HALO: We WERE Forerunner!

[@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?

[@thunderbird7020]

*Holds position nobody even understands *Gets promoted to franchise director *instantly fucks up the entire canon of said franchise *refuses to elaborate further *gets fired

[@ClaseyMeanAh]

He was the true halo killer all along

[@kenl659]

@@ClaseyMeanAh No, his fans were. People that enabled him and defended him for an entire decade. They embraced his decisions and fought and spat at everyone who disagreed. Now he's gone, these snakes simply pivoted in the shadows. No one idiot could kill Halo, it takes an army. An army of 343i snakes. They live on now in Halo Studios, just rebranded, same mentality. No sympathy or apologetic stance for defending Frankie's position throughout the decade of decline. 343i fans were the true cancer of Halo. Frankie was the one who gave the cancer food.

[@ZedByt]

@@kenl659 False, don't blame the people (as instigative as they are), Microsoft would have kept him as head pretty much no matter what, perhaps unless there was a VAST (and I mean HUGE) outcry from fans, and you can't blame people for NOT making a giant stink and effectively throwing a tantrum at first sign of change.

[@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.

[@neato2765]

I don't usually read long comments but this one was a solid 10/10. I had a similar experience myself and finally decided to just ignore everything that came after Bungie left.

[@gavinrobinson8925]

I couldn't agree more. I also fell into the 343 rabbit hole when I started digging into the lore and story, but I never really liked where it lead, and I lost all my interest in halo's lore, every new thing I learnt made me like the universe less not more. But when I realised just how much 343 retconned the old lore, and how much I prefer the old lore, I've never looked back... or forward? Either way 343's stuff is just a bad fanfic to me now, a feverdream of events.

[@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.

[@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.

[@yan-rayiller-may8443]

It's beautiful writing and wonderful symbolism. Everything Frank O'Connor lacks in his writing.

[@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.

[@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

[@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.

[@Devdev009]

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

[@thegrayinthefield8764]

Ironically you now have 343 likes because of me. My apologies.

[@YnossZaperator]

Let's not forget another prophet of the 343 Industries Empire, Kiki Wolfkill who did "kill" Master Chief's character.

[@matthird3961]

Any time I hear the names Frank O’Connor, Bonnie Ross, Kiki Wolfkill, or Unyshek (John Junyszek) I feel my stomach drop

[@mikeyahl7363]

Frank holds the chisel, but Microsoft holds the hammer. Same with Star Wars. I love both, & I seek enjoyment in both, but the flaws are just so clearly the fault of the soulless corporation demanding its milk.

[@Devdev009]

@@mikeyahl7363 And so much damage has been irreparably done, that it’ll take decades to even potentially repair. I would argue that Halo has been more damaged than Star Wars has though.

[@ABenAbides]

Imagine a parallel universe where Bungie included the cut scene where the Arbiter finds the Forerunner (Human) remains: they could have stopped 343's stupid retcon before it was ever conceived of.

[@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.

[@TheMock5000]

Just stumbled onto this. I was so confused when the forerunners were aliens. And that we weren't decended from them. When i first saw the didact, I thought "ah, a cool a alien." But after that i thought "wait..... weren't we forerunners? What do you mean they returned?" I knew that Frank was incompetent since he lead halo down the drain, but to find out HE is the source of the changes... that he single handedly corrupted and destroyed the video game series that used to be my favorite. I'm glad he's gone, I hope he doesn't ever touch Halo again.

[@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.

[@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 😂.

[@smacke2950]

holy shit ur right lmao this is exactly how the covenant saw it

[@samfrazee7022]

Just in the sense that humans were rejected and made low by the forerunners, or is there more to it that I’m not grasping?

[@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

[@alexanderstilianov]

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

[@ventriloquistmagician4735]

amen

[@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

[@todddouglas7231]

Oh shoot I never thought of that! Another clue as Joe would say lol but seriously there are a ludicrous amount of little nuggets of hints suggesting humanities forerunner ancestry and I love them all. The Ark being buried on Earth at the origin point of humans, the Biblical names and Creation/Flood/Ark Story similarities and "God made man in His own image", Cortana being compatible with Forerunner terminals, etc. All so cool and shows so much thought and effort going into the big Halo 3 reveal. Screw you 343...

