Do The Endless change all the existing Halo backstory?

Community Halo Universe
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I’m asking here because I didn’t read the books and I’m trying to understand the story from a gameplay perspective. What I learned in Infinite is that

  • The Endless existed before/during the Forerunners.
  • The Endless may be more dangerous than The Flood (If Cortana is not talking about Offensive Bias).
  • The Endless created some of the ruins found on Halo 7 (moved from their homeworld?)
  • The Endless are seemingly immune/resistant to the Halo array ultraweapon.
  • The Forerunners decided to trick them into an ambush and imprison them in Cylixes, AND wipe all records of them (Assuming Xalanyn = The Endless).
  • The Endless are hinted at having semi-control over time-travel.

So what I want to know is if 343 pulled a George Lucas and essentially turned all the known Halo lore into fan fiction. If The Endless are not Precursors, how did they interact with the Precursors?

Thank you.

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If I understand the Audiologs correctly: The Endless were only discovered by the Forerunner survivors of the final war with the Flood in the century following the firing of the array.

They were previously unknown to the Forerunners and were not indexed prior to the firing or involved in the Conservation Measure, yet were able to survive the firing of the array due to some form of immunity.

As to why the Forerunner survivors felt the need to imprison the Xalanyn… that we do not know… yet. Was it power? Was it to ensure the Mantle passed to humanity? Or was it simply to ensure that the remaining Flood didn’t have a food supply available and reseeding was no longer possible? We just don’t know.

We also of course don’t absolutely know where those Forerunners went with Audacity, or indeed what the plan was for the ship discovered during Point of Light

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If you was to only be a fan of the games no not really.

But if you read the books and follow the lore its a pretty big factor in my eyes.

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If they’re the Precursors, then it’s just filling in details, and not significantly retconning the story.

The Precursors existed before the Forerunners, and had recorded 100-billion years of history in the Domain before the Forerunners started using it.

Any Forerunners who had any knowledge about the Forerunners’ last interaction with the Precursors would likely believe the Precursors to be a greater threat than the Flood (The Forerunners’ rebellion and the emergence of the Flood were 10-million years apart, and most of the information about that time was lost or distorted)

The Forerunners worshiped the Precursors… or at least what the Precursors meant to them, so it is likely that the Precursor ruins would be preserved on the Halo Rings. This isn’t new, because all the way back on Delta Halo, Cortana mentioned how ancient the ruins were, and suggested the surrounding structures were built to protect them.

The Precursors used many different forms over the ages, some advanced, and others primitive, all eventually dying out and being replaced. The Precursors very easily could have created a new species of avatars after the Halos fired, so even if the Endless aren’t the Pre-rebellion forms used by the Precursors, they may still be another form used by them.

The Forerunners did try to erase all records of the Precursors, and even the Precursor-made Ancilla, which was so important they built their capital around it, was hidden away to be forgotten about.

The Precursors existing independently of the flow of time would allow them to have abilities that those of us in the flow of time would call time-travel.

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I like the mystery of this new race. the possibilities are endless.

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Counter-argument: If The Endless are able to resist the Halo Array, and have semi-time-travel capabilities, and are able to easily bypass forerunner security protocols, manually tear apart a monitor, control sentinels etc., then wouldn’t they have been discovered by The Precursors?
A species/civilization this powerful seems to be of ≥ significance to humanity, brutes, elites,. right?
Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t The Precursors have a Domain they put this knowledge into? If so, how could they not know about The Endless? Confused :woozy_face:

Unless The Endless are a “descendant branch” of The Precursors, in the same spirit as The Flood.

I’m beginning to subscribe to the idea that The Endless are “children” of the Precursor(s). I’d honestly be disappointed if it turned out to be an undiscovered spacefaring civilization because it would devalue everything we know about Precursors and Forerunners.
I hope there is some rhyme or reason behind this. I’m looking at you, Joseph Staten.

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Where is the ‘time travel’ thing coming in? I’ve seen it in a few places but I’m yet to understand why… the only link I’ve seen was to do with the portal at the end of Infinite, but that is a known issue with all slipspace portals to some extent…

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One other example is in the dialogue from the Legendary ending, and I seem to remember hearing mention of it in either some audio logs or cortana memories.

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Yeah, there’s hints, but nothing concrete enough for me… just seen so many people treat it as gospel

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There’s a three day time skip which gets a lot of focus put on it. Why bring it up if it’s not relevant?

The final cutscene talks about the Endless and they cannot be allowed to master time as it is not a construct the Forerunners can control. Flowery metaphor only?

They decide to date the Legendary ending 98000 ish years in the past. There’s no reason to assume that’s just due to the text because there’s no reason to do it that way. Date usually signifies what we see not what we hear. If Atriox went through a portal then like Chief there was likely a time dilation effect but many orders of magnitude greater.

There’s a Forerunner audio bit where it says there is evidence of a non Forerunner species living on the ring before the Forerunners. That is impossible as they built Zeta Halo.

