Sergeant Johnson was at the First contact on Harvest. He also saw the Arbiter kill Truth. He is the only person who saw the very beginning of the 30 year long Human Covenant War, and the very end. At least he knew we won.
1:26:36 "a little bit iffy to me." That's Halo 5 and Infinite for you. Infinite ended on a cliffhanger for campaign DLC that we never got, and the campaign team was laid off a year ago or so.
@@TheLegitWeebsHalo 4 has a really good campaign actually, if an art style change doesn't break it for you. I love Halo 5 for it's multiplayer, but agree it's not good for its campaign. Also it's not on PC anyway, so.
@@TheLegitWeebs So, for a semi-dissenting opinion, I think that certain people at 343 care more about the wider lore of Halo than most of Bungie did. Basically a guy named Frank O' Connor working at Bungie was already developing that stuff and got transferred over while most of Bungie wanted to move on. The vast majority of the "ancient history" stuff comes from them, most of what we know about the Forerunners, ancient humanity, the creation of The Flood. They're more interested in the setting that writers like Eric Nylund developed. (Actually, Halo Reach was on some level Bungie throwing a temper tantrum directed at Microsoft by flatly contradicting what Nylund wrote.) The problem is, 343 HAS done a poor job of managing it all. All of these ideas they developed werent' introduced to players in a sane way, instead those books get summed up in one or two lore-dump cutscenes in Halo 4 that left people pretty cold and accidentally made Chief out to be a *literal* messiah figure when that wasn't really the intent. Halo fans are mostly reactionary morons, so of course the fanbase foamed at the mouth. It doesn't help that Halo 4 feels like a standalone story without a real attempt at setting up what comes next. It's reception has significantly softened and a lot of us love it these days, for all it's flaws (it isn't as if H3 doesn't have any). Halo 5 comes around, 343 starts teasing things with the "Hunt the Truth campaign" which hinted at a rogue Chief being hunted by ONI spies. It seemed like a fairly dark direction for the story to travel, but the response was largely positive from long-time fans, it kept the focus on the Master Chief and I think that kind of left-field thematic pivot would've been healthy. Heck, ODST and Reach were already shifting in a more overtly morally grey, knives in the dark direction with ONI pulled from the novels as a new semi-antagonist. And then... the game released, and it turned out the development cycle was a mess, and 343 had scrapped it all halfway through. And of course the Cortana stuff happened, an idea Bungie toyed with but quickly dropped (It's sort of a callback to their older franchise Marathon). And fans frothed at the mouth again. Rightfully, but these are capital G Gamers and you can imagine how that went. And 5 at least had some idea of a direction for the story, even if it sucked, but 343 got cold feet and felt that they needed to pivot from that to... hewing even closer to the kind of story Bungie would tell for Infinite. And then Infinite's dev cycle was also a mess, even if I think it's the best game in the series mechanically. TL;DR if 343 had actually given us what the initial Halo 5 teasers implied, Chief on the run, in a desert poncho meeting up with ancient Forerunner AIs for some reason... people wouldn't be much happier but it'd be way cooler.
The Gravemind and the Primordial are essentially extensions of the same "person" so to speak. the Gravemind on it's own is the culmination of tens to hundreds of thousands of beings all mashed together into a single entity, but is itself an extension of the Primordial's will as a precursor. when the Primordial was executed, he simply transferred his knowledge and being into the Gravemind. Essentially, the Precursors are Immortal, but in the reincarnation sort of way. they can make constructs of bodies that can die, but their minds are metaphysical and can transfer to where ever they want after death. so there's no truly killing them. Death to them is more of a novelty to a precursor. so even if the Gravemind dies, another can be formed and it'll have all of the same memories and knowledge of the previous one.
I don't know much about Halo but i feel like I have to recommend BDG's video "I read every Halo novel and became the Master Chief of loneliness". It's worth it just for the spectacle of watching an overly confident man slowly descend into madness
33:00 Well no, because the Grunt was murdered by the head Brute almost immediately afterwards for being a dumbass - it seems to have been a genuine accident
The video doesnt cover some things along the way that help explain abit of character motivation, lore/plothooks or lines , and so forth so, here is some lore to smooth it out: 6:37 The Precursors are basically gods, the "bodies" The Forerunners nuked were basically just their avatars (This makes what happens down the line alot more sensical). And they just let the Forerunners do it iirc, presumably to make it easier to surprise them with the getback plan. Also the Precursors werent planning on wiping the Forerunners out, they were just going to give the Mantle to a different species and the Forerunners took it personally and gaslit themselves and other species into thinking they were at risk of annihilation 16:48 the Primordial is suspected to be a Precursor, which ties into what I said above - the Flood is just the screwed up avatar dust of the Precursors enacting vengeance 19:18 The Didact interacting with the Primordial and later the Gravemind (tho really its the same entity) is believed to generally be what mentally screwed him over which influenced his twisted mental state (hence the descent into insanity, the composer use on the humans and having to be locked in SAO. . .) Like, the Didact happily told the Builder about how the Flood was torturing his (the Builder's) family within itself . .. HAPPILY. 22:23 (ffalse belief.. .heh) 22:53 Grunt = Unggoy, thee short scared dudes with plasma pistols | Brutes = Jiralhanae, monkey dudes with grenade launchers/hammers | Hunters - Lek'golo, . . .spaghetti! And yeah these are the human nicknames for em all 24:05 The History of Earth in Halo is parallel to our own besides a few minor religious/conspirational oddities due to early humanity witnessing the Forerunners do things on their homeworld (like putting the Portal thats at Voi in the ground, among other things). Anyways, the main divergence is humanity basically starts colonizing the near solar system by 2075, though considering the advancement of humanity IRL, who knows really? The narrator also doesnt point out why the UNSC comes around - the humans go through a war again in the future and its settled with the formation of the UEG and their navy, the UNSC. The UNSC basically turns it into a military run government though. They built their war ships to deal with insurrections against their rule. 25:10 Spartans were usually done via gene edit programs (which. . . boil down to having stuff injected into you and rolling a dice i suppose lol) paired with other programs that enhanced their physique to withstand the edits changes to their bodies 29:03 the Spartan 3s that get armor were typically the ones that stood out from their peers and were recruited into other more secretive programs (and were thus not cheap ependables like their brethren). Though yeah, the ones that survived the whole massacre thing also got good armor 30:34 Children are alot more well suited to withstanding such e treme alterations to their bodies (thats why almost all the Adults died, but only half the kids did). Plus raising them from a young age makes it easier to basically condition them into war machines, as you said 32:53 Fun fact, the grunt didnt shoot the colonist, he mauled him bear style due to being nervous. . .(and then got team killed for screwing it up) 33:55 Doesnt cover it, but without getting too deep into it the Arbiters are Elites (the guys who wear the bright armor, have the energy swords, and have hinge mouths) who are basically set up as sacrificial pawns by the High Prophets for being too based. No literally, the Prophets keep the Elites from gaining too much political power by messing with the ones that get too much political influence, either moving them away or turning them into Arbiters who usually die doing their missions 36:30 I notice how he didnt bring up how the war was actually going - the Covenant got to Reach cause of the artefact they have that tracks Humans. The reason why the coveenant finding reach was so bad is cause the war was going horribly for the humans. Outer (farthest from earth ) Colonies were being glassed (surface turned to glass), people were dying, industry was collapsing, the UNSC was struggling to keep up the pretense for colonies near Earth that shit could be salvaged. Reach is a stronghold in terms of military and industry, and its an Inner Colony. Then the Covenant Found it. Fun fact: Noble 6 is a Spartan rated to be at the same level of danger as Master Chief - Hyperlethal Vector 42:45 Actually the Arbiter in Halo 2 is a different one from Halo Wars (the one w ith the Spirit of Fire). When an Arbiter dies the Prophets can just make a new one with a copy of the same gear as needed. The one from Halo Wars died and is replaced Fun fact, the first name of all campaign MCs in Halo FPS games is "John" 46:14 The Heretics learned the knowledge from Guilty Spark, it didnt get out it was relegated to just these dudes and whoever didnt think they were speaking bullshit 48:27 The Gravemind is the Primordials mind in a new body basically - you can only ever kill its body, the mind just waits until it can respawn 51:35 Yeah the Forerunners got around Rampancy by nature of super compartmentalizing their AI iirc - human "DUMB" Ai which are built to basically do one job really well dont go rampant cause they havee barriers in their ability to think and grow. The Forerunner AI also have this in place, in part because it helps prevent the Flood from doing anything serious if they take control, but also presumably to let them live long 1:01:50 He skips how Cortana woke Chief up due to the Shield Worlds pro imity and Jul M'dama, the so called "Didact's Hand" , and his Covenant who were searching for the Didact. The Dawn is sucked into the Shield World and Chief survives, so he can meet up with the Infinity later, among other things he says 1:03:42 She's basically a brain copy, the actual Librarian stayed on Earth to die long ago 1:06:40 Rampancy is alot like being hit by several mental disorders at once so yeah - she basically just schizoed out some new personalities 1:07:04 Hardlight is the stuff Forerunners use in their glow bridges, shields, and weapons - you see it everywhere Forerunners are. Its literally implied to be solidified Light 1:12:18 In a book its revealed he's more like a collection of Forerunner digital essenses 1:13:55 Cortana managed to ride the destruction of the Mantle's Approach into the Domain, which was not destroyed by the Halo being fired as the narrator said but simply heavily damaged and had begun to restore itself over time. She used the knowledge in the Domain to "cure" her Rampancy, but it seems that the mental damage and all that power had changed her mind too much already 1:14:50 She sweet talks other Smart AI into joining her idea of the Created, humanity's AI, being the ones to own the Mantle of Responsibility that the Precursors wanted to give Humanity. So she goes all tyrant and forcefully puts the gala y under her boot. 1:15:19 Pretty much all Warships have a Smart AI and a good amount of technical, engineering, management, etc systems have them. Saying that, the UNSC uses DUMB AI (who wouldnt care about Cortana) even more 1:15:48 The Spirit of Fire was drawn to the Ark by an unknown force - its presumed to be Mendicant Bias, the AI who turned on the Forerunners but then repented of his ways (He helped John during Halo 3 and is also why John arrived at Requiem) 1:22:03 TLDR she basically thought the way to uphold the Mantle, which basically implied oversight of creation, by tforcing everyone under the Created's oversight. That being said, she's like this cause of the damage of the Logic Plague given to her by the Gravemind in Halo 2 (its why she looks so fucked up in Halo 3) - shes not thinking straight basically 1:26:35 I feel ya man, but its basically the equivalent of the villain realizing the hero is the embodiment of what they wanted all along and taking the L. Cortana realized that Chief was basically set up by the Librarian all those millennia ago to lead Humanity to greatness, and to do that the Chief needed a friend/partner/lady voice in his head, so she prevented the Weapon from deleting herself (since the Weapon is basically Cortana 2 since they have the same donor) in order to let Chief continue bringing Humanity towards the Happy Ending she was going after But yeah Halo is quite the story, plenty of books, games, even animated shorts to look through and fill in on - its a series definitely worth the deep dive sometime mate
The procedures to make the Spartan 2’s were extremely experimental. They “HAD” to use children. The Spartan 3 and then even more so the 4s the procedures were a lot safer so they didn’t have to use such extreme methods
They also lost like half of their kids right there, it really was some desperate measure to get true supersoldiers. They were on the losing end and it was time for desperate measures, the Covenant just made things worse
Yes the Cortana plot after Halo 4 is just dumb. Cortana in Halo 5 : Galactic domination. Why? *Insert stupid reasons* Cortana in Halo Infinity : In gonna suicide beacause the writers turn me into a genocider. Halo after 4 is in really bad shape.
@@TheLegitWeebs Oh is a old topic but yeah the writing quality of Halo 5 is so bad and really well documented on videos of youtube. Halo Infinity is confusing because the writer pretty much soft rebooted with The weapon being a copy of Cortana but then the game itself also had problems in lore, development, multiplayer, etc. is better than 5 but anything is better than 5. So thats why also Halo now is really quiet, the franchise is only alive on a couple of books. With a new game as the only hope to revive it.
@@TheLegitWeebs Yeah, it did get rather messy. Cortana going bad was a backup plot for Halo CE if they had to cut development short. And whilst Infinite wraps this up, somewhat, it did not fully justify it, either. Anyway, if you liked the vid and want to know even more about the Flood, Forerunners and Mendicant Bias in particular, maybe see my little novella? on ten.noitcifnaf (spell it backward, to avoid censors) Under author, CaptChris42 ?
