I'm actually curious about what the subtitle still means. Is it possible we could get another alien faction of some sort in this game? Not to say that what happened to the Infinity couldn't have been the Flood. In fact, it would also made sense why the colony is so devastated, maybe it was partially glassed in some way? But I don't recall 343 mentioning what "Guardians" means yet. I remember one of the CE Anniversary terminals suggesting that there was already an hereunto unspecified alien species with spacefaring capabilities shortly after the firing of the Halo Array, but the games and media seem to have been moot on that tiny story thread since. Perhaps that will be brought back into the forefront?
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Halo Lore Thread
- Thread starter Korten
- Start date
wesleyshark
Banned
In hoping so. What makes that event all the more curious is how/why the occupants made no apparent motions to leave their vessel, despite 343GS detecting lifeforms within.
There's no way that terminal was put into the game with no longterm purpose. Whomever was in that ship, or wherever it came from, I have no doubts will be come into play again.
GringoSuave89
Banned
wesleyshark
Banned
Sloppy but it's late
If this is in the Limited Ultra Banana Edition, you'll have my fistful of dollars.
That's definietly how I feel too. With that and the increasing attention given to the Precursors in the other Halo media, it makes me suspicious that something is in play. That, and the Guardians definitely sounds like a title for another alien species in Halo.
It would certainly be an interesting wrench to throw into the works of the remaining factions, to be sure. If that species was spacefaring 40,000 years before the Covenant even formed, they would definitely have the tech now to be able to do the kind of damage seen in the trailer. Maybe be a threat to Forerunner tech, even.
It could also just be a throwaway side story and I'm just getting my hopes up. I did figure it might come into play in Halo 4, and that clearly never transpired.
wesleyshark
Banned
What we currently know of:
Precursors
The Flood (once Precursors)
Forerunners
Ancient Humanity
Mystery vessel that crashed on Halo.
The Covenant (too many to list at 130am lol)
Modern Humanity
So who are the Guardians referring to? A group from this list? Individuals from one or some of these groups? Or is it an entirely new variable that we aren't privy to yet?
GringoSuave89
Banned
maybe a new iteration of the Assembly? nah that's too out there.
wesleyshark
Banned
NO. DON'T YOU DARE. IT'S TOO EARLY IN THE MORNING TO OPEN THAT CAN OF WORMS, SIR.
GringoSuave89
Banned
I know I know I know.... But still, what if. ;p
Weren't there sects of Forerunners that left the galaxy long before the Flood appeared? It could be them, perhaps. Could be a whole new species, maybe one related to the Precursors and their love of creating life. It really could be anything, really.
It may also just be a title to something Forerunner-related that we aren't privy to yet. We likely won't know more until at least E3. Still, it's fun to speculate.
I'm still baffled as to why Bungie created that plot point anyway. It didn't really seem to affect much of anything and conveniently concludes itself before the events of Halo. Why even add it in the first place?
GringoSuave89
Banned
Yeah, it's one of the more bizarre aspects of the lore. Part of me wishes they did something with it, and part of me hopes they leave it dead in the water. I mean, where could they go with it?
UNSC Infinity (5,694 meters)
CSO-Supercarrier (28,960 meters)
CAS-Assault Carrier (5,346 meters)
wesleyshark
Banned
...It's a very big, yet very plausible, if.
~Not sure about sects leaving before the Halo's were fired, though that doesn't mean it could be used as a convenitent plot point.
~The only Forerunners we know about still be alive, other than the Ur-Didact, is IsoDidact, Chant-to-Green, and the rest of their group. They weathered the firing of the Halos on the Lesser Ark, then saw after reseeding the Galaxy before leaving it altogether for destinations unknown.
~Yeah, definitely could be just about anything at this point. We have literally no confirmed information on what the title is actually referring to as of the current.
Wait, what plot point? The Halo CE Anniversary terminals were all 343's doing, not Bungie's.
Edit: I know what you were referring to now. Yeah, I'm not sure. The Assembly bits are so bizarre and so.... Deeply, deeply, speculative. Might be the most obscure parts of the Halo canon that we know of right now.
Didn't they kind of do something similar with the whole "Ancient Humanity were the Forerunners" thing? It seemed like they had seriously hinted at that being the case, right up until the terminals in Halo 3 said "lol no they're nothing alike". I mean, what was the point of that, really? If you didn't even read the terminals, Guilty Spark's whole "You ARE Forerunner" quote would give you the impression humans were the Forerunners after all.
I read up on it to make sure. Apparently some ancient Forerunners who fought the Precursors left for the Large Magellanic Cloud and stayed there. Then they got killed by a Halo firing, so that theory is moot, lol.
wesleyshark
Banned
I think that's where Bungie was going with that initially... That humans were actually Forerunners. 343 expanded and expounded and deepened things when they took over, and made it a much richer chain of histories.
