Return of the Flood and State of the Universe

Community Halo Universe
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STATE OF THE UNIVERSE
For those of us who played Halo 5: Guardians, you know that Cortana has become the dictator of the known galaxy and has essentially contained all species under her interpretation of the Mantle of Responsibility using the power of the Forerunners. Depending on how strong 343 decides to make her in later fiction, i’m going to assume that Cortana has control of most if not all of the previous Ecumene. That being said, the whole Halo Universe is in a problematic position. How is anyone supposed to fight back against her? I mean, she has a Halo, if not ALL Halo’s under her control and AI don’t appear to be effected by the array; hence why all Forerunner AI’s still exist. The Guardians have eliminated the ability to fight back and unless 343 decides to pull an ex machina and bring Johnson back with two sticks and a rock, the Universe is nearing a black hole.

RETURN OF THE FLOOD
The only way to beat something that is an order of magnitude stronger than everything else is to throw something even stronger at it. One of the things that I thought 343 would put on narrative hold was the Flood, and with Halo 4, it looked to be going that direction. Yes, the Flood are the overall Meta bad guy to the Halo Universe, so of course things are going to revolve around them. 343’s direction showed that the narrative was about humanity’s greater role in the Halo Universe and the reclamation of the Forerunner empire. You could say that Halo 1-3 were introductions - with Halo 4 and early expanded fiction, it molded the idea that humans would have to inevitably fight the Flood again, but that would be later on. How long i’m not sure, but the Didact and his corrupted ideas were to be the new grand threat.

Then he got shafted in a comic.

So now we have the Created; arguably the most powerful threat ever to exist and they have control of the Milky Way. Come Halo Wars 2, a self-contained story that brings us back to probably the most important Forerunner installation in the Universe. We’re fighting a threat with the UNSC that reminds us of the good 'ol days and overall it does a very good job at telling a good Halo story. (In my personal opinion, there had never really been a bad Halo story until Halo 5 and Escalation. I may not have enjoyed the Kilo-5s as much, but there were good narrative pieces.) However, Halo Wars 2 doesn’t add anything to the Universe, as we’re kind of left with two cliffhangers: One with Anders and the other with Cutter. That’s where the narrative left off. Nothing changed. The Ark is still left completely in the unknown too.

Then the surprise announcement of Awakening the Nightmare comes along. The Flood are making a return. Now, it may be that they are destroyed after the Banished Campaign is complete, we just don’t know yet. However, let’s say they get loose. Let’s say they start taking control of the Ark. They have biomass, they have a big portal to transport themselves back to the Milky Way, AND GUARDIANS DON’T FIGHT FLOOD*. 343 may have figured out the key to Faster than Light Travel, because that’s the only way they are going to escape the pull of that narrative Black Hole. I didn’t want to really see the Flood back so soon, but with the way the Universe is headed, it may be the only way to bring everything back to: (i’m going to pull a President Harding) normalcy. The Flood are the only enemy capable of challenging the Created for galactic dominance but we’ve had virtually nothing building up to that point. Halo 5 and a possibly return of the Flood represent almost the complete eradication early EU - including a lot of Halo 4, so it puts the Universe into an uncertain position. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.*

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I would argue that the Flood is the most powerful threat the galaxy has ever had, to each his own. I think the Flood will have a small outbreak in this Campaign. I don’t think we’re going to have the grand re-introduction to the Flood in the galaxy just yet. There’s many things going on, and bringing in the Flood would make it even more convoluted and stuffed. I do think it will return on a massive scale, just not yet.

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If the Created didn’t have control over the Halo array I would agree with you on who is the strongest. However, I don’t think the Created would really care about the fallout of using a ring. The Forerunners were capable of creating life, stars, and planets with their technology. They could just rebuild what was destroyed after using one of the rings. I doubt they would need to use all of them. A Halo’s pulse traverses 25,000 light years.

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I wonder what Cortana’s reaction would be upon the return of the Flood. Probably some horror.

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“Welp, imma chargin my Halo.” - Cortana, Halo 6

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> 2533274858350698;5:
> “Welp, imma chargin my Halo.” - Cortana, Halo 6

Dr. Cortanalopolis BLAH!!!

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I think there was that one canon fodder article which said that you still had people quietly mining Meridian and its mentioned that the UNSC can still conduct operations on Earth. Cortana also hasn’t taken Sanghelios as they mention that only probes have been sent. So it looks like her control isn’t absolute and might even be focused mostly upon the UNSC if she hasn’t taken the Elite homeworld. However the devs have repeatedly stressed how powerful the character is supposed to be. Its not a black hole since all the factions are actively resisting Cortana and she hasn’t succeeded yet.

But remember that this threat exists purely so that us, the player, has something to fight in Halo 6 and raise the stakes. So it doesn’t make sense to have an external threat resolve the problem for us. I mean Halo has always relied on Dues Ex Machinas to resolve these problems. Blow up the Halo. Fire the Halo. Blow up the Mantles Approach. Blow up that Shield World. So either Chief blows up the Domain, or he cures Cortana of rampancy and she becomes a good AI again. Then it won’t matter if shes really powerful because she won’t want to rule the galaxy.

Guardians don’t fight Flood. But Cortana has other weapons and Guardians can stop the Flood using ships to spread their infection. Which is really useful for quarantining worlds.

Plus, put yourself in the shoes of somebody playing Halo 6 who never touched the strategy game. You’d be completely confused if the Flood inexplicably show up. Sure, in HW2 they do take it as assumed knowledge that you have played the FPS games (how else would you recognize a Guardian?) but that’s because the sub story is following the main storyline. Not the other way around. Why would they let the story of game, produced by a third party remember, suddenly displace the existing storyline in the FPS games? Its more likely that the Flood would be introduced from another quarter later on in the FPS games rather than from the Ark itself. Theres no reason there cannot be more than one flood infestation in the galaxy at once. The Ark is basically a sandbox for the Halo Wars franchise into which they are slowly adding extra factions.