[@XtreemAlan]

@@todddouglas7231 yeah and there are people who are saying that Joe has no idea what he’s talking about his own universe In interviews I can tell that Joe is ashamed of what Frank did to the Halo legacy

[@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.

[@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.

[@trevsoda]

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

[@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?

[@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

[@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

[@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

[@AttiMatter]

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

[@iivin4233]

"Descended" from Forerunners and "are Forerunners" would still be two different things. I had most of this story down already, but I had always thought humans were literally Forerunners. I think that is the more satisfying interpretation. The alternative leaves linguistic holes such as that "created by" and "are" are two different things. The idea that Halo is science fiction rather than science fantasy never crossed my mind because Halo is only slightly less fantasy than Star Trek, which is only slightly less fantasy than Star Wars. I think the presence of bullets fools people. So, "Reclaimer" is one of the few words of Bungie's humans are forerunners confirmation that makes more sense if humans were made by the forerunners rather than being forerunners. But, that is tantamount to saying humans are not forerunners. It would be like gathering in the lawyer's office after your mom died and the lawyer saying, "I'm not here to divide your inheritance. That is up to the executor of your mother's will. Here she is." as he points to your mother. That would be a bizarre mistake to make. Why would Guilty Spark confuse you for someone he knows is dead, from a species that is probably dead? He should know the will of the forerunners--their reclamation plan--and should therefore know that we are forerunner creations and not forerunners themselves. Either that or he should be confused and incredulous. "What? The dead walk? Is this a Flood deception?" On the other hand, if Guilty Spark confuses you for the Didact or for any forerunner, that would imply you're closer to them than genetically modified apes probably should be. It's pretty unscientific to call two creatures identical when they have different DNA. It's already a bit of an assumption that the forerunners bio-cyber-logical anatomy would even use DNA. Meanwhile, it is both scientifically true and required by the plot of Halo that humanity experienced natural genetic change on Earth for over 100,000 years but did not change into a different species. If human beings did remain the same species for 100,000 years then forerunners refugees could have remained the same species for 100,000. The real problem for my interpretation is our archaeological record which shows we evolved on Earth. Admittedly I didn't think of this until just now, but that is not actually a problem unless we assume forerunners evolved elsewhere and moved to Earth. Doesn't it make more sense that if they evolved on Earth that their reclamation program would repopulate them on Earth? And doesn't it also make more sense that they would build an ark for Earth if Earth were there home planet?

[@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.

[@ffili92]

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

[@erick4845jr]

Frank O'Connor is the prophet of truth and we are the elites.

[@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

[@Slender_Man_186]

@EvanMerkes1 lmao I read that in Victor Reznov’s voice for some reason..

[@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

[@spanadian]

Worth noting that in Halo 2 when the Prophet of Truth starts going towards Earth with the objective of activating the rings, the prophet of Mercy says to Master Chief that “this time, none of you will be left behind”

[@xtc2]

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

[@bigdaddynero]

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.

[@SpecterPaladin]

This video has helped me come to terms with why I always hated 343's canon. Thinking of it as a new thing entirely makes me feel much better about all the retcons because I think seeing it as a full reboot not meant to tie in with the previous stories is a really good cope lmao

[@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.

[@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.

[@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

[@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.

[@jakeorb771]

The fact that Red vs Blue has a better, more faithful depiction of rampancy with the Alpha and the freelancer saga than a former bungie story director does says a lot about frank O’Conner 😭

[@fearlesswee5036]

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

[@TheGameJammer]

What do you mean?

[@HeadcrabHill141]

​@TheGameJammer He means that, in 343's universe where the Forerunners are a separate species, since they are the Covenant's gods and ancient humanity was the enemies of the Forerunners, then the Covenant's war is one against the enemies of their gods.

