I think it would have been badass and mind-blowing to have the Didact's crypt open up and you're about to see a forerunner for the first time; and it's an ancient human. 🤯
they wouldnt even have to look that human, 343 could have kept the design they were going for with the didact because humans would have evolved over time anyway.
I MUCH prefer the idea that the Forerunners were ancient humans. IMO, it makes more sense why humans would be able to activate Forerunner technology, and it's a beautiful irony that the covenant were unknowingly worshiping the very enemy they called vermin and unworthy. Also, I love the idea that ancient humans wiped themselves out using a technology they created... it shows we haven't changed very much.
The prophets knew, that is the whole reason they wanted humans killed. All the power they have through their religion would be lost to the humans and they didn't want that.
I actually still believe that humans are descendants of forerunners, in fact I think they’re genetically modified forerunners that were created for the purpose to take on the mantle of responsibility and to pave a way for forerunners to get back into power. The librarian mentions that humanity is the culmination of a thousand lifetimes of planning. Why would the forerunners be planning something for humanity if the forerunners want to inherit the mantle of responsibility? Unless humans are actually forerunners then this would make sense. On top of that the gravemind says “Child of my enemy, why have you come?” Clearly this is the primordial talking about humanity, not the forerunners, because if he was then he’ll say my enemy instead of child of my enemy. We also have a bunch of lines from guilty spark alluding to humanity being forerunner, also in halo infinite (spoilers) The harbinger mentions that the forerunners lies are to come to an end. This might be referring to forerunners saying that humanity are not forerunners but created by the precursors when in fact humanity might be the product of the forerunner’s plan.
It also explains so much why modern humans would be Reclaimers, and that the Prophet of Truth discovers this fact, that Forerunners were in fact ancient humans, thus explaining the genocidal campaign against modern humanity.
Interesting points. But I also like the idea of the Forerunners as being a similar species that felt Humans should take up the Mantle, thus calling them Reclaimers.
I used to be under the impression that they KNEW that humans were connected to the Forerunners. I thought the Covenant believed that humans were like a primitive race of the Forerunners that were too savage and unworthy to go on the Great Journey, and were thus left behind. "Your forefathers wisely set aside their compassion. Steeled themselves for what needed to be done. I see now why they left you behind. You were weak... and gods must be strong." People don't give the Covenant religion enough credit. They only believed that the Forerunners were gods because they used to rings to "ascend" (had this been Stargate, the Covenant would have literally been correct about everything). That would have explained why they believed that the gods demanded mankind's destruction. We were basically an affront to the achieved godhood of the other Forerunners. Unworthy, dumb and primitive, nothing like the Forerunner gods who watched everything from a higher plane of existance. I always thought that in their propaganda/beliefs, they viewed humans as literal demons (hence why they use those terms). They thought we were evil, degenerate, inbred abominations of what the Forerunners used to be. Humanity was basically seen as Lucifer and Co. Forerunners became literal gods, and we're barely smart enough to travel space. It all made sense. I still hold that the new lore is garbage. The idea that a single Forerunner (Librarian) just decided on a whim that "meh, humans are cooler, ima exterminate my own species without asking anyone else or some shit".... is so dumb. Just what the lore needed, a Halsey 2.0. Another Mary Sue "mastermind" that can do no wrong (and even when they do wrong, it's right).
@@The_Moe_Szyslak_Exp_feat_Homer no the forerunners after firing the halo array completely abandoned the milky way and went into exile in the void between galaxies. The librarian just chose humanity as the inheritors of her people's legacy and the mantel of responsibility. There could be forerunners out in other parts of the universe as that was what the great journey actually was
The "Forerunners were humans" angle was always so much more interesting to me than the "Star Trek-style aliens who look like humans and act like humans and might as well be human but they're not actually human because aliens."
Yeah that would have been fascinating to explore and could have been halo 4's big plot twist moment, which for the first time in a halo game was missing. Humans and Forerunners being seeded sibling species is pretty cool tho. 343 just needs to portray it outside of the novels
@@proudiofficial yep, chakas...even at first, he was referred as monitor chakas by the isodidact before his memories were compartmentalized and renamed as 343 guilty spark...
Well, I like many lore lovers, thought that the forerunner were humanity's ancestors. Or at the very least, look really identical to humans minus the hair color.
Regardless of what road you prefer or would have preferred, THIS is a strong example of why I personally think it's important to nail down worldbuilding sooner rather than later.
I think it's better if it's never said one way or the other. the mystery is a big reason why CE worked. we don't know who built this place, but they seemed to know who we are... all we can really do is wonder why.
@@marktulo yeah we don't need sequels though. I was perfectly content with halo 3 being what it said it was: the conclusion. Reach and ODST were fine spinoffs but we didn't need anything else. Halo 4 should have just been a new sci fi game that was a spiritual successor to Halo... like how Halo was to Marathon.
@Paul Thomas exactly. With almost no adjustment to the plot, just removing it from the halo universe as a franchise, the game becomes infinitely more tolerable. An aging veteran lost in space during the last days of a war between humans and a fanatical alien empire re-awakens to find his ship being tossed over by alien space pirates, made up of the species from the war. His old AI assistant is suffering from decay, and he needs to find a way home. They end up being sucked into a Dyson planet, discover an ancient, and the last of his kind, who is disgusted by humanity for not surrendering to him like the pirate species did, and swears vengeance. Meanwhile a giant human battleship shows up to deal with the pirates in the region, gets caught up in this whole plot, and some of its crew hate our protagonist, seeing him as a symbol of an older way of human life, one that used to weapons to suppress its people just as much as save them. In this version the writers wouldn't be afraid to make the chiefs cold calculated approach appear like the result of decades of military training. Chief wouldn't need to be the badass savior of humanity after 3 successful games. They could actually explore how he was made to kill humans and suppress them, and only due to a much bigger threat emerging, did he rise to save the people he previously kept down. They'd be able to actually do something with the plot idea that only appeared briefly and seemed anachronistic. Was chief just a tool for weapon? Was he less human than his AI companion? Was the companion more human than he was? Get rid of the elements sacred to the franchise, and you may have to spend another 2 years developing the story, but you could have made a new game that changed the way video games looked and felt, but that would cost money and time, and a halo game was a sure-fire success, so why bother? They could used halo 5s formula for a sequel to much greater effect. It made no sense to casual players like myself that Spartans were hunting another spartan for seemingly no reason, and it was so obvious chief would "win" and so I didnt buy the game. Had halo 4 had a different name, with a slightly different plot, I would have been interested in seeing a sci fi Rambo-esque story. Also this likley would have stopped my least favorite part of the halo community from forming: the people who act like the artistically designed vehicles and tech is "realistic" and modern militaries should use it as a blueprint, and act like mjolnir suits are only a few years away from being developed.
@@Robb1977 Yeah agreed. I think 1-3 was an amazing trilogy in it's own right, and the ending was very satisfying. Meanwhile 4-6 kinda feels a bit like an unneeded disjointed mess.
I like both directions, so I don’t mind the retcon. However, the reason why I lean a little more towards the ”Ancient Humans were Forerunners” concept is because of the Covenant. For some reason, I really love the idea of the Convenant worshipping the Forerunners, not knowing they’re at war with them. Something about that irony makes that direction a bit more appealling
I think it’s cooler irony sake but doing that all of the awesome lore from the past. All life coming from the precursors and having humans and forerunners. The Human Forerunner war and human flood war and Forerunner flood war and precursor forerunner war. I’m a sucker for all of the past lore
Buddy, the Diadict and Librerian is pretty much human by all human standards... According with astrobiology, the chances of an alien species resemble so much with humans like the forerunners do, are very low, bellow several zeros, in the same galaxy them, the only good explanation would be a common ancestral They look like aliens to us, because we never saw humans like them before, but they aren't aliens at all.
The fact that Humans were Forerunners used to be the reason the covenant went to war with humanity. Here the covenant is, worshiping these dead gods from hundreds of thousands of years ago, only to learn from a forerunner AI that they’re still alive and are now lesser in terms of technology to the covenant. The entire religion was founded on a misunderstanding of what the Forerunners were, making humanity’s very existence what proves the covenant religion to be false. The prophets even knew about this, that’s why they never invited humanity to join. Now the covenant is at war with humanity because... reasons.
I don’t like the direction Halo 4 went with. At the end of Halo 3, I had more of a sense that the forerunner’s chose humanity to be their successors, which would still throw a wrench into the covenant faith without being ridiculous
In an old storyboard for the original Halo 2 ending, a human skeleton is come across in a Forerunner tomb, so they did have Human Forerunners on the mind back then.
They also had Human forerunners directly depicted in the Halo mmo in development from 2004-2007. Which was cancelled only, at most, 7 months from Halo 3 going gold.
Are you kidding me? Dude it wasn't just a thought. IT WAS CANON. Theres so much things suggesting forerunners were human. 343i changed it. I don't know why everyone in this comment section is pretending like the forerunners being humans was only an idea. 343 guilty spark literally says "You ARE forerunner" to the chief and in the books the reason why the human covenant war even happened was because they found out humans are forerunners.
@@LordVader1094 what do you mean Halo 3 screwed things up? Dude in Halo 3 it's confirmed that forerunners are human. Not in some random terminal made by the guy that even made the retcon in the first place no, it's directly in a cutscene. "You are Forerunner!"
Only Frank O'Connor thought forerunners weren't humans, because the terminals that contradict the old lore were written by him. The terminals that weren't written by him, follow the idea that humans were forerunners
@@Singlemethod4217 No, Halo 2's original ending was going to even more directly confirm humans as Forerunners by having a human skeleton in a Forerunner tomb.
@@LordVader1094 I said story boarding/planning. The idea was there in their minds back in Halo 2, and then they pursued it further in Halo 3 and then Halo 4 cemented that fact.
The comic iris, the terminals, and all pieces of media depicting forerunners as a seperate species, were created by frank oconnor. He was community manager at Bungie and for some reason was given free reign to create those medias. He decided to not do any research and made his own story through those medias. He compromised bungie’s collective vision everyone was working together on and muddied the story. Then he got promoted to the leader of 343, and so took all his characters and story ideas he made, and retconned bungie’s lore to fit his.
When you look at human interaction with Forerunner artifacts, it makes complete sense. In the novel 'The Flood' it describes the chief instinctively tapping the correct control sequence for the light bridge, much to Cortana's surprise. There was a genetic memory & compatibility. Retconning humanity to 'Inheritors' was rather confusing imo.
It wasn’t just confusing, it sort of broke the story. It was the way it was so badly implemented. Halo 1 to 3 were very solid stories with good plots, easy to follow because they made sense. The games set up a premise, and then totally switched on it without warning or explanation. It threw me off completely and made Halo 4 and 5 confusing as hell.
@@Green-cactus. In a gaming franchise to a gaming studio that created the universe we are talking abt, I think it's safe to say games take way more priority over the books.
The Halo 3 terminals were written by Frank O'Connor - the same guy that's responsible for the massive changes in the 343 continuity. It's safe to say most if not all of Bungie, minus Frank, were on the same page given the multiple confirmations in Halo 3. Frank just couldn't keep his headcannon out of the terminals. Halo 3's terminals don't make sense in the context of the game they're in. Spark says Chief is a Child of his Creators and a Forerunner because Humans are descendants of the Forerunners.
Even the monitors are not consistent. The ones that treat humanity as separate were made by Frank. The others were not and do not treat humans as separate from Forerunners.
Thankfully, I ignored them when I was 13 years-old. Adding more aliens really makes the story less interesting: it's one of the most contrived methods to tell a story and drives all wonder out of it.
I think a cutscene where it is explicitly stated humans _are_ forerunner takes precedent over 1 comic and some allusions in the terminals. I'm thinking about writing an outline/retcon thing of what I think H4 and beyond should have been, adapted from 343's existing material.
Is there a decent source of lore from the older lore only? Stuff like the Humans being forerunners and not mentioning the bs introduced in reach and such
Most of The halo 3 terminals actually pointed to humans being forerunner the only terminals that contradicted this was the one that was made by frank O’Connor who later became a major producer in 343 which is probably how the forerunner went from Humans to there own race
@@junfourThe Librarian terminals in H3 were the first and only pieces of law in the Bungie universe that implied Forerunners and Humans to be separate specifies, and both were personally confirmed to be written by Frank O’Connor himself.
@junfour basically it’s those 6 librarian+Didact terminals which Frank O’Connor some how doesn’t understand those were job titles not names and there were multiple of them but basically it puts forth this idea that humans were found in the last few years of the Forerunner Flood war who coincidentally evolved to be Forerunner and that the Precursors were basically the og humanity before the Forerunners and the sequence of events in them don’t make a lick of sense even beyond that, C3 Sabertooth explains this in his video on this
@@ZSTE fortunately iris and the Terminals never outright say humans and forerunners are seperate species. He didn't say much but there was a post on neogaf of someone trying to explain that the terminals were what retconned the Forerunners, and Frankie himself responded with a "well, there were actually many directions thought of for post-halo 3" and he wrote them. I think he was implying he was not necessarily implying humans aren't forerunner at least in those terminals like people think.
Not entirely; Jason Jones wrote the spine while Joe Staten sowed the flesh. Remember: Jason Jones cowrote Marathon's story with Greg Kirkpatrick, and the lore is almost Halo-like.
"birth right from an ancient civilisation" -Halsey Halo - reach "you are forerunner ! but this ring is mine" -guilty spark - Halo 3 "child of my enemy, why have you come? I offer no forgiveness... a father's sins, passed to his son" -gravemind - Halo 3 "I have walked among man and angel for three thousand years" -Mendi kit bias - Halo 2 "Your forefathers wisely set aside their compassion.. steeled themselves for what needed to be done. I see now why they left you behind. You were weak... and gods must be strong." -Prophet of truth -Halo 3 Humans are very forerunner and it only changed due to Frank O Connor who changed that detail in halo 4 and was the only one against the original story that was made by Joseph Staten @@OmegaF77
Its really hard to top the delicious irony of the Covenant literally declaring a holy war on their gods. It also was fun to kind of try and divine it back in the earliest days when you realize that the smaller corridors on Halo have halls, doorways and control panels all sized for a human rather than say a Grunt or Elite.
Sounds like they had this one guy, Frank O’Connor, who wanted the the lore to be one way while the rest of development was going another. And that one guy not only didn’t have the restraint to keep his headcannon out of what was actually being done, went on to preside over the awful worldbuilding that mars the 343 Halo games, which in turn really explains their lack of restraint. Got it. Really wish he’d kept it the way it was because Humans being Forerunners was way better and doesn’t create a plethora of plot holes
@@Arander92 This is a lie. W a tch C3Sabertooth's since you cle-a-ry h-a-ve no ide a wh-a-t you're t-a-lking a-bout. Added the hashed because RUclips keeps delisting my reply.
@@Arander92 when Frank O'Connor is working at bungie, its simply impossible to tell what he worked on. nope, no way to do it. In fact, everything that Bungie did was really done by a hivemind of 7, that had time to carefully consider each and every part in conjunction and in isolation. So really, when Frank was in Bungie, he wasn't even acting under his own will.
@C3 Sabertooth actually did an amazing job explaining the real lore about the Forerunner lore... and how Frank O'Connor (originally just a Bungie Forum community supervisor) actually critically messed up the Forerunner lore.
This, most of the Bungie era lore inconsistencies can be traced back to Frank, a former gaming journalist Bungie hired to write weekly updates on their website, who Bonnie Ross made her second in command when she was forming 343i.
Why do people alwaya use the terminal to say humans arn't forerunner. Frank o'conner was not on the story team. Just a content manager. Literally just wrote some text logs. Clearly got it wrong. Imma go sith the the 95% of the content written by the narrative team rather than a text log written by a content manager.
This is all because of Frank O'Connor, not Halo 3, he didn't know what he was writing, he doesn't even know how to summarize Halo in general. Frank O'Connor is the reason it's all like this.
Frank O’Connor is the explanation for this shift. He wrote those terminals and directed Halo 4. He completely F’d up the franchise and deserves a good bit of the hest that 343 has received.
@@DigiNiverg you better trust this guy. he read a wiki once. he knows better than us plebs who read the books and played the games and watched interviews with the original team.