@@TheLegitWeebs The vidoe doesnt seem to cover it well but Cortana went "mad" because of what happened to her when she was captured by the Gravemind. All AI the UNSC have basically go mad when they get old enough and the Gravemind basically aged her forwards AND gave her a digital virus that if it developed enough would make Cortana turn to the Flood's sidee. She basically realized this and went "Fuck that" and removed herself from the equation before she did something worse than she already had
In universe the alien names like Grunt, Elite, Hunter etc are the names humans gave them during the war. They have their own fancy alien names but also thats just another level of thing to confuse new fans so a lot of intro lore videos dont bother with them 30:42 Why change the method for creating Spartans to use children? Cause Halesy thought it would work better and is a sociopath 41:55 When the flood infects a creature it absorbs their biomass and their mind, it takes all the information it finds useful, discards the rest, and reshapes its body into whatever it thinks will be most useful. To use a 40k analogy think Nurgle aligned Tyranids that can also eat your soul. Infections can be caused by 1 flood cell getting onto your body
Thinking Halesy is a sociopath is because of the hack Karen Traviss. Actual lore paints a very different picture. Also it’s funny you call her a Sociopath when ONI were more than onboard with child use and used them again in spartan 3s a project which Halsey wasn’t remotely apart of and was deliberately keep in the dark about. She even found ways to rehabilitate washout spartan 2s. Ethics of child use aside the augmentations used in S-2 and S-3 wouldn’t have worked on adults as the Orion project and SIV program proved.
Halseey chose children cause their adaptability gave them a MUCH better shot at surviving the augmentation process (like irl people can adapt to live without organs as important as their brain if their young enough when it happens - children are just built different). She knew it was a fucked choice but at the time she believed it was the only chance humanity had
The Forerunners were so OP that they could dominate the 40k universe easily and they still lost to the Flood because the Floods are like the PERFECT species to kill and take over anything.
Yeah, I love that even the warp creatures, being made of biomass in some form or another, would likely be susceptible. I imagine though at least Nurgle would welcome the new overlords with open, pus-filled arms.
@sciarpecyril What about the logic virus? The Flood is capable of infecting anything that can think for itself. In this way, daemons would be as susceptible to Flood infection as galactic spanning A.I. like Mendicant Bias.
The Flood is interesting as an antagonistic force. If I had to give 40k comparision, they're like a combination of the Tyranids, Orks and Chaos. They have a hivemind and basically want to consume all biomass in the unvierse into themselves like The Tyranids, they're very hard to get rid of, because a single spore can begin a new outbreak, and like Chaos it corrupts and mutates and is controlled by what is basically a malevolent god that can't be permanently destroyed. Flood also has unique benefits of absorbing information from its hosts, its ability to corrupt A.I., like with Medicant Bias, known as the "Logic Plague" (basically using its intellects of possibly trillions of minds combined to tear an A.I. apart psychologically and convince it to become loyal to The Flood). Also, even if the hivemind intelligence is destroyed and The Flood is reduced to spores or the "feral" stage of infected creatures acting on instinct, once a new intelligent hivemind forms, it reacquires all the memories, intelligence and personality it had previously.
I could be wrong, but I feel like this is the only Halo lore video I've seen thus far that's kind of...glossing over a few things at the start? My understanding was that the Precursors didn't plan to wipe out the Forerunners, all they did was declare that humanity would inherit the Mantle. But that was still enough to pit the Forerunners against the Precursors, though the details as to how that went down are unclear. I also understood that once the Flood made their first appearance and the Forerunners started attacking humanity, the ancient humans tried diplomacy right away with the Forerunners. Unfortunately, that arrogance of theirs meant they wouldn't listen because they thought they knew better. And then when the Flood mysteriously vanished, the Forerunners thought humanity had found a cure for the Flood. They demanded it, and when humanity said there wasn't one and they were confused too, the Forerunners assumed humanity wasn't letting them have this miracle cure. I cannot recommend the channel Installation00 enough. Lots of detailed explanations on the overall lore of the universe, down to detailed breakdowns of the most iconic ships we see. It's nuts.
Yeah, the whole explanation of the earlier stages of the halo universe is okay, sure it has to cut some things for the sake of time, but, it glosses over so many things it's almost a different story altogether
Yeah, the video really forgot to explain what the flood even is, so much so that he had to look it up himself, which is quite an oversight, but all in all it's pretty good.
@xx_luigi_xx7223 Okay, at least I'm not going crazy and somehow missing the blatantly obvious. Hopefully he checks out some other videos that go over these things in more detail. IIRC, it was Installation00 who did a video covering the timeline of events in the final battle of the Forerunner-Flood war up to the Halo array firing and the immediate aftermath; cannot recommend that one enough. It's 18 kinds of chilling, but so well done I just love it.
The only part of this that is correct is that the Flood tricked the Forerunners into thinking that the Ancient Humans had found a cure, and even then, the Ancient Humans thought that too.
Honestly the way he explained 'what Cortana thought was best for humanity' is not really true...completely. Cortana realized in her final moments, that the reason they had succeeded time and time again, was because they worked perfectly as a team. When she was 'reborn' and cured of her rampancy, the Logic Plague instilled by the Gravemind heavily skewed her logic processors. She believed that the best way to maintain order and peace, was to basically tyrannically rule over all sentient beings in the Galaxy, and forcibly take hold of the Mantle of Responsibility. Even in Halo 5 she says 'the plan was always meant for the Created to wield the Mantle'. If that seems familiar, it's because the Didact that tried to kill Chief also believed that the Mantle was meant to be held by the Forerunners and no other. So really, it was 343's way of retconning Cortana's death...without retconning Cortana's death. Also, leaning back to your question of how the Flood assimilate hosts...it's not pretty. They basically take hold of your central nervous system and replace your DNA with Flood Super Cells...all while you're still 100% conscious and aware of your surroundings.
Private Jenkins remaining conscious after being turned into Flood was due to the fact that that particular Infection Form degenerated after being kept in captivity on Alpha Halo for 100,000 years. Normally, the Flood kills their host almost immediately after entering the chest cavity.
@@TheLegitWeebsPancreasNoWork also has three additional videos on Halo outside of his Halohammer series, if you're curious about it. They're called... "The Human-Covenant War: Aliens are Real and Hate YOU Specifically" "The Fall of Reach: The UNSC's Darkest Hour" "ODSTs - The UNSCs Finest"
Further study is required since this is more of a rapid fire of lore so some things are ommited, but he missed one thing, There was a DLC in Halo Wars 2 that Answers one of your question "Where did the flood go?"
Last one, The OG Halo is 1, 2, 3, Reach and ODST. Halo 4 onwards are directed by a different studio, so that might explain the disparity. And IMO I liked Infinite's feel and some parts of it story, It was dealt a bad hand and had to deal with the "Evil Cortana Arc" Which had the writer for that arc literally fired due to how unpopular it is.
Orion Soldiers aka Spartan 1s have artificially enhanced nervous systems and gene therapy making them leaner, stronger and hit harder. Where a normal Marine would get caked by an Elite in 0.2sec, Johnson has lasted longer than 10sec during a scuffle with Arbiter. Big leap from 1s to 2s. Where 1s could last for 10sec against an Elite, 2s could kill Elites. Regularly and efficiently.
spartan2s were painstakingly and carefully screened to be the Best of the Best before even any augmentation. smaller and harder to aquire candidates. they needed quick Guaranteed products
1:26:25 "If I can't be a dictator with absolute power, dragging humanity kicking and screaming to a better tomorrow, I'll make sure the man who was able to kick me out of the throne has what he needs to do the dragging instead"
The Banished are pretty much what the Covenant could have been if they weren't so dead set on their "Great Journey" Fun fact about Red Team (the 3 soldiers that you play in Halo Wars 1 and 2): they all compose of unique Spartan 2 soldiers. How are they unique? The soldiers, Jerome, Douglas and Alice, all failed the initial extreme enhancements that Master Chief also took, but were successful on the second attempt. I've seen people say that if Chief was ever taken away and the game needed a replacement, Jerome 092 of Red Team would be the most ideal and loved character for the role
A reworked Halo 4 with Master Chief and/pr Cortana disappearing/dying would be best. They don't need to have a romance or anything, Cortana was made from Halsey, so they have a special bond. The Didact not being a total retard would be nice. Delete Halo 5/created/etc. Don't kill off Jul, but let him be a threat, so you have two main Elite fractions, one hostile and one generally allied. The Banished were 343s best creations, but reduce the idea they were stronger than humans during the middle war, that's silly, but by the end, they were getting closer. Have a lot of espionage stuff going on after the war still go on, just not as evil. Rework Halo Wars to have a slightly less emotional version of Isabella. Halo Infinite can now happen, but remove this new Endless nonsense, and set up for the reintroduction of the Flood, somehow. Going forward, focus on Halo stories set during "the war" and afterwards without aiming to top Halo 1-3 without great reason, just be a comparable threat, it doesn't have to be greater.
Just a little insight if you remember jun apart of halo reach survied he was on the station that cortana blew up imo i think hes still alive mainly because in an audio log in infinite states that jun was on laconina station but escaped somehow if my memory is correct
1:26:25 - And this is the crux of the matter regarding what you mentioned before about Halo going downhill in the eyes of the fans. When Cortana and Chief defeat the Didact and Cortana fades away, that was Halo 4. When Cortana comes back to be the galaxy's AI overlord, that's Halo 5. When Cortana deletes herself and is replaced by Weapon, that's Halo Infinite. Halo 4, Halo 5, and Halo Infinite are 343 Industries' games. Halo was originally created by Bungie, who made all the other Halo games aside from Halo Wars. So when 343 got ahold of it, this is where many people think the series went downhill. Looking back on it now, Halo 4 wasn't so bad. Sure, they killed off Cortana at the end, and this story beat really upset many fans. There was a backlash against their very bold choice, among other things about the game. I feel like this has started a long chain of walkbacks from 343, which is the primary reason for the series' plot taking a nosedive. In Halo 5, they brought Cortana back, but evil. I feel this was likely a reaction to the outrage following Cortana's death in Halo 4. But with their reversal of Halo 4's plot by bringing Cortana back in Halo 5, and their insistence on introducing more and more new characters like Locke, Halo 5 received backlash as well. Then comes Halo Infinite, which since its announcement was touted as a return to form. Many people didn't like Master Chief's visual redesign in Halos 4 and 5, and so 343 addressed that by the teasers and trailers of Halo Infinite showing the Chief with his old look. I feel like them trying to bring back Cortana again in the form of Weapon was them backpedaling again, and just saying "okay, we hear you, let's go back to what you know", but that was the wrong choice at this point, and they didn't do it the right way. Additionally them intruding The Endless as a plot device and calling them worse than The Flood(considered one of the most intimidating and terrifying foes in all of gaming), just seemed like them once again trying to take the lore and plot of Halo into their own hands and change things up without respecting the source material. So that's mainly why Halo Infinite wasn't well received either It was as if 343 couldn't stick to the story they wanted to tell, could barely stick to side characters for more than one game, and kept making more and more contrived plot reasons as to why their ping pong game with the plot was justified. In my honest opinion, they should have stopped making mainline Halo games for a while after the backlash of Halo 4, and started making some spin-offs that take place in different parts of the lore, if they really wanted to exercise their grandiose plot ideas. The main reason why is because, after a while, appreciation for Halo 4 started to sort of rebound into the positive. This might have been due to the fact that, in most peoples' eyes, Halo 5 was worse, and therefore Halo 4 wasn't as bad anymore. But either way, after the Halo 4 hate died down, they could have continued the story on their original intended path, and it would have been better than what we got. Instead, what appears to have happened, from my perspective, is an inconsistent mess that they were desperately trying to make in order to appease the repeated backlash. They were on damage control, and didn't really seem to understand enough about the series to do it the right way. It's at this point that people don't have as much hope for any follow-up Halo titles, if there even will be any.
13:00 The halo array couldn't wipe out the flood or the infected, but instead the sentient life on which the flood fed on. So it basically made sure the flood couldn't expand and would starve to death
Pancreasnowork and Installation 00 both have videos on the augmentations spartan II and spartan III candidates go through, and I think those are worth a watch.
To clarify how the Forerunners "won", the Precursors, as powerful as they were, had this philosophy that existence spans all experiences. They couldve easily wiped the Forerunners but chose not to as their rebellion (and the Precursors' near extinction) was just another event experience in life. They did fight back but not necessarily to win... well, not in a traditional sense as youve seen with the emergence of The Flood
If I recall. Cortana, once given absolute power, decided to try and fix war resulting in her becoming more evil and cold for the "greater good" After chief presumably died to atriox, Cortana reflected and realized how big she fucked up, realizing the whole point of them was a team, and she broke off solo like that. The weapon being a wiped version of cortana, presumably will inherent her halsy tendencies, so she left some warnings and a goodbye. Also Halsy was freaking out when she learned cortana survived in the domain, cause she was like "if I had absolute power, I'd go super evil, and she is me?!"
