This video was a HERCULEAN effort, took almost 2 weeks to make, so I really hope you guys enjoy ❤ *Please remember to be civil in any discussions you have here in the comments or off the back of this video, I get this topic is very polarising and I tried to approach it in the most balanced manner possible, but please just be chill with each other and don't take it too seriously, at the end of the day, it's just Ring Game™ lore 😂*
I have not gotten through the entire video yet. However I did skip to the conclusion just to see if you maybe had a different position than most people seem to in this position. Unfortunately, It doesn't seem like you have. In my opinion, The evidence as of the Halo 3 era points much more to the Forerunners being humanity's *creators* as opposed to being literally the same species as us.
You know, if you think about it, the forerunners as humans actually makes the covenant much more important to the whole halo universe. And, in a weird way, it makes the halo series less "human centric," since, rather than the destined golden babies chosen by the precursors, humanity is just the descendant of a group of hyper advanced ancestors. In this universe, humanity is not "special" or chosen, any more than a trust fund baby, as shown by the covenant being able to easily kick humanities teeth in. And what saves humanity is not human special super powers, its the fundamentals that make us human. Love, trust, the ability to work together, while the covenant fracture b/c their bonds are all based on a lie.
@@HiddenXperia love it I'm a little sick of explaining this to people I've met who are entranced / believe 343s or Frankies lore was how it always was it's nice to get another video advising the community of these changes to help keep bungies lore which to no surprise my favourite lore archived in some ways.
Personally I always liked it was always ambiguous with the one concrete confirmation in a book for those that do their own extra digging and the ramblings of an AI on the brink. My main issue with 343's retcon is ancient humanity being some rival species feels convoluted as opposed to us as just as their inheritor, an offshoot seeded by them or a parallel species that they saw with a potential to evolve in a similar direction. That said I appreciate 343 gave us the forerunner trilogy to balance out such a big shift in lore but tbh we should never have seen them. If we did they should've look like an evolved/enhanced version of us like what we got in halo legends but I just wouldn't want to see humans looking like us 1 to 1
True, but I think it's also poetic for the forerunners to be aliens passing on the Mantle to their heirs, the humans, and accepting their death and their guilt, choosing not to repopulate the forerunner population and receding into ancient history. It shows their repentance.
Don't forget in Halo: The Food, any time Chief interacts with a forerunner device, he mentions it feeling oddly familiar and that he just knew how to operate the panels
@@addisonwelsh They didn't. Many times in Halo 3 it alludes to this, but I will specify the ending with 343 literally saying "you are Forerunner, but this ring is mine", "Think of your forefathers", and calling the Ark and such "Your legacy" and "your inheritance". To the book that came out after Halo 3, Contact Harvest in which it has Medicant Bias referring to humans as Reclaimers and calls them "his makers", to it being alluded to in ODST, then finally to the "birthright from an ancient civilization" you uncover in Reach. How would it be a birthright otherwise? Really, I recommend C3 Sabertooth's video on the topic, as it's very long and I can't cover it here. He talks about everything, including the terminals that you're alluding to. PS. Even when you open the terminals it plays lines like "lineage confirned" etc.
On one hand, it’s nice to think that humanity was such a wild card to the galaxy that even a god like race of aliens were scared of us. On the other hand you don’t see a lot of ancient alien races being humans in sci fi. And there’s a bit of irony that the covenant were slaughtering their own gods
And now there's a lot of irony in the covenant slaughtering the people they were claiming to be while explicitly going against the wishes of their own gods and attempting to redo the mistakes the Forerunner made that led to their own damnation
@Lazypackmule Thank you. I hate this “the irony is lost if they’re not human” bullshit. How is exterminating the chosen people of the gods you claim to worship NOT IRONIC?? You’re just lying if you say you don’t see the irony there
Nah bro what are you talking about? It's not like the "humans are an upstart species that annoy a generic race of advanced space gods" trope has been done to death so hard that the dead horse being beaten is a finely crushed paste.....
@@braydeno4189 Except here the 'advanced space gods' are lucifer mad at humanity because they think they're the ones who deserve to rule heaven, earning god's wrath and inadvertently sealing their fate with a too late act of redemption where all they can really do is ensure humanity is left their original birthright and given the chance that was taken from them Previously they were just advanced humans who got an unlucky break and responded to it by being dumb and fucking themselves over for no real reason
@kingmasterlord time actually theoretically could be a flat circle if the big crunch is real, as in that potential outcome the entire universe collapses back into the singularity that set off the big bang
It wasn't really even a retcon because it was so unimportant. The important figures behind Bungie weren't on the same page regarding the Forerunner identity because it was unimportant. Guilty Spark was also rampant when he said "You are Forerunner" so he's unreliable due to insanity.
@@flipfloppy_ No need to be a dick. And the Halo 3 terminals the part that was not covered in this video was the fact that in one of the ending conversations between the Librarian and the Didact, she indicates that humanity is separate from the Forerunners. This just tells me that clearly Bungie didn't really have any idea either (or just wanted to keep it deliberately vague).
@@IamCanadian3333the terminals is but one part of the whole bungie lore, and the only part that talks about them being a different species is the part made by Frank O'Connor.
I think that is why halo 4 was so jarring. First you fighting 'covenant' again without a reason why. Then, you are no longer the reclaimer. then the Didact and Librarian dump straight exposition at you. Then to finish it, you can survive a nuke. The other side of it is playing the games as they came out and the unraveling of the truth was just so awesome. The speculation between games. Not on the internet, but between friends. There were no youtube videos. There was gaming magazines (which most of my friends didn't get). Retconning isn't just changing the lore. It changed the memory of the entire experience, though I (and I am guessing many others) still believe to our hearts that humans are forerunner.
I don't know if it's already been said in the comments, but in the German version of the game, the forerunners are not called forerunners (or translated as such), but are called "Blutsväter" instead, which directly translates to blood fathers in English. Like if they were your forefathers or ancestors.
It is blatantly obvious and shouldn't be controversial at all that humans and forerunners were meant to be the same in the Bungie era, and then 343 changed it. The controversy should be around 343 making the change... for seemingly no reason. The Forerunner book trilogy is pretty much the only thing of quality with the Forerunner in it, and I think you could have made the series easily work just as well if Humans = Forerunner. Halo 4 would have also been a lot better if it was revealed that the Didact was actually an ancient human (most game players don't read the books).
Yeah if the Didact was just an insanely menacing armored monster and then at some point his mask is knocked off/removed and he's just an extremely pissed off and cybernetically enhanced human... that's a huge payoff for all the players who went from 1-4 without catching the hint. Also makes the whole Composer plot even more fucking brutal if he's converting his own people. Or maybe not - maybe the composer converts every race EXCEPT humans and the final battle is over Sanghelios so Chief and the Infinity now have to stick their necks out saving the guys who saved them. Holy fuck everything just works better if you DON'T make that change
@@Tom-s6x6iI thought in the 343 lore the didact already converted other forerunners I thought that was kinda the point, so he absolutely would do that to his own species
This isn't obvious in the slightest. This video and theories like it cherry pick hard and generally ignore evidence against it. The biggest being an almost comical inability in reference dates 343 took over halo in 2012. The first forerunner novel came out in 2011.
@@Tom-s6x6i And could have made the Didact a wonderful parallel to Master Chief himself by way of them both being peak enhanced humans from two different eras. Remove his stupid instant win telekinesis tech and have some legitimate showdowns between Chief and the Didact.
It's seems very easy to have both 343 and Bungie forerunner ideas to co exist with some retcons like saying the Ancient Humans were forerunners but they broke off from the 343 era Forerunners as they didn't want to partake in the extensive genetic engineering and strict cast system so they were banished from forerunner society.
Fair.....but at that point why not just have both be the same thing? Plus it creates issues with the Precursor stuff. They really wrote themselves into a corner with that.
I also really liked the human and forerunner connecton, for me the biggest thing that always made this link was the title of reclaimer. Why would humans be a "reclaimer" if they weren't reclaiming what they once lost, it was a very ICONIC concept. I get later with 343 they surmised this to reclaiming the "mantle of responsiblity" but just being the reclaimers of a lost civilization always made more sense to me.
I'm so tired of being gaslit by denials that 343i retconned the Human-Forerunner connection, or by claims that Bungie retconned it first. Halo 3's story is _incredibly_ direct and unambiguous that Humans are Forerunner. The whole sum of "evidence" that contrarians like to bring up is claiming that Guilty Spark and Mendicant Bias are unreliable narrators (despite that being _terrible_ storytelling in the relevant narrative context), and the Terminals. Or rather, one Terminal entry in particular, written by an entirely different story team (headed by what basically amounted to the Bungie office gofer, and certainly not someone authorized to make major sweeping changes to the lore!), and not properly fact-checked for inconsistencies in the haste to ship the game on time. And the worst part is, the apparent inconsistency this introduced could have been reconciled relatively easily with the original intent that Humans were the descendants of the Forerunners. The facts are clear. Bungie had a creative vision were Humans were Forerunner. 343i pursued a creative vision where Humans and Forerunners are not just different civilizations, but distinct species. You can certainly _like_ the direction that 343i took the franchise in, and more power to you if you do. I genuinely think that, taken in isolation, Greg Bear's Forerunner Trilogy of novels are well-written works of science fiction. However, to claim that 343i didn't retcon the lore is, in itself, nothing less than an Orwellian retcon in denial of the historical reality. It is insanity that, in the year of our Lord two-thousand and twenty-four, people are still arguing about this.
funny your comment made me actually look up Who wrote the forerunner trilogy of books which were the first things that Retconned That bit of story and yeah you're right it was 343 I always thought it was bungie in its last few years but I guess it had already Sold the franchise
@@blackpillz3479Lmao “Umm…well, there’s bigger problems in life” is basically your argument here? Lord, please shut up. 343 lapdogs *cannot* admit to anything bad about their owners.
The terminals in the Ark missions in Halo 3 show that the Forerunners were not Humans. It is not even the Librarian alone that is evidence of that, there is also the simple fact that the Flood even in Bungie Lore showed up among Humans and the Prophets, then fled after their further actions, and we got that from another data source in an earlier game. That data source states the Flood also only returned well after the war with us was over. The Gravemind testifying to that in his child of my enemy, and monument to all our sins, is are clear lies meant to sow destruction from that claim. He was trying to do to Chief what he ultimately succeeded in doing to not just Mendicant Bias, but Cortana, and Didact himself. Turn them on their allies and people using self doubt and half baked truths as psychological weapons. I also fully accept that Bungie had it the other way. I just think that this retcon is better in that it widens the game universe, instead of shrinking it.
@shauntempley9757 The terminals still kept them as human, but it reworked it so the Forerunners were a group of early humans uplifted by the Precursors.
@@D33pTh0ugh7The actual reason was to save memory by having a smaller texture with half the design and then mirror it to the other side so is completed But i agree the panel makes more sense it can be used with both hands, as I expect an advance civilization like the Forerunners to make their tech also accessible for leftes instead of the whole aura of "No, Lefties like you dont exist, six fingers is more likely!" that I get from the halofanbase
??? How tf would 6 fingers be dominant when ALLLLLL mammals have 5 sets of phalanges There is no way the "recessive gene" wins out in all branches of mammalia against the "dominant gene"
Also, if the Forerunners were their own species, why would they not reseed themselves after the firing of the Arrays? Granted, they kept the Didact, but there's no reason to repopulate the entire galaxy with every species lost except your own. It makes more sense that there is no Forerunner in the present day because humans are Forerunners, rather than this advanced species committing seppuku while rezzing every other species but, for some reason, not cataloging themselves. Little tangent, but can you imagine a Halo 4 where the Didact is an ancient human ? I could already imagine the Didact reveal scene, but when he takes his helmet off he is revealed to be a human. I feel like that would have been more impactful than what we got considering the average player didn't know how a Forerunner looked.
@@RandomName55yeah that’s a point that’s always really bothered me. You mean to tell me you got a civilization of trillions and not a single person thinks “yeah, maybe we should reseed ourselves too and not just leave the galaxy with these fucking super weapons floating around.”
They didn't need to, they were personally going to survive both physically in shield worlds and the ark and eternally in the domain to ensure that all worked- the flood and the halo array ensured most of that failed Never beating the "doesn't know anything about the lore they shit on" allegations
I highly agree that the most impactful twist wouldn't have been "wow, he kinda looks like a catfish I guess?" but instead, finding one of the most important Forerunners, who features heavily in the war that led to the wiping out of their entire empire........... opening his helmet, and being just human. Maybe taller like he was in the armor, right, but.... human. Like imagine peoples' jaws dropping when we find out that he's been digitizing functionally *his own people* and turning them into mindless killing machines, and was about to do so to what is likely their actual homeworld. Like... the places it could have gone.... and instead, we just get him being petty over his wife(?) or something? Idk man, the symbolism just doesn't work as good to me.
@@RandomName55 except they didn't go extinct in that galaxy sure but many left the others did not, the reality is not even bungie solidifed one or the other because you can find numerous retcons in the games and terminals before 343 took over and thats because they never settled one way or the other
That always threw me for a loop. It would be like people in ancient times using BC. That's something that got applied retroactively. Plus, in the Bible, John the Baptist referred to himself as a Forerunner of someone greater than himself, and I can't see either version of the Forerunners thinking humanity was greater than them. But I can see the logic: You are the first of the modern races, you are leading the way. Hence, Forerunner. Not what I would choose, but...
They didn't: it's just how their translation AI worded it. Same thing with their defensive line against the Flood being called the Maginot Line, despite the fact that the French didn't build the area called "Maginot" until nearly 100,000 years later.
343 retconned the identity of the Forerunners, then retconned what rampancy was, then killed Cortana, then retconned her death, then retconned the Mantle of Responsibility and who the reclaimer was, then killed Cortana again. I'm not sure what crack their writing team is smoking
@@212thBeehiveMan then they retconned halo 4 in halo 5, and retconned halo 5 in halo infinite... and yet 343 fans fight back at the idea of retconning everything after halo 3, somehow convinced that the writers have any fucking vision for the universe at all outside of "LET'S JUST COPY WHATEVER IS POPULAR"
@@212thBeehiveMan the "Halo is just a lucrative product for MS, just ship a shooty game and the details don't matter" crack. I've read a lot of the Halo novels and I really enjoyed the Forerunner trilogy, but that doesn't stop me from acknowledging alien forerunners are 343 fanfic.
@@gamerboiiiiiii less so retconned more so handwaved. The entire conflict that was the basis of h5 basically stopped existing before infinite could start.
You know, if you think about it, the forerunners as humans actually makes the covenant much more important to the whole halo universe. And, in a weird way, it makes the halo series less "human centric," since, rather than the destined golden babies chosen by the precursors, humanity is just the descendant of a group of hyper advanced ancestors. In this universe, humanity is not "special" or chosen, any more than a trust fund baby, as shown by the covenant being able to easily kick humanities teeth in. And what saves humanity is not human special super powers, its the fundamentals that make us human. Love, trust, the ability to work together, while the covenant fractures b/c their bonds are all based on a lie.
You also have the Elites switching sides near the end and that whole Debacle. I'm pretty sure humanity would have lost if not for the elites joining sides and the Great Schism
Humans being Forerunners is just more captivating. Why would 343 mess this up? Just to turn around and say humans were chosen to take the mantle. 343 is unbelievable bad at what they do.
