HALO: We WERE Forerunner!

Patreon: / c3sabertooth
Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
06:35 - 343 Changed A Lot
15:36 - What Bungie Established
29:21 - Created or Literal?
33:45 - Terminals, part 1
48:28 - The IRIS Campaign
55:34 - Terminals, part 2
1:08:03 - The Million-Dollar Question
1:16:08 - Conclusion
1:22:49 - Epilogue
Sources:
IN-UNIVERSE TEXT
Halo: Contact Harvest, pp. 14, 153, 188, 274-275, and 278.
Halo: The Flood, p. 74
Halo: First Strike, p. 195
Halo: Evolutions, “Wages of Sin,” p. 293
Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, p. 133
Halo: Shadows of Reach, p. 7
Halo: Cryptum, chapters 1, 12, and 36
Halo: Primordium, chapters 17, 25, and 30
Halo: Silentium, string 3 and p. 277
Halo: Point of Light
“The Cradle of Life,” IRIS
“Episode 1: The Unknown Helper” and “Episode 5: The Artifact,” IRIS
Halo 3 Beastiarium
Halo 3 Terminals
OTHER IN-UNIVERSE MEDIA
Guilty Spark, levels “The Library,” “Two Betrayals,” and “The Maw,” Halo: CE
Guilty Spark, “The Great Journey,” Halo 2
2401 Penitent Tangent, Halo 2
Cortana, Halo 2
Background art assets, Outskirts, Halo 2
The Prophet of Truth, “The Covenant,” Halo 3
The Gravemind, “Cortana,” Halo 3
343 Guilty Spark, “Halo,” Halo 3
Epilogue, Halo 3: ODST
Dr. Halsey, “ONI: Sword Base” and “The Package,” Halo: Reach
Chapter title, “The Package,” Halo: Reach
Roland, Halo 4 Spartan Ops, episode 9, chapter 5: “The Hammer.”
“Reunion,” Halo 5: Guardians
ORIGINS I, Halo: Legends
ORIGINS II, Halo: Legends
The Package, Halo: Legends
Terminals 2 and 3, Halo 4
Terminals (general), Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
MISC MEDIA
Behind the Scenes: Making of Halo 2
The Complete, Untold History of Halo, VICE, May 30, 2017
Frank O’Connor Interview, HIH, 2006 (?)
“Interview: Frank O’Connor on why 343 Industries changed Halo,” VentureBeat, 2012
“Titan” concept designs, Ensemble Studios
Early human migration map, National Geographic
Catalog, Halo Waypoint (2014-2015)
Halo: Reach “Fortress World” map, 343 Industries
Defend THIS! (Terminal 2), Marathon
King James Bible, Genesis 1 : 27 and 6 : 17
INDIVIDUALS
Joe Staten, halo.bungie.org, October 2004
Joe Staten, halo.bungie.org, August 2006
Sparth, Awakening: The Art of Halo 4
Greg Bear, www.gregbear.com
Eric Nylund, ericnylund.com
Frank O’Connor, Twitter
Paul Russel, Twitter
Graeme Devine & Rob "Xemu" Fermier, Twitter
(web.archive.org/web/202304040...)
Lee R. Wilson, Artstation

[@C3_SABERTOOTH]

While I absolutely stand by what I said about rampancy, the number of dissenting comments suggests I didn’t expand on the topic enough. Rampancy was effectively an AI “evolving” into sentience/personhood, and this involved the AI rapidly expanding along divergent paths and spreading across their network (hence, “becoming rampant”). The AI would continue their expansion even in the absence of enough space within a network to store them, resulting in their “thinking themselves to death.” All the Bungie-era EU novels describe the process completely in line with Marathon’s, their only addition being the seven-year timeframe before its onset.

[@Durp_EXE]

I kinda wanna see your thoughts on Marathon and it’s story.

[@gabethebabe3337]

Out of curiosity will you be doing Halo 3's storyboards as well? I don't know if they're fully available or what your process is, but this series has been insanely fun to watch. I heard that the cut Halo 3 mission "Forerunner City" was also supposed to reveal that humans were forerunners, but it was cut for time. I also wonder if the mission Data Hive from ODST is named that not only because of the Superintendent and drone hives, but also as a reference to the cut data vault.

[@warriorshedge6772]

Metastability

[@C3_SABERTOOTH]

@@gabethebabe3337 I’m still debating it. All of Lee Wilson’s pieces for Halo 3 were effectively “lighting tests,” and not actually storyboards - and everything he released pretty closely mirrors what we already received in the finished game. Basically, putting it all together would be a ~10 minute video effectively recreating scenes that are already in Halo 3.

[@friktogurg9242]

So there were so many retcons that were made only to allow halo 4 to happen. Personally, I thought much of the fan base praised too much of the newer books/ were too optimistic in their view of the books. Could you make a review of the newer ones?

[@Devdev009]

The true “Halo Killer” wasn’t Killzone, or even Call of Duty. It was Frank O’Connor and Bonnie Ross

[@Gyrfalcon312]

Truly, a subversion of expectations that _succeeded_ . 😑

[@JangoPeppers]

What I’m getting so far is that Frank O’Connor single-handedly destroyed Halo lore

[@gabethebabe3337]

Not single-handedly. He also had his 343 goons and stooges to follow him blindly.

[@EvanMerkes1]

Frank, Kiki, and Bonnie.

[@tommurphy4770]

It’s funny how the one guy from bungie who has a chance of destroying the lore like this is the one who gets hired and promoted to lead the franchise

[@mauz791]

​@@tommurphy4770 Another Microsoft classic

[@XtreemAlan]

Bungie era: “why would you hesitate to do something _you’ve_ done before?…You *are* Forerunner” 343: nah

[@mariobadia4553]

I don't see why that's a bad thing I'd rather it be another species than just humans

[@joshuapurdy7065]

The only thing I can say to this playing devils advocate is that it doesn’t retcon this line because guilty spark actively thinks chief is the iso didactic at this point because he’s rampant or whatever. Him bringing up the line “last time you asked me” is him from a long time ago speaking to a forerunner so “something you’ve already done” makes sense either way cause to 343s lore guilty spark thinks he’s talking to a forerunner

[@djanthaz]

@@mariobadia4553congrats to you. For people who grew up with this franchise we really enjoyed the original and more exemplary story.

[@djanthaz]

@@joshuapurdy7065that’s lore that 343 added. Bungie never explains who or what 343 is talking to. Could just be Forerunners as a whole. TL;DR you’re explaining retcons with retcons. Also though, you’d still have to explain Truth and THE GRAVEMIND

[@joshuapurdy7065]

@@djanthaz yes I know that that is 343 added lore but it was one of the few things they were able to make sense since they had a simple explanation for that particular thing within the retcon forerunners being different

[@okankyoto]

I mean, how can you TOP the delicious irony that the Covenant is waging a holy war against their own gods?!

[@nutyyyy]

In 343s lore the Covenant were basically right...

[@averymicrowave1713]

Its so bad when you think further about it. Why is humanity as a whole able to access Forerunner tech if they were supposed to be a technologically peer hostile race? Isn't the whole Contact Harvest scene now retroactively mistaken, with the Prophets being justified for declaring war on humanity for the wrong reasons - instead of humanity disproving their religion, they instead validate the war by being the ancient enemies of their gods - and thus the wacky trio simply got their casus belli wrong? And worst of all is that the retcon could have worked - I read and actually kinda liked Cryptum - but Halo 4 kinda killed that.

[@thecynicaloptimist1884]

That and making the humans and Forerunners separate species entirely nullifies the whole reason the Covenant waged war to begin with. The whole reason they waged war is because humans essentially read as living Forerunners on their scanners, negating the key point of the Covenant faith that all the Forerunners - the "worthy" - ascended to godhood when the Halos were fired. That some Forerunners remained meant that somehow the Forerunners themselves were not worthy, and thus were not gods. If humans are just another species that some of the Forerunners "chose" to inherit all their technology, then why did the Covenant ever wage war with them? In 343's lore, that means the Covenant waged war over a misunderstanding of a misunderstanding.

[@aWraithsSoul_]

@@thecynicaloptimist1884 It was never "just" a misunderstanding; it was always a targeted conspiracy, Truth, Regret, and Mercy deliberately take control of the Covenant in the first place because they know this revelation would tear the Covenant apart. It was easier to manipulate the entire Covenant based on their religion than reconcile with the fact that their entire faith (down to the "we fire Halo to become Gods") had always been a lie.

[@Monsuco]

As bad as what 343 did to forerunner lore was, what they did to Cortana was worse. Just remember guys, according to 343 all of Noble Team and Sgt. Johnson had to die so that Cortana could one day die, then not die, then become space-Hitler.