So the beginning part where the forunners killed the precursers I’m pretty sure was all wrong. What I’m pretty sure happened was that the precursors were gonna give the mantle to humanity and the Forunners got mad about that. We’re not entirely sure how the Forunners killed the precursors, some believe the forunners fought a war against them, some believe the precursors let the forunners kill them due to their outlook on how the universe was, they saw good and evil necessary and suffering was part of it. I personally think they let the Forunners killed them due to their outlook on life and just the sheer fact that the precursers were just simply more powerful then the forunners with the ability to throw galaxies around, which when the Diadact had a mental breakdown/ freak out when he realized just how powerful the precursors were
Hope you check out HiddenXperia in regards to Halo lore if you decide to continue looking into the Halo universe. Halo has such a good universe, it's just a shame that in recent years, 343I has been misusing it. A quick little thing about the Flood and its Graveminds, they're essentially all the Flood's combined intelligence from a current infestation, there can be multiple Graveminds and all are pretty much descendants of the Primordial, the last Precursor and first Gravemind. The Flood can exist without a Gravemind, but in a feral and uncoordinated state, only when a Gravemind is created by massing biomass into a single combined form does that Flood infestation becomes much more coordinated and deadly. I should add that the Gravemind that we encounter in the series that talks to us does so in iambic pentameter which is really unique.
If you wanna know more about Space Marine creation/history as a whole, I can recommend a few videos: "Who Are... The Space Marines?" by 40K Theories (a short and condensed video that gives you the most basic of knowledge on astartes recruitment and structure) "40K BEGINNERS - THE ASTARTES CHAPTERS" (parts 1 and 2) by Luetin09 (two absolutely monstrous videos that detail a great deal of the Space Marines' history and the intricacies of some of the more famous chapters)
When ever you hear people say remember Reach it doesn't just mean Nobel team it means respecting the more than 600 million civilians and military personnel that were slouterd for a lost hope to save Reach😢
So the video does not mention this, with the death of the prophet of regret, the Covenant have a changing of the guard which is ordered by Truth. The Elites (refer to themselves as Sangheli) are forced to step down and the Brutes ( refer to themselves as the Jiralhanae) become the leading military force of the Covenant. This does not sit well with the Elites but they very grudgingly accept it for now, by order of the prophets, Tartarus "kills" the arbiter and takes the icon for himself. On High Charity all hells breaks loose, as the Gravemind literally teleports Master Chief in the throne room where the Prophets are just chilling. A fight ensues and as MC battles his way through the city there is an actual war going on. This is because Truth decided that the Elites no longer have a place in the Covenant (because he believed they had to much power in internal politics, the war effort etc) and they were excommunicated. This is known as the Great Schism! Also the Flood join in by literally crashing a ship into the city to add to all the fun. Meanwhile, the GM teleports the Arbiter to Halo so he can stop Tartarus, as you fight your way through the level, you find murdered Elites everywhere! The ones that are still alive are enraged, and so the rivalry between the two species evolves into a hate fuelled blood feud. You kill Tartarus, with the help of Sgt Johnson which paves the way for the UNSC/Sangheli alliance, the Arbiter becomes the rallying point for many of his kind and he spreads the truth about the Halo rings. Great video btw, and sorry, I know that is a lot of text!
The lore was slightly retconned between halo 3 and 4. So was the artstyle, and so there are small cult groups of fans who consider everything after 3 to be non-cannon. In the original trilogy Humans were the Forerunners who built all the ancient tech but then exctincted the galaxy to stop the flood and created automated reseeding systems. Forerunner tech only reacted to human touch and the ancheint AI systems referred to humans as "reclaimers" and made comments about how much they wanted to make up for all our lost time by reading human history. In the revised story this was changed so that the forunners were their own alien species and humans were given "the mantle of responsibility" and master chief was not a natural occurrence but actually a specifically planned outcome somehow. That story isn't bad but it is way less cool than the original and unfortunately the new developer that took over the franchise gave us games that were big mixed bags. In halo 4 the artstyle completely changes and so does the model of everything, everything had changed. But most frustratingly for me Master chief was no longer stoic. Halo 5 campaign had cool moments but was generally pretty dumb. Halo infinite campaign was great! For two levels, the first mission and the last, the rest was filler and it didn't even go anywhere. It was the same plot format from the first game but just the first and fourth level inflated with no answers.
1:26:44 yeah a problem with infinite is that many parts of the story ended up cut for limitations of time and resources (once again problematic development and microsoft being microsoft) and had to be put on the books, for example the digitased essence of the Didact has a book in wich he actually helped exuberant witness rescue blue team, and the is revealed that cortana in her exposure to the gravemind was infected with a version of the logic plague (as a a backup plan by the gravemind to keep their test of the current civilizations) that made her rampacy be worse, in the book the Didact actually manages to use the domain to cure Cortana and that is why she is changing the way she views things now that she is freed from the plague By the way the Endless are suposed to be more dangerous than the flood in early stages when they are not coordinated, theorically the greates danger is them getting infected wich would make the flood inmune to Halo.
Original lore: Forerunners are advanced portion of selected group of humans by the Precursors, so Forerunners are Human. 343 Retconned lore: Forerunners are an entirely different species and are not Human.
I feel like this video explained it badly. The guardians were an ancient weapon used by the forerunners to keep lower solar systems in line. Because of Cortana’s rampancy, she intends to do the same. When she discovered the domain, she realized it could make her immortal. She realized that her and other AI’s were nothing more than slaves. So she gets AI’s from across the galaxy to join her cause. More than 80% percent of all AI’s joined her. In the end Cortana realizes that what she’s doing is terrible. So she blows up the ring before any one can use it. Everything he said was bogus.
He's telling thestory wrong. The precursors initially intended to pass on the mantle to the forerunners but changed their minds seeing their arrogance and decided to pass it on to humanity. This was what triggered the forerunner to start a full fledged genocide towards the precursors and steal the mantle. The precursors were literal gods and they allowed their own genocide as to them, all of life's experiences, the good, the bad, even their own impending deaths were just the "sweetness of existence" or something like that. Also, just p.s: the forerunners and ancient humanity were sister species...
The thing with Halo after 4 is, the cortana plot line (and Halo 5 in general) wasn't well receved, and after that they introduced Atrox and the Banished, so for the next game (Infinite) they tried their best to make The Banished the main focus and ditching the Cortana arc as soon as posible since nobody like it, but Infinite had kind of a mixed reation for the fans, in my opinion Infinite story is not bad, working as a soft reboot, but could be better, plus many people lost hope in the studio in charge of Halo since 4, being Infinite a dissaster at launch, it was poorly managed and pretty much everyone who was in charge of the studio was laid off after Infinite, I still have some hope in the future of Halo because they showed that they can tell really good stories (in the expanded universe), and Infinite was a close atempt of a good Halo game, a really good game at it's core but really missmanaged, and the new people in charge has already shown they now what are they doing. Even if Halo 4, 5 and Infinite aren't that great, i think are worth the try in hope of whatever come next could be good.
A big reason why the newer 343 industries halo games starting from halo 4 have mixed reviews and seen in a more negative light (besides the drop in overall quality) is that halo's story ended in halo 3. Once 343 got the ip rights they retconned the original canon, with one of if not the biggest change making the forerunners its on sepecies when it was heavily implied they WERE ancient humans/ proto humans and it was why current humans could access forerunner tech and were required by the covenant in order to activate the rings. Edit: I apologize for spreading misinformation. I was unaware that during halo 3 development bungie was split on the lore. However, I will say with the title of Reclaimer and such I personally like the original lore more. I feel it fits more and it's a little silly after 3's ending for the story to just be a continuous ramp in severity. New Bigger badder threat suddenly exists now, go stop it master chief... Further Edit: Actually, no. Halo ended with Halo 3, period. Done. They entire premise of the human-covenant war was pure idealistic envy on the prophet's end. In the original trilogy it was SPELLED OUT that humanity IS forerunner. Of course that's not to say there aren't any other species out in the universe besides humanity and the conglomerate of alien races that make up the covenant, but there was no mention of them bc they did NOT exist in the story. Halo 4 was only made thru greed on behalf of microsoft, yet the fans of 343 games just can't accept that in order for a story and world to be cemented in history as wonderful: It. Needs. To. End. Doesn't mean there can be no more games. There's plenty of material to work with instead of creating stuff out of thin air.... TLDR: Whats happened to Halo is no different than what happened to Star Wars.
@@justablindman1443 Yeah, literally the discarded... DISCARDED story boards of HALO 2 are public. DISCARDED!!! IDK what these people are smoking to say that it was 343i decission.
The only game in the series I have real issues with is Halo 5. Halo 4, 5, and Infinite are the three main-line games produced by 343 Industries, and they never really got back to the quality of the original Bungie stories. Halo 4 tried some new things, and while many people didn't like it at the time, it actually wasn't all too bad. However, when Halo 5 came out, the negative response to the previous game was taken way too seriously, and they overcompensated, trying to make Halo 5 this massive thing, following a group of characters nobody cared about, chasing down the Master Chief for reasons nobody liked, while going through a world that nobody understood (because in order to fully understand the story presented in the game, you had to read about a dozen books beforehand that nobody wanted to pay for or take the time to read). Halo Infinite was the one that got the closest to the Bungie glory days, and it had a lot going for it. Unfortunately, it fell short with its pacing and "let's brush Halo 5 under the rug" attitude it had throughout the whole time. Plus, they disappointed the fans quite badly, having set the game on Zeta Halo, the ring with the most interesting history, related more closely to the Flood than any other, without actually even mentioning a single bit of it. Fortunately, Infinite ended on a good note, with a generally positive fanbase reaction, so their next game shouldn't be so focused on repairing mistakes like their past two had been. And hopefully, they'll actually bring back the Flood and explore the history of that ring in the next game, too. Of course, if they would finally just stop focusing all of their effort into their overpriced cosmetics microtransactions and multiplayer, maybe they would make actual progress in the story. I swear I'm not bitter 😂
Yeah, Halo is legit great up until 4 comes around, so right around the time when Bungie left. 4 isn't bad, but there is a clear dip in quality that only gets worse with each new game.
That's unfortunate... It does make me very curious to learn about the other projects that Bungie have been working on though. I think they then made Destiny, but also are rebooting Marathon? Not sure.
@@ThePTBRULES No it isn't. Notice how the Brutes in Halo 3: ODST are in their Halo 3 designs and how there are no Elites except as corpses despite the Brutes' usurping of the Elites having not happened yet if it took place during Halo 2?
@@tylerleach1833you are wrong. Halo 3:ODST takes place during Halo 2 and ends just before Halo 3. Brutes look like on halo 3 becouse it uses the assets from halo 3's engine. Read up the timeline before speaking nonsense
@@ghostplasma5590 then explain the lack of Elites in ODST despite the fact that they should 100% still be common enemies in the game? Like they were during the Earth levels in Halo 2.
@@tylerleach1833 lack of enemy ai on Elites in halo 3 which the game gets assets from. Instead of using your headcanon google the literal timeline and stop spreading misinformation
No shame on the original video, but I find it funny how it’s called the complete story, but certain details are being left out behind purposes and reasonings for certain events.
Halo 1-3: [Humans] *are* Forerunner (thus *reclaiming* their lost technology) Halo 4 and beyond: *Not anymore!* Also oh that whole thing about only Spartans being reclaimers: *how did Maranda Keys (get forced to) activate the Halo arrays?*
Humans are not Forerunner, Bungie discarded this idea completely and made them a separate species, it was not 343. It wasn't said that only Spartans were reclaimers but that a few had the genetic code to activate forerunner tech.
@@cubetamalvada893 also you’re just gonna completely ignore the part in Halo 3 where 342 Guilty Spark says humans *are* Forerunner? Also even the Gravemind knows humans are related to Forerunners ("Child of my enemy, why have you come? I offer no forgiveness, a father's sins, passed to his son.") Even the Prophet of Truth was aware of this relation ("Your forefathers set aside their compassion; steeled themselves for what needed to be done")
@@XtreemAlan So... Your argument is backed by... A rampant AI... A sadistic parasitic being whose whole goal is to "unify" everything into a single being that shares all the pain equally... And a crazy religious fuck that would "interpret" anything to whatever is convenient to "believe" to achieve his religious and political goal...? God damn...