The direction of some of that stuff was carried directly in deference to ideas from forward thinking fiction folks at Bungie. That's not to say it was a consensus, just stuff from conversations and ideation.
wesleyshark
Banned
Guardians = The Assembly? See below.
Snipped the hell out of these. You can view the original for my full on crazy, but I keep the relevant bits, in relation to the Assembly. And now I'm going to sleep, before I start to write a third part to this. SHUT OFF, BRAIN.
wesleyshark
Banned
Oh, cheers to that. That's actually something I've always been quite curious about. Thank you!!!
I definitively like the route 343 has taken with the Forerunners and Humanity, since I find it quite a bit more interesting than humans and Forerunners being one and the same, even if that theory did seem a bit more straightforward. The current ancient humanity addition to the lore adds a lot more depth than I think the prior theory does. It just always seemed odd since it felt like it was almost a last minute change if that was what Bungie was going for originally.
Oh cool, thanks for responding. I was always curious about what happened there, since the whole Humans=Forerunners theory always seemed to be pretty sensible in some ways, like the the Ark and Installation 04 being extremely Earth like, the other Installations looking similar to many celestial bodies in the Solar System, etc.
Huh, that's a pretty interesting theory. I'll have to check it out more tomorrow before I collapse from exhaustion myself.
From the other thread, pretty awesome
There are two sides to every story.
˙ʎɹoʇs ʎɹǝʌǝ oʇ sǝpıs oʍʇ ǝɹɐ ǝɹǝɥʇ
wesleyshark
Banned
Love that. These trailers are absolutely mint. The production values, solid. Voice acting, solid. Littered with details. Shrouded in mystery.
Halo 5 Hype... Is just beginning.
Yeah I don't really get it either, because "OMG there was a massive conspiracy that's been controlling everything!" is in general a horrible plot point to use—why would you rob all your characters of agency?
Given the contents of the data pads, the Assembly either got wasted on Reach or they managed to use Halsey's experiments to propel themselves into slipspace and become demigods. Either way I don't think MS would even be wise to go back to it, especially since if they were going to say "hey we're here" I think they would have done so in the years during and since the war.
As for the meaning of the radio episode, I think I agree with the "ONI machinations" stuff right now. Multiple clones of John starts getting really convoluted and fails so basic tests for logic (If you could clone Chief... why would you return him to where he was stolen away from? Why wouldn't you duplicate the effect, or try to?) The question I have is why create this cover story at all, though. As far as we know the "Original Spartans were stolen from their family" line has, if not become common knowledge, become an open-air fact, thanks to Parangosky's penance/scapegoating of Halsey/propaganda for the Spartan-IVs. So why fabricate a more elaborate story for John continuing to live on Eridanus? And why would these people close to him lie? I don't see a clear endgame.
AtomicSymphonic
Banned
Sooooo happy to have found this thread... 
Just saw the new pair of announcement ads a few minutes ago.
I'm *shocked*, TBH! What in the galaxy is causing the downfall of the Chief? Surely it can't have anything to do with Halsey's betrayal in Spartan Ops, could it?
...
Could it?
Just saw the new pair of announcement ads a few minutes ago.
I'm *shocked*, TBH! What in the galaxy is causing the downfall of the Chief? Surely it can't have anything to do with Halsey's betrayal in Spartan Ops, could it?
...
Could it?
AtomicSymphonic
Banned
Wha... Flash cloning is still bunk, though. Isn't it? Clones don't last longer than a few weeks... Unless they have perfected it...
As far as we know, and if they managed to crack it, it begs the question of why you wouldn't just be using a clone army at this point. So yeah, it seems to me like it wouldn't hold much water as an explanation for the discrepancy.
wesleyshark
Banned
Couldn't sleep last night, so of course I passed the time watching various Halo-related videos, including some of the older stuff. Eventually made my way to the Halo Origins Part I and II videos as I fell into the clickhole, and something stuck out to me that I hadn't noticed before. I'm not sure if this has been covered earlier in the thread or not, but I think it might be worth mentioning.
[All Hail the Conquering Stream]: Shadows and Foreshadows
In the Origins videos, we are given a scene in which Master Chief stands before the Gravemind. This is somewhat similar to the scene we know from Halo 2, but... at the same time... it's entirely different.
He's not ensnared in this scene. He's standing, and free, as if he were conversing on his own volition, and not as a captured audience. And then...
...Gravemind gives Chief Cortana's chip. This is an entirely new piece of information that certainly was not in Halo 2, nor is it in any other piece of Halo literature to date. Is this Cortana's estimation of how Chief rescued her? Is this just simply a matter of creative license? Or is this a foreshadowing of something that hasn't happened yet?
