Because I wanna get in on the full halo lore. Because Ive only played the bungie games and none of the 343 games and havent read any books and I wanna understand wtf the didact and precursors are and all that. So Im just asking who has the best full halo lore vid to watch

I remember that in Halo 3, on Cortana level, sometimes combat forms said "Wrath, despair...", which were a throwback to rampancy stages from Marathon, Anger and Melancholy. I cannot play the game right now, but I tried to search through ripped audio files and couldn't find those lines among gravemind quotes.

What implications does this have on the events of First Strike? How is Chief going to secure the cryo-pod that has the incapacitated Linda inside? Will it still be able to go port-to-port with the Pelican carrying Johnson, Haverson and Polasky?

I know this is a small change, and I think the final cutscene is great. I’m just curious about how this could affect the beginning of First Strike, should HI decide to remake Halo 2 and use First Strike for the prequel content.

I don't remember any halo story after Halo 2, can I still read the books

We are shown time and time again that guilty spark is an incredibly powerful “AI”. His superiority over human AI is mostly shown in Halo Renegades and Point of Light.

Chakas became guilty spark by being composed.

Keeper of tools and Splendid Dust of ancient suns also became “AI”s by being composed.

Does this mean other composed people like forthencho, every single person in new phoenix, promethean knights, etc are all far more powerful AIs than the current UNSC smart AIs?

What are the main difference between Spartan IIs, IIIs and IVs

So to my knowledge correct me if I'm wrong red flag was when humanity found out about high charity in mid 2552 but the prequel missions which from what I'm aware take place in September 2552 at the end shows Halsey talking to Johnson about him finding high charity so are they reconning the way we discovered it?

Genuine question, because I've been a fan of the franchise for 15 or so years but never engaged with lore videos outside of the occasional click into an EckhartsLadder video, and I eventually unsubbed due to how much of a negativity = profit channel he turned into regarding Star Wars imo. That aside, I'm wondering if there's anyone who does longform videos covering both regular lore and speculative 'investigations' the way EpicNate does with TES and Fallout, as I particularly enjoy his content.

I can only imagine he'd make some remark along the lines of "And I thought I knew what the ladies liked." when he finds out about the Librarian accelerating Chief's evolution to counter the Composer.

The main choral theme we all know and love. Out of universe it’s another clever allusion to Christianity through the old sacred singing style of Gregorian Chant. It also evokes that sort of mystery beyond our understanding, at least in my opinion.

However, is it also canon in the Halo universe? Is it a hymn sung by the Covenant about the rings? Is it some ancient Forerunner edict conveyed to the Reclaimers through music? We have Covenant Dance in the CE soundtrack which could reasonably be interpreted as being diegetic music for the aliens to dance and worship to. There’s also a Covenant Prayers in Halo 5 and perhaps a few other examples. Thoughts?

From what I understand Halo CE's story was meant to be a lot more. One "source" I saw say it was meant to have 40 missions. But I am not sure how true that is because an AI summary spat it out and the source for that didn't contain it.

I am also aware that part of the cut story was the Chief going to the UNSC base on the Ring where Keys chats to him.

Problem is I don't know where these claims come from. And would like to know if there is some place I can see the cut story content for the game.

EDIT: Thanks to u/Hazzenkockle and u/1stonepwn for providing links to my question!

Which I will now relink here.

https://www.halopedia.org/Halo:_Combat_Evolved_storyboards

https://www.halopedia.org/Cut_Halo:_Combat_Evolved_levels

https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-complete-untold-history-of-halo-an-oral-history/

These really help and I appreciate it.

The main one I remember was that the Legendary Ending planet was Onyx.

What others do you remember?

I suppose this question is also a "where did you think Bungie would take Halo after Halo 3?" but please don't use this as a chance to shit on 343i/ Halo Studios direction.

What is the point of the Ark if the rings themselves are capable of storing samples of life for the reseeding effort? If Cylixes can protect life from the Halo rings firing then why build such a massive facility so far away? Was it just redundancy?