[@latviandragon2718]

act man skit for that was so funny

[@nagger8216]

I disagree, what they did with the Forerunners recontextualized everything about Halo's story for the worse and ruined the entire motivation for the Prophets extermination of humanity, that is far worse than one character assassination

[@bdbcsm5441]

noble teams fate was already sealed in the first halo game which was bungies work bru

[@MrMegaMetroid]

Cortana was slated to die ever since halo ce. Her 7 year until rampancy life expectancy was set in halo: the fall of reach in 2001. That doesn't mean that nobles actions where worthless, as cortana single handedly propelled the plot and ensured humanities survival many times over in the original trilogy. Neither her dying, not her turning evil takes any of the impact away that she already had on the universe, and therefore, any impact nobles actions had

[@zingy1811]

@@MrMegaMetroid Did you watch the video? Rampancy is not ai schizophrenia nor a death sentence

[@theriveracis5172]

I return to this fairly often, whenever someone rants about Halo, reminds me what was lost, or just tells me things we know happen didn't. I hope you know, this video still means a lot to me, as one of those disenfranchized Halo fans. From the heart, Thank you for creating it.

[@ffili92]

same here m8 🙋‍♂

[@ChrisSmith-mi2zo]

Absolutely. This video is a masterpiece, showing all the receipts for the slow poisoning of Halo lore and rightfully dunking on everyone involved.

[@bigroaststyrone8135]

“You *are* Forerunner, but this ring is mine” “Child of my enemy, why have you come?” “Your forefathers wisely set aside their compassion, steeled themselves for what must be done. I see now why they left you behind” I don’t think they could’ve made it any more obvious what the relations between the Forerunners and Humans were lmfao

[@citizenvulpes4562]

Exactly.

[@adambelfast1]

Not to forget everything 343 Guilty Spark said to Chief from day ONE back in Halo CE

[@benclark4823]

@@adambelfast1 the same guy that was going crazy 🤦‍♂️

[@adambelfast1]

@@benclark4823 That's a cop out excuse just to give reason for the forerunner not being human. "He was going rampant he didn't know what he was saying". No where in the game did it even remotely imply that he was going crazy or becoming corrupt. Why blatantly give the player an impression and delivlberatley mislead them on such a huge plot point, just to turn around and say "nah we decided to make what he was saying was just bullshit in the end in order to fit this new narrative" I get it, they wanted to make forerunners not human in the end. And in order to do so, they had to fill holes that would contradict that. So they had to throw in Guilty Spark going crazy as an excuse. But its still bullshit to do that. The forerunners were originally meant to be humans, end off. What Guilty Spark said way back then was supposed to the truth. Its the same kind of weak excuses 343i gave to many of their changes. Chiefs armour being different in halo 4 "oh he got an upgrade while in cryosleep" The elites, jackets and grunts looking completely different. "Oh its a subspecies". Ok fair enough plausible reason's yes. But weak excuses to justify their changes for the sake of making changes. But my criticism isn't just aimed it 343i, I'm also pointing my finger a bungie. As the halo 3 temrimals contradict everything that was said that basically implied forerunners were humans.

[@tanodz7635]

​@@adambelfast1 48:30, and "the Terminals" section of the video.

[@nicoalvarezp2]

Just wow....the damage a single person made to an entire saga....

[@TSEDLE333]

Amazing heh? Im puting it directly into MS's incopentece and mismanagement skills...

[@brysonkuervers2570]

@@TSEDLE333 honestly a lot of the shit around Halo is directly due to Microsoft meddling it’s baffling how Bungie managed to make it work with their interference and now I think I can see it happening with 343, except they’re allowing it unlike Bungie

[@McBoofus]

Then you have dipshits(some of them being Halo KZbinrs) blindingly going to their defense. 343 fanboys are partially responsible for why Halo has been down bad for a decade.

[@JustClem001]

(Man's kicking an atom bomb that has been bugging me for YEARS) The cool but confused terminals regarding the activation, the forerunner trilogy contradicting said terminals with humans existing 200000 years ago, and the voi portal not being real. 343 guilty spark in the control room, telling us in combat evolved to ignore any notion of forerunners forgetting to leave behind inheritors. It has all bothered and rotted my brain after getting the "marathon man" achievement. The keyships being remote detonated sounds as wack, as forerunners not indexing themselves in anyway, and conveniently never speaking of it. Absurd little frankie fry and his writtings cursed me, with three canons to parse through, to make a book trilogy seem better than griffball!

[@Bronasaxon]

Are we talking about Frank O’Conner or Kathleen Kennedy?

[@rubencastro811]

The 343 art director claiming that the old Forward Unto Dawn looked like "an aggregation of boxes" and then redesigning it into a literal flying brick with no recognisable silhouette is still so baffling to me.

[@SirCap]

That’s what happens when you hire people who hate Halo to work on a Halo game.

[@Leg3nd-27]

I’m pretty sure 343 could have turned Master Chief into a grunt and 343 fans would’ve accepted it

[@C3_SABERTOOTH]

Just so long as he isn’t _black._

[@vancodling4223]

​@@C3_SABERTOOTH I literally alway pictured chief as looking like Locke and I don't know why lol 😂

[@The_Punisher]

​@@C3_SABERTOOTHJust don't mention Sprint to you guys or you shit yourself

[@ThatTallBrendan]

@@C3_SABERTOOTH You are _nitpicking_ and *BIASED* _I win_ ~byebye (But seriously though, the level to which 343 is able to gaslight their base of underdeveloped, spaceman COD-children is concerning to a level only _my dad_ could replicate with my mother. Both equally POSs' I might add)

[@LordVader1094]

@@ThatTallBrendan Ngl, it reminds me a lot of how hard Star Wars sequel fans gaslight themselves to defend those films. There's a lot of similarities between both Halo and Star Wars in how their franchises have progressed lol

[@bitter_iron2688]

Post H3 is just Chief's cryo brain ramblings H4: what if we're not forerunner, what if cortana dies, what if forerunners are mean? H5: am i blinded by loyalty, what if cortana becomes a bad guy. H6: hey member the first time we landed on a Halo that was crazy, can ONI just make me a new Cortana? H7:wake from cryo in busted ship, OG Cortana "ive been monitoring your brain activity...and.."

[@user-wp3sr2lo8p]

Halos everywhere at the end of time

[@MalkuAtu]

I hated 343 so much for this reason, It had been so blatantly obvious that the forerunners were human the moment they started referring to humans as reclaimers, and then 343 completely shits all over that and gives us aliens as forerunners instead.

[@TheShadowFox1]

Still pisses me off to this day, look at the halo show. I got those halo boots and my Dr today seen them and said oh is that from halo? I like that show. My eye twitched as he talked about it, 343i fans always make excuses even for the show, some make it out as if 343i had no control over the show.... Someone greenlit it.

[@ItsButterBean1020]

Funnily enough 343 seems to have walked this back, implying the Forerunners are cousins to the Ancestors

[@brenn0818]

343 didnt even do it. bungie did in halo 3 if you read the terminals

[@ItsButterBean1020]

@@brenn0818 this is covered in the video

[@brenn0818]

@jamesburgess1011 that's good I honestly just couldn't get through the whole thing. Guy was getting annoying

[@ugoboom]

I just went to the halostory subreddit. These people are on a completely different stratosphere level of cope. they all think bungie halo had bad boring zzz lore and that the retcons 343i did were all completely necessary to tell much better stories and are glad they happened. oh my god man. its so over. the OGs like us here will more and more be snuffed out as new fans, energized by being young new fans, continually drown out. I'm so glad you made this video. It stands as a beacon that we've been royally had. and that no, the ugly artstyle change and CoDification of multiplayer were only the tip of the iceberg. There's no saving the franchise at all. There's no longer even financial incentive to destroy 343i's lore and restore the sanctity of bungie's. Our only hope of anything new being good is fan media from fellow bungie lore loyalists. Thats it. otherwise it's done and concluded.

[@AimlessJourney]

I think 343 went through a 'industrialization period' trying to fatten up Halo with as much expansive lore as possible to provide the base for turning Halo into a multi-media franchise like Star Wars and the MCU - with very little critical thinking as to how this lore impacts the worldbuilding of Halo Sure theres a lot of detail, and thats what dazzles these subredditors, but like a painting detail is only effective when incorporated into a greater, structured harmony. 343 lore does not have that. Its trying to be sexy like star wars and marvel for the sake of it.

[@TheBlueMan117]

i got banned for saying one of the books were garbage

[@TheBlueMan117]

@@AimlessJourney its what i said but i got silenced for it lmao

[@alexanderstilianov]

Bungie leaving Halo: "What could possibly go wrong?" Frankie: *starts the Great Journey upon all of the pre-established lore*

[@DigitalApex]

The idea that ancient humanity worshipped "angels" (Forerunners) but saw the Ark as a literal ark and the Flood as a literal flood in Abrahamic religion, combined with the Gravemind using biblical angel phrases such as "Be not afraid" and Halos being seen as something derived by "angels" is just so... UGH, I love Halo. The writing was so good.

[@OmegaF77]

Jason Jones co-wrote Marathon with Alex Seropian and Greg Kirkpatrick. He was also project lead on Halo: CE and Halo 2, a tiny bit with Halo 3 (he wanted to pull a Half Life and didn't want to work on Halo 3 anymore). I think that's why the lore is rich and has so many references to other literature.