Chief still holds her chip, as of the current. But...how did he come to have it? The last we see of her chip, it was digitized in the console that Chief had inserted it into. He never had time to remove it, and thus it was presumed to be lost.
So where did the chip come from? Is it possible that Chief will have a rendezvous with a new Gravemind at some point in Halo 5? Could his quest to resurrect Cortana lead him to align with The Flood to suit his own means? Could this possibly be a piece of what drives a rift between Chief and ONI? Perhaps he goes AWOL because they find out The Flood is back, and that a new Gravemind has appearaed.
During Cortana's time with Gravemind, it is very likely that pieces of her, or a copy of her, was assimilated in The Flood's collective conciousness.
Could this be a piece of what Halo 5 will be about? What I took from both of the new trailers is that Chief does something that will be both good and bad, depending on who is viewing the choices made. It will be of great importance, but it will also be of great destruction.
Let's review the text from each trailer:
Locke's Trailer:
Chief's Trailer:
Both videos are nearly mirrored in their progression. Both Locke and Chief first speak to the statue of Master Chief (THE IDEAL), and then they speak directly to the figure laying below the statue (THE REALITY).
This raises some questions:
Or maybe I'm just a crazy man, who thinks too much. Maybe this is why I can't sleep.
[All Hail the Conquering Stream]: Shadows and Foreshadows
In the Origins videos, we are given a scene in which Master Chief stands before the Gravemind. This is somewhat similar to the scene we know from Halo 2, but... at the same time... it's entirely different.
He's not ensnared in this scene. He's standing, and free, as if he were conversing on his own volition, and not as a captured audience. And then...
...Gravemind gives Chief Cortana's chip. This is an entirely new piece of information that certainly was not in Halo 2, nor is it in any other piece of Halo literature to date. Is this Cortana's estimation of how Chief rescued her? Is this just simply a matter of creative license? Or is this a foreshadowing of something that hasn't happened yet?
Chief still holds her chip, as of the current. But...how did he come to have it? The last we see of her chip, it was digitized in the console that Chief had inserted it into. He never had time to remove it, and thus it was presumed to be lost.
So where did the chip come from? Is it possible that Chief will have a rendezvous with a new Gravemind at some point in Halo 5? Could his quest to resurrect Cortana lead him to align with The Flood to suit his own means? Could this possibly be a piece of what drives a rift between Chief and ONI? Perhaps he goes AWOL because they find out The Flood is back, and that a new Gravemind has appearaed.
During Cortana's time with Gravemind, it is very likely that pieces of her, or a copy of her, was assimilated in The Flood's collective conciousness.
Could this be a piece of what Halo 5 will be about? What I took from both of the new trailers is that Chief does something that will be both good and bad, depending on who is viewing the choices made. It will be of great importance, but it will also be of great destruction.
Let's review the text from each trailer:
Locke's Trailer:
Chief's Trailer:
Both videos are nearly mirrored in their progression. Both Locke and Chief first speak to the statue of Master Chief (THE IDEAL), and then they speak directly to the figure laying below the statue (THE REALITY).
This raises some questions:
-What would be the dividing line between being a savior and a betrayer? To what extreme would one need extend to cross it?
-What does Chief compromise? And why does he question if it was worth doing thus?
-If Chief's mission is just beginning, then this massive rift has already occured, and is what will lead to a cat-and-mouse chase across the galaxy. It's entirely possible that Chief rendezvous with the new Gravemind, is given Cortana's chip, but then is double crossed and The Flood end up attacking this locale that is featured in the trailer. Chief then goes AWOL, and ONI sends Locke after him. The ensuing fight/escape causes the crack in Chief's visor that we see in the E3 video, as he is now long gone and on the run, seeking answers. Perhaps what he receives from Gravemind isn't complete, or cannot be accessed, and he needs to seek out Mendicant Bias or some other Forerunner construct and/or device.
-What does Chief compromise? And why does he question if it was worth doing thus?
-If Chief's mission is just beginning, then this massive rift has already occured, and is what will lead to a cat-and-mouse chase across the galaxy. It's entirely possible that Chief rendezvous with the new Gravemind, is given Cortana's chip, but then is double crossed and The Flood end up attacking this locale that is featured in the trailer. Chief then goes AWOL, and ONI sends Locke after him. The ensuing fight/escape causes the crack in Chief's visor that we see in the E3 video, as he is now long gone and on the run, seeking answers. Perhaps what he receives from Gravemind isn't complete, or cannot be accessed, and he needs to seek out Mendicant Bias or some other Forerunner construct and/or device.