@@prevaileternal6932you enjoy the depth of world building that Greg Bear did with his trilogy. Which is fine, he's one of the greatest science fiction writers who ever lived. But 95% of all the retconned lore is in those books, which 343i had almost zero input on. So yes, it is indeed very possible for you to enjoy the retconned lore and it also be true that 343i sucks ass.
because despite there claims, 343i was put together for microsoft, by microsoft and where beholden to there meddling. bungie was notable in delebretly keeping microsoft out of there office and effectively told them, let us do out thing and make you money, you listen to behind the scenes footage of bungie vs 343i and you hear bungie talking about narrative and story and focusing on fun for multiplayer and 343i brings up esports like 2 dozen times. 343i, though perhaps many loved playing halo, from interviews alone, seemed to not be well versed in what bungie was trying to do, and so there narrative got lost in the sauce, hell they even admitted when dong the master chief collection that they forgot halo CE was for Xbox and not pc first and used the broken PC port for the remastered CE witch broke so much including the lighting system witch was important for "3d" textures and many fog effects(how can suposed fans not know that?). 343i being made my microsoft, simply did not understand why halo was so good. they did there best, but it clearly was not done by people who truly understood the direction or narrative of the games
This video was INCREDIBLY needed. There's been way too much misinformation on this topic for WAY too long. If you're a fan of the 343 era story good for you I have no issue with that, but don't tell me that they never retconned this and that my anger toward 343 for this isn't valid. Retcons piss me off period, but Retconning bungie's identify of the the forerunners and making them separate from humans completely ruins SO much of the original games. Those games hinge on the reveal of humans being descendants of the forerunners and taking that away either cheapens huge elements of the story or outright invalidates them altogether. As a fan of any franchise that just sucks to have happen to a story you love. Thank you Hidden Xperia. Very much looking forward to the Wendigoon colab video.
Yeah the decades long gaslighting that they were never descended was the biggest thing that pissed me off. In current lore, the covenant were just fighting their gods mortal enemies lol
I agree. It hurts that 343 actually vindicated the covenant being that humans ultimately became the forerunners enemy and weakened them so much it guaranteed a loss to the flood.
The worst part is how the people who defend this treat this like politics. They think your a horrible person for even saying the truth about this. They get so angry. They are no different from the covenant calling anyone who tells the truth about the great journey a heretic. Its shocking that they will go that far to defend retcons, to deny reality. Just to defend 343 tribalistically. Idk. Something tells me they only defend 343 for ideological reasons or for personal reasons. either way its pathetic. you can be a fan of either bungie or 343. But atleast admit their faults. The fact they have to lie and gaslight like this says alot C3Sabertooth told us all the truth about modern halo lore and knowing how broken it is makes it so hard to enjoy anything after halo 3.
ICONIC! @18:01 In the original art book for Halo: CE, there’s a note that the UNSC fleet of ships were designed to look like; “a human skyscraper turned onto its side.” That’s why they’re so blocky in appearance. The Pillar of Autumn is the best example of that design philosophy.
I vaguely remember a line from an early novel that also describes the Pillar of Autumn as having a ring to generate gravity. Would've been cool to see an artist's take on that version of the ship.
Other than just confirming humans are descended from forerunners, the cut halo 2 ending also clarified what truths plan was. The fact that he was trying to preserve himself to become a template for reseeded life really explained his actions in H2, his betrayals seem so random and unnecessary without the humanity = forerunner descendant context. H3 made it seem like he drank the coolaid in the keyship
I would argue the whole Covenant war against Humanity doesn't make any sense without humans = Forerunner, as is a huge blow to Covenant believes that their "gods" who supposedly "ascended" are still walking around, and its why Mercy whole point of saying "and this time, none of you will be left behind", which makes NO SENSE if humanity and Forerunner arent related
It really feels like Halo 3 sort of muddied things just by existing (blunt Spark Statement aside). If we'd gotten H2's original last level the whole store would have had a much cleaner and neater ending especially with Truth. I'm not H3's biggest fan but the best thing about it for me was the arc we got just cuz it's such an awesome installation and an installation that makes Halo rings by itself was an amazing concept. But the original arc concept really would have fit the story ITSELF better
Everyone discovering the truth about this is like arbiter discovering the truth about the great journey at the end of halo 2. with the 343 twitter force denying it being Tartarus and the brutes.
Q: The Forerunners were humans until H3 development, right? "Not really' -Marcus Lehto, co-creator of the Halo universe It would appear it is not so simple
Hinting that humans are Forerunner??? Guilty Spark literally says, "You are Forerunner" in Halo 3, I believe. Not so much a hint as flat-out stating it.
@@anthonychase6906 Given the fact that humans are able to directly interface with the rings' controls when other races can't, it's far more resonable to interpret it literally... You have every reason to do so and no reason really to do otherwise.
@@rickedwards415 only some humans are able to, this has been true the whole time even in the original bungie era. I think yall didn't play the games or read even the original authors works....
@@blahtheotter1512"You are a child of my makers, inheritor of all they left behind. You are forerunner, but this ring is mine." Basically the last thing Guilty Spark says before you kill him in Halo 3. Looks like you're the one who didn't play the games tbh.
Humans being Forerunners is the single most iconic revelation of Halo's grander story that simply got erased over time. I'm glad this idea is being brought back into the fold.
Funny how Bungie was totally ok with moving on from that idea by their own will, and the only reason it’s still relevant is due to passionate 343 hatred.
@@jakespacepiratee3740If you ignore the original Halo trilogy, especially the last 3 levels of Halo 3, as well as the book Contact Harvest, and ascribe all praise of Bungie era Halo to "passionate 343 hatred", then yes, the only reason this is relevant is due to passionate 343 hatred.
@@sanchorim8014 You can praise something without hating the new. Nice strawman. Bungie had conflicting ideas on what the Forerunners are and they accepted each other. Many are incapable of this.
calling the original idea contrived is ridiculous, it makes way more sense and gives way to far more interesting conclusions than the 343 idea that just throws everything out on the table and says no more surprises.
I'm only 5 minutes in and you're telling me that red vs blue is more lore accurate with the whole metastability thing that halo 4 is? Cause that is hilarious
Not really - "rampancy" just means different things between Halo's lore and Marathon's lore. Halo rampancy meaning an AI loses their mind and dies was established since the very first book that was released alongside the first game, "Fall of Reach". Cortana is fully aware that after about seven years, AI start to degrade and "think themselves to death". Same term, but lore-wise it's always meant something very different and Halo 4 is in line with it.
@@TheHaddonfieldRegistry only problem is that rvb came out before Halo 4. The whole AI shit started in the Halo 3 episodes, way before Halo 4 changed what rampancy is. And it's in line with the Bungie games.
@@DarkestMirrored I don't think it's ever directly stated that rampancy in Halo leads to death, and also from what we've seen it is functionally identical to Durandal's rampancy in Marathon.
@@DarkestMirrored That's really only the case because of limited processing power. The same thing CAN happen in Marathon, and it is Durandal's efforts to avoid that fate that drive the plot. UNSC AI will do the thinking themselves to death thing with Rampancy, but Forerunner AI have more advanced technology that allows them to last MUCH longer before the threat becomes existential.
Bungie made the Choice themselves to change the Forerunners. People who think that ONLY 343 did that are basically acting like they know better than the actual creators.
@@HowdyFolksGaming I mean, he has a point. the game goes against so much of previously established lore, that it really makes the whole conflict a narrative mess.
There is a reference in the flood book to the forerunner control terminals, Chief says he cant explain why, but they seemed familiar, and he just sort of knew where to touch. I always thought they would expand on this point more but it was never referenced again. Its just after going into the interior of the ring for the first time after the escape pod landing, and just before activating the first light bridge. But maybe the reference was to how similar our ancestors were.
that was in Halo: The Flood/CE in the 2nd level where MC activates the light bridge from the underground section to rescue the other lifepod survivors escaping from the Autumn then Cortana asks “how did you know where to push the on switch”
@@Halomasterchris this moment makes more sense in 343's halo because of the librarian's geas. In bungie halo it's like as if technological know-how was supposed to be inherited just because humans were a more developed civilization at some point
15:00. Jesus isn't just the son of god. He is also god in human form. So it would show that forerunners aren't just the ancestors of humanity, but that they are humanity.
Honestly the nature of Jesus is a complex and convoluted thing. According to the book of Judas, Jesus is literally the son of god in that he is literally an offspring of the creator but he is rebelling against his father to save humanity from the wrath of his father. Basically, in this version, Jesus is saving humans from God's judgment. God doesn't believe any of the humans are worthy and that's why Jesus sacrificed himself. Jesus wanted to change Gods mind about humanity
@@SevenPr1megnostic gospels are sooo goofy🤣 "Actually guys, God is evil, bbbbut Jesus only told the one guy, I promise I didn't write this myself" -written 200AD That's like finding a writing from 1950 written by "Andrew Johnson", about how Abe Lincoln actually only freed the slaves because he hated them and thought they should fend for themselves: and then actually believing it😭 brother, no one there said anything like that. None of the texts before the second century have anything alluding to that. It's a cringe fanfiction rewrite😂 In the actual Jesus story, yes, humans are unworthy of God, yes, humanity was doomed to judgement by God, yes, Jesus was the sacrifice to sanctify humanity, but no it was not done in rebellion. It was done in concordance with God. The book of Judas is a cringe cultist's rewriting of one of mankind's most heroic stories, don't even try to pretend it holds close to the same weight culturally or historically as the post-nicea bible
My biggest issue with the Forerunner retcons is that, like much of 343i-era lore... it's just needlessly CONVOLUTED & I struggle to see how it enriched Halo's universe for the better in any way. IMO, we had two viable options from where the majority of the Bungie era content -- at least the core stories of the trilogy -- left us. Either Forerunners WERE ancient humanity... or they simply chose a random, fledgling, basic species to succeed them because they showed a GLIMMER of potential. Given the very nature of what RECLAIM means, the former makes way more sense than being separate but there was at least SOME precedence to indicate we were separate (most notably H3's terminals which even talks about "Eden" & the potential of the primitive species there; there was also the comic showing Forerunner ships arriving on Earth & ancient humans seeing them). So those were the options! Instead... the official lore is now that Forerunners are a separate species from humanity, BUT ALSO Ancient Humanity was ALSO a highly advanced space faring civilization as well! Not only that, but Ancient Humanity actually discovered the Flood FIRST & ran from them, accidentally getting into a war with the Forerunners who beat Humanity, forcibly devolved them, then started to fight the Flood. As the Flood started to overwhelm them, the Librarian decided to make their previous arch enemy into their Reclaimers because reasons, the Didact (ONE of them anyway, oh yeah -- there's TWO Didacts because ofc there is) was against it, Halos are activated, cue reset evolution & Halo series. But here's the thing... that-that's the SAME FUCKING STORY as Ancient Humanity simply BEING the Forerunners!!!! Just with EXTRA STEPS that completely gut the original trilogy's dramatic revelations & waters down the very concept of Reclamation, shatters the IRONY of the Covenant worshiping the Forerunners only to end up going to literal WAR with the Forerunners & further erodes the extra twist of the knife that the Prophets *knew* Humans were somehow special, and so on & so forth. Literally, the same damn story arc just less impactful, less dramatic, less ironic, etc. A major defense I've seen toward the retcon is that the "Ancient Humans being super advanced" is cliche & tropey. And I'm like... "yes, and? Have you PLAYED Halo??" It's always BEEN tropey, cliche concepts executed BRILLIANTLY. And again, that argument would hold more weight if not for the fact that they just told the same cliched story about a highly advanced ancient civilization following the exact same steps we already knew/assumed to take place with extra steps. EDIT: But if you prefer the new lore, more power to ya. But yeah, this was always my biggest thing when coming into Halo 4. In general, I feel like 343i has this bad habit of A. Always feeling the need to explain EVERYTHING and leaving little to be mysterious & B. Always going for THE most convoluted solution possible & C. The previous element made worse that they also can't seem to actually every resolve or tie up any of their floating plot threads in anything close to a satisfying manner... Didact, anyone?
I would rather make my own canon then and imagine all the Forerunners in the Forerunners books were indeed humans and all the Forerunner characters are humans. And the Forerunner nation was the most powerful dominating human nation that the other Ancient Human nation couldn't do much against and the Forerunner Humans were the ones who killed the Precursors.
My lord finally someone with a brain, 343 and its defendes wanna separate the forrunners and humans so much but yet they cram so much lore and connection between the two, trying their best to "replace" old lore when they might aswell be the same species 1to1. Allat lore fore the "native human" when they could have been a different species entirely, and could have been used as enemy faction in h4 thru infinite
@@nexar13 It would have been so much easier if the Forerunners & the Ancient Humans were two competing Human civilizations who seperated after one organization killed the Precursors and the other seperated from them afterwards after some kind of civil war or separation war.
@@TheRealRobertBlarg I love when Bungie makes something overly simple it’s “perfect” and when 343 makes something in-depth it’s “overcomplicated and needlessly convoluted” the bias couldn’t be more obvious.
@@jakespacepiratee3740 Fr brother. Specially when, as HiddenXperia said, 343 is leaning in a nice middle point where Forerunners, while yes, clearly still very different, are at the same time at one point very very VERY closely connected to humans to the point of them calling eachother brother/sister. Like sure, you can call the decision "needless" and "convoluted" but honestly thats only if your looking at it from the perspective of the games and the games only. Everywhere else they have worked with that idea and crafted a rather intriguing and expanse universe (ex: the Forerunner trilogy and a bunch of the halo books). Have they expanded on it in a good way? not always, specially when it comes to the games, thats for sure. But...saying it was a straight up bad decision, specially when Bungie themselves left some room for it to be interpreted differently, is just wrong. Some people like simpler stories and some like more complex stories. Neither one is the objectively wrong choice. Its just different.
Forerunners =/= Humans is a retcon. A bad one. I don't care how many dozens of novels and crap games they've made about it. It'll always be a truly bad retcon.
@@spikem5950nope should have been Tamil, which is way older the sumrian.....as it is and euro aryan language, the language german stole when they past through from siberia through northern india towards europe
@@spikem5950 Yeah, but knowing Bungie's background. With their lead head being catholic, and that a lot of the basis and lore of Halo is based off of christianity with abrahamic undertones. It at least thematically makes sense for their language to be Latin
Sabertooth did an incredible video breakdown of all evidence. Humans are 100% forerunner. 343 retconned it. I highly recommend watching his video on it.
It was true only until halo 2. When bungie started halo 3 they were split. Paul Russel even said that it was all approved by bungie to make them a separate species. Part of also the reason the level “forerunner city” was cut because bungie didn’t wanted to humanise the forerunners. But then again there is that one spark line from halo 3 which shows how split bungie was after halo 3 regarding the forerunners
@@shaheer1172they can be split internally. What made it in the game was that humans are forerunner. That's the fact in gane. Outside of the game devs can be split.
@@xenosayain1506but there are terminals in the game so it’s a part of the game and lore. That was all approved by bungie themselves. Unless bungie didn’t care at all about their game
The next Halo game should ditch this braindead plot that 343 pulled off, and should act like 343 story never existed. It should just retcon everything and do the whole "humans were the forerunner" thing instead, and have a whole game centered around that
becuase its also well known that within bungie it wasn't set and stone hence the contradictions mainly in halo 3, but also because some have said that bungie was deviating after halo 3 hence the higher contradictions the game has and it was approved by bungie before hand. Also many of 343 original staff that is were from bungie as well and likely it was the side that saw them as separate or along those lines. As such the reality is there wasn't much of a retcon or anything because bungie itself was a mess even during halos days and hence why the halo games were all so rushed.
