The reason I ask is that we see Elites and Marines in areas dense with spores that don’t become infected from breathing them in.
Yes they can. That method of infection ends up being slower than if an Infection Form burrows into you, but ultimately inhaling spores does turn you into a Flood. For Elites, maybe one can argue that their energy shields protect them from spores. For marines, I guess it’s just a plothole.
> 2533274817408735;3:
> Yes they can. That method of infection ends up being slower than if an Infection Form burrows into you, but ultimately inhaling spores does turn you into a Flood. For Elites, maybe one can argue that their energy shields protect them from spores. For marines, I guess it’s just a plothole.
Shielding would be a good explanation for why the Arbiter wasn’t infected. Though speaking of infection mehtods, The Mona Lisa depicts the Flood being able to spread via bites and slashes as well as spores and infection forms. Is this accurate or just artistic license for that story?
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> > 2533274817408735;3:
> > Yes they can. That method of infection ends up being slower than if an Infection Form burrows into you, but ultimately inhaling spores does turn you into a Flood. For Elites, maybe one can argue that their energy shields protect them from spores. For marines, I guess it’s just a plothole.
>
>
> Shielding would be a good explanation for why the Arbiter wasn’t infected. Though speaking of infection mehtods, The Mona Lisa depicts the Flood being able to spread via bites and slashes as well as spores and infection forms. Is this accurate or just artistic license for that story?
Bites and slashes could very well carry spores as the transmission vector.
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> > 2533274846307559;4:
> > > 2533274817408735;3:
> > > Yes they can. That method of infection ends up being slower than if an Infection Form burrows into you, but ultimately inhaling spores does turn you into a Flood. For Elites, maybe one can argue that their energy shields protect them from spores. For marines, I guess it’s just a plothole.
> >
> >
> > Shielding would be a good explanation for why the Arbiter wasn’t infected. Though speaking of infection mehtods, The Mona Lisa depicts the Flood being able to spread via bites and slashes as well as spores and infection forms. Is this accurate or just artistic license for that story?
>
>
> Bites and slashes could very well carry spores as the transmission vector.
Good to know. Thanks for the info.
Elites have energy shields to protect them so they get the pass. As for the Marines, you could just blame the Gravemind purposely sparing them (to an extent) to provide Keyes time to get the Index before the Covenant or the Marines not being in an area with spores because Halo Wars shown us what happens when UNSC infantry encounters Flood Spores.
Hint, it is doesn’t end well for the UNSC.
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> > > 2533274817408735;3:
> > > Yes they can. That method of infection ends up being slower than if an Infection Form burrows into you, but ultimately inhaling spores does turn you into a Flood. For Elites, maybe one can argue that their energy shields protect them from spores. For marines, I guess it’s just a plothole.
> >
> >
> > Shielding would be a good explanation for why the Arbiter wasn’t infected. Though speaking of infection mehtods, The Mona Lisa depicts the Flood being able to spread via bites and slashes as well as spores and infection forms. Is this accurate or just artistic license for that story?
>
>
> Bites and slashes could very well carry spores as the transmission vector.
That wasn’t the case for a long time, in the second book marines subdued Jenkins as a flood, he scratched and beat two of them and even bit another, and they were fine. Chief was even bit by an infection form. The flood originally needed the correct conditions, time and host that had lots of calcium. Guilty spark off hand implies this when he says the flood needs to go through stages before its truly unstoppable, as we see it in Halo 3. and no, J being infected with a weaker version of the flood doesnt effect this, only his ability to have free will, the physical effects were unchanged.
After Halo 3 frank started 343i, and they quickly tried to reinforce that the flood have always been stat strong, other changes like how the rings worked and what the forerunners were also made the already shaky canon less sense. in my opinion, the classic version of the flood, being a slow overwhelming force rather then immediately OP out of the gate when they were already basically unstoppable but with a realistic scope.
Well, gameplay isn’t canononical. I expect its down to that.
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> > > > 2533274817408735;3:
> > > > Yes they can. That method of infection ends up being slower than if an Infection Form burrows into you, but ultimately inhaling spores does turn you into a Flood. For Elites, maybe one can argue that their energy shields protect them from spores. For marines, I guess it’s just a plothole.
