Apologies that this took so long, holidays and all.
Respectfully, those do not matter. Yes, they indicate the idea of the direction that writers of Halo 2 wanted to take the story, but that did not become the story, and was not even entered into Tertiary Canon.
Following the current definition of Core Canon (all published material covering the Halo universe is equally canon unless expressly stated to be otherwise by the developers) the books of the Forerunner Saga supersede the Halo 3 Terminals only in the sense that they are first-hand accounts, without the corrupted influence of Mendicant Bias delivering an incomplete message. The Terminals (and in Halo 4) are seen as incomplete messages.
Bungie’s policy, to limit the scope to Halo 3 alone, was that the games take precedence over extended universe sources (e.g. novels, graphic novels, and adaptations). The Terminals, being a part of Halo 3, are included in the canon of the game itself, and by Bungie’s policy would supersede what is written in the Forerunner Saga, if Bungie was still at the helm. The Terminals are not, however, viewed in any policy as non-canonical or “dubious”.
Additionally, the Terminals themselves point to 343 Guilty Spark being errant in the current records of him accessing the Ark’s systems, straying from his proper path. Rampant. This alone gives indication that he is not in his “right mind”, and what he says may not be entirely accurate.
Respectfully as well, this seeming vendetta against Frank O’Connor seems to be… misplaced. For example you’re citing William Dietz and Eric Nylund as “lead writers” despite them writing novels that Bungie was fundamentally against. Dietz, in Halo: The Flood, threw known canon via Halo: The Fall of Reach to the wind and had everyone and their brother know about the highly-classified origins of the Spartan project, as well as various direct contradictions to what was seen in Halo: Combat Evolved. Nylund’s books themselves had numerous internal contradictions, and were superseded (much to fan disdain) by Halo Reach. Neither were “lead writers” as they were not Bungie staff, and their writing would be considered secondary to even Frank’s.
Viewing the direction of exploration taken toward the Forerunners as a “lie” is, as well, problematic. It sets a bad precedent, predicated on little more than taking a stance in opposition to tribal knowledge, but not anything that was ever established canon.
The problem with this view on it is that it is absolutely not as though Frank hijacked the storyline from the shadows, stealing The Lore like a thief in the night. This contradiction and clarification comes through officially published material in the primary form of canon, put out by Bungie as a whole. If it was in direct contradiction of “The Plan”, it would not have seen the light of day. The Terminals would not have had the narrative that they did, outlining the Librarian finding Humanity on Erde Tyrene. The Cradle of Life promotional comic would not have depicted a sub-saharan man watching the Ark Portal being built by the Forerunners.
The removal of these things would have made Spark’s statements definitive, rather than dubious given the numerous hints to his rampancy since Halo: CE (the humming and character confusion, for example).
Given the general dedication put into the project, it’s far more likely that there wasn’t a solid plan and they were just coming up with it as they went. I know we fans like to think that they had this grand, sweeping plan for everything, that the Halo Bible was plotted out from start to finish and it’s word was Law, but the fact as evident from Halo 2’s development is that there wasn’t really a plan, with most of the game being completed and worked on after the E3 2003 Demo.
Halo: CE wasn’t meant to have a sequel, Jason Jones was notorious for being flakey with sequels and had to literally be dragged back to the project, and when he dipped again halfway through they had to scramble for a product. Getting the story that we got was a stroke of luck, but it - quite evidently - left more messes than it wrapped up. Indicative of why I think Halo 3 is actually the worst of the series.
As well, if anyone “hijacked” the storyline, it was Joe Staten. Everyone on the team had their own vision of what Halo 2 was to be, and Joe was the one who was very insistent on telling the “other side” and expanding the story beyond the Master Chief. He’s even quoted in an interview saying “…something I felt passionate about was exploring this whole other world, that isn’t all about Master Chief.” His vision is the reason we play as the Arbiter, and have that character at all.
For their merits the efforts undertaken by 343i in codifying a cohesive story have done quite well to make sense of things while also allowing old games to be revisited without having whiplash for things not making sense at all. 343 Guilty Spark’s rampancy has been made much more clear (hints were always there in the games), and as such everything he says is mostly inaccurate. Including misreading John’s geas and assuming his nature from there.