@@yulfine1688 "Also many of 343 original staff that is were from bungie as well and likely it was the side that saw them as separate or along those lines. " You see, you'd have a point here if those people that transferred over were and continued to make narrative decisions and not just Frank O'Connor. Also Paul Russel confirmed that when he applied to transfer to 343i, the official reason for rejection by 343i was "No Bungie people." Can we please stop with the colossally ignorant amounts of cope, please?!
frank O'Connor single handedly fucked up the whole established lore with: terminals, marketing campaign,and the abominations that were halo 4 and 5 just revert back everything to post halo 4 era with the ce remake(which i doubt would ever happen)
@@demogun117 Original Bungie: “I think the Forerunners are Humans.” “Cool, i think they aren’t, but with big impact on humanity” “Cool!” 🗿 Halo Community: “NOOO 4RUNNERS R HOOMAN!” “NOOOOOO THEY ARE NOT!!” 😭😢
@@jakespacepiratee3740 Under 343, the Gravemind from Halo 3 is a Precursor. also under 343, Humans were made by Precusors. In Halo 3, the Gravemind calls Humanity the child of his enemy. The Gravemind's enemy is himself?!?!?! This line only makes sense if Humans were NOT created by Precursors, i.e. Humans are Forerunner. Considering such collosal break in lore, it's very reasonable to be upset with the side that claims Humans aren't Forerunner.
@@eclipseslayer98 The flood ARE the precursors and they always have been. This logic 100% holds up because if he calls them "the child of his enemy" that means humans are the children of the forerunners. This also falls in line with the vast majority of the Halo lore as well to which even the prophets directly stated and admitted to.
@@Delimon007 What? I was pointing out how in 343 lore, the Precursors created humanity, and the Gravemind is a Precursors, so by the Gravemind calling his OWN children the, "child of my enemy", that means he's calling HIMSELF his own enemy which makes zero sense. I genuinely didn't know that The Flood were Precursors under Bungie lore. Not that it matter AT ALL for what I was talking about. If you happen to know of a Bungie source that I can look-up for the The Flood being Precursors I'd appreciate it.
i find myself agreeing with c3 sabertooths take more and more; it’s ok that they made the retcon, it’s totally fine to like the change. what’s NOT ok is pretending the change never occurred at all, it was a retcon and it fundamentally changed halo permanently.
I thought I'd been going insane with how people just did not acknowledge this for so many years. It felt so incredibly obvious to me, and it's why I've always hated Halo 4.
Thank you for finally covering this. Halo today isn’t what it was meant to be. It’s lost track of what made it interesting and its own. The Bungie era was truly, and unequivocally, iconic.
By changing the origins of humanity so that they're no longer forerunners a big part of the halo storyline is lost the naming of the rings as halos and the enemy that led to the destruction of the Galaxy as the flood they're named those things for a reason they're biblical terms the ark and the flood We're supposed to be humanity misremembering its ancient past and putting a mythological angle to events that humans after those events wouldn't properly be able to comprehend four runners who became humanity had to hide on the ark to survive the flood it's so beautifully poetic and I hate that 343 industries just through that away for no reason I guess just so that they could bring back the forerunner And they're not even any interesting race so much cut lost and nothing gets gained the forerunners just they're boring and they're not even a believable race i'm just not believing that there's these beings who lived for thousands of years who had hyper technology yet got its ass kicked in a war against the flood losing the war against the flood made sense when you don't see everything that the forerunners which were supposed to be humans were capable of so everything was left to be imagination for how it went but then they ruined that and released a tree of books that detailed the war and it just it doesn't line up the forerunners are made to be too superior and the reasoning behind them making the halo rings was tweaked a bit so it didn't even line up that well for why those things were made also really lame that somehow some hippie named at the librarian was making major military decisions despite her being a super pacifist pansy who for some reason despite being a super pacifist decided to marry the single most aggressive thing in the universe that's not the flood oh and for some reason the forerunners had the bright idea that while they're in the middle of a war with a super parasite they decide to kill all of their soldiers after they lose a political debate that makes no sense heck even without the war why would losing a political debate lead to your army getting executed so the forerunners had both such advanced technology that you can't imagine them losing but also they had to be made to be so retarded that you can't imagine them ever reaching that level of Technology
@@RandomName55 “guilty spark and mendicant bias are defective, but only when it pertains to this specific retcon and in fact everything else they say is perfectly accurate”
@@RandomName55if you monologue to a dog about "our" history, does that mean fido's ancestors were human? Experiences are shared, even in 343 lore the forerunner conservationists were extremely close to the humans, I lean more towards Bungles version being humans too, but that doesn't mean most of the evidence was not extremely ambiguous for a reason.
@@michaellane5381 bro what? Humans and dogs are coexisting now. If humans went extinct tomorrow The next millennia of dogs roaming around would be dog history, there's no shared human history to catch up on because humans are dead. Spark says YOU have fired this ring before. YOU are forerunner. Mendicant says those are my creators, not those are the de-evolved spiritual successors of my creators It's very clear
definitely some of your best work so far. thanks for putting this together. it was getting old having this same tired argument time after time, so it's nice to finally put it to rest.
Part of the reason I tuned out of Halo during/after 4 _was_ all this messing with a fairly neat and cool concept. I didn't want a living Forerunner, or Forerunner enemies to fight, or a new species etc. It's just lore bloat, it's one of the things that puts me off fiction, when writers mistake complexity for meaning. Just make.. more.. until it's a jumbled mess and too much to process. Bungie's version felt really clean. They burned their civilisation to prevent the Flood from winning, and we got to exist because of them. We'll never meet them, or know them, but it's comforting knowing their sacrifice wasn't in vain. The Covenant commit genocide in the belief that they are special and will go on a great journey, so them finding out their not and that the species they're murdering are actually their gods.. it's cool, it's tragic. Nice overlapping themes. Not a lot of bloat, easy to understand. When you start throwing in specific characters and sub-species and events etc it just gets bloated. Simple is better
Id love to see a concept video where we speculate about Halo Lore if 343 had left Humans as Forerunners. What happens after Halo 3? What happens to the Covenant then? All the lore would be completely different and fun to talk about.
The word is subtlety. Bungie's writers understood subtlety. It allowed them to write way more and add more depth while saying alot less but still leaving enough clues there for people to pick up on and figure out. It also resulted in better and more satisfying writing. 343 belive subtlety to be spelled with sticks of dynamite placed to blow up anything left before and remove all room for doubt, replacing it with concrete and infinitely shittier answers.
I seriously can't understand why people can't refrain from destroying these franchises. What is so hard about sticking to what works and giving fans what they have shown to love and want?
@feihceht656 yet it is also an allegory to Christianity with the main pc's name, the ark, sins of the father, the flood and so on. It's also a literal holy war halo is a religious universe in all but name.
Ultimately, I like the og forerunner lore. I think looking at the 343 forerunners as a type of highly advanced human that evolved somewhat differently is the way to go tbh.
Bungie and 343's Forerunners can also complement each other, especially with the established lore of Humans and Forerunners killing and enslaving each other. Having Humans forced to construct the architect of the Forerunner can even add extra symbolism to the term “RECLAIMER". Two species; same parent - Classic sibling rivalry.
@@RedCommunistDragon that’s literally what 343 did. Added new stuff while retaining the original concepts. Any deviation from the original is heresy to many fans who think they know better.
@@jakespacepiratee3740I disagree, I read the Forerunner Trilogy and while I enjoyed them a lot, 343 ultimately ruin much of the mysticism and symbolism that is so common in Bungie lore (both halo and marathon). The Forerunners are constantly given a paternal, fatherly role in the story, mankind and chief are constantly referred to as "sons" or "children" of the Forerunners, and in 343 continuity it takes serious mental gymnastics to explain that, since humans were rivals and siblings to the Forerunners and fought a war with them, only to be devolved, it completely changes the dynamic between them. It becomes strange that the Forerunners treat the Humans in such a paternalistic way even if they essentially guided mankind during a primitive age (one they created), because they aren't father and son.
This change is reversible again. It could be that during the Precursor days, Forerunners and Humans were the same species, but eventually some kind of cataclysm (or a series of cataclysms) led to the collapse of the original Forerunner civilization, a bloody civil war, the extermination of the Precursors in the Milky Way and the loss of millions of years or historical records. By the time of the _Halo_ Array, the descendents of the original Forerunners have split into two distinct subspecies and had developped two distinct civilization over the course of a million or so years. 23:58 This actually supports my theory. All of those things are true from a certain angle. There is information that seem contradictory because we're missing context that was lost over the many hundreds of thousands of years if not millions of years as we only have only access to broken and incomplete pieces of information. Remember, as I've previously established, even the Forerunners and the Erde-Tyrene Humans of 150 kya could only trace back historical records with any kind of reliability to a maximum of one million years in their past. Much of their historical records was lost after the genocide of the Precursors. Their own origins was a mystery even to these exceptionally advanced civilizations.
Humans and Forerunners being the same race brings it all together neatly and explains everything simply. 343's retcon just complicates things FOR NO REASON.
@@friendlyneighborhoodcombine My brother in Christ, how does the creator ruins its own creation? That's rhetorical. Don't even bother answering, as I'm afraid you're gonna spout something far more stupid.
Not really a retcon. There were only hints at it at best and it would have been extremely boring revelation. Current lore is much more complex and interesting.
@@4realm8rusirius humans and forerunners being seperate goes back to the iris marketing campaign for halo 3 if i remember right. which was done under bungie
Really doesn't need to be any more clear than being point-blank told "You ARE Forerunner" by someone who was literally there. Two someones if you count the gravemind calling 117 "Child of my enemy."
It's pretty obvious that Bungie's core writers had written and created a wondrous and finished plot, all wrapped up and tied with a pretty little bow (humans are forerunners, great journey was a great reset, Covenant are ironically killing their own gods, ect.) and gave it to Microsoft Studios. Microsoft Studios then said, "F THAT, we want more games, more books, movies, shows, ect. So we need to rewrite the plot so we can keep pushing out content and milk it for money." And lo and behold, here comes the newly created 343 Industries, which butchered the franchise into the sad shell of itself is has now become.
Huh? No, it doesn't. It only makes sense when humans descended from forerunners. The flood is the monument to the forerunners' sins of destroying all life in the galaxy in an attempt to kill the flood, which ended up not being successful after the contained flood on the Halo ring got out.
@@J05TI Humanity literally caused the Flood to spread in the first place in the Forerunner Trilogy. It’s their fault. It works in both directions. Stop being so bias
@@CJ-db4yq if anything that further hurts the human-forerunner thing. If it were true, he would say “Your sins, passed to no one because You are the forerunners”
@@J05TI Honestly I would take it the other way: The flood came from what? Precursors who preserved themselves after being "destroyed"/attacked by the Forerunners... why? Because the forerunners were jealous the Precursors chose humanity to succeed the mantle. The forerunners failed to destroy the precursors, failed to destroy humanity, and failed to uphold the mantle... failures (their sins) at every turn. The gravemind is the encapsulation of all these failures/sins... a monument to them even.
I wasn't sold on the human-forerunner connection being the superior plot line until the very last portion where you went into detail with its potential ramifications and thematic influences, truly an ICONIC video, this was a great watch, thanks!
I was always a huge fan of this concept. It made the mystery of the forerunners and their connection to humans much more emotional, they had sacrificed everything for us to survive
@Thlormby This is BAFFLING to me. “they had sacrificed everything for us to survive” Uh no, in your preferred canon, they sacrificed everything so that THEY THEMSELVES could survive. Literally just ensuring the continuity of their own species! I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but there’s nothing selfless about it. What’s more noble than sacrificing your entire civilization for the sake of a younger more primitive race with great potential that hasn’t yet been given a chance?? Tell me what not noble about that?
I LOVE YOUR VIDEOS SO MUCH I JUST FINISHED THE FORERUNNER TRILOGY. GENUINELY THE BESG BOOKS IVE READ. Thank you for being one of the last beacons of halo.
Quite the ICONIC video. To add some of my own thoughts, I think there is a way further reconcile all the 343 has done with Bungie's original intent. It's hinted at that the Librarian likely had recent Human ancestry, given her five fingers. We also know that after the firing of the Halo Array, Bornstellar and Chant-to-Green had a son. If that son fell in love with a stone-age Human, after only a few thousand years all living Humans would be his direct descendants. Essentially a Halo-ified version of the Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden story. Akin to how the Forerunner-Flood War is a Halo-ified version of the Noah's Flood story. It's taking the scenic route, but it would make Modern Humanity direct descendants of the Forerunners again. Acting as both an in-universe reconciliation as the different surviving branches of Humanity are made whole once again when Humans go on to reclaim the birthright to the stars, and as an out-of-universe reconciliation as one gets to keep the lore events of Forerunner trilogy novels with Humans also reclaiming being Forerunners.
ICONIC I actually like that 343i and Bungie's visions are aligning. I like aspects of both. Bungie's blurry, background view and 343i's direct history. Blending both appeal to me.
Wasn't the original ending of Halo 2 supposed to blatantly indicate that the forerunners were originally humans? I can't remember which UA-camr made a video about it, but they detailed how the arbiter, on a quest to see a long dead forerunner, found only a human skeleton. Edit: Made that comment before watching through the 22 minute mark, so I guess I was right...
I've created my own entire headcannon at this point. I usually don't with franchises but it's mandatory for Halo at this point. I can barely enjoy this series
I'm waiting for the very obviously needed partial reboot where 343's "Halo" gets redone from the end of Halo 3, essentially remaking Halo 4 and beyond in old Bungie's vision, which would also split 343's Halo off into its own timeline. Sounds perfect to me, and I feel like every true Halo fan would want that, but that'd likely only happen and/or actually be good once 343's replaced with a new dev. I can't imagine 343 not screwing that up, as I'm sure most people feel at this point.
If the Halo Ce's remake is real, it would be really interesting to see the story taking this path again instead of the forerunners being a different species
@@SonilotosThe most boring dynamic ever 😂 Humans being Forerunner is the reason why the Prophets manipulated different alien species to kill all the humans before they reclaimed their lost history.
Masterchief is jesus, Halo is deeply religious. This is why 343 and Microsoft try to make halo fail so the word of the great lord master jesus cannot reach the new generations
The forerunners will always be human to me, it's the only storyline that makes sense in the original 3 games and you have to go through some pretty extreme mental gymnastics to think otherwise. 343's retcon harms the canon of the original games so it should be disregarded along with their mediocre games.
You would be right if you are talking about Noah's boat, but if memory serves, Moses did construct the Ark od the Covonant. HiddenXp could have been referring to that.
Moses built the Ark of the Covenant. Noah's Ark is the large boat used to survive the flood. I do think the ark in halo is more related to Noah's Ark tho, since both are used to escape the flood.
@@Thunderstar-ky4tfExactly. The Ark in Halo is almost certainly a reference to Noah's boat, given the context of saving different species from destruction, etc.
I mean He made another Ark But yeah The one the halo ark is refering is the one that Noah did The "save the species from the flood" Just a little error of what ark was he talking about
Literaly the final twist of the Halo story is Guilty Spark revealing humans are Forerunners. Whatever 343 fan-fiction followed it has neither weight nore legitimacy. It's as if Disney said "well actualy Vader isn't Luke's father", they have no say in the matter. Humans are forerunners, Halo CE confirms it, Halo 2 hints heavily at it, Halo 3 confirms it in plain words "You ARE Forerunner, the child of my creators".
In Halo CE, the library mission, guilty spark says in gameplay “my creators blah blah blah i am glad to see some of them survived to reproduce” i remember at the time how thats a huge clue also
He was talking about the flood im pretty sure. His statement was something like "My creators created this array to study the flood. I am glad to see some of them survived to reproduced." It could be interpretted either way though
@@VincentVanGirth Voxino hit it on the head but the exact line is ""The installation was specifically built to study and contain the Flood. Their survival as a race was dependent upon it. I am grateful to see that some of them survived to reproduce." While I can see how one might interpret that as referring to the Forrunners Spark never really refers to the Forerunners during that level and largely talks about the ring and the flood.