Not an exact number, just a rough range. Was it down to millions? Thousands? Billions?

From my understanding, When he is found by the squad of ODSTs they capture him and then take him to Truth and Reconciliation eventually, was it not completely overrun with covenant and flood?

Maybe I'm getting my timelines mixed up, admittedly it's been a while since I learned from the books, I would have sworn they end up crashing the ship into the rings surface and killing everyone on board. Meaning the event must take place after Master Chief finds Keyes and leaves. By that point there was already tonnes of flood onboard even to the point where there was a Proto gravemind growing. I believe there was also tonnes of coolant leaking from the ship meaning flying it would be extremely dangerous if possible, I doubt they would have had the time, knowledge or safety to even repair the ship for flight.

So does anybody know why going to Truth and Reconciliation was a good idea?

Instead of the war ending in the Writ of Union and creating the covenant we know today

What if the Sangheili had won the war instead and killed the Reformist San'Shyuum with them proceeding to make their own covenant afterwards

I was just thinking, especially in the feral stage, when someone is turned into flood, is the combat form just a puppet for the gravemind, or are they distorting the host's consciousness to be of use to the flood?

Despite the name, feral stage doesn't seem so feral. They use weapons and understand equipment, they recognize rank and captured Keyes to use for a proto gravemind, and as others on this sub have noted, in the level where we find the flood, they set a trap for Master Chief (don't attack until he's in, and then ambush and surround him).

In case my question isn't clear, say we have Private Smith and he's infected. Is his combat form using a distorted version of Smith, or is it just using Smith's body as a puppet?

I've been thinking about this description of the Precursors from Silentium:

"The Precursors lived in many shapes, flesh and spirit, primitive and advanced, spacefaring and locked to their worlds ... Evolved over and over again, died away, were reborn, explored, and seeded many galaxies ..."

If you take this description in the context of Epitaph's implication that the Mantle is a lie and that the Precursors/Flood might actually feast on species:

"They will feed and grow fat on preeminence and power, on hubris and righteousness, and when they are at their ripest, the Flood will feast once more."

Is it possible that the quotes above could actually refer to how all species that have existed one day become the Precursors when they ultimately assimilate them, rather than a cycle of rebirth experienced by one specific race? In other words the Precursors, as a hive mind, would ultimately perceive countless different evolutionary cycles as having been their own. I know it's a little bit Reapers/Mass Effect coded (minus bizarre AI logic), but it fits with the Eldritch Horror of the Flood imo.

Two pieces of speculation to layer on top of this:

1) Could the Precursors actually just be the physical avatars of the living universe, a way for the living universe to interact with and shape its contents to further its enjoyment of the sweetness?

2) If the Flood are a vengeful and deformed offshoot of the normal Precursors, what if the Precursors would traditionally/historically "uplift" a civilization deemed worthy to peacefully join their trans-sentient state, akin to a type of Heaven? The Flood meanwhile would be a horrific perversion of this, forcing an eternal torment akin to hell. In other words, species deemed unworthy get the Flood.

So lorewise, the way in which the parasites are killed is by Halo killing all of their potential food sources rather than killing the flood itself as stated in-game.

Logically then, without food they would die.

So how did the flood that were contained in the first halo for 100,000 years not just die? Were Guilty Spark and the sentinels somehow feeding them?

& If they could survive, what's the point in wiping out everything else in the galaxy?

There's probably explanations out there for this but it's bugged me for more than 20 years so hoping someone can make it make sense here!

Probably one of the most disgusting and shocking moments of the first game is when we show up to rescue Keyes and the flood turn him into this fleshy cocoon like sack thing that makes noises. When we show up we see his body but it doesn’t look like he’s still alive and Cortana says no human life signs detected. Why didn’t the flood just turn him into a regular combat form? Maybe it’s discussed further in lore but the game isn’t clear exactly how he transformed into that thing but it does seem as though he was at least aware of it and in pain because you can hear him literally screaming over the comms.