wether it ends up being right or not.it was great.

  • 06.02.2006 6:58 PM PDT
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Great job with that research, that guilty spark quote really makes me think MC goes back in time and the ark is a "time travel device". However, i have a few of my own theories to add. First, what if all the halos create a warp backwards in time, affecting all living creatures? if you think about it, the halos eliminate all life without damaging planets or buildings. They also don't affect undead flood. That eliminates something like a wave of fire, but opens the possibiltiy of a time warp. I beleive forerunners are humans, and they built the flood for something ( mabye immortality?- flood never die naturallly, even over thousands of years), the project went out of control, they then sealed the flood inside the Halos (scence their dead matter would not be considered living and would not warp) and activated them, sending all life a few billion years down the evolutionary chain. As a last precaution they made it so only the re-evolved human life could use the rings in the future. Also, if it did only affect living things, the moniters would see all the "forerunners" as simply vanishing, and therefore "dying". They also may have used the "Ark" as a safehouse on their homeworld from the "great flood". Anyone notice this sound like its from the bible? I hope u agree with my theory.

  • 06.02.2006 7:02 PM PDT
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no, the rings probably would hurt the flood. i listened very carefully while playing halo 2, and i heard guilty spark say that the rings were designed to destroy all sentinent life to STARVE the flood (this was after you defeated Tartarus) i dont know how that would work though

[Edited on 6/2/2006]

  • 06.02.2006 7:19 PM PDT
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Also, heres a theory; in the trailer, what if that thing that blows up has something to do with the arc?! its a bit wild, i know. i even disagree with myself. but still you never know.

Edit> OR, the thing that blows up could be a human trap set for the Covenants arrival. cause at the end when all of the triangular looking things are going up, it looks as if all of the covenant ships are flying away from it

[Edited on 6/2/2006]

  • 06.02.2006 7:23 PM PDT
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or another thing (i am a noob to the halo world) is that the flood was on a contained planet. not in large numbers, but survived off the native creatures. But then the forerunners come along with all the technoligy and find the flood. they find the flood intriguing and build halo's to study the flood and how they work and stuff. somone falls asleep on guard or a door jams on one of the halo's and it becomes over run. activate halo. boom! nomore forerunners. I may be missing info, like bungie saying that the forerunners did make the flood. but everything alse seems seemless. great theary. :)

  • 06.02.2006 7:37 PM PDT
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Alright, I’m back. I want to thank several of you for your thoughts and adding to this already existing theory.

I understand that some of you have not read the books, and that’s fine. However the books are kind of like the filling that binds the story together in a way so I suggest you read them, there great if you love the story. I think that Bungie could add parts to there story that don’t necessarily make since to those who don’t know the "whole" story. This doesn’t mean that H3 wont make any sense, I’m sure Bungie will do it in a way (probably in cinematic movies within the game to explain much of what I have wrote.

Some of you are wondering how this is possible, the in's and outs of why they did it, why the Forerunners did what they did and there reasoning. And for the purpose of not making my theory run on for hours I summarized it the best I could. As someone wrote after my opening post, there are other parts of the story (from the games) that would fit very nicely with my theory.

However, most of you that disagree on the time travel thought, here is a rough time line of what could have happened and what is a likely plot.

The Forerunners built the flood for whatever reason, they may have even encountered the flood although the flood does seem like a virus because it seem unlikely that the flood have produced them selves or even evolved from something else. (I will point out that when we first encounter the flood on Halo, it is nether human or covenant, the first flood there must be descendents of something, or someone else right, the ones that were saved for study, the "mistake" as GS refers to them...just something else to ponder though.)

-100000 years ago there is a crisis in the galaxy.
-For whatever reason the flood get out of control
-The Forerunners build the halos and an arc
-As a last resort the forerunners activate the rings and wipe out the galaxy
-Not having sufficient food to survive on there own, the flood die out and the galaxy is void of life. The flood has no hosts to infect and they die out.
-The arc, which could be a time traveling ship, goes back into the past makes a few stops and crashes.

This is the part of the timeline that we don’t yet know what exactly happened.

We will call this time line B

The universe is devoid of life at this point. All that is left are the halos and unanswered questions.