There was ironically a "great schism" going on at bungie during halo 3's development, on one side those sticking to the lore as it was with humans and foreunners being one and the same, and the other side being those enamored with the concepts and ideas brainstormed with peter jackson prior to the halo movie cancellation (eventually reworked into district 9 before 343 went full steam ahead with the same ideas)
Gonna need a source on this. David Candland/Evil Otto worked on all Bungie Halos and never heard of an alternative to Forerunners being humans until reading the halo 4 books
@@Sam-gs2wq there are old articles and video interviews about this online. I consumed them when they came out but you should be able to find them on google
Can anybody provide a source for this beyond "trust me bro, I watched these interviews a decade ago?" It's something I'm genuinely interested in but I haven't managed to find the correct interview(s?) yet. Is it maybe one of the H3 Vidocs?
@@sweetschmeat7417 The only real concrete evidence is the fact that Frank O'Connor wrote the Halo 3 terminals and heavily influenced Halo 4's story. Besides him I literally can't think of anyone else that thought humans were different, everyone else actually writing the story for the games were on the same page until the 343 nonsense
The book Point of Light un-recons the notion that humans and forerunner are not the same. Spoilers beyond this sentence: Forerunners have 3 rates.. warrior servants, builders, and life workers, but a link was discovered to a fourth "theoretical" rate.. philosophers. Those are ancient humans. So the Precursors made one race that could evolve into four rates. one of them became an offshoot of the main branch, and their origins were forgotten.
"birth right from an ancient civilisation" -Halsey Halo - reach "you are forerunner ! but this ring is mine" -guilty spark - Halo 3 "child of my enemy, why have you come? I offer no forgiveness... a father's sins, passed to his son" -gravemind - Halo 3 "I have walked among man and angel for three thousand years" -Mendi kit bias - Halo 2 "Your forefathers wisely set aside their compassion.. steeled themselves for what needed to be done. I see now why they left you behind. You were weak... and gods must be strong." -Prophet of truth -Halo 3 Humans are very forerunner and it only changed due to Frank O Connor who changed that detail in halo 4 and was the only one against the original story that was made by Joseph Staten@@TK503
it seems most people are in agreement that regardless of weather or not it's a retcon or when it started, it's much more interesting and narratively poetic for the Forerunners to be Ancient Humans
Iris and the H3 terminals were written by Frank O’Conner. You know, the guy that made the following games? When 343 was founded and Frank was in charge he took his idea and ran with it. Edit: Frank was not in a leadership position at all during his time at Bungie and there are literally a hundred examples of Bungie alluding to humans being Forerunner and exactly 2 where there is not. Both of which came from Frank.
@@DigiNiverg uh huh and Frank made a dogwater call putting that lore in, bungie also fumbled the brute design and 343, like with the forerunners, made them too even worse lol
This honestly makes more sense. Forerunners are known to have made alterations to themselves. After hundreds of thousands of years, those alterations could result in what we see as Forerunners now. For all we know, the Forerunners could have been Humans that defected and started their own society much like we see in the fight between the UNSC and the Rebels.
Yup it is possible Precursors only created a one species which became two. Perhaps Forerunners changed more from the original creation and thus Precursors liked humans more.
Guys, in astrobiology, the forerunners are literally humans! The chances of an species look so much as humans like the forerunners are so low, that the only explanation would be a common ancestral, even the brutes are basically humans. The notable differences that we see in those species are more similar with skin tones than anything else.
@@efxnews4776 Well no because the forerunners and humans aren’t entirely products of random evolution. They are designs of the precursors. So that’s why they’re so similar, both are designed.
Right. I honesty liked how we never knew what they looked like. Now the only mystery left in the Halo universe is the one of the precursors and idk if I even want that answered. I do but I don’t. If they ever do answer it, it’ll have to be the amongst the last of the stories told in the halo universe
Cus 343 has no actual vision for halo besides money. Like, making the forerunners look like weird fish people is one of the least egregious things they did with them.
To give them their own identity, I don't know why y'all crying about such little things as if it's the end of the world. I like the fact that humans are made to be more of their own as they're the real chosen ones of the halo universe. To have the humans descend from the forerunners in the original concept is less-interesting as it spits out ill-irony: Because then that means back then they were only highly superior advanced race in the galaxy. Which means back then they were probably huge a-holes to other species in the past like exactly like how the covenant empire is to mankind in 26th century. And they'll have to be the same exact race that gave the middle-finger to the precursors, who the latter just handed them the mantle out of respect because they're suppose to be responsible. So all in all in the official story: It's cool that the relationship between humans and forerunners are like siblings, And that the Precursors is like the father of them all because they're the ones who created the universe.
During The Maw, 343 Guilty Spark is fascinated by human history and wants to archive it and study it. I forgot how he worded it, but he expressed his fascination in such a way, it was actually as if humanity were the forerunners
343 guilty spark was insane throughout the original trilogy. Even without 343 lore it's obvious. But he is also an ancient human composed and put into a monitor so him calling human history "our lost history" could mean he's speaking about ancient humanity in relation to modern humanity
@Riorozen except it is canon. 343 guilty spark being a composed human actually explains his erratic behavior. Also bungie changed their minds on a lot throughout halo's development I mean the flood was originally gonna be a covenant bioweapon let lose.
Also, in the cut content for Halo 2 (which was supposed to contain many Halo 3 elements) the Arbiter would find a sealed forerunner tomb on the ark, and guilty spark would open it for him to reveal that the Forerunners ARE humans, but I guess they ran out of time and by the time they hit that plot point in Halo 3, they decided maybe Forerunners were a different species.
The Halo mmo in development from 2004-2007 had Human forerunners, it would have been cancelled ~at most~ 7 months before Halo 3 was finished, and probably less
The whole point of the video is to show that there was no "they" deciding things during Halo 3's development. The fact that Spark explicitly states that humans are Forerunners in that game, yet simultaneously you have other media stating otherwise shows that there was some sort of schism between the lead devs at Bungie.
Little theory: What if forerunners and ancient humans originated from the exact same species as when the precursors created them, but over time they split genetically via evolution and essentially formed into their own species, I mean the change would take millions of years and we know that the forerunners are at least 10 million years old. That would explain how the humans can still use forerunner tech even though they're not really forerunner.
the books explain this the forerunners allowed the humans to access there technology as they were next to hold the mantle and they would be the "reclaimers" of the mantle.
@@donovanhendrix9857 yeah my bad,after reading back that makes sense. Though the possibility that they were both very similar genetically could still be evidence of them being the same species first
I like installation 00's take on this, he theorizes that humans and forerunners are related, we are just split down slightly different evolutionary paths. He also thinks that some of the old structures we encounter in halo 2 are actually ancient human structures, they are just displayed like museum pieces and also studied
@@Bastion70 or the forerunners made humanity to inherit the mantle as part of their plan because the precursors weren’t happy with the forerunners, on top of that theres a lot of hints in halo infinite that the forerunners are hiding a truth that they absolutely don’t want to be known.
@@ChaosWolfNinja and it wouod be the biggest plot twist for the covenant when they find out the Gods they worshipped this whole time are the ancestors to the "Demons!" they keep trying to kill
Humans being the literal descendants of the Forerunners makes so much sense and is a much better twist than what they went with. Things got really complicated when they started building on the lore for the Forerunners and their history with ancient humanity, almost needlessly.
I prefer the human's being forerunner personally. The ancient humans being made different than FR's made humans just budget forerunners anyway, and having FR's be aliens that look really similar to humans just felt pointless, that and the hole cast system think suck all the intrest out of it for me. It would have been poetic for the covenant to be killing the vary "gods" they worshiped. Be it bungie or 343 I feel the dissison was a flaw of not nailing down world building.
I mean, it was fine with humans just being the reclaimers/inheritors of the forerunner legacy. Made much more sense narratively. But then Halo 4 just swings too far by making both technically true and it’s just....meh
@@yueshijoorya601 And so is an alien species giving up its role as harbingers or shepherds of the Galaxy to Humans. Ancient Humans was a better idea, and a bit more novel at the time.
@@argo9721 Summation: Joseph kept things vague which made us speculate and think on what was, offering mysticism and intrigue. Frank made finite, definitive, officiating the nature of the forerunners, instead of leaving it to interpretation and wonderment.
@@MegamanZero410 Argo doesn't like using his brain. Needs everything spelled out for him. Like literally, because of the piss-poor books that 343i pushes out lately.
The human forerunner connection was formly established in the finale Level of CE. 343 Says that the data he collected from the pillar of autumn was a record of all their lost time. Human History is forerunner history. That retcon always will bother me.
That is true, though it still fits post retcon with the reveal in the Greg Bear books that Spark used to be an ancient human himself, who was turned into a monitor AI in an attempt to save his life. So post retcon, it could refer to Spark vaguely remembering he used to be human and wanted to learn how his species had grown back on Earth in 100, 000 years.
but not really, because that still stands. the humans were around back then anyway, and there history was lost. And it was saved by the librarian in forerunner records.
@@skebaba918The precursors didn't design the Forerunners or Humans, though. They more or less just provided the essential elements and conditions to make the phenomenon we call "life" possible. It's also important to remember that they do not abide by our time table in any way at all, as they can move faster than light and therefore can move back and forth through time at will. The precursors came from a different galaxy so the truth about the existence of the precursors outside of the Galaxy is up for speculation. In my opinion, I dont think they're really extinct. I honestly think they just like watching things unfold for their own entertainment lol
@@BigSnakey2 Considering the precursors are benevolent and pacifist by nature (they outright refused to fight the Forerunners, even when they were being killed off by them). As such, I don't think any Precursors outside the Milky Way are even aware of what's going on in the Milky Way, and if they are, they're completely avoiding it.
@@Practitioner_of_Diogenes I think that with their ability to communicate telepathically, any surviving precursors 100% know or knew what happened to their "relatives" in the Milky Way Galaxy. Interesting to think about for sure.
I really found it much more interesting that we were descendants of the forerunners rather than them being separate. It made it feel even more mysterious, making me wonder "what were we like? why this form now and not the original forerunner form?" It felt like we were orphanized longing for our parents and it felt like there was a much deeper connection due to that
Technically that still exists ancient humans were still there and those same questions can still be raised. I don't see anything really lost more gained now that we have two highly advance races that will have more depth as separate instead of together.
@@dr.catherineelizabethhalse1820 how is it cliched? It seems we got a really got amount of lore and world building that everyone agrees make halo better. Even then the Precursors did make the humans and forerunners so they are related.
@@Knight1029 Well it’s pretty common trope that human actually are the ancient powerfu race. The current story direction has allowed more complex and interesting story in my opinion.
@@dr.catherineelizabethhalse1820 wait. I think I may have misunderstood what you were saying. Do you think it is better that humans and Forerunners are separated or that they should have been the same. Cause I like that they are separated it is more interesting.
Also, it's much easier to make the Halo 3 terminals fit that narrative rather than to fit everything that came before into the new narrative. If you take just the Bungie games as canon, it's straight forward to conclude that forerunners were humans. The only other problem I'm aware of when it comes to this interpretation is when Halsey says (under Sword Base): "Before you is an alien artifact neither human nor Covenant in origin." My answer to that would be that she simply doesn't know and even if she does it would've been strange for her to refer to it as a human artifact in that context. "Human" can also be thought of as a faction (just like Covenant is a faction), meaning modern humans rather than forerunners.
"birth right from an ancient civilisation" -Halsey Halo - reach "you are forerunner ! but this ring is mine" -guilty spark - Halo 3 "child of my enemy, why have you come? I offer no forgiveness... a father's sins, passed to his son" -gravemind - Halo 3 "I have walked among man and angel for three thousand years" -Mendi kit bias - Halo 2 "Your forefathers wisely set aside their compassion.. steeled themselves for what needed to be done. I see now why they left you behind. You were weak... and gods must be strong." -Prophet of truth -Halo 3 Humans are very forerunner and it only changed due to Frank O Connor who changed that detail in halo 4 and was the only one against the original story that was made by Joseph Staten@@junfour
@@BlueGoyim71 i dont deny bungie wanted forerunner to be human but after playing halo 4 it still fits with the original story. in away the forerunners did give life to humanity making them their "children." the whole reason for the covenant war was because the prophets misunderstood the forerunners and twisted their "great journey" into their favor.
what earth are you on. the whole story form halo 4 contradicts everything that happened ce to 3. The iris ads by FRANK O CONNOR didn't line up with the original lore, the didact and libarian were job titles and not people. Halo was a biblical story, not a space fantasy which is what it is now. @@dg7347
Mendakit bias made it clear that humans are reclaimers, let alone in the bungie written terminals mendakit threatens to send the forerunners back to the stone age lmao. Also in halo legends forunners had five fingers and a every human body and original concpet art for a cancelled halo game showed humans as forerunners.@@dg7347
I was always disappointed with the change, and the reveal that mankind had their own ancient interstellar empire. It turned the Forerunners from these enigmatic, almost unknowable beings with a mysterious connection to humanity, to salty fish people that got angry because mommy and daddy started paying more attention to the new kid. It cheapens the status of “Reclaimer” from the descendants of the closest things in the known galaxy to gods, to just a badge you get if the Precursors like you. Personally in my own headcannon, I’ve reconciled the two ideas by making humanity a secret genetic project conducted by the Forerunners to create life, something reserved only for the Precursors and not an entitlement of the Mantle. That way the Didact still hates humanity (seeing them as mutants and inferior to true Forerunner life), and there’s still a reason for the Precursor war, since when they find out the Forerunners created life they try to revoke the Mantle from them.
There was something beautiful about the idea of Forerunners discovering humanity and seeing such potential in them that they appoint them as their successors. Compare that to the whole messy Human-Forerunner war thing with humanity being on par with the Forerunners but are then devolved and are then appointed as the inheritors of the mantle like I mean what?!? Also the whole "There are 2 Didacts who are the same bu not really" thing really cheapened the bittersweetness of Librarian and Didact's romance that we got a glimpse of in the Halo 3 terminals.
343i is just another symptom of Microsoft taking good things and driving them straight into the ground. Like it's almost like they made it as convoluted as possible so that a person has to buy books to even begin to make sense of the mess. Trying to make every book canon to the point that events in the games are brushed aside in favor of a books version of events only to be explained by. "Oh mendicant bias wasn't showing those events properly, he was trying to skew things purposely." Or "you can't take that person's word due to rampancy." Halo one through three pushed far more narrative suggesting that humanity was forerunners than providing much as evidence of two separate races. It makes the gravemind's quote "I am a monument to all your sins." Feel empty since the new direction they took turned humanity into victims of forerunners.
The book Point of Light un-recons the notion that humans and forerunner are not the same. Spoilers beyond this sentence: Forerunners have 3 rates.. warrior servants, builders, and life workers, but a link was discovered to a fourth "theoretical" rate.. philosophers. Those are ancient humans. So the Precursors made one race that could evolve into four rates. one of them became an offshoot of the main branch, and their origins were forgotten.
Halo’s old concept of humans being forerunners was looked at more closely in a very old scrapped alpha for Halo 1, which Forrest of the Marathon fanbase (I don’t know how to spell his surname) used as a basis for his mod Marathon Eternal X, which does the same thing but for the Marathon equivalent, the Jjaro (Jyi-rr-aro). I recommend checking out this mod as part of the Before Halo series, it’s really good.
@@SameToken Cheers. I mention it in a text LP I did for Marathon Eternal and Halo SPV3 (as I made versions for the Marathon Story Page too, I included a primer of the books leading up to Halo 1 so Marathon’s fans who didn’t know much about Halo wouldn’t be left in the dark). I can provide links to the ones on my blog if you want. (The link lists I did for the MSP versions are on the Pfhorums and the Pfhorums has been down for weeks now)
I don't think it's as complicated as made out in this video to understand why/ when the change was made. Frank O'Connor (as far as I'm aware) is the ONLY Bungie era developer that considered humans & forerunners as separate species. He wrote the Diadact & Librarian terminals which establish humanity as its own species despite being contradicted by the other terminals, the main story of the games & literally every novel released under Bungies tenure. The guy just didn't understand the nuance of the Halo story.
@@DigiNivergthey bullied him for it apparently, because he kept trying to shove his stupid headcanon in everything, and eventually he did, ruining the entire lore of the series. There have been multiple ex-bungie devs who have said “forerunners are humans”
@@DigiNiverg “343 went with the lore bungie established” no they went with the lore frank o’connor established, do I need to remind you that according to frankie, the covenant and UNSC teamed up to beat the flood, even though that never happened. The only reason why frank even wrote 2 of the terminals was because they were approaching the deadline and needed someone to write some filler BS, so they grabbed a random employee they didnt care to much about. In fact some of the terminals in Halo 3 contradict the whole “human and forerunners are different” arguement, and if you want even more evidence that humans are forerunners, Marty O’Donnel, a guy who was way more hands on than frankie was even tweeted “subtext, wasnt it obvious that Humans were and will always be forerunner?”
