TSIA, who do you think The Didact was talking to at the very end of the game? I think it’s in the present as he says we seize their triumphs while they squander eons in the darkness. Who do you think it could be, also where do you think he went after he went through slipspace portal?
I believe it was in the present, and I expect it means that other forerunners are “alive” in one way or another.
It’s one of those things I would hope spartan ops would expand upon but so far…nothing.
The Didact’s Epilogue speech can only make sense in a post-Halo 4 context. To avoid having a whole conversation about this, I’ll spell out why:
> In this hour of victory, we taste only defeat. I ask why.
Their hour of victory is seeing the Flood eradicated and the success of the Librarian’s Conservation Measure, but human supremacy is a defeat to the Didact - as he later alludes to.
> I stand before you, accused of the sin of ensuring Forerunner ascendancy. Of attempting to save us from this fate where we are forced to… recede.
Composing Humans 100,000 years ago wasn’t to ensure Forerunner ascendency, but to stop the Flood - he himself said that humanity’s imprisonment was a “kindness” to them and that they would serve him in “ending [the Flood’s] threat” as “final payment for [humanity’s] crimes”. Composing humanity in Halo 4 was to ensure Forerunner ascendency to bring the Forerunners back to being the holders of the Mantle so they could face the Precursors with an army of immortal, composed Prometheans.
> Humanity stands as the greatest threat in the galaxy, refusing to eradicate them is a fool’s gambit.
Pretty self-explanatory. In Halo 4’s Terminals, we see the Didact say that “the enemy must be sent home and taught to stand with the galaxy, rather than rail against us and take what they desire. The Mantle shelters all”. However here he’s clearly reflecting the personality change the Librarian talks about where “such moral concerns faded from the Didact’s attention” over time at the end of the Forerunner-Flood war.
> We squander eons in the darkness while they seize our triumphs for their own.
This line alone makes it pretty clear this is said in the present. The Forerunners have spent aeons in self-imposed exile outside the Orion Arm of the galaxy on their “final Great Journey”, in the darkness - in this time, humanity has taken the Forerunners’ achievements and made them our own: the Infinity, slipspace drives, shielding, and so on. There is no possible way this can reference Ancient Humanity since they didn’t seize any Forerunner “triumphs”, they primarily occupied Precursor worlds like Charum Hakkor.
> Think of my acts as you will, but do not doubt the reality: The Reclamation has already begun. And we are helpless to stop it.
This is the ‘Reclaimer Trilogy’, the Precursors are returning to test humanity for the Mantle and wipe out the Forerunners once and for all. We weren’t Reclaiming anything back when our ancestors were fighting the Forerunners, nor wars with sticks and bronze spears; it’s only now that we’re realising our legacy, and Reclaiming what was stolen from us by the Forerunners - the Mantle, which the Precursors and now the Librarian intend humanity to bear. And the Didact feels the Forerunners are helpless, since their numbers are probably extremely thin and they lost the Composer which removes the advantage of immunity against Flood infection.
It seems pretty clear that the Didact is speaking after Halo 4. He made a slipspace portal under the Composer for a reason - upon composing Earth he would headed back to Requiem with his Promethean army (since the Mantle’s Approach obviously isn’t going to hold several billion Knights) and gone off to find the other Forerunners - he’d know where they are because he was with them around the time they started planning their final Great Journey - which, funnily enough, was led by the Bornstellar-Didact. To support the Didact returning to Requiem after composing Earth, look at Spartan Ops Episode 5 where Halsey discovers that the Prometheans on the planet are the ones from New Phoenix, Grant also states in Episode 2 that Requiem was supposed to be clear of Promethean forces.
We haven’t seen the last of the Didact. That’s why the science team in Primordium, set supposedly in 2559 (2 years after the Didact’s defeat in Halo 4) is trying to learn what they can about the Didact. I would direct you to Chakas’ line:
> “We have faced the Didact before, and now, and perhaps ever after. This is combat eternal, enmity unslaked.”
As I said, it can only make sense when applied to post-Halo 4, none of it fits with being 110,000 years ago.
So to answer the OP’s question, I believe that he ended up back at Requiem after falling into the slipspace portal and took a ship to wherever the Great Journey took the other Forerunners.
As said before, it looks to be most likely the Didact talking to Forerunners after his defeat to Humanity.
