What could be much worse than the flood? What did the forerunners do to create more dangerous living things? And now is going to be alot scarier in the next game or dlc.
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According to guilty spark in the halo cea terminals he said humans might almost prefer the flood to didact and the prometheans, the flood terrorised me as a child more than some digi pet ever will.
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From what I can gather they were unaffected by the firing of the halo rings, which is why the Prometheans feared them, and therefore tricked and imprisoned them.
They might turn out to be quite nice actually and I can understand why the Harbinger was a bit angry
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Right?? I still remember rushing to turn off my xbox the first time I saw that damn cutscene on 343 Guilty Spark lmao
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nothing will ever beat how powerful the flood was during the forerunner flood war, 343 is just trying to pull something out of their a** because having the flood in the game would most likely bump it up to an M rating and they can’t have that, even though parents buy their 9-10 year olds call of duty every year
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The endless may be a low-key race, and its combat effectiveness is not very strong.
Chak’lok.said"My kind would once have called it divine." (about The Harbinger)They had contact with the elite who were still primitive creatures.
And controlling time may be a very dangerous ability.This is why the forerunners wanted to imprison them.
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That worse than the flood line is kinda silly because the flood is the only species in all of fiction that would probably thrive in the Warhammer 40k universe.
Honestly if they manage to introduce a faction that’s worse than the flood then they better come up with a damn good way of defeating them because I already kinda think the Flood is borderline too powerful to actually be defeated
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I think when they say they are worse than the flood - they don’t mean by how vicious or cunning they are, but because they had the means to avoid being wiped out by the power of the rings, and that they still have that knowledge now.
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I really wish 343 would stop with the “Ancient evil” plotline. It failed miserably with Prometheans. And stop downplaying the flood. Just because your narrative says this new enemy is worse than the flood, doesn’t make it so. It will only proceed to be an iteration of the same concept. Like brining the emperor back. Just enough. So exhausting.
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Yeah the Endless had better be Precursors or have mastery over time. Because that’s some big talk for a few floating squids who don’t even have their own guns. The Didact at least got to Earth and took out a city.
You’re walking around with the face that burnt a thousand worlds. We’ve really not seen anything to suggest the Endless or the Banished have done all that much impressive.
If they’re just squid babies with pew pew guns I am struggling to get why Cortana would see them as more dangerous than the Flood. Considering she rules the Galaxy with an army of planet killing Guardians you’d assume they’d need to be more dangerous than she was.
In fact, really, yeah they have to have some technology or ability that completely changes the game. If it’s just, oh wait, we’re immune to Halo; let’s fire it to cleanse the galaxy. 
Yeeaah, I don’t know about it… The Flood was pretty bad, and we’ve seen nothing to indicate that the Endless are anywhere near close, nevermind worse beyond being told that they are. Without more information, it sounds silly – just escalating the stakes without earning it.
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“One single flood spore can destroy an entire species”
Was the Harbinger able to destroy an entire species?
Consider what the Flood was able to do:
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They possess all the knowledge of the Precursors and every absorbed mind.
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They can corrupt the minds of Organics and Artifical minds up to a Contender Class AI.
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They destroyed the Forerunners forcing them to destroy the Galaxy. Those Guardians Cortana conquered the Galaxy with are supposed to have been near useless against the Parasite.
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They, in a matter of days overran most of the Covenant army that had destroyed Reach when led by one of their finest commanders.
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They destroy High Charity, effectively bringing the death of the Covenant.
These are impressive achievements. The only time the Flood were outright beaten was by the Banished and that’s only because they didn’t have a true Gravemind and used the Arks defences to lock them back down. Every other time they had to resort to blowing up the installation they were on.
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I think some of you trying to power scale this issue when it doesn’t need to be. The Flood will always be the true terror of Halo, but here is something the Forerunners one true weapon against them feel short against. They had been uncataloged. They represented an unknown variable to their plan and their plan was paramount. Looks what a few San Shyuum were able to do with the lucky break of access to a Dreadnought. If the Endless were to ever get off their world they’d be able to undo everything the Forerunners set up to do.
Does that make them “worse than the Flood”? Maybe, but a little hyperbole is no stranger in Halo.
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Exactly. It just doesn’t make sense – especially when we’ve been given no indication or information on how they could possibly be worse. On-par would be a push, but worse? I really can’t see how.
