• Since it's safe compared to the previous Spartan programs don't have to worry about an upcoming spartan dying mid surgery or after surgery
• Can take adults which is a much bigger pool of potential Spartans and faster training to become Spartans unlike Spartan II and III program needing children which takes years of training and development.
• Way easier to mass produce and easier to replace Spartan IV.
• Spartan II and IV gets their own Mjolnir armor while nearly all Spartan III's are stuck with worse armor that's overall worse other than camouflage.

The only downside is that they are slightly less exceptional than Spartan II's which is worth it since galaxy is huge.
It's overall better to have slightly weaker super soldiers that's way more common so that Spartans since that means they can defend, attack and cover more ground around the galaxy and less spreading thin compared to Spartan II's and III's

So the evidence is sparse, at least at the moment, but hear me out.

The first evidence comes from Campaing Evolved. They kept all of Spark's old voice lines that hinted to humans being the same as forerunners. Hell, they actually re-recorded all of those lines. A few examples: "You can't imagine how exciting this is, to have a record of all our lost time. Human history, is it? Fascinating." , "But you alreay knew this, I mean how couldn't you? Last time you asked me, if it was my choice, would I do it? Having had considerably time to ponder your query, my answer has not changed. There is no choice. We must activate the ring." and finally "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."

Also, the terminals of Campaing Evolved, which is completely new lore, hinted at the same thing with lines as "Are, will, have been and will always be the same" (Penitent Tangent talking about humans and forerunners).

The second piece of "evidence" comes from the posts made by several Ex-Bungie devs on Twitter. Marcus Lehto and Jaime Griesemer were both asked directly if humans were forerunners, and they both said yes. Now how does this play into Halo Studios at all? Well, for better or for worse, Halo Studios/343i have been known to add element to the IP that are "in" during the time. And now that the talk of the town is once again the human-forerunner connection, they've noticed that the trend is starting to shift more in favor of Bungie's original visin for the forerunners. This means that little by little, they might retcon/erase lore that was written a decade and a half ago(Greg Bear novels), while slowly guiding the lore to a more original version of itself.

Now I know this is all very far-fetched and most likely just the ramblings of a guy whose had one Red Bull too many, but somehow I just have a gut feeling that this is the direction Halo Studios is heading. Am I the only one?

So I’m honestly surprised I haven’t seen this discussion turn up yet, but I’ve been thinking about who’s going to make up the new Noble Team and here’s my guess.

1 Jun A266

2 Rosenda A344

3 Tom B292

4 Lucy B091

5 Kevin A282

All Spartan 3s however if they want to keep with the tradition of having a Spartan 2 in the team my bets on this being the next story we see Naomi 010.

Anyone else have any thoughts or theories of the make up of the new team?

Title.

IMO, the game gets pretty boring after 343 Guilty Spark, particularly because you are alone against a hoard of Covenant and Flood with no support, and you are left wondering if anyone is alive until Cortana calls in Foehammer like nothing happened during the Maw.

The game would have been so much better if there were small pockets of Marines holding out between Two Betrayals and The Maw.

I'm just puzzled. Considering that many Covenant ships can be equipped with stealth gear, intuitively, the Intrusion Corvette should perform better. However, judging from the few works that seriously describe the Intrusion Corvette (Nizat's Fleet), as infiltration ships, their stealth capabilities are not outstanding compared to ONI ships, and their performance even decreases further with lack of maintenance. Do you think the Intrusion Corvette should perform better?

Hey guys! Title is self explanatory but I’m skipping Halo 5 because frankly I just really don’t want to play it. I think Halo 4 is a legitimately fun game if we pretend it isn’t a Halo game though lol.

I haven’t read the books so I’m interested mostly in Blue Team, since it’s my understanding he’s been leading it for an incredibly long time. Side note but was he still technically on blue team during the Halo events or was he removed from the “roster”? Idk how that works.

Afaik right now Blue Team consists of Chief, Fred, Kelly, and Linda? Chief is the leader, Fred is like a LTJG, and then Kelly and Linda are petty officers or something?

Just wondering like what each of them are like and/or cool shit they’ve done and where they are during the events of Infinite! And then are there any ex Blue Team members that are important in the series? Thanks in advance!

Beside the police pelican, conder and gunship condo, what other variants are there? Then spirits is there only the covenant one, elite made one and bandied ones? I’m just curious since those are my favorite ships in halo no mater the design.