Back to the timeline. We will call this one time line A

-The Forerunners land/crash in the past, 100000 years ago and for whatever reason do not have the means to time travel again; they do not have the means to leave wherever they went (which is in our area, what would become our colonies). They use what they can and live in our time (accept 100000 years ago) and slowly evolve into what we are now. They forget what happened, they evolve over time but not for the best, but are a more primitive species without their technology. This would make for what seemed to be an advanced civilization being here on earth in an early stage of our existence, an Atlantis like civilization that slowly forgets where they are from or from what time. (which is the future)

-The arc, which is still on earth, is buried, not by the forerunners but perhaps partially from a crash landing or by natural disaster, and is also forgotten. Think of the Atlantis story...a city with an advanced civilization that somehow disappears bla bla bla.

Think of time line A and B as two totally separate time lines, because that’s what would happen if one were to travel back in time right? The place/time in which the persons left from, say in the year 100000, that place would continue in that time and the persons that left and went back to the year 0 would be in a totally different place, and who knows how that effected the time line in the future.

We have the first time line that we have never seen, the future time line that the forerunners traveled from.

And we have a new time line created when the forerunners make once traveling back into the past. 100000 years go by and here we are with the MC. The reclamer. (Yes I understand all humans are "reclamers") He is the one that is to "reclame" what the Forerunners lost, he has the means to make things right (and do what the forerunners had planned to do), because he has the ability to get the lost keys. (the crystals that for some reason got spread out within the human colonies. Again, perhaps the Arc made several stops before crashing on earth and the keys were separated.) Now that the MC can activate the arc, he has the ability to travel back to the future after the flood died out, or starved them self’s out. It doesn’t matter that he is going to activate the rings, because the rings have already been activated in the future and he’s going past the point of where the Forerunners left from, a time where the flood is all gone and there are no other species.

So in the end, now I’m guessing Bungies ending will be epic, The MC will have the choice. He can stay in this time activate the rings and travel back to the future where there is no longer a threat. Or activate the rings and kill everything including himself (which would mean no life left in ether time line unfortunately…very sad.)

Personally, I would like to see the MC, Kelly and the Arbiter (and maybe his chosen one who knows) get on the arc and go to the future, that leaves us with a descent ending. That would also explain why GM said the journey would make them brothers.

Thoughts?


[Edited on 6/2/2006]

  • 06.02.2006 7:38 PM PDT

Twelve Large ²

An army of sheep led by a lion would defeat an army of lions led by a sheep.

You still can't explain the biggest problem.

The rings have only been activated once.

Forerunners activated them first.

So Master Chief activated them second in your theory.

That is TWO firings of these bad ass rings. Not one. Guilty Spark remembers the Forerunners. And he remembers the Chief Activating the rings - or so you assume.

So.. Here we go. The two in the same timeline. O = Origin of Activation?

Forerunners Activate Rings.

Forerunner (-100,000) ------- (O) ------- ???

This sets the Forerunner back - 100,000 years to be exact.

Second Activation

Forerunner(-100,000) ------- (O) ------- Humans! (+100,000)

They both have had "Time" to evolve - 100,000 years. Now it's time to meet at the Origin. Rings are activated! Guilty Spark DOES NOT remember Chief hesitating to do what he's already done in this timeline.

Third Timeline

ForeHuman(-100,000) ------- (O) ------- ?????? (+100,000)

Actually. Anything could happen here.. Anyways..

That's two Activations. Not one.


[Edited on 6/2/2006]

  • 06.02.2006 8:26 PM PDT
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I just edited my post, hope that makes sence now...will read threw it again in a few mins...

  • 06.02.2006 8:37 PM PDT

Twelve Large ²

An army of sheep led by a lion would defeat an army of lions led by a sheep.

Posted by: EliteSlapPer
So in the end, now I’m guessing Bungies ending will be epic, The MC will have the choice. He can stay in this time activate the rings and travel back to the future where there is no longer a threat. Or activate the rings and kill everything including himself...OMG I am so late for work, be back in 30 mins...I will edit this then because this is still very rough but just think about it for a while...


That's not epic. It's a horrible mind ****. Traveling back in time. Activating The Rings. Then forward in time. Don't forget the Time Crystals, Kip!

Easy on the Time Travel

  • 06.02.2006 8:42 PM PDT

If you want some possible theories you should check the cortana letters they are from 1999 they have info that seems like it could be related to to the halo universe.

  • 06.02.2006 8:42 PM PDT