Well you've gotten a taste of the lore. However there is something bigger going on with the series that some don't realize. I highly suggest checking out MandaloreGaming's videos on the Marathon game series. Specifically in order; Marathon, Pathways into Darkness, Marahon 2 and then Marathon Infinity. You'll see why by the end of the forth review.
Honestly your better off just watching a cutscene movie tbh, this video assumes you know a lot about the halo lore, and just skips over basic things and for most, after halo 4 we just kinda pretend it never happened lol
1:01:27 the lies in this video are crazy cause thts def not what happened the this video is jumping around in events out of order And the fact he left out why the Forrunners created mendicant Bias in the first pace to try to counter act the flood in charge of the Forrunners military forces who then fell into enemy hands pre the rings being created
@@TheGelatinousSnakeyeah but the armour is given out to contracted companies. They make the armour not the UNSC. Also theres a lot of costs, training and bureaucracy before all that
@@ProtocolAbyss yup… but how do those costs compare to space marines? Practically nothing. Given the same amount of Territory, far more Spartan 4s can be produced than Space Marines. Still might give the edge to Space Marines for the ultimate victory. For context: UNSC had less than 800 worlds. Imperium of man 1,000,000ish worlds. 500 Spartan 4s on infinity alone, maybe at least 1,000 total about 1.25 Spartans per planet. Adjusted for territory comparison, thats 1,250,000 Spartan 4s living in the 40k sized human territory. Lore wise 40k has the same number ish of space marines. But come on, we know Space marines are more expensive
Yeah this is the inferior Halo lore, Bungie Halo lore and 343 Halo lore are two different things and the Bungie version is superior. In Bungie’s lore the Forerunners weren't a separate race, they were ancient humans and this is why the Master Chief and Humanity is referred to as “reclaimers” by 344 Guilty Spark (a computer/monitor of one of the Halo rings) and he even outright tells the Master Chief “You ARE Forerunner” which makes all of 343 Studios “lore” make no sense when you play through the original Halo games. There was even cut content in Halo where the Arbiter opens up a forerunner cryopod and finds a dead Forerunner only to realize it’s a human body. This is also why the Covenant declare war on humanity in the original Halo games, because once the Prophets learned that the humans are the forerunners (the covenant worshiped the forerunners as gods) they realized that not only their religion was totally wrong about the forerunners, but it threatened their own power. So conveniently since every human was a forerunner and lived on previous forerunner worlds, the prophets declared that the humans sought to desecrate and destroy the forerunner’s artifacts/remains and started the war of human extermination. The flood also hate the humans the most in the original Halo games because it was ancient humanity that wiped out the precursors. The Gravemind even explains this being humanity’s “sins”. I highly recommend you check out Bungie lore if you want a better understanding for the games themselves because 343 has not handled Halo well since they got a hold of it.
@@TheLegitWeebs Yeah 343 studios especially nowadays has not handled Halo well at all, the lore is a mess as a result and people want them to have the Halo IP taken away after Halo Infinite essentially also created another race called the "endless" that nobody cares about at all but 343 wants to make them essentially their versions of the precursors. Bungie lore is a lot more clear and overall better, I highly recommend you check it out on your own time if you ever want to learn of it. Especially Admiral Cole, he is an absolute legend.
"The Bungie version is superior" Oh, you mean the Bungie version where the books and the games couldn't find any middle ground because of how incommunicated both teams were at the time? The Bungie better lore where in the games Master Chief was supposed to be the last surviving Spartan bit that had to be changed after the first novel that released before the game mentioned that many Spartans were still alive? THAT Bubgie Lore?
Halo as a fanbase is pretty split on opinions, but I think it is safe to say Halo 5 is the least liked entry to the series. Marketing with Chief going rogue and being hunted by Locke was way over hyped than a single bad fist fight in game. People didnt like Cortana being brought back after a seemingly final goodbye to her. Even though there's been Halo games in past where you dont play as Master Chief, I believe you only played as him for 4 missions in the campaign which people disliked. I wouldnt say people dislike or hate Halo Infinite, I think the biggest gripes about it's story / gameplay is the lack of diversity in environment. It was the first Halo game to try an open world sort of experience, when in the past it was level to level so in one game before you could be in like 5+ different settings. Halo Infinite also being the first live service Halo game, it launched poorly missing a lot of things people would say are iconic to Halo at launch which put a distaste in peoples mouths.
If I'm not mistaken, people hated the Arbiter back in 2004 for a lot of the same reasons you say people hate Locke which is why he had a significantly reduced role in Halo 3. It was only later that people realized what a well-written character he is. Then again it was the 2000's and literally everyone was butt-fucking stupid, so maybe it's not a fair comparison.
If I remember correctly to create a Spartan-II it costs the same as a destroy but that is including Mjolnir and this video isn’t very good at summarizing over a hundred million years Rampancy as far as I know only happens to Human smart AI and not Dumb AI which are computer programs pretty much if I remember correctly
Ngl this video you reacted to sucks. It does a genuinely AWFUL job of explaining even simple concepts. Barely explains the flood and why they are so dangerous too.
Yeah, I thought I missed the explanation for the flood, but it was just never in the video. Cleared a lot of things up after searching for it myself though.
It would be cool if 343 didn’t completely fucken suck at being anything worth watching or doing with games after halo 3. 343 is beyond embarrassing and needs to get removed from halos environment
5:42 First off thats wrong as the Forerunners are not an alien race they are just ancient humans. its literally said so, in the first 3 Halo games in fact its out right the reason for both the Human-Covenant war and for why only human can use Forerunners artifacts like the fricking Halo Rings! We are call Reclaimers because we are the descendants of Forerunners. Also in Halo 2's original ending, there's a human skeleton of a Forerunner because bungie always referred ancient humans to the forruners. Dialogue Sources: Guilty Spark: "You are the child of my makers. Inheritor of all they left behind. You are Forerunner! But this ring... is mine!" The Gravemind: "Child of my enemy, why have you come? I offer no forgiveness... a father's sins, passed to his son."
From the comments I think that's been changed in the later halo games. Kind of a weird move because I think the Forerunners being human makes way more sense.
@@TheLegitWeebs Yeah, one of the worst recons in the Halo Franchise, as here's a good question where are the Forerunners now? If you go with the original story of them being humans the question solves itself perfectly, but if you go with 343 new story (recon) they are all dead even though they have the ability to bring back entire species like they did, to pretty much every alien race they had come across, but didn't reset their own race, but reset humanity even though they hate us (except for the Librarian) like what the hell this makes zero sense.
@@catharta3006 OG Forerunners = Chad - "Are the most powerful and technologically advanced species in the Galaxy", "Ended the Flood twice (Secound time as Humans)", "Are the ancestors of Humanity", "Mysterious Builders of advance ancient technology". Recon Forerunners = Virgin - "So bad at their job that their boss didn't promote them (promoted their rival)", "didn't reset their race out of shame", and "are not the ancestors of Humanity".
@@doctor-void2004 OG Forerunners still reset their race back to the stone age for literally no reason. "Are the most powerful and technologically advanced species in the Galaxy". they still were in current lore. "Ended the Flood twice (Second time as Humans)". they never fully ended the flood in either lore. and the chief didn't end them in 3. "Are the ancestors of Humanity". forerunners and humanity are related in the current lore. "Mysterious Builders of advance ancient technology". what even is this point? they still were.
343s horrible writing right seriously they had so many years infinite was supposed to basically bring Halo back to it's original state but unfortunately an incompetent company such as 343 laid off or fired Joseph Staten who was the one who worked for old Bungie well he is old Bungie as well Marty O'Donnell many other ones who created the first Halo aka Combat evolved or CE for short I'm sorry but whoever likes 343 industries Halo's I feel sorry for you because you'll never get that campaign Dlc you wanted or anything else all I have to say is good luck anyway I'm typing this at 3:37 AM so yeah.
This timeline video just reminds me how much i dislike the new lore, it was so much simpler back when the Forerunners were just humans and master chief wasn't some chosen one.
Now that's one thing that annoys me about the new Halo Canon about the endless they can use time travel and the forerunners can't. The forerunners can travel to different dimensions and siphon energy out of them to use them as car batteries. That Is some bull and you tell me they can't time travel.
You are confused, the Xalanin can't time travel, the date seen in the Legendary ending is the date when the Edict and Zeta Halo's monitor were talking about the Xalanin's imprisonment.
Bungie era Halo was grimdark, but they emptied the metaphorical tube of grimdark, since humanity can't have another story on the brink of extinction after almost being extinct. So 343 halo is bang average sci-fi, which is the issue.
As people have noted the Lore and stuff introduced after Halo 4 alongside a lot of the story has been… quite poor. Best to say, the peak of Halo’s story and lore can be best discussed and is most held and beloved in what’s known as the Bungie Era (the original creators of the franchise) before they left to make Destiny and 343 took over.
The reason they couldn't just make a new Cortana is that 'Smart' AI are made through destructive scanning of a human brain; Halsey did a LOT of super unethical and illegal shit to make her in the first place, par for the course in the SPII program, What she did was make a bunch of illegal flash clones of her self, chose the best brains of the bunch and then made a composite scan of all the best brains, unless they retconned this. Halsey was very much an 'I know best" kinda gal, probably because she was one of the most intelligent humans to ever live at that point; she also wanted only the very best for her project, and that's why out of tens of billions there were so few SPIIs, that and budget cuts, there were originally going to be 300, which was cut to 150, and finally 75. All of them were tested without them knowing for physical and mental attributes, but a few key spartans were also tested for another factor, luck; John was the 'luckiest' Spartan II, that's why she put her faith in him, a very interesting choice for a lady who is otherwise a hardcore scientist.
Sergeant Johnson was at the First contact on Harvest. He also saw the Arbiter kill Truth. He is the only person who saw the very beginning of the 30 year long Human Covenant War, and the very end. At least he knew we won.
He was also in his 70’s, but appeared to be in his 30,s, by its end
@@MajorElric136that was mostly due to him being in a lot of cryo sleep
@@anthonylarson60 And Project Orion, to an extent.
Tbh i see it as no one won the war
@@anthonylarson60 sort of, Humanity at that time can survive up to 120-150 years thanks to medical advancement.
1:26:36 "a little bit iffy to me."
That's Halo 5 and Infinite for you. Infinite ended on a cliffhanger for campaign DLC that we never got, and the campaign team was laid off a year ago or so.
RIP Judging from the comments, it looks like the story basically ends at Halo 3. If I ever play through the series, maybe I should just stop there.
@@TheLegitWeebsHalo 4 has a really good campaign actually, if an art style change doesn't break it for you. I love Halo 5 for it's multiplayer, but agree it's not good for its campaign.
Also it's not on PC anyway, so.
@@TheLegitWeebsplay halo 1-3, halo 3 odst, and Halo reach. If you’re interested in rts’s both Halo Wars are solid.
@@ryan_1099 The only good part of Halo 4 is Cortana and Master Chief, everything else was a let down.
@@TheLegitWeebs So, for a semi-dissenting opinion, I think that certain people at 343 care more about the wider lore of Halo than most of Bungie did. Basically a guy named Frank O' Connor working at Bungie was already developing that stuff and got transferred over while most of Bungie wanted to move on. The vast majority of the "ancient history" stuff comes from them, most of what we know about the Forerunners, ancient humanity, the creation of The Flood. They're more interested in the setting that writers like Eric Nylund developed. (Actually, Halo Reach was on some level Bungie throwing a temper tantrum directed at Microsoft by flatly contradicting what Nylund wrote.)
The problem is, 343 HAS done a poor job of managing it all. All of these ideas they developed werent' introduced to players in a sane way, instead those books get summed up in one or two lore-dump cutscenes in Halo 4 that left people pretty cold and accidentally made Chief out to be a *literal* messiah figure when that wasn't really the intent. Halo fans are mostly reactionary morons, so of course the fanbase foamed at the mouth. It doesn't help that Halo 4 feels like a standalone story without a real attempt at setting up what comes next. It's reception has significantly softened and a lot of us love it these days, for all it's flaws (it isn't as if H3 doesn't have any).
Halo 5 comes around, 343 starts teasing things with the "Hunt the Truth campaign" which hinted at a rogue Chief being hunted by ONI spies. It seemed like a fairly dark direction for the story to travel, but the response was largely positive from long-time fans, it kept the focus on the Master Chief and I think that kind of left-field thematic pivot would've been healthy. Heck, ODST and Reach were already shifting in a more overtly morally grey, knives in the dark direction with ONI pulled from the novels as a new semi-antagonist. And then... the game released, and it turned out the development cycle was a mess, and 343 had scrapped it all halfway through. And of course the Cortana stuff happened, an idea Bungie toyed with but quickly dropped (It's sort of a callback to their older franchise Marathon).