If you read the “Forerunners composed by Halo Array” thread, my theory makes sense.
I believe the Didact is being interrogated/standing on trial before a council of composed Forerunners.
Its possible the portal led directly to Requiem. But there is the possibility (if the Composer is linked to some kind of digital realm) that it passes through a digital realm. The Didact simply takes the memories from there and into an AI core.
But if the Forerunners were composed, they would be residing in a digital.realm, achieving transcendance as they desired. This portal took the Didact (physically or digitaly) before a council of Forerunners there. Now the Didact attempts to justify his actions, and convince the Forerunners that Humanity must be stopped… the Forerunners must take the Mantle once more.
But either way, the Didact is speaking to a Forerunner council of some sort. Either live Forerunners or digital Forerunners.
I think the portal was meant to transport composed materials back to Requiem. You could see particles from the Composer entering the portal in that one scene before Cortana’s pedestal goes pop. This would explain how a composed human from earth ended up on Requiem in SpOps, at least.
Beween Didact falling into it and the beginning of SpOps is anyone’s guess. Somehow the Didact came into the presence of a body of Forerunner leaders and gave that speech.
Tons of questions regarding this. Who’s controlling the Prometheans in SpOps? Did the Didact give command to Jul in his absence?(If so, does that mean he had time after returning to meet up with Jul again before he was apprehended, or did he travel to wherever the Forerunners are willingly?) Or are they just under a sort of “default” commands, i.e. “Don’t shoot Covies, shoot humans”?
Really hope these are answered soon.
> I think the portal was meant to transport composed materials back to Requiem. You could see particles from the Composer entering the portal in that one scene before Cortana’s pedestal goes pop. This would explain how a composed human from earth ended up on Requiem in SpOps, at least.
>
> Beween Didact falling into it and the beginning of SpOps is anyone’s guess. Somehow the Didact came into the presence of a body of Forerunner leaders and gave that speech.
>
> Tons of questions regarding this. Who’s controlling the Prometheans in SpOps? Did the Didact give command to Jul in his absence?(If so, does that mean he had time after returning to meet up with Jul again before he was apprehended, or did he travel to wherever the Forerunners are willingly?) Or are they just under a sort of “default” commands, i.e. “Don’t shoot Covies, shoot humans”?
>
> Really hope these are answered soon.
I’m pretty sure the Prometheans have a standing alliance with the Covenant.
Why does he have to be talking to anyone? Seems to just to be a ‘bad-guy’ monologue.
When the Composer hits humans, it sucks their ‘data’ into the portal.
When the Didact went through the portal, he was an actual body. I think, if the portal takes stuff back to Requiem, he’d still be in once piece. He may still have his own body.
I do believe that he may be talking to the Forerunners or even the Precursors that escaped the Halo Array firing, sometime after Halo4.
> Why does he have to be talking to anyone? Seems to just to be a ‘bad-guy’ monologue.
Because if it was a monologue to himself would he be using words like “we”, “us” and so on?
Think of my actions as YOU will…
> Why does he have to be talking to anyone? Seems to just to be a ‘bad-guy’ monologue.
Because he’s CLEARLY addressing someone to justify what he’s done. WTF would even lead you to think they’d just stick in a random, pointless soliloquy just to “be a bad guy”? I think they made that one perfectly clear when he composes Ivanoff Station and New Phoenix…
I believe it is the monologue from when he was tried and exiled to requiem , however it’s context fits both situations.
I have thought on this for some time and we clearly get the sense that at least some significant amount of Forerunners believed humans should inherit the Mantle. If this is so and they are still alive , would they have allowed us to be pushed to the brink of extinction , by a species they deemed inferior , and offer no help.
Knowing that it had been the war with Humans that possibly caused them to fail the test for the Mantle , (being weakened by us) , would they have allowed us to be weakened before our test if they could have helped?
I think these questions and the logical answers to them point towards Forerunners being mostly if not completely extinct.
> I believe it is the monologue from when he was tried and exiled to requiem , however it’s context fits both situations.
>
> I have thought on this for some time and we clearly get the sense that at least some significant amount of Forerunners believed humans should inherit the Mantle. If this is so and they are still alive , would they have allowed us to be pushed to the brink of extinction , by a species they deemed inferior , and offer no help.
>
> Knowing that it had been the war with Humans that possibly caused them to fail the test for the Mantle , (being weakened by us) , would they have allowed us to be weakened before our test if they could have helped?