[@user-ns4zm8qe9p]

I love Abrahamic theology story notes in my science fiction. It’s just the cherry on top

[@Theonlywatchman2]

Not to mention the villain of Abrahamic religion, Satan, led a rebellion with a third of the angles against God and His designs because he wanted be become like God and worshiped as God. He subverts humanity birthright as God's stewards of creation, leading a effort to kill all of humanity, by keeping them enslaved in sin and in ignorance of the truth separated from the source of life which is God through deception. And all out of jealousy of humanity being created in God's image. Sounds a lot like the Covenant doesn't it? :)

[@Nighterac]

And then there's morons who unironically prefer 343's slop over actual good story-telling and say that the Forerunners being humans was "middle-school tier writing" and "so predictable".

[@DigitalApex]

@@OmegaF77 Marathon's writing is also fantastic. The veteran writers from the OG Bungie days working with "the rule of cool" and having old Arthurian and Abrahamic symbolism or motifs combined with sci-fi blew me away as a kid playing Bungie games for the first time. I loved Halo so much that I bought Marathon: Durandal and fell in love with the Marathon lore and universe too.

[@captainbeefster]

Imagine how Joseph Staten, one of the lead writers at Bungie, must have felt coming back to work on Halo: Infinite. Not just to see the story that had been ruined, but the direction 343 had gone as a video game developer.

[@EggEnjoyer]

I was thinking about this ever since he was confirmed to be back on the project. Bro probably cringes at how someone who was just a low level writer and community manager became lead of something he worked on and totally ruined it. Probably breaks his heart every time he looks at it. But then again I’m willing to bet he mentally clocked out way back in 2012 when halo 4 dropped and he seen how butchered the game’s story was.

[@peanutgallery4]

​@@EggEnjoyerat least je got to do what he wanted to do with Halo, and only the ideas for continuation he left to others was ruined, Destiny never really got off the ground, he never saw the proper vision for Destiny come to fruition

[@EggEnjoyer]

@@peanutgallery4 Yeah Destiny is another story he had to watch get butchered. I forgot about that. I guess it’s just the name of the game, but man it’s gotta hurt. Especially since he can never tell that story or repurpose it in anyway.

[@peanutgallery4]

@@EggEnjoyer Also he didn't mentally check out of Halo, he wrote another story in 2016 called Shadow of Intent which was post-war

[@bubbajoe117]

@@EggEnjoyer I'm sure he's absolutely sobbing into his millions, seriously though I don't think he cares all that much, while i'm sure he's still a fantastic person I do think it's important for people to try and stay objective and nuanced in their perspectives towards game devs and lead authors/artists/writers etc... The Joseph Staton that worked on the original trilogy and slaved away hours and hours making Halo 2 in a cave with a box of scrap, is not the same person as the Joseph Staton that sold us Halo infinite with a thumbs up and a sparkling smile, he's been hardened and calloused by decades of work as a big staple name in a industry that's gone mainstream and cutthroat. I have great respect for the man and what he made and built, but we shouldn't let that turn into a weird parasocial relationship with what's essentially a name-brand as that's just as bad as what the 343 sycophants have become, and it's a really easy trap to fall into.

[@saithvenomdrone]

Just imagine the irony of the Covenant’s holy war against humanity is essentially a war against their own gods, and they didn’t even know it.

[@Slender_Man_186]

For extra irony, it’s their own religious leaders, the high prophets who secretly knew the truth, who ordered the execution of their own gods. You don’t have to imagine it, that WAS the grand irony of Halo’s story.

[@nutyyyy]

That was the whole point. The Prophets discovered the truth, and it shattered their entire worldview. They couldn't reveal the truth because it would break the Covenant apart. And possibly they didn't want to believe it themselves. Better to let the secret die with humanity. And after all, if they were left behind after the supposed great journey, then surely they weren't worthy.

[@citizenvulpes4562]

That's what it was.

[@nutyyyy]

It's not just that. The retcons basically justify the Covenant's decision since humanity was literally the enemy of their gods. Bravo 343...

[@andrewmeyer3599]

​@nutyyyy Except now in their very own lore they created their own subfaction of San'Shyuum who still remember the Forerunners for being cockheads. Yeah, real good job 343, don't see how those guys wouldn't have put a major hole in the Covenant at all

[@XtreemAlan]

After some thinking I realized that humanity built the slip space drives from scratch, while it’s common knowledge that the Covenant got their better slip space tech from scavenged Forerunner tech

[@1999le]

The prophet of mercy in halo 2 also says "And this time, none of you will be left behind" Potentially further indicating that the prophets believed humans were descendent from unworthy forerunners

[@xenosayain1506]

I had to rewatch the cutscene to catch that! "Trutch will finish what we started, and this time, none of will be left behind". Literally stating when the array goes off, no human will be left behind.

[@Universexy1]

Or it implies he knows the Halos are weapons further indicating their desire to shape the galaxy in their own image.

[@nolandderlugner1351]

Nah Thr prophets race and humans had a war long ago Maybe it relates to that

[@xenosayain1506]

@@nolandderlugner1351 only in the post 343 canon is that true. Not the bungie canon

[@Installation00]

Don't forget, Mercy suggested to humanities origins as Forerunners when he told Master Chief on High Charity, "To finish what was started. And this time, none of you will be left behind". (The scene in question is when Mercy is being munched by the Flood). Because Mercy was fully aware that Humanity were forerunners, and were "Left Behind" after the firing of the rings. He was there after all, when Mendicant Bias awoke within the Keyship in the centre of High Charity and spoke about the age old mistranslation that had been the foundation of the Covenant Religion. I believe Mercy was more devout to the religion and its gods than Truth and Regret were. Excellent video bud. Love the long format!

[@C3_SABERTOOTH]

Thanks, man! I _considered_ adding that quote along with the Gravemind’s famous “I am a monument to all your sins,” but I felt like they were both too open to interpretation. The Halo community seems to have largely decided that the Hierarchs all have hypocritical names, so addressing Mercy’s final words as an ultimate display of mercy would be difficult for many to accept. I think Mercy’s dying quote is possibly my favorite from the original trilogy and I definitely agree with you!

[@sanchorim8014]

@@C3_SABERTOOTH Definitely open to interpretation. I thought Mercy's quote was comparing Truth's mission to Regret's first incursion against Earth. Humanity had beaten back the first Prophet, but now the Covenant was arriving with a full can of whoop ass to make Reach look like a playdate. If Mercy is referring to what you guys are saying, that's even more intriguing.

[@C3_SABERTOOTH]

@@sanchorim8014 Yeah. At face value, it sounds like a threat - but Regret didn’t go to Earth with the intention of killing humans; he went with the intention of starting the Great Journey. _“… And, this time, none of you will be left behind.”_

[@vancodling4223]

​@@sanchorim8014 Very true. I think that's what made the mystery so great, the vagueness of the evidence. Open to interpretation so as not to spell it out. Taken as a whole, it poetically hints at something. That's what I miss most now that the backstory us painstakingly spelled out - that feeling of almost knowing something lost to time. Honestly, hard evidence of what the forruners really were had to be the end of the story to pay off, because the not knowing was so satisfying. I think that was 343s biggest mistake really: thinking we needed all the answers

[@platypipope328]

@@C3_SABERTOOTH i never looked at mercy's statement like that but now that you've mentioned it it actually makes way more sense than the alternatives

[@thefreakazoid4937]

I wish they'd kept that moment of the Arbiter discovering the Forerunner skeleton. The way Keith David delivered the Arbiter's reaction was great, you could hear the pain and confusion as his worldview comes crashing down around him.

[@bubbajoe117]

Imagine if you will just a brief moment, a cutscene of the Arbiter breaking down into an existential crisis as the waves of realization all come crashing in that the Prophets had had him personally murdering his own gods and he hadn't even realized, that he COULDN'T have realized... Never mind the fact this was cut from Halo 2, the fact it wasn't worked into Halo 3 somehow makes it even worse... Likely because Bungie wanted to course correct away from the Arbiter, the Covenant, and the Gravemind etc because there was a lot of 'controversy' surrounding those elements after Halo 2 back in the day, which is ridiculous since that's what's talked about the most in the original story these days as they've all aged like fine wine.

[@SirCap]

Holy shit, it really took one clueless idiot to shatter an entire story. At this point, I'm just gonna say the 343 stories are just hallucinations.

[@trashjash]

Or a conspiracy theorist's ideas about the events the military got up to after Halo 3? Or even ONI propaganda to mislead the public from the truth of humanity's situation in the galaxy? Or a Grunt's story about what he thinks the humans are up to as he sits down to lunch around the food nipple with his squadmembers? There's a number of bungie-canon abiding ways to disregard 343i's terrible retcons and misinterpretations of lore.

[@averymicrowave1713]

@@trashjash The funny thing is I think those are ACTUALLY 343 stories especially as advertising campaigns for Halo 5. And then they retconned THOSE.

