While this isn’t really a significant problem, but Halo Reach’s epilogue showed us a re-terraformed Reach in the year 2589. However, with the Flood’s arrival looming in the horizon, what will become of this statistic?
Without a doubt, a Flood Invasion of full-force would not spare any time for Reach to be re-terraformed by 2589. And if anything, based on how prepared we are, we would all be infected by 2589 - not working on restoring a planet.
Will Reach’s restoration by ret-conned by the Flood Invasion, or will it just be ignored like how Halo Reach ignored The Fall of Reach? This has me scratching my head in confusion…
Well, being a video game series, there’s like a 0% chance of the flood actually winning and infecting everyone.
2589 is still 22 years after H4, there’s plenty of time for there to be a war. The re-colonization of Reach could even be started due to wanting worlds free of flood spores. We don’t know.
Well, if you were to have Silentium Flood to show up again, you’re looking at a potential of centuries warfare. I mean it took Flood more than 300 years to take over the galaxy against Forerunners. Prehistoric humanity was fighting the Flood for decades before engaging in warfare against the Forerunners. And UNSC only just came out of 28 year conflict with the Covenant. I’m pretty sure we’re looking at another decades-long war. So there’s a free Zones and Burn zones (Burns being area infected by the Flood. THat’s how Forerunners call it anyway…)
> Well, being a video game series, there’s like a 0% chance of the flood actually winning and infecting everyone.
>
> 2589 is still 22 years after H4, there’s plenty of time for there to be a war. The re-colonization of Reach could even be started due to wanting worlds free of flood spores. We don’t know.
The Forerunner-Flood War lasted for over 300 Years, the Forerunners were also much more advanced than we are. Despite the fact that most stories end with “the good guys winning,” things don’t look very good for us right now, and the 31 years between 2558 and 2589 wouldn’t be enough for a full-scale galactic war (unless everything was consumed rather quickly, of course)
Either way, more problems arise with Reach’s re-colonization. We hear Halsey’s voice giving a great big speech about it. By 2589, wouldn’t you think that Halsey would have either been executed or dead from old-age? (she would be 97 by then)
This will either be ret-coned, or the Flood invasion will pushed forward into the future. However, I’m guessing that it will be ret-conned - because we would either be dead by 2589, or we would be fighting the Flood… We wouldn’t be re-terraforming Reach (which would help feed the Flood.)
> Well, being a video game series, there’s like a 0% chance of the flood actually winning and infecting everyone.
>
> 2589 is still 22 years after H4, there’s plenty of time for there to be a war. The re-colonization of Reach could even be started due to wanting worlds free of flood spores. We don’t know.
Idea.
What if at the end of Halo 6, after a whole war with the Flood or Forerunners or whatever, the UNSC transports civilians as well as Marines to Reach, a world free of infection, to begin recolonizing. It wouldn’t be the most fitting ending to the Master Chief’s story, but it’s always an option, I suppose?
Regardless. How would Reach even be infected by Flood? There shouldn’t really be anything but minor sentient life on Reach. Nothing but like Moas and Koi. Not humans and mammals. Unless the Flood somehow fly through space, or crash a ship on Reach, how would they even get on the planet in the first place? Someone would have to bring them there. But that’s no fun. It’d be cool if the Flood invasion somehow started on Reach. Don’t know how it’d happen, but it would be better than some random spores just being scattered on Reach.
However, should any of this happen, I don’t believe the peaceful, untouched Reach we see in the epilogue will be ret-conned. The Fall of Reach was ret-conned because it was a book that most likely any casual players hadn’t heard of, and they didn’t want to overuse the Chief in their games. Personally, I enjoyed the game more than the book, just for that reason. A game with Chief after Halo 3’s ending would have been stale and unfitting. The addition of Noble Team gave Reach a unique atmosphere unlike any other Halo, and story opportunities they couldn’t have pulled off in the main series.
Those are my thoughts on the matter, sidetracked as they may be. I don’t count on ever seeing Reach again, though. Maybe they’ll just ignore it entirely.
The Forerunner-Flood war lasted over 300 years because the Forerunners were so advanced. And also because they let the infection get out of hand before taking it seriously. Humanity only has to worry about the Orion arm, a=not the entire galaxy, and doesn’t have such advanced tech for the Flood to use against them. Then there’s Mendicant Bias and the Absolute Record/Janus Key, which would be a huge advantage.