[@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

[@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

[@chris141]

It's funny... growing up with Halo I always knew that humans were forerunners. It was just something I assumed all Halo fans knew. It's crazy it has to be explained to people now lol

[@krakenshark9482]

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

[@C3_SABERTOOTH]

My crowning achievement!

[@SatelliteEnthusiast]

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"

[@justinwu163]

For the longest time, I thought that forerunners were different species than humans because of all the lore videos and wikis I consumed. Little did I know that the lore being discussed was based off of 343 books and extended media. It wasn’t until I ran across this video a year ago did I realize how in depth the original trilogy was. If you’d pay attention to the games, you would’ve learned the secrets of the forerunners without extended media or lore videos. Excellent job by the way Saber.

[@Dragon_of_Terra]

The question is, Did Frank O'Connor know Humans were supposed to be Forerunner and intentionally changed it or did he simply not understand and got mixed up between culture and species? one would be simply negligance while the other would be malicious.

[@jakethesnake3593]

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

[@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.

[@TylerB-my1kr]

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

[@Zminator1986]

What doesn't make sense is even after the retcon 343 STILL made humans a technologically advanced civilization that can rival the Forerunners. So why bother?

[@raulpetrascu2696]

What I don't understand of Bungie lore is if humans are supposed to be Forerunners then why are humans not technologically advanced? I saw this question in 2005 forums too (they were saying the humans=forerunners theory is dumb and contradicted by the AI in H2). If activating the rings didn't kill everything why the de-evolved version (humans) survived and not the forerunners with all their tech, who are supposedly one and the same thing? Why did Forerunners call themselves Reclaimer? of their own technology which..they had at that point and if they planned to survive why did they lose it? If you hold this to be what their intention was Bungie lore makes no sense and never gave any explanations. 343 lore / the terminals at least makes sense with the devolution and reseeding of humanity on earth after the firing of the rings, and the mantle of responsibility to explain reclaiming, which is being argued here that Bungie didn't have in their universe. It even fits "child of my maker" more

[@gabethebabe3337]

@@raulpetrascu2696the idea is we basically sent ourselves back to the Stone Age as penance for wiping out a galaxy full of life. The Forerunners revered life to the degree that they even made artificial environments on their super weapons like the rings. It’s a punishment. If we’re worthy of atonement then we are worthy to RECLAIM our birthright.

[@actionjaxon903]

@@raulpetrascu2696 the flood survive by eating sentient life. SENTIENT LIFE. so they killed all sentient life in galaxy to starve flood. once flood gone, ai machines reseed galaxy with dna of all killed species including humanity so that some day humanity will RECLAIM all the technology the forerunners built and left for them. how do you not understand this? how are you this stupid?

[@ZedByt]

@@raulpetrascu2696 Homeslice, imagine this, as Bungie lore. Forerunners are losing against the Flood. They build rings that kill ALL or at least all intelligent life so the Flood can't survive and populate. The Forerunners (or even just one small team lead by someone... maybe a Librarian...) build a program where after everyone is wiped out (because they can't keep anyone alive or you risk the Flood spreading, and even if you keep SOME alive, what are they going to do for millennia without any civilizations), most of the life that was wiped out gets artificially spread BACK OUT across the galaxy, or even JUST their race (Forerunners/humans) gets started again on Earth. Obviously they want this restart to actually lead to a victory against the Flood and for the new civilization to the as cool or even cooler than the old ones because pride, so they leave knowledge and weapons for the knew batch to reclaim. They basically just said, wipe the lobby, let's respawn and take it from the top, but make sure we pick up the weapons that we got comfortable with before. I don't get how that's hard to understand, and there wasn't a de-evolution, just a complete cultural (language, tradition, beliefs, etc.) reset. They failed their mission, they said "we'll all sacrifice ourselves to wipe out the enemy, and let our children inherit our knowledge and power to complete the mission".

[@baileyjcochran]

@@ZedByt perfectly said

[@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.

[@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.

[@blindvalkyrie9352]

I ALWAYS HATED that line from the opening of Halo 4, "I thought we had a truce with the Covenant" ??? Chief were you there???? We allied with The Sangheili to Destroy the Covenant and stop the flood

[@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.

