unforum

[Fenwicked]

Unless I'm mistaken, the war with the Covenant has been going on for several decades, according to the books. I don't remember exact dates, but someone who has read the novels more recently than I will probably come along and provide that info.

I think you do bring up a very valid point for the whole "canon/not canon" debate, which is of course in another thread, but the point was brought up here. The Haloverse is vast enough to allow for many great stories that aren't told by Bungie, or considered official by them, but don't necessarily contradict those parts of the universe that Bungie has seen fit to explicitly describe. Even though these stories may be extraordinary, and fit perfectly well among officially established canon, they are not, in fact, official canon.

[SuperJerms]

About the Earth being the Ark, there seems to be a drawback. What if the Flood got to Earth? I guess when I think of a cataclysmic infection across the universe, it plays out in my head like this...
The flood spread, the Forerunner fight back and try to check the infection. Quickly the flood adapt and start kicking butts. At some point, they decide that they will have to end the universe in order to keep everything from getting killed a la flood. That point would be once Flood reach Earth and Forerunner can no longer repel them? Run into the Ark, press the universal reset button.

About the Ark being a small artifact, I guess there is a drawback there too. If the Ark was an artifact, how would GS or PT know that it was in fact located on Earth? What would keep it from being transported to another planet? Well, it obviously isn't the ILB artifact, now that ILB isn't canon, but it could be a different artifact, I suppose.

Still I think it has to be either a structure (such as a pyramid/ziggurat or the planet itself). Being that a structure would hold fewer people and be easier to defend against flood than the entire planet, my money is still on the Ark being a building.

[archon]

I'd like to echo that I think Halo in the next incarnation (whatever it is, book, game, or whatever) will deal primarily with the Flood. The Covenant is no longer the enemy as the Elites, Hunters, and Grunts will side with humanity if only to save their own collective butts from being fried by the remaining Halos.

This is also why the final scene of Halo 2 showed what it did.

Spoiler for anyone who hasn't finished Halo 2:

Now that the Gravemind has control of High Charity, there will be nothing stopping it and the Flood from simply eating up the rest of the known galaxy, short of the Halos being fired. Once the loser remainder of the Covenant is dealt with (Prohpets, Brutes, Jackals, and Drones), the final problem that all sentient life will have to deal with is that of the Flood invasion.

Maybe Earth, if most of it's orbital defense platforms are saved from the final Covenant battle, could defend itself from the Flood onslaught, but what's to save the rest of the universe?

[ubersaurus]

[Nova]

I don't think the Ark is Earth, I think the Ark landed on Earth and brought humanity with it.

[SuperJerms]

Ooh...that's a good spec, Nova. I like.

[DreamOfTheRood]

Here's my version of the Halo 3 storyline with backstory included.

1) The rest of the Covenant fleet is headed toward Earth, and Master Chief has to stop them. That means taking out the Prophet and stoping the invasion.
2) The Arbiter will also join in this halt of the Covenant fleet and try to bring everybody together.
3) We know from a few scenes in Halo 2 that the Flood can control Covenant technology to a certain degree. If Gravemind could harness that power, it would be catastrophic for all life. So, I think we'll see some Flood make it to Earth. Master Chief will have to put a stop to that, and then he'll have to finish Gravemind back on that creepy Halo thingy.

[Gemini]

[Foz]

[Oecumenix]

Don't Flood hosts have to be 'intelligent'? Since the Forerunners 'wiped themselves out' (paraphrasing from various in-game quotes), but humans are clearly in some way descended from them, could the Forerunners have attempted to perserve some form of themselves as an 'unintelligent' species on the Ark (like cro-magnon man, or something) which later evolved into humans?

I still think it's more likely that a small number of Forerunner would have 'survived to reproduce', though.

The Gravemind being created by the Forerunners ('my creators activated this ring') doesn't quite seem to fit with 343GS's previous assertion that the halo installation was built to 'study and contain' the Flood. Why would they need to study them, if they created them in the first place? Maybe the Forerunners created only the Gravemind; they may have mutated the Flood they had already come into contact with, or they created him first, and the other flood forms were developed by the Gravemind without the forerunners' consent or knowledge. Someone *other* than the Forerunners creating the Gravemind and activating Halo seems unlikely since only Reclaimers can use the Index.

..Unless the Flood were created by one faction of Forerunners, and a different faction built the Halo rings as a countermeasure (explaining why they needed to study them), after the Gravemind project failed to control the Flood as hoped.

Feh. Just trying some different spec.

PS I took the Heisenburg quote by <whichever Bungie guy it came from> to mean: if you keep on speculating on the plot and you guess what we were going to do, we'll likely change it.

[ubersaurus]

As far as I know, the Flood merely need something of sufficient biomass, with a central nervous system and calcium to sustain them. I'm pretty sure that as a result, the Hunters are immune to the flood, and thus, in the event of a Halo firing, would probably survive.

[Grifter_7]

IGN posted a good little rumor....

[INCyr]

Wow. Yeah, that'll wreck sony some damage.

As much as I'd love to stay behind Sony (there's a long history there), I think I may end up switching over to the XBox as my main console with the next gen consoles. As it is, my PS2 gets little love these days. Hell, if not for the GT series and MGS, I'd probably have abandoned it already. (Okay, the FF series deserves some credit as well...)

[drseuss90]

[thunderclap8]

if it weren't for the fact that the DDR pads I invested in are Playstation only, the Xbox would be it for me as well. Instead I've got some serious decision making to do.