[@snaildad193]

I think the worst part of all of this is that in 2007, I was eight. Sure I played Halo all the time but I only had a surface-level understanding of the lore and greater picture. I knew there was something BIG going on behind the scenes because playing the Bungie trilogy is a whole lot like seeing the shape of something massive underneath the water. Someone a long time ago on a video I don't remember said that "Bungie writes three pages of lore for everything but only lets us read one." and even as a kid I could tell. By the time I actually started trying to figure out what the bigger picture was, by the time I started going through the wiki page-by-page and piecing the lore together for myself, Halo 4 was already out, as was the Reclaimer Saga, which means for the entire time I've been an obsessive Halo fan, since I was a pre-teen, I've only known the retcon. Let me say that again; my engagement with the Halo lore for most of my life has been post-retcon. The wiki pages I read, the headcanons I made, the characters I fell in love with, all of it was changed while I wasn't looking and replaced with ONE DUDE'S fanfiction and because I didn't know any better I just accepted it as truth. I spent my whole life confused about why the lore didn't match up with the original trilogy and only now do I know that there's an entire story for the original games that's just...gone. But it's okay. There is a definitive line between where Halo stops and the fanfiction begins. Everything from the original trilogy and the books written under Bungie still follow the Old Canon, literally the only thing from Frank O'Connor that made an appearance in the trilogy are a handful of terminal entries. I can still learn the real story, what Bungie intended before everything got fucked up. Call it copium, call it self-deception if you want, but when Master Chief says it's finished in Halo 3, it's finished.

[@RhoDesia-gr1wb]

It's finished.

[@stephencrawley2862]

Dude, I really have to give you props for abandoning the familiar and embracing what you know is right. That is exceedingly rare, both when people are regarding fiction and reality.

[@bubbajoe117]

I know that feeling you described in your first paragraph, I think I was 12 at the time myself when I was first playing through Halo 3 but i'd played the original Halo 1 and 2 obsessively throughout my young life (the Flood reveal of Halo CE marked my poor little 6 year old brain) and I was always trying to rewatch the cutscenes and pay attention to the characters and their motives... But I think it all caps off not even at the ending, but on the short journey to the control room, the same reconstructed control room, on a reconstruction of the very same ring you started this franchise on, and when that haunting looming choir fades in as the blizzard clears... You can just... You can *FEEL* that this is the culmination of a 100,000's years of history coming to an end, that every being that has ever lived in Halo's milky way is holding it's breath watching this moment, that your ancestors (the Forerunners) are watching, ready to see the ultimate judgement of their sacrifice, and Mendicant Bias's unseen final act of atonement.

[@TheCrazeturk]

Every 343 game has been a retcon of the last. Halo 4 retconned Halo 1-3, Halo 5 retconned Halo 4 and Halo Infinite retconned Halo 5. And people actually got paid to write all of it.

[@SentinelEnforcer]

I will never understand the amount of praise 343 had for their narrative. Their narrative that resets with every game, where characters are killed/written off in comics/books, with plot threads that lead nowhere, with retcons that trivialize crucial plotpoints, etc etc.

[@jurassicarkjordanisgreat1778]

And people say we need a reboot. We already had 3

[@caramelldansen2204]

@@jurassicarkjordanisgreat1778 The only way to really continue the franchise would have been ODST-style (or arguably Reach too) games focusing on non-Chief and non-mainline characters.

[@berserkasaurusrex4233]

Sounds like the Disney Star Wars trilogy, ngl. Right down to being amazed people actually got paid to write it.

[@Slender_Man_186]

@@jurassicarkjordanisgreat1778 those were all half assed “soft reboots,” we need a hard reboot that picks up where Halo 3 left off with all of 343’s crap completely retconned our of existence.

[@dextergrif]

This video was literally the equivalent of the Gravemind convincing Mendicant Bias to turn on the Forerunners. I wrote a long comment defending 343 before I watched the video, deleted it because I wanted to give the video a try before passing judgement, then every single one of my arguments were slowly and methodically dismantled one by one. Well fucking done. All that is mine is now yours to do with as you see fit.

[@AlphaWolfShade]

Lmao, that's fucking great.

[@alexanderrobins7497]

Props to you for being willing to hear new information instead of being entrenched in your ways. I sick of being gaslight by 343i fans saying “yOu WaNt ThE sAmE gAmE” or “bUnGiE fAnBoY” despite also loving Halo Wars and the books prior to 2011.

[@dextergrif]

@@alexanderrobins7497 Yeah, and I still like some of 343’s stuff, I just get it now that they obviously retconned stuff

[@BiomechanicalBrick]

I share this sentiment

[@n7pako367]

So weak

[@N0TYALC]

I can see how a biased person could wave away the “You ARE forerunner” line as being poetic or symbolic, but contact harvest could not be more direct

[@citizenvulpes4562]

I mean guilty spark was hinting we were forerunner since CE. It's just that, that one line is what confirmed mosts people's suspicions.

[@kemori_]

i hate that I can't look up things about bungie's universe as it existed before it was retconned without getting info mixed in from the 343 universe... i honestly wish there was a separate wiki

[@C3_SABERTOOTH]

A passionate Bungie-era fan has started one at bungiehalowiki.miraheze.org!

[@Nostripe361]

I only played the original trilogy and don’t really have an interest in the new games. What irritates me the most is not these retcons but how lazy they feel. It’s never be as good as the original but I feel an actual good writer could have made this version of the universe at least adequate. Like instead of war because ancient humans were to dumb to give the forerunners a phone call about the flood you could of had the flood still be a mystery and using tensions between the races and false flag attacks to set off a war between them to weaken both races before the flood invasion

[@zebzai3918]

@@C3_SABERTOOTH Thanks for informing me about this.

[@caramelldansen2204]

@@C3_SABERTOOTH Yippie!

[@xXx_Regulus_xXx]

​@@C3_SABERTOOTHfantastic! thanks for sharing, I appreciate this

[@jeantoor7103]

I find it amusing that people who defend 343i Forerunners lore often say that Bungie's idea was too mary sue-ish with humanity being forerunners all along. But 343 lore with Librarian bragging about how humans are important and unusual and mysterious and important is somehow better. If anything, it's even more marysue-ish.

[@samlund8543]

The fact of the matter is that in order for the story of Halo to even work, humanity has to have SOME KIND of special connection with the Forerunners, full stop. That will naturally feel a little MarySue-ish no matter how you do it, but there are certainly better ways to do it than others. 343’s route is not one of those better ones, that’s for sure.

[@nagger8216]

@@samlund8543 Humanity's "special connection" got them genocided on a scale we've never even seen in our current history, I really wouldn't call that Mary Sue-esque at all.

[@Gunslinging_Photographer]

Start from halo 3's ending, and have chief wake up, Cortana ask what he dreamt about and him to simply make a noise of disgust.

[@tatotaytoman5934]

"EUGH!!!... Anyway"

[@AttiMatter]

“LINEAGE CONFIRMED” And we’re still arguing over whether we were forerunners in the Bungie games?

[@Slender_Man_186]

So regarding Frank somehow thinking that humanity and the Covenant came to a truce, I think I have a better explanation: he has no clue that the great schism happened, he probably saw a bit of gameplay footage where elites were fighting alongside humans (probably during Floodgate or even when Arby picks us up during Cortana), and thought that because Elites were friendly that the entire Covenant was. He has literally no clue that the elites were completely betrayed which is why in Halo 4 we went right back to fighting elites.

[@Jojonogogo]

Just watched this today for the first time. I now get to say yet again, “You don’t hate Journos enough” cause Frank O’Connor just got added to another list.

[@Agora2021]

It's always the journos.

[@strangegaming3060]

Almost every single line of 343 Guilty Spark's dialogue supports this idea. He talks to you as though you are a Forerunner. He says he's glad some Forerunners survived to reproduce, even though the Forerunners are obviously all dead. Halo itself has a breathable atmosphere with Earth-like gravity, and Earth-like plants. Only humans can activate Halo. One of the continents on Delta Halo is OBVIOUSLY Africa, which happens to be the same continent humans originated on. The portal is located on Earth, and the Monitor literally says point blank to Chief, "You ARE Forerunner."

[@Gofaw]

343 shills say that Spark saying "you are forerunner" isn't a reveal because.. rampancy or something. They just go "nuh uh" and shoehorn a shitty explanation to deny what's evident

[@forestrees2000]

@@Gofawevery. fucking. time. it’s the most cop out excuse i’ve ever seen. “nuh uh, he was crazy! you can’t believe a single word he says because he’s crazy! you must now disregard every single piece of important lore and canon he delivers because he’s crazyyyyyyyy!!!1!” so fucking lazy and annoying

[@Charlisimo123]

At this point, 343 are the literal embodiment of the Prophets of the Covenant. Saying their blasphemous lies about Forerunners being a different race, while us the old fans of Halo have known for a while that humans were Forerunners. They have literally split the fanbase between heretics and Covenant.