[@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.

[@OptionallySavage]

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

[@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

[@qsfff5099]

i thought delta halo had Italy not Africa

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@richardwolfe2089]

As someone who played the original 3 Halo games and loved the message and lore of the games, but hasn't kept up with it since, I decided to jump back into the halo universe and watch videos explaining and diving into the stories of 4, 5 and infinite by other Halo lore KZbinrs. I found myself feeling very confused. Was my understanding wrong? Am I stupid? What am I missing? The levels of cognitive dissonance going on in my head was overwhelming. Finally, I stumbled upon your Halo 2 Lost Story series and now this video. Thank you for making this and vindicating my original understanding of the lore. It is bittersweet however, since I am no longer feeling cognitive dissonance, but sadness and a bit of anger at how utterly wrecked the universe and its story has become... The fact that this has less than 100k views, while other videos that continue to further the lie that "343 didn't change it, bungie did" get 5x that amount is staggering and makes me irrationally angry.

[@tomitiustritus6672]

Modern Halo lore is riddled with these retcon scars. The Maginot Sphere, in the terminals often referred to "the line" seems to have been a line drawn by the Forerunners when the Flood infestation spiralled out of control. It also fits to the Maginot line being constructed specifically to stop Germany as the main defense line. The new lore now retcons it as some ancient, traditional literal line of forts. Which is laughable, since such a line could have easily been overcome by swarming it and not take 300 years. With the terminals giving me the feeling that when they started to loose the war, they drew a line in the sand and declared everything behind it as unsavable. The terminals mention that outside of the Maginot Sphere panic and anger at the central government that abandoned them rulses supreme. It is refered to as "contested space". The Halo Array was built in that time as a desperate last ditch effort. In new 343 lore, the Flood supposedly lingered around at the edges for almost 300 years, the Forerunners kept it somehow secret from the population, the Halos had been built thousands of years earlier, while the Flood hadn't shown up yet, but it had previously been seen so they just built a suicide machine. "Oh yeah, this infection thing the humans exterminated with their left hand while fighting us with their right hand... when they come back we'll just wipe the galaxy, i guess." Sounds about right. Supposedly, over 300 years of war, the Flood captured a handfull of worlds at the periphery and then just suddenly decided to get serious when Mendicant defected. BS. It seems clear in OG lore, that the Flood had been overrunning the Forerunners those 300 years, with them getting more desperate over generations. Unable to contain it, they first abandoned most of the galaxy. With eventual defeat and breach of the Maginot Sphere becoming more certain, They created Mendicant Bias as a last hope. They also started building the Halo Array and started cataloguing life. When Mendicant Bias defected. The situation deteriorated even faster and Offensive Bias pushed for the fire break strategy inside the sphere. Knowing this was the end and with Mendicant compromising the shield worlds, they activated the array timed so, that Offensive Bias could subsequently eliminate Mendicant Bias. 343 wants it to be 300 years of stalemate that got a little out of hand in the end. Bungies version tells us about a mighty civilization, aeons old, shepherding many youngef sentient species over 300 years of absolute terror and chaos slowly realize they are lost and decide to blow themselves up to give posterity a chance.

[@ToxicBalloon360]

Your description of the canonical version of the Forerunner-Flood War (the Bungie version that is), sounds like a far more desperate and tragic scenario. Whereas 343's fanfiction seems riddled with contrivances.

[@watch.v-dQw4w9WgXcQ]

​​​@@ToxicBalloon360it's almost like The Flood is a massive unstoppable wave forcing a last ditch attempt to create a big boat to allow life to survive after... It just fits the Religious motifs, otherwise if The Flood isn't beating down everything quickly creating a desperate situation, it wouldn't fit - To reach Heaven you have to die, and for all their sins the final act was them having washed it all away, cleansing them of their sins as they ensured the future would be ready.

[@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.."

[@VubuMack]

Halos everywhere at the end of time

[@yan-rayiller-may8443]

@@bitter_iron2688 That would be the best retcon of all time!