Fun fact about the cut Halo 2 ending and revelations. They were not cut due to a change of desire for the story direction. The final draft was submitted and this was the intended story. However, in the final roughly 8 months of development, the production team realized that they needed to halt production of the single player in order to back track over levels that were done and fix glaring issues and bugs, as well as stabilize the engine. The only production done in these final months was the multiplayer team making the maps and game types. Due to this, we didn't get the final act in the game. I stead we ended with a cliffhanger where we were transitioning to the final act. The final act was then postponed and edited to be a full feature game by moving the Ark off of Earth for Halo 3. And even with all this backtracking to fix things, many glitches and errors thst are relatively minor still remained in the game. Such as Lenengary Sniper Jackals being too OP, Brutes when enraged not triggering their cool down or stagger animations which resulted in the player being beaten to death with ease if not careful, and the multiplayer map Foundation being locked since the line of code to trigger its unlocking upon beating the game was not triggering (though owners of Halo 2 Multiplayer Map Pack would install the fix for this when installing the DLC content, gifting them the map). Part of me wishes thst somehow Bungie would convince Microsoft to allow Halo 2 to be postponed and be a launch title for the Xbox 360 or a sendoff title for the Xbox's final year before the 360. At least them we would have the perfect conclusion.
I categorically reject anything 343i produced as canon: much like 343i rejected its own games as canon. Each new game completely diverged from the previous; there is no conceptual consistency in any of 343i’s productions, and they retconned the original halo story. For me, the only halo story that exists is the original trilogy, plus reach and odst. Remember the guardians? Neither did 343 in Initinite. Remember the Forerunner resurgence and hard light technology? Neither did 343 in Halo 5. 343i’s tenure as steward of the halo franchise has to be one of the most inept, misguided, and incompetent enterprises ever embarked on. Very similar to how Gears of War was treated. It would have been much wiser to embark on a completely new adventure, with a new cast of characters, new heroes and enemies, and follow them through another trilogy, using the same universe but employing a time skip of 200 or so years. 343i’s writing is worse than fan fiction.
Not only that, they made a real ugly looking art style for the games I don't think 200 years is long enough, i'd say a minimum of four digits ought to put enough logical distance for what ever the fuck happened to the sangheili in halo 4 to occur canonically
I find Halo's lore from 4 and onwards so frustrating. The writing in the first three games is constantly putting up signs towards the forerunners being ancient humans. The biblical references (the flood, the arc, etc) are so on the nose, and the writing is so clearly pointing to humanity's history repeating itself when John 117 (another on the nose biblical reference) is named reclaimer. He's NOT the "claimer" or similar because the name crucially implies a taking back what was lost. But when the forerunners turn out to be just another alien race, "reclaimer" loses its meaning, and they literally strip the title from Master Chief in Halo 4. I never thought it was a clever piece of subversion, if anything it was a frustrating, unsatisfying literary choice. Didact and the librarian could have been human, the didact could still have twisted ideals for order. Humanity didn't need to be relegated to a completely separate race that coicidentally existed at the time of the forerunners and be genetically de-evolved (a great concept but terribly implented plot device btw). It's a terrible shame how poor the writing quality was from halo 4 and onward.
First of all I want to make clear that I despise everything 343 did to halo lore. but then I want to point out some reasoning issues to consider them in the future... 1. Sentinels are autonomous, forerunner might be dead by the time the portal was built 2. The keyship used by the covenant was transported by mendicant bias, he might as well got it before the others were destroyed or (somehow made it himself). 3. In contact harvest the prophets decide to hide the idea of forerunners being left behind not because they did not believe the interpretation but because it poseed a threat to the bases of the covenant, (even if after that they believed their mental gymanstics to justify it)
Babe, wake up. HiddenXperia finally dropped the video we've been waiting for a long time. Before I even begin watching this mammoth or a video, forerunners were just humans before 343 took over. I'll die on this hill. ICONIC
The thing that irks me about the way people defend this is that a lot of them seem to refute the idea that this was a retcon at all. I definitely think Bungie's idea for the forerunners was better, but you can't come arguing against that by saying that it was never the plan lol.
@@BlakesGamez i know right, im sick of it. You cant go and change a already established story then pretend everyone else is the issue when they are upset. And to have the bungie games lore explained by 343i shills changing the meaning and intention behind it annoys me. "Oh he said that because of this" that was not the orignal intention!
It reminds me a lot of Games Workshop recent claims that there was always female Custodes in Warhammer 40k despise never mentioning or showing one for over 40 years of the franchise. Is a retcon, just openly admit you want to bring the series in a new direction or something, but don't go the "You are all so fucking stupid you will believe anything we say" route
343 ruined this game, it was the story that held the players and from 4 on it was an after thought and continues to infinity. Halsey is still on oynx waiting for the true story to continue.
I'm so glad this topic is finally getting talked about publicly. It's been the biggest thing that's bothered me as a fan of the original games who just can't get into 343i's games.
I like the sci-fi versus fantasy argument that sabertooth gave, as it kinda always was my head cannon. The Forerunners couldn’t live so they did the next best thing which was mess around with the humans to turn us into their inheritors. Always like the idea that it is theoretically possible that our future is halo’s future. That science doesn’t have to completely break to allow halo’s timeline and our current one to exist.
I like halos future because its a sc-fi were humanity are the good guys (atleast in bungies lore, for some reason 343 wanted to do the generic sc-fi trope of "HUMANS LE BAD!" in their books)
@@jurassicarkjordanisgreat1778Seems to me you've never read any of the books made by Bungie because humans originally sold weapons and Intel to the Covenant since they had a grievance with the UNSC. Of course they had no idea the aliens wanted them all dead based on lies but the point still stands.
@@jurassicarkjordanisgreat1778 Bungie's lore still had humans do plenty of shady stuff, the creation of the SPARTAN II program being the obvious example. 343i has just put more focus on what was already there, to admittedly mixed results.
@@thegrouchization maybe it’s because there’s not a war of extermination going on it’s now way harder to justify their actions. But sometimes they feel like they pick action because it’s “bad” not because it’s a necessity or even the easiest way to do something.
@@CanNotName Worth noting that there wasn't a war of extermination going on at the time the SPARTAN program started either. The only reason it seems justifiable to begin with is because we started out with the benefit of hindsight. As for them picking bad actions despite the existence of better alternatives, unfortunately that's kind of how humans as a whole tend to operate, especially when they have a vested interest in maintaining power.
the only reason they changed the forerunners into a separate species was so master chief could have a new enemy to shoot at for halo 4. the flood is gone, the covenant was defeated. what's left in the galaxy to throw grenades at? microsoft is already going ahead with halo 4 so you gotta pick something to be the new enemy. so they just go "people who play halo know the forerunners, what if one of those guys is the main antagonist?"
I prefer the idea that Humans and Forerunners being separate species, and I don't know why. However, I must admit that Bungie built the Human/Forerunnner connection far too well to advocate for the separate species version. It's simply an *Iconic* part of the Halo trilogy.
Agreed. As a kid, the forerunners and humans were always two different species in my mind. So when halo 4 came out I wasn’t upset by the retcon at all and I actually liked the twist but I can definitely understand how that muddies the lore
I was saying this for a long time and most people said your wrong even though we all played the same game and read the same book's like come on get a grip........
@1:23 I use the Virgil tone as my ringtone for the longest time now and legit thought I has gotten a text message when it went off lol. I was so confused to see my phone screen still dark XD
13:00 collab with Icerberg Boi! Hell yeah! Also, the fact that you decided to go to an expert on christianity compared to you is a good move, btw. Very repectable decision that most people dont do anymore when it comes to christianity. People tend to just misrepresent it and make it into a mockery of what the religion truly is at its core.
He did misrepresent it when he said Moses built the Ark. Yes there’s an Ark of the Covenant, but that is not what Halo built around. The Ark is meant to shelter living things from the Flood in the Genesis account as well as in Halo lore. The Ark referenced in Exodus and constructed following YHWH’s commandments is completely different.
@mhm35 eh, not really. There's multiple ways to look at things. The Ark of the Covenant is as symbolic to halo as the literal ark Noah built. Its not that big of a deal when considering how christianity is usually just described 100% incorrectly and not a single attempt to get it right is made.
@@HandsomeLongshanks the Flood in scripture was an all consuming force that wiped out all living things not sheltered by the Ark. the Ark’s role in Halo was multiple purposes, but among them was sheltering indexed life forms from the all consuming force that was…. The Flood. The Ark of the Covenant in Scripture was a box constructed by the Hebrews after YHWH gave the Ten Commandments to Moses. It contained said commandments and later two other items that I’ve heard no relevance to in Halo. If there are mentions of commandments, manna, and Aaron’s rod in Halo, my apologies, and I’d love to learn. But in either event, Xperia is mistaken because scripture at no point says Moses BUILT the Ark, whether referencing a floating shelter or a box representing YHWH’s presence traveling with the Hebrews.
I feel personally the change made by 343 regarding the Forerunners was a massive mistake. The whole original concept that bungie heavily implied and outright confirmed in Halo 2's original ending was so cool, and worked so well.
This is the best decision they made. The idea of humans being Forerunner was boring and couldnt go anywhere interesting. It could have worked in the games but not really as well in the extended media.
@@dr.catherineelizabethhalse1820 I disagree. In fact, there are almost no changes in the lore if forerunners are human. Disregarding the didact’s appearance in halo 4, there is nothing that suggests that forerunners can’t be humans. I think the most appropriate fix would be to make ‘ancient humanity’ and ‘the forerunners’ just two opposing factions of ancient humans. Doing so would bring in some great parallels to the insurrectionists war and also appease both crowds.
@@dr.catherineelizabethhalse1820 No. That decision has now led up to the current writers block that has happened to the Halo series. It wasn't a good decision. And now we are stuck with the current situation.
@@dr.catherineelizabethhalse1820 Who are you to say that the Forerunners being humans would have been boring and wouldn't go anywhere? How do you know that? You can take the narrative and develop it anywhere with it including in 343's own chronology of events and it would still go well by having lore of the Forerunners humanity having strife and separation wars from other ancient human civilizations who broke off with the Forerunners after they attacked the Precursors. It is very easy to make interesting lore adapting in that direction.
This video was a HERCULEAN effort, took almost 2 weeks to make, so I really hope you guys enjoy ❤
*Please remember to be civil in any discussions you have here in the comments or off the back of this video, I get this topic is very polarising and I tried to approach it in the most balanced manner possible, but please just be chill with each other and don't take it too seriously, at the end of the day, it's just Ring Game™ lore 😂*
I have not gotten through the entire video yet. However I did skip to the conclusion just to see if you maybe had a different position than most people seem to in this position. Unfortunately, It doesn't seem like you have. In my opinion, The evidence as of the Halo 3 era points much more to the Forerunners being humanity's *creators* as opposed to being literally the same species as us.
Iconic.
You know, if you think about it, the forerunners as humans actually makes the covenant much more important to the whole halo universe. And, in a weird way, it makes the halo series less "human centric," since, rather than the destined golden babies chosen by the precursors, humanity is just the descendant of a group of hyper advanced ancestors. In this universe, humanity is not "special" or chosen, any more than a trust fund baby, as shown by the covenant being able to easily kick humanities teeth in. And what saves humanity is not human special super powers, its the fundamentals that make us human. Love, trust, the ability to work together, while the covenant fracture b/c their bonds are all based on a lie.
@@HiddenXperia love it I'm a little sick of explaining this to people I've met who are entranced / believe 343s or Frankies lore was how it always was it's nice to get another video advising the community of these changes to help keep bungies lore which to no surprise my favourite lore archived in some ways.
Personally I always liked it was always ambiguous with the one concrete confirmation in a book for those that do their own extra digging and the ramblings of an AI on the brink. My main issue with 343's retcon is ancient humanity being some rival species feels convoluted as opposed to us as just as their inheritor, an offshoot seeded by them or a parallel species that they saw with a potential to evolve in a similar direction. That said I appreciate 343 gave us the forerunner trilogy to balance out such a big shift in lore but tbh we should never have seen them. If we did they should've look like an evolved/enhanced version of us like what we got in halo legends but I just wouldn't want to see humans looking like us 1 to 1
I think Forerunners being humans adds a poetic tragedy to the war: the Covenant are murdering their own gods.
The beauty of it
@@juster257s Beauty?
@@sainsburyshopper Yeah, exactly! I'm not going to say I hate 343's version of the lore, but I can't say it wouldn't be better...
True, but I think it's also poetic for the forerunners to be aliens passing on the Mantle to their heirs, the humans, and accepting their death and their guilt, choosing not to repopulate the forerunner population and receding into ancient history. It shows their repentance.
I think it’s way too cliché. I’m happy with the change.
Don't forget in Halo: The Food, any time Chief interacts with a forerunner device, he mentions it feeling oddly familiar and that he just knew how to operate the panels
Haha, the food. Now I imagine the chief using Forerunner devices like food dispensers.
I still think about how they never fleshed this out and never brought it up again. It’s a shame.
The master chef stopping the cakenant from starting the onion ring
Chief: "Touching this makes me... hungry."
Master chef
It has always bothered me how 343 has failed to respect the source material in their attempts to expand the lore.
This actually wasn't a 343 thing. Bungie moved away from the "Humanity are the Forerunners" idea around the time Halo 3.
@@addisonwelsh They didn't. Many times in Halo 3 it alludes to this, but I will specify the ending with 343 literally saying "you are Forerunner, but this ring is mine", "Think of your forefathers", and calling the Ark and such "Your legacy" and "your inheritance". To the book that came out after Halo 3, Contact Harvest in which it has Medicant Bias referring to humans as Reclaimers and calls them "his makers", to it being alluded to in ODST, then finally to the "birthright from an ancient civilization" you uncover in Reach. How would it be a birthright otherwise? Really, I recommend C3 Sabertooth's video on the topic, as it's very long and I can't cover it here. He talks about everything, including the terminals that you're alluding to.
PS. Even when you open the terminals it plays lines like "lineage confirned" etc.
@@addisonwelsh Yep. These people are delusional
On one hand, it’s nice to think that humanity was such a wild card to the galaxy that even a god like race of aliens were scared of us. On the other hand you don’t see a lot of ancient alien races being humans in sci fi. And there’s a bit of irony that the covenant were slaughtering their own gods
And now there's a lot of irony in the covenant slaughtering the people they were claiming to be while explicitly going against the wishes of their own gods and attempting to redo the mistakes the Forerunner made that led to their own damnation
@Lazypackmule
Thank you. I hate this “the irony is lost if they’re not human” bullshit. How is exterminating the chosen people of the gods you claim to worship NOT IRONIC?? You’re just lying if you say you don’t see the irony there
Nah bro what are you talking about? It's not like the "humans are an upstart species that annoy a generic race of advanced space gods" trope has been done to death so hard that the dead horse being beaten is a finely crushed paste.....
@@braydeno4189 In the current story of Halo, the past humans are basically the same as the forerunners, so that trope is still being used
@@braydeno4189 Except here the 'advanced space gods' are lucifer mad at humanity because they think they're the ones who deserve to rule heaven, earning god's wrath and inadvertently sealing their fate with a too late act of redemption where all they can really do is ensure humanity is left their original birthright and given the chance that was taken from them
Previously they were just advanced humans who got an unlucky break and responded to it by being dumb and fucking themselves over for no real reason
Humans and Forerunners being one also aligns with the whole "ring" symbolism.
Time being cyclical.
“Time-‘line’? Ugh! Time isn’t made out of lines! It is made out of circles. That is why clocks are round.”
-Michael J. Caboose, 2005
time is a spiral. it loops, yes, but still progresses.
@@kingmasterlordflat circle no spiral
@@earsplittingpictures1133 nope.
@kingmasterlord time actually theoretically could be a flat circle if the big crunch is real, as in that potential outcome the entire universe collapses back into the singularity that set off the big bang
They never should have retconned this; its an absolutely beautiful idea to have the tomb of the forerunner be a human skeleton.
It wasn't really even a retcon because it was so unimportant. The important figures behind Bungie weren't on the same page regarding the Forerunner identity because it was unimportant. Guilty Spark was also rampant when he said "You are Forerunner" so he's unreliable due to insanity.