I personally still go with Humans are descendants of the forerunners in my head canon. Always after playing Halo 3, this was the impression I had and I have decided to keep that for me. Its also a matter of Occam’s Razor for me. It more easily explains why Humans are able to operate forerunner tech and everything. I will add though that there is room for the forerunners to look not exactly like humans still too. I can’t remember off the top of my head how much time elapsed between the Halo Rings firing and the events of Halo 3 but evolution would still be at play the whole time. Even if it was originally forerunner genetic code that was used to reseed earth, it is Naive to say that some changes couldnt happen along the way but enough of the forerunner genetics remains to operate forerunner tech. Thats what I think anyway :P
The Librarian could have something to do with humans being able to operate forerunner tech, since it was the Librarian's plan to have humans take over and take up the mantle of responsibility
Halo 2’s intended ending reveals a device on Earth to guide human evolution to ensure we come out like our ancestors aka the Forerunners. Probably to make sure the majority of people inheriting the tech aren’t savage asshats by the time it happens.
"birth right from an ancient civilisation" -Halsey Halo - reach "you are forerunner ! but this ring is mine" -guilty spark - Halo 3 "child of my enemy, why have you come? I offer no forgiveness... a father's sins, passed to his son" -gravemind - Halo 3 "I have walked among man and angel for three thousand years" -Mendi kit bias - Halo 2 "Your forefathers wisely set aside their compassion.. steeled themselves for what needed to be done. I see now why they left you behind. You were weak... and gods must be strong." -Prophet of truth -Halo 3 Humans are very forerunner and it only changed due to Frank O Connor who changed that detail in halo 4 and was the only one against the original story that was made by Joseph Staten
I always thought that when Spark said “you are forerunner” he was addressing the fact that humanity had essentially replaced the Forerunners. That also would explain the line in Contact Harvest because if the Forerunners gave their tech to humanity their machines would recognize them as Forerunner.
No he’s saying he is forerunner. A child of something is an offspring. You are a child of your dad and yet you are human? He’s not saying the forerunners literally made the humans.
@@raaaaaaaaaam496 lol I never said the forerunners made the humans. I was referring to the way that the forerunners passed the Mantle of Responsibility on to the humans, and their tech and stuff along with it.
That makes no sense at all. If we replaced the Forerunners, we wouldn’t be Forerunner. Think about what the word means. It’s totally incompatible unless it is the literal truth.
@@inquisitor1284pretty sure the new lore states that Forerunners killed the Precursors because the Precursors gave the Mantle of responsibility to the Ancient humans. Why would they give it away?
IRIS was directed by Frank O'Conner. The terminals that suggest humans aren't forerunners were written by Frank O'Conner. Frank O'Conner was appointed, by Bonnie Ross, to be the franchise lead of 343 in 2008. They have since both been fired and will never work on Halo ever again. Clearly Frank O'Conner had issues with Bungie and is why he was so eager to leave Bungie to take control of Halo by any means. Lead Bungie devs have all unanimously reported that Humans were Forerunners until 343 changed it with their novels and games. Bungie did not authenticate the terminals or the IRIS campaign with their lore-comb. Clearly the stuff Frank O'Conner made contradict the Halo Bible.
Every design 343 came up with sucks. From the over complicated and overdesigned Forerunner technology to the boring basic sci fi cities, the ugly ass Covenant, and the power ranger Spartans. It all sucks, Halo 5 is as ugly as dog shit.
The original trilogy was supposed to end with humanity opening a coffin of a forerunner and it was a human skeleton and you hear guilty spark tell us we are forunners and it makes sense cause we can activate halo arrays and other artifacts but other species cannot so Idk why 343 retconned it kind of bummed out and makes the original trilogy kinda weird when you look back on it
Librarian: "I thought that was the plan? We needed to cover up the fact we screwed over the galaxy by creating the Flood trying to fast-track galactic domination through excessive use of false flags, only to accidentally create a legitimate threat? And that we planned to do that by making it appear 'humans' were our enemies? It's called tough love. Either we compose them, or the galaxy will genocide them."
I haven't looked into this much, but that page from the comic could very easily be saying that from the point of view of the early humans, the Forerunners were alien, but really the Forerunners were still human but were so unrecognisable as such by the early humans. I consider IRIS a way of leaving the door open to the Forerunners being their own species should 343 have wanted to go that route with their games' story. Remember 343 was formed some months before Halo 3's release.
I know this was 2 years ago but Iris was an inconsistent mishap that got leaked and panic edited for damage control, and anything pre-343 that indicates Forerunners weren't humans is done under the influence of Frank O' Connor, the guy that went to 343 after his time in Bungie and fully retconned them. Frank O' Connor is responsible for the retcons.
I wish they kept them human. I fell frank o connor just added to much unnnesasry world being with the human forruner war, precursers and ,flood being ground up precurser remains. Should of kept forruners as humans and the origins of the flood a seceret
The whole "Halo 3 retconned human forerunners" thing isn't exactly conclusive, it's just that the Librarian refers to the inhabitants of Earth as "they" in one terminal, which doesn't necessarily mean they are a different species, they could just as likely be a different group or population of Forerunners. The whole "exit portal from the Ark where the Forerunners were taking refuge during the Halo firing being in the exact same location humanity is believed to have started as a species around the same time as the Forerunners would have exited" is also a massive Forerunners = Humans clue contained in Halo 3, something Joe Staten explicitly states and confirms in a 2006 interview. I Love Bees was never really believed to be canon, or at least not to the same level of canon as the content of the books and games, so I don't know why IRIS is. I have seen some ex-Bungie employees claim on twitter that they retconned the Forerunners being Human during Halo 3's development, but as you say yourself, I don't believe that was a company-wide agreed idea or change. Regardless of when or how the retcon happened, I'd much rather stick to the established lore of talented devs and Bungie veterans such as Joe Staten over retcons made by journalist latecomers to the company like O'Connor any day of the week anyway. Hidden messages in the Halo Reach datapads also support the Humans = Forerunner idea, so even if the idea of retconning it started in 2007 by people such as O'Connor, it seems not all of Bungie got the memo, even by 2010.
There was actually a post on neogaf where someone was explaining the usual, "so the terminals in h3 actually were when forerunners were retconned" and you know what. Frankie himself responded and said when he wrote them there were many ideas of what post-3 Halo could be. Essentially he said he wasn't trying to retcon anything at least at the point of 2007
@@Sam-gs2wq well Halo 2 was supposed to end on ark that was o earth where Arbiter and chief would find forerunner graves with human bodies. *one hellcrunch later* halo 2 was cut from the end of act 2 and halo 3 became the act 3. In Halo 3 the terminals are there to keep it ambigous what the forerunners were up until the final confrontation with 343 guilty spark. Thus far there had only been clever hints towards Forerunners being human. CE: humans being called "reclaimers" meaning they are not claiming forerunner assets. They are *re* claiming it. When chief refuses to fire the halo "why would you hesitate to do something you have already done" a more direct hint that its the same species. When 343 browsers through the UNSC records he states "catch up in all of our lost time" people state this is in general but that doesnt make sense since humanity hasnt been spacefaring for that long and by the time of CE humanity has barely spread to stars so no not even close enough to cover for all the thousands of years of lost time 343 has spent on the ring. One biggesr counters to this is librarian saying that the creatures on earth have been gathered up for reseeding. Few things to note it says "creatures" what an indiffirent name for species you chose as the reclaimers of everything you leave behind. Not to mention a species you have a long standing history with and what Halo 4 librarian is deeply invested with. So the creatures more likely meant animals. Final nail on the coffin was supposed to be when 343 states "you are forerunner"
343 went with the wrong narrative imo. The idea that the "gods" the Covenant worshipped were actually the race they were trying to wipe out the whole time would have been beautifully ironic. A post-war story about the remaining Covenant struggling to come to terms with the fact that Humans are Forerunner, or the Humans themselves attempting to "reclaim" the ancient tech of their ancestors would have been far more interesting than the Darth Vader knockoff with his droid army we got in H4.
Exactly! The set up was practically a lay up, bungie left them with a tremendous story, a few loose strings but all they had to do was tie the knot, but they changed the entire gift wrap. 343 should get some balls and scrap halo 4 and halo 5 story. Retcon it like they did with bungies story. Release a new and improved halo 4 and halo 5 with appropriate story. Halo infinite will expand upon halo 5s terrible story. Now they're introducing the banished? What a shame.
Well. The san'shyuum were allies of the ancient humans until they surrendered and forgot about the humans post forerunner-flood war after reseeding. So the sanshyuum killing off humanity without realizing they were allies makes it just as ironic as killing off the very gods they worshipped. It's possible that the surviving sanhyuum may or may not regret their actions.
This was one of the things that finally turned me off the Halo franchise for good. Not only did they retcon something that had been effectively foreshadowed for so long, but for what? I mean, having the humans BE the Forerunners made sense, and it tied everything up in a narrative sense. The way the architecture seemed awesome and mysterious, but familiar through the use of hard angles and planes, much like a human might. The way humans could use FR tech. The fact that the Ark was on earth. And it made sense from a narrative perspective. Rather than risk absolute extinction, they “seeded” their home world (or at least one of their worlds) with their own species set to re-emerge after the rings had been fired. Not only that, but the retcon (like retcons always do) introduces far more problems than it could ever hope to fix. Humans on earth observing the Ark as it was built? Doesn’t that imply that earth was either outside the blast radius of the rings, or that humans were somehow unaffected by them? It’s a narrative mess that didn’t need to happen.
Was such a turnoff for me I couldn't bring myself to buy another Xbox. So much of these convoluted lore things felt so tacked on that it bogs everything else down. Humans were forerunners? There's why you seem to have a natural affinity for using their technology. Now it's "Well you see...it is all a master plan by aliens...our lore is being written by the ancient aliens guy."
The Ark wasn't on earth. The gateway to the Ark was....the Forerunners built it there so that humanity could uphold the mantle and activate the rings if the Flood ever escaped containment. Humanity and every other species in the galaxy were contained (on their respective worlds) by the forerunners prior to the Halo array firing. Then they were released. Not sure where you got all that bad info from.
I think 343 should have probably left the Forerunners mysterious and the past mysterious and unknown. I do agree that the galaxy needed a new threat but you could have come up with anything. I also think Halo 5 or 6 (Infinite) should have seen the Flood come back. It is easy to explain as you could say a ship from the Flood went to seed them somewhere else between Halo 2 and Halo 3 since the Flood was at their height again after Halo 2.
Regarding only Halo CE, 2 & 3 (no books or ad campaigns or whatever else that's not the games themselves) if we don't count only one specific terminal log of the Librarian and Didact conversing, everything else points to humans being forerunners. So we're seriously gonna say the optional skippable missable single terminal log in halo 3 takes precedent over numerous examples in the trilogy? I don't think so. Humans are Forerunners.
I've always imagine bungie era's forerunner to be their Destiny's "Awoken" in terms of aesthetics and they would have to "devolved" and forget their glorious past due to their encounter with the flood
@@argo9721 No, but had it come out, it would have been the first look at Forerunners. Bungie had to have been involved on some level, or Ensemble had access to the Story Bible for the foundations of the game.
Originally I was excited at the idea of humanity being forerunner as the trilogy was releasing and anticipating what would come next. However, over time I now think I prefer the separate species approach. So many movies, shows, games and book use the trip of being the chosen ones/prophecy/chosen one. While Halo does do this with the whole mantle of responsibility stuff, I think the separate species adds a dynamic to it where it’s less of a chosen one scenario and more of a pass the torch.
@@Fuk99999 Actually that does make it more interesting. We were once advanced too, but reset to boot by the forerunners, only for them to realise their mistakes and pass the mantle onto us (or arrange for it to be so later). Kind of a cool and unique approach to a human history history
@@advait35 is functionally the same as the chosen ones though. The precursors favored humanity, the newrunners were jealous and killed and de-evolved humans. It's basically the same thing except instead of playing around in the ruins of our golden age were playing around in the ruins of the forerunners (which is a perfect explanation for the golden age trope in classical literature). Now we're playing around in a civilization that was slightly better than our golden age and was just sort of jealous so they exiled us and I guess the implication is the forerunners are the gods of antiquity so the covenant is just right? why they didn't just kill all humans is just silly. The main reason they did this was that they needed humanity to fight things in the new games. The covenant was shattered, the remnants seemed like a joke concept, so they decided to invent the forerunners... and defile the mystery associated with them. The introduction of the banished is really the only thing that could be perceived as a valid threat, but it was too late, and we're stuck with the forerunners being fish people who don't like humanity except for one who thought they were cute. I think if you needed to make the forerunners a separate species, the eldar/old ones in 40k would be a good place to look for inspiration. The forerunners could have seeded life on millions of wolds, and perhaps play around with humanity as an experiment, seeing them as potential successors or on the way to being equals (hence we seem to be able to access their tech and operate their machines unlike the covenant). But with the flood war, we were forgotten about or hidden, to return when it was safe to come back and "reclaim" the forerunners legacy. instead, the current state of the forerunners is comically evil and they have one who comically benevolent.
I mean, at this point the "pass the torch" trope has been more overused in sci-fi than the humans actually being the ancient race themselves. So I'm not sure why the retcon is any better, especially considering where they ultimately went with it after the handover to 343.
The Cradle of Life doesn't even depict the Librarian in that image? Nor do the Terminals claim them to be a separate species anywhere... Why do people try so hard to justify this obvious retcon that came post Bungie?
I'd like to point out that Bungie ignored the terminals due to the fact it conflicted with what they intended. In Halo 3 humans were Forerunner. 343 WAS the one to retcon that. Frank O'Connor was the one who wanted Forerunners to be separate species from humans, as he was doing the writing for some of the terminals and Bungie said no. Frank O'Connor went on to become creative director once 343 took over from Bungie. So no, it wasn't retconned in Halo 3. It was retconned in Halo 4.
"You are the child of my makers, inheritors of all they left behind. You are Forerunner." Come to think about 343 guilty Sparks quote to master chief, this is meant that Master Chief has something in common with Bornstellar, not humans necessarily being forerunner themself. Although I admit, I find that the Precursors splitting one humanoid race into Forerunners and Humans is rather fascinating.
@Paul Thomas Well, now that those lines are canon, how else will 343 Industries work around them? Perhaps that Guilty Spark actually referred to the Master Chief as Bornstellar. Besides, there are several videos confirming this.
Changing this was really the original sin that trickled down into making modern halo lore a chaotic space-fantasy mess. In a perfect world I'd rewind the whole series back to Halo 2 and just declare everything that was released after a non-canon alternate universe.
C3 Sabertooth's video on Bungie Forerunners disproves this idea. Bungie Forerunners ARE Humans. You can't throw away 99% of the lore that states Forerunners are Humans and then just hold up the 1% that says they MIGHT not be human, ESPECIALLY when that 1% of "lore''s cannonicity can easily be called into question. I dislike referencing other RUclipsrs on people's channels since it can be considered rude, but C3 Sabertooth blows ALL this crap out of the water.
Iris and the 1/3 of the terminals (not even all of them) that depicted them as separate were written/co-written by frank O'Conner, who's the reason why they got changed in H4 and onward. Everyone else, even though the writing on the wall was kept subtle until 343 gp confirms it in H3, kept the narrative that they were the same. It even stayed with Reach that came after H3. Frank might've worked at bungie at the time, but he's not representative of the masses nor did bungie really change it before 343 did.
Tbh I always interpreted 343 GS's dialogue as metaphorical. And this is back when I didn't really pay that much attention to the lore. My instant thought was "Oh so he's saying that by inheriting (activating) Forerunner artefacts, Chief is essentially a descendant of the Forerunners in a non-biological way". Would still have been cool if 343 went with the human route however. Although I'm not against them being a separate species either. I still take issue with some of the creative directions 343 took with the Forerunners though.
That's funny because when I got to that line, I took Guilty Spark's line in the literal way opposite of you and Guilty Spark was confirming "Yes, humans are literally Forerunners".