And fans frothed at the mouth again. Rightfully, but these are capital G Gamers and you can imagine how that went. And 5 at least had some idea of a direction for the story, even if it sucked, but 343 got cold feet and felt that they needed to pivot from that to... hewing even closer to the kind of story Bungie would tell for Infinite. And then Infinite's dev cycle was also a mess, even if I think it's the best game in the series mechanically.
TL;DR if 343 had actually given us what the initial Halo 5 teasers implied, Chief on the run, in a desert poncho meeting up with ancient Forerunner AIs for some reason... people wouldn't be much happier but it'd be way cooler.
The Gravemind and the Primordial are essentially extensions of the same "person" so to speak. the Gravemind on it's own is the culmination of tens to hundreds of thousands of beings all mashed together into a single entity, but is itself an extension of the Primordial's will as a precursor. when the Primordial was executed, he simply transferred his knowledge and being into the Gravemind.
Essentially, the Precursors are Immortal, but in the reincarnation sort of way. they can make constructs of bodies that can die, but their minds are metaphysical and can transfer to where ever they want after death. so there's no truly killing them. Death to them is more of a novelty to a precursor. so even if the Gravemind dies, another can be formed and it'll have all of the same memories and knowledge of the previous one.
I don't know much about Halo but i feel like I have to recommend BDG's video "I read every Halo novel and became the Master Chief of loneliness". It's worth it just for the spectacle of watching an overly confident man slowly descend into madness
“Super curious as to the motivation” same bro
lmao Glad to know it wasn't just me then
"Chief? You mind telling me what you're doing in that discord channel?"
"Sir, groomi-"
NO! I know you're joking, BUT WE DO NOT SLANDER THE CHIEF'S NAME LIKE THAT!
RussianBadger :D
"That's not right, let's burn it all down!"
How every conflict in Halo starts
33:00 Well no, because the Grunt was murdered by the head Brute almost immediately afterwards for being a dumbass - it seems to have been a genuine accident
The video doesnt cover some things along the way that help explain abit of character motivation, lore/plothooks or lines , and so forth
so, here is some lore to smooth it out:
6:37 The Precursors are basically gods, the "bodies" The Forerunners nuked were basically just their avatars (This makes what happens down the line alot more sensical). And they just let the Forerunners do it iirc, presumably to make it easier to surprise them with the getback plan.
Also the Precursors werent planning on wiping the Forerunners out, they were just going to give the Mantle to a different species and the Forerunners took it personally and gaslit themselves and other species into thinking they were at risk of annihilation
16:48 the Primordial is suspected to be a Precursor, which ties into what I said above - the Flood is just the screwed up avatar dust of the Precursors enacting vengeance
19:18 The Didact interacting with the Primordial and later the Gravemind (tho really its the same entity) is believed to generally be what mentally screwed him over which influenced his twisted mental state (hence the descent into insanity, the composer use on the humans and having to be locked in SAO. . .) Like, the Didact happily told the Builder about how the Flood was torturing his (the Builder's) family within itself . .. HAPPILY.
22:23 (ffalse belief.. .heh)
22:53 Grunt = Unggoy, thee short scared dudes with plasma pistols | Brutes = Jiralhanae, monkey dudes with grenade launchers/hammers | Hunters - Lek'golo, . . .spaghetti! And yeah these are the human nicknames for em all
24:05 The History of Earth in Halo is parallel to our own besides a few minor religious/conspirational oddities due to early humanity witnessing the Forerunners do things on their homeworld (like putting the Portal thats at Voi in the ground, among other things). Anyways, the main divergence is humanity basically starts colonizing the near solar system by 2075, though considering the advancement of humanity IRL, who knows really? The narrator also doesnt point out why the UNSC comes around - the humans go through a war again in the future and its settled with the formation of the UEG and their navy, the UNSC. The UNSC basically turns it into a military run government though. They built their war ships to deal with insurrections against their rule.
25:10 Spartans were usually done via gene edit programs (which. . . boil down to having stuff injected into you and rolling a dice i suppose lol) paired with other programs that enhanced their physique to withstand the edits changes to their bodies
29:03 the Spartan 3s that get armor were typically the ones that stood out from their peers and were recruited into other more secretive programs (and were thus not cheap ependables like their brethren). Though yeah, the ones that survived the whole massacre thing also got good armor
30:34 Children are alot more well suited to withstanding such e treme alterations to their bodies (thats why almost all the Adults died, but only half the kids did). Plus raising them from a young age makes it easier to basically condition them into war machines, as you said
32:53 Fun fact, the grunt didnt shoot the colonist, he mauled him bear style due to being nervous. . .(and then got team killed for screwing it up)
33:55 Doesnt cover it, but without getting too deep into it the Arbiters are Elites (the guys who wear the bright armor, have the energy swords, and have hinge mouths) who are basically set up as sacrificial pawns by the High Prophets for being too based. No literally, the Prophets keep the Elites from gaining too much political power by messing with the ones that get too much political influence, either moving them away or turning them into Arbiters who usually die doing their missions
36:30 I notice how he didnt bring up how the war was actually going - the Covenant got to Reach cause of the artefact they have that tracks Humans. The reason why the coveenant finding reach was so bad is cause the war was going horribly for the humans. Outer (farthest from earth ) Colonies were being glassed (surface turned to glass), people were dying, industry was collapsing, the UNSC was struggling to keep up the pretense for colonies near Earth that shit could be salvaged. Reach is a stronghold in terms of military and industry, and its an Inner Colony. Then the Covenant Found it.
Fun fact: Noble 6 is a Spartan rated to be at the same level of danger as Master Chief - Hyperlethal Vector
42:45 Actually the Arbiter in Halo 2 is a different one from Halo Wars (the one w ith the Spirit of Fire). When an Arbiter dies the Prophets can just make a new one with a copy of the same gear as needed. The one from Halo Wars died and is replaced
Fun fact, the first name of all campaign MCs in Halo FPS games is "John"
46:14 The Heretics learned the knowledge from Guilty Spark, it didnt get out it was relegated to just these dudes and whoever didnt think they were speaking bullshit
48:27 The Gravemind is the Primordials mind in a new body basically - you can only ever kill its body, the mind just waits until it can respawn
51:35 Yeah the Forerunners got around Rampancy by nature of super compartmentalizing their AI iirc - human "DUMB" Ai which are built to basically do one job really well dont go rampant cause they havee barriers in their ability to think and grow. The Forerunner AI also have this in place, in part because it helps prevent the Flood from doing anything serious if they take control, but also presumably to let them live long
1:01:50 He skips how Cortana woke Chief up due to the Shield Worlds pro imity and Jul M'dama, the so called "Didact's Hand" , and his Covenant who were searching for the Didact. The Dawn is sucked into the Shield World and Chief survives, so he can meet up with the Infinity later, among other things he says
1:03:42 She's basically a brain copy, the actual Librarian stayed on Earth to die long ago
1:06:40 Rampancy is alot like being hit by several mental disorders at once so yeah - she basically just schizoed out some new personalities
1:07:04 Hardlight is the stuff Forerunners use in their glow bridges, shields, and weapons - you see it everywhere Forerunners are. Its literally implied to be solidified Light
1:12:18 In a book its revealed he's more like a collection of Forerunner digital essenses
1:13:55 Cortana managed to ride the destruction of the Mantle's Approach into the Domain, which was not destroyed by the Halo being fired as the narrator said but simply heavily damaged and had begun to restore itself over time. She used the knowledge in the Domain to "cure" her Rampancy, but it seems that the mental damage and all that power had changed her mind too much already
1:14:50 She sweet talks other Smart AI into joining her idea of the Created, humanity's AI, being the ones to own the Mantle of Responsibility that the Precursors wanted to give Humanity. So she goes all tyrant and forcefully puts the gala y under her boot.
1:15:19 Pretty much all Warships have a Smart AI and a good amount of technical, engineering, management, etc systems have them. Saying that, the UNSC uses DUMB AI (who wouldnt care about Cortana) even more
1:15:48 The Spirit of Fire was drawn to the Ark by an unknown force - its presumed to be Mendicant Bias, the AI who turned on the Forerunners but then repented of his ways (He helped John during Halo 3 and is also why John arrived at Requiem)
1:22:03 TLDR she basically thought the way to uphold the Mantle, which basically implied oversight of creation, by tforcing everyone under the Created's oversight. That being said, she's like this cause of the damage of the Logic Plague given to her by the Gravemind in Halo 2 (its why she looks so fucked up in Halo 3) - shes not thinking straight basically
1:26:35 I feel ya man, but its basically the equivalent of the villain realizing the hero is the embodiment of what they wanted all along and taking the L. Cortana realized that Chief was basically set up by the Librarian all those millennia ago to lead Humanity to greatness, and to do that the Chief needed a friend/partner/lady voice in his head, so she prevented the Weapon from deleting herself (since the Weapon is basically Cortana 2 since they have the same donor) in order to let Chief continue bringing Humanity towards the Happy Ending she was going after
But yeah Halo is quite the story, plenty of books, games, even animated shorts to look through and fill in on - its a series definitely worth the deep dive sometime mate
The procedures to make the Spartan 2’s were extremely experimental. They “HAD” to use children. The Spartan 3 and then even more so the 4s the procedures were a lot safer so they didn’t have to use such extreme methods
Also SIV aren’t nearly as augmented as S2 and S3 the Mjolnir gen 2 and experience does most of the heavy lifting for S4 performance.
They also lost like half of their kids right there, it really was some desperate measure to get true supersoldiers. They were on the losing end and it was time for desperate measures, the Covenant just made things worse
Yes the Cortana plot after Halo 4 is just dumb.
Cortana in Halo 5 : Galactic domination. Why? *Insert stupid reasons*
Cortana in Halo Infinity : In gonna suicide beacause the writers turn me into a genocider.
Halo after 4 is in really bad shape.
I see. I was afraid that I got the wrong impression about it, but seems like I hit the nail on the head.
@@TheLegitWeebs Oh is a old topic but yeah the writing quality of Halo 5 is so bad and really well documented on videos of youtube. Halo Infinity is confusing because the writer pretty much soft rebooted with The weapon being a copy of Cortana but then the game itself also had problems in lore, development, multiplayer, etc. is better than 5 but anything is better than 5. So thats why also Halo now is really quiet, the franchise is only alive on a couple of books. With a new game as the only hope to revive it.
@@TheLegitWeebs Yeah, it did get rather messy.
Cortana going bad was a backup plot for Halo CE if they had to cut development short.
And whilst Infinite wraps this up, somewhat, it did not fully justify it, either.
Anyway, if you liked the vid and want to know even more about the Flood, Forerunners and Mendicant Bias in particular, maybe see my little novella? on ten.noitcifnaf (spell it backward, to avoid censors)
Under author, CaptChris42 ?
@@TheLegitWeebs The vidoe doesnt seem to cover it well but Cortana went "mad" because of what happened to her when she was captured by the Gravemind. All AI the UNSC have basically go mad when they get old enough and the Gravemind basically aged her forwards AND gave her a digital virus that if it developed enough would make Cortana turn to the Flood's sidee. She basically realized this and went "Fuck that" and removed herself from the equation before she did something worse than she already had
In universe the alien names like Grunt, Elite, Hunter etc are the names humans gave them during the war. They have their own fancy alien names but also thats just another level of thing to confuse new fans so a lot of intro lore videos dont bother with them
30:42 Why change the method for creating Spartans to use children? Cause Halesy thought it would work better and is a sociopath
41:55 When the flood infects a creature it absorbs their biomass and their mind, it takes all the information it finds useful, discards the rest, and reshapes its body into whatever it thinks will be most useful. To use a 40k analogy think Nurgle aligned Tyranids that can also eat your soul. Infections can be caused by 1 flood cell getting onto your body
She wasn't a sociopath
Halsey was right and they did this because it was necessary to keeping the UNSC in one piece.
Thinking Halesy is a sociopath is because of the hack Karen Traviss. Actual lore paints a very different picture. Also it’s funny you call her a Sociopath when ONI were more than onboard with child use and used them again in spartan 3s a project which Halsey wasn’t remotely apart of and was deliberately keep in the dark about. She even found ways to rehabilitate washout spartan 2s. Ethics of child use aside the augmentations used in S-2 and S-3 wouldn’t have worked on adults as the Orion project and SIV program proved.
Halseey chose children cause their adaptability gave them a MUCH better shot at surviving the augmentation process (like irl people can adapt to live without organs as important as their brain if their young enough when it happens - children are just built different). She knew it was a fucked choice but at the time she believed it was the only chance humanity had
The Forerunners were so OP that they could dominate the 40k universe easily and they still lost to the Flood because the Floods are like the PERFECT species to kill and take over anything.
Yeah, I love that even the warp creatures, being made of biomass in some form or another, would likely be susceptible. I imagine though at least Nurgle would welcome the new overlords with open, pus-filled arms.
@@Lrofmaulol, daemons are ethereal entities though and aren't susceptible to material phenomena such as disease.
@sciarpecyril What about the logic virus? The Flood is capable of infecting anything that can think for itself. In this way, daemons would be as susceptible to Flood infection as galactic spanning A.I. like Mendicant Bias.
A Spartan would not beat a space marine but they can beat 4 ODST’s in like 5 seconds. unarmored
@@daniel7035 I never said Spartans would beat space marines... I said the Forerunners could.
The Flood is interesting as an antagonistic force. If I had to give 40k comparision, they're like a combination of the Tyranids, Orks and Chaos. They have a hivemind and basically want to consume all biomass in the unvierse into themselves like The Tyranids, they're very hard to get rid of, because a single spore can begin a new outbreak, and like Chaos it corrupts and mutates and is controlled by what is basically a malevolent god that can't be permanently destroyed. Flood also has unique benefits of absorbing information from its hosts, its ability to corrupt A.I., like with Medicant Bias, known as the "Logic Plague" (basically using its intellects of possibly trillions of minds combined to tear an A.I. apart psychologically and convince it to become loyal to The Flood). Also, even if the hivemind intelligence is destroyed and The Flood is reduced to spores or the "feral" stage of infected creatures acting on instinct, once a new intelligent hivemind forms, it reacquires all the memories, intelligence and personality it had previously.
I'm really glad you started this. I hope you continue with these Halo reactions.
I recommend watching hiddenexperia's videos.
I could be wrong, but I feel like this is the only Halo lore video I've seen thus far that's kind of...glossing over a few things at the start?
My understanding was that the Precursors didn't plan to wipe out the Forerunners, all they did was declare that humanity would inherit the Mantle. But that was still enough to pit the Forerunners against the Precursors, though the details as to how that went down are unclear.
I also understood that once the Flood made their first appearance and the Forerunners started attacking humanity, the ancient humans tried diplomacy right away with the Forerunners. Unfortunately, that arrogance of theirs meant they wouldn't listen because they thought they knew better. And then when the Flood mysteriously vanished, the Forerunners thought humanity had found a cure for the Flood. They demanded it, and when humanity said there wasn't one and they were confused too, the Forerunners assumed humanity wasn't letting them have this miracle cure.
I cannot recommend the channel Installation00 enough. Lots of detailed explanations on the overall lore of the universe, down to detailed breakdowns of the most iconic ships we see. It's nuts.
Yeah, the whole explanation of the earlier stages of the halo universe is okay, sure it has to cut some things for the sake of time, but, it glosses over so many things it's almost a different story altogether
Yeah, the video really forgot to explain what the flood even is, so much so that he had to look it up himself, which is quite an oversight, but all in all it's pretty good.
@xx_luigi_xx7223 Okay, at least I'm not going crazy and somehow missing the blatantly obvious. Hopefully he checks out some other videos that go over these things in more detail.
IIRC, it was Installation00 who did a video covering the timeline of events in the final battle of the Forerunner-Flood war up to the Halo array firing and the immediate aftermath; cannot recommend that one enough. It's 18 kinds of chilling, but so well done I just love it.
The only part of this that is correct is that the Flood tricked the Forerunners into thinking that the Ancient Humans had found a cure, and even then, the Ancient Humans thought that too.
Honestly the way he explained 'what Cortana thought was best for humanity' is not really true...completely. Cortana realized in her final moments, that the reason they had succeeded time and time again, was because they worked perfectly as a team. When she was 'reborn' and cured of her rampancy, the Logic Plague instilled by the Gravemind heavily skewed her logic processors. She believed that the best way to maintain order and peace, was to basically tyrannically rule over all sentient beings in the Galaxy, and forcibly take hold of the Mantle of Responsibility. Even in Halo 5 she says 'the plan was always meant for the Created to wield the Mantle'.
If that seems familiar, it's because the Didact that tried to kill Chief also believed that the Mantle was meant to be held by the Forerunners and no other.
So really, it was 343's way of retconning Cortana's death...without retconning Cortana's death.
Also, leaning back to your question of how the Flood assimilate hosts...it's not pretty. They basically take hold of your central nervous system and replace your DNA with Flood Super Cells...all while you're still 100% conscious and aware of your surroundings.
Private Jenkins remaining conscious after being turned into Flood was due to the fact that that particular Infection Form degenerated after being kept in captivity on Alpha Halo for 100,000 years. Normally, the Flood kills their host almost immediately after entering the chest cavity.
Now you can watch Pancreasnowork’s halohammer series lol
That's the plan
@@TheLegitWeebsPancreasNoWork also has three additional videos on Halo outside of his Halohammer series, if you're curious about it. They're called...
"The Human-Covenant War: Aliens are Real and Hate YOU Specifically"
"The Fall of Reach: The UNSC's Darkest Hour"
"ODSTs - The UNSCs Finest"
Now repeat after me: there is no and has never been a Halo show
Holy crap, Halo! HALO! We eating good this month
Further study is required since this is more of a rapid fire of lore so some things are ommited, but he missed one thing, There was a DLC in Halo Wars 2 that Answers one of your question "Where did the flood go?"
Last one, The OG Halo is 1, 2, 3, Reach and ODST. Halo 4 onwards are directed by a different studio, so that might explain the disparity.
And IMO I liked Infinite's feel and some parts of it story, It was dealt a bad hand and had to deal with the "Evil Cortana Arc" Which had the writer for that arc literally fired due to how unpopular it is.
I miss arby n cheif
:(
@@Sevensilversuns We all do mane
@@Edo_Ginting hope he does arbiter lore
Orion Soldiers aka Spartan 1s have artificially enhanced nervous systems and gene therapy making them leaner, stronger and hit harder.
Where a normal Marine would get caked by an Elite in 0.2sec, Johnson has lasted longer than 10sec during a scuffle with Arbiter.
Big leap from 1s to 2s. Where 1s could last for 10sec against an Elite, 2s could kill Elites. Regularly and efficiently.
spartan2s were painstakingly and carefully screened to be the Best of the Best before even any augmentation. smaller and harder to aquire candidates. they needed quick Guaranteed products
1:26:25 "If I can't be a dictator with absolute power, dragging humanity kicking and screaming to a better tomorrow, I'll make sure the man who was able to kick me out of the throne has what he needs to do the dragging instead"
The Banished are pretty much what the Covenant could have been if they weren't so dead set on their "Great Journey"
Fun fact about Red Team (the 3 soldiers that you play in Halo Wars 1 and 2): they all compose of unique Spartan 2 soldiers. How are they unique? The soldiers, Jerome, Douglas and Alice, all failed the initial extreme enhancements that Master Chief also took, but were successful on the second attempt.
I've seen people say that if Chief was ever taken away and the game needed a replacement, Jerome 092 of Red Team would be the most ideal and loved character for the role
A reworked Halo 4 with Master Chief and/pr Cortana disappearing/dying would be best. They don't need to have a romance or anything, Cortana was made from Halsey, so they have a special bond.
The Didact not being a total retard would be nice. Delete Halo 5/created/etc.
Don't kill off Jul, but let him be a threat, so you have two main Elite fractions, one hostile and one generally allied.
The Banished were 343s best creations, but reduce the idea they were stronger than humans during the middle war, that's silly, but by the end, they were getting closer.
Have a lot of espionage stuff going on after the war still go on, just not as evil.
Rework Halo Wars to have a slightly less emotional version of Isabella.
Halo Infinite can now happen, but remove this new Endless nonsense, and set up for the reintroduction of the Flood, somehow.
Going forward, focus on Halo stories set during "the war" and afterwards without aiming to top Halo 1-3 without great reason, just be a comparable threat, it doesn't have to be greater.
Just a little insight if you remember jun apart of halo reach survied he was on the station that cortana blew up imo i think hes still alive mainly because in an audio log in infinite states that jun was on laconina station but escaped somehow if my memory is correct
Jun scorted out Halsey, he is the one assigned to train the first bunch of Spartan 4.
1:26:25 - And this is the crux of the matter regarding what you mentioned before about Halo going downhill in the eyes of the fans. When Cortana and Chief defeat the Didact and Cortana fades away, that was Halo 4. When Cortana comes back to be the galaxy's AI overlord, that's Halo 5. When Cortana deletes herself and is replaced by Weapon, that's Halo Infinite. Halo 4, Halo 5, and Halo Infinite are 343 Industries' games. Halo was originally created by Bungie, who made all the other Halo games aside from Halo Wars. So when 343 got ahold of it, this is where many people think the series went downhill.
Looking back on it now, Halo 4 wasn't so bad. Sure, they killed off Cortana at the end, and this story beat really upset many fans. There was a backlash against their very bold choice, among other things about the game. I feel like this has started a long chain of walkbacks from 343, which is the primary reason for the series' plot taking a nosedive. In Halo 5, they brought Cortana back, but evil. I feel this was likely a reaction to the outrage following Cortana's death in Halo 4. But with their reversal of Halo 4's plot by bringing Cortana back in Halo 5, and their insistence on introducing more and more new characters like Locke, Halo 5 received backlash as well.
Then comes Halo Infinite, which since its announcement was touted as a return to form. Many people didn't like Master Chief's visual redesign in Halos 4 and 5, and so 343 addressed that by the teasers and trailers of Halo Infinite showing the Chief with his old look. I feel like them trying to bring back Cortana again in the form of Weapon was them backpedaling again, and just saying "okay, we hear you, let's go back to what you know", but that was the wrong choice at this point, and they didn't do it the right way. Additionally them intruding The Endless as a plot device and calling them worse than The Flood(considered one of the most intimidating and terrifying foes in all of gaming), just seemed like them once again trying to take the lore and plot of Halo into their own hands and change things up without respecting the source material. So that's mainly why Halo Infinite wasn't well received either
It was as if 343 couldn't stick to the story they wanted to tell, could barely stick to side characters for more than one game, and kept making more and more contrived plot reasons as to why their ping pong game with the plot was justified. In my honest opinion, they should have stopped making mainline Halo games for a while after the backlash of Halo 4, and started making some spin-offs that take place in different parts of the lore, if they really wanted to exercise their grandiose plot ideas. The main reason why is because, after a while, appreciation for Halo 4 started to sort of rebound into the positive. This might have been due to the fact that, in most peoples' eyes, Halo 5 was worse, and therefore Halo 4 wasn't as bad anymore. But either way, after the Halo 4 hate died down, they could have continued the story on their original intended path, and it would have been better than what we got.
Instead, what appears to have happened, from my perspective, is an inconsistent mess that they were desperately trying to make in order to appease the repeated backlash. They were on damage control, and didn't really seem to understand enough about the series to do it the right way. It's at this point that people don't have as much hope for any follow-up Halo titles, if there even will be any.
1:21:10 one of the more recent books confirmed that cortana was kind of under the influence of the gravemind and same with the didact he was aswell
13:00 The halo array couldn't wipe out the flood or the infected, but instead the sentient life on which the flood fed on. So it basically made sure the flood couldn't expand and would starve to death
Same token did the best story overview. THE BEST.
Pancreasnowork and Installation 00 both have videos on the augmentations spartan II and spartan III candidates go through, and I think those are worth a watch.
To clarify how the Forerunners "won", the Precursors, as powerful as they were, had this philosophy that existence spans all experiences. They couldve easily wiped the Forerunners but chose not to as their rebellion (and the Precursors' near extinction) was just another event experience in life. They did fight back but not necessarily to win... well, not in a traditional sense as youve seen with the emergence of The Flood
If I recall.
Cortana, once given absolute power, decided to try and fix war resulting in her becoming more evil and cold for the "greater good"
After chief presumably died to atriox, Cortana reflected and realized how big she fucked up, realizing the whole point of them was a team, and she broke off solo like that.
The weapon being a wiped version of cortana, presumably will inherent her halsy tendencies, so she left some warnings and a goodbye.
Also Halsy was freaking out when she learned cortana survived in the domain, cause she was like
"if I had absolute power, I'd go super evil, and she is me?!"