@@adamalexander1496 You clearly didn’t watch the video. Spark wasn’t “rampant” in any sense that would make his word unreliable
@@flipfloppy_ No need to be a dick.
And the Halo 3 terminals the part that was not covered in this video was the fact that in one of the ending conversations between the Librarian and the Didact, she indicates that humanity is separate from the Forerunners.
This just tells me that clearly Bungie didn't really have any idea either (or just wanted to keep it deliberately vague).
@@adamalexander1496 that's not how rampancy works, it is not A.I schizophrenia...
@@IamCanadian3333the terminals is but one part of the whole bungie lore, and the only part that talks about them being a different species is the part made by Frank O'Connor.
I think that is why halo 4 was so jarring. First you fighting 'covenant' again without a reason why. Then, you are no longer the reclaimer. then the Didact and Librarian dump straight exposition at you. Then to finish it, you can survive a nuke.
The other side of it is playing the games as they came out and the unraveling of the truth was just so awesome. The speculation between games. Not on the internet, but between friends. There were no youtube videos. There was gaming magazines (which most of my friends didn't get). Retconning isn't just changing the lore. It changed the memory of the entire experience, though I (and I am guessing many others) still believe to our hearts that humans are forerunner.
Halo 4 had to justify being a sequel to something that was pretty definitely an ending, so it made a bunch of shit up
They are
I don't know if it's already been said in the comments, but in the German version of the game, the forerunners are not called forerunners (or translated as such), but are called "Blutsväter" instead, which directly translates to blood fathers in English. Like if they were your forefathers or ancestors.
OH REALLY!
I didn't actually know that lol
How would you say butt father in German?
I found the best youtube comment ever@@nothanks9503
@@nothanks9503 like Bloots vaeter
Well, speaking of strong evidence...
It is blatantly obvious and shouldn't be controversial at all that humans and forerunners were meant to be the same in the Bungie era, and then 343 changed it. The controversy should be around 343 making the change... for seemingly no reason. The Forerunner book trilogy is pretty much the only thing of quality with the Forerunner in it, and I think you could have made the series easily work just as well if Humans = Forerunner. Halo 4 would have also been a lot better if it was revealed that the Didact was actually an ancient human (most game players don't read the books).
Yeah if the Didact was just an insanely menacing armored monster and then at some point his mask is knocked off/removed and he's just an extremely pissed off and cybernetically enhanced human... that's a huge payoff for all the players who went from 1-4 without catching the hint.
Also makes the whole Composer plot even more fucking brutal if he's converting his own people.
Or maybe not - maybe the composer converts every race EXCEPT humans and the final battle is over Sanghelios so Chief and the Infinity now have to stick their necks out saving the guys who saved them.
Holy fuck everything just works better if you DON'T make that change
@@Tom-s6x6iI thought in the 343 lore the didact already converted other forerunners I thought that was kinda the point, so he absolutely would do that to his own species
343 games are fanfics
This isn't obvious in the slightest. This video and theories like it cherry pick hard and generally ignore evidence against it.
The biggest being an almost comical inability in reference dates
343 took over halo in 2012. The first forerunner novel came out in 2011.
@@Tom-s6x6i And could have made the Didact a wonderful parallel to Master Chief himself by way of them both being peak enhanced humans from two different eras. Remove his stupid instant win telekinesis tech and have some legitimate showdowns between Chief and the Didact.
It's seems very easy to have both 343 and Bungie forerunner ideas to co exist with some retcons like saying the Ancient Humans were forerunners but they broke off from the 343 era Forerunners as they didn't want to partake in the extensive genetic engineering and strict cast system so they were banished from forerunner society.
That would actually be a sick lore expansion and add so much more political and tragic depth to the ancient history of Halo.
I agree. I do like the idea of humans having been an offshoot of the original Forerunners.
Fair.....but at that point why not just have both be the same thing? Plus it creates issues with the Precursor stuff. They really wrote themselves into a corner with that.
I agree. Though I would have the Forerunner armor look like it would fit even genetic manipulating humans more.
@@samuelazzaro It isn't a perfect idea just one I thought of while watching
I also really liked the human and forerunner connecton, for me the biggest thing that always made this link was the title of reclaimer. Why would humans be a "reclaimer" if they weren't reclaiming what they once lost, it was a very ICONIC concept.
I get later with 343 they surmised this to reclaiming the "mantle of responsiblity" but just being the reclaimers of a lost civilization always made more sense to me.
I'm so tired of being gaslit by denials that 343i retconned the Human-Forerunner connection, or by claims that Bungie retconned it first. Halo 3's story is _incredibly_ direct and unambiguous that Humans are Forerunner. The whole sum of "evidence" that contrarians like to bring up is claiming that Guilty Spark and Mendicant Bias are unreliable narrators (despite that being _terrible_ storytelling in the relevant narrative context), and the Terminals. Or rather, one Terminal entry in particular, written by an entirely different story team (headed by what basically amounted to the Bungie office gofer, and certainly not someone authorized to make major sweeping changes to the lore!), and not properly fact-checked for inconsistencies in the haste to ship the game on time. And the worst part is, the apparent inconsistency this introduced could have been reconciled relatively easily with the original intent that Humans were the descendants of the Forerunners.
The facts are clear. Bungie had a creative vision were Humans were Forerunner. 343i pursued a creative vision where Humans and Forerunners are not just different civilizations, but distinct species. You can certainly _like_ the direction that 343i took the franchise in, and more power to you if you do. I genuinely think that, taken in isolation, Greg Bear's Forerunner Trilogy of novels are well-written works of science fiction. However, to claim that 343i didn't retcon the lore is, in itself, nothing less than an Orwellian retcon in denial of the historical reality. It is insanity that, in the year of our Lord two-thousand and twenty-four, people are still arguing about this.
funny your comment made me actually look up Who wrote the forerunner trilogy of books which were the first things that Retconned That bit of story and yeah you're right it was 343 I always thought it was bungie in its last few years but I guess it had already Sold the franchise
.. and the world continues to spin and burn around us 🤷🏻♂️
@@blackpillz3479Lmao
“Umm…well, there’s bigger problems in life” is basically your argument here? Lord, please shut up. 343 lapdogs *cannot* admit to anything bad about their owners.
The terminals in the Ark missions in Halo 3 show that the Forerunners were not Humans.
It is not even the Librarian alone that is evidence of that, there is also the simple fact that the Flood even in Bungie Lore showed up among Humans and the Prophets, then fled after their further actions, and we got that from another data source in an earlier game.
That data source states the Flood also only returned well after the war with us was over.
The Gravemind testifying to that in his child of my enemy, and monument to all our sins, is are clear lies meant to sow destruction from that claim. He was trying to do to Chief what he ultimately succeeded in doing to not just Mendicant Bias, but Cortana, and Didact himself. Turn them on their allies and people using self doubt and half baked truths as psychological weapons.
I also fully accept that Bungie had it the other way. I just think that this retcon is better in that it widens the game universe, instead of shrinking it.
@shauntempley9757 The terminals still kept them as human, but it reworked it so the Forerunners were a group of early humans uplifted by the Precursors.
note on Forerunners now having 6 fingers: iirc, technically the allele for 6 fingers is dominant over the recessive 5-finger gene
The holo-control panel could also just be set up so you could use either your L or R hand, and was misunderstood for a single two-thumbed hand, right?
@@D33pTh0ugh7The actual reason was to save memory by having a smaller texture with half the design and then mirror it to the other side so is completed
But i agree the panel makes more sense it can be used with both hands, as I expect an advance civilization like the Forerunners to make their tech also accessible for leftes instead of the whole aura of "No, Lefties like you dont exist, six fingers is more likely!" that I get from the halofanbase
@@D33pTh0ugh7 I always thought this was the reason
???
How tf would 6 fingers be dominant when ALLLLLL mammals have 5 sets of phalanges
There is no way the "recessive gene" wins out in all branches of mammalia against the "dominant gene"
Also, if the Forerunners were their own species, why would they not reseed themselves after the firing of the Arrays? Granted, they kept the Didact, but there's no reason to repopulate the entire galaxy with every species lost except your own. It makes more sense that there is no Forerunner in the present day because humans are Forerunners, rather than this advanced species committing seppuku while rezzing every other species but, for some reason, not cataloging themselves.
Little tangent, but can you imagine a Halo 4 where the Didact is an ancient human ? I could already imagine the Didact reveal scene, but when he takes his helmet off he is revealed to be a human. I feel like that would have been more impactful than what we got considering the average player didn't know how a Forerunner looked.
The fanboy defense for them not reseeding themselves is they felt too guilty and chose to go extinct.
Yes, really
@@RandomName55yeah that’s a point that’s always really bothered me. You mean to tell me you got a civilization of trillions and not a single person thinks “yeah, maybe we should reseed ourselves too and not just leave the galaxy with these fucking super weapons floating around.”
They didn't need to, they were personally going to survive both physically in shield worlds and the ark and eternally in the domain to ensure that all worked- the flood and the halo array ensured most of that failed
Never beating the "doesn't know anything about the lore they shit on" allegations
I highly agree that the most impactful twist wouldn't have been "wow, he kinda looks like a catfish I guess?" but instead, finding one of the most important Forerunners, who features heavily in the war that led to the wiping out of their entire empire........... opening his helmet, and being just human. Maybe taller like he was in the armor, right, but.... human. Like imagine peoples' jaws dropping when we find out that he's been digitizing functionally *his own people* and turning them into mindless killing machines, and was about to do so to what is likely their actual homeworld. Like... the places it could have gone.... and instead, we just get him being petty over his wife(?) or something? Idk man, the symbolism just doesn't work as good to me.
@@RandomName55 except they didn't go extinct in that galaxy sure but many left the others did not, the reality is not even bungie solidifed one or the other because you can find numerous retcons in the games and terminals before 343 took over and thats because they never settled one way or the other
At this rate, Halo Studios will retcon humans being humans
halo lore was always boring
Why would a race, however advanced actually name themselves "forerunners"?
That always threw me for a loop. It would be like people in ancient times using BC. That's something that got applied retroactively. Plus, in the Bible, John the Baptist referred to himself as a Forerunner of someone greater than himself, and I can't see either version of the Forerunners thinking humanity was greater than them.
But I can see the logic: You are the first of the modern races, you are leading the way. Hence, Forerunner. Not what I would choose, but...
They never did
@@trillionbones89didact .-.
They didn't: it's just how their translation AI worded it.
Same thing with their defensive line against the Flood being called the Maginot Line, despite the fact that the French didn't build the area called "Maginot" until nearly 100,000 years later.
@@MishraArtificer the didact literally says “the forerunners have returned” in the first cutscene he appears in
"You are forerunner" - 343
"You aren't forerunner" - 343i
Haha.
HA
Why I hate 343i, reason number 117.
@@Chemo735 funny how corporatizing something ruins it
"You're the reclaimer" - 343
"You're not the reclaimer" - 343i
God 343 butchered the lore right out the gate. I never realised at the time.
Like C3 Sabertooth said, if you like 343i's version of Halo that's fine but don't deny the fact that Bungie's Halo was retconned by 343i.
343 retconned the identity of the Forerunners, then retconned what rampancy was, then killed Cortana, then retconned her death, then retconned the Mantle of Responsibility and who the reclaimer was, then killed Cortana again. I'm not sure what crack their writing team is smoking
@@212thBeehiveMan then they retconned halo 4 in halo 5, and retconned halo 5 in halo infinite... and yet 343 fans fight back at the idea of retconning everything after halo 3, somehow convinced that the writers have any fucking vision for the universe at all outside of "LET'S JUST COPY WHATEVER IS POPULAR"
@@212thBeehiveMan the "Halo is just a lucrative product for MS, just ship a shooty game and the details don't matter" crack.
I've read a lot of the Halo novels and I really enjoyed the Forerunner trilogy, but that doesn't stop me from acknowledging alien forerunners are 343 fanfic.
.... how did they recton 5 with infinite?@@AimlessJourney
@@gamerboiiiiiii less so retconned more so handwaved. The entire conflict that was the basis of h5 basically stopped existing before infinite could start.
You know, if you think about it, the forerunners as humans actually makes the covenant much more important to the whole halo universe. And, in a weird way, it makes the halo series less "human centric," since, rather than the destined golden babies chosen by the precursors, humanity is just the descendant of a group of hyper advanced ancestors. In this universe, humanity is not "special" or chosen, any more than a trust fund baby, as shown by the covenant being able to easily kick humanities teeth in. And what saves humanity is not human special super powers, its the fundamentals that make us human. Love, trust, the ability to work together, while the covenant fractures b/c their bonds are all based on a lie.
"And, in a weird way, it makes the halo series less "human centric,""
My brother in christ, you JUST contradicted yourself in two sentences.
@@monandoboi7360 did you read his comment?
@@ne3333tI’m afraid he may have failed his reading comprehension classes in grade school.
@@monandoboi7360 You have shit reading comprehension lol
You also have the Elites switching sides near the end and that whole Debacle. I'm pretty sure humanity would have lost if not for the elites joining sides and the Great Schism
Humans being Forerunners is just more captivating. Why would 343 mess this up? Just to turn around and say humans were chosen to take the mantle. 343 is unbelievable bad at what they do.
Debatable, I like 343 forerunner lore more
@@prevaileternal6932you enjoy the depth of world building that Greg Bear did with his trilogy. Which is fine, he's one of the greatest science fiction writers who ever lived. But 95% of all the retconned lore is in those books, which 343i had almost zero input on.
So yes, it is indeed very possible for you to enjoy the retconned lore and it also be true that 343i sucks ass.
because despite there claims, 343i was put together for microsoft, by microsoft and where beholden to there meddling. bungie was notable in delebretly keeping microsoft out of there office and effectively told them, let us do out thing and make you money, you listen to behind the scenes footage of bungie vs 343i and you hear bungie talking about narrative and story and focusing on fun for multiplayer and 343i brings up esports like 2 dozen times. 343i, though perhaps many loved playing halo, from interviews alone, seemed to not be well versed in what bungie was trying to do, and so there narrative got lost in the sauce, hell they even admitted when dong the master chief collection that they forgot halo CE was for Xbox and not pc first and used the broken PC port for the remastered CE witch broke so much including the lighting system witch was important for "3d" textures and many fog effects(how can suposed fans not know that?). 343i being made my microsoft, simply did not understand why halo was so good. they did there best, but it clearly was not done by people who truly understood the direction or narrative of the games
Eh. I think it’s cheesy and trash that way
@@prevaileternal6932I actually hate 343i’s lore additions. They didn’t build a world, they ruined what was in it.
You know what´s curious, the centinels in cradle of life could fit very easily the description of angels, like those giant freaks with hundred eyes.
“Be not afraid” -Forerunner construct bearings giant glowing eye.
AIngels you might call them
This video was INCREDIBLY needed. There's been way too much misinformation on this topic for WAY too long. If you're a fan of the 343 era story good for you I have no issue with that, but don't tell me that they never retconned this and that my anger toward 343 for this isn't valid. Retcons piss me off period, but Retconning bungie's identify of the the forerunners and making them separate from humans completely ruins SO much of the original games. Those games hinge on the reveal of humans being descendants of the forerunners and taking that away either cheapens huge elements of the story or outright invalidates them altogether. As a fan of any franchise that just sucks to have happen to a story you love.
Thank you Hidden Xperia. Very much looking forward to the Wendigoon colab video.
Yeah the decades long gaslighting that they were never descended was the biggest thing that pissed me off.
In current lore, the covenant were just fighting their gods mortal enemies lol
I agree. It hurts that 343 actually vindicated the covenant being that humans ultimately became the forerunners enemy and weakened them so much it guaranteed a loss to the flood.