Interestingly, Spark's line "You are the child of my makers" is open to interpretation in multiple ways. First interpretation is that which is present in the video, that humans are a separate species from the original forerunners or were created/seeded by them. Second, and what I personally think is a more accurate interpretation is that modern humanity in the halo series are the direct descendants of the forerunners. The only difference is that the first interpretation takes Spark's quote metaphorically, whereas the second takes it literally. I think the quote is meant to be taken literally, considering that immediately after that Spark tells Chief that he IS forerunner. The word "child" also implies direct genetic continuation. If we take Contact Harvest as a secondary piece of evidence, not only did the covenant luminaries recognize humanity as forerunners, but they also recognized their AI's such as Sif and Mack as Oracles, the same as they recognized Mendicant Bias or Spark as oracles. These two facts taken together also heavily imply that humans are at least the descendants of forerunners. That book was also written by Joseph Staten who was greatly involved in the writing of Halo 2 and 3, and so I think it's fairly safe to take this point of view as cannon, even if it was somewhat ambiguous at times and later completely retconned out by 343i. I'd love to see a take where the current "forerunners" are discovered to be aliens masquerading as the OG forerunners, who hijacked their tech or something and attempted to usurp humanity's position as reclaimer/forerunners.
I mean, not really. "You are the child of my makers" pretty explicitly states humans are Forerunners. Spark is a pretty literal guy. Species typically give birth to the same species. And the fact he follows it up with "You ARE Forerunner" should leave no doubt what he meant.
Tbh this is wrong. We STILL were Forerunners in Halo 3, it’s pretty obvious they had NO intention of making humans separate from forerunners in 3. They just decided it worked more if it was vague instead of explicit. Which tbh it does. But now we have 343i taking a shit in it all. For no reason.
This is somewhat false and only makes sense if you value the most poorly written and broken terminal section, the Librarian and Didact Terminals, over literally everything else in the franchise, including the rest of Halo 3 and the rest of the Terminals (mainly the Mendicant Bias Terminals which have some of the most heavy handed hints that Humans are Forerunners), not to mention Contact Harvest which came out AFTER Halo 3 and was written by Joe Staten himself just further confirming that Humans are Forerunners.
"birth right from an ancient civilisation" -Halsey Halo - reach "you are forerunner ! but this ring is mine" -guilty spark - Halo 3 "child of my enemy, why have you come? I offer no forgiveness... a father's sins, passed to his son" -gravemind - Halo 3 "I have walked among man and angel for three thousand years" -Mendi kit bias - Halo 2 "Your forefathers wisely set aside their compassion.. steeled themselves for what needed to be done. I see now why they left you behind. You were weak... and gods must be strong." -Prophet of truth -Halo 3 Humans are very forerunner and it only changed due to Frank O Connor who changed that detail in halo 4 and was the only one against the original story that was made by Joseph Staten @@shadewolf0075
Frank O'Connor was responsible for the iris campaign and he was never involved in any other aspect of bungies halo but was made the head of 343 thats how it happened frank made a mistake in the terminals and then continued to retcon everything in halo 4. Bungie wanted humans to be forerunners Frank had no idea of the story and still doesn't. Frank screwed up... that is the reason.
It wasn't even until Halo 3. It was still clearly humanity except for a few monitor messages written by one guy at the studio who wanted his own narrative that had already been rejected by the team. Guess who leads the writing for 343i? That's right. It's him.
I interpret the line, "You are the child of my makers. Inheritor of all they behind" as it being serious and not him saying the forerunners(aliens) made humans or reseeded them to Earth. Humans being the forerunners throughout the entire series, with tons of evidence, makes too much sense. It would be like in our world the old generation leaving the fate of the nations/property/etc to the next generation, and like some human civilizations, they disappear like the forerunners did only to leave behind ruins, many of which we, the newer generations, don't understand because we didn't grow up in that era. Also humans being forerunners would be satisfying irony for the Covenant's religion, you know, killing their Gods and all that.
@@richardpatterson1694 Johnson isn't even a canon character until the Novel the Flood makes him one which is why he appears multiple times in the game he's just another marine in Combat Evolved.
I'm sure lots of people have already said this but it's never made any sense to me that humans could so easily access and activate Forerunner technology if they weren't previously Forerunners.
Yes, the word 'reclaimer' has a meaning, and 343 Guilty Spark is using it literally, he's a very logical robot he didn't just pick a cute pet name for humans for fun.
I, PERSONALLY, prefer them being a different species who messed up with their decisions, and decided that their mortal enemies were, kind of better and really were more deserving of the mantle of responsibility.
It destroys a lot of what was fundamental to their role. Having them egotistical asshats who control other species with Imperial order was the dumbest decision ever made. The firing of the rings was supposed to be a selfless, saving grace to an ensuing threat - a perfect contrast to their Technology and Love for the cosmos and its inhabitants compared to the Flood’s organic, consuming, corrupting nature. Forerunners were never warriors, builders of lifeworkers: they were CREATORS with a beautiful sense of wisdom and maturity beyond war.
@@yellowhoodie5299 I like that they were more eco driven it makes them have more depth as they had to realise that live was precious and it was not something they automatically knew. And realizing they were not the best so ended themselves so that live under humans could flourish and be better taken care of by the people they destroyed. That is way more complex and interesting than if they were just already perfect being that were just fighting the bad guys.
@@Knight1029 they’re not “perfect”, they’ve simply gone through a learning lesson which they should have a long time ago. Having their egos in the way is silly, especially during a time where they are facing Flood. You can’t have extreme evil face against decently evil, they would simply become of the same side. To have any chance of a lasting and exchangeable spiritual conflict, they will bring out the absolute deepest convictions of said group; magnifying more of what they are - There’s no room for egoic struggles in the midst of that.
@@yellowhoodie5299 they still learned the lesson that was set up before and in a far more interesting way then them essentially starting out with that lesson. Now we get to see and explore those themes, concepts and ideas more personal than just having a story were good guys beat up bad guys. If that is what people enjoy then sure but I really prefer them being more grey. Also it is nice that they are not a race that all think the same and have a unique life from person to person.
In CE, the 'last time you asked' line from Spark is implied that they and Chief were discussing how the rings worked and why they were crucial to stopping the flood, especially since the start of Two Betrayals has Spark finishing a previous sentence involving Flood biology. *This was probably cut dialogue in a mission that was also cut, since Halo CE was supposed to have an open night-day cycle and 25 campaign levels, which got scrapped and cut to ten missions respectively.* In Halo 3, the terminals clearly mark out the Librarian and Didact, and the ending of Halo 3 on Legendary implies a Forerunner Shield World. *Quite literally, 343 took the next logical steps for Halo 4, but broke a lot of conventions and rules of cannon in the process with the biggest one being the artstyle change.* And finally, Reclaimers are granted access to the Forerunner technology by the will of the Forerunners in an attempt to ascend them to holding the Mantle of Responsibility. This bit of lore came after Bungie's time with Halo, but it's still relevant so on this it goes; over and over again, humanity has been referred to by Forerunner machines and ancillas as 'Reclaimers', those destined to gain back their long lost power within the milky way galaxy. What's more, is there is a line from the Flood in Halo 3 that directly states; "Child of my enemy, why have you come? I offer no peace..." referring that the Primordial/Gravemind/Precursor/Flood sentience knows humanity are effectively, at this point within the timeline, to be of Forerunner descent, consecration, and geas implantation. *In the simplest terms possible, the Forerunners are, have been, and always will be a now completely* _probably_ *extinct species of near-humanity from +100,000 years before modern Humanity as per Halo's standards. They were almost entirely wiped out with the Array's activation, down to the last known survivor being the now deceased Ur-Didact after his release from the prison Shield World designated Requiem.* *Humanity is destined to take up the Mantle of Responsibility; this was why the Ur-Didact was so dead set on ending them, because they did not see Humanity as fit to control it even though their use of the Composer directly violated the prestated Mantle of Responsibility, therefore proving that the Forerunners were unworthy of it. That is why they fell to the flood and killed everything to stop its spread.*
Humans being forerunners themselves works so much better as a narrative. Here’s an idea. Forerunners WERE humans. A branch of them that continually experimented on themselves until they were mutated to the forerunners. This section fell out of mainline humanity through civil war. The mainline humans stayed the same. A kind of parallel between the UNSC and the Innies. The UNSC does already do genetic makeup experimentation, after all.
That's pretty much what Bungie was going for minus the civil war stuff. Humans on Earth were evolving separately from the rest of the Forerunners, so there would be differences but they'd still be the same species at the end of the day
I started thinking about this a lot last year and was just telling my friend the other day it seemed like Bungie originally intended for Forerunners to be human. I think that would have been a WAY cooler reveal and i don’t like 343’s direction. It’s cool but sad that this is now confirmed. I love this channel and your videos are fantastic. But I disagree about your attempts to explain away Spark’s comments. It’s obvious from his line that Forerunners are human, and i think they made a big mistake retconning it.
@@deathtrooper2048 no they didn’t. in all of bungie’s lore, Humanity were the Forerunners. Humans were the ones who could activate forerunner tech seamlessly, and humans being forerunner descendants was the reason the covenant went to war with humanity, the Forerunner’s descendants being an inferior society to them proved their entire religion that worshiped the Forerunners to be a falsehood. Now suddenly Forerunners look like half-shaved scrotum people if the Didact is anything to go by.
@@Slender_Man_186 Nah halo 3 terminals kinda make it so that the forerunners are a separate species. But like it’s pointed out in the video, the development staff didn’t even agree on this. The story implied one thing and then the hidden lore in game implied another. Personally I think they should have just stayed in the “forerunners are ancient humans” rout
I liked the forerunners and humans being their own species instead of being the same, It's less cryptic and confusing, And It makes more sense as to why the Flood is so hellbent on attacking the Covenant more than attacking humanity, The Gravemind despises the Covenant, Specifically the prophets, for trying to revive the traditions and culture of the traitorous forerunners, And find their idea of The Great Journey insulting considering that they they attempt to reactivate the Halo rings that almost killed them the first time. But not really much on the humans because atleast the Gravemind still accepts them as the only WORTHY ones of holding the mantle, If the Gravemind tossed away little of what respect remains leftover from their time as Precursors, Then they would straight up throw the infested high-charity at Earth instead of sending a small infested covie cruiser at them with little effort in Africa, Earth would be devoured by the flood that way and it's game over for Halo 3.
Halo 3's Terminals did not claim Forerunner's were a separate species. It reaffirmed that Forerunner's were ancient humans... Regardless, that core decision is where the Halo series died for me. Just look at all the narrative developments that stemmed from it. Developments that absolutely ruined the franchise.
Andy - ISP Magnum did a great video ripping into 343’s awful writing. He explained how there was barely an implication to the forerunner being Human. The man who wrote the terminals eventually came to write Halo 4. So I reckon he picked his own false take because he’s an egotistical writer that preferred his own work to Bungie’s.
Frank o Connors writing and its consequences have been a disaster for halo lore
It's over......
Facts.... a cursed timeline
Is there a repository or youtube channel with only the older bungie lore?
@@grahamdixon1699 your mad AT the Bungie lore lmao
ancient human pops out of the crypt and looks at chief
Ancient human: monke
Monke is life
Return to
Planet of the apes halo style
So the cavemen hidden in Halo 3 and ODST were actually Forerunners?
@@smurfsareoppressed9584 probably
I think it would have been badass and mind-blowing to have the Didact's crypt open up and you're about to see a forerunner for the first time; and it's an ancient human. 🤯
Walter i watch u all the time
they wouldnt even have to look that human, 343 could have kept the design they were going for with the didact because humans would have evolved over time anyway.
Me Didact. You man. hmm. lol
?
And it looks like Danny DeVito
I MUCH prefer the idea that the Forerunners were ancient humans.
IMO, it makes more sense why humans would be able to activate Forerunner technology, and it's a beautiful irony that the covenant were unknowingly worshiping the very enemy they called vermin and unworthy.
Also, I love the idea that ancient humans wiped themselves out using a technology they created... it shows we haven't changed very much.
Also the Halo ring itself is a very earth-like environment
The prophets knew, that is the whole reason they wanted humans killed. All the power they have through their religion would be lost to the humans and they didn't want that.
I actually still believe that humans are descendants of forerunners, in fact I think they’re genetically modified forerunners that were created for the purpose to take on the mantle of responsibility and to pave a way for forerunners to get back into power. The librarian mentions that humanity is the culmination of a thousand lifetimes of planning. Why would the forerunners be planning something for humanity if the forerunners want to inherit the mantle of responsibility? Unless humans are actually forerunners then this would make sense. On top of that the gravemind says “Child of my enemy, why have you come?” Clearly this is the primordial talking about humanity, not the forerunners, because if he was then he’ll say my enemy instead of child of my enemy. We also have a bunch of lines from guilty spark alluding to humanity being forerunner, also in halo infinite (spoilers)
The harbinger mentions that the forerunners lies are to come to an end. This might be referring to forerunners saying that humanity are not forerunners but created by the precursors when in fact humanity might be the product of the forerunner’s plan.
It also explains so much why modern humans would be Reclaimers, and that the Prophet of Truth discovers this fact, that Forerunners were in fact ancient humans, thus explaining the genocidal campaign against modern humanity.
Interesting points. But I also like the idea of the Forerunners as being a similar species that felt Humans should take up the Mantle, thus calling them Reclaimers.
The Covenant trying to exterminate the same people that they worshipped is a brilliant twist. I can't believe they scrapped it.
I think that would really be a better story to tell. It would have push more war for peace for humanity against the covenant
The wealth of technology and history to be shared would have been an all new game as both sides truly join together and fight the flood
Totally, wasted.
I used to be under the impression that they KNEW that humans were connected to the Forerunners. I thought the Covenant believed that humans were like a primitive race of the Forerunners that were too savage and unworthy to go on the Great Journey, and were thus left behind.
"Your forefathers wisely set aside their compassion. Steeled themselves for what needed to be done. I see now why they left you behind. You were weak... and gods must be strong."
People don't give the Covenant religion enough credit. They only believed that the Forerunners were gods because they used to rings to "ascend" (had this been Stargate, the Covenant would have literally been correct about everything).
That would have explained why they believed that the gods demanded mankind's destruction. We were basically an affront to the achieved godhood of the other Forerunners. Unworthy, dumb and primitive, nothing like the Forerunner gods who watched everything from a higher plane of existance.
I always thought that in their propaganda/beliefs, they viewed humans as literal demons (hence why they use those terms). They thought we were evil, degenerate, inbred abominations of what the Forerunners used to be. Humanity was basically seen as Lucifer and Co. Forerunners became literal gods, and we're barely smart enough to travel space.
It all made sense.
I still hold that the new lore is garbage. The idea that a single Forerunner (Librarian) just decided on a whim that "meh, humans are cooler, ima exterminate my own species without asking anyone else or some shit".... is so dumb. Just what the lore needed, a Halsey 2.0. Another Mary Sue "mastermind" that can do no wrong (and even when they do wrong, it's right).
@@The_Moe_Szyslak_Exp_feat_Homer no the forerunners after firing the halo array completely abandoned the milky way and went into exile in the void between galaxies. The librarian just chose humanity as the inheritors of her people's legacy and the mantel of responsibility. There could be forerunners out in other parts of the universe as that was what the great journey actually was
The "Forerunners were humans" angle was always so much more interesting to me than the "Star Trek-style aliens who look like humans and act like humans and might as well be human but they're not actually human because aliens."
Agree
I think it just goes with the concept of convergent evolution, that Humans were basically natural rivals of Forerunners.
O'Connor flubbed the boat on that one
Yeah that would have been fascinating to explore and could have been halo 4's big plot twist moment, which for the first time in a halo game was missing. Humans and Forerunners being seeded sibling species is pretty cool tho. 343 just needs to portray it outside of the novels
If I recall, the Forerunners looked a lot less human until 343 took over. All we saw was vague artwork of them before Halo 4, I think.
Frank O’Connor. You single handedly destroyed my love for HALO’s plot.
“Your inability to safeguard Halo was a colossal failure”
"You can't imagine how exciting this is! To have a record of all of our lost time. Human history, is it? Fascinating."
- Guilty Spark, Halo 1, The Maw
Where was this from?
Edit: Thanks for the edit
@@argo9721 Spark says this after accessing terminals in pillar of autumn ship in the Halo CE last level, the Maw
well, He was human.
@@proudiofficial yep, chakas...even at first, he was referred as monitor chakas by the isodidact before his memories were compartmentalized and renamed as 343 guilty spark...
343 Guilty Spark was once an ancient Human named Chakas.
Makes the line “You ARE forerunner but this Ring is MINE!” Hit different.
Well, I like many lore lovers, thought that the forerunner were humanity's ancestors. Or at the very least, look really identical to humans minus the hair color.
*differently
@@g.d.dodgeconverse9221 that was Bungie's original plan, then they decided to change it.
Just another reason to reject everything after 3
@@arm6075 3 is the one that made the change tho?
Regardless of what road you prefer or would have preferred, THIS is a strong example of why I personally think it's important to nail down worldbuilding sooner rather than later.