[@cosmictreason2242]

Long as we agree that thematically, us old fans are the heretics

[@hannaheasley1681]

I’m happy to be a heretic! I just spin the 343 shit into a way that makes sense to me in the original lore

[@PlinaZ]

....Frank O'Connor was a journalist.... EVERYTHING makes sense now

[@sofaking1627]

6 months later and this is still the most underrated Halo lore video I bothers me endlessly that self proclaimed Halo Lore youtubers ignore this

[@sekiko7183]

*stares down HiddenXperia*

[@sofaking1627]

Lol@@sekiko7183

[@gafrers]

You are 100000% correct

[@McBoofus]

Most Halo KZbinrs are 343 apologists. I wouldn't take their word seriously, especially since they're high on hopium and forced positivity.

[@SkyWolf.117]

I blame the CiA lmao

[@thecynicaloptimist1884]

Another hint from _Halo 2_ is the Gravemind's line: "I am a monument to all your sins".

[@robertharris6092]

They didnt need to make the forwars unto dawn bigger. Just make it so a covenant ship is connected to the dawn and you go onto it during the mission.

[@vanjabulajic1618]

The irony here is that The Covenant started their holy war to hide a misintepretation of their own religious canon... Only for 343 to retcon this with their own misinterpretation of their IP's canon. 343's Halo universe is a monument to all their sins.

[@tristanlee8495]

I absolutely love how much this video has permeated the community, anytime I see someone online bring up the changes to the Forerunner lore, there is inevitably someone referring to your video in that conversation.

[@jakethesnake3593]

Another line that the Halo 3 terminals will say in the backwards distorted speech is "welcome child".

[@wavemasterxyra1630]

Remember, they cannot change what you experienced, what you witness and what you learned. We ARE Forerunner and Halo died with Bungie.

[@Destroyer_V0]

Short of 343 actually making something satisfying... yeaaah. Halo 3 is the end. Halo wars and contact harvest, is the begining.

[@TheLouisianan]

To me, Halo 4 and on are just dreams Chief is having while he's still floating in space after 3

[@punchout2418]

​@@TheLouisianan That's what I've been saying. Chief is still aboard the Dawn in cryo waiting. The Reclaimer saga has just been a really bad fever dream while Chief is in cryo sleep.

[@four-en-tee]

Halo isn't "back" until Microsoft puts another team other than 343 on the series.

[@paperclip6377]

​@@Destroyer_V0 Halo Reach is the end.

[@serathaevistille995]

What I get from this video is that the entire 12 years we've had of bad storytelling in Halo has all been down to one shiny bald man's incapability to have the reading comprehension of a seven year old. I... I don't even. I need a drink.

[@Slender_Man_186]

It’s not even fan fiction, that would imply he knows and respects the source material.

[@vancodling4223]

​@@Slender_Man_186 It's literal heresy. He had to understand it almost comprehensively to know how many retcons needed to be deployed lol

[@arivibin3318]

Cheers M8 I'll drink to that

[@fearlesswee5036]

I still can't get over how this 343i retcon fucking *vindicates* the Covenant and makes them kinda right.

[@BioAlpha5]

One Side note, The fact that the Halo Array and The Ark have the same enviroment Earth does, a living breathable habitat for humans to live, a "Home away From Home" Id say is more proof of Bungie DID know what they were doing.

[@riccsty7851]

I always thought the fact that the halos had ACTUAL FREAKING TREES LIKE FROM EARTH!! to be proof that the rings were built for humans

[@josephcasper8803]

@@BiomechanicalBrick ^ It was a collection of things Also elites and jackals can breathe air soooo It seams like in the halo universe oxygen breathers are the most varied characters

[@tropitropitropo]

@@josephcasper8803 Yes, but compare that to Sanghelious or any other Covenant soecies's home planet. It's waaay more similar to something like Earth.

[@josephcasper8803]

@@tropitropitropo from what we have seen I think its a lot better if we weren't in the spotlight of things

[@tropitropitropo]

@@josephcasper8803 Meh, fair enough.

[@secretsecret2780]

"It is best that our crews perished now; because the battle that is about to ensue would have driven them mad." -The best quote of the whole video.

[@C3_SABERTOOTH]

That kinda hurts my feelings! (That said, I agree.)

[@user-bv7zo6vd4m]

one of the best one-liners in all of halo, and there is tons of competion. Shame it's so underated

[@MrHotSalsa]

Offensive Bias went sicko mode after that

[@varlak9061]

Does sound like something that would be out of marathon

[@DigitalApex]

"I throw away all the rules of acceptable conduct during battle; near the ruptures, I throw away all the accepted ideas of how the natural world is supposed to behave. I toss around [37,654 tonne] Dreadnoughts like they were fighters; dimly aware of the former crews being crushed to deliquesce."

[@krakenshark9482]

you made it man I now see your video being referenced in internet arguments that's big leagues.

[@C3_SABERTOOTH]

My crowning achievement!

[@ferghalicious1480]

1:04:58 Hilariously, the explanation I’ve often seen for this is that Cortana’s rampancy is causing her to misremember the details of the Human-Covenant war. So essentially 343 fans are using Frank’s misunderstanding of rampancy to explain Frank’s misunderstanding of Halo’s story. Retcons upon retcons as you put it.

[@xtc2]

this video is the most insanely thorough examination of any lore in any franchise i have ever seen

[@agchains78543]

I'm so glad that people are finally talking about this. I've brought this up a lot of times in discussions about 343i's treatment of the lore when they took over the franchise, quoting lines from Halo 3, and referencing 343 Guilty Spark's ambient dialogue during Combat Evolved, and it is constantly denied by 343i revisionist shills. This was a much more engaging and original story than anything 343i is capable of.

[@DigitalApex]

Not even just Halo 3, but also in Halo: CE. "A record of all _our_ lost time. Human history is it?" On the last level of CE.

[@agchains78543]

@@DigitalApex Yep. I've used that line before, and also his lines from The Library.

[@Jesse-qy6ur]

@@agchains78543 I was excited for Halo since before Microsoft bought Bungie. I remember reading the pre-retcon version of The Fall of Reach before the game even came out (the book landed at Borders a month or two before the game released). I was 16, almost 17 at the time, the Twin Towers had been destroyed a few weeks earlier, and it was enjoyable pulpy sci-fi that reminded me of Ender's Game. Anyhow, they kept being indirect about it, but this was what they kept teasing: I remember I think in First Strike one of the Spartans in Red Team captures a Wraith and is shocked that they intuitively know how to operate the equipment. A big deal is made of the way Covenant technology is imitative and derivative of Forerunner technology. Chief and Cortana hijack a Covenant cruiser and it takes little time for Cortana to go fucking S-tier on the jump drives and plasma weapons. Ghosts of Onyx is where the wheels start to fall off the bus, but it does the tease about Forerunner equipment knowing something like Latin. And hint at the possibilities that some Forerunners made it into the Shield Worlds' slipspace bubbles before the Halos fired. There was this compelling mystique about the Forerunners because you knew things were building to a reveal, where you were either going to come face to face with a small group of surviving Forerunner, or a recording of the final minutes of the Forerunner civilization and get to see the full array fire, or both. There was always the question: what exactly _is_ humanity's relationship with the Forerunners? What was the Forerunner civilization like -- the genocidal and casual brutality of the Covenant would suggest narratively the Forerunners would be their opposite. And there was always the question about where the Flood came from. But it was clear that as of the end of Halo 2, for some reason the Halo array could be fired or disarmed from Earth. It seemed like there was adventure and discovery and oh-shit moments waiting for us in the future. But this was in the first half of the 2000s, when it seemed like there would be more of these integrated epic stories -- but almost twenty years on commercial studios have proven they can only start things, they can't bring them to satisfying conclusions. And then you start to see the trickle and then flood of retcons starting with Halo 3 as the story starts to fall apart. Interesting, though, that now that we've seen the storyboards it seems likely that the Librarian from the Terminals is derived from the progenitor Forerunner in the Ark's Data Vault. Halo 3's story sucked, honestly. You had the mechanical wrapping-up of the storyline but it just didn't pay off what Halo and Halo 2 set up. I'm still disappointed over what could have been.

[@agchains78543]

@@Jesse-qy6ur I have to strongly disagree with you about Halo 3. It was the epic conclusion that Halo deserved, and for that reason it remains my favorite to this day. I don't think Halo really is a case of a studio not being able to finish what it started. Bungie set out to tell an epic story, and they did. There are a few plot threads that could have been closed off, but apart from the Flood there's enough evidence to put all that together. The problem isn't that Halo wasn't concluded in a satisfying way. It's that, while I personally would have loved to have more Halo, it did get a satisfying conclusion, but it was picked up by an incompetent studio afterward.

[@slvrcobra1337]

I'm glad I'm not the only one. I was pretty much a games-only Halo fan with only a couple of books and tangential knowledge of the terminals etc by the time 343 took over, but I was so thoroughly confused and disgusted with Halo 4's story that I made a brief post on the Waypoint forums to vent about it. I got swarmed by a bunch of 343 shills that used EVERY lie and excuse in this video and I went back and forth arguing with them about it and trying to research as much as I could because I could've sworn everything under Bungie implied Humans were basically Forerunners. I'm grateful for the existence of this video and this channel because through this guy's content, we not only got THE most blatant confirmation to date in the form of the release of the original H2 storyboards, but he also showed me that the piece I was missing in my old arguments was that Frank O'Connor himself wrote the inconsistent parts of the H3 terminals that 343 shills said vindicated his later retcons.