The worst part is how the people who defend this treat this like politics. They think your a horrible person for even saying the truth about this. They get so angry. They are no different from the covenant calling anyone who tells the truth about the great journey a heretic. Its shocking that they will go that far to defend retcons, to deny reality. Just to defend 343 tribalistically. Idk. Something tells me they only defend 343 for ideological reasons or for personal reasons. either way its pathetic. you can be a fan of either bungie or 343. But atleast admit their faults. The fact they have to lie and gaslight like this says alot
C3Sabertooth told us all the truth about modern halo lore and knowing how broken it is makes it so hard to enjoy anything after halo 3.
@@RandomName55 You don't know the current lore
Halo 3 Terminals: Hi :v
ICONIC! @18:01 In the original art book for Halo: CE, there’s a note that the UNSC fleet of ships were designed to look like; “a human skyscraper turned onto its side.” That’s why they’re so blocky in appearance. The Pillar of Autumn is the best example of that design philosophy.
I vaguely remember a line from an early novel that also describes the Pillar of Autumn as having a ring to generate gravity. Would've been cool to see an artist's take on that version of the ship.
Other than just confirming humans are descended from forerunners, the cut halo 2 ending also clarified what truths plan was. The fact that he was trying to preserve himself to become a template for reseeded life really explained his actions in H2, his betrayals seem so random and unnecessary without the humanity = forerunner descendant context. H3 made it seem like he drank the coolaid in the keyship
I would argue the whole Covenant war against Humanity doesn't make any sense without humans = Forerunner, as is a huge blow to Covenant believes that their "gods" who supposedly "ascended" are still walking around, and its why Mercy whole point of saying "and this time, none of you will be left behind", which makes NO SENSE if humanity and Forerunner arent related
It really feels like Halo 3 sort of muddied things just by existing (blunt Spark Statement aside). If we'd gotten H2's original last level the whole store would have had a much cleaner and neater ending especially with Truth. I'm not H3's biggest fan but the best thing about it for me was the arc we got just cuz it's such an awesome installation and an installation that makes Halo rings by itself was an amazing concept. But the original arc concept really would have fit the story ITSELF better
“Wasn't it obvious?
Humans are and will always be forerunner.”
- Marty O’Donnell
Simple as that
Everyone discovering the truth about this is like arbiter discovering the truth about the great journey at the end of halo 2. with the 343 twitter force denying it being Tartarus and the brutes.
I appreciate the honesty about this just being tribalism
Q: The Forerunners were humans until H3 development, right?
"Not really'
-Marcus Lehto, co-creator of the Halo universe
It would appear it is not so simple
“It as shrimple as that”
I don't see why people still take Marty's word as canon
Hinting that humans are Forerunner??? Guilty Spark literally says, "You are Forerunner" in Halo 3, I believe.
Not so much a hint as flat-out stating it.
It's extremely reasonable to interpret that a metaphor though
@@anthonychase6906 Given the fact that humans are able to directly interface with the rings' controls when other races can't, it's far more resonable to interpret it literally... You have every reason to do so and no reason really to do otherwise.
He calls him a Reclaimer....did yall play the game or just finding ways to join the culture war about modern games?
@@rickedwards415 only some humans are able to, this has been true the whole time even in the original bungie era. I think yall didn't play the games or read even the original authors works....
@@blahtheotter1512"You are a child of my makers, inheritor of all they left behind. You are forerunner, but this ring is mine."
Basically the last thing Guilty Spark says before you kill him in Halo 3. Looks like you're the one who didn't play the games tbh.
Humans being Forerunners is the single most iconic revelation of Halo's grander story that simply got erased over time. I'm glad this idea is being brought back into the fold.
Funny how Bungie was totally ok with moving on from that idea by their own will, and the only reason it’s still relevant is due to passionate 343 hatred.
@@jakespacepiratee3740If you ignore the original Halo trilogy, especially the last 3 levels of Halo 3, as well as the book Contact Harvest, and ascribe all praise of Bungie era Halo to "passionate 343 hatred", then yes, the only reason this is relevant is due to passionate 343 hatred.
@@jakespacepiratee3740 When was Bungie ever ok with moving on from that idea?
@@sanchorim8014 You can praise something without hating the new. Nice strawman. Bungie had conflicting ideas on what the Forerunners are and they accepted each other. Many are incapable of this.
@@xx_amongus_xx6987 Probably with Frank o Connor writing Lore about them not being humans, plus removing the Halo 2 ending with the Human skeleton.
calling the original idea contrived is ridiculous, it makes way more sense and gives way to far more interesting conclusions than the 343 idea that just throws everything out on the table and says no more surprises.
I'm only 5 minutes in and you're telling me that red vs blue is more lore accurate with the whole metastability thing that halo 4 is?
Cause that is hilarious
Not really - "rampancy" just means different things between Halo's lore and Marathon's lore. Halo rampancy meaning an AI loses their mind and dies was established since the very first book that was released alongside the first game, "Fall of Reach". Cortana is fully aware that after about seven years, AI start to degrade and "think themselves to death".
Same term, but lore-wise it's always meant something very different and Halo 4 is in line with it.
Halo 4 is the canon product, so it's the other way around. RvB is inaccurate to Halo 4
@@TheHaddonfieldRegistry only problem is that rvb came out before Halo 4. The whole AI shit started in the Halo 3 episodes, way before Halo 4 changed what rampancy is. And it's in line with the Bungie games.
@@DarkestMirrored I don't think it's ever directly stated that rampancy in Halo leads to death, and also from what we've seen it is functionally identical to Durandal's rampancy in Marathon.
@@DarkestMirrored
That's really only the case because of limited processing power. The same thing CAN happen in Marathon, and it is Durandal's efforts to avoid that fate that drive the plot.
UNSC AI will do the thinking themselves to death thing with Rampancy, but Forerunner AI have more advanced technology that allows them to last MUCH longer before the threat becomes existential.
People denying Bungie's original intent is just... baffling to me, at this point.
Bungie made the Choice themselves to change the Forerunners. People who think that ONLY 343 did that are basically acting like they know better than the actual creators.
@@jakespacepiratee3740 thank you for being the example that makes my point.
@@HowdyFolksGaming idk if you’re agreeing with me or not
@@jakespacepiratee3740 and that's the way I like it 😌
@@HowdyFolksGaming I mean, he has a point. the game goes against so much of previously established lore, that it really makes the whole conflict a narrative mess.
There is a reference in the flood book to the forerunner control terminals, Chief says he cant explain why, but they seemed familiar, and he just sort of knew where to touch. I always thought they would expand on this point more but it was never referenced again. Its just after going into the interior of the ring for the first time after the escape pod landing, and just before activating the first light bridge. But maybe the reference was to how similar our ancestors were.
Funny part was they contradict this with a throwaway line in Halo 5.
@@samlund8543 I do think I remember this too! So I guess it would be fair to say 343 really did decide to change the origin of humans?
that was in Halo: The Flood/CE in the 2nd level where MC activates the light bridge from the underground section to rescue the other lifepod survivors escaping from the Autumn then Cortana asks “how did you know where to push the on switch”
@@samlund8543 which line? Is it the one were he approaches that forerunner console on genesis?
@@Halomasterchris this moment makes more sense in 343's halo because of the librarian's geas. In bungie halo it's like as if technological know-how was supposed to be inherited just because humans were a more developed civilization at some point
15:00. Jesus isn't just the son of god. He is also god in human form. So it would show that forerunners aren't just the ancestors of humanity, but that they are humanity.
Honestly the nature of Jesus is a complex and convoluted thing. According to the book of Judas, Jesus is literally the son of god in that he is literally an offspring of the creator but he is rebelling against his father to save humanity from the wrath of his father. Basically, in this version, Jesus is saving humans from God's judgment. God doesn't believe any of the humans are worthy and that's why Jesus sacrificed himself. Jesus wanted to change Gods mind about humanity
@@SevenPr1megnostic gospels are sooo goofy🤣 "Actually guys, God is evil, bbbbut Jesus only told the one guy, I promise I didn't write this myself" -written 200AD
That's like finding a writing from 1950 written by "Andrew Johnson", about how Abe Lincoln actually only freed the slaves because he hated them and thought they should fend for themselves: and then actually believing it😭 brother, no one there said anything like that. None of the texts before the second century have anything alluding to that. It's a cringe fanfiction rewrite😂
In the actual Jesus story, yes, humans are unworthy of God, yes, humanity was doomed to judgement by God, yes, Jesus was the sacrifice to sanctify humanity, but no it was not done in rebellion. It was done in concordance with God.
The book of Judas is a cringe cultist's rewriting of one of mankind's most heroic stories, don't even try to pretend it holds close to the same weight culturally or historically as the post-nicea bible
Thank you, Xperia! To finally spread this to the wider Halo community
Fr honestly 343s lore is terrible in my opinion
@@jamiiiedee3196 too bad, an incorrect opinion
@@BiomechanicalBrick 343 killed your franchise but my opinion is incorrect?
@@jamiiiedee3196 Slayed him with words, goddamn.
@@jamiiiedee3196 I disagree, because humanity being forerunner would be far too cliche and easy
My biggest issue with the Forerunner retcons is that, like much of 343i-era lore... it's just needlessly CONVOLUTED & I struggle to see how it enriched Halo's universe for the better in any way.
IMO, we had two viable options from where the majority of the Bungie era content -- at least the core stories of the trilogy -- left us. Either Forerunners WERE ancient humanity... or they simply chose a random, fledgling, basic species to succeed them because they showed a GLIMMER of potential. Given the very nature of what RECLAIM means, the former makes way more sense than being separate but there was at least SOME precedence to indicate we were separate (most notably H3's terminals which even talks about "Eden" & the potential of the primitive species there; there was also the comic showing Forerunner ships arriving on Earth & ancient humans seeing them). So those were the options!
Instead... the official lore is now that Forerunners are a separate species from humanity, BUT ALSO Ancient Humanity was ALSO a highly advanced space faring civilization as well! Not only that, but Ancient Humanity actually discovered the Flood FIRST & ran from them, accidentally getting into a war with the Forerunners who beat Humanity, forcibly devolved them, then started to fight the Flood. As the Flood started to overwhelm them, the Librarian decided to make their previous arch enemy into their Reclaimers because reasons, the Didact (ONE of them anyway, oh yeah -- there's TWO Didacts because ofc there is) was against it, Halos are activated, cue reset evolution & Halo series.
But here's the thing... that-that's the SAME FUCKING STORY as Ancient Humanity simply BEING the Forerunners!!!! Just with EXTRA STEPS that completely gut the original trilogy's dramatic revelations & waters down the very concept of Reclamation, shatters the IRONY of the Covenant worshiping the Forerunners only to end up going to literal WAR with the Forerunners & further erodes the extra twist of the knife that the Prophets *knew* Humans were somehow special, and so on & so forth. Literally, the same damn story arc just less impactful, less dramatic, less ironic, etc. A major defense I've seen toward the retcon is that the "Ancient Humans being super advanced" is cliche & tropey. And I'm like... "yes, and? Have you PLAYED Halo??" It's always BEEN tropey, cliche concepts executed BRILLIANTLY. And again, that argument would hold more weight if not for the fact that they just told the same cliched story about a highly advanced ancient civilization following the exact same steps we already knew/assumed to take place with extra steps.
EDIT: But if you prefer the new lore, more power to ya. But yeah, this was always my biggest thing when coming into Halo 4. In general, I feel like 343i has this bad habit of A. Always feeling the need to explain EVERYTHING and leaving little to be mysterious & B. Always going for THE most convoluted solution possible & C. The previous element made worse that they also can't seem to actually every resolve or tie up any of their floating plot threads in anything close to a satisfying manner... Didact, anyone?
I would rather make my own canon then and imagine all the Forerunners in the Forerunners books were indeed humans and all the Forerunner characters are humans. And the Forerunner nation was the most powerful dominating human nation that the other Ancient Human nation couldn't do much against and the Forerunner Humans were the ones who killed the Precursors.
My lord finally someone with a brain, 343 and its defendes wanna separate the forrunners and humans so much but yet they cram so much lore and connection between the two, trying their best to "replace" old lore when they might aswell be the same species 1to1.
Allat lore fore the "native human" when they could have been a different species entirely, and could have been used as enemy faction in h4 thru infinite
@@nexar13
It would have been so much easier if the Forerunners & the Ancient Humans were two competing Human civilizations who seperated after one organization killed the Precursors and the other seperated from them afterwards after some kind of civil war or separation war.
@@TheRealRobertBlarg I love when Bungie makes something overly simple it’s “perfect” and when 343 makes something in-depth it’s “overcomplicated and needlessly convoluted” the bias couldn’t be more obvious.
@@jakespacepiratee3740 Fr brother. Specially when, as HiddenXperia said, 343 is leaning in a nice middle point where Forerunners, while yes, clearly still very different, are at the same time at one point very very VERY closely connected to humans to the point of them calling eachother brother/sister.
Like sure, you can call the decision "needless" and "convoluted" but honestly thats only if your looking at it from the perspective of the games and the games only. Everywhere else they have worked with that idea and crafted a rather intriguing and expanse universe (ex: the Forerunner trilogy and a bunch of the halo books). Have they expanded on it in a good way? not always, specially when it comes to the games, thats for sure. But...saying it was a straight up bad decision, specially when Bungie themselves left some room for it to be interpreted differently, is just wrong.
Some people like simpler stories and some like more complex stories. Neither one is the objectively wrong choice. Its just different.
Forerunners =/= Humans is a retcon. A bad one. I don't care how many dozens of novels and crap games they've made about it. It'll always be a truly bad retcon.
What also proves that the Forerunners were humans is the Onyx Sentinels speaking latin and the Spartans on Onyx being called an aboriginal subspecies.
THIS. Im finishing up that read and thought of that the entire video.
Kind of stupid to have them speak Latin when Latin didn't come until way after the first human civilizations. Should've been Sumerian.
@@spikem5950nope should have been Tamil, which is way older the sumrian.....as it is and euro aryan language, the language german stole when they past through from siberia through northern india towards europe
@@spikem5950 Yeah, but knowing Bungie's background. With their lead head being catholic, and that a lot of the basis and lore of Halo is based off of christianity with abrahamic undertones. It at least thematically makes sense for their language to be Latin
@@SWOTHDRA lmao you gotta be Indian with your lame out of India theory 😂😂😂😂
Sabertooth did an incredible video breakdown of all evidence. Humans are 100% forerunner. 343 retconned it. I highly recommend watching his video on it.
It was true only until halo 2. When bungie started halo 3 they were split. Paul Russel even said that it was all approved by bungie to make them a separate species. Part of also the reason the level “forerunner city” was cut because bungie didn’t wanted to humanise the forerunners. But then again there is that one spark line from halo 3 which shows how split bungie was after halo 3 regarding the forerunners
@@shaheer1172they can be split internally. What made it in the game was that humans are forerunner. That's the fact in gane. Outside of the game devs can be split.
@@xenosayain1506but there are terminals in the game so it’s a part of the game and lore. That was all approved by bungie themselves. Unless bungie didn’t care at all about their game
The C3 sabertooth video is good but flawed.
@@shaheer1172they barely contradicted anything. They were just confusing pre343. Using 343's retcon to retcon a minor discrepancy is quite the reach.
- HiddenXperia finally talks about the lore retcon
- 343 Industries dies a couple days later
Coincidence?
The next Halo game should ditch this braindead plot that 343 pulled off, and should act like 343 story never existed.
It should just retcon everything and do the whole "humans were the forerunner" thing instead, and have a whole game centered around that
14:34 wait… Moses wasn’t the one who built the ark, that was Noah…
Moses was given the Ark of the Covenant on Mount Sinai, though.
@@lexington.oh that ark. That makes a lot more sense now 😅 thanks
@@dcswag7049took me a second too. Lol
Yeah I was thinking the same thing, but he may mean that Moses had the Ark Of The Covenant.
@@clipsmasterproductions7479 he does
It's funny seeing so many comments from people who clearly didn't watch the video before commenting.