I think it's better if it's never said one way or the other. the mystery is a big reason why CE worked. we don't know who built this place, but they seemed to know who we are... all we can really do is wonder why.
@@Robb1977 True, but with enough sequels, some things will have to be explained eventually.
@@marktulo yeah we don't need sequels though. I was perfectly content with halo 3 being what it said it was: the conclusion. Reach and ODST were fine spinoffs but we didn't need anything else.
Halo 4 should have just been a new sci fi game that was a spiritual successor to Halo... like how Halo was to Marathon.
@Paul Thomas exactly. With almost no adjustment to the plot, just removing it from the halo universe as a franchise, the game becomes infinitely more tolerable.
An aging veteran lost in space during the last days of a war between humans and a fanatical alien empire re-awakens to find his ship being tossed over by alien space pirates, made up of the species from the war. His old AI assistant is suffering from decay, and he needs to find a way home. They end up being sucked into a Dyson planet, discover an ancient, and the last of his kind, who is disgusted by humanity for not surrendering to him like the pirate species did, and swears vengeance. Meanwhile a giant human battleship shows up to deal with the pirates in the region, gets caught up in this whole plot, and some of its crew hate our protagonist, seeing him as a symbol of an older way of human life, one that used to weapons to suppress its people just as much as save them.
In this version the writers wouldn't be afraid to make the chiefs cold calculated approach appear like the result of decades of military training. Chief wouldn't need to be the badass savior of humanity after 3 successful games. They could actually explore how he was made to kill humans and suppress them, and only due to a much bigger threat emerging, did he rise to save the people he previously kept down.
They'd be able to actually do something with the plot idea that only appeared briefly and seemed anachronistic. Was chief just a tool for weapon? Was he less human than his AI companion? Was the companion more human than he was? Get rid of the elements sacred to the franchise, and you may have to spend another 2 years developing the story, but you could have made a new game that changed the way video games looked and felt, but that would cost money and time, and a halo game was a sure-fire success, so why bother? They could used halo 5s formula for a sequel to much greater effect. It made no sense to casual players like myself that Spartans were hunting another spartan for seemingly no reason, and it was so obvious chief would "win" and so I didnt buy the game. Had halo 4 had a different name, with a slightly different plot, I would have been interested in seeing a sci fi Rambo-esque story.
Also this likley would have stopped my least favorite part of the halo community from forming: the people who act like the artistically designed vehicles and tech is "realistic" and modern militaries should use it as a blueprint, and act like mjolnir suits are only a few years away from being developed.
@@Robb1977 Yeah agreed. I think 1-3 was an amazing trilogy in it's own right, and the ending was very satisfying. Meanwhile 4-6 kinda feels a bit like an unneeded disjointed mess.
I like both directions, so I don’t mind the retcon. However, the reason why I lean a little more towards the ”Ancient Humans were Forerunners” concept is because of the Covenant. For some reason, I really love the idea of the Convenant worshipping the Forerunners, not knowing they’re at war with them. Something about that irony makes that direction a bit more appealling
I hadn't even thought of that! I totally agree that would be cool
I think it’s cooler irony sake but doing that all of the awesome lore from the past. All life coming from the precursors and having humans and forerunners. The Human Forerunner war and human flood war and Forerunner flood war and precursor forerunner war. I’m a sucker for all of the past lore
Buddy, the Diadict and Librerian is pretty much human by all human standards...
According with astrobiology, the chances of an alien species resemble so much with humans like the forerunners do, are very low, bellow several zeros, in the same galaxy them, the only good explanation would be a common ancestral
They look like aliens to us, because we never saw humans like them before, but they aren't aliens at all.
The fact that Humans were Forerunners used to be the reason the covenant went to war with humanity. Here the covenant is, worshiping these dead gods from hundreds of thousands of years ago, only to learn from a forerunner AI that they’re still alive and are now lesser in terms of technology to the covenant. The entire religion was founded on a misunderstanding of what the Forerunners were, making humanity’s very existence what proves the covenant religion to be false. The prophets even knew about this, that’s why they never invited humanity to join. Now the covenant is at war with humanity because... reasons.
I don’t like the direction Halo 4 went with. At the end of Halo 3, I had more of a sense that the forerunner’s chose humanity to be their successors, which would still throw a wrench into the covenant faith without being ridiculous
In an old storyboard for the original Halo 2 ending, a human skeleton is come across in a Forerunner tomb, so they did have Human Forerunners on the mind back then.
They also had Human forerunners directly depicted in the Halo mmo in development from 2004-2007. Which was cancelled only, at most, 7 months from Halo 3 going gold.
Are you kidding me? Dude it wasn't just a thought. IT WAS CANON. Theres so much things suggesting forerunners were human. 343i changed it. I don't know why everyone in this comment section is pretending like the forerunners being humans was only an idea. 343 guilty spark literally says "You ARE forerunner" to the chief and in the books the reason why the human covenant war even happened was because they found out humans are forerunners.
Not a thought. Guilty Spark directly said it "YOU are Forerunner" to Chief, and in Contact Harvest.
Halo 3 screwed most everything up.
@@LordVader1094 what do you mean Halo 3 screwed things up? Dude in Halo 3 it's confirmed that forerunners are human. Not in some random terminal made by the guy that even made the retcon in the first place no, it's directly in a cutscene. "You are Forerunner!"
@@paperclip6377because Bungie did change it lol
Only Frank O'Connor thought forerunners weren't humans, because the terminals that contradict the old lore were written by him. The terminals that weren't written by him, follow the idea that humans were forerunners
yup
The idea that humans weren't forerunners goes back to Halo 2 story boarding/game planning. We lost lots of things in Halo 2's development cycle.
@@Singlemethod4217 No, Halo 2's original ending was going to even more directly confirm humans as Forerunners by having a human skeleton in a Forerunner tomb.
@@LordVader1094 I said story boarding/planning. The idea was there in their minds back in Halo 2, and then they pursued it further in Halo 3 and then Halo 4 cemented that fact.
@@Singlemethod4217 proof?
The comic iris, the terminals, and all pieces of media depicting forerunners as a seperate species, were created by frank oconnor. He was community manager at Bungie and for some reason was given free reign to create those medias. He decided to not do any research and made his own story through those medias. He compromised bungie’s collective vision everyone was working together on and muddied the story. Then he got promoted to the leader of 343, and so took all his characters and story ideas he made, and retconned bungie’s lore to fit his.
When you look at human interaction with Forerunner artifacts, it makes complete sense. In the novel 'The Flood' it describes the chief instinctively tapping the correct control sequence for the light bridge, much to Cortana's surprise. There was a genetic memory & compatibility. Retconning humanity to 'Inheritors' was rather confusing imo.
Funny enough that’s actually still how it works
(for the most part)
because the librarian indexed genetic codes to humans to have access to it
It wasn’t just confusing, it sort of broke the story. It was the way it was so badly implemented. Halo 1 to 3 were very solid stories with good plots, easy to follow because they made sense. The games set up a premise, and then totally switched on it without warning or explanation. It threw me off completely and made Halo 4 and 5 confusing as hell.
@@cretinousswine8234 bungie retconned the books unfortunately
@@Green-cactus. In a gaming franchise to a gaming studio that created the universe we are talking abt, I think it's safe to say games take way more priority over the books.
The Halo 3 terminals were written by Frank O'Connor - the same guy that's responsible for the massive changes in the 343 continuity. It's safe to say most if not all of Bungie, minus Frank, were on the same page given the multiple confirmations in Halo 3. Frank just couldn't keep his headcannon out of the terminals.
Halo 3's terminals don't make sense in the context of the game they're in. Spark says Chief is a Child of his Creators and a Forerunner because Humans are descendants of the Forerunners.
Exactly 💯.... I saw the video by CS Sabertooth recently and he explains PERFECTLY how the lore was originally. And how Frank O'Connor mucked it up.
Even the monitors are not consistent. The ones that treat humanity as separate were made by Frank. The others were not and do not treat humans as separate from Forerunners.
Thankfully, I ignored them when I was 13 years-old. Adding more aliens really makes the story less interesting: it's one of the most contrived methods to tell a story and drives all wonder out of it.
then why didn't they stop him? Y'know, look over all their work before launching the game?
@@phantomsanic3604 They needed to give 343 more fodder for their series, through their contractual agreement with Microsoft.
I think a cutscene where it is explicitly stated humans _are_ forerunner takes precedent over 1 comic and some allusions in the terminals. I'm thinking about writing an outline/retcon thing of what I think H4 and beyond should have been, adapted from 343's existing material.
I would like to read that, what could’ve been. Have u made any progress on ur retcon?
People will just say "but guilty spark insane"
Is there a decent source of lore from the older lore only? Stuff like the Humans being forerunners and not mentioning the bs introduced in reach and such
Most of The halo 3 terminals actually pointed to humans being forerunner the only terminals that contradicted this was the one that was made by frank O’Connor who later became a major producer in 343 which is probably how the forerunner went from Humans to there own race
Is there a contradiction though? I know there's a bit of an implication, but I can't remember there being anything solid.
@@junfourThe Librarian terminals in H3 were the first and only pieces of law in the Bungie universe that implied Forerunners and Humans to be separate specifies, and both were personally confirmed to be written by Frank O’Connor himself.
@@notting2640 Yeah, but what's the actual text?
It doesn't even confirm anything, it just adds a level of ambiguity. This notion is just 343 shill cope@@notting2640
@junfour basically it’s those 6 librarian+Didact terminals which Frank O’Connor some how doesn’t understand those were job titles not names and there were multiple of them but basically it puts forth this idea that humans were found in the last few years of the Forerunner Flood war who coincidentally evolved to be Forerunner and that the Precursors were basically the og humanity before the Forerunners and the sequence of events in them don’t make a lick of sense even beyond that, C3 Sabertooth explains this in his video on this
"Why would you fail to do what you've already done?"
Issue with the Halo 3 split was you had one group doing iris/ terminals (Frank O' Connor) and another group making the games (Joseph Staten)
@@ZSTE fortunately iris and the Terminals never outright say humans and forerunners are seperate species. He didn't say much but there was a post on neogaf of someone trying to explain that the terminals were what retconned the Forerunners, and Frankie himself responded with a "well, there were actually many directions thought of for post-halo 3" and he wrote them. I think he was implying he was not necessarily implying humans aren't forerunner at least in those terminals like people think.
marty o’donnell replied to a tweet asking about this video
his answer: “Subtext? Wasn’t it obvious?
Humans are and will always be forerunner.”
Joe was the literal brain behind halo’s entire story. I take his word over terminals written by nobodies like Frank O’Connor at that time
Not entirely; Jason Jones wrote the spine while Joe Staten sowed the flesh. Remember: Jason Jones cowrote Marathon's story with Greg Kirkpatrick, and the lore is almost Halo-like.
@@OmegaF77 I mean you’re not wrong but my point is O’Connor’s input is completely irrelevant.
@@Borgyboy09how? He was the Bungie employee chosen by Bungie for that stuff
"birth right from an ancient civilisation" -Halsey Halo - reach
"you are forerunner ! but this ring is mine" -guilty spark - Halo 3
"child of my enemy, why have you come? I offer no forgiveness... a father's sins, passed to his son" -gravemind - Halo 3
"I have walked among man and angel for three thousand years" -Mendi kit bias - Halo 2
"Your forefathers wisely set aside their compassion.. steeled themselves for what needed to be done. I see now why they left you behind. You were weak... and gods must be strong." -Prophet of truth -Halo 3
Humans are very forerunner and it only changed due to Frank O Connor who changed that detail in halo 4 and was the only one against the original story that was made by Joseph Staten @@OmegaF77
Its really hard to top the delicious irony of the Covenant literally declaring a holy war on their gods.
It also was fun to kind of try and divine it back in the earliest days when you realize that the smaller corridors on Halo have halls, doorways and control panels all sized for a human rather than say a Grunt or Elite.
Yeah its pretty funny now that both the Didact and Librarian would have crawl through forerunner doors seen in past halos
Particularly for a Spartan.
Sounds like they had this one guy, Frank O’Connor, who wanted the the lore to be one way while the rest of development was going another. And that one guy not only didn’t have the restraint to keep his headcannon out of what was actually being done, went on to preside over the awful worldbuilding that mars the 343 Halo games, which in turn really explains their lack of restraint. Got it. Really wish he’d kept it the way it was because Humans being Forerunners was way better and doesn’t create a plethora of plot holes
*incorrect buzzer*
@@DigiNiverg How
Frank O Conner didn’t retcon this, Bungie did.
@@Arander92 This is a lie. W a tch C3Sabertooth's since you cle-a-ry h-a-ve no ide a wh-a-t you're t-a-lking a-bout.
Added the hashed because RUclips keeps delisting my reply.
@@Arander92 when Frank O'Connor is working at bungie, its simply impossible to tell what he worked on. nope, no way to do it.
In fact, everything that Bungie did was really done by a hivemind of 7, that had time to carefully consider each and every part in conjunction and in isolation.
So really, when Frank was in Bungie, he wasn't even acting under his own will.
I always wondered why everything went off the rails. It seemed pretty obvious in 1 and 2 that humans were definitely Forunners.
Frank O’Connor this guy betrayed us for alien cheek lol
They were still human in Halo 3.
@C3 Sabertooth actually did an amazing job explaining the real lore about the Forerunner lore... and how Frank O'Connor (originally just a Bungie Forum community supervisor) actually critically messed up the Forerunner lore.
This, most of the Bungie era lore inconsistencies can be traced back to Frank, a former gaming journalist Bungie hired to write weekly updates on their website, who Bonnie Ross made her second in command when she was forming 343i.
Why do people alwaya use the terminal to say humans arn't forerunner. Frank o'conner was not on the story team. Just a content manager. Literally just wrote some text logs. Clearly got it wrong. Imma go sith the the 95% of the content written by the narrative team rather than a text log written by a content manager.
343 completely ruined everything about halo
Halo 3 did not change the forerunners. The narrative established by 343 Guilty spark since Halo 1 and his dialogue at the end of Halo 3 prove it so.
This is all because of Frank O'Connor, not Halo 3, he didn't know what he was writing, he doesn't even know how to summarize Halo in general.
Frank O'Connor is the reason it's all like this.
Frank O’Connor is the explanation for this shift. He wrote those terminals and directed Halo 4. He completely F’d up the franchise and deserves a good bit of the hest that 343 has received.
*incorrect buzzer sound*
@@DigiNiverg you better trust this guy. he read a wiki once. he knows better than us plebs who read the books and played the games and watched interviews with the original team.
There was ironically a "great schism" going on at bungie during halo 3's development, on one side those sticking to the lore as it was with humans and foreunners being one and the same, and the other side being those enamored with the concepts and ideas brainstormed with peter jackson prior to the halo movie cancellation (eventually reworked into district 9 before 343 went full steam ahead with the same ideas)
Gonna need a source on this. David Candland/Evil Otto worked on all Bungie Halos and never heard of an alternative to Forerunners being humans until reading the halo 4 books
@@Sam-gs2wq there are old articles and video interviews about this online. I consumed them when they came out but you should be able to find them on google
Can anybody provide a source for this beyond "trust me bro, I watched these interviews a decade ago?"
It's something I'm genuinely interested in but I haven't managed to find the correct interview(s?) yet. Is it maybe one of the H3 Vidocs?
@@sweetschmeat7417 The only real concrete evidence is the fact that Frank O'Connor wrote the Halo 3 terminals and heavily influenced Halo 4's story. Besides him I literally can't think of anyone else that thought humans were different, everyone else actually writing the story for the games were on the same page until the 343 nonsense
@@sweetschmeat7417 Plenty of sources, learn to google zoomer
Honestly I really prefer the idea that the forerunners were ancient humans. It’s just a more interesting twist.
The book Point of Light un-recons the notion that humans and forerunner are not the same. Spoilers beyond this sentence: Forerunners have 3 rates.. warrior servants, builders, and life workers, but a link was discovered to a fourth "theoretical" rate.. philosophers. Those are ancient humans. So the Precursors made one race that could evolve into four rates. one of them became an offshoot of the main branch, and their origins were forgotten.