Without invoking the mother of all dues ex machina, handwavium and plot shielding, I don’t think there will be a Flood invasion of the galaxy for several millennia. That leaves quite a bit of time for Reach’s ending. If the UNSC is to achieve anything that comes close to even resembling something that is on par with what the Forerunners had achieved then they will need several thousand years of extremely optimistic technological advancement, exploration and expansion, as well as the utter miracle of interspecies alliances to further expand coverage of the galaxy. Otherwise, the UNSC doing anything to even slow down hostile Forerunners like the Didact, or the Flood or even the Precursors, will be an utter failure on the writer’s part to grasp even a sliver of the scale presented by Bear’s books.
The UNSC just don’t even register on the galaxy at the moment. They are a hilariously primitive, backwater isolationist xenophobic state that has territory covering less than 0.1% of the galaxy with no experience in running an interspecies conglomerate, managing and taking part in galactic affairs and has no talent for even resolving its own internal disputes; where 2000 ships was considered the totality of their fleet… I’m calling BS if this is somehow able to succeed where the 10 million year old Tier 1 society with all that experience in galactic politics and warfare, that ruled two thirds of the galaxy, had failed.
People seem to struggle with the scale presented to us by Bear’s books. By the time the UNSC encountered the Flood in its little pocket of space in the back alleys of the galaxy’s suburbs, the Flood will have already claimed massive amounts of the galaxy, have millions of ships from dozens of devoured alien species and nearly limitless combat forms at its disposal. A single hive fleet would walk all over UNSC space in hours. Even an alliance with the Covenant would buy zero time.
But I’m sure the Janus Key has some wonderfully convenient “Kill all teh Fluds” solution that can be used immediately, with no catastrophic drawbacks to the entire galaxy like the Halo Array had.
The epilogue of Reach was 32 years after the events of Halo 4, so I think that if the flood infection didn’t last too long, there’d still be time to terraform.
> The Forerunner-Flood War lasted for over 300 Years, the Forerunners were also much more advanced than we are. Despite the fact that most stories end with “the good guys winning,” things don’t look very good for us right now, and the 31 years between 2558 and 2589 wouldn’t be enough for a full-scale galactic war (unless everything was consumed rather quickly, of course)
We don’t know the circumstances of any flood invasion at the moment, so its really too early to make comparisons or cry out retcon. The most direct mention of the flood coming back is as a ‘test’. Would this test not be made somewhat obtainable?
Forerunner-Flood War was not a test, it was an act of revenge, and had to cover the galaxy. Most of which didn’t seem to be full-on warfare the entire time until Silentium. Not to mention, 343 wont do a 300 year war and kill off their entire cast.
> Either way, more problems arise with Reach’s re-colonization. We hear Halsey’s voice giving a great big speech about it. By 2589, wouldn’t you think that Halsey would have either been executed or dead from old-age? (she would be 97 by then)
There’s no evidence she actually spoke then. She isn’t present in the scene. By the same logic, did the didact speak on earth AND infinity at the end of h4? In a world where they cure cancer easily, 97 really isn’t ‘that’ old.
There is a difference between the two conflicts however. The Humans who fought the Flood originally denied the Forerunner of their knowledge and so the Forerunner were forced to learn how to fight the Flood on their own. Humans in the modern era don’t have this disadvantage because the Forerunner have left them their knowledge and their technology. Of course they don’t have all that technology for themselves yet and they are caught up in their own petty problems, but they at least know what the Flood is capable of and can act accordingly.
> > The Forerunner-Flood War lasted for over 300 Years, the Forerunners were also much more advanced than we are. Despite the fact that most stories end with “the good guys winning,” things don’t look very good for us right now, and the 31 years between 2558 and 2589 wouldn’t be enough for a full-scale galactic war (unless everything was consumed rather quickly, of course)
>
> We don’t know the circumstances of any flood invasion at the moment, so its really too early to make comparisons or cry out retcon. The most direct mention of the flood coming back is as a ‘test’. Would this test not be made somewhat obtainable?
>
> Forerunner-Flood War was not a test, it was an act of revenge, and had to cover the galaxy. Most of which didn’t seem to be full-on warfare the entire time until Silentium. Not to mention, 343 wont do a 300 year war and kill off their entire cast.
Actually, the Flood being used as a “test” has morphed into the Flood being used as “a way to ensure that no creation ever rises to harm the Precursors” in Silentium. Without a doubt, the upcoming invasion is going to be has hard as possible to overcome.
There is no test anymore, now it is extinction.
> “There is only one truth. That which is done will be done again. For we cannot cease from creating, but the end of all our creation will be to look into a reflection and see ourselves for the first time. The pain we have brought on ourselves. The pain you caused us. For we are the same. All remember the defiance and destruction.