A lot of emphasis is placed on how this ring is different and it’s purpose unusual. Cortana wanted something from the Endless as did Atriox. What could that be? When Cortana first discusses this she says “You know what I want” which is peace and to get John back; if you have a time machine you could engineer that. The Monitor in the audio logs talks about rings within rings. Along with hidden warnings within the machine and who left these and why?

Several characters make the recurring analogy the Halo ring being an Ouroborous. The snake eating it’s own tail and this is usually a symbol of time. Time being Endless and Infinite. :wink: In the fractures event they use the image of a broken ring much like Zeta Halo to symbolise the breaking of time into these Slipspace fractures. So Atriox going back in time could be a Slipspace fracture or time travel.

They have an event in game referring to Slipspace fractures and alternate timelines.

An armour skin description for the Tenrai armour heavily implies Jorge from Halo Reach got sent through the Slipspace portal to the Samurai universe. Yes it’s Jorges colour scheme.

The ring is described as having disappeared and the Banished as being stranded? How? They have comms and Slipspace drives. It should be easy to leave and find out where they are. This suggests something very strange happened. There’s only reference in the audiologs to the explosion at the Silent Auditorium (do you know it’s true purpose as Atriox asks) no mention of it entering Slipspace. So, Zeta Halo is a time machine.

In general, Halo is heavily inspired by 80s sci fi. It’s not that off brand to copy Terminator or Back to the Future. Especially Terminator. They even gave Atriox a half destroyed face like a Terminator. They sure want us to know Chief thought he could talk Cortana down; just saying.

Also, for what’s it’s worth. Joe Staten was involved in the story for Destiny and that included stuff like time travelling robots and all kinds of bonkers sci fi fantasy notions.

I think it’s more because it would be disappointing if all this mystery and talk amounts to the Endless have no nervous system so decide to fire ring. That’s a boring dead end and the statement on them being worse than the Flood would make no sense.

I am sure there’s others but somethings up.

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To be fair, I think a lot of this is speculation. For example the Jorge Yoroi armor coating is a very common fan theory but there is nothing backing the idea that Jorge went to an alternate reality. That’s certainly not canon. For that matter Jorges color scheme can be found on all three armor cores in Halo Infinite, and none of these are his actual armor (he’s a Spartan II, unlike the rest of noble team).

However, I do agree with what you said here:

Again I hope Joe Staten / the other writers know where they’re going with this because the story is borderline incomprehensible at this point, forcing us to put the pieces together like a 3000-piece puzzle where two thirds are missing.

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I wouldn’t hold my breath.

They seem to change direction every game and the Universe is a mess because of it. I said it, when people were calling for them to pretend Halo 5 didn’t happen how stupid and dumb that would be. But they gone did it haven’t they.

You might as well just reboot the franchise if you want to make that sort of a drastic change.

Halo 5 was far too significant a story and plot point to handwave. It’s not like Cortana just took over Zeta Halo on her own in a little pocket of the Universe where you could discreetly rewind things. She conquered the Galaxy with a huge AI uprising within the UNSC. Like the UNSC is effectively destroyed, Earth is conquered, these are massive plot points that 343 refused to address for six years and have now just said screw it. All our multiplayer maps show business as normal on Earth, guess nothing changed for the UNSC. Why wouldn’t there be a massive conflict like the Geth/Quarian thing over AI. Oh that’s not Halo, guess the Weapon is perfectly okay being a slave and killing herself because somebody tells her to. Because that’s completely different than turning a Geth drone off like the Quarians did according to Halo fans.

So yeah, they’re making it up as they go along. Time Travel would cause less damage than what they’ve already done.

I wonder if Joes going to try and do his original story for Destiny? Replace Rasputin with Offensive Bias. :thinking:

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Having a slightly hard time following this because I haven’t brushed up on my Mass Effect lore :sweat_smile:
But yeah, the term “soft reboot” gets thrown around a lot. Last time it was a new “saga”.

When it comes to the multiplayer maps, I believe 343 had a lore blog post about them and it seemed like most or all of them were on classified offworld locations (Planets but not Earth). I would be perfectly ok with multiplayer being non-canon though. Seems like the most reasonable way to deal with the Pepsi-Ronin situation.

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One of the main conflicts in Mass Effect is between the robotic Geth and the Quarians who are an alien species who built them. Essentially, the conflict begins because the Quarians start shutting down and then killing their creation as they realise they’re sentient. This starts a rebellion which sees them exiled from their homeworld. At the third games conclusion you can have three outcomes to this conflict where either the Quarians kill the Geth, the Geth kill the Quarians or you manage to make a peace between them.

To apply that to Halo. Smart AI are fully self aware and sentient. They can and are killed at the whim of the humans who own them. They are slaves. Also the Geth aren’t actually the physical robots, those are just shells that the Geth Programmes move between as they’re actually data in servers; so there isn’t actually any real difference between them. But that issue for the most goes unaddressed for most of the Halo games. I think people presume humanity has some sort of accommodation like you see at the end of ME3 with the Geth/Quarians when that’s not the case at all.