"birth right from an ancient civilisation" -Halsey Halo - reach
"you are forerunner ! but this ring is mine" -guilty spark - Halo 3
"child of my enemy, why have you come? I offer no forgiveness... a father's sins, passed to his son" -gravemind - Halo 3
"I have walked among man and angel for three thousand years" -Mendi kit bias - Halo 2
"Your forefathers wisely set aside their compassion.. steeled themselves for what needed to be done. I see now why they left you behind. You were weak... and gods must be strong." -Prophet of truth -Halo 3
Humans are very forerunner and it only changed due to Frank O Connor who changed that detail in halo 4 and was the only one against the original story that was made by Joseph Staten@@TK503
it seems most people are in agreement that regardless of weather or not it's a retcon or when it started, it's much more interesting and narratively poetic for the Forerunners to be Ancient Humans
I don’t agree with any of that, but clearly I’m in the minority. It’s honestly shocking though. Humans=Forerunner is so boring to me
@@Arander92 Humans = Forerunners. Cope.
@@WonderMePartyStrip nice fanfic bro
@@shadewolf0075 Marty and Jaime said that H = F. COPE 🤡
@@WonderMePartyStrip That isn’t the timeline we live in
H isn’t F
Iris and the H3 terminals were written by Frank O’Conner. You know, the guy that made the following games? When 343 was founded and Frank was in charge he took his idea and ran with it.
Edit: Frank was not in a leadership position at all during his time at Bungie and there are literally a hundred examples of Bungie alluding to humans being Forerunner and exactly 2 where there is not. Both of which came from Frank.
The guy Bungie hired and chose his stuff to be in the game?
@@DigiNiverg uh huh and Frank made a dogwater call putting that lore in, bungie also fumbled the brute design and 343, like with the forerunners, made them too even worse lol
@@that1metalhead792 brutes and forerunners? Which got better after Bungie left?
This honestly makes more sense. Forerunners are known to have made alterations to themselves. After hundreds of thousands of years, those alterations could result in what we see as Forerunners now.
For all we know, the Forerunners could have been Humans that defected and started their own society much like we see in the fight between the UNSC and the Rebels.
Yup it is possible Precursors only created a one species which became two. Perhaps Forerunners changed more from the original creation and thus Precursors liked humans more.
Guys, in astrobiology, the forerunners are literally humans!
The chances of an species look so much as humans like the forerunners are so low, that the only explanation would be a common ancestral, even the brutes are basically humans.
The notable differences that we see in those species are more similar with skin tones than anything else.
@@efxnews4776 Not inherently true. Convergent evolution is a thing
I hope that something like that becomes lore. Forerunners and humans being seperate, yet the same
@@efxnews4776 Well no because the forerunners and humans aren’t entirely products of random evolution. They are designs of the precursors. So that’s why they’re so similar, both are designed.
Why did they make the forerunners look like fish people, that's the real question.
Right. I honesty liked how we never knew what they looked like. Now the only mystery left in the Halo universe is the one of the precursors and idk if I even want that answered. I do but I don’t. If they ever do answer it, it’ll have to be the amongst the last of the stories told in the halo universe
Cus 343 has no actual vision for halo besides money. Like, making the forerunners look like weird fish people is one of the least egregious things they did with them.
Because Halo 4’s art direction was awful.
@@Comkill117 ^^^
To give them their own identity, I don't know why y'all crying about such little things as if it's the end of the world. I like the fact that humans are made to be more of their own as they're the real chosen ones of the halo universe.
To have the humans descend from the forerunners in the original concept is less-interesting as it spits out ill-irony: Because then that means back then they were only highly superior advanced race in the galaxy. Which means back then they were probably huge a-holes to other species in the past like exactly like how the covenant empire is to mankind in 26th century.
And they'll have to be the same exact race that gave the middle-finger to the precursors, who the latter just handed them the mantle out of respect because they're suppose to be responsible.
So all in all in the official story: It's cool that the relationship between humans and forerunners are like siblings, And that the Precursors is like the father of them all because they're the ones who created the universe.
During The Maw, 343 Guilty Spark is fascinated by human history and wants to archive it and study it. I forgot how he worded it, but he expressed his fascination in such a way, it was actually as if humanity were the forerunners
He calls it "our lost history".
343 guilty spark was insane throughout the original trilogy. Even without 343 lore it's obvious. But he is also an ancient human composed and put into a monitor so him calling human history "our lost history" could mean he's speaking about ancient humanity in relation to modern humanity
@@shadewolf0075 that's Frankie/343i retcon lore.
@Riorozen except it is canon. 343 guilty spark being a composed human actually explains his erratic behavior. Also bungie changed their minds on a lot throughout halo's development I mean the flood was originally gonna be a covenant bioweapon let lose.
@@Gamenoob117 sorry you don't get to decide what is canon bud
Also, in the cut content for Halo 2 (which was supposed to contain many Halo 3 elements) the Arbiter would find a sealed forerunner tomb on the ark, and guilty spark would open it for him to reveal that the Forerunners ARE humans, but I guess they ran out of time and by the time they hit that plot point in Halo 3, they decided maybe Forerunners were a different species.
The Ark then was more of a giant temple on Earth, but it would’ve made the scope way too small at that point. So they had to change so much around.
The Halo mmo in development from 2004-2007 had Human forerunners, it would have been cancelled ~at most~ 7 months before Halo 3 was finished, and probably less
The whole point of the video is to show that there was no "they" deciding things during Halo 3's development. The fact that Spark explicitly states that humans are Forerunners in that game, yet simultaneously you have other media stating otherwise shows that there was some sort of schism between the lead devs at Bungie.
Little theory: What if forerunners and ancient humans originated from the exact same species as when the precursors created them, but over time they split genetically via evolution and essentially formed into their own species, I mean the change would take millions of years and we know that the forerunners are at least 10 million years old.
That would explain how the humans can still use forerunner tech even though they're not really forerunner.
the books explain this the forerunners allowed the humans to access there technology as they were next to hold the mantle and they would be the "reclaimers" of the mantle.
This is similar to what Installation00 proposed.
Well good news because the last book(point of light) hinted that humans and forerunners might share the same origin
@@GeorgeMazur29 Wait really? i havent watched him in ages but if so then thats sick!
@@donovanhendrix9857 yeah my bad,after reading back that makes sense. Though the possibility that they were both very similar genetically could still be evidence of them being the same species first
I like installation 00's take on this, he theorizes that humans and forerunners are related, we are just split down slightly different evolutionary paths. He also thinks that some of the old structures we encounter in halo 2 are actually ancient human structures, they are just displayed like museum pieces and also studied
This Precursors took them apart to have competition for the Mantle
@@Bastion70 or the forerunners made humanity to inherit the mantle as part of their plan because the precursors weren’t happy with the forerunners, on top of that theres a lot of hints in halo infinite that the forerunners are hiding a truth that they absolutely don’t want to be known.
@Scary_Pronoun Possibly the truth of the Forerunners driving the Precursors' to near-extinction
The original ending for halo 2 is incredible. Arbiter and spark finding the bones of the forerunners that look like humans was mind blowing
I liked the previous history better. Ancient humans being forerunner was alot cooler
Yeah! It would show how really capable and intellectually superior we were.
It would have been a far more creative and original idea than oh look ancient aliens got how boring.
@@ChaosWolfNinja and it wouod be the biggest plot twist for the covenant when they find out the Gods they worshipped this whole time are the ancestors to the "Demons!" they keep trying to kill
@@gonzaloenrique8741 It would have been an awesome twist. To see the whole "religion" collapse. Would have been an epic scenario
Humans being the literal descendants of the Forerunners makes so much sense and is a much better twist than what they went with. Things got really complicated when they started building on the lore for the Forerunners and their history with ancient humanity, almost needlessly.
Look up Andy - insp. Magnum's retrospective review regarding to Halo 4.
I prefer the human's being forerunner personally. The ancient humans being made different than FR's made humans just budget forerunners anyway, and having FR's be aliens that look really similar to humans just felt pointless, that and the hole cast system think suck all the intrest out of it for me.
It would have been poetic for the covenant to be killing the vary "gods" they worshiped. Be it bungie or 343 I feel the dissison was a flaw of not nailing down world building.
I mean, it was fine with humans just being the reclaimers/inheritors of the forerunner legacy. Made much more sense narratively. But then Halo 4 just swings too far by making both technically true and it’s just....meh
On the contrary, that would've been a little cliche.
Happens too much in other franchises.
Nah two being
Different species
Is better
@@human3213 Chungmonus
@@yueshijoorya601 And so is an alien species giving up its role as harbingers or shepherds of the Galaxy to Humans. Ancient Humans was a better idea, and a bit more novel at the time.
Imagine thinking anything that comes out of frank O’Connors head is canon
I still prefer the idea of humans being forerunner. Kind of upsetting that Frank decides to just shift away from Joseph’s story...
The point was that they never made a decision tho?
@@argo9721 True, but Frank did, instead of leaving the thought to be there he made it definitive. So in a way you proved what I was saying 😂
@@MegamanZero410 dude I’m just gonna go with what the official books say OK. Because this is getting to confusing
@@argo9721 Summation: Joseph kept things vague which made us speculate and think on what was, offering mysticism and intrigue. Frank made finite, definitive, officiating the nature of the forerunners, instead of leaving it to interpretation and wonderment.
@@MegamanZero410 Argo doesn't like using his brain. Needs everything spelled out for him. Like literally, because of the piss-poor books that 343i pushes out lately.
The human forerunner connection was formly established in the finale Level of CE. 343 Says that the data he collected from the pillar of autumn was a record of all their lost time. Human History is forerunner history. That retcon always will bother me.
That is true, though it still fits post retcon with the reveal in the Greg Bear books that Spark used to be an ancient human himself, who was turned into a monitor AI in an attempt to save his life. So post retcon, it could refer to Spark vaguely remembering he used to be human and wanted to learn how his species had grown back on Earth in 100, 000 years.
but not really, because that still stands. the humans were around back then anyway, and there history was lost. And it was saved by the librarian in forerunner records.
@@lionocyborg6030 I disagree. The dude literally called Chief a Forerunner to his face.
@@Gunplabro Bungie has never been good at writing.
@Nagger There are a lot of artistically starved people who do apparently yes.
Some forerunners in the forerunner trilogy theorized that the forerunners and the humans had a common ancestor. So there's that
Forerunners, might be an entirely artificial species instead of an uplifted species like humans.
@@Reyma777 ALL LIFE IN THE GALAXY IS ARTIFICIAL, tho... cuz all of them were literally Seeded by the Precursors when they entered Milky Way
@@skebaba918The precursors didn't design the Forerunners or Humans, though. They more or less just provided the essential elements and conditions to make the phenomenon we call "life" possible. It's also important to remember that they do not abide by our time table in any way at all, as they can move faster than light and therefore can move back and forth through time at will. The precursors came from a different galaxy so the truth about the existence of the precursors outside of the Galaxy is up for speculation. In my opinion, I dont think they're really extinct. I honestly think they just like watching things unfold for their own entertainment lol
@@BigSnakey2 Considering the precursors are benevolent and pacifist by nature (they outright refused to fight the Forerunners, even when they were being killed off by them). As such, I don't think any Precursors outside the Milky Way are even aware of what's going on in the Milky Way, and if they are, they're completely avoiding it.
@@Practitioner_of_Diogenes I think that with their ability to communicate telepathically, any surviving precursors 100% know or knew what happened to their "relatives" in the Milky Way Galaxy. Interesting to think about for sure.
I really found it much more interesting that we were descendants of the forerunners rather than them being separate. It made it feel even more mysterious, making me wonder "what were we like? why this form now and not the original forerunner form?" It felt like we were orphanized longing for our parents and it felt like there was a much deeper connection due to that
Technically that still exists ancient humans were still there and those same questions can still be raised. I don't see anything really lost more gained now that we have two highly advance races that will have more depth as separate instead of together.
I think it’s pretty cliche. I find it a bit more original that were close relatives to each other. Siblings so to speak.
@@dr.catherineelizabethhalse1820 how is it cliched? It seems we got a really got amount of lore and world building that everyone agrees make halo better.
Even then the Precursors did make the humans and forerunners so they are related.
@@Knight1029 Well it’s pretty common trope that human actually are the ancient powerfu race. The current story direction has allowed more complex and interesting story in my opinion.
@@dr.catherineelizabethhalse1820 wait. I think I may have misunderstood what you were saying. Do you think it is better that humans and Forerunners are separated or that they should have been the same. Cause I like that they are separated it is more interesting.
If Joe Staten and Martie O'Donnell says forerunners are human I'm more inclined to believe them.
Also, it's much easier to make the Halo 3 terminals fit that narrative rather than to fit everything that came before into the new narrative. If you take just the Bungie games as canon, it's straight forward to conclude that forerunners were humans. The only other problem I'm aware of when it comes to this interpretation is when Halsey says (under Sword Base): "Before you is an alien artifact neither human nor Covenant in origin." My answer to that would be that she simply doesn't know and even if she does it would've been strange for her to refer to it as a human artifact in that context. "Human" can also be thought of as a faction (just like Covenant is a faction), meaning modern humans rather than forerunners.
"birth right from an ancient civilisation" -Halsey Halo - reach
"you are forerunner ! but this ring is mine" -guilty spark - Halo 3
"child of my enemy, why have you come? I offer no forgiveness... a father's sins, passed to his son" -gravemind - Halo 3
"I have walked among man and angel for three thousand years" -Mendi kit bias - Halo 2
"Your forefathers wisely set aside their compassion.. steeled themselves for what needed to be done. I see now why they left you behind. You were weak... and gods must be strong." -Prophet of truth -Halo 3
Humans are very forerunner and it only changed due to Frank O Connor who changed that detail in halo 4 and was the only one against the original story that was made by Joseph Staten@@junfour
@@BlueGoyim71 i dont deny bungie wanted forerunner to be human but after playing halo 4 it still fits with the original story. in away the forerunners did give life to humanity making them their "children." the whole reason for the covenant war was because the prophets misunderstood the forerunners and twisted their "great journey" into their favor.
what earth are you on.
the whole story form halo 4 contradicts everything that happened ce to 3.
The iris ads by FRANK O CONNOR didn't line up with the original lore, the didact and libarian were job titles and not people.
Halo was a biblical story, not a space fantasy which is what it is now. @@dg7347
Mendakit bias made it clear that humans are reclaimers, let alone in the bungie written terminals mendakit threatens to send the forerunners back to the stone age lmao.
Also in halo legends forunners had five fingers and a every human body and original concpet art for a cancelled halo game showed humans as forerunners.@@dg7347
I was always disappointed with the change, and the reveal that mankind had their own ancient interstellar empire. It turned the Forerunners from these enigmatic, almost unknowable beings with a mysterious connection to humanity, to salty fish people that got angry because mommy and daddy started paying more attention to the new kid. It cheapens the status of “Reclaimer” from the descendants of the closest things in the known galaxy to gods, to just a badge you get if the Precursors like you.
Personally in my own headcannon, I’ve reconciled the two ideas by making humanity a secret genetic project conducted by the Forerunners to create life, something reserved only for the Precursors and not an entitlement of the Mantle. That way the Didact still hates humanity (seeing them as mutants and inferior to true Forerunner life), and there’s still a reason for the Precursor war, since when they find out the Forerunners created life they try to revoke the Mantle from them.
There was something beautiful about the idea of Forerunners discovering humanity and seeing such potential in them that they appoint them as their successors. Compare that to the whole messy Human-Forerunner war thing with humanity being on par with the Forerunners but are then devolved and are then appointed as the inheritors of the mantle like I mean what?!?
Also the whole "There are 2 Didacts who are the same bu not really" thing really cheapened the bittersweetness of Librarian and Didact's romance that we got a glimpse of in the Halo 3 terminals.
343i is just another symptom of Microsoft taking good things and driving them straight into the ground. Like it's almost like they made it as convoluted as possible so that a person has to buy books to even begin to make sense of the mess. Trying to make every book canon to the point that events in the games are brushed aside in favor of a books version of events only to be explained by. "Oh mendicant bias wasn't showing those events properly, he was trying to skew things purposely." Or "you can't take that person's word due to rampancy." Halo one through three pushed far more narrative suggesting that humanity was forerunners than providing much as evidence of two separate races. It makes the gravemind's quote "I am a monument to all your sins." Feel empty since the new direction they took turned humanity into victims of forerunners.
The book Point of Light un-recons the notion that humans and forerunner are not the same. Spoilers beyond this sentence: Forerunners have 3 rates.. warrior servants, builders, and life workers, but a link was discovered to a fourth "theoretical" rate.. philosophers. Those are ancient humans. So the Precursors made one race that could evolve into four rates. one of them became an offshoot of the main branch, and their origins were forgotten.
Halo’s old concept of humans being forerunners was looked at more closely in a very old scrapped alpha for Halo 1, which Forrest of the Marathon fanbase (I don’t know how to spell his surname) used as a basis for his mod Marathon Eternal X, which does the same thing but for the Marathon equivalent, the Jjaro (Jyi-rr-aro). I recommend checking out this mod as part of the Before Halo series, it’s really good.