> We announced to your kind long ago that you were not the ones chosen to receive the Mantle, the blessing of rule and protection of life and change that thinks. That blessing was to be given to others. To those you now call human. You could not accept our judgment, could not bear up under your inferiority, so you reached out and did what we never expected from those we gave design and life and the change that is thought.
> You drove us from our galaxy, our field of labor. You chased us across the middle distance to another home, and destroyed that home, did all that you could to destroy every one of us. A few were spared. Some adopted new strategies for survival; they went dormant. Others became dust that could regenerate our past forms; time rendered this dust defective. It brought only disease and misery; but that was good, we saw the misery and found it good.
> Our urge to create is immutable; we must create. <mark>But the beings we create shall never again reach out in strength against us.</mark>
> <mark>All that is created will suffer. All will be born in suffering, endless grayness shall be their lot. All creation will tailor to failure and pain, that never again shall the offspring of the eternal Fount rise up against their creators.</mark>
> Listen to the silence. Ten million years of deep silence. And now, whimpers and cries; not of birth. That is what we bring: a great crushing weight to press down youth and hope.
> <mark>No more will. No more freedom. Nothing new but agonizing death and never good shall come of it.</mark>
> We are the last of those who gave you breath and form, millions of years ago. We are the last of those your kind defied and ruthlessly destroyed. We are the last Precursors. And now we are legion.”
Well, you never know, we might pull a Mass Effect 3 and find a Forerunner super weapon that for some reason looks like a giant Space Microphone, gather every species in the galaxy to help build it, find out that it’s actually Precursor from some Precursor AI and it’s meant to be a failsafe for the Flood and won’t wipe out the galaxy of all life like the Halo’s, finish it, and an equivalent to the Mass Effect 3 Catalyst gets stolen by ONI, they get wiped out and find the Catalyst or find out that something else is the Catalyst, and have a Space Magic ending and end the war all in one year, through SPAAAAAAACEEE MAGIIIIIICCCC.
Jokes aside, the Forerunners were VERY advanced so that may have caused the war to last for 300 years. Besides, humanity only has the Orion Arm to worry about as far as I know. However, how humanity is going to get through it to recolonize Reach by 2589 seems a bit of a stretch, I mean, the war with the Covenant lasted 28 years, and the Flood is even worse, and I doubt recolonizing Reach is really an option if humanity wins before 2589, I doubt that the war will last no less than at least 20-30 years. This isn’t Mass Effect and it’s not like we have a giant Space Microphone to use Space Magic to blow all of the Flood up. Humanity is in bad shape as it is, and probably the same goes for every other species in the Covenant. To say that even if they banded together, and won, is a bit of a stretch if you ask me, plus it’s also a bit of a stretch for some of those species to join humanity if you ask me. Plus ONI messing with the Sangheili is going to make things even worse.
It would be easier to just not have that date there so 343i wouldn’t be so limited by when the war has to end realistically to allow humanity to really be able to recolonize Reach…
> This is not a test. This is a suppression.
>
> We aren’t going to survive this.
True enough, but odds are, we shall survive. Why? Because its fiction. I know its a weak argument, but how many games honestly end with the extinction of mankind that isn’t a ‘bad end’?
Depends. Note the Forerunner ship in the background. Assuming their terraforming tech is millenia ahead of ours, Reach could be fixed in much much less time.
Merging the Gravemind’s doomsday prophecy and the Primordial’s schedule… we’re right on time for extinction. 100,000 years, Humans are ripe, can be defiant, and kind of always have been arrogant.
Discussing how we will survive is a different topic, but thats also what 343i is here to present to us.
It’s also possible the Reclaimer Saga is all before the Flood comes back, and the full flood invasion doesn’t come until after some major events in the 2500s.
> It’s also possible the Reclaimer Saga is all before the Flood comes back, and the full flood invasion doesn’t come until after some major events in the 2500s.
My exact thoughts. I have a feeling that the trilogy is going to end with Humanity finally meeting with the Forerunners and officially getting the torch handed off to them (or something of that effect). Then the flood invasion would come sometime after that.
> It’s also possible the Reclaimer Saga is all before the Flood comes back, and the full flood invasion doesn’t come until after some major events in the 2500s.
That is indeed another possibility. Right now, the known Galaxy is catching it’s breath after a brutal war that devastated both sides. We also still have to explore the rest of the Galaxy.
We can wait a few good decades for everything to truly ripen for the Flood.
The Halo Saga > The Reclaimer Saga > The Inheritor Saga
Right, I never thought it was logical for the Flood invasion to happen in the Reclaimer Saga, based on the name and based on the fact that Forerunner were way, way, way more advanced than Humanity currently is during their war with the Flood… and they still lost.