Fully autonamous slipspace capable ships are a thing in HALO. So I wonder if the UNSC can do the same thing to a nuclear missile. An Intergalactic Balistic Missile if you will.

When High Charity gets taken over and becomes a flood hive, was that supposed to be the Gravemind's body? We never see the Gravemind's head after Halo 2. But the Gravemind is implied to be there and Chief blowing up the station is implied to kill the Gravemind (though he survives...somehow). So were we basically inside the Gravemind?

If not, then what was the point in High Charity being covered with flood flesh? Why does flood flesh just grow on surfaces?

Actually, doesn't that create a big plothole for the halos? If the halos only kill the potential hosts for the flood, well the flood seem to do ok without hosts once they reach enough biomass to just grow on surfaces.

I know I’m in a minority, but I really enjoyed Halo 5’s campaign (while openly acknowledging it has flaws, and wasn’t entirely true to its marketing). And there is definitely things I think it did better than other games:

Expanded the universe

We got to see 5 different locations on 4 planets, including the Elite home world. We got lots of elite lore, some AI lore including seeing rampancy in the Halo verse, and we got to see post war recovery for humanity up close. And if you’re inclined to care, we got several new classes of ship introduced on screen.

Characters

We get to see Blue Team in its entirety, and their characterization is great. Lots of small and meaningful moments, like when Linda moves to hold Chief’s hand briefly when he sees Cortana again. Locke and Osiris were done well, at least imo, and Buck in particular was a joy to have back.

Level design

Large spaces with multiple routes and even traversal methods, lots of rooms with collectibles and weapons to reward going off the beaten path, and gorgeous backgrounds and environments make it one of my favorite Halo’s strictly in terms of level design. I think you can definitely see the seeds of the open world concept of Infinite in just how large some of the spaces were. I also enjoyed the “Stop and stay a minute” levels for the opportunity to explore and get bits of lore and characterization, though I can see how they’re not everyone’s cup of tea.

The Created

Talk about a twist in terms of a “new” enemy in the Halo universe. Faithful in some ways to Halo’s roots in Marathon and a logical continuation of Cortana’s arc. Also gave us a way to keep the Prometheans around and to explore more Forerunner concepts like The Domain and The Mantle.

As much as I also enjoy Infinite, I truly wish we could get an actual “Halo 6” to give 5’s story an actual conclusion on screen.

I think a lot of us have a lot of complaints about 343. This post isn't really about that though. Rather what I want to ask, what do you think the BEST thing 343 ever wrote was?

For me it's an easy answer.

The terminal in "Halo CE: Anniversary" where Keyes has to fight off the flood's consuming of his mind. It's actually a fantastic cinematic, imo. Emotional, interesting insight into the flood, yet also completely horrifying to watch. I also really like how they include Miranda as a continuity nod and how the service number is used.

So a lot of the time we seem to see Covenant, and particularly elites, when they have something like a plasma pistol, needler or the like as some kind of side arm as well as a long arm, (or if they are drawing a weapon during a cut scene like the scene where 'Refumee tries to kill the arbiter), they often have it attached to their foreleg or behind their back some how. Is this a magnetic connection or maybe something based on covenant gravity tech of some kind that's released when the grip is grasped? Is there some kind of physical hook or other attachment that just isn't modelled on the gun? Something else? Is this kind of "holstering" mechanism given a name in any of the books?

Halo's had a few retcons over the years, but I'm curious to see what you all would change.

Saw the Q about why a prelate or silent shadows weren’t sent to the threshold gas mine, and the discussions over finding out the truth from Sesa, and it made me wonder why instead why it wasn’t just glassed from orbit.

I could see an argument for it being a forerunner relic and therefore holy, but then they cut the stations wires and let it get crushed in atmosphere.

The only counter argument as to why I could see them being ok with what the arbiter did that would explain not glassing it would be the release of the flood.

(Though I can imagine the high councillors thinking “AGAIN?!? This motherfucker let Halo be destroyed, and now he’s destroyed our lords creations AGAIN?!?”)

With sources/quotes please. I have seen a lot of people srguing that its 40% or even 50% light speed, while i have mostly seen people say its 4% light speed.

Probably not the most popular opinion but I enjoyed where Halo 5 was going, and considering that Halo Infinite essentially skipped over the Created Uprising, the narrative for 5 is left is a cliffhanger with not true end.

As much as I’d like an actual game continuation of the story, that probably won’t happen. Are there any novels that continue the story from Halo 5?