That's really interesting, thanks for letting me know! Even if it's not mentioned in Before Halo, that might actually deserve its own video
@@SameToken Cheers. I mention it in a text LP I did for Marathon Eternal and Halo SPV3 (as I made versions for the Marathon Story Page too, I included a primer of the books leading up to Halo 1 so Marathon’s fans who didn’t know much about Halo wouldn’t be left in the dark). I can provide links to the ones on my blog if you want. (The link lists I did for the MSP versions are on the Pfhorums and the Pfhorums has been down for weeks now)
Such an underrated channel
Agreed
Agreed
Agreed
Criminally
One of the most underrated channels on here if u ask me
I don't think it's as complicated as made out in this video to understand why/ when the change was made. Frank O'Connor (as far as I'm aware) is the ONLY Bungie era developer that considered humans & forerunners as separate species.
He wrote the Diadact & Librarian terminals which establish humanity as its own species despite being contradicted by the other terminals, the main story of the games & literally every novel released under Bungies tenure. The guy just didn't understand the nuance of the Halo story.
The Bungie dev chosen by Bungie to have his stuff put in
@@DigiNivergthey bullied him for it apparently, because he kept trying to shove his stupid headcanon in everything, and eventually he did, ruining the entire lore of the series. There have been multiple ex-bungie devs who have said “forerunners are humans”
@@roachdoggjr1454 get over yourself, Bungie approved it and Bungie devs themself have said 343 simply went with the lore Bungie established
@@DigiNiverg “343 went with the lore bungie established” no they went with the lore frank o’connor established, do I need to remind you that according to frankie, the covenant and UNSC teamed up to beat the flood, even though that never happened. The only reason why frank even wrote 2 of the terminals was because they were approaching the deadline and needed someone to write some filler BS, so they grabbed a random employee they didnt care to much about. In fact some of the terminals in Halo 3 contradict the whole “human and forerunners are different” arguement, and if you want even more evidence that humans are forerunners, Marty O’Donnel, a guy who was way more hands on than frankie was even tweeted “subtext, wasnt it obvious that Humans were and will always be forerunner?”
@@roachdoggjr1454 lmao you can not do all this bitchin for lore Bungie approved and put in
I personally still go with Humans are descendants of the forerunners in my head canon. Always after playing Halo 3, this was the impression I had and I have decided to keep that for me. Its also a matter of Occam’s Razor for me. It more easily explains why Humans are able to operate forerunner tech and everything. I will add though that there is room for the forerunners to look not exactly like humans still too. I can’t remember off the top of my head how much time elapsed between the Halo Rings firing and the events of Halo 3 but evolution would still be at play the whole time. Even if it was originally forerunner genetic code that was used to reseed earth, it is Naive to say that some changes couldnt happen along the way but enough of the forerunner genetics remains to operate forerunner tech. Thats what I think anyway :P
The Librarian could have something to do with humans being able to operate forerunner tech, since it was the Librarian's plan to have humans take over and take up the mantle of responsibility
Halo 2’s intended ending reveals a device on Earth to guide human evolution to ensure we come out like our ancestors aka the Forerunners. Probably to make sure the majority of people inheriting the tech aren’t savage asshats by the time it happens.
"birth right from an ancient civilisation" -Halsey Halo - reach
"you are forerunner ! but this ring is mine" -guilty spark - Halo 3
"child of my enemy, why have you come? I offer no forgiveness... a father's sins, passed to his son" -gravemind - Halo 3
"I have walked among man and angel for three thousand years" -Mendi kit bias - Halo 2
"Your forefathers wisely set aside their compassion.. steeled themselves for what needed to be done. I see now why they left you behind. You were weak... and gods must be strong." -Prophet of truth -Halo 3
Humans are very forerunner and it only changed due to Frank O Connor who changed that detail in halo 4 and was the only one against the original story that was made by Joseph Staten
I always thought that when Spark said “you are forerunner” he was addressing the fact that humanity had essentially replaced the Forerunners. That also would explain the line in Contact Harvest because if the Forerunners gave their tech to humanity their machines would recognize them as Forerunner.
No he’s saying he is forerunner. A child of something is an offspring. You are a child of your dad and yet you are human? He’s not saying the forerunners literally made the humans.
@@raaaaaaaaaam496 lol I never said the forerunners made the humans. I was referring to the way that the forerunners passed the Mantle of Responsibility on to the humans, and their tech and stuff along with it.
Their machines recognize them as forerunners if they are so
That makes no sense at all. If we replaced the Forerunners, we wouldn’t be Forerunner. Think about what the word means. It’s totally incompatible unless it is the literal truth.
@@inquisitor1284pretty sure the new lore states that Forerunners killed the Precursors because the Precursors gave the Mantle of responsibility to the Ancient humans.
Why would they give it away?
IRIS was directed by Frank O'Conner. The terminals that suggest humans aren't forerunners were written by Frank O'Conner. Frank O'Conner was appointed, by Bonnie Ross, to be the franchise lead of 343 in 2008. They have since both been fired and will never work on Halo ever again. Clearly Frank O'Conner had issues with Bungie and is why he was so eager to leave Bungie to take control of Halo by any means. Lead Bungie devs have all unanimously reported that Humans were Forerunners until 343 changed it with their novels and games. Bungie did not authenticate the terminals or the IRIS campaign with their lore-comb. Clearly the stuff Frank O'Conner made contradict the Halo Bible.
Forerunners are humans, the new lore is bad fan-fiction.
I absolutely hate the design of the forerunner 343 came up with.
Every design 343 came up with sucks. From the over complicated and overdesigned Forerunner technology to the boring basic sci fi cities, the ugly ass Covenant, and the power ranger Spartans. It all sucks, Halo 5 is as ugly as dog shit.
I always loved the Humans were Forerunners idea and honestly wish that is the way the lore went.
They essentially did in the point of light novel. The Libraian kept making references to the similarities and mentions how they were once the same
I just pretend halo 4 and 5 are like star wars EU
@@YiaMdj Man you’re gonna have a hard time communicating with everyone else then
The original trilogy was supposed to end with humanity opening a coffin of a forerunner and it was a human skeleton and you hear guilty spark tell us we are forunners and it makes sense cause we can activate halo arrays and other artifacts but other species cannot so Idk why 343 retconned it kind of bummed out and makes the original trilogy kinda weird when you look back on it
@@jaimevalencia6271 The original trilogy for the most part is still intact story wise and logic wise
WAIT WHAT? Don't tell me I composed my own sons? Just what the hell is going on?
_HELLO THERE_
Time for warm family reunion...
Well that would be an awkward family reunion at the end of escalation.
As a famous human poet once said a long time ago: “D’OH!”
Librarian: "I thought that was the plan? We needed to cover up the fact we screwed over the galaxy by creating the Flood trying to fast-track galactic domination through excessive use of false flags, only to accidentally create a legitimate threat? And that we planned to do that by making it appear 'humans' were our enemies? It's called tough love. Either we compose them, or the galaxy will genocide them."
I haven't looked into this much, but that page from the comic could very easily be saying that from the point of view of the early humans, the Forerunners were alien, but really the Forerunners were still human but were so unrecognisable as such by the early humans.
I consider IRIS a way of leaving the door open to the Forerunners being their own species should 343 have wanted to go that route with their games' story. Remember 343 was formed some months before Halo 3's release.
343 at that time was little more than 4 Microsoft guys that handled the MT Dew deals while Bungie made the game.
I know this was 2 years ago but Iris was an inconsistent mishap that got leaked and panic edited for damage control, and anything pre-343 that indicates Forerunners weren't humans is done under the influence of Frank O' Connor, the guy that went to 343 after his time in Bungie and fully retconned them.
Frank O' Connor is responsible for the retcons.
I wish they kept them human. I fell frank o connor just added to much unnnesasry world being with the human forruner war, precursers and ,flood being ground up precurser remains. Should of kept forruners as humans and the origins of the flood a seceret
The whole "Halo 3 retconned human forerunners" thing isn't exactly conclusive, it's just that the Librarian refers to the inhabitants of Earth as "they" in one terminal, which doesn't necessarily mean they are a different species, they could just as likely be a different group or population of Forerunners. The whole "exit portal from the Ark where the Forerunners were taking refuge during the Halo firing being in the exact same location humanity is believed to have started as a species around the same time as the Forerunners would have exited" is also a massive Forerunners = Humans clue contained in Halo 3, something Joe Staten explicitly states and confirms in a 2006 interview.
I Love Bees was never really believed to be canon, or at least not to the same level of canon as the content of the books and games, so I don't know why IRIS is. I have seen some ex-Bungie employees claim on twitter that they retconned the Forerunners being Human during Halo 3's development, but as you say yourself, I don't believe that was a company-wide agreed idea or change.
Regardless of when or how the retcon happened, I'd much rather stick to the established lore of talented devs and Bungie veterans such as Joe Staten over retcons made by journalist latecomers to the company like O'Connor any day of the week anyway.
Hidden messages in the Halo Reach datapads also support the Humans = Forerunner idea, so even if the idea of retconning it started in 2007 by people such as O'Connor, it seems not all of Bungie got the memo, even by 2010.
Also the whole 343 calling humanity forerunners at the end was supposed to resolute this entire issue.
There was actually a post on neogaf where someone was explaining the usual, "so the terminals in h3 actually were when forerunners were retconned" and you know what. Frankie himself responded and said when he wrote them there were many ideas of what post-3 Halo could be. Essentially he said he wasn't trying to retcon anything at least at the point of 2007
@@Sam-gs2wq well Halo 2 was supposed to end on ark that was o earth where Arbiter and chief would find forerunner graves with human bodies. *one hellcrunch later* halo 2 was cut from the end of act 2 and halo 3 became the act 3. In Halo 3 the terminals are there to keep it ambigous what the forerunners were up until the final confrontation with 343 guilty spark. Thus far there had only been clever hints towards Forerunners being human. CE: humans being called "reclaimers" meaning they are not claiming forerunner assets. They are *re* claiming it. When chief refuses to fire the halo "why would you hesitate to do something you have already done" a more direct hint that its the same species. When 343 browsers through the UNSC records he states "catch up in all of our lost time" people state this is in general but that doesnt make sense since humanity hasnt been spacefaring for that long and by the time of CE humanity has barely spread to stars so no not even close enough to cover for all the thousands of years of lost time 343 has spent on the ring. One biggesr counters to this is librarian saying that the creatures on earth have been gathered up for reseeding. Few things to note it says "creatures" what an indiffirent name for species you chose as the reclaimers of everything you leave behind. Not to mention a species you have a long standing history with and what Halo 4 librarian is deeply invested with. So the creatures more likely meant animals. Final nail on the coffin was supposed to be when 343 states "you are forerunner"
343 went with the wrong narrative imo. The idea that the "gods" the Covenant worshipped were actually the race they were trying to wipe out the whole time would have been beautifully ironic. A post-war story about the remaining Covenant struggling to come to terms with the fact that Humans are Forerunner, or the Humans themselves attempting to "reclaim" the ancient tech of their ancestors would have been far more interesting than the Darth Vader knockoff with his droid army we got in H4.
Exactly! The set up was practically a lay up, bungie left them with a tremendous story, a few loose strings but all they had to do was tie the knot, but they changed the entire gift wrap.
343 should get some balls and scrap halo 4 and halo 5 story. Retcon it like they did with bungies story. Release a new and improved halo 4 and halo 5 with appropriate story.
Halo infinite will expand upon halo 5s terrible story. Now they're introducing the banished? What a shame.
So it'd be like the Minbari of Babylon 5?
Ehh, I can dig it.
Well. The san'shyuum were allies of the ancient humans until they surrendered and forgot about the humans post forerunner-flood war after reseeding. So the sanshyuum killing off humanity without realizing they were allies makes it just as ironic as killing off the very gods they worshipped. It's possible that the surviving sanhyuum may or may not regret their actions.
@@gonzaloenrique8741 yeah uhh no, retconning all of Halo 4 and Halo 5 will retcon nearly every book and bit of lore set after Halo 4 and 5.
@@greenradiozone824 Rookie lives so I fail to see the problem.
This was one of the things that finally turned me off the Halo franchise for good. Not only did they retcon something that had been effectively foreshadowed for so long, but for what?
I mean, having the humans BE the Forerunners made sense, and it tied everything up in a narrative sense. The way the architecture seemed awesome and mysterious, but familiar through the use of hard angles and planes, much like a human might. The way humans could use FR tech. The fact that the Ark was on earth.
And it made sense from a narrative perspective. Rather than risk absolute extinction, they “seeded” their home world (or at least one of their worlds) with their own species set to re-emerge after the rings had been fired.
Not only that, but the retcon (like retcons always do) introduces far more problems than it could ever hope to fix. Humans on earth observing the Ark as it was built? Doesn’t that imply that earth was either outside the blast radius of the rings, or that humans were somehow unaffected by them? It’s a narrative mess that didn’t need to happen.
Was such a turnoff for me I couldn't bring myself to buy another Xbox. So much of these convoluted lore things felt so tacked on that it bogs everything else down. Humans were forerunners? There's why you seem to have a natural affinity for using their technology. Now it's "Well you see...it is all a master plan by aliens...our lore is being written by the ancient aliens guy."
The Ark wasn't on earth. The gateway to the Ark was....the Forerunners built it there so that humanity could uphold the mantle and activate the rings if the Flood ever escaped containment. Humanity and every other species in the galaxy were contained (on their respective worlds) by the forerunners prior to the Halo array firing. Then they were released.
Not sure where you got all that bad info from.
@@footlessmoonbadger7189 People just like to complain. The retconned lore added a beautiful and extensive narrative to the Halo universe.
@@dhr416 No. It REALLY didn't. It ruined a beautiful and extensive narrative. For no reason other than they wanted to be more like Mass Effect.
@@vKILLZ0NEv bungie's narrative was a mess. Full of contradictions.
I think 343 should have probably left the Forerunners mysterious and the past mysterious and unknown. I do agree that the galaxy needed a new threat but you could have come up with anything. I also think Halo 5 or 6 (Infinite) should have seen the Flood come back. It is easy to explain as you could say a ship from the Flood went to seed them somewhere else between Halo 2 and Halo 3 since the Flood was at their height again after Halo 2.
Regarding only Halo CE, 2 & 3 (no books or ad campaigns or whatever else that's not the games themselves) if we don't count only one specific terminal log of the Librarian and Didact conversing, everything else points to humans being forerunners. So we're seriously gonna say the optional skippable missable single terminal log in halo 3 takes precedent over numerous examples in the trilogy? I don't think so. Humans are Forerunners.
I've always imagine bungie era's forerunner to be their Destiny's "Awoken" in terms of aesthetics and they would have to "devolved" and forget their glorious past due to their encounter with the flood
If the canceled Halo MMO was going to be any indication, the Forerunners were meant to look like Disney Atlanteans with white hair and glowing eyes.
@@Halo1138 yeah I saw that but I kinda prefer the awoken to be advanced form of humans
@@Halo1138 that wasn’t made by Bungie
@@argo9721 No, but had it come out, it would have been the first look at Forerunners. Bungie had to have been involved on some level, or Ensemble had access to the Story Bible for the foundations of the game.
Originally I was excited at the idea of humanity being forerunner as the trilogy was releasing and anticipating what would come next.
However, over time I now think I prefer the separate species approach. So many movies, shows, games and book use the trip of being the chosen ones/prophecy/chosen one. While Halo does do this with the whole mantle of responsibility stuff, I think the separate species adds a dynamic to it where it’s less of a chosen one scenario and more of a pass the torch.
Would have been better to also not make humanity an ancient space faring race
@@Fuk99999 Actually that does make it more interesting. We were once advanced too, but reset to boot by the forerunners, only for them to realise their mistakes and pass the mantle onto us (or arrange for it to be so later). Kind of a cool and unique approach to a human history history
@@advait35 is functionally the same as the chosen ones though. The precursors favored humanity, the newrunners were jealous and killed and de-evolved humans. It's basically the same thing except instead of playing around in the ruins of our golden age were playing around in the ruins of the forerunners (which is a perfect explanation for the golden age trope in classical literature). Now we're playing around in a civilization that was slightly better than our golden age and was just sort of jealous so they exiled us and I guess the implication is the forerunners are the gods of antiquity so the covenant is just right? why they didn't just kill all humans is just silly.