[@randomportalcore8027]

I'm surprised you didn't point out how in the halo 3 terminals always default to using hours as the longest unit of time measurement, except in the didact and librarian terminals when they say [300 years[?]] Which can't be measured the same way as hours because we don't even know how many leap years there are in that equation.

[@dust195]

Came from the tweet, Marty has officially stated what we all knew to be fact. Humans are Forerunner!

[@Vffhndsercchi]

1v1 me snipers MLG on Guardian m8

[@nutyyyy]

Seeing the 343 zoomies who didn't even watch the video seething in the replies was both hilarious and sad.

[@benclark4823]

So a music composer is telling you about lore cannon 🙄

[@dust195]

@@benclark4823 Tell me you know nothing about Marty Odonell without telling me. He was basically the franchise director for all Bungie Halo games.

[@AttiMatter]

@@benclark4823 Found the guy who doesn’t know his stuff

[@ffili92]

wake up C3 Sabertooth, we need you to upload another video

[@thecynicaloptimist1884]

Phenomenal video that really sums up my issues with the lore problems 343 ran with. Another of my biggest gripes is how they ruined the Flood by turning them from a mysterious eldritch cosmic horror to the vengeful remnants of gods reincarnated from rotten dust who want to punish the Forerunners. One thing I especially liked in the video was the production design, everything is very well presented and animated. You deserve WAY more subs than you have!

[@bigdaddynero3497]

This video makes me want to weep. Like I'm in a court room and my son's killer is getting away, innocent. Thank God he can no longer tarnish Halo, but as you put it, there's no coming back.

[@OptionallySavage]

I'm guessing the reason Frank O'Connor doesn't know what happened in Halo 3 is because he didn't play it.

[@Durp_EXE]

> Think of your forefathers! > Do not destroy your inheritance! > Accept your legacy! Anyone else find it chilling that 343 Guilty Spark's last words were these, and 343 literally went against all of it when they took over halo?

[@gabethebabe3337]

343 always put themselves in the weirdest positions by ignoring what actually worked about Halo.

[@prompthorizon_12]

HA HA ... right ...last words

[@warriorshedge6772]

@@prompthorizon_12 right?! 😂 I'll give them the next hint; UNSC: Rubicon

[@Durp_EXE]

@@prompthorizon_12 i’m aware that ‘Spark’ survives in 343 canon, but in Bungie’s Halo, that was the last we’d see of 343 Guilty Spark

[@barrybend7189]

disregarding the surviving Spark I at least appreciate the slight deviation of the old hat "humans are the ancients" thing. as that was old hat in modern sci-fi.

[@Emll_117]

In conclusion, 343i's Halo is NOT cannon.

[@nikitab.6600]

The most hilarious part of it all is that 343s interpretation of previous Halo lore is entirely and totally the same as the Covenant. No difference 😂.

[@12halo3]

Really deserves more views. It's sad to see the wiki infected with nothing but 343s lore. I wish they had kept is separate it makes running a pure Bungie RPG campaign a headache.

[@AbbyRawks]

Imagine, if at some point in the future, we come full circle and a new game or series of books retcons the 343 retcons back to the way things were in the Bungie era. Now that would be wild. We'd probably have a lot of 343 fans pissed about them retconning THEIR lore though and it would be an endless cycle of hating the new story.

[@drew3762]

If someone argued to me that 343 never changed the art style I think I would have a stroke 😂

[@NGRevenant]

it's literally just gaslighting

[@ne3333t]

​@@NGRevenantNow that I think about it, the past decade has been nothing but gaslighting from 343 fans

[@LagoonPurple]

the fact that guilty spark says to chief in the last mission "you are forerunner" blows my mind with 343 change

[@TylerB-my1kr]

As a community lets start over and make the actual sequel to halo3.

[@Maggot-Milk]

This video deserves WAY more views, the production quality is insane

[@EvilPhoenix007]

Try to keep it trending if we can.

[@gabethebabe3337]

@@BiomechanicalBrick so you’re saying you don’t like Halo and you prefer someone else’s false interpretation of Halo.

[@Greyscale11]

@@BiomechanicalBrick If a different path was chosen and the original vision was never expanded upon, then it would obviously have a lower level of development, you dummy. Unless you had a means to traverse alternate timelines and could see how that original vision would've been developed faithfully over a few more games, you can hardly compare the two in terms like that.

[@cidgonzalez1272]

No, they haven't need more views

[@NGRevenant]

having timers on pop up excerpts is a nice touch

[@davidthompson5991]

I get so tired of people STILL claiming that Bungie “changed their minds” in Halo 3 just because of the O’Connor terminals. It’s a very very selective stance

[@DoesNotEqual14]

It's not just a selective stance, it's basically a lie.

[@grumpydixie1645]

One thing also worth mentioning is that nearly every forerunner instillation or relic is in/a suspiciously earth-like environment, if that's not another haring that humans were intended to be forerunners then i don't know what is.

[@stevengreene879]

Why don’t more big halo KZbinrs acknowledge this point?

[@jaydenjackson2876]

They meat ride and blindly follow 343s stupid ass lore

[@bubbajoe117]

Because then they won't get those sweet influencer bux.

[@helljumper7101]

Probably because they want to be on 343s good side for one reason or another so attacking the only thing 343 has going for them which is riding old Bungie’s coattails (by showing that they’ve done basically everything to rip out Bungie’s Halo intentionality) tends to not be so good for that and the fact that usually when the scale of 343s retcons are brought to light fans of the Bungie era such as myself come to reject all of 343s canon which would be career suicide for some of these channels because they depend on people wanting more of 343s Halo

[@kassarc16]

Frankie was the Ball Boy to Team Bungie who got to throw a first pitch once, after which he decided he was a real pitcher. The team got sold and eventually traded off own star line-up, handed him the ball, and made him their star player.

[@potatoepope]

Seeing the facts laid bare really explains why Halo 4 felt so off from start to finish. And then 5. And then Infinite. I loved the video, and watching the old lore takes me back, thank you Sabertooth!

[@JZStudiosonline]

I really liked starting Halo 5 and having no clue why there were all these other spartans around or what any of anything is. Then 343 said it was too complicated and you wouldn't need prior knowledge for Infinite, so instead you start off left for dead on some ring you've never seen before by some space ape you don't know that's not even in the game to stop... something? and then Cortana also destroyed Australia for some reason. Luckily I think I've only played Halo 4 twice and 5 once. I only watched Infinite, so thusly I act as though they don't exist.

[@johnwotek3816]

Like many pointed out before, 4 is a retcon of 3, 5 retcon 4 and Infinite retcon 5. There is litteraly no continuity in the reclaimer trilogy. The fact infinite wasn't numeroted halo 6 says a lot. Since 343 took control, the entire story has had no direction and no integrity, changing itself completelly everytime they faced the inevitable criticism from disapointed fan. We have reached a point where rebooting again the franchise of sticking to it's messy storyline would make absolutelly no difference.

[@turututu2113]

@@johnwotek3816 That's why I don't care about new stories, everything was destroyed. I realized that this “trilogy” was on the wrong track when it turned the relationship between Chief and Cortana's friends/colleagues or half-siblings into a romantic relationship between Chief and a young version of his mother who is naked 24 hours a day. That “friends/classmates or step-siblings” part, but I’d say Chief and Cortana’s relationship in the Bungie era was more like step-siblings, as they’re both Halsey’s creations. OR maybe everything I said is wrong XD

[@yobud6637]

I used to think I was a Halo fan, then I watched this. I started playing Halo, each game in order of release, in about 2007 or something, and I was about six years old. Oddly enough, the first time I played a Halo game where I actually was old enough to start caring about the story beyond "Master Chief is cool and we kill aliens and Flood are space zombies" was around 2012, right when Halo 4 rolled around. Of course, I played it on Christmas that year and could immediately tell something wasn't right. It wasn't the Halo I knew for practically all of my short life so far. In recent years, I learned a bit more about the original plan for Halo, but stopped at "Humans were supposed to be descended from Forerunners" and never bothered to look further, because I felt there was no reason to. After all, the current story is what we have, and I don't have a reason to think about original concepts for things that never panned out. I have played all of the original trilogy at least 20 times each since then, and just glossed over that aspect of the story altogether. My perspective now, after seeing this, makes me unreasonably mad. I used to think Frank O'Connor shared the same vision as Bungie all along, and again, never looked into it. But to see how clearly opposed he was to everything the company was going for, and that I would have loved way more than what we have now, I can't help but feel betrayed in a way. But hey, Frank O'Connor apparently just left 343 industries for good, so here's hoping that Halo Infinite's sequel/DLC/whatever they're planning ('cause who knows at this point) gets better. Infinite itself already took a step back to what we all love in the artstyle, so maybe they'll somehow fix the story in a similar way. Wishful thinking, maybe, but Halo is basically my whole conscious childhood and I would hate to see it die after all the torture it has been through already. It just has to be put back on course.

[@C3_SABERTOOTH]

If you really like Halo, then you’re a fan of Halo. My video shouldn’t take that away from you! I honestly don’t know how 343i can course-correct at this point, but I guess we have to wait and see!

[@yobud6637]

@@C3_SABERTOOTH Your video didn't take any of that away, don't worry. It's more just that you made me realize something I hadn't seen before, which changed my opinions from "there was an interesting plan originally, oh well" to "it would have been so much better if we had gotten that instead of what O'Connor gave us in the end and I'm disappointed now." I'm still excited for the future and can accept that we're stuck with what we have now, and still have hope that they can, if not completely fix, just guide their story to a place that most fans would want to see it go, and now that O'Connor is gone, I think they're that next step closer to it.

[@gabethebabe3337]

I would love to see a followup video explaining other retcons and changes even if they are told in a less detailed way. You did so much research and the work you put into your animations and the storyboards is astoundingly good. I hope to see more stuff from you soon dude because your videos on Halo have been extremely interesting.

[@FluttersShy-ln2ln]

I call 343's iteration of the forerunners as the "34runners" 😋

[@nagger8216]

I prefer "Fiverunners" personally, but that's also a good one.

[@LKNear]

Huge thanks to Frank Oconnor for ruining what we had. Microsoft should reboot Halo and decanonize 343's Halo

[@MaxLittleBuddy]

Shhh... They might reboot it with the TV show version

[@zero1487]

Dude amen. Amen

[@opticalraven1935]

Frank was to Halo as Schetino was to the Costa Concordia: Both ran their charges into the rocks.

[@jessestevenson8361]

Just let halo die it ended with bungie

[@Milesamanjaro]

I still think Master Chief is still floating out there in the ether, and unfortunately experiencing some cryosleep-induced fever dream... at least that's what I want to "believe" (Halo 3: Believe reference, here - big winks 😉).

[@midgetydeath]

What 343i fans fail to realize is that by retconning the Forerunners to not be human, there is no reason for the war as humanity being the chosen inheritors of the Forerunners is something the Prophets would have eagerly and easily taken advantage of to ride the Reclaimers’ coat tails. Meaning the war and all the games _cannot happen under 343i’s version._

[@SendReinforcements]

I agree with pretty much everything you’ve said in this video, and even learned some stuff I didn’t know! The only thing I’ll point out is that changing the size of the Forward Unto Dawn does change a few things. First, the scene where the ship flies down and drops off a squad of marines and a scorpion tank; this scene is already pretty impressive, but now imagine a ship QUADRUPLE that size doing the same maneuver! Second, as a light cruiser Miranda says she’s outclassed and outgunned in the fight against the covenant fleet; if the ship was 4x bigger the fight wouldn’t have been quite as difficult, and likely would have had more marines, ODSTs, and armaments to commit to the ground engagement rather than the scrappy light cruiser. I couldn’t stand or finish reading the Forerunner saga. The biggest sins for me was removing ALL the mystery from Halo and the forerunners, and turning the Flood from just a horrendous space plague into “ancient space gods that accidentally turned themselves into dust and forgot how to turn back”. I’ve talked to a few people that liked the serious for adding depth to the forerunners and flood, but to me they made them far less interesting.

[@gunsarrus7836]

I don't consider 343's stuff Halo, I consider it bad halo fan fiction

[@DoctorpooandtheTURDIS]

Something I don't think can be stressed enough is that it was never a plan. Never something Bungie deliberated on. It was FACT. From even before the Halo universe as we knew it began to take shape. "Unexpected contact with indigenous human populations on four "lost colony" worlds led to a frenzy of research as archaeologists, theologians, astronomers, and evolutionary biologists competed to offer an explanation for the startling discovery." -that's from the Cortana Letters. Before the first game's story was finalized. Before it even made the transition to Xbox. All the way back THEN, Bungie knew: Humanity had been to the stars before, and SOMETHING had happened to reset the slate. But, the evidence was still there. And it still existed. Even IN Iris (which Frank O'Connor RAN), it's shown that the Forerunners were aware of Earth LONG before modern humanity emerged. There were human handprints in segments of limestone originating from 110 million years ago... the Cretaceous Period... when Primates are theorized to have first appeared. And the Forerunners possessed a map of Earth as it was when the supercontinent Pangaea existed. There was no mystery. They came FROM EARTH. Literally the ONLY person who seemed to be in a back-and-forth about it was Frank O'Connor.

[@jHounder]

1:04:28 In the first level of Halo 4, Master Chief says to Cortana, "I thought we had a truce with the Covenant." That line never made any sense to me from the very first time I played it in 2012. I remember thinking at the time, "What? When did that happen?" Now I know why that line was there. Frank O' Connor completely misunderstood Halo 3's story. And that's the guy who was put in charge to develop the Halo franchise. That alone is very telling about 343's take on Halo as a whole. Edit: Haha, you even addressed this absurd line later on in the video. Well done.

[@Slender_Man_186]

Same here, I was only 10 when I got Halo Legends for Christmas and 11 when I got 4 the year after that, Origins Part 2 and that line in 4 both made no sense to me even then.

[@nutyyyy]

Yes, humanity had a tentative truce with the Covenant Separatists/Elites that were led by the Arbiter. They had no peace with the actual Covenant or other Covenant Separatists/Elites who weren't yet following the Arbiter. That nuance completely disappeared. Of course, that's assuming Ghosts of Onyx is even Canon anymore. The Covenant Separatists gather much of their fleets at Joyous Exultation in order to hit back at the Prophets, Brutes, and other Covenant Loyalists AND also finish off Humanity. The Separatists have no idea they were lied to. They just know they were betrayed. They still hate humanity. Their leader was a prominent Elite Admiral/Fleet Master. However, most of the fleet is destroyed by an UNSC Nova Bomb that was taken from Reach, disguised as a forerunner artefact. So it's the Arbiter that convinces much of the Elites to not continue the war against humanity.

[@dr.boring7022]

Right? Its soo dumb. I could understand if Chief said "I thought we had a truce with the Elites." That would have honestly made perfect sense, even if the Arbiter didn't yet rally all of the Elites. It would make sense that the Chief would think that. But the Covenant? No lmao there was never a point in history where Humanity and the Covenant were friends.

[@tommymaxey2665]

Yeah it really doesn't. Because the Elites are different from the Covenant. Jeez how could Frank O'Connor not know the distinction between a singular alien species and an organized religious group of multiple alien species.

[@jurassicarkjordanisgreat1778]

IIRC some of the cod guys who came to work on halo 4 where confused when 343 asked them to add ADS and they said “we came to make halo not cod”

[@VoodleBand]

The Frankie O'Connor section of this video gave me head trauma. I can put into words now why I don't like 343's Halo so much, so that's good. Bungie's Halo is not gone to me. I look forward to playing the games again with this video in mind.

[@Agora2021]

Wow, I had no idea things were this bad. My journey with Halo ended with Bungie's departure as I saw the writing on the wall almost immediately with 343. Sad what's become of one of my favorite childhood universes.

[@RahulDevanarayanan]

I got chills hearing Keith David's voiceover in the animated storyboard. Nice work sabretooth :)

[@TheObscuran]

The desolate sadness in his voice is absolutely heart-wrenching.

[@shadesofrevolution]

Pure Catharsis: The Video. I'll never forgive 343I for watering down Spartan's and giving us Mighty Morphin Spartan Rangers either.

[@DxnnyFanta]

We need a complete reboot of the series, make everything 343 created non cannon and start over from the end of halo 3

[@cursedwanderer1753]

I'd rather we star from Halo 2, halo 3 dropped the ball a bit (but not as much as 4 or 5). I want to see Arbiter break Truth's neck, then find out he was worshipping humanity, then fly away with Guilty Spark.

[@JustSiouxMe]

I think continuing after Halo 3 was a mistake. It's generally a bad idea to force a story to continue past its obvious conclusion. It would be better for them to have made a trilogy set during the Forerunner-Flood war. Show us what Forerunner tech was like in its prime. How powerful a class 12 combat skin is. Expand on the Flood, show what they are like on a galactic level rather than the smaller localised outbreaks that where in the Bungie trilogy. Doing that they could respect the lore (more importantly not retcon the entire reason for the Human-Covenant war) and have plenty of room to do thier own thing.

[@theholygamer969]

Who said 343 Halo ever was canon?

[@thewubgod]

@@cursedwanderer1753 this sounds horrible sorry

[@kkcks]

Tbh I think the franchise should just end, things don't just end anymore. Why should we milk the story continually?

[@Powerof7even]

You are like an archivist of true halo. If I were to make a team of developers for a halo reboot I would have you in charge of lore and writing for sure.

[@alexanderrobins7497]

The Halo community has proved over and over again to have significantly more passion and probably talent than the idiots running 343 Incompetencies.

[@collaborisgaming2190]

I wonder what the Efficacy of that would be? Make our own franchise?

