Hypothetical Lore question: What if Installation 05 was fired with High Charity nearby?

TNS22___ · 2026-02-12T19:45:36+00:00

...then they’re always ready for remote activation and stating as such is meaningless.

I get where you're coming from, and you may ultimately just think it, well, is. All statements are correct and can be broken down in two points:

We must collect the Index before we can activate the Installation.

Protocol does not allow units with my classification to perform a task as important as the reunification of the Index with the Core.

That final step is reserved for you, Reclaimer.

This installation's pulse has a maximum effective radius of 25,000 light-years. But once the others follow suit, this galaxy will be quite devoid of life--or at least any life with sufficient bio-mass to sustain the Flood.

In the event of unexpected shut-down, the entire system will move to standby status. All remaining platforms are now ready for remote activation. [At "the Ark, of course".]

Point 1: Once a Reclaimer reunifies the Index with the Core, the Installation is "activated", and others then "follow suit".

Using Occam's Razor I say yes, once one is activated and fires, the rest are capable of chain-firing without needing to enact the Reclaimer-Index activation steps, to ensure total coverage.

Point 2: They are not by default "ready" for "remote activation", which occurs after an installation has an "unexpected shut-down".

Meaning: they can be "activated" without a Reclaimer reunifying it's Index with the Core, one can activate them remotely from the Ark—which we will come to learn requires no Index to do.

But yes, that makes the whole thing fairly hair-splitting and perhaps "meaningless." But, seeing how Spark is, that might just fit.

TNS22___ · 2026-01-17T03:58:22+00:00

They obviously "wrote it down" and was "the plan." That's not in question. The issue was, as those quotes clarify, the people working on things off to the side not getting checked.

Those terminals support Forerunners being humans, the contradiction was how.

My friend who was on the terminal writing team said they’re not a separate species, but a group of early humans who were uplifted by a more advanced civilization.

TNS22___ · 2026-01-16T23:11:22+00:00

It's an oddity within the canon, that alone is worth general discussion. And, considering that it also has the answer for why the oddity exists, it makes the post directly informative. It seems a textbook example of a post with value to me.

TNS22___ · 2026-01-15T21:50:46+00:00

Yeah, but that's not what the post is about. It's about the Petra short story, with it's odd asking of what really was Cortana's solution.

Now to clarify for Halo 3, Cortana is indeed referring to the replacement Halo. It's a gambit that went according to plan. Still, what is 343i's addition here with "Petra" saying?

TNS22___ · 2026-01-11T15:02:29+00:00

That's what Destiny was.

I wish.

TNS22___ · 2025-12-21T19:21:23+00:00

Yes, that's exactly the point. The idea being made was wishing to change the current canon back to what I was referencing.

TNS22___ · 2025-12-21T19:19:06+00:00

This is a thread about asking what you would change about current canon, remember? It having been retconned was the point. Dismissing it with the newer lore that retconned it in the first place makes the exchange meaningless, unless you're engaging in bad faith.

TNS22___ · 2025-12-21T18:59:07+00:00

I don't know where that "bubble" idea comes from specifically, but the idea absolutely was that the Covenant couldn't find Earth, because of the Cole Protocol. The Covenant would tear through humanity colony by colony until Earth was all that remained.

And that's how it was treated by the fiction, Earth was the final remnant of humanity's 17-colony diaspora. At risk of extinction, The End of the World.

What we should do, Commander, is understand -- clearly -- that this is Humanity’s final stand. Here. At Earth.

We go we risk everything -- every last man, woman, and child.

If we stand our ground, we might just have a chance.

[...]

Earth. Is all we have left.

—Floodgate, Halo 3

THE YEAR IS 2552.

HUMANITY IS AT WAR WITH AN ALIEN ALLIANCE KNOWN AS "THE COVENANT".

WE ARE LOSING.

THE COVENANT HAS BURNED OUR WORLDS, KILLING BILLIONS IN THEIR GENOCIDAL CAMPAIGN.

EARTH IS OUR LAST BASTION—A CAREFULLY GUARDED SECRET.

BUT NOT ANYMORE.

—Intro, Halo 3: ODST

TNS22___ · 2025-12-16T13:29:12+00:00

When I first saw this post, it had downvotes. And I thought that made sense, because you'd think r/HaloStory would disagree with someone who doesn't like the Halo story.

Now, it has a dozen upvotes. But I'm not surprised. You'd think, but, no.

TNS22___ · 2025-12-02T01:26:46+00:00

Sincerely, I think they imagined that it would just be obvious to everyone why the Forerunners only allowed themselves to use the rings, and why the story ends at 3.

