So Bungie intended for Forerunners to be ancient humans. This starts on page 275 of Contact Harvest (full-size paperback):
> < THIS IS NOT RECLAMATION > the Oracle boomed. < THIS IS RECLAIMER > … < AND THOSE IT REPRESENTS ARE MY MAKERS >
Yeah…slight problem, especially considering this is Mendicant Bias talking.
Retcon. Halo 3 already contradicted that statement because the Didact says they, (Forerunner), built Mendicant Bias yet in the same Terminals they discover primitive Humanity on Earth meaning Humans are not Forerunner.
> Retcon. Halo 3 already contradicted that statement because the Didact says they, (Forerunner), built Mendicant Bias yet in the same Terminals they discover primitive Humanity on Earth meaning Humans are not Forerunner.
Not to mention Staten seemed to have problems with consistency. If you go by Contact Harvest there were only 17 human colonies (all other sources indicate there were hundreds), Harvest had a population of around three hundred thousand (three million everywhere else) and Epsilon Eridani and Eridanus are the same system called Epsilon Eridanus despite characters travelling between them in previous novels and one housing Reach while the colonies in the other were attacked 20 years prior to the battle of Reach.
So yeah, despite the fact that Bungie made the Forerunners a separate species during Halo 3’s development, Staten didn’t make the change in his book.
Even in Halo 3 we had Spark saying “You are Forerunner”, so it’s likely an AI thing involving humanity being Reclaimers and thus “equal” to Forerunners in their minds.
Personally, I think they intended Forerunners to be a separate species since at least Halo 2. I saw a control panel button with a six-fingered handprint, which isn’t much but still.
> Not to mention Staten seemed to have problems with consistency.
It’s probably more likely that the licensed EU fiction at the time had a problem with him.
I think that Humans were Forerunners even in Halo 3. There needs to be some evidence from someone that rather conclusively shows that the Terminals and IRIS files were talking about Humans and not Earth life in general.
I believe Spock said something about this in Star Trek IV… Something about Human arrogance in assuming things meant for Earth were meant for Humans…
If you find this seemingly random and unimportant planet in space that has a vast proportion of its natural wildlife contain massive genetic similarities to your own species, I think that would qualify for going the extra mile to preserve and continue researching, as well as labelling its “denizens” as being unique and holding the keys to your own past.
> I believe Spock said something about this in Star Trek IV… Something about Human arrogance in assuming things meant for Earth were meant for Humans…
Humpback Whales are the true inheritors of the Mantle.
> Not to mention Staten seemed to have problems with consistency. If you go by Contact Harvest there were only 17 human colonies (all other sources indicate there were hundreds),
Doesn’t the whole “17” colonies thing come from a flag or something that Johnson saw once? Perhaps the flag, or whatever it was, represented Earth and the Inner Colonies?
There was also the funny “BR prototype” 30 years before it became standard, that’s one reaaaaaly slow development cycle.
Brutes and Drones being some of the first covenant species encountered, making the briefing on the covenant in Fall of Reach odd, and First Strike was already retconned so it wasn’t chief’s first time encountering brutes.
Halo novels aren’t perfect.
The issues with First Strike and The Fall of Reach have largely been corrected as of 2011.
> Even in Halo 3 we had Spark saying “You are Forerunner”, so it’s likely an AI thing involving humanity being Reclaimers and thus “equal” to Forerunners in their minds.
>
> Personally, I think they intended Forerunners to be a separate species since at least Halo 2. I saw a control panel button with a six-fingered handprint, which isn’t much but still.
Well in GoO it was made clear that “forerunner” is a title which was addressed in cryptum. Yeah the 6 fingered panel on the gondala was cool even more so since the Didact’s hand matches that perfectly. But i think it is more reasonable to assume that was done so you could use either hand or so others with an extra finger could use it.
> The issues with First Strike and The Fall of Reach have largely been corrected as of 2011.
True, but that’s also largely because cannon simply changed (except for Fall of Reach’s date errors, which were clearly errors).
There probably isn’t a lot of money to be had fixing cannon errors in novels.
What’s wrong the The Fall of Reach’s dates?
> What’s wrong the The Fall of Reach’s dates?
The original copy, and atleast one of the reprints, has the battle happening like 10 years too early.