Bet it’s those “FIRST, SECOND, THIRD!” type people.
They already made up their minds and just want to shout their opinion into the void.
They couldn't even bother to say Iconic
becuase its also well known that within bungie it wasn't set and stone hence the contradictions mainly in halo 3, but also because some have said that bungie was deviating after halo 3 hence the higher contradictions the game has and it was approved by bungie before hand.
Also many of 343 original staff that is were from bungie as well and likely it was the side that saw them as separate or along those lines.
As such the reality is there wasn't much of a retcon or anything because bungie itself was a mess even during halos days and hence why the halo games were all so rushed.
@@yulfine1688 "Also many of 343 original staff that is were from bungie as well and likely it was the side that saw them as separate or along those lines. "
You see, you'd have a point here if those people that transferred over were and continued to make narrative decisions and not just Frank O'Connor. Also Paul Russel confirmed that when he applied to transfer to 343i, the official reason for rejection by 343i was "No Bungie people." Can we please stop with the colossally ignorant amounts of cope, please?!
Bro anything past what Bungie created is non canon, Chief is still asleep in cryo and this is a bad nightmare
This would be the smartest move Halo Studios could make
frank O'Connor single handedly fucked up the whole established lore with: terminals, marketing campaign,and the abominations that were halo 4 and 5
just revert back everything to post halo 4 era with the ce remake(which i doubt would ever happen)
@@demogun117 Original Bungie: “I think the Forerunners are Humans.”
“Cool, i think they aren’t, but with big impact on humanity”
“Cool!” 🗿
Halo Community: “NOOO 4RUNNERS R HOOMAN!”
“NOOOOOO THEY ARE NOT!!” 😭😢
@@jakespacepiratee3740 Under 343, the Gravemind from Halo 3 is a Precursor. also under 343, Humans were made by Precusors. In Halo 3, the Gravemind calls Humanity the child of his enemy. The Gravemind's enemy is himself?!?!?! This line only makes sense if Humans were NOT created by Precursors, i.e. Humans are Forerunner. Considering such collosal break in lore, it's very reasonable to be upset with the side that claims Humans aren't Forerunner.
Let’s hope this remake can right the course for Halo by slow remaking the original games but 343 will find a way to fuck it all up as usual.
@@eclipseslayer98
The flood ARE the precursors and they always have been. This logic 100% holds up because if he calls them "the child of his enemy" that means humans are the children of the forerunners. This also falls in line with the vast majority of the Halo lore as well to which even the prophets directly stated and admitted to.
@@Delimon007 What? I was pointing out how in 343 lore, the Precursors created humanity, and the Gravemind is a Precursors, so by the Gravemind calling his OWN children the, "child of my enemy", that means he's calling HIMSELF his own enemy which makes zero sense.
I genuinely didn't know that The Flood were Precursors under Bungie lore. Not that it matter AT ALL for what I was talking about. If you happen to know of a Bungie source that I can look-up for the The Flood being Precursors I'd appreciate it.
i find myself agreeing with c3 sabertooths take more and more; it’s ok that they made the retcon, it’s totally fine to like the change. what’s NOT ok is pretending the change never occurred at all, it was a retcon and it fundamentally changed halo permanently.
@@forestrees2000 The thing people like to forget is that Bungie made the changes,
@@jakespacepiratee3740 did you even watch the video dude?
I wouldn't go so far as to say that the retcon existing is okay, but yes, it is okay to like it. I just won't like you (kidding, kidding).
@@forestrees2000 any video with wendiGoon “Boogaloo Boy” the Gooner Man will be willfully dishonest.
@@jakespacepiratee3740 i never mentioned wendigoon, but ok?
I thought I'd been going insane with how people just did not acknowledge this for so many years. It felt so incredibly obvious to me, and it's why I've always hated Halo 4.
Thank you for finally covering this. Halo today isn’t what it was meant to be. It’s lost track of what made it interesting and its own.
The Bungie era was truly, and unequivocally, iconic.
Somewhere along the lines they made it impossible for the people who should be making games to make it in the gaming industry
By changing the origins of humanity so that they're no longer forerunners a big part of the halo storyline is lost the naming of the rings as halos and the enemy that led to the destruction of the Galaxy as the flood they're named those things for a reason they're biblical terms
the ark and the flood We're supposed to be humanity misremembering its ancient past and putting a mythological angle to events that humans after those events wouldn't properly be able to comprehend
four runners who became humanity had to hide on the ark to survive the flood it's so beautifully poetic and I hate that 343 industries just through that away for no reason I guess just so that they could bring back the forerunner
And they're not even any interesting race so much cut lost and nothing gets gained the forerunners just they're boring and they're not even a believable race i'm just not believing that there's these beings who lived for thousands of years who had hyper technology yet got its ass kicked in a war against the flood
losing the war against the flood made sense when you don't see everything that the forerunners which were supposed to be humans were capable of so everything was left to be imagination for how it went but then they ruined that and released a tree of books that detailed the war and it just it doesn't line up the forerunners are made to be too superior and the reasoning behind them making the halo rings was tweaked a bit so it didn't even line up that well for why those things were made
also really lame that somehow some hippie named at the librarian was making major military decisions despite her being a super pacifist pansy who for some reason despite being a super pacifist decided to marry the single most aggressive thing in the universe that's not the flood
oh and for some reason the forerunners had the bright idea that while they're in the middle of a war with a super parasite they decide to kill all of their soldiers after they lose a political debate that makes no sense heck even without the war why would losing a political debate lead to your army getting executed
so the forerunners had both such advanced technology that you can't imagine them losing but also they had to be made to be so retarded that you can't imagine them ever reaching that level of Technology
Also full of plot holes, they weren't infallible.
The 343 defense squad is rolled out in full force today
The excuses are so lame too. "guilty spark thought chief was in a forerunner combat suit, or he was just insane!"
@@RandomName55 “guilty spark and mendicant bias are defective, but only when it pertains to this specific retcon and in fact everything else they say is perfectly accurate”
@@RandomName55if you monologue to a dog about "our" history, does that mean fido's ancestors were human?
Experiences are shared, even in 343 lore the forerunner conservationists were extremely close to the humans, I lean more towards Bungles version being humans too, but that doesn't mean most of the evidence was not extremely ambiguous for a reason.
It must be a perspective thing, I've been seeing a bunch of 343 bashing myself.
@@michaellane5381 bro what? Humans and dogs are coexisting now. If humans went extinct tomorrow The next millennia of dogs roaming around would be dog history, there's no shared human history to catch up on because humans are dead.
Spark says YOU have fired this ring before. YOU are forerunner. Mendicant says those are my creators, not those are the de-evolved spiritual successors of my creators
It's very clear
definitely some of your best work so far. thanks for putting this together. it was getting old having this same tired argument time after time, so it's nice to finally put it to rest.
Part of the reason I tuned out of Halo during/after 4 _was_ all this messing with a fairly neat and cool concept. I didn't want a living Forerunner, or Forerunner enemies to fight, or a new species etc. It's just lore bloat, it's one of the things that puts me off fiction, when writers mistake complexity for meaning. Just make.. more.. until it's a jumbled mess and too much to process.
Bungie's version felt really clean. They burned their civilisation to prevent the Flood from winning, and we got to exist because of them. We'll never meet them, or know them, but it's comforting knowing their sacrifice wasn't in vain. The Covenant commit genocide in the belief that they are special and will go on a great journey, so them finding out their not and that the species they're murdering are actually their gods.. it's cool, it's tragic.
Nice overlapping themes. Not a lot of bloat, easy to understand. When you start throwing in specific characters and sub-species and events etc it just gets bloated. Simple is better
They couldn't make sequels if that was the case though 😢
Id love to see a concept video where we speculate about Halo Lore if 343 had left Humans as Forerunners.
What happens after Halo 3? What happens to the Covenant then?
All the lore would be completely different and fun to talk about.
The word is subtlety. Bungie's writers understood subtlety. It allowed them to write way more and add more depth while saying alot less but still leaving enough clues there for people to pick up on and figure out. It also resulted in better and more satisfying writing.
343 belive subtlety to be spelled with sticks of dynamite placed to blow up anything left before and remove all room for doubt, replacing it with concrete and infinitely shittier answers.
I mean, Bungies writing was as subtle as a brick to the face...
I seriously can't understand why people can't refrain from destroying these franchises. What is so hard about sticking to what works and giving fans what they have shown to love and want?
Because 343 couldn't resist just "putting their own footprint on the halo franchise" So they just needlessly changed everything to spite bungie.
A disdain for God and since halo drew inspiration from Christianity it needed to be rewritten
@@NS_Voice chill out confessor, halo is an allegory for religious zeal gone wrong lol
@feihceht656 yet it is also an allegory to Christianity with the main pc's name, the ark, sins of the father, the flood and so on. It's also a literal holy war halo is a religious universe in all but name.
@@NS_Voiceby that logic dune is pro religion 💀
Ultimately, I like the og forerunner lore. I think looking at the 343 forerunners as a type of highly advanced human that evolved somewhat differently is the way to go tbh.
Bungie and 343's Forerunners can also complement each other, especially with the established lore of Humans and Forerunners killing and enslaving each other. Having Humans forced to construct the architect of the Forerunner can even add extra symbolism to the term “RECLAIMER".
Two species; same parent - Classic sibling rivalry.
@@RedCommunistDragon that’s literally what 343 did. Added new stuff while retaining the original concepts. Any deviation from the original is heresy to many fans who think they know better.
@@jakespacepiratee3740I disagree, I read the Forerunner Trilogy and while I enjoyed them a lot, 343 ultimately ruin much of the mysticism and symbolism that is so common in Bungie lore (both halo and marathon). The Forerunners are constantly given a paternal, fatherly role in the story, mankind and chief are constantly referred to as "sons" or "children" of the Forerunners, and in 343 continuity it takes serious mental gymnastics to explain that, since humans were rivals and siblings to the Forerunners and fought a war with them, only to be devolved, it completely changes the dynamic between them. It becomes strange that the Forerunners treat the Humans in such a paternalistic way even if they essentially guided mankind during a primitive age (one they created), because they aren't father and son.
Forerunner are humans
Don't care about 343 non canon shenanigans
This change is reversible again. It could be that during the Precursor days, Forerunners and Humans were the same species, but eventually some kind of cataclysm (or a series of cataclysms) led to the collapse of the original Forerunner civilization, a bloody civil war, the extermination of the Precursors in the Milky Way and the loss of millions of years or historical records. By the time of the _Halo_ Array, the descendents of the original Forerunners have split into two distinct subspecies and had developped two distinct civilization over the course of a million or so years.
23:58 This actually supports my theory. All of those things are true from a certain angle. There is information that seem contradictory because we're missing context that was lost over the many hundreds of thousands of years if not millions of years as we only have only access to broken and incomplete pieces of information. Remember, as I've previously established, even the Forerunners and the Erde-Tyrene Humans of 150 kya could only trace back historical records with any kind of reliability to a maximum of one million years in their past. Much of their historical records was lost after the genocide of the Precursors. Their own origins was a mystery even to these exceptionally advanced civilizations.
Humans and Forerunners being the same race brings it all together neatly and explains everything simply. 343's retcon just complicates things FOR NO REASON.
no, 343 didn't do that, BUNGIE DID
@@friendlyneighborhoodcombine My brother in Christ, how does the creator ruins its own creation?
That's rhetorical. Don't even bother answering, as I'm afraid you're gonna spout something far more stupid.
Not really a retcon. There were only hints at it at best and it would have been extremely boring revelation. Current lore is much more complex and interesting.
@friendlyneighborhoodcombine I can tell you didn't watch the video
@@4realm8rusirius humans and forerunners being seperate goes back to the iris marketing campaign for halo 3 if i remember right. which was done under bungie
Really doesn't need to be any more clear than being point-blank told "You ARE Forerunner" by someone who was literally there.
Two someones if you count the gravemind calling 117 "Child of my enemy."
Thank you! Ever since I saw Sabertooth's video, I was hoping you would make a video on the topic as well.
I was waiting for this video. I love C3's video on the topic. Excited to see what your take is.
That video is incredibly well done
It's pretty obvious that Bungie's core writers had written and created a wondrous and finished plot, all wrapped up and tied with a pretty little bow (humans are forerunners, great journey was a great reset, Covenant are ironically killing their own gods, ect.) and gave it to Microsoft Studios. Microsoft Studios then said, "F THAT, we want more games, more books, movies, shows, ect. So we need to rewrite the plot so we can keep pushing out content and milk it for money." And lo and behold, here comes the newly created 343 Industries, which butchered the franchise into the sad shell of itself is has now become.
55:45 this whole bit about the covenant unknowingly waging war on their own gods blew my mind, way more interesting than just an interspecies spat
The graveminds quote, "I am a monument to all your sins" makes more sense with the human rivalry.
Huh? No, it doesn't. It only makes sense when humans descended from forerunners. The flood is the monument to the forerunners' sins of destroying all life in the galaxy in an attempt to kill the flood, which ended up not being successful after the contained flood on the Halo ring got out.
It really doesn’t and you’re forgetting all his other lines saying that. “A father’s sin is passed to his son”?
@@J05TI Humanity literally caused the Flood to spread in the first place in the Forerunner Trilogy. It’s their fault. It works in both directions. Stop being so bias
@@CJ-db4yq if anything that further hurts the human-forerunner thing. If it were true, he would say “Your sins, passed to no one because You are the forerunners”
@@J05TI Honestly I would take it the other way: The flood came from what? Precursors who preserved themselves after being "destroyed"/attacked by the Forerunners... why? Because the forerunners were jealous the Precursors chose humanity to succeed the mantle. The forerunners failed to destroy the precursors, failed to destroy humanity, and failed to uphold the mantle... failures (their sins) at every turn. The gravemind is the encapsulation of all these failures/sins... a monument to them even.
I wasn't sold on the human-forerunner connection being the superior plot line until the very last portion where you went into detail with its potential ramifications and thematic influences, truly an ICONIC video, this was a great watch, thanks!
I was always a huge fan of this concept. It made the mystery of the forerunners and their connection to humans much more emotional, they had sacrificed everything for us to survive
Bruh it’s literally not a mystery anymore then. It’s just us, the end. So emotional and impactful.
@@jakespacepiratee3740 you just blow in from stupid town?
@@BLAM5980 hello Penguinz0
@Thlormby
This is BAFFLING to me.
“they had sacrificed everything for us to survive”
Uh no, in your preferred canon, they sacrificed everything so that THEY THEMSELVES could survive. Literally just ensuring the continuity of their own species! I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but there’s nothing selfless about it.
What’s more noble than sacrificing your entire civilization for the sake of a younger more primitive race with great potential that hasn’t yet been given a chance?? Tell me what not noble about that?
@@Arander92 It’s a fucking video game. Get a job. Jesus christ stop taking shit this seriously
I LOVE YOUR VIDEOS SO MUCH I JUST FINISHED THE FORERUNNER TRILOGY. GENUINELY THE BESG BOOKS IVE READ. Thank you for being one of the last beacons of halo.
Ayyyyyy ya love to hear it!
Remember my teachers were suprised that I was reading it in elementary school
Halo 4 literally ruined everything.. 😑
Quite the ICONIC video. To add some of my own thoughts, I think there is a way further reconcile all the 343 has done with Bungie's original intent. It's hinted at that the Librarian likely had recent Human ancestry, given her five fingers. We also know that after the firing of the Halo Array, Bornstellar and Chant-to-Green had a son. If that son fell in love with a stone-age Human, after only a few thousand years all living Humans would be his direct descendants. Essentially a Halo-ified version of the Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden story. Akin to how the Forerunner-Flood War is a Halo-ified version of the Noah's Flood story. It's taking the scenic route, but it would make Modern Humanity direct descendants of the Forerunners again. Acting as both an in-universe reconciliation as the different surviving branches of Humanity are made whole once again when Humans go on to reclaim the birthright to the stars, and as an out-of-universe reconciliation as one gets to keep the lore events of Forerunner trilogy novels with Humans also reclaiming being Forerunners.