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In this case it can be a worse in the moral sense not in the world ending one. A spieces that would destroy everything the forerunners stood for just by existing. Proving that the forerunners where wrong and did everything for not.
All it would take is one sapient species that is immune to the flood to crash the forerunners house of lies. OR a species created by the Precursors that shows the forerunners where wrong.
Either of those would be an existential threat to the forerunners so that they see it as worse then the flood even if the threat isn’t actually worse.
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I am more curious about why Cortana would have wanted to release the Endless. To kill them? Did they have something she needed? She already controlled the Galaxy and won so what else would there have been? They mention that Atriox learnt something on the Ark as well. 
Initially I thought they were being a little misleading as they discuss releasing “the punished” as opposed to the Endless. Perhaps referring to Offensive Or Mendicant where YES they are more dangerous than the Flood. In context it has to be the Endless though since this is what follows on is the Endless and the way the Skimmers show up.
Also how would Cortana have learned of this? Despondent knows Cortana is in the Domain so she can’t have been surprised by that. Did the Warden know something? Did the Gravemind?
I think the “more dangerous than the Flood” being followed with the Skimmers is a little bit of a misstep. What’s more dangerous than the Flood? Not them.
well i think people are missing the obvious. If the race is immune to the halo ring activating, then what if a flood infects said race and gains there immunity? You now have a flood that is immune to halo rings, and thus the race is more scary in what its effect of just existing can cause.
there is also the little hints about how the endless seem to have some control of time travel, which could be use in many dangerous ways.
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So There is only one way in truth that the Harbinger, endless, ext., Yatta, Yatta… can be worse than the flood… That is if it becomes it. During halo 2 the Gravemind says “Now I shall talk, and you shall listen”.
In the audio logs in infinite that same line is repeated to a marine by the harbinger. Given Zeta Halo’s history with born stellar and the primordial my loose theory would be is if the harbinger is a devolved form of the precursors along with the endless. The reason I bring this up is the Didact did in fact devolve space fairing humans back to primitives. During the final battle in infinite the Harbinger said they changed her. However, If the forerunners devolved the precursors and sent them back in time if that’s what the silent auditorium is believed to be capable of time this would most likely set off the events that started the forerunners betrayal of the precursors and thus in time caused the flood. Cortana would know this for 2 reasons logic plagues origins and the fate of medicant bias (the last terminal from halo 3). The only reason I bring this up is since at the end of infinite the pilot said we had been gone for three days and when it shows the epilogue it gives a time stamp predating the firing of the halo arrays with Atriox in it. The video is time stamped 97,368 BCE. Around 100,000 BCE is when Zeta was used by the Master builder to squash the rebellion of the San Shiyum. Its between this time and the end of the Human- forerunner war that the Primordial is discovered. For those who never understood what the domain was, it is a digital neural network created by the precursors. Atriox may of not been who the Harbinger was talking to. But rather the primordial from the past that would become the gravemind. As we all know 1 spore can wipe out an entire species so naturally the forerunners save a sample. If Halo 4 is to be believed Chief’s gene song to fight the composer was that of born Stellar and thus the game would come full circle with the Gravemind stating " A father’s sin must be cast down to his son". The reason this is important is that the second set of Halos were made by Born Stellars father.
Naturally Forerunners want to control the mantle as the alpha but realize they’re second notch. secretly start genocide and use the technology they have to devolve precursors into the endless and incarcerate them into time stasis. With the arrival of Atriox they are freed and thus the genocide is made more aware with the current precursors at the time delving off into deep space to become the flood (choice or not) while being hunted to extinction. So great everyone… We might get stuck with a time traveling paradox. Hope this isn’t where the plot is going but I’ve said that since halo 4.
As for Atriox, given what Cortana did to his home world I would guess that he is trying to undo its destructions or follow through with the decimation of humanity. Second theory: he is the first to be incorporated into the Gravemind. Not due to what he says but the way he talks and his anger towards humanity and the forerunners. If you found out that your species was destined to die due to historical parallels you would be angry with those that caused the original issue. Granted this last theory is not supported by anything other than him being on zeta around the time Medicant bias may have taken off with it to assault the ark.
That is a really good point
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A race that is not effected by the flood nor to the firing of the rings. They might possibly have some time related powers but that is just my guess. Just the thought of a race that could gain control and fire the rings with no effect on them is pretty dangerous.
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