> In the 2010 reprint edition, most of the mistakes present in the original novel have not been fixed, despite the purpose of said reprint. Remaining mistakes include “2542” replacing the correct date of “2552” in every instance of use,[6] Halsey still merely speculates at the existence of Sangheili, despite numerous encounters with them beforehand, on page 240 line 21, it states that Red and Blue teams were in the trees while it was Red and Green teams which were in the trees, as Blue team was coming into the evac zone, and the first contact with Mgalekgolo is still stated to be at Sigma Octanus IV.
That was the 2010 print. The 2011 print updated all the dates to 2552, among other things. You can differentiate the two in that the 2011 print has “Definitive Edition” on it.
EDIT: Hrm, the 2011 print still has Red and Blue in the trees.
> > Not to mention Staten seemed to have problems with consistency. If you go by Contact Harvest there were only 17 human colonies (all other sources indicate there were hundreds),
>
> Doesn’t the whole “17” colonies thing come from a flag or something that Johnson saw once? Perhaps the flag, or whatever it was, represented Earth and the Inner Colonies?
If not for Staten later trying to say that there were only 17 large colonies and the hundreds of others were all small (again, already contradicted by existing canon) then that would have been acceptable, though still not true by today’s canonical standing.
> If not for Staten later trying to say that there were only 17 large colonies and the hundreds of others were all small (again, already contradicted by existing canon) then that would have been acceptable, though still not true by today’s canonical standing.
I can’t remember, but what sources said that there were hundreds of colonies pre-Contact Harvest?
> > If not for Staten later trying to say that there were only 17 large colonies and the hundreds of others were all small (again, already contradicted by existing canon) then that would have been acceptable, though still not true by today’s canonical standing.
>
> I can’t remember, but what sources said that there were hundreds of colonies pre-Contact Harvest?
The first mention of there being hundreds of colonies was a timeline released in the lead up to the original game designed to fill people in on the universe so far. To my knowledge all of the information in the timeline has remained consistent with the only contradictions coming from Contact Harvest’s colony numbers and the Admiral Cole short story continually referring to him as a vice admiral. I believe there were other sources too but I can’t say for sure.
> The first mention of there being hundreds of colonies was a timeline released in the lead up to the original game designed to fill people in on the universe so far.
This is a case of the licensed EU not agreeing with Bungie. That timeline, assuming it even still exists, should be taken with a truckload of salt because by the sounds of it Bungie either never got the chance to inspect its contents before it went live, or that things were added to it between their inspection and the publishing of the site. Either way, any of the contents could have been non-canonical and not in any way representative of the actual Halo story. The “800+” colonies that it outlined is an example of that. It was made up by someone in Microsoft’s Halo division for marketing purposes.
In a way, Contact Harvest wasn’t really a retcon in this regard because it didn’t change anything canonical about the colony numbers at the time.
> I believe there were other sources too but I can’t say for sure.
The only ones that anyone has ever brought up have been from the Halo Encyclopaedia and beyond. I don’t think Nylund was specific either.
17 colonies is probably too low for the war, even if we assume that it was originally a borderline cold war of the UNSC trying to outsmart and outmanoeuvre the Covenant, hiding from them among the stars and tricking them with false signals and fake navigation data banks, as well as the sheer vastness of space offering some sort of protection. However the Covenant would occasionally get lucky and find a Human colony out of the thousands of neighbouring systems that could also possibly hold Human worlds. The Cole Protocol (The actual protocol, not the book) sort of gave that impression with fleeing ships leading pursuers on wild goose chases in random directions, stopping the Covenant from getting their hands on NAV databases and with ONI somehow attenuating Earth’s early broadcasts whilst creating multiple fake sources. Several dozen colonies would probably be more reasonable. It’s only a problem if you assume that there is a battle being fought every month of the war, or even every year.
I mean if there really were hundreds of colonies, then the Cole Protocol itself was practically useless as the Covenant would be finding worlds by the dozen per year anyway. It makes the Covenant searching for NAV databases useless as they would seem to be getting on just fine without them. After annihilating the first hundred colonies or so, they could probably start guessing as to where the core worlds are from the layout of the colonies they have already discovered, yet they didn’t. ONI vastly misrepresenting the nature of the war to the general public also only really works if the number of colonies is low, and not in the hundreds. It would be a bit hard to hide the fact that about one hundred colonies are gone, as opposed to just a few.
Haven’t read the whole thread, however, Harvest being the 17th colony founded has nothing to do with the UNSC only having 17 colonies as of when it’s attacked.