ICONIC
I actually like that 343i and Bungie's visions are aligning. I like aspects of both. Bungie's blurry, background view and 343i's direct history. Blending both appeal to me.
Love it! The iconic building blocks were buried but not lost, you've tried them together brilliantly.
Wasn't the original ending of Halo 2 supposed to blatantly indicate that the forerunners were originally humans? I can't remember which UA-camr made a video about it, but they detailed how the arbiter, on a quest to see a long dead forerunner, found only a human skeleton.
Edit: Made that comment before watching through the 22 minute mark, so I guess I was right...
I have to consider 343’s lore an alternative (inferior) timeline so I can sleep at night.
I've created my own entire headcannon at this point. I usually don't with franchises but it's mandatory for Halo at this point. I can barely enjoy this series
Ignoring how rights are owned legally, it quite literally is fanfiction.
I like to think it's just Chief dreaming in his cryo pod.
I just ignore it. It's a fanfiction. The last time a Halo game came out was 2010
I'm waiting for the very obviously needed partial reboot where 343's "Halo" gets redone from the end of Halo 3, essentially remaking Halo 4 and beyond in old Bungie's vision, which would also split 343's Halo off into its own timeline. Sounds perfect to me, and I feel like every true Halo fan would want that, but that'd likely only happen and/or actually be good once 343's replaced with a new dev. I can't imagine 343 not screwing that up, as I'm sure most people feel at this point.
I hated the 343 retcon of making the Forerunners as separate from hunanity
If the Halo Ce's remake is real, it would be really interesting to see the story taking this path again instead of the forerunners being a different species
I'd rather them stay as a seperate species. Makes the dynamics more interesting imho.
@@Sonilotos🤡
@@Sonilotos wrong comment, idk how it ended here lol
@@elecman748 it's fine lmao
@@SonilotosThe most boring dynamic ever 😂 Humans being Forerunner is the reason why the Prophets manipulated different alien species to kill all the humans before they reclaimed their lost history.
We got HiddenXperia unironically calling Master Chief Jesus Christ in a lore video before GTA6
Because its true.
It is funny but Jesus analogues are really common in Sci-fi, for example Anakin Skywalker is force Jesus lol
Masterchief is jesus, Halo is deeply religious. This is why 343 and Microsoft try to make halo fail so the word of the great lord master jesus cannot reach the new generations
Chief's other name is literally John 1:17
@@NS_Voice for the Law was given through Moses, but Grace and Truth came through Jesus Christ
The forerunners will always be human to me, it's the only storyline that makes sense in the original 3 games and you have to go through some pretty extreme mental gymnastics to think otherwise. 343's retcon harms the canon of the original games so it should be disregarded along with their mediocre games.
sorry, just little tid bit; Moses didn't build the ark. Noah did. Moses was courier for the ten commandments. Some Christian 'lore' for ya
You would be right if you are talking about Noah's boat, but if memory serves, Moses did construct the Ark od the Covonant. HiddenXp could have been referring to that.
Moses built the Ark of the Covenant. Noah's Ark is the large boat used to survive the flood. I do think the ark in halo is more related to Noah's Ark tho, since both are used to escape the flood.
@@Thunderstar-ky4tfExactly. The Ark in Halo is almost certainly a reference to Noah's boat, given the context of saving different species from destruction, etc.
I mean
He made another Ark
But yeah
The one the halo ark is refering is the one that Noah did
The "save the species from the flood"
Just a little error of what ark was he talking about
And Muslims and Jewish lore to friend.
Literaly the final twist of the Halo story is Guilty Spark revealing humans are Forerunners.
Whatever 343 fan-fiction followed it has neither weight nore legitimacy.
It's as if Disney said "well actualy Vader isn't Luke's father", they have no say in the matter.
Humans are forerunners, Halo CE confirms it, Halo 2 hints heavily at it, Halo 3 confirms it in plain words "You ARE Forerunner, the child of my creators".
Disneys already done plenty of that in their fan fics. Rouge 1 was just a retcon movie about an internet meme.
In Halo CE, the library mission, guilty spark says in gameplay “my creators blah blah blah i am glad to see some of them survived to reproduce” i remember at the time how thats a huge clue also
He was talking about the flood im pretty sure. His statement was something like
"My creators created this array to study the flood. I am glad to see some of them survived to reproduced."
It could be interpretted either way though
@ why would he be glad to see the flood reproduced?😳
@VincentVanGirth because he wants more specimens to study. And, despite what xperia says. Hes definitely batshit, just not rampant
@@VincentVanGirth Voxino hit it on the head but the exact line is ""The installation was specifically built to study and contain the Flood. Their survival as a race was dependent upon it. I am grateful to see that some of them survived to reproduce." While I can see how one might interpret that as referring to the Forrunners Spark never really refers to the Forerunners during that level and largely talks about the ring and the flood.
Fun fact about the cut Halo 2 ending and revelations. They were not cut due to a change of desire for the story direction. The final draft was submitted and this was the intended story. However, in the final roughly 8 months of development, the production team realized that they needed to halt production of the single player in order to back track over levels that were done and fix glaring issues and bugs, as well as stabilize the engine. The only production done in these final months was the multiplayer team making the maps and game types.
Due to this, we didn't get the final act in the game. I stead we ended with a cliffhanger where we were transitioning to the final act. The final act was then postponed and edited to be a full feature game by moving the Ark off of Earth for Halo 3.
And even with all this backtracking to fix things, many glitches and errors thst are relatively minor still remained in the game. Such as Lenengary Sniper Jackals being too OP, Brutes when enraged not triggering their cool down or stagger animations which resulted in the player being beaten to death with ease if not careful, and the multiplayer map Foundation being locked since the line of code to trigger its unlocking upon beating the game was not triggering (though owners of Halo 2 Multiplayer Map Pack would install the fix for this when installing the DLC content, gifting them the map).
Part of me wishes thst somehow Bungie would convince Microsoft to allow Halo 2 to be postponed and be a launch title for the Xbox 360 or a sendoff title for the Xbox's final year before the 360. At least them we would have the perfect conclusion.
I categorically reject anything 343i produced as canon: much like 343i rejected its own games as canon. Each new game completely diverged from the previous; there is no conceptual consistency in any of 343i’s productions, and they retconned the original halo story. For me, the only halo story that exists is the original trilogy, plus reach and odst.
Remember the guardians? Neither did 343 in Initinite.
Remember the Forerunner resurgence and hard light technology? Neither did 343 in Halo 5. 343i’s tenure as steward of the halo franchise has to be one of the most inept, misguided, and incompetent enterprises ever embarked on. Very similar to how Gears of War was treated. It would have been much wiser to embark on a completely new adventure, with a new cast of characters, new heroes and enemies, and follow them through another trilogy, using the same universe but employing a time skip of 200 or so years. 343i’s writing is worse than fan fiction.
Not only that, they made a real ugly looking art style for the games
I don't think 200 years is long enough, i'd say a minimum of four digits ought to put enough logical distance for what ever the fuck happened to the sangheili in halo 4 to occur canonically
Excellent video man, I too prefer Bungie's choice here. 343 have made a *_loooot_* of mistakes.
I find Halo's lore from 4 and onwards so frustrating. The writing in the first three games is constantly putting up signs towards the forerunners being ancient humans. The biblical references (the flood, the arc, etc) are so on the nose, and the writing is so clearly pointing to humanity's history repeating itself when John 117 (another on the nose biblical reference) is named reclaimer. He's NOT the "claimer" or similar because the name crucially implies a taking back what was lost. But when the forerunners turn out to be just another alien race, "reclaimer" loses its meaning, and they literally strip the title from Master Chief in Halo 4. I never thought it was a clever piece of subversion, if anything it was a frustrating, unsatisfying literary choice. Didact and the librarian could have been human, the didact could still have twisted ideals for order. Humanity didn't need to be relegated to a completely separate race that coicidentally existed at the time of the forerunners and be genetically de-evolved (a great concept but terribly implented plot device btw). It's a terrible shame how poor the writing quality was from halo 4 and onward.
First of all I want to make clear that I despise everything 343 did to halo lore.
but then I want to point out some reasoning issues to consider them in the future...
1. Sentinels are autonomous, forerunner might be dead by the time the portal was built
2. The keyship used by the covenant was transported by mendicant bias, he might as well got it before the others were destroyed or (somehow made it himself).
3. In contact harvest the prophets decide to hide the idea of forerunners being left behind not because they did not believe the interpretation but because it poseed a threat to the bases of the covenant, (even if after that they believed their mental gymanstics to justify it)
Babe, wake up. HiddenXperia finally dropped the video we've been waiting for a long time.
Before I even begin watching this mammoth or a video, forerunners were just humans before 343 took over. I'll die on this hill.
ICONIC
The thing that irks me about the way people defend this is that a lot of them seem to refute the idea that this was a retcon at all. I definitely think Bungie's idea for the forerunners was better, but you can't come arguing against that by saying that it was never the plan lol.
@@BlakesGamez i know right, im sick of it. You cant go and change a already established story then pretend everyone else is the issue when they are upset. And to have the bungie games lore explained by 343i shills changing the meaning and intention behind it annoys me. "Oh he said that because of this" that was not the orignal intention!
It reminds me a lot of Games Workshop recent claims that there was always female Custodes in Warhammer 40k despise never mentioning or showing one for over 40 years of the franchise. Is a retcon, just openly admit you want to bring the series in a new direction or something, but don't go the "You are all so fucking stupid you will believe anything we say" route
0:27 that sword camera angle was peak!
343 ruined this game, it was the story that held the players and from 4 on it was an after thought and continues to infinity. Halsey is still on oynx waiting for the true story to continue.
Hidden using his xperience to show us just how deep and hidden halos lore is. Perfection.
This is the mother load of topics in the halo community.
Because it makes sane people angry
@@spookubusBuddy, we’re Halo fans. We’re anything but sane. Lol
I'm so glad this topic is finally getting talked about publicly. It's been the biggest thing that's bothered me as a fan of the original games who just can't get into 343i's games.
I like the sci-fi versus fantasy argument that sabertooth gave, as it kinda always was my head cannon. The Forerunners couldn’t live so they did the next best thing which was mess around with the humans to turn us into their inheritors.
Always like the idea that it is theoretically possible that our future is halo’s future. That science doesn’t have to completely break to allow halo’s timeline and our current one to exist.
I like halos future because its a sc-fi were humanity are the good guys (atleast in bungies lore, for some reason 343 wanted to do the generic sc-fi trope of "HUMANS LE BAD!" in their books)
@@jurassicarkjordanisgreat1778Seems to me you've never read any of the books made by Bungie because humans originally sold weapons and Intel to the Covenant since they had a grievance with the UNSC. Of course they had no idea the aliens wanted them all dead based on lies but the point still stands.
@@jurassicarkjordanisgreat1778 Bungie's lore still had humans do plenty of shady stuff, the creation of the SPARTAN II program being the obvious example. 343i has just put more focus on what was already there, to admittedly mixed results.
@@thegrouchization maybe it’s because there’s not a war of extermination going on it’s now way harder to justify their actions. But sometimes they feel like they pick action because it’s “bad” not because it’s a necessity or even the easiest way to do something.
@@CanNotName Worth noting that there wasn't a war of extermination going on at the time the SPARTAN program started either. The only reason it seems justifiable to begin with is because we started out with the benefit of hindsight.
As for them picking bad actions despite the existence of better alternatives, unfortunately that's kind of how humans as a whole tend to operate, especially when they have a vested interest in maintaining power.
the only reason they changed the forerunners into a separate species was so master chief could have a new enemy to shoot at for halo 4. the flood is gone, the covenant was defeated. what's left in the galaxy to throw grenades at? microsoft is already going ahead with halo 4 so you gotta pick something to be the new enemy. so they just go "people who play halo know the forerunners, what if one of those guys is the main antagonist?"
I prefer the idea that Humans and Forerunners being separate species, and I don't know why. However, I must admit that Bungie built the Human/Forerunnner connection far too well to advocate for the separate species version. It's simply an *Iconic* part of the Halo trilogy.
Agreed. As a kid, the forerunners and humans were always two different species in my mind. So when halo 4 came out I wasn’t upset by the retcon at all and I actually liked the twist but I can definitely understand how that muddies the lore
I was saying this for a long time and most people said your wrong even though we all played the same game and read the same book's like come on get a grip........
@1:23 I use the Virgil tone as my ringtone for the longest time now and legit thought I has gotten a text message when it went off lol. I was so confused to see my phone screen still dark XD
Legend
Same. Ive had that sound for about 2 years and every time I hear it in a Halo video, I think I get a notification.
Yo, no way, i literally also thought i got one, same ringtone
343 really did ruin everything good about halo
13:00 collab with Icerberg Boi! Hell yeah! Also, the fact that you decided to go to an expert on christianity compared to you is a good move, btw. Very repectable decision that most people dont do anymore when it comes to christianity. People tend to just misrepresent it and make it into a mockery of what the religion truly is at its core.
He did misrepresent it when he said Moses built the Ark.
Yes there’s an Ark of the Covenant, but that is not what Halo built around.
The Ark is meant to shelter living things from the Flood in the Genesis account as well as in Halo lore.
The Ark referenced in Exodus and constructed following YHWH’s commandments is completely different.
@mhm35 eh, not really. There's multiple ways to look at things. The Ark of the Covenant is as symbolic to halo as the literal ark Noah built. Its not that big of a deal when considering how christianity is usually just described 100% incorrectly and not a single attempt to get it right is made.
@@HandsomeLongshanks the Flood in scripture was an all consuming force that wiped out all living things not sheltered by the Ark.
the Ark’s role in Halo was multiple purposes, but among them was sheltering indexed life forms from the all consuming force that was…. The Flood.
The Ark of the Covenant in Scripture was a box constructed by the Hebrews after YHWH gave the Ten Commandments to Moses. It contained said commandments and later two other items that I’ve heard no relevance to in Halo. If there are mentions of commandments, manna, and Aaron’s rod in Halo, my apologies, and I’d love to learn. But in either event, Xperia is mistaken because scripture at no point says Moses BUILT the Ark, whether referencing a floating shelter or a box representing YHWH’s presence traveling with the Hebrews.
I feel personally the change made by 343 regarding the Forerunners was a massive mistake. The whole original concept that bungie heavily implied and outright confirmed in Halo 2's original ending was so cool, and worked so well.
This is the best decision they made. The idea of humans being Forerunner was boring and couldnt go anywhere interesting. It could have worked in the games but not really as well in the extended media.
@@dr.catherineelizabethhalse1820
I disagree. In fact, there are almost no changes in the lore if forerunners are human. Disregarding the didact’s appearance in halo 4, there is nothing that suggests that forerunners can’t be humans.
I think the most appropriate fix would be to make ‘ancient humanity’ and ‘the forerunners’ just two opposing factions of ancient humans. Doing so would bring in some great parallels to the insurrectionists war and also appease both crowds.
@@dr.catherineelizabethhalse1820
No. That decision has now led up to the current writers block that has happened to the Halo series. It wasn't a good decision. And now we are stuck with the current situation.
@@thorshammer7883if forerunners were humans there would be no conflict. Humans would just control everything now.
@@dr.catherineelizabethhalse1820
Who are you to say that the Forerunners being humans would have been boring and wouldn't go anywhere? How do you know that? You can take the narrative and develop it anywhere with it including in 343's own chronology of events and it would still go well by having lore of the Forerunners humanity having strife and separation wars from other ancient human civilizations who broke off with the Forerunners after they attacked the Precursors. It is very easy to make interesting lore adapting in that direction.
Making the forerunners seperate from humanity is the single worst retcon.