That’s very generous all around; my experience was that it made more messes than it answered. Caused divisions among fans that thought completely different things, and had no context to frame anything. Was the Master Chief a Mark V Spartan? Is he a full on Robocop cyborg? Is he the only one of the Spartans as none of them are ever mentioned in the games? Etc, etc. It doesn’t make for a cohesive canon, and a lot of the game didn’t make sense until the novels were released.
By tribal knowledge of the Human/Forerunner relation, it should not be possible at all. With the “hints” that have built that theory, only humans should be able to activate anything related to Forerunner technology. But, as we see, this is not always the case.
Sure they were. The “Great Journey” was all about following the Forerunners into godhood (attaining the Mantle), and humanity was not worthy of that task. They had to be stopped from following in those footsteps through genocide. The narrative has shifted only in that after winning the war, the UNSC is now able to dip their toes in that reclamation that they were denied for decades.
Brief aside, but no it’s not.
Halo 4 takes place in July 2557 Halo 4: Spartan Ops takes place in January of 2558 Halo 5 takes place in October of 2558 Halo Infinite takes place in December 2559 (Intro) to May 2560.
Spark said that John was Forerunner because 1.) he was rampant and insane, and 2.) because Humanity was supposed to inherit the Empire. If the technology recognized DNA because there was a lock that would only respond to the same race as the Forerunners, how were the Covenant able to access and use that technology? Not just reverse engineering it to where it would work, but accessing areas on Halo and various Forerunner facilities the Galaxy over without the aid of humans?
Why do the Sangheili refer to themselves as Elites, and the Jiralhanae as Brutes? At the end of the day that’s due to “Forerunner” being an identifying term for us. I would love for there to be an actual name for the race as a whole, beyond their various rate names, however those could be considered the species name as each rate is regarded as racial divisions. They are Forerunners in that they came before and above many species like the Sangheili and the San’Shyuum (and in their mind, they are above all others). Within Forerunner, there are the Warrior-Servants, the Builders, the Lifeworkers, the Miners, the Juridicals, etc.
I am merely pointing out that the devs wanted to do that but didn’t have time to.
And then Halo 3, though it modified the Ark to be off Earth, still made scenes where the characters of their narrative outright stated that Humans are the Forerunners.
Though they didn’t get to execute their twist reveal how they wanted to, they still executed it regardless through the dialogue of Truth and Monitor 343 Guilty Spark.
Had the lead writers truly scrapped this idea, they would have had Truth reword his dialogue and had Guilty Spark say something different other than outright stating that the Humans are Forerunners.
Had Halo 3 actually intended to change the narrative and have Humans not be Forerunners, Spark would’ve said something like “You are the child of my makers, chosen to be the inheritors of all they left behind! But this ring is mine!”
Instead he has his usual dialogue where he outright calls Humans to be Forerunners.
The only places in the Bungie Era of the games that cite Humans as not being the Forerunners is within the Halo 3 Terminals, which were written from scraps left out of development and drafted by a set of four tertiary writers.
The Lead Writers tell the story.
The Secondary and Tertiary writers help fill the world of that story with lore and mysteries.
And when Frank O’Connor became the Franchise Director, he decided to push his tertiary narrative into the primary narrative.
I get that.
I get that whoever holds the franchise’s intellectual property gets to choose canon however they see fit.
After all, look at what Disney did to Star Wars.
All the novels, comics, and videogames that were published before Disney’s takeover were declared as non-canon, being defined as mere “Legends” within their new canon.
343 instead chose to ret-con and alter previously established canon by changing the context of the history and its meaning.
Before 2011 it was clear that the evidence being laid out led to Humans being the Forerunners prior to the firing of the Halo array. And in Halo 2 they meant to confirm this but didn’t get to because of time constraints.
And even though in Halo 3 they had a chance to not declare Humans as being the Forerunners, Bungie’s lead writing staff still chose to confirm in in the form of dialogue rather than visual example.
And by this logic, the Terminals were in fact dubious canon at best back then.
Written by tertiary writing staff members and not the lead writing staff, the terminals presented the narratives to be either plot holes or that the Forerunners were a diverse race of Humans with many cultures and differences within their race, just like modern Humans, only now varied by worlds.