[@pouncelygrin6699]

@@collaborisgaming2190 "Halo: We Are Forerunners" something like that 🤔

[@N0TYALC]

I would hire nothing but cows. Literal cows. That way, the game would never be released and the story would just end where it was meant to

[@flydeath1841]

Amazing video Sabertooth, honestly it makes me depressed to know just how much damage that Frank O Connor did to Bungie's work, still the fact that we can get so angry about what happens just shows how much we all loved this universe and games back when it was in its golden age.

[@warriorshedge6772]

Was all planned like sjws

[@burge117]

Yeah man. It is so frustrating...O'connor is just garbage and sadly a sign of things to come when 343 got their hands on Halo!

[@Lordoftheringwraiths]

How is he still a part of 343?

[@Arander92]

Because the fans bemoans that Bonnie Toss and Kiki Wolfkill be fired, but they don’t seem to care about Frank. They completely ignore him. Probably because he’s a white guy

[@burge117]

@@Arander92 SAD but true most likely.

[@calebreynolds9183]

I cite this video so often. You deserve the views and subs, but it sickens me that it takes over an hour of evidence and credits to untangle a mess made by the spare internet-janitor, and even more sad that people are in such denial that I’ve repeatedly needed to cite this video (just the whole thing) just to defend the view that 343 thoroughly nuked the entire franchise at every single narrative level imaginable.

[@peytonbollhorst6624]

I feel the exact same way bro

[@shadekerensky3691]

Maaan, can't wait to see a video on all of 343's other retcons as good as this one is. And it's funny, Frank O'Conner is basically the Dave Filoni of Halo.

[@ulty1472]

Yep glad to know im not only one who came to that conclusion

[@Slender_Man_186]

To an extent, yeah, Dave’s work on Clone Wars is largely misattributed, he directed clone wars but didn’t actually write the majority of episodes considered to be the best, those were mostly the work of George Lucas. Another similar case is Taika Waititi, people tend to attribute Thor Raganarok being funny to him because he directed it, but he was largely being carried by like 3 writers, and it shows when looking at Love and Thunder which was directed *and* written by him.

[@1000g2g3g4g800999]

I'd be careful with narrativizing observed changes in properties like these such to assign culpability to any one individual, the information laid out in this video and the case it makes it seem like this is mostly the work of Frank O'Çonner, and it may well be, but the production of something like Halo involves a lot of people. You can easily see several contradictory ideas of what's happened with Star Wars Legends, The Clone Wars, and the 2014 continuity reboot (as well as the direction of the sequel films), and people will point to significant amounts of evidence to support their theory of what happened, but we don't have access to perfect information, and we get multiple theories at odds with each other partially as a result of that. I would like to comment on the creator of this video saying Star Wars isn't SciFi and that the scene from TFA is fine in universe: Space Opera is a subgenre of SciFi, fantasy and other things that aren't actually rigidly mutually exclusive with each other. It's also been possible for the longest time to treat Star Wars as media where the visuals aren't meant to be entirely literal, however, that scene from TFA just isn't how Star Wars has ever worked (there are some weird moments with regards to certain other things happening in space, but I don't want to get into that, the scene where Starkiller base destroys several planets at once observable in real-time from another just doesn't make sense).

[@averymicrowave1713]

​@@1000g2g3g4g800999I can sorta get your point about Frankie but to be fair to Sabertooth, Frankie became the creative lead of the entire IP and was basically the only Bungie member in a somewhat prominent role to make it to 343 and especially to a leadership position. If anyone was in a position to preserve established canon, and say no to any changes that would have diluted the franchise, it was him. But his own contributions to Halo 3 proved that he already had no concerns for the creative work of his peers.

[@presidentbirb1]

With the way you described losing the previous Halo series to the current one and how people try to convince you that the previous one never existed feels similar to how many people nowadays try retcon past civilizations of human history...and even present day histories.

[@Horgler]

It's a shame this has as few views as it does for how much effort was put in.

[@talizorahnarrayya001]

Reading the comments from reddit you provide... The 343I apologists deserve 343I Halo games. 🤣

[@hylandhistories4140]

I played Halo for the first time, no context and no outside knowledge, for the first time on MCC in 2019. Halo 3 ended by telling me humans were forrunners. The next game said no you are not. Needless to say, very confusing.

[@Wint910]

I came here to write just that! I also played all the games very recently from reach, 1, 2 3, etc in chronological order and was confused when i in the game i was being told humans were foreunners while the terminals were telling me humans were killed by foreunners... and i had only read contact harvest at the time which literally says humans are foreunner....

[@nagger8216]

​​@@Wint910Just stick with the Contact Harvest explanation. I promise none of the original games ever seriously considered making the Forerunners separate from humans. It's all "Your forefathers..." this and "Child of my enemy" that. Introducing some "Uuuh... technically 🤓" bullshit just makes it way more confusing and convoluted than it ever needed to be. The Covenant were genociding their own gods, that's the point of the story, nothing else.

[@paperclip6377]

Bro 343i games ain't canon please don't suffer through them. Bungie ended the chief's story at 3.

[@soktherat777]

This video was fantastic. Depressing as hell, but it was nice to hear my feelings about this subject properly articulated. I used to rabidly read the Halo books back in high school. I remember being excited to read the Forerunner Saga. After finishing it, I just had this feeling of emptiness. I didn't enjoy it at all then, and when you try to simply have a conversation about it, you're labeled a Bungie fanboy and not a true Halo fan. Sorry I didn't enjoy a trilogy that was designed to completely tear down everything Bungie had established. Edit: I will also die on the hill that it was extremely disrespectful of 343 to completely scrub Bungie's post game letters and credits in MCC. Imagine seeing a company re-release something you worked on, and they just completely scrub your contribution from existence.

[@whydidimakethis111]

With Frank O' Connor being the kind of person he is, it is not that surprising but very disrespectful all the same. You lucked into being the head of a franchise, Frank. At least have the self-awareness to recognize the work of others that brought you here (it's not gonna happen).

[@josephcasper8803]

I like both does that mean I'm not a halo fan?

[@geekofsteal]

@@josephcasper8803 You're definitely a Halo fan. He's talking about HIS experience specifically of being called 'not a true Halo fan' for not liking 343's content. This is an opinion about 343 as a company and what they've created, not about people who enjoy what they've created.

[@josephcasper8803]

@@geekofsteal I see

[@nutyyyy]

​@@josephcasper8803People can enjoy whatever they like. It's just frustrating being a fan from the very beginning and having people pretend that nothing was ever changed.

[@justinstoll4955]

It's pretty amazing how much 343 screwed up Bungie's lore and story. 343 literally had to write multiple books to have their crap lore for 4 to work. Then 343 practically ditched their own lore from game to game. 343 can't write for shit.

[@pablogr6960]

jesus christ, i knew this thing had some problems, but i did not expect this level of clusterfuckery

[@seventeenohio2641]

Please make more videos comparing Bungie's canon with 343 canon. Is truly so interesting to see the differences and the way you present it is far superior to so many others

[@nagger8216]

Yes, please! This is more addictive than crack, I'd love to see the original lore explored more. Like the origins of the Flood, the implications of what the post-war era would be like, there's so much that could be covered and no one ever does, all the lore channels and wikis focus on 343's bullshit

[@Nighterac]

There was a video that covered the original Bungie timeline up to the Fall of Reach but it's seemingly gone now

[@thoridannn]

The halo universe was one of the most unique and enthralling sci-fi experiences of the 00s. These retcons destroyed something truly unique and special. I know it’s too late to ever fix it, but I appreciate you doing this. It needs to be said. Do you have a patron? I’d be happy to support you.

[@caramelldansen2204]

did you check the description?

[@WallabyWinters]

It's not too late. Either a hard reboot from CE with bungies vision and passion or at least a reboot of the second trilogy. The former is probably more likely to happen

[@1000g2g3g4g800999]

I always enjoyed the story of Halo and didn't really appreciate how common it was to trash on it, or say it's a dumb video game plot, or just a StarCraft knock off, but it probably wouldn't have topped my favorite SciFi or video game stories, even if it was significantly above many video game stories, and totally eclipsed the average for a shooter. But you said "experience," and you know what? It's still probably the best Arena Shooter made for consoles, it's mechanics were great, it had one of the more notable early competitive scenes, and it has some of my favorite weapon designs (in terms of in game functionality) of any shooter I've played.

[@dtgs4502]

Finally someone says it. I don't care about player counts, how broken it is, or how bad the gameplay is. Those can all be fixed in the next game if not through updates. What makes Halo special has always been the story and worldbuilding. It takes the best parts of not only sci fi, but religions, philosophy, poetry, and history. All delivered in a PARTY game because no matter how good books can be, it's damn near impossible to get your friends to read them, so you have nobody to share the experience with.

[@12DAMDO]

when i first played Halo 4 i always assumed those voldemort lookin ahh aliens were supposed to be like an evolved version of humans because that's the only way my mind could interpret what i was looking at.. i genuinely don't remember Halo 4's lore so this head-canon is all i can go by for now.. btw this is not me defending the retcons, it's just me trying my hardest to make sense of it..