Okay, I have thought a lot about the Promethean Knights of Halo 4 and how they are vastly different and even officially described as being markedly different from the Promethean Warriors of the old Forerunner Ecumene. I have read both of the Forerunner Trilogy books Cryptum & Primordium and if you have not or do not want to have them spoiled than stop reading now, actually your probably shouldn’t even have clicked on this thread as the title was clear on the potential for spoilers. Anyhow, after reading both of the Forerunner novels by Greg Bear I started to think about the Promethean Knights and why they were so goddamned different from the bad–Yoink- Prometheans they talk about in the book. The Didact is described as over 7 or 8 feet tall and capable of crushing a humans skull in his palm. Nothing synthetic or robotic at all about them. And then you have the so called “skull” housed inside their helmets or heads. People have written or speculated that these are there strictly for intimidation factors & while I agree that is one part of why they are displayed to the enemy I do not agree that that is the reason they are there. I believe that since the Forerunner Ecumene has fallen and the Forerunners themselves gone, that most of the true Promethean Warriors have perished in the Forerunner-Flood war. With Requiem clearly being the resting place of the Didact’s Cryptum he has to have some kind of protection for it. In the novel Cryptum he has multiple guards watching over his Cryptum that are referred to as “War Sphinxes” by the Forerunners. They were essentially Forerunner constructs designed for fighting, combat, waging war, protection & even capable of being piloted by a Forerunner themselves. In the novel Cryptum, the Didact actually keeps his children’s memories, personalities, traits, etc…essentially a computer copy of their minds programmed into each of his War Sphinxes. I believe that the Promethean “Knights” are actually the same exact thing as a “War Sphinx”, perhaps Promethean Knight is the human name for them, who knows, but I believe they are one in the same. The books make reference to the War Sphinxes coming in different makes & models & that the Didact has particularly old models compared to the War Sphinx’s of the Master Builder. The “Promethean Knights” are nothing more than Forerunner War Sphinx’s, however, each one is, I believe, programmed with the actual memory and minds of actual, true fallen Promethean Warriors who fell in battle whilst serving with the Didact. The Skulls seen in the game being displayed to their enemies as an “intimidation tactic” is actually the skull of the Forerunner whose mind & memories now inhabit the War Sphinx and control them in combat. While the skulls look superficially Human at first, if you truly look closely and pay attention then you will notice they are not Human at all but Forerunner skulls. If you watch Halo Legends short “Origins Pt. I” as well as the Halo CEA terminals, they both include images of actual Forerunners wearing armor. Mainly it shows Forerunner Lifeworkers but in Origins there is one glance at the Didact himself in full armor & helmet. If you take notice of each of the Forerunners helmets, they all seem to look like relatively normal helmets that you could see a Human wearing but when you look closer at them you begin to notice that every single one of the helmets include two protrusions on the jaw line, just below each cheek. I at first thought they were just aesthetic features in the helmets or maybe even the air mask features of the helmets so that they could breathe in vacuums or underwater but I noticed the Didact had it too. Then they appear in the CEA terminals. So the helmets must protrude in those areas because the Forerunner jaws themselves have protrusions in that spot. Whereas a Human jaw line resembles the letter V or U, a Forerunner jaw would look like this -v- or -u- (rather crude attempt at an example but you get the idea). So the skull shown or exposed in the helmet of the Promethean Knight/War Sphinx is the actual skull of the fallen Promethean who once inhabited the armour or whose mind still controls the construct. We are never told how the Composer works or how the Didact & Librarian were actually able to save their children’s memories into their War Sphinx’s. Perhaps the skulls themselves are used to retain the actual knowledge & memories or they keep a record of the living like how in Mass Effect 3 Javik can know things about you just by touching. Who knows. My point is that the Orange & Blue skulls seen in the Promethean Knights are actually Forerunner skulls. If anybody is a forensic reconstruction artist maybe they could extrapolate from the skull and figure out what a Forerunner looks like, eh? JK. Anyways, sorry for the long essay but I had a lot to say. Bottom line is that the Promethean Knights are actual Promethean Knights of old, just in different form. The other ones, the Crawlers & the Watchers I believe are simply constructs like the Sentinels from the Halo installations with little intelligence if any at all and are simply controlled and at the whims of the monitor or in this case either the Didact or the Promethean Knight War Sphinx’s. What do you guys think? I think it would explain a lot and it ties perfectly into what is written in the books. I hope to hear what you all think. BTW this is my first post in the Halo Waypoint forums…so hello everybody. Prolly should’ve done that somewhere else but oh well.
You could separate East and West Berlin with a wall like that.
Please use paragraphs. It’s an eyesore to read it like this.
Not even going to attempt to read that o.O Yes, please use paragraphs.
My eyes! D:
Okay, I tried to read it all, I really did, but I lost patience halfway through.
I think what you’re trying to say is that you think the Promethean Knights contain the memories of slain Prometheans, just like the Didact’s War Sphinxes contained the memories of his slain children. That does seem to be the leading theory on what the Promethean Knights are.
He’s saying that these are different models of the War Sphinxes in Cryptum
Yeah I really hope the Prometheans we fight in Halo 4 are some sort of artificial beings, not true Forerunner Promethean Warriors.
In this video, Kiki Wolfkill says, “We didn’t want them to look like monsters, because they’re not monsters,” but then you know, they jump on you and have facemasks that open up to show their glowing skull face and they roar at you. They behave like monsters/animals.