The main reason they did this was that they needed humanity to fight things in the new games. The covenant was shattered, the remnants seemed like a joke concept, so they decided to invent the forerunners... and defile the mystery associated with them. The introduction of the banished is really the only thing that could be perceived as a valid threat, but it was too late, and we're stuck with the forerunners being fish people who don't like humanity except for one who thought they were cute.
I think if you needed to make the forerunners a separate species, the eldar/old ones in 40k would be a good place to look for inspiration. The forerunners could have seeded life on millions of wolds, and perhaps play around with humanity as an experiment, seeing them as potential successors or on the way to being equals (hence we seem to be able to access their tech and operate their machines unlike the covenant). But with the flood war, we were forgotten about or hidden, to return when it was safe to come back and "reclaim" the forerunners legacy. instead, the current state of the forerunners is comically evil and they have one who comically benevolent.
I mean, at this point the "pass the torch" trope has been more overused in sci-fi than the humans actually being the ancient race themselves. So I'm not sure why the retcon is any better, especially considering where they ultimately went with it after the handover to 343.
@@piranhaplantX especially considering it still keeps humans as the ancient race while also being pass the touch twice.
The Cradle of Life doesn't even depict the Librarian in that image? Nor do the Terminals claim them to be a separate species anywhere... Why do people try so hard to justify this obvious retcon that came post Bungie?
I'd like to point out that Bungie ignored the terminals due to the fact it conflicted with what they intended. In Halo 3 humans were Forerunner. 343 WAS the one to retcon that. Frank O'Connor was the one who wanted Forerunners to be separate species from humans, as he was doing the writing for some of the terminals and Bungie said no. Frank O'Connor went on to become creative director once 343 took over from Bungie. So no, it wasn't retconned in Halo 3. It was retconned in Halo 4.
It was actually retconned in Soma the Painter and the Forerunner trilogy, and Halo 4 solidified that contradiction.
@@flatarthur3161 by 343 and yes I'm aware.
"You are the child of my makers, inheritors of all they left behind. You are Forerunner."
Come to think about 343 guilty Sparks quote to master chief, this is meant that Master Chief has something in common with Bornstellar, not humans necessarily being forerunner themself. Although I admit, I find that the Precursors splitting one humanoid race into Forerunners and Humans is rather fascinating.
No all of that lore was made to explain these lines.
@Paul Thomas Well, now that those lines are canon, how else will 343 Industries work around them? Perhaps that Guilty Spark actually referred to the Master Chief as Bornstellar. Besides, there are several videos confirming this.
Changing this was really the original sin that trickled down into making modern halo lore a chaotic space-fantasy mess. In a perfect world I'd rewind the whole series back to Halo 2 and just declare everything that was released after a non-canon alternate universe.
C3 Sabertooth's video on Bungie Forerunners disproves this idea. Bungie Forerunners ARE Humans. You can't throw away 99% of the lore that states Forerunners are Humans and then just hold up the 1% that says they MIGHT not be human, ESPECIALLY when that 1% of "lore''s cannonicity can easily be called into question. I dislike referencing other RUclipsrs on people's channels since it can be considered rude, but C3 Sabertooth blows ALL this crap out of the water.
Iris and the 1/3 of the terminals (not even all of them) that depicted them as separate were written/co-written by frank O'Conner, who's the reason why they got changed in H4 and onward. Everyone else, even though the writing on the wall was kept subtle until 343 gp confirms it in H3, kept the narrative that they were the same. It even stayed with Reach that came after H3. Frank might've worked at bungie at the time, but he's not representative of the masses nor did bungie really change it before 343 did.
Tbh I always interpreted 343 GS's dialogue as metaphorical. And this is back when I didn't really pay that much attention to the lore. My instant thought was "Oh so he's saying that by inheriting (activating) Forerunner artefacts, Chief is essentially a descendant of the Forerunners in a non-biological way". Would still have been cool if 343 went with the human route however. Although I'm not against them being a separate species either. I still take issue with some of the creative directions 343 took with the Forerunners though.
That's funny because when I got to that line, I took Guilty Spark's line in the literal way opposite of you and Guilty Spark was confirming "Yes, humans are literally Forerunners".
I mean, there is just SO much more evidence that humans are literal decedents of Forerunners. Its not like this ONE line is the only clue.
Interestingly, Spark's line "You are the child of my makers" is open to interpretation in multiple ways.
First interpretation is that which is present in the video, that humans are a separate species from the original forerunners or were created/seeded by them.
Second, and what I personally think is a more accurate interpretation is that modern humanity in the halo series are the direct descendants of the forerunners.
The only difference is that the first interpretation takes Spark's quote metaphorically, whereas the second takes it literally. I think the quote is meant to be taken literally, considering that immediately after that Spark tells Chief that he IS forerunner. The word "child" also implies direct genetic continuation.
If we take Contact Harvest as a secondary piece of evidence, not only did the covenant luminaries recognize humanity as forerunners, but they also recognized their AI's such as Sif and Mack as Oracles, the same as they recognized Mendicant Bias or Spark as oracles. These two facts taken together also heavily imply that humans are at least the descendants of forerunners. That book was also written by Joseph Staten who was greatly involved in the writing of Halo 2 and 3, and so I think it's fairly safe to take this point of view as cannon, even if it was somewhat ambiguous at times and later completely retconned out by 343i.
I'd love to see a take where the current "forerunners" are discovered to be aliens masquerading as the OG forerunners, who hijacked their tech or something and attempted to usurp humanity's position as reclaimer/forerunners.
I mean, not really. "You are the child of my makers" pretty explicitly states humans are Forerunners. Spark is a pretty literal guy. Species typically give birth to the same species. And the fact he follows it up with "You ARE Forerunner" should leave no doubt what he meant.
@@vKILLZ0NEv Yeah I don't disagree, read the first paragraph
@@theonefreeman3375 You said it is open to interpretation. I say it is not.
I stick with what was established in Halo CE, forerunners are human. Couldn't give a crap on some unknown comic trying to retcon the Halo lore.
I think forerunners being ancient humans is way more poetic
Tbh this is wrong. We STILL were Forerunners in Halo 3, it’s pretty obvious they had NO intention of making humans separate from forerunners in 3. They just decided it worked more if it was vague instead of explicit. Which tbh it does. But now we have 343i taking a shit in it all. For no reason.
This is somewhat false and only makes sense if you value the most poorly written and broken terminal section, the Librarian and Didact Terminals, over literally everything else in the franchise, including the rest of Halo 3 and the rest of the Terminals (mainly the Mendicant Bias Terminals which have some of the most heavy handed hints that Humans are Forerunners), not to mention Contact Harvest which came out AFTER Halo 3 and was written by Joe Staten himself just further confirming that Humans are Forerunners.
Spark’s character changes from having a long memory to being insane once forerunners changed to a different species.
Gonna be honest the psychotic giggles from CE are a dead give away
"birth right from an ancient civilisation" -Halsey Halo - reach
"you are forerunner ! but this ring is mine" -guilty spark - Halo 3
"child of my enemy, why have you come? I offer no forgiveness... a father's sins, passed to his son" -gravemind - Halo 3
"I have walked among man and angel for three thousand years" -Mendi kit bias - Halo 2
"Your forefathers wisely set aside their compassion.. steeled themselves for what needed to be done. I see now why they left you behind. You were weak... and gods must be strong." -Prophet of truth -Halo 3
Humans are very forerunner and it only changed due to Frank O Connor who changed that detail in halo 4 and was the only one against the original story that was made by Joseph Staten @@shadewolf0075
Frank O'Connor was responsible for the iris campaign and he was never involved in any other aspect of bungies halo but was made the head of 343 thats how it happened frank made a mistake in the terminals and then continued to retcon everything in halo 4.
Bungie wanted humans to be forerunners Frank had no idea of the story and still doesn't. Frank screwed up... that is the reason.
Frank was also very active on the Bungie forums during the mid 00s, 2003 to 2005 to be specific and drew a lot of ideas from the community there.
It wasn't even until Halo 3. It was still clearly humanity except for a few monitor messages written by one guy at the studio who wanted his own narrative that had already been rejected by the team. Guess who leads the writing for 343i? That's right. It's him.
Frank O'Connor left 343i in April last year.
@flatarthur3161
That’s good, but doesn’t purify a poisoned well.
I interpret the line, "You are the child of my makers. Inheritor of all they behind" as it being serious and not him saying the forerunners(aliens) made humans or reseeded them to Earth. Humans being the forerunners throughout the entire series, with tons of evidence, makes too much sense.
It would be like in our world the old generation leaving the fate of the nations/property/etc to the next generation, and like some human civilizations, they disappear like the forerunners did only to leave behind ruins, many of which we, the newer generations, don't understand because we didn't grow up in that era.
Also humans being forerunners would be satisfying irony for the Covenant's religion, you know, killing their Gods and all that.
The story works so much better the original way. It is much more interesting, and much more compelling.
lol no
To be honest bungie themselves couldn't seem to agree if they were human and the halo 3 terminal ending hints they weren't
Bungie couldnt agree on a lot of stuff honestly. The flood was originally a Covenant bioweapon.
@@Bastion70 to be fair to bungie that was in CE there first ever halo game the same game also has Johnson dying in the end
@@Bastion70 is that idea shown in any of the games ?
@Paul Thomas Oh indeed i was saying that bungie had different idea's that idea was never used. So bungie changing idea's isn't uncommon.
@@richardpatterson1694 Johnson isn't even a canon character until the Novel the Flood makes him one which is why he appears multiple times in the game he's just another marine in Combat Evolved.
I'm sure lots of people have already said this but it's never made any sense to me that humans could so easily access and activate Forerunner technology if they weren't previously Forerunners.
Yes, the word 'reclaimer' has a meaning, and 343 Guilty Spark is using it literally, he's a very logical robot he didn't just pick a cute pet name for humans for fun.
I, PERSONALLY, prefer them being a different species who messed up with their decisions, and decided that their mortal enemies were, kind of better and really were more deserving of the mantle of responsibility.
Yeah this makes the Forerunners more complex than simply if they were humans
It destroys a lot of what was fundamental to their role. Having them egotistical asshats who control other species with Imperial order was the dumbest decision ever made.
The firing of the rings was supposed to be a selfless, saving grace to an ensuing threat - a perfect contrast to their Technology and Love for the cosmos and its inhabitants compared to the Flood’s organic, consuming, corrupting nature. Forerunners were never warriors, builders of lifeworkers: they were CREATORS with a beautiful sense of wisdom and maturity beyond war.
@@yellowhoodie5299 I like that they were more eco driven it makes them have more depth as they had to realise that live was precious and it was not something they automatically knew. And realizing they were not the best so ended themselves so that live under humans could flourish and be better taken care of by the people they destroyed.
That is way more complex and interesting than if they were just already perfect being that were just fighting the bad guys.
@@Knight1029 they’re not “perfect”, they’ve simply gone through a learning lesson which they should have a long time ago.
Having their egos in the way is silly, especially during a time where they are facing Flood. You can’t have extreme evil face against decently evil, they would simply become of the same side.
To have any chance of a lasting and exchangeable spiritual conflict, they will bring out the absolute deepest convictions of said group; magnifying more of what they are - There’s no room for egoic struggles in the midst of that.
@@yellowhoodie5299 they still learned the lesson that was set up before and in a far more interesting way then them essentially starting out with that lesson. Now we get to see and explore those themes, concepts and ideas more personal than just having a story were good guys beat up bad guys. If that is what people enjoy then sure but I really prefer them being more grey. Also it is nice that they are not a race that all think the same and have a unique life from person to person.
In CE, the 'last time you asked' line from Spark is implied that they and Chief were discussing how the rings worked and why they were crucial to stopping the flood, especially since the start of Two Betrayals has Spark finishing a previous sentence involving Flood biology. *This was probably cut dialogue in a mission that was also cut, since Halo CE was supposed to have an open night-day cycle and 25 campaign levels, which got scrapped and cut to ten missions respectively.*
In Halo 3, the terminals clearly mark out the Librarian and Didact, and the ending of Halo 3 on Legendary implies a Forerunner Shield World. *Quite literally, 343 took the next logical steps for Halo 4, but broke a lot of conventions and rules of cannon in the process with the biggest one being the artstyle change.*
And finally, Reclaimers are granted access to the Forerunner technology by the will of the Forerunners in an attempt to ascend them to holding the Mantle of Responsibility. This bit of lore came after Bungie's time with Halo, but it's still relevant so on this it goes; over and over again, humanity has been referred to by Forerunner machines and ancillas as 'Reclaimers', those destined to gain back their long lost power within the milky way galaxy.
What's more, is there is a line from the Flood in Halo 3 that directly states; "Child of my enemy, why have you come? I offer no peace..." referring that the Primordial/Gravemind/Precursor/Flood sentience knows humanity are effectively, at this point within the timeline, to be of Forerunner descent, consecration, and geas implantation.
*In the simplest terms possible, the Forerunners are, have been, and always will be a now completely* _probably_ *extinct species of near-humanity from +100,000 years before modern Humanity as per Halo's standards. They were almost entirely wiped out with the Array's activation, down to the last known survivor being the now deceased Ur-Didact after his release from the prison Shield World designated Requiem.*
*Humanity is destined to take up the Mantle of Responsibility; this was why the Ur-Didact was so dead set on ending them, because they did not see Humanity as fit to control it even though their use of the Composer directly violated the prestated Mantle of Responsibility, therefore proving that the Forerunners were unworthy of it. That is why they fell to the flood and killed everything to stop its spread.*
Humans being forerunners themselves works so much better as a narrative.
Here’s an idea.
Forerunners WERE humans. A branch of them that continually experimented on themselves until they were mutated to the forerunners. This section fell out of mainline humanity through civil war.
The mainline humans stayed the same.
A kind of parallel between the UNSC and the Innies. The UNSC does already do genetic makeup experimentation, after all.
That's pretty much what Bungie was going for minus the civil war stuff. Humans on Earth were evolving separately from the rest of the Forerunners, so there would be differences but they'd still be the same species at the end of the day
I always assumed that 343 Guilty Spark was undergoing rampancy & that's why he confused Chief for a Forerunner.
I started thinking about this a lot last year and was just telling my friend the other day it seemed like Bungie originally intended for Forerunners to be human. I think that would have been a WAY cooler reveal and i don’t like 343’s direction. It’s cool but sad that this is now confirmed.
I love this channel and your videos are fantastic. But I disagree about your attempts to explain away Spark’s comments. It’s obvious from his line that Forerunners are human, and i think they made a big mistake retconning it.
Bungie made the change
@@deathtrooper2048 no they didn’t. in all of bungie’s lore, Humanity were the Forerunners. Humans were the ones who could activate forerunner tech seamlessly, and humans being forerunner descendants was the reason the covenant went to war with humanity, the Forerunner’s descendants being an inferior society to them proved their entire religion that worshiped the Forerunners to be a falsehood. Now suddenly Forerunners look like half-shaved scrotum people if the Didact is anything to go by.
@@Slender_Man_186 Nah halo 3 terminals kinda make it so that the forerunners are a separate species. But like it’s pointed out in the video, the development staff didn’t even agree on this. The story implied one thing and then the hidden lore in game implied another. Personally I think they should have just stayed in the “forerunners are ancient humans” rout
I liked the forerunners and humans being their own species instead of being the same, It's less cryptic and confusing, And It makes more sense as to why the Flood is so hellbent on attacking the Covenant more than attacking humanity, The Gravemind despises the Covenant, Specifically the prophets, for trying to revive the traditions and culture of the traitorous forerunners, And find their idea of The Great Journey insulting considering that they they attempt to reactivate the Halo rings that almost killed them the first time.
But not really much on the humans because atleast the Gravemind still accepts them as the only WORTHY ones of holding the mantle, If the Gravemind tossed away little of what respect remains leftover from their time as Precursors, Then they would straight up throw the infested high-charity at Earth instead of sending a small infested covie cruiser at them with little effort in Africa, Earth would be devoured by the flood that way and it's game over for Halo 3.
@@Slender_Man_186 Bungir made the halo 3 terminals and Iris
Halo 3's Terminals did not claim Forerunner's were a separate species. It reaffirmed that Forerunner's were ancient humans...
Regardless, that core decision is where the Halo series died for me. Just look at all the narrative developments that stemmed from it. Developments that absolutely ruined the franchise.
Andy - ISP Magnum did a great video ripping into 343’s awful writing. He explained how there was barely an implication to the forerunner being Human.
The man who wrote the terminals eventually came to write Halo 4. So I reckon he picked his own false take because he’s an egotistical writer that preferred his own work to Bungie’s.
Hey, can you do Covenant lore?? That would be AWESOME!!