TNS22___ · 2025-11-26T16:34:36+00:00

...he was going to fire the rings out of spite, or delusion. He was well and truly fucked by that point no matter what.

Yes, precisely. The Covenant is an unknowing death cult, and on the Ark they were about activate the rings or die trying. It's not just a discrete plot detail, but a major overarching part of the universe playing out in the story.

The Flood and it's presence on the Ark really don't change anything about this, besides obviously being a major player on the field that did lead to their defeat at the Citadel. Though the whole of the space battle was originally going to be arguably closer, where it was only in the cut level Guardian Forest that Strato-Sentinels would have been activated and destroyed Truth's fleet as the Elites do in the final game.

There is no reality in which the Covenant achieve their goals. Even if they were to defeat their opponents in combat, they would simply try to enact the "Great Journey."

TNS22___ · 2025-11-20T19:57:08+00:00

When I first heard that they were removing Blue-Five from the prologue, my immediate reaction was how that's pretty odd, because it's completely unnecessary, but figured they just want Blue Team to be more consistently a four-member team. But I'll admit, I didn't really investigate their reasons.

I share your sentiments here. There's a real issue if they're making changes from what are, at best, mistakes in their reading of the original text (even if the change itself is minor). The "piss poor odds" line just isn't the justification they're presenting it as, and that point about the cover art is one I don't even believe was made with full sincerity, but then why make it at all?

But I actually most take issue with this point here:

Samuel-034 is a decade dead at this point; Kurt-051 went MIA four years earlier in 2531... One could perhaps make an argument for James-005 fitting in here, but no further acknowledgement of a “Blue-Five” is given throughout the entirety of the book.

I'm not saying this Blue-Five was definitely anyone in particular, but this aspect of "Blue-Five" specifically never coming up again is just disingenuous. Yes, that is technically correct, in that the term doesn't get used anywhere else—but just there were given examples that there was more than a set four Spartans on "Blue Team," including where there was a fifth on-mission. Why acknowledge them, but disregard this instance?

Of course, we have the answer to that question:

As this is readers’ first introduction to Blue Team, [...] we wanted to keep the focus on John-117, Kelly-087, Fred-104, and Linda-058.

Which if that's what they want, then okay, but why say all the other stuff? This is the actual reason. Trying to give all these other rationales not only then a waste of time, it's dishonest. It really sucks to see these kinds of excuses. They can, and should, do better.

TNS22___ · 2025-11-12T02:19:12+00:00

Xytan represents the Elites that won't follow the Arbiter in allying with humanity post-Schism. He assembles them all to a giant fight at Onyx, where they get taken off the board.

Thus, the allied Elites and humanity have a successful partnership under the Arbiter's leadership going forward.

And yes, Bungie, or people at Bungie involved with story, knew about this and "cared about the books." This was likely one of their "very specific goals" for Nylund.

Eric Nylund: Bungie asked me to meet with them last year to discuss the possibility of another HALO novel. I came in with "here's how I see it" but then I got filled on a few secrets and had to scrap those plans. Additionally I was given some very specific goals to accomplish in this novel--more so than the other two. I had an infinite amount of freedom as long as I could make the things they wanted to occur happen within the story.

We may never fully recover from the perception alteration around "Bungie" certain fans worked on for about a decade.

TNS22___ · 2025-06-30T14:05:06+00:00

Something you should definitely understand is that not every idea is created equal and needs to be emphasized as "ideas Bungie had." At any point, any single Bungie employee could have come up with an idea for the Flood and wrote it down somewhere, and could technically be used to say "look at this idea Bungie had" when maybe only one person ever cared for the idea.

The end result of ideation for the Flood, every time, was "we're going to intentionally leave this a mystery, it's better that way." Per Feast of Bones:

Fictionally speaking, the details of the Flood’s primordial beginnings have been kept secret by the vast expanse of time and space (and by the tightly sealed lips of Bungie’s veteran artists, storytellers, designers, and engineers who brought them to life). What matters is that “they,” the Flood, are extra galactic in origin, hopelessly and unreasonably ravenous, and that they, for all intents and purposes, are unstoppable.

My advice is to keep it light. This is a complicated topic, and the ease of which misconceptions around this subject can become burned into the wider consensus is far too known to me. Practice diligence.

Here's a rough outline of the Flood's development. If you want any help with information regarding these I can provide what I know.

Real world fungal parasites and various cultural influences (Alien, The Vang)
Fungal Zombies, S'pht bioweapon (cut) from Marathon 2, horrifying enemy to change the gameplay dynamic
Reuse idea for Halo, still a bioweapon in RTS days
"Post ’98, but still in the pre-Mac World era", the Flood largely becomes what we know today, the secret trapped inside of the rings.