When something being written by a lead writer is being contradicted by a secondary or tertiary writer, it leads to plot holes and contradictory statements.
The Lead Writers are correct.
The Secondary and Tertiary Writers are causing plot-holes and contradictions.
That is how it usually goes.
Unless of course one of those lower-ranked writers suddenly skyrockets to the executive position of Franchise Director.
Just because someone is losing it doesn’t mean that they still cannot make correct statements.
Cortana was rampant with fractally replicating fragments being created.
Sloane was rampant and gutting himself to extend his life span while reducing his overall effectiveness.
Guilty Spark, despite his delusions of grandeur and talking to himself, still aimed to follow protocol and reveal information as a primary source.
Granted I did goof up there a bit.
They are authors that are commissioned writers, making them Secondary or Tertiary writing staff, depending on the importance of their work.
In fact, Bungie themselves eventually ret-conned plenty of facts in Eric Nylund’s books.
After all, Dr. Halsey doesn’t ask Jorge-S052 who these other five Spartans in the room were.
And yeah, I will admit that I have a vendetta over Frank O’Connor that I have and more of the fact that the guy who was the social media manager and tertiary writer for Bungie was default promoted up to Franchise Director and then proceeded to mess up a LOT of the narrative.
Not just the narrative mind you.
Frank has this mindset of wanting to do things that break tradition and become something new.
Bold thing to do, considering the fact that you are working with a multi-million dollar franchise that has an established set of expectations.
Trying to do something different and new is best done when making a new IP or a spinoff game.
Not a direct sequel.
And yet, here is what we know Frank pushed to do.
Some excerpts from the following game informer article
Holmes recalls was when the team completed a small piece of the Halo experience that he described as a "very traditional" Halo. User research showed that people thought it was a lot of fun, and it showed that the team was capable of making a Halo game that was true to what the series was about. 343 scrapped it, Holmes says, as it was too traditional.
"We had people who we hired who hated Halo because of 'X,'" says O'Connor. "But what that really meant was, 'I feel like this game could be awesome because of 'Y input' that I'm going to bring into it. I want to prove it, and I'm passionate about proving it.' So we ended up with a bunch of people who were genuinely passionate about the product. That is a huge advantage, and that helped in hiring and forming our team."
"There were a lot of mistakes we made along the way in which we knew weren't necessarily the right way to do things, but given what we had to deliver and our timeframe, we accepted that these are necessary mistakes, and we acknowledged them."
How was it never established canon when the characters written by the lead writers are outright saying it to be true?
In the context of the old canon, it was easy to view this as akin to urban city dwellers visiting an Amish settlement.
Not every Human World had to be hyper advanced in the ancient past.
And as for The Cradle of Life, that was a small comic written and illustrated by Ashley Wood, a concept artist that worked at Bungie and was used to tie in an IP Address to a website for the “Alternate Reality” game that Bungie used as an online promotional game for players to encounter and theorize upon.
Earlier you pointed out that Bungie focuses on in-game lore and The Cradle of Life is very much out of the main games and has direct ties to a promotional meta-game.
Just pointing out a contradiction here is all.
All I’ve gotta say is that it made the character more flavorful and, honestly, it made sense.
Isolation makes people a little stressed and loopy.
I talk to myself sometimes just because I don’t want it to be silent in my apartment but I am not in the mood for music. If anything it helps me focus on the task at hand by coming up with a story dialogue via ad-libbing to myself as multiple characters, which really helps with the book that I am trying to stop procrastinating on so much.
No there was a plan for Halo CE.
The game used to have 25 missions back when it was an RTS title. But Bungie had to reduce it down to 10 missions to help it fit and run on the Xbox as an FPS game.
And just as Joseph Staten says, they like to reuse old concepts into their next games if it fits in and works.
The Prophets didn’t appear until Halo 2 but were planned for Halo CE.
Ditto for the Engineers not showing up until Halo 3 ODST.
Dual Wielding.
Of course not everything is planned out, but enough is done to ensure that they can make it so that the transmedia works out.