Or maybe I'm just a crazy man, who thinks too much. Maybe this is why I can't sleep.
Hockeymac18
Member
Interesting, always wondered where/when some of this storyline stuff was developed in the Halo development timeline.
edit: Stinkles banned?
wesleyshark
Banned
Wait what? He got banned?
EchoChamber
Member
Wait what stinkles our savior is banned?
Hockeymac18
Member
wesleyshark
Banned
LordOfChaos
Member
That's exactly what I thought of the terminal. By the time humans were getting over flinging poop at each other, they would have been crazy advanced, if they hadn't destroyed themselves or set their society back a few times. Much more than the Covenant for sure.
But - I don't think a little throwaway in the terminal will be the basis for a new species. I hope it's explored, I just feel it won't be.
The other problem is though, between the Covenant and the humans, very vast swathes of the galaxy have been scouted, if the race was that advanced, their many worlds would presumably been seen by now.
There was a map of the regions of the galaxy in human or covenant control, can anyone find that?
WhiteRabbitEXE
Member
This?
Looks like most of the interior of the galaxy is unexplored, and Installation 04 is just about at the cut-off point.
wesleyshark
Banned
Enhance.Exe
WhiteRabbitEXE
Member
Dammit, Wikia images are wonky. Some kind of hotlinking protection I guess. If you go directly to the address of that image and then hard refresh is should be full-size... Let me re-host it though.
Poodlestrike
Banned
What is this, a galactic map for ants?
Goldfishking
Member
Question, when was 'first contact' with an alien species in the halo universe. Surely the covenant weren't the first aliens they met. Going off that map, humans couldn't of been patrolling almost half the galaxy and not found atleast 1 other species.
Poodlestrike
Banned
Nope, first contact was with the Covenant. Keep in mind that patrolling a space doesn't mean they're familiar with every system and planet inside it.
Goldfishking
Member
still though, makes the milky way look really small. Especially if you compare it to the star trek galaxy maps.
LordOfChaos
Member
Galactic habitability zone. The increased concentration of stars towards the centre of a galaxy creates a higher level of radiation that makes life unfeasible (as we understand it at least). Granted this is sci-fi and they could do whatever they wanted almost, but that's why I think they left the centre of the galaxy mostly untouched, if they understood that principal.
http://www.space.com/414-death-stars-sterilizing-galactic-center.html
Poodlestrike
Banned
True. It's still mostly empty space.
Star Trek isn't set in a galaxy that all living beings were once kill off in.
WhiteRabbitEXE
Member
Like you said, it's fiction, and there's a number of ways they could address the issue. The simplest would be that the race evolved in a region of the galaxy within the habitable zone, but as their technology progressed to a certain point they moved progressively closer to the galactic core for whatever reason.
That said, the concept of such a galactic habitable zone defined by distance from the galactic core is not universally accepted anyway.
LordOfChaos
Member
Right, they could go in many directions with it - just that looking at the galactic occupation map, it kind of looks like they deliberately avoided the hot zone in respect to that theory. Just spitballing an idea anyways.
WhiteRabbitEXE
Member
Yeah, I agree there, the map was definitely set up that way in reference to the concept.
Back to the idea of bringing in the advanced race from the terminal though, I don't think we'll necessarily see them again in the core fiction, at least any time soon. I'm sure 343i has plans regarding who they are, where they came from, and where they went, but I don't think the plan with that terminal was to setup Halo 5 or 6 in advance. More just to present a curiosity from some far reaches of the expansive Halo universe.
MrGreencastle
Member
That whole "dream sequence" part can be taken so many ways I don't think we'll truly find out what it means for a while. I think there is certainly still a lot of meat in there left unpicked though.
"This Galaxy is vast; its wonders and beauty are almost unfathomable. But the galaxy also hides dark secrets, some of which have lain dormant since the beginning of time itself. There is a danger in secrets, both in seeking and in knowing. Some things are meant to be hidden from view. Some mysteries defy understanding, and sometimes even the things we think we know are untrue. Some secrets should remain untouched. Secrets can tempt your primal instinct, and lead you again into war. The Halos were one such secret."
LordOfChaos
Member
I don't believe I've seen that one before, what was the name?
wesleyshark
Banned
That's from Origins, on the Halo Legends collection. Two parts. They're both extremely well done, I highly recommend!
wesleyshark
Banned
I agree whole heartedly, sir. There's so much in those two videos that I want to know more about, but as is this is Halo, it'll only come to be revealed when it's ready to be. But until then, we can speculate.
I just kind of really dig the idea of Chief coming across another Gravemind. It's almost something that just has to happen, given the Timeless One's proclamation of humanity's testing, and how the geas of the IsoDidact courses through Chief's subconscious. A Third Meeting, millenia in the making.