> > >
> > >
> > > Shielding would be a good explanation for why the Arbiter wasn’t infected. Though speaking of infection mehtods, The Mona Lisa depicts the Flood being able to spread via bites and slashes as well as spores and infection forms. Is this accurate or just artistic license for that story?
> >
> >
> > Bites and slashes could very well carry spores as the transmission vector.
>
>
> Good to know. Thanks for the info.
Essentially, if you get Flood Super Cells on or in you you’re -Yoinked!- unless you cauterize or amputate that real soon.
> 2533274807881644;8:
> After Halo 3 frank started 343i, and they quickly tried to reinforce that the flood have always been stat strong, other changes like how the rings worked and what the forerunners were also made the already shaky canon less sense. in my opinion, the classic version of the flood, being a slow overwhelming force rather then immediately OP out of the gate when they were already basically unstoppable but with a realistic scope.
The rapid metamorphosis that we see combat forms undergo in game doesn’t line up with that at all. Flood biology has always been ridiculously insane.
> 2533274817408735;3:
> Yes they can. That method of infection ends up being slower than if an Infection Form burrows into you, but ultimately inhaling spores does turn you into a Flood. For Elites, maybe one can argue that their energy shields protect them from spores. For marines, I guess it’s just a plothole.
Well, it’s not necessarily plot hole regarding the marines.
Unless there’s an instance slipping my mind, we don’t know how long it takes a host to succumb to infestation by Flood spores just by breathing them in. It may be within the realm of possibility that a human (or other comparable potential host) would have to be in an infested area for a pretty significant amount of time to accumulate enough Flood spores in his system to allow the spores to infect him fully.
If true, that would be a good explanation of why the Flood bothers with infection forms (and carrier forms) at all. If spores alone got the job done just as well, there would be no reason to waste biomass on anything other than spores, various combat forms, and Graveminds (especially early in an outbreak). But if a host would need to remain in an infested area for a pretty long time with only spores to infect them, that would be a good reason to start dedicating infested biomass to carrier/infection forms as soon as possible.
“A single Flood spore can destroy a species” might just be a little bit of hyperbole.
> 2533274884722193;12:
> “A single Flood spore can destroy a species” might just be a little bit of hyperbole.
It’s not. The Infection Forms are viable because they can quickly overwhelm potential hosts and directly jack into their neural networks to make instant combat forms. The spores take longer for full conversion but are at least as dangerous. It doesn’t really matter how long you sit around in a disease after having caught it.
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> > 2533274884722193;12:
> > “A single Flood spore can destroy a species” might just be a little bit of hyperbole.
>
>
> It’s not. The Infection Forms are viable because they can quickly overwhelm potential hosts and directly jack into their neural networks to make instant combat forms. The spores take longer for full conversion but are at least as dangerous. It doesn’t really matter how long you sit around in a disease after having caught it.
That’s the distinction, though; a single infection form can destroy a species, no doubt. The spores, though? In-game missions with marines present are not the only examples of life forms exposed to areas with Flood spores present where those life forms were not turned into Flood. Also, I’m not at all convinced that Elites’ shields could prevent them inhaling airborne spores. Air can get through the shield for them to breath, obviously, and we’ve never seen their shields “filter out” something, be it smoke or dust or any small particles of anything.
As one particular example of surviving an area with Flood spores, Miranda Keyes was exposed to the overwhelmingly Flood-infested Quarantine Zone and survived whole.
I agree that the Flood spores are definitely at least as dangerous as the infection forms, all I’m saying is that during the missions we see live elites and marines battling the Flood it may be possible that we simply don’t spend enough time there for the spores to become effective.
Normally for this kind of thing it’s a case of gameplay being different from canon, but the gameplay mechanics don’t change the fact of those people being in those places and breathing in areas where Flood spores are supposedly present. In the story, aside from quotes about them being dangerous, the spores play just about no part at all.
The effectiveness of the spores has always been a bit of a trouble for the canon, and the topic of this thread is a question that’s been asked a lot over the years for good reason. We’re told it’s infectious, but people survive Flood encounters quite a bit without later becoming Flood. We see lots of people turned into Flood by infection form, but not by spores. It’s always been a kind of limbo where the spores are infectious if the story says they are at that moment (like Half-Jaw’s quote), but outside of those moments we’re just supposed to not think about it.
I think that, overall, the Flood spores are in a “just don’t think about it too much” column of the Halo canon.
Not sure
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> > 2533274807881644;8:
> > After Halo 3 frank started 343i, and they quickly tried to reinforce that the flood have always been stat strong, other changes like how the rings worked and what the forerunners were also made the already shaky canon less sense. in my opinion, the classic version of the flood, being a slow overwhelming force rather then immediately OP out of the gate when they were already basically unstoppable but with a realistic scope.
>
>
> The rapid metamorphosis that we see combat forms undergo in game doesn’t line up with that at all. Flood biology has always been ridiculously insane.
Yes it does, go replay the Halo and Halo 2. In Game we see that the metamorphosis inst instant or guaranteed, the flood gather the bodies of the dead in the first game rather than automatically assimilating them, and remarks from both keys and other marines show the victim could take anywhere from an hour to 8 hours before conversion. it wasnt until Halo 3, roughly one month after Halo 2 ended, that the flood had enough biomass to make its evolution jump forward, this was present in game by the elites and again by the elites in book as they were fighting them off weeks before making the jump to earth. in both Halo and Halo 2 it was canon that the flood could not instantly transition a combat form without long periods of time from both Guilty Spark and from watching the marines and elites defend against it in the campaign. Bungie even had footage of the instant transformation sequence cut from Halo 2 because it didn’t line up with how the flood worked. even Jenkins took several hours, same as Mendoza, but that and everything else i mentioned was retconed by 343.
Bungie relied on the Game’s mechanics to tell part of the story, and the books back this up (flood and parts of first strike)
> 2535457202768003;9:
> Well, gameplay isn’t canononical. I expect its down to that.
Gameplay according to both 343 and Bungie is the First and foremost thing to be canon. The books second. everything else works backwards from there, Both Frank and Joseph mentioned this.
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> > 2535457202768003;9:
> > Well, gameplay isn’t canononical. I expect its down to that.
>
>
> Gameplay according to both 343 and Bungie is the First and foremost thing to be canon. The books second. everything else works backwards from there, Both Frank and Joseph mentioned this.
Really? I was under the impression that it was the other way round. It would make sense for the lore to be tweaked to make it a better game, whereas it can be as accurate as they like in books.
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> > 2535457202768003;9:
> > Well, gameplay isn’t canononical. I expect its down to that.
>
>
> Gameplay according to both 343 and Bungie is the First and foremost thing to be canon. The books second. everything else works backwards from there, Both Frank and Joseph mentioned this.
“Games” being canon and “gamplay” being canon are two separate things. Some gameplay mechanics don’t necessarily fit the lore because the game must play well primarily. For instance, Spartans in armor weigh alot, around 1000 lbs. When you think of that kind of weight, a Spartan landing after jumping in place should crack the ground or make a huge splash in water. But in game, your character’s weight doesn’t affect the environment realistically. Another thing: beyond energy shielding, the helmets of Spartans should provide some antiballistic protection. However, after shields are broken, headshots are an instant kill 100% of the time for any precision weapon. There are plenty of mechanics that don’t match the lore, but that’s just for the sake of making a playable game.
Yes. there are certain restrictions to mechanics but thats what the books are meant for. an example is sprinting, Spartans arent limited to a cooldown like in Halo reach or 4, in the books its expanded Spartans could always run super fast for longer periods of time. That may sound confusing considering the book gives more then the game does, but thats because in the end you have to cut certain features to make the game both function and seem more solid from a playable standpoint. BUT, the ability to sprint is in game meaning that the function is Canon and the books better describe it, but the Game sets the frame work and ground rules. the book doesnt supersede what the game sets up, but expand on it.
In the case of the flood, the books do the same thing, expanding on what the games set up. The reason we don’t see everyone instantly turning into flood was because ORIGINALLY in the books the flood needed the time to transform the host.
it works like a check list:
is it in game? y/n
is it in book? Y/N
is it an official quote from a member of the studio Y/N
are they the lead writer/artist/director? Y/N
is the artwork depicting this from the studio official? Y/N
is it just concept or art closely supporting an actual scene? Y/N