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| Topic | Just finished Halo 3... umm.... does everyone else think it's bad? |
| ParanoidObsessive 08/19/20 2:29:52 AM #14: | SKARDAVNELNATE posted... To the crew of the Pillar of Autumn does the word Forerunner mean anything? Cortana just brings it up and I can't tell if Master Chief had any recognition of the name. Again, the implication is pretty clear. Literally nothing is said or done in-story that implies anyone has ever heard the word/concept before, and it's pretty clearly implied they're just discovering all of this for the first time. The same applies when the squad of marines have no idea what the Flood is when they let them out and are attacked. Moreover, in Halo 1, the only people who ever HEAR the word "Forerunner" are Master Chief and Cortana. By the time they start using it, Keyes is already gone. So arguably, "the crew of the Pillar of Autumn" never know "the Forerunner" exist at all, outside of MC and Cortana. The crew's perspective of the game is mostly "Okay, we crashed into this weird world, Covenant are trying to kill us, oh no, now monsters are trying to kill us, oops we're all dead." No one ever has a moment like "Hey, this reminds me of those ruins we found on Centauri Prime!" (the way Mass Effect does almost immediately when it introduces the concept of the Protheans). Later games kind of retcon this, but you yourself said you wanted to view the game without the later context. SKARDAVNELNATE posted... Yet it doesn't sound like something they would have called themselves. It's more like The Ancients, or The Progenitors. Something that people would call you long after you have been forgotten and only the things you built are left laying around to be discovered. Pretty sure it's outright stated (or at least heavily implied) that "Forerunner" is what the COVENANT call them. And from the Covenant's perspective, everything you've said applies. Cortana doesn't call them that until after she's hacked into the Covenant databases and starts figuring out what the Halo IS. She just uses the term because she has no other name for them. It's the same reason why they start calling the ringworld "Halo" in the first place (watch the cutscene from the mission where you rescue Keyes - he mentions the Covenant talking about "Halo"). The word "Forerunner" is actually only used about three times in the entire game - it isn't until later games that you realize it's an important term. Pretty much EVERYTHING you're told about Halo and the Forerunners either comes from the Covenant or the Halo itself. Guilty Spark - who is the only one in the entire game who WOULD know what "The Forerunners" called themselves - never refers to them by name. He refers to YOU as "Reclaimer", but a) that sounds more like a title than a name, b) he can't see your face through the armor so could easily be mistaking you for someone else, and c) he's pretty clearly portrayed to be at least a little crazy from thousands of years of isolation. Though 343 (the company) kind of contradicts all of that later anyway, and flat-out says that the Forerunner DID call themselves "Forerunner". Because they saw themselves as the guardians of every species that would evolve after them (which is where the concept of the Mantle comes in). The original backstory (the one that was in place when Halo 1 was written/developed, and what all the dialogue and implications are meant to hint at) is that HUMANS ARE the Forerunner. Humans actually had a space-faring empire that spanned the galaxy before the Flood became a threat, and it was destroyed when Halo originally fired. The few survivors managed to return to Earth, but their knowledge and technology was lost and they returned to barbarism - modern human society is actually the SECOND human civilization to develop space flight and start colonizing the galaxy. Master Chief is the "Reclaimer" because he's literally reclaiming humanity's lost legacy and authority. Guilty Spark's comment about "the last time you asked me if we should do it" is directly referring to the fact that it was a HUMAN (and not any of the races of the Covenant) that fired the Halo in the first place. The ultimate irony of the war between humans and the Covenant is that the Covenant have literally been murdering their own gods the entire time and never realized it. 343 changed all that (they kept the "ancient humanity" idea but made the Forerunners a distinct race that literally called themselves "Forerunner"), but it was Bungie's plan from start to finish (hence "The Ark" in Halo 3, and it being in Africa - the "origin place" of "modern humans"). Everything in the games and tie-in novels was meant to play into that backstory, but the backstory was never really meant to be important in and of itself, as much as it was just meant to give a little flavor to the modern setting. It wasn't really until 343 decided to release an entire novel trilogy set in the past and made Forerunners antagonists in the modern era that things get murkier. --- "Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76 "POwned again." --- blight family ... Copied to Clipboard! |
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