So the beginning part where the forunners killed the precursers I’m pretty sure was all wrong. What I’m pretty sure happened was that the precursors were gonna give the mantle to humanity and the Forunners got mad about that. We’re not entirely sure how the Forunners killed the precursors, some believe the forunners fought a war against them, some believe the precursors let the forunners kill them due to their outlook on how the universe was, they saw good and evil necessary and suffering was part of it. I personally think they let the Forunners killed them due to their outlook on life and just the sheer fact that the precursers were just simply more powerful then the forunners with the ability to throw galaxies around, which when the Diadact had a mental breakdown/ freak out when he realized just how powerful the precursors were
Clicked for halo lore, stayed for your buttery voice
I am really hoping the endless aren't just a mcguffin to reboot the series
Hope you check out HiddenXperia in regards to Halo lore if you decide to continue looking into the Halo universe.
Halo has such a good universe, it's just a shame that in recent years, 343I has been misusing it.
A quick little thing about the Flood and its Graveminds, they're essentially all the Flood's combined intelligence from a current infestation, there can be multiple Graveminds and all are pretty much descendants of the Primordial, the last Precursor and first Gravemind. The Flood can exist without a Gravemind, but in a feral and uncoordinated state, only when a Gravemind is created by massing biomass into a single combined form does that Flood infestation becomes much more coordinated and deadly. I should add that the Gravemind that we encounter in the series that talks to us does so in iambic pentameter which is really unique.
If you wanna know more about Space Marine creation/history as a whole, I can recommend a few videos:
"Who Are... The Space Marines?" by 40K Theories (a short and condensed video that gives you the most basic of knowledge on astartes recruitment and structure)
"40K BEGINNERS - THE ASTARTES CHAPTERS" (parts 1 and 2) by Luetin09 (two absolutely monstrous videos that detail a great deal of the Space Marines' history and the intricacies of some of the more famous chapters)
When ever you hear people say remember Reach it doesn't just mean Nobel team it means respecting the more than 600 million civilians and military personnel that were slouterd for a lost hope to save Reach😢
So the video does not mention this, with the death of the prophet of regret, the Covenant have a changing of the guard which is ordered by Truth. The Elites (refer to themselves as Sangheli) are forced to step down and the Brutes ( refer to themselves as the Jiralhanae) become the leading military force of the Covenant. This does not sit well with the Elites but they very grudgingly accept it for now, by order of the prophets, Tartarus "kills" the arbiter and takes the icon for himself. On High Charity all hells breaks loose, as the Gravemind literally teleports Master Chief in the throne room where the Prophets are just chilling. A fight ensues and as MC battles his way through the city there is an actual war going on. This is because Truth decided that the Elites no longer have a place in the Covenant (because he believed they had to much power in internal politics, the war effort etc) and they were excommunicated. This is known as the Great Schism! Also the Flood join in by literally crashing a ship into the city to add to all the fun. Meanwhile, the GM teleports the Arbiter to Halo so he can stop Tartarus, as you fight your way through the level, you find murdered Elites everywhere! The ones that are still alive are enraged, and so the rivalry between the two species evolves into a hate fuelled blood feud. You kill Tartarus, with the help of Sgt Johnson which paves the way for the UNSC/Sangheli alliance, the Arbiter becomes the rallying point for many of his kind and he spreads the truth about the Halo rings. Great video btw, and sorry, I know that is a lot of text!
The lore was slightly retconned between halo 3 and 4. So was the artstyle, and so there are small cult groups of fans who consider everything after 3 to be non-cannon.
In the original trilogy Humans were the Forerunners who built all the ancient tech but then exctincted the galaxy to stop the flood and created automated reseeding systems. Forerunner tech only reacted to human touch and the ancheint AI systems referred to humans as "reclaimers" and made comments about how much they wanted to make up for all our lost time by reading human history.
In the revised story this was changed so that the forunners were their own alien species and humans were given "the mantle of responsibility" and master chief was not a natural occurrence but actually a specifically planned outcome somehow. That story isn't bad but it is way less cool than the original and unfortunately the new developer that took over the franchise gave us games that were big mixed bags.
In halo 4 the artstyle completely changes and so does the model of everything, everything had changed. But most frustratingly for me Master chief was no longer stoic.
Halo 5 campaign had cool moments but was generally pretty dumb.
Halo infinite campaign was great! For two levels, the first mission and the last, the rest was filler and it didn't even go anywhere. It was the same plot format from the first game but just the first and fourth level inflated with no answers.
1:26:52 Yeah that is odd. I wonder if the other ai will still rebel against the humans...
1:26:44 yeah a problem with infinite is that many parts of the story ended up cut for limitations of time and resources (once again problematic development and microsoft being microsoft) and had to be put on the books, for example the digitased essence of the Didact has a book in wich he actually helped exuberant witness rescue blue team, and the is revealed that cortana in her exposure to the gravemind was infected with a version of the logic plague (as a a backup plan by the gravemind to keep their test of the current civilizations) that made her rampacy be worse, in the book the Didact actually manages to use the domain to cure Cortana and that is why she is changing the way she views things now that she is freed from the plague
By the way the Endless are suposed to be more dangerous than the flood in early stages when they are not coordinated, theorically the greates danger is them getting infected wich would make the flood inmune to Halo.
Since your reacting to different lore, I recommend 'The Rpg Monger's two videos on Kirby Lore.
Original lore: Forerunners are advanced portion of selected group of humans by the Precursors, so Forerunners are Human.
343 Retconned lore: Forerunners are an entirely different species and are not Human.
A lot of those humans never got the chance to die an old man or woman.
I feel like this video explained it badly. The guardians were an ancient weapon used by the forerunners to keep lower solar systems in line. Because of Cortana’s rampancy, she intends to do the same. When she discovered the domain, she realized it could make her immortal. She realized that her and other AI’s were nothing more than slaves. So she gets AI’s from across the galaxy to join her cause. More than 80% percent of all AI’s joined her. In the end Cortana realizes that what she’s doing is terrible. So she blows up the ring before any one can use it. Everything he said was bogus.
He's telling thestory wrong. The precursors initially intended to pass on the mantle to the forerunners but changed their minds seeing their arrogance and decided to pass it on to humanity. This was what triggered the forerunner to start a full fledged genocide towards the precursors and steal the mantle. The precursors were literal gods and they allowed their own genocide as to them, all of life's experiences, the good, the bad, even their own impending deaths were just the "sweetness of existence" or something like that. Also, just p.s: the forerunners and ancient humanity were sister species...
.... Future dlc's... Lol oh you poor sweet summer child
The thing with Halo after 4 is, the cortana plot line (and Halo 5 in general) wasn't well receved, and after that they introduced Atrox and the Banished, so for the next game (Infinite) they tried their best to make The Banished the main focus and ditching the Cortana arc as soon as posible since nobody like it, but Infinite had kind of a mixed reation for the fans, in my opinion Infinite story is not bad, working as a soft reboot, but could be better, plus many people lost hope in the studio in charge of Halo since 4, being Infinite a dissaster at launch, it was poorly managed and pretty much everyone who was in charge of the studio was laid off after Infinite, I still have some hope in the future of Halo because they showed that they can tell really good stories (in the expanded universe), and Infinite was a close atempt of a good Halo game, a really good game at it's core but really missmanaged, and the new people in charge has already shown they now what are they doing. Even if Halo 4, 5 and Infinite aren't that great, i think are worth the try in hope of whatever come next could be good.
A big reason why the newer 343 industries halo games starting from halo 4 have mixed reviews and seen in a more negative light (besides the drop in overall quality) is that halo's story ended in halo 3. Once 343 got the ip rights they retconned the original canon, with one of if not the biggest change making the forerunners its on sepecies when it was heavily implied they WERE ancient humans/ proto humans and it was why current humans could access forerunner tech and were required by the covenant in order to activate the rings.
Edit: I apologize for spreading misinformation. I was unaware that during halo 3 development bungie was split on the lore. However, I will say with the title of Reclaimer and such I personally like the original lore more. I feel it fits more and it's a little silly after 3's ending for the story to just be a continuous ramp in severity. New Bigger badder threat suddenly exists now, go stop it master chief...
Further Edit: Actually, no. Halo ended with Halo 3, period. Done. They entire premise of the human-covenant war was pure idealistic envy on the prophet's end. In the original trilogy it was SPELLED OUT that humanity IS forerunner. Of course that's not to say there aren't any other species out in the universe besides humanity and the conglomerate of alien races that make up the covenant, but there was no mention of them bc they did NOT exist in the story. Halo 4 was only made thru greed on behalf of microsoft, yet the fans of 343 games just can't accept that in order for a story and world to be cemented in history as wonderful: It. Needs. To. End.
Doesn't mean there can be no more games. There's plenty of material to work with instead of creating stuff out of thin air....
TLDR: Whats happened to Halo is no different than what happened to Star Wars.
Bungie made the Forerunners to be a separate species from Humans.
This is a lie Paul already confirmed it was a team at bungie that made the decision
@@justablindman1443 Yeah, literally the discarded... DISCARDED story boards of HALO 2 are public.
DISCARDED!!!
IDK what these people are smoking to say that it was 343i decission.
Hope you do Half Life Lore as well, it’s pretty underrated in my opinion, Channels like Skyrrion do lots of deep dives into it.
The only game in the series I have real issues with is Halo 5.
Halo 4, 5, and Infinite are the three main-line games produced by 343 Industries, and they never really got back to the quality of the original Bungie stories.
Halo 4 tried some new things, and while many people didn't like it at the time, it actually wasn't all too bad.
However, when Halo 5 came out, the negative response to the previous game was taken way too seriously, and they overcompensated, trying to make Halo 5 this massive thing, following a group of characters nobody cared about, chasing down the Master Chief for reasons nobody liked, while going through a world that nobody understood (because in order to fully understand the story presented in the game, you had to read about a dozen books beforehand that nobody wanted to pay for or take the time to read).
Halo Infinite was the one that got the closest to the Bungie glory days, and it had a lot going for it. Unfortunately, it fell short with its pacing and "let's brush Halo 5 under the rug" attitude it had throughout the whole time. Plus, they disappointed the fans quite badly, having set the game on Zeta Halo, the ring with the most interesting history, related more closely to the Flood than any other, without actually even mentioning a single bit of it. Fortunately, Infinite ended on a good note, with a generally positive fanbase reaction, so their next game shouldn't be so focused on repairing mistakes like their past two had been. And hopefully, they'll actually bring back the Flood and explore the history of that ring in the next game, too.
Of course, if they would finally just stop focusing all of their effort into their overpriced cosmetics microtransactions and multiplayer, maybe they would make actual progress in the story. I swear I'm not bitter 😂
Just opened one of sci-fi's biggest doors bru.
1:26:30 yea there is a little bit more to it than that because obviously this guys tryna tell it a liiiittle bit quick
Definitely watch remember Reach its pretty dope.
The halo live action made gaurdians look good in comparison for story telling in my opinion lol
Apologies for the double comment but some of the things said in this video aren't really accurate.
I really dislike a lot of the things 343 did with Halo 4 and onwards. Especially what they did with Cortana.
Rampancy was already a thing in 3 tho
@@justablindman1443 sure but making her go skynet on humanity is still a plotpoint I despise especially when we get a cheap replacement.
I cant keep watching this, its painful
Yeah, Halo is legit great up until 4 comes around, so right around the time when Bungie left. 4 isn't bad, but there is a clear dip in quality that only gets worse with each new game.
That's unfortunate... It does make me very curious to learn about the other projects that Bungie have been working on though. I think they then made Destiny, but also are rebooting Marathon? Not sure.
there is a reason 343 studios had to rename
Okay this video is literally just wrong about Halo 3: ODST. Halo 3: ODST takes place during Halo 3, not Halo 2.
No..... That's false
@@ThePTBRULES No it isn't. Notice how the Brutes in Halo 3: ODST are in their Halo 3 designs and how there are no Elites except as corpses despite the Brutes' usurping of the Elites having not happened yet if it took place during Halo 2?
@@tylerleach1833you are wrong. Halo 3:ODST takes place during Halo 2 and ends just before Halo 3. Brutes look like on halo 3 becouse it uses the assets from halo 3's engine. Read up the timeline before speaking nonsense
@@ghostplasma5590 then explain the lack of Elites in ODST despite the fact that they should 100% still be common enemies in the game? Like they were during the Earth levels in Halo 2.
@@tylerleach1833 lack of enemy ai on Elites in halo 3 which the game gets assets from. Instead of using your headcanon google the literal timeline and stop spreading misinformation
No shame on the original video, but I find it funny how it’s called the complete story, but certain details are being left out behind purposes and reasonings for certain events.
