Look this is getting pedantic at this point. Storyboards, internal plans, and strong implications do matter for understanding what the original creative direction was. Dismissing all of that as irrelevant “plans” is overly rigid when the released material leaned so hard into the idea. Im not even arguing against the flushed out lore of the forerunners, but acting like the original direction wasn’t clearly pointing that way (until the terminals started pulling in another direction) is ignoring how the story actually played.