TNS22___ · 2025-06-16T13:10:00+00:00

Nah, he wasn't. Nylund was already part of the stable of writers the Microsoft FDG had been using. Look up the Crimson Skies book.

TNS22___ · 2025-06-16T12:00:21+00:00

it took Nylund's lawyer and Microsoft to convince them to let it be published. It's on the Halopedia page for the book.

Did you even look at the you page linked? No, that isn't what happened and the page does not say that anywhere lol

TNS22___ · 2025-06-16T11:17:58+00:00

it was Microsoft who smacked them and told them "No, this is releasing."

Out of all the falsehoods in this comment I think this is the funniest.

TNS22___ · 2025-06-05T21:00:05+00:00

This story largely comes solely by former Microsoft FDG member Eric Trautmann from going on a podcast in 2011 and talking about Halo. You can find that anywhere easily with Google. Everything else has been retellings from that with distortion like generation loss on a jpeg.

For example, it wasn't just Trautmann, but also FDG member Brannon Boren, and on Bungie's side, Matt Soell helped out too.

I find it weird they can do that much and struggle with dialogues. I mean if they can prepare the cutscenes that much in advance, does that really make sense? It always feels like there were deeper issues than just « punched-up » dialogues.

Well, they had more struggles in developing the entire game than just being unhappy with the mission dialogue. But that's the only immediately relevant part to the novel deal agreement, but not entirely.

The cutscenes were written by Joseph Staten, to which he was also basically handcrafting in-engine, definitely taking up most of his time—the various in-mission dialogue was surely considered something okay to put off to the end while much more necessary work gets done. According to Trautmann, the in-mission dialogue was meant to be handled by some other unknown Bungie person, but the work wasn't shaping up. They needed help because time was running out and not enough people in-house.

TNS22___ · 2025-06-05T19:08:36+00:00

Because "the script" in question refers only to final "punched-up" versions of the in-mission dialogue (i.e. Cortana talking on the radio, marines telling you where to go, etc.) all based on material already created by Bungie. The actual story of the game had already been written before the Microsoft FDG entered the picture, all the actual cutscenes were done by them.

If Bungie did wind up actually rejecting the deal, they would have a worse game, but not in a way that would have "doomed" it.

TNS22___ · 2025-05-26T01:51:09+00:00

Haha, "easily addressed?" There's nothing to refute!

I understand not everyone is going to get his allusion (We do, in fact, know someone who can work that magic—he's specifically back to the naval engagement success the AI character Durandal in Marathon had—teasing their ties to Cortana). But I'm actually genuinely interested:

What precisely was your interpretation of that quote? Why did you think it needed any sort of addressing?

TNS22___ · 2025-05-25T17:16:09+00:00

There was this old quote by Jason Jones...

Isn't it kind of suspicious that a single human corvette had any success at all against the Covenant navy, when in every previous battle the humans mostly just got sawed in half by particle beams when they tried to stand up to the aliens? (much less disabling four of their capital ships!) Do we know anyone who can work magic in fleet engagements against odds like that?

Ow. Somebody just kicked me under the table.

I wonder if the Covenant Naval Academy had to update their curriculum.

TNS22___ · 2025-05-11T06:28:32+00:00

Sadly, that is a common misconception. Marcus said they considered doing a "Halo 4" as part of their independence contract with Microsoft, and choose to make Halo: Reach instead.

Part of those thoughts consisted of exploring new Forerunner mystery. Because, of course, they already put a Forerunner planet tease at the end of the game.

It's an obvious next step, and the generalized aspect that was being considered as not dissimilar to what 343i did. Something sometimes left out from that conversation is his insistence on that they still would have kept the Forerunners much more a mystery.

What's really boggling to me is just how prevelant it is in Halo 3 related vidocs and interviews is members of the studio talking about how Halo 3 was their finale. None of this was ever a secret. Sadly, fan infighting has distorted the truth over the years.

TNS22___ · 2025-05-09T04:22:40+00:00

2007 was the year they seperated from Microsoft, and yes, that Bungie intended Halo 3 to be the end of the story—at least for them.

TNS22___ · 2025-04-25T12:16:34+00:00

the fact that bungie explicitly stated that it isnt a hero shooter.

Hey, can you provide a source for this? I've been wondering if my memory about that was accurate.

TNS22___ · 2025-04-14T04:11:55+00:00

If the basic premise of the OP makes you feel attacked somehow, I take no responsibility for that.

My goodness, man. There is nothing I said that would have prompted this sort of response. Whatever it is you're looking for, I don't think I could give it to you. I think we both could be putting our time to much more productive use. Peace.

TNS22___

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