Throughout the Halo games, we see various highlighting colors on Forerunner structures and technology, but what do they mean? What’s their purpose? I count 5 different colors seen so far (Blue, Red, White, Purple, and Green).
Blue seems to be most often associated with the Forerunners (purple may go along with this, as it’s seen in Halo 3 alongside blue). Up until the UrDidact’s encounter with the Gravemind, even the Warrior-Servants used blue to compliment the usual grays. But that still leaves the green accents seen Solace and Requiem’s Lockup unexplained, as well as the White of Monolith.
One theory is that the colors represent an emotion, in a way. Blue represents serenity, and red chaos. Green might represent something along the lines of beauty or romance. White might be mourning.
For reference, here’s a list of the instances we see red, white, and green (if something’s not listed, just assume blue is used):
Red
-Various Warrior-Servant structures/vessels post UrDidact’s corruption by Gravemind)
-Mantle’s Approach (Didact’s flagship)
-The Cauldron (thermal processing system, near volatile volcano)
-Meltdown (coloring of a Forerunner reactor going critical)
-Wreckage (Line Installation, would shoot down ships within a certain range)
White
-Monolith (war monument to fallen soldiers)
-The Refuge (Requiem’s safe house)
Green
-Lockup (repair/staging site for Forerunner war vessels)
-Solace (used beacons to suspend death of small stars, operated by stellar engineers)
-Control (post campaign)
-Sniper’s Alley (outside area near Librarian’s Rest)
-x50 (planet killer, likely operated by Miners)
Orange actually for Urdidact. I don’t think across all 3 million forerunner worlds, they have the same type of things…
I’m pretty sure that red doesn’t just stand for the UrDidact. Not only did the UrDidact use blue over red before his encounter with the Gravemind, but we see red coloring in multiple other places (which I listed in the OP).
In the case of the Cauldron, why would a thermal processing system have red coloring, when a safe house built for high ranking officials (The Refuge), Apex, or Lockdown don’t have red coloring, when all have more to do with the UrDidact’s military operations? Not even the large pillars that we visit in Shutdown have red coloring, despite their connection to the UrDidact.
There seems to be something else going on here.
Well, red could indicate danger in general. The Cauldron would certainly require caution to operate and be around given it’s nature dealing with volcanic. I like to think green indicates Covenant control, after all Control and Lockup have major Covenant presences as areas where prisoners (Lockup) and equipment (Control) are stored. Blue could just be the standard color for Forerunner structures.
Green being associated with the Covenant Remnant is a possibility, but Solace messes it up. The UNSC has a presence at Solace.
But it is interesting how Control (I’ll add that to the list) changes colors between the campaign on SpOps. Even more interesting when Sniper’s Alley is green in both appearances.
in the kilo 5 books i believe they mentioned how it was interesting that both humans and forerunners used red as a warning indicator
> Green being associated with the Covenant Remnant is a possibility, but Solace messes it up. The UNSC has a presence at Solace.
>
> But it is interesting how Control (I’ll add that to the list) changes colors between the campaign on SpOps. Even more interesting when Sniper’s Alley is green in both appearances.
Well, the Forerunner likely use all sorts of colors, maybe even just to look nice. It could be the Covenant simply just use green to denote their ownership out of all the colors at hand.
Blue seems to be the standard color.
Red, caution or danger.
Green… reapair/technical zones or miner facilities? x50’s planet killer beam is green.
Obviously Red means Destroy, Blue means Control and Green means Synthesis.
Always found it funny in Star Wars (original trilogy) how green lasers came from Empire Tie Fighters and red from Rebel starcrafts and such, would think it’d be flip flopped.
OT, what Cobra said up top.
Then could white mean death/sacrifice/victory?