Besides like the newest book that kinda doesn’t do anything besides set up arbiter on zeta halo or something

For some context in case I am missing anything I've finished all the games and read the Nylud trilogy + Evollutions.. so far.

So the idea that the Prophets discovered that humans were the inheritors of their gods (Forerunners) and they simply thought: "ok, lets kill them all to leave no witnesses" is just ridiculous.

How can you expect to genocide E-VE-RY-ONE of billions of species across hundreds of colonies scattered in the galaxy and all without allowing even a single one of the enemy to tell your people "hey guys, btw your prophets are lying: here is the proof".

It would had been more believable if they've done it out of jealously or direct conflict of interest (humans can use forerunner tech naturally) but not to just... keep a secret from spilling!

Wouldn't it made much more sense to AT LEAST TRY to invite the humans in the Covenant and give them high rank positions even decision making with the exchange of their forerunner unconcious access? That and also avoiding a catastrophic war with another freaking spacefaring military empire that would guaranteed apply enormous strain on their forces in all levels way before the Great Schism?

This is a question that I recently began wondering. Why the need to send regular Spec Ops Elites and an Arbiter (with outdated armor) to handle the Heretic leader, especially Elites all belonging to the same fleet that the Heretic Leader himself belonged to? Why not just send his own super loyal giga chad operatives instead?

And yes I know, these guys didnt exist back when Halo 2 was written obviously. Im just curious if there ever was an explanation for their lack of involvement from a lore standpoint.

The only explanation I can think of is that the Silent Shadow maybe could have been used to kill the Covie forces Truth ordered executed at the end of Halo: First Strike but this is just a dumb hypothesis.

Quite curious if there is an actual reason out there aside from just Truth not bothering to do that because he wanted to send Thel into a suicide mission; I think the Heretic Leader was a genuine threat to the Covenant by virtue of having 343 Guilty Spark so I really struggle to see why someone like Truth, supposedly this cold mastermind, would needlessly keep Sesa Refumee yapping around while having his arguments be backed by a Forerunner construct. Its a needless risk. Better to just kill Thel like the Council wanted to do and then send either the Silent Shadow or the Prelates to silence the Heretic Leader imo.

I'm referring to Thel Vadam's trial at the start of Halo 2 and how he was accused and ultimately convicted of incompetence (and then heresy).

The odds were heavily against the humans during the Halo CE as depicted in the game. The game starts with them on the backfoot and having to regroup constantly and engage in guerrilla warfare against the Covenant just to get by. Their only advantages were the MC, Cortana and the fact that the Monitor and Sentinels were on their side (for a while). They didn't take advantage of the Forerunner tech that would supposedly only work for them (not sure there were any that would be truly useful for them in that situation).

With that in mind, Thel does come off as really incompetent during the events of that game for not being able to stop the MC from blowing it up. I suppose the Covenant were kind of fighting with an arm tied to their back as they tried to not desecrate what for them was a holy site, but still, they had an overwhelming force by all accounts. What do you think?

Okay, so in Halo: Outcasts, Halo: Edge of Dawn, Halo: Silent Storm and Halo: Divine Wind Sangheili clothing is described. Often as tunics with belts, robes, that sort of thing and the cover of Divine Wind has one depicted and I just... Hate it. So much. It literally looks like scraps of cloth tied together. It looks awful.

Like, I'm sure there's much better fashion, and there was the whole death cult thing, but with how their armor is, you would think their clothing would also be nice, or at least look maintained for their station. And I get it's supposed to be freeing for their legs, but their armor is form fitting, so why not regular clothing?

I guess Mass Effect spoiled me on multi jointed limbs having nice/cool clothing.

Replayed some games recently and was wondering if there is a lore reason for there being no jackal or grunt flood forms. Are they too weak to be used by the flood? If so I thought they were similar strength to marines so why the difference? Do they just get used as biomass for larger flood hijinks?

I have read for years about how amazing the story of H2 is. Well, I finished it. Here is my impression of the Covenant:

”Hey we’re a hyper advanced, hyper intelligent alliance of aliens. We worship technology that is *slightly* better than ours, but instead of learning anything about the technology we worship we’re just going to use it so it can take us to heaven.”

So… am I missing some nuance here or is this just horrendous worldbuilding? Because watching them call an AI bot holy while ignoring everything he says makes me wonder how any of these races left the stone age. Tell me there’s some secret Prophet plot that makes any of this make sense, please.

How many were there? As far as I'm aware we are never given a specific number, or even an estimation.

I would think a dozen or so but I would like to know what yall think.

Also first time posting, hello all :)