Had Eric Nylund’s book about The Fall of Reach published with the original script or the current script of Halo CE, it still would fit into both narratives as a descriptor to the origins of the Spartans and the lead-up to Halo CE’s opening cutscene.
Typically all stories aren’t meant to have sequels, but usually leave room for one just in case they want to make one down the line due to the success of the first and the ability to make a second one.
Gears of War
Dead Space
Metal Gear
The Sims
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Animal Crossing
Super Smash Bros.
The Legend of Zelda
Sonic
Megaman
Pac-Man
All of these were not intending to have sequels and yet, Gears of War now has six games and a collection of novels. Dead Space has five games and a dynamic remaster on the way while still having novels and comics and even two movies. Metal Gear has three non-canon sequels and 8 mainline games.
You don’t know you have something good and worthwhile until you see it have success in the market.
Yes, I do understand that Joseph Staten did basically hijack everything for Halo 2.
But as a result, is Halo 2 not realized as one of the best games in the entire franchise? Some of the most iconic tracks, scenes, and lines come from Halo 2.
And yes, while I get that the whole Dervish/Arbiter thing was his schtick, he still executed it brilliantly enough by making the game a dual-narrative. While Joe stated in interviews that he views Halo 2 as the Arbiter’s story, he was still wise enough to realize that excluding Chief would be ludicrous. So we at least, in the final storyboard script, got to play as Chief and Arbiter at about a 50/50 rate, but ended up playing as Chief more with four more missions than Arby.
Which is a lot better executed than the “Dual Narrative” that Halo 5 Guardians presented with it being a game entirely about Osiris and the Hunt of Chief rather than Chief himself, with us only playing as Blue Team for 3 of the 15 chapters of Halo 5’s final draft.
It was easy to see that Master Chief was some sort of humanoid super-soldier cyborg by the sheer fact that he was in Cryostasis until needed. You don’t put a computer on ice.
And yeah, the books do answer more questions because they are more-or-less indirect sequels and prequels, which by their nature are supposed to answer vital questions while raising new ones to make even more sequels to extend the story.
But the Covenant technology is all reverse-engineered scraps of tech that they could manage to break apart and learn about.
They are mere mockery. Imitations.
The Covenant in Halo CE and Halo Wars showed that they had to force the technology to work for them. Halo Wars 1 showed that the Covenant had to manually force the doors in the first mission to open and that they couldn’t make use of the Forerunner Fleet because they lacked the code. But as soon as a Human was present to interface, you notice the hologram orb rotate to allow for Prof. Anders’ hand to make contact with the correct symbols.
Humans naturally discovered and developed Slip-Space drives while the Covenant races were only able to do so by learning what little they could from Forerunner tech that they could manage to actually force to operate by essentially hot-wiring and reverse-engineering it.
No.
The “Great Journey” was all about the Covenant misinterpreting the Forerunner’s purpose of the Halo Rings. They did not initially know that the rings would eliminate all life, rather believing that the rings would allow them to open the path to salvation and ascend to godhood. But the Flood Parasite was their rendition of the devil, wanting to corrupt their very beings and make them unworthy of the path.
The Great Journey was the journey to ascend to godhood, not knowing that the would merely enter the afterlife by intragalactic suicide.
Indeed. I forgot to calculate the 7 months part of Chief’s cryostasis.
The ending of Halo 4’s playable story gameplay is Spartan-Ops, ending in 2558.
Halo 5 takes place a little over 1 year after the end of Halo 4’s main campaign, in 2558
Halo Infinite takes place in 2560.
However, my point on this matter was the fact that Halo’s narrative isn’t so concise anymore.
Halo Reach through Halo 3 took the span of less than a year, from July 2552 until March of 2553.
Halo 4 through Halo Infinite takes place over the course of nearly four years.
That is a LOTTA gaps that you have to fill in because the characters aren’t going to sit on their thumbs.
Imagine watching a TV show and suddenly between Episode 4 and Episode 5 there is a timeskip and the rest of the season references things from the skipped period of time. And now to understand what happened you have to read three novels, read a comic book, and listen to a pod-cast mini-series that lasts six hours.
That is exactly what happened between Halo 4 and Halo 5 Guardians.