[@LegendStormcrow]

It's my head canon, that said, it'd be funny if Cortana was just super embarrassed like there was dirty dreams.

[@GrenadeMcSticki]

Were it so easy...

[@raulpetrascu2696]

Was Chief even in cryo after halo 3? I thought that was a halo 4 thing

[@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.

[@vincentsavoretti2201]

There's also the part where 343 Guilty Spark looks Master Chief directly in the fucking visor and speaks the words "You ARE Forerunner" but I mean what could that really mean?

[@vincentsavoretti2201]

Oh lmao nevermind, I could have sworn it was in Halo: CE that he says it but I just got through the explanation in Halo 3. I gotta play these again, damn, my memory is way off

[@jameson7276]

If people can memory hole something this easy to disprove imagine what they'll forget about complex real-world events.

[@warwolf715]

I was just thinking the same thing. I wonder if they've already forgotten about the covid era

[@wheezer6695]

​@@warwolf715Even worse that the 343cels more likely than not defend it, with their gleeful hiddenxperia soyjak face

[@TheDecisionsDecision]

Everything after the bungie era isn't canon, should reboot the franchise after halo 3.

[@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.)

[@ΒασίληςΒλάχος-τ3κ]

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."

[@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.

[@jonathannester7486]

"While I loved Bungie's universe, I would never suggest the studio was above making mistakes. After all, they hired Frank O'Connor." is beyond amazing. You should absolutely do an actual attempt at a forerunner book trilogy video.

[@invidatauro8922]

I think my favorite part of 343 fans is that they have GENUINELY become angry at you over this video. And I think a big reason for that is that they cannot really argue against any of your points because you backed them up succiently. And, of course, the fact that multiple former bungie employees have all come out and said "Yeah, humans were meant to be forerunners" then again, they tend to get mad at them to for some reason.

[@PlinaZ]

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

[@tomtheconqerur]

It's urinalist get it right.😊

[@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.

[@thecynicaloptimist1884]

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

[@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.

[@dannycardona211]

I miss how mysterious the forerunners used to be

[@vergolophus]

Holy shit the little bit of Mendicant Bias vs Offensive Bias. It feels like a summary of a whole damn movie.

[@Maggot-Milk]

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

[@Prehistoeif]

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

[@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.

[@Horgler]

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

[@yan-rayiller-may8443]

I'm so tired of arguing with people about this. Humans were Forerunner. That's what Joseph Staten wrote and Guilty Spark says it multiple times throughout the trilogy. Frank O'Connor had a stick up his butt and changed it.

[@Lazypackmule]

Who cares?

[@yan-rayiller-may8443]

@@Lazypackmule Apparently not you, whom I assume is a child.

[@Lazypackmule]

@@yan-rayiller-may8443 The irony of this post from a manchild obsessed over games he doesn't even like

[@Kalmera6238]

​@@Lazypackmuleyou sure seem to care a lot

[@Lazypackmule]

@@Kalmera6238 About things I like? Absolutely

[@chipsdubbo5.56]

24:23 that's a cool detail I never realized. The presence that was fighting back against Cortana on the forerunner dreadnought was mendicant bias! I always wondered what she was talking about

[@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.

[@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.

[@seth3491]

As if a couple of text logs written by a guy with little to no involvement in Halo 3's development somehow invalidates years of world building by the rest of Bungie

[@Nighterac]

People still fall back on "muh turr menals" every time.

[@jayblair6956]

Frank O’Connor ruined the entire series trying to make Halo’s story World of Warcraft tier and 343 ruined the gameplay with the terrible weapons, knights, and trying to make Halo CoD.

[@Nighterac]

@@jayblair6956 Funny how my two favorite franchises as a kid felt victim to the same crap. Pandering to tryhards, shitty writing, making the game something it's not and copying other trends from other games, sterilizing the universes into MCU-style capeshit, then really shitty attitudes from the devs towards the people who they wouldn't even have a job if it weren't for them.. the list goes on.

[@soup6564]

watched this while debating whether to play halo 4 for the first time, thanks for saving me the effort. i was gonna ask what the mlp stuff was about but honestly completely checks out. only someone with immense autism power could do battle with the frankmind and win. godspeed.

[@C3_SABERTOOTH]

ᕦ(ò_ó)ᕤ

[@WWFanatic0]

I do wonder how much the decline in general Christianity knowledge plays a role in people not understanding. Growing up in Catholic school, Halo's allegories were so blindingly obvious. Talking with some friends who weren't raised in a Christian household had some of the general ideas but more in a "oh that's religion stuff" kind of way. Humans being Forerunner make a lot more sense when you understand the Forerunners were in-universe the de facto Abrahamic God and as Genesis goes, humans were made in His image. The game has a lot of obviously religious overtones from the name to the Gregorian Chant theme, but what those things mean can be harder to interpret. I remember the SAT and AP tests have moved away from including works with Biblical references (which I think is dumb as so many writers in the western world used Biblical references and being aware of them is important for understanding regardless of your religion or lack thereof) because fewer students understand them due to the decline in religiosity. I think Halo is pretty on the nose even if you don't know the religious metaphors exactly, but it's a lot more obvious if you do.

[@Artemisarrowzz]

Also, with the decrease of reading and people just liking tiktok bs all day, it's not surprising most new fans know nothing of the actual Halo lore itself, since they didn't play the og, the wikias were changed and they can't be bothered to listen to the old lore. But missing the bible references just show people are npcs.

[@cosmictreason2242]

I disagree that they were allegories but simply motifs. Yes people are ignorant. But an allegory, in contradistinction to a parable, metaphor, symbolism or motif, is a 1:1 equivalence with the thing it's allegorizing. Bungie changed enough that nothing in halo would be on-the-nose as an allegory. Surviving the flood on an ark is a motif. There is no 1:1 relation where the prophets of an abrahanic faith are trying to destroy all life with the flood - for that matter, this brings up the fact that the halos were the things that killed everything, and stopped the flood. What's the 1:1 to that? There is none. It was not "The strong east wind" That killed all life on earth, and it didn't stop the flood from destroying all life. So, it's not an allegory. Hopefully that makes sense. There's nevertheless MANY motifs. The prophets act like ayatollahs in Shia islam, and their death cult religion is parallel because the goal is to bring the end of the world and their salvation by murdering all the heretics wholesale. This isn't an allegory to anything in the Bible, it's an extended metaphor for something IRL. And master chief as a christ figure is likewise a motif and not an allegory because Jesus did not rescue humanity from the flood but from their sins. And what would cortana be an allegory for? So no, not allegory. Hope I've made my case

[@averymicrowave1713]

I don't have enough faith that it's ignorance on the part of the industry so much as willfull deviation, especially since Christian motifs and allusions are nowadays pretty faux pas unless you're depicting Christianity as an oppressive monolith. Which ironically Halo always did too since the Covenant were a hostile theocracy. But yeah 343 will never write anything that alludes to Christian mythology unless it's something you're supposed to despise or something already established by Bungie (which 343 will try to retcon or change anyways). Hell, it's already moved far from its roots as hard military sci-fi already (i.e. the art style changes and writing changes that makes the UNSC look less like the Marine Corps and more like SHIELD, removal of ODSTs), so we won't even get characters that have subtle displays of religiousness (i.e. Johnson and Dutch).

[@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.

[@shadesofrevolution]

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

[@talizorahnarrayya001]

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

[@alexanderstilianov]

Another example of how thoroughly 343 misunderstands what Halo is about: they based all of their games on Halo: Reach, the most experimental game in the mainline series in terms of gameplay (armor abilities), art style (gritty military), tone (hopelessness, sacrifice) and music. Then again, it's not outside the realm of possibility they never played any of the previous games.

[@HeavyDevy89]

Found this video via a reddit thread and oh my GOODNESS thank you for tying this all up. Thought I was crazy because I didn't read the Precursor books and so much got changed.

[@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.

[@zaniusmaximus2490]

Humanity loses against the flood and must reset the universe to try again. Mary Sue's dont lose.