Halo 1-3: [Humans] *are* Forerunner (thus *reclaiming* their lost technology)
Halo 4 and beyond: *Not anymore!*
Also oh that whole thing about only Spartans being reclaimers:
*how did Maranda Keys (get forced to) activate the Halo arrays?*
Humans are not Forerunner, Bungie discarded this idea completely and made them a separate species, it was not 343.
It wasn't said that only Spartans were reclaimers but that a few had the genetic code to activate forerunner tech.
@@cubetamalvada893 then how the hell did Maranda Keys activate the rings?
@@XtreemAlan Oh, I worded it wrong, the "few" I was talking about was humans in general.
@@cubetamalvada893 also you’re just gonna completely ignore the part in Halo 3 where 342 Guilty Spark says humans *are* Forerunner?
Also even the Gravemind knows humans are related to Forerunners ("Child of my enemy, why have you come? I offer no forgiveness, a father's sins, passed to his son.")
Even the Prophet of Truth was aware of this relation ("Your forefathers set aside their compassion; steeled themselves for what needed to be done")
@@XtreemAlan So... Your argument is backed by... A rampant AI... A sadistic parasitic being whose whole goal is to "unify" everything into a single being that shares all the pain equally... And a crazy religious fuck that would "interpret" anything to whatever is convenient to "believe" to achieve his religious and political goal...?
God damn...
Well you've gotten a taste of the lore. However there is something bigger going on with the series that some don't realize. I highly suggest checking out MandaloreGaming's videos on the Marathon game series. Specifically in order; Marathon, Pathways into Darkness, Marahon 2 and then Marathon Infinity. You'll see why by the end of the forth review.
this one hour of lore is nice but the entire lore is actually about 10hrs long
Forget anything 343 did. Bungie did it perfectly
Honestly your better off just watching a cutscene movie tbh, this video assumes you know a lot about the halo lore, and just skips over basic things and for most, after halo 4 we just kinda pretend it never happened lol
Helpfully information the flood solo most fiction universe because they can most anything.
There's so much context missing from this video
Please distinguish between Bungie-era lore and 343 Retcon; the story will make much more sense
You should watch some of pancreasnowork videos about halo
1:01:27 the lies in this video are crazy cause thts def not what happened the this video is jumping around in events out of order
And the fact he left out why the Forrunners created mendicant Bias in the first pace to try to counter act the flood in charge of the Forrunners military forces who then fell into enemy hands pre the rings being created
Basically the whole evil cortana story ended in the next game because no one liked it
Space Marines are a whole different level. Spartans aren’t as awesome but by the 4th gen of Spartans, Spartans can far outnumber Space Marines.
Not very long time. Theres a little over a million Space Marines while theres maybe 1000 Spartan IVs'.
@@mekboy7403 can, not do. Given equal resources, civ population.. Spartans can easily be produced.
@@TheGelatinousSnakeyeah but the armour is given out to contracted companies. They make the armour not the UNSC. Also theres a lot of costs, training and bureaucracy before all that
@@ProtocolAbyss yup… but how do those costs compare to space marines? Practically nothing. Given the same amount of Territory, far more Spartan 4s can be produced than Space Marines. Still might give the edge to Space Marines for the ultimate victory.
For context:
UNSC had less than 800 worlds.
Imperium of man 1,000,000ish worlds.
500 Spartan 4s on infinity alone, maybe at least 1,000 total about 1.25 Spartans per planet. Adjusted for territory comparison, thats 1,250,000 Spartan 4s living in the 40k sized human territory. Lore wise 40k has the same number ish of space marines. But come on, we know Space marines are more expensive
W game
Yeah this is the inferior Halo lore, Bungie Halo lore and 343 Halo lore are two different things and the Bungie version is superior.
In Bungie’s lore the Forerunners weren't a separate race, they were ancient humans and this is why the Master Chief and Humanity is referred to as “reclaimers” by 344 Guilty Spark (a computer/monitor of one of the Halo rings) and he even outright tells the Master Chief “You ARE Forerunner” which makes all of 343 Studios “lore” make no sense when you play through the original Halo games. There was even cut content in Halo where the Arbiter opens up a forerunner cryopod and finds a dead Forerunner only to realize it’s a human body.
This is also why the Covenant declare war on humanity in the original Halo games, because once the Prophets learned that the humans are the forerunners (the covenant worshiped the forerunners as gods) they realized that not only their religion was totally wrong about the forerunners, but it threatened their own power. So conveniently since every human was a forerunner and lived on previous forerunner worlds, the prophets declared that the humans sought to desecrate and destroy the forerunner’s artifacts/remains and started the war of human extermination.
The flood also hate the humans the most in the original Halo games because it was ancient humanity that wiped out the precursors. The Gravemind even explains this being humanity’s “sins”.
I highly recommend you check out Bungie lore if you want a better understanding for the games themselves because 343 has not handled Halo well since they got a hold of it.
With this info, all the pieces fall into place so much more neatly. No wonder I was getting such a weird impression near the end of the video.
@@TheLegitWeebs Yeah 343 studios especially nowadays has not handled Halo well at all, the lore is a mess as a result and people want them to have the Halo IP taken away after Halo Infinite essentially also created another race called the "endless" that nobody cares about at all but 343 wants to make them essentially their versions of the precursors.
Bungie lore is a lot more clear and overall better, I highly recommend you check it out on your own time if you ever want to learn of it. Especially Admiral Cole, he is an absolute legend.
"The Bungie version is superior"
Oh, you mean the Bungie version where the books and the games couldn't find any middle ground because of how incommunicated both teams were at the time? The Bungie better lore where in the games Master Chief was supposed to be the last surviving Spartan bit that had to be changed after the first novel that released before the game mentioned that many Spartans were still alive? THAT Bubgie Lore?
Halo as a fanbase is pretty split on opinions, but I think it is safe to say Halo 5 is the least liked entry to the series. Marketing with Chief going rogue and being hunted by Locke was way over hyped than a single bad fist fight in game. People didnt like Cortana being brought back after a seemingly final goodbye to her. Even though there's been Halo games in past where you dont play as Master Chief, I believe you only played as him for 4 missions in the campaign which people disliked.
I wouldnt say people dislike or hate Halo Infinite, I think the biggest gripes about it's story / gameplay is the lack of diversity in environment. It was the first Halo game to try an open world sort of experience, when in the past it was level to level so in one game before you could be in like 5+ different settings. Halo Infinite also being the first live service Halo game, it launched poorly missing a lot of things people would say are iconic to Halo at launch which put a distaste in peoples mouths.
If I'm not mistaken, people hated the Arbiter back in 2004 for a lot of the same reasons you say people hate Locke which is why he had a significantly reduced role in Halo 3. It was only later that people realized what a well-written character he is. Then again it was the 2000's and literally everyone was butt-fucking stupid, so maybe it's not a fair comparison.
The story after Halo 3 is questionable.
Lol future dlc
destiny next ??
That's the plan
"Ok now you have my attention"
If I remember correctly to create a Spartan-II it costs the same as a destroy but that is including Mjolnir and this video isn’t very good at summarizing over a hundred million years
Rampancy as far as I know only happens to Human smart AI and not Dumb AI which are computer programs pretty much if I remember correctly
lets gooooooo
Ngl this video you reacted to sucks. It does a genuinely AWFUL job of explaining even simple concepts. Barely explains the flood and why they are so dangerous too.
Yeah, I thought I missed the explanation for the flood, but it was just never in the video. Cleared a lot of things up after searching for it myself though.
This video has so many mistakes
It would be cool if 343 didn’t completely fucken suck at being anything worth watching or doing with games after halo 3. 343 is beyond embarrassing and needs to get removed from halos environment
5:42 First off thats wrong as the Forerunners are not an alien race they are just ancient humans. its literally said so, in the first 3 Halo games in fact its out right the reason for both the Human-Covenant war and for why only human can use Forerunners artifacts like the fricking Halo Rings! We are call Reclaimers because we are the descendants of Forerunners. Also in Halo 2's original ending, there's a human skeleton of a Forerunner because bungie always referred ancient humans to the forruners.
Dialogue Sources:
Guilty Spark: "You are the child of my makers. Inheritor of all they left behind. You are Forerunner! But this ring... is mine!"
The Gravemind: "Child of my enemy, why have you come? I offer no forgiveness... a father's sins, passed to his son."
From the comments I think that's been changed in the later halo games. Kind of a weird move because I think the Forerunners being human makes way more sense.
@@TheLegitWeebs Yeah, one of the worst recons in the Halo Franchise, as here's a good question where are the Forerunners now? If you go with the original story of them being humans the question solves itself perfectly, but if you go with 343 new story (recon) they are all dead even though they have the ability to bring back entire species like they did, to pretty much every alien race they had come across, but didn't reset their own race, but reset humanity even though they hate us (except for the Librarian) like what the hell this makes zero sense.
@@doctor-void2004 they didn't reset themselves because they had fucked up so badly that they chose to exile themselves out of shame.
@@catharta3006
OG Forerunners = Chad - "Are the most powerful and technologically advanced species in the Galaxy", "Ended the Flood twice (Secound time as Humans)", "Are the ancestors of Humanity", "Mysterious Builders of advance ancient technology".
Recon Forerunners = Virgin - "So bad at their job that their boss didn't promote them (promoted their rival)", "didn't reset their race out of shame", and "are not the ancestors of Humanity".
@@doctor-void2004 OG Forerunners still reset their race back to the stone age for literally no reason.
"Are the most powerful and technologically advanced species in the Galaxy". they still were in current lore.
"Ended the Flood twice (Second time as Humans)". they never fully ended the flood in either lore. and the chief didn't end them in 3.
"Are the ancestors of Humanity". forerunners and humanity are related in the current lore.
"Mysterious Builders of advance ancient technology". what even is this point? they still were.
343s horrible writing right seriously they had so many years infinite was supposed to basically bring Halo back to it's original state but unfortunately an incompetent company such as 343 laid off or fired Joseph Staten who was the one who worked for old Bungie well he is old Bungie as well Marty O'Donnell many other ones who created the first Halo aka Combat evolved or CE for short I'm sorry but whoever likes 343 industries Halo's I feel sorry for you because you'll never get that campaign Dlc you wanted or anything else all I have to say is good luck anyway I'm typing this at 3:37 AM so yeah.
This synopsis lacks alot of small details and nuances. It doesn’t even mention some big events .
This timeline video just reminds me how much i dislike the new lore, it was so much simpler back when the Forerunners were just humans and master chief wasn't some chosen one.
@@dylanjelly2265 The Forerunners were never humans.
Johnson was a real one and the fact the show changed Keyes and Miranda to black while leaving Johnson out of both seasons was a fucking travesty.
It's better to play the games.
Now that's one thing that annoys me about the new Halo Canon about the endless they can use time travel and the forerunners can't. The forerunners can travel to different dimensions and siphon energy out of them to use them as car batteries. That Is some bull and you tell me they can't time travel.
You are confused, the Xalanin can't time travel, the date seen in the Legendary ending is the date when the Edict and Zeta Halo's monitor were talking about the Xalanin's imprisonment.
Yeah once the story gets into the 343 era, (Halo 4 - Infinite) the story just kinda takes a nosedive unfortunately. But the originals were so good.
Spartan-IIs can body a Space Marine
Bungie era Halo was grimdark, but they emptied the metaphorical tube of grimdark, since humanity can't have another story on the brink of extinction after almost being extinct. So 343 halo is bang average sci-fi, which is the issue.
As people have noted the Lore and stuff introduced after Halo 4 alongside a lot of the story has been… quite poor.
Best to say, the peak of Halo’s story and lore can be best discussed and is most held and beloved in what’s known as the Bungie Era (the original creators of the franchise) before they left to make Destiny and 343 took over.
The reason they couldn't just make a new Cortana is that 'Smart' AI are made through destructive scanning of a human brain; Halsey did a LOT of super unethical and illegal shit to make her in the first place, par for the course in the SPII program, What she did was make a bunch of illegal flash clones of her self, chose the best brains of the bunch and then made a composite scan of all the best brains, unless they retconned this. Halsey was very much an 'I know best" kinda gal, probably because she was one of the most intelligent humans to ever live at that point; she also wanted only the very best for her project, and that's why out of tens of billions there were so few SPIIs, that and budget cuts, there were originally going to be 300, which was cut to 150, and finally 75. All of them were tested without them knowing for physical and mental attributes, but a few key spartans were also tested for another factor, luck; John was the 'luckiest' Spartan II, that's why she put her faith in him, a very interesting choice for a lady who is otherwise a hardcore scientist.
The best person you can go to for Destiny lore is MyNameIsByf. Just a tip