And the pod-cast is made non-canon by default as you find out through playing the game that none of the events transpire or even relate to the main narrative since the marketing team that ran the pod-cast were going off of the original script before the creative leads swapped seats.
Already addressed in previous replies.
Because that is what the players know them as if they do not read the Halo 3 game manual.
The names for the races weren’t settled upon until Halo 3, or at least made public until Halo 3.
But you notice in the books, latter games, and movies; the characters do refer to one-another by their race; which is one of the few things that 343 did right.
Which still begs the question as to why they go through such lengths to ret-con and establish the Forerunners to be a separate species from Humans and then NOT come up with a native name for themselves.
The new faction of The Endless have an actual name, the species name being Xanalyn.
Why go through all these lengths to name even the new species and NOT make a name for the Forerunner race.
Retcons always have discrepancies in the lore and create plot-holes.
And this just shows that 343 is either being lazy in this regard or that Frank O’Connor didn’t think about every tiny detail when making his ret-con and not realizing that he missed a few details.
I am pretty sure that if he were to read this thread and notice the plot-holes I am pointing out, he might make another post on twitter to magically usher in a new set of details in order to plug up these holes.
Sorry it took so long to respond.
I was on a fishing trip when you posted this thread.
When Spark says “You are Forerunner” and some of the things he mutters in the Library strongly suggests this.
However it’s not a massive change. You still have the core of humanity being an ancient species devolved and then being reseeded on Earth. There’s just the added wrinkle that the builders of the Rings degenerated humanity and then had a change of heart. This allows for more story to be told.
There are several issues with humans being forerunners. Mainly, why wouldn’t the Forerunners just keep all their technology and make sure they took over the Galaxy? There’s no logical reason to do that. But also they aren’t truly sacrificing anything if they simply intend to takeover the Galaxy with their hidden progeny.
Whereas in current canon the Forerunners have a sort of similar place as the Elves in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. You’ve got this ancient but flawed species that has to pass the torch on to Men of defending the world. The Forerunners can thus have mercurial reasons for wanting humanity to evolve naturally before inheriting Forerunner Tech.
It also makes their sacrifice matter as they actually do decide that they’ve failed and have to pass on the torch. Instead of some half baked plan to continue their civilisation.
Basically, it’s a good retcon. You don’t need to make the Forerunners humans to make the Covenant religion seem stupid.
Then hinted in more of halo 3s terminals than it was rejected by.
The terminal that did not reject it failed to be internally cohesive. Nor do they match the retconned timeline as it exists in 343i material.
Alternatively contact harvest confirmed the truth behind forerunners.
And spark flat out said to us that we were forerunners.
To deny it seems rather silly.
It was retconned and no longer applies but Yes humanity was infact forerunner.
Personally think it was a poor choice. Like how shield worlds are no longer shields or the needlessly messy humans were smort then monk then monk again now smort stuff. Fun but regrettably poor.
How was 343 Guilty Sparks ramapncy hinted throughout the games? Also we’re not just looking at what 343 Gulity Spark said. There’s also what the Gravemind and The Prophet of Truth said. And they all say the same thing. Humans are Forerunner. Are they all lying or going crazy?
I know this may be a stretch, a big one at that. But I’m going with Frank O’connor doing a bit of retcon with the Forerunner/human thing. I know that explanation has holes in it. Like why did Bungie allow those terminals if it goes against what story they were telling? But by the time Halo 3 was being developed, I’m pretty sure it was already set in stone that Bungie was going to be leaving Halo and Microsoft all together in the near future and that a new company would take over the development. The company Frank would become franchise director of. I’m sure that role that Frank would go to to take was in talks or even confirmed behind the scenes back then.
So could it be possible that Bungie just let it slide? Maybe their thinking was something “we’re going ahead with and finishing up the story we have been hinting towards. What ever direction future developer takes, take”? Yes the terminals hint towards one thing while the main narrative say the opposite. But seeing as the terminals were pieces of text hidden away in the game that most players probably wouldnt have discovered at least the first time around. Its not something that was being said directly to out face like with Guilty Spark, Gravemind and Truth. So like I suggested, maybe they jusy let those tidbits of info hidden in the game slide and let post Halo 3 story go how it was going to go without them?