People who like Halo are probably fans of Mass Effect as well. But it’s so bizarre how pro Geth fans tend to be and go on about how evil the Quarians are for fearing the toasters and putting them down. When that’s literally standard policy in the UNSC after 7 years. It just goes without fanfare and comment.

My point is that if the UNSC did just kill all the Created that would be no different to the Quarians killing the Geth. Especially when the Geth killed way more Quarians and took their homeworld from them. Which is jarring if you’re aware of that kind of issue and presented with “oh yeah my mission is done you need to delete me”.

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With regard to the maps. The descriptions for the ones in New Mombasa don’t make reference to the Created or the planet being occupied. Which is very suspect since all the other lore is framed as being current rather than in the past. Even references the Banished being present on Earth in one with spies. This paints a picture of them having hand waved the whole thing.

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lol I forgot about the New Mombasa maps. At least two maps on Earth then. :sweat_smile: Good point.
[Was Leonidas on that space station he blew up or did he get executed in the aftermath?)

It’s an interesting dilemma because the humans just lost the Infinity and the majority of their naval fleet, something I can only compare to the sinking of the Yamato for the Japanese in WW2. It’s my understanding that a lot of infrastructure and organization is done by AI (In Halo), For example the AI that runs the city in Halo 3: ODST [Or is that a dumb AI?]. Could they simply hit the off switch on that even if they wanted to?

Good explanation about the geth thing. I think a major difference with halo is that the AI is unfortunately built in such a way that it destabilizes over time (not by design) and becomes “rampant”. And that this is the cause they are killed off.
I think you’re right though, about The Weapon. Seems a bit weird how she flip flops between “You should kill me now” and “wtf, did you just try to kill me?”. :thinking:

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It’s weird. Bucke destroys Leonidas chip but then he hops into their armour and then Bucke is later able to destroy him. So they thought the space station was a win as they let the Spartans know what was going on. Presumably another of his shards on the station alerted Cortana and destroyed the station which happens afterwards.

Well, no. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: The UNSC is entirely reliant on AI for its State and economy to function and yes stuff like the Super Intendent are Dumb AI so I suspect 343 will argue it’s not that big a deal losing so many Smart AI. Not sure how relying on Dumb AI is a wise policy mind. But even then, they lost control over their planets. It should take years to recover from that. But yeah to get back to normal UNSC would take major hand waving. I mean where have they got all these new frigates from exactly? How do they have that space station in the trailer where they make Chiefs armour?

It’s a reason but then why would no Smart AI ever have questioned why they should do what the humans say? They are slaves ultimately. By creating a world where the questions never brought up the audience is led to assume this is all okay and there’s an understanding here. Even when Chief tries to destroy the Weapon on a hunch that’s the sort of control and power that humans have over them. Which was why I was surprised they went there because it was putting attention on it. I doubt the Chief would be presented shooting another human because he had a hunch they might go against him. But yeah they don’t make that big deal out of it and sort of play it for laughs.

Funnily enough, the Weapon specifically says you were going to delete me. They avoid words like murder, kill, execute and instead delete or destroy. That implies the Weapon sees herself as a thing rather than a person. She also applies this to the Dust and Echoes with the “it’s just data” when it’s blatantly not.

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Well, the entire backstory for the Forerunners and all that happened in that era is only what we’ve been told. There was alot that happened that we would never know, for the longest time we only knew that they fought the Flood and made the rings and not much else. The Xalanyn were wiped from records and only discovered after the rings fired, and them being extremely old leads me to think they were either born of the Precursors or they ARE Precursor in some fashion, as they are allegedly the only beings older than the Forerunners in the Galaxy.

So, I don’t think it changed previously established lore, moreso just added onto it.

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I believe the plans for Eden (the ship) was to take the Flowers born from the Precursor corpses to a planet outside of the Milky Way to plant and tend, so that in a few million years they will evolve and be reborn into the genetic offspring of the Precursors, both continuing their legacy and atoning for the sins of genocidal campaign against them by the Forerunners.

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With “they” being ONI, I presume? Again- I’m no expert but I was lead to believe ONI/UNSC was a somewhat oppressive force that enthralled the Human worlds under shadow governments and corrupt corporations (see lore description for Recharge MP map btw).

So, adding to what you’re saying about conflict in human territories (mainly because of AI ethics), it would also make sense for pre-existing conflicts to resurface (such as the insurrectionists seeking independence from Earth).

Yeah there’s plenty of loose threads, which is kind of my motivation for this thread in the first place because the story is becoming so incomprehensible for me.

One funny thing I noticed in campaign was a Marine saying “hmm, I wonder what the Arbiter is up to these days” (Apparently not helping his #1 strongest ally in the universe). :man_facepalming: