- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
I've only seen this mentioned once or twice before (I've only recently registered, but have been reading the boards for quite a while), and that's that the Forerunners are not one race, but multiple races. There are two things that made me come to this idea- A. The arbiter, and B. The Master Chief.
Well we all know the clues as to humans being the forerunners (through the chief), with all of the quotes by GS, the ancient symbols that MC recognizes, etc.
But, well, what about the arbiter? Let's take a look for the minute at him. First of all, his armor (at least seems by playing him) as vastly superior to those of the other elites. While his cloaking technology isn't obsolete compared to theirs, his shields/regeneration and general armor seem much stronger. We also know the arbiter's armor is very (very) old, and that there have been dozens, if not hundreds (as seen in the mosoleum in the cutscene in H2) of arbiter's before him.
Well the question here is, if the arbiter's shields are so much stronger, why don't they make more suits? My answer to you is that they can't, because the arbiter's armor is a direct relic from the forerunners, and that its too advanced for the covenant to make more of.
Perhaps to the forerunners cloaking tech. was new by the time they were wiped out (or otherwise dissapeared) and so there was some room for the covenant to improve on it since they already had the basics. But...wait a second. If my theory is right, that means that the forerunners had a suit of armor for an elite?
We also know the Master Chief's armor is very similar to the "reclaimers" armor, which we believe to be a forerunner, and that it is classified by the monitor in H1 as class 2 of 12. In order for this to be done though, it has to be recognized by the monitor, a forerunner construct, as forerunner armor, or at least something very similar to it.
Well, what I'm saying, more or less, is that both humans and the elites were forerunner races, and possibly even more. Going out on a limb, perhaps the entire covenant, plus the humans (and who knows how many other races) were once the forerunners, but over the course of several cataclysmic events (the halo's firing) and thousands of years, it was forgotten.
The answer to why only humans can fire the halo's is that perhaps they were the race put in charge of the halo's, or perhaps something went terribly wrong with the other races (or even the humans) so now only the halo's will respond to them.
Well, that's pretty much my theory. Of course it could be, and probably is, completely wrong, but I'd never seen someone mention the arbiter's armor before, so I figured I may as well. Afterall, it does seem to be equal to that of the MC's armor, and we know from the books and just playing that the covenent's shield armor that the elites wear is inferior to his, suggesting the Arbiter's armor is not covenant made.
[Edited on 7/1/2006]