>
> I think these questions and the logical answers to them point towards Forerunners being mostly if not completely extinct.
The data pads as well as a little letter in the limited edition in Halo 4 seem to imply that the forerunners (or well, whoever) DID try their best to avoid human conflict with the covenant, but conflict was still necessary to make humanity stronger. The conflict resulted in the spartan program becoming what it now is, as well as significantly accelerating the speed that humanity discovered the forerunners relics. If it wasn’t for the covenant digging them up, Halo would still be a mystery in the middle of nowhere, the ark would still be quite untouched, onyx would still be nothing more than a planet…we’d be a lot weaker now.
As a result of that war, humanity is now stronger than ever by far. Perhaps not in terms of raw numbers, but pound for pound.
I do not recall him ever being exiled to requeim. I also don’t see why they would have “squandered eons in the darkness” if it wasn’t set post Halo 4.
> I think these questions and the logical answers to them point towards Forerunners being mostly if not completely extinct.
Well we know they aren’t extinct due to the Halo 3 terminals and Encyclopedia.
> > I believe it is the monologue from when he was tried and exiled to requiem , however it’s context fits both situations.
> >
> > I have thought on this for some time and we clearly get the sense that at least some significant amount of Forerunners believed humans should inherit the Mantle. If this is so and they are still alive , would they have allowed us to be pushed to the brink of extinction , by a species they deemed inferior , and offer no help.
> >
> > Knowing that it had been the war with Humans that possibly caused them to fail the test for the Mantle , (being weakened by us) , would they have allowed us to be weakened before our test if they could have helped?
> >
> > I think these questions and the logical answers to them point towards Forerunners being mostly if not completely extinct.
>
> The data pads as well as a little letter in the limited edition in Halo 4 seem to imply that the forerunners (or well, whoever) DID try their best to avoid human conflict with the covenant, but conflict was still necessary to make humanity stronger. The conflict resulted in the spartan program becoming what it now is, as well as significantly accelerating the speed that humanity discovered the forerunners relics. If it wasn’t for the covenant digging them up, Halo would still be a mystery in the middle of nowhere, the ark would still be quite untouched, onyx would still be nothing more than a planet…we’d be a lot weaker now.
>
> As a result of that war, humanity is now stronger than ever by far. Perhaps not in terms of raw numbers, but pound for pound.
>
> I do not recall him ever being exiled to requeim. I also don’t see why they would have “squandered eons in the darkness” if it wasn’t set post Halo 4.
How do we know that those were Forerunner AIs? I always thought they were ONI. Also, could you post a link to the book that came with the Legendary Edition?
The Assembly where human AI’s because they said so in one if the datapads -_-
> > Why does he have to be talking to anyone? Seems to just to be a ‘bad-guy’ monologue.
>
> Because if it was a monologue to himself would he be using words like “we”, “us” and so on?
Hmm, good point. Part of me felt he was using those words sort of like he talking to the player, and because either the Forerunners are not extinct or he considers Forerunners unable to go away, if that makes any sense.
> > Why does he have to be talking to anyone? Seems to just to be a ‘bad-guy’ monologue.
>
> Because he’s CLEARLY addressing someone to justify what he’s done. WTF would even lead you to think they’d just stick in a random, pointless soliloquy just to “be a bad guy”? I think they made that one perfectly clear when he composes Ivanoff Station and New Phoenix…
Woah, calm down. Just because its clear to you doesn’t mean its clear to everybody else. His speech could be interpreted in many different ways, and I shared my opinion. From what I’ve heard 343 has somewhat emphasized on The Didact being a cruel evil villain, which is apparently far from the truth. So it would not be unlikely that 343 would make a monologue for the purpose of making the Didact seem more ‘classic villain.’ (As most classic villains would do monologues) Now thats my opinion, and feel free to debate it. I’m more than happy to have a discussion, not a rage battle.
> Somehow the Didact came into the presence of a body of Forerunner leaders and gave that speech.
I agree, that is the most reasonable explanation as to the origin of his speech. Halo 5 could start with the Didact giving that speech to a board of Forerunners somewhere outside the Orion Arm.
> From what I’ve heard 343 has somewhat emphasized on The Didact being a cruel evil villain, which is apparently far from the truth.
Frankie said he isn’t good nor evil and would have character development in the trilogy.