[@LtAlguien]

And ironically enough, post-retcon ancient Humanity actually beat the flood in ancient times, somehow the Forerunners were unable to do without killing everything so they are even more special. And if anything, I would say Humanity being Forerunner is actually the opposite of being "mary sue", because the whole premise is "We were once great, we aren't anymore" The creation of our ancestors surpases everything we build to the point their creations look like gods to us. We were once the primary race ruling the galaxy, now we are at best one more of the races in the galaxy. Hell, Humanity only survived because the Covenant fell into a Elite-Brute civil war, a group of religious alien races that don't even understand our ancient technology yet they know more that humanity does. Is not marysueism, is the dark ages.

[@isopropyltoxicity]

The humans literally built halo to starve the flood because they messed up how is that marysueish to anyone?

[@Wint910]

So recently in the last few years i decided to play all the games in chronological order as im 24 and played halo CE years ago with my brother not knowing what was going on. So when i started playing them all years later i was really enjoying the story and the lore reading the books but noticed there were lots of contridictions of what was happening in the games i was playing and the books/343 terminals. So from someone whos played the games all at once i have to say what 343 has done is insane, i have clearly seen all of the changes and errors that have been made and found myself going down rabbit holes trying to understand what was the true lore. I find it insane people are convincing themselves bungie didnt know what the story is. Its clearly there in the first 3 games saying forerunners were humans blinded by their own self impotance and that we screwed up. Also i have to say going from halo 3 to halo 4 and not knowing previoulsy about the huge changes well, i was not prepared for it, its an absolute joke

[@helljumper7101]

Also adding onto the evidence in Ghosts of Onyx Kurt in his internal monologue is annoyed by Forerunner glyphs because he almost understands what they’re saying but he can’t get his mind to fully complete the thought Edit: also Engineers are known as Facticius Indoles which is Latin for Man-made Character Even when I believed 343s "fan" fiction out of ignorance mostly because I was new to Halo in late 2011, 343 wanting to erase Bungies universe and the Halo youtubers never even once mentioning that 343 retconned anything, 343s canon never quite sat right for me, for instance by the time I noticed what Truth, the Gravemind and so on were saying that H=F I bought into that stupid Genesong theory for years but deep down I knew that they were clearly saying H=F and other things like humanity shrugging off Reach's destruction post war like it didn't matter or ODSTs and Spartan 3s disappearing or the Spartan 4s or everyone hating Halsey, the over explanation of the flood and Forerunners or Rookie dying for no reason and so on and so forth

[@keithpennock]

Microsoft put a “journalist” with no managerial experience & no understanding of Bungie Halo’s lore (i.e. Frankie i.e. Fankle) in charge of 343 Halo? That explains so much as the only thing that surpasses a “journalists” hubris is their laziness & aversion to basic research. Seriously this is the key that unlocks the lore charlie foxtrot between Bungie Halo vs. 343 Halo! As a Halo newbie who only barely played CE (b/c I didn’t have an XBox nor could I afford a computer to run the games at the time) I read the books first. I liked the world building but in watching the walkthroughs on KZbin detected the disconnect between Bungie Halo lore & the books Halo lore. I think the world has a lot of potential but “fixing” it would be a Herculean feat. Like you I’m not sure it ever can be fixed. I hate that they killed off Cortana in Infinite. Maybe with the hard reset & management change coming at Microsoft after the 2023 layoffs a course correction can happen. I’m still pulling for that not being the real Cortana but a rampant fragment and that Cortana is still out there in the Domain somewhere.

[@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.

[@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

[@TopMostFlavor]

In halo 2's earth mission when youre in the tunnels in the warthog Cortana says that the covenant seemed surprised that humans were on earth, implying they found the arc and were surprised that humans occupied the planet it's on. To me this will always be the real canon. It's so tragic that the covenant based their entire worldview and got so many killed over a misreading that they double down on. They really have nothing to do with the human/flood conflict and got themselves in too deep. The writing for these (bungie) games is so incredible

[@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

[@Jodie-G198]

Here again to relish in a classic of Halo lore explanation. Hail! to ya, C3 Saber - I hope this video exists for many more years to come!