imagine being a citizen in a highly controlling authoritarian society and finding out that not only is there a massive super alliance of aliens that wants you and the entirety of your race exterminated, but there is also a eldritch zombie horror called the flood that wants EVERYONE dead. Halo has got to be among the top 10 worst universes to live in.

I'm actually personally quite fond of Halo 3's story, despite the abrupt ends of Miranda and Johnson. I did watch C3's video, as well as Andy Bunker Dweller's excellent Halo 4 review which touches on that topic, as well. I will say, I also find the idea of Humans being the literal descendents of the Forerunners (as is implied in Halo 3 and in The Fall of Reach and First Strike books) to be more compelling and to add to the irony more than a guided evolution. I feel the idea of a guided evolution produces the same colossal series of problems that the "genesong" of the Librarian did in Halo 4. The amount of variables and the like that could have ruined it kinda make it silly, in my own opinion haha. Despite it not being planned the way it came out, I'm actually extremely pleased overall with the Original Trilogy

Also I will concede that Truth's characterization in Halo 2, Halo 3, and The Cole Protocol makes for an admittedly very contradictory character. On the one hand he's a conniving backstabbing coolheaded politician, then a ranting raving madman, then he knew the entire time apparently and that's why he wants to kill the whole galaxy? But if that's true, then why fire Delta Halo? Plot holes haha

@Bornstellar731 (Sorry for the horrifically late response) Yeah, I can see that. I was talking to some guy and he was saying that originally Bungie most likely intended for us to be literal Forerunners. But, Halo was meant to be set in our world and you can’t reconcile that with the fossil record. So they changed it to where were creations of the Forerunners that were made by molding hominids into their successors. Funny thing is that wouldn’t be the first time they made a big change to the canon. After all, Johnson dies in CE (we see him and the other marines get swarmed with Infection Forms and there’s pools of blood where each of them was standing. Plus, he wasn’t a character yet and was just a generic sniper marine template), and the Covenant go from knowing for a fact the Rings are weapons (the goal in CE prior to the Flood showing up is taking control of said Ring so the Covenant can’t use it against us) to having a super warped view where they think it will turn them into Gods (the Covenant were also noticeably less religious is CE and the expanded lore at the time. In The Flood book they don’t even call Spartans demons yet. They refer to Chief as “that human with the special armor”). I personally like both of these changes because they made the setting much better. I agree that there’s more poetic irony in us being literal Forerunners as opposed to their creations. But, there’s also implications that Forerunner technology had been shaping our society and beliefs in addition to our genetics. So I think it still works. Plus, that could tie in with what C3Sabertooth was saying about the Biblical allegory of God representing Forerunners creating man in his image (would’ve been far more impactful with Halo 2’s ending). I remember for the longest time I believed the notion that Bungie never cared about the lore and couldn’t make up their mind about what they wanted to do with the Forerunners because at the time I hadn’t real the books, like C3Sabertooth said in his video definitions of words nor mean something completely different in the new continuity, and all these people I trusted to give me accurate information of the lore parroted this talking point. In hindsight I really should’ve seen this coming because Xperia can be a massive sperg at times (I still like a lot of his content. But, anything Flood related sends him into schitzo mode and he’s easily impressed by stuff that isn’t very high quality), Installation00 is a shill and 343/Paramount even gave the man an early screening for season 2 electric boogaloo the terrible show😂, and Halo Canon has a video talking about how Reach the game and The Fall of Reach book totally don’t contradict each other. Plus, Reach trampled all over the expanded universe, and we should’ve been fighting Elites for most of ODST (it doesn’t make any sense that they’d magically be replaced with Brutes that as far as I’m aware weren’t even part of Regret’s fleet. Gameplay wise it also should’ve been a tactical shooter with a fully fleshed out stealth system, as opposed to being diet Halo 3) so those things contributed to this. Prior to seeing the video I knew that 343 changed various things and didn’t really understand Halo. But, I had NO IDEA it was as bad as it was. That video was truly phenomenal and really eye opening. Although, I will admit there were some parts of it that were really dumb. Like a part where he used a quote from Guilty Spark saying he was glad that some of them managed to reproduce as proof of humans being Forerunners, when he was clearly talking about Flood samples reproducing. At one point he was melting down about various things in Frank O’Conner’s terminals and 343’s books/games that weren’t scientifically accurate because he took some statement from Jason Jones about Halo being “a hard sci-fi setting” as gospel. Despite the fact there were already all kinds physics breaking things and biochemistry that didn’t make much sense prior to either of their involvements (Eric Nylund’s books are what truly made Halo feel grounded despite having some fantastical elements like faster than light travel, artificial gravity, shields that were clearly magical barriers that run on batteries, telepathy from the Flood, and teleportation. Plus, Halo Chronicles almost happened and NOBODY would have ANY right to complain about the various nonsensical things in 343’s ever changing canon because that would’ve set the provident that anything no matter how ridicules could be part of Halo). And at one point he used a Halsey quote in Reach was so vague and ill defined that it could go either way (that same part made lots of people think that Cortana was created using Forerunner tech. Which, admittedly could’ve been Bungie’s intention since they were pretty open about Reach being a retcon). Plus, when talking about MASSIVE retcons that trampled all over a previous vision and went against the lore you really DON’T want to mention Reach. That game was arguable just as big of a change and set the precedent that 343 could just ignore longstanding lore that’s a fundamental part of the setting. Other than those regard moments the video was super good and more people should see it. It would be nice if we could just change back how Rampancy and the Forerunners worked previously. But, both changes are instrumental to so much of the new lore that you’d need to reboot the series to reconcile the various differences. There’s various things from the new lore I really liked like the Didact who wouldn’t be the man he is now without the split. I liked Cortana’s arc in 4 where she was simultaneously “becoming more human” and coming to grips with her own mortality (unfortunately, whenever 343 listen to fan feedback they always listen to the wrong criticisms resulting in the Didact being killed off in a comic, Jul was killed in 5’s first mission, and bringing back Cortana in the worst way possible). I also prefer the Forerunners having a flawed society where their fall was just as much their own fault as it was from an outside force over being naturally benevolent with a perfect society. In addition to 3 botching Truth’s character, my distaste for 3’s narrative also comes from how they reduced the Arbiter to a side character because a bunch of regards were upset that you didn’t play as Chief the whole game. He went from being one of the driving forces in the previous game to kind of just being there, and he only had a few notable moments like killing Truth. The original confrontation was so much better because it would’ve been revealed that Truth knew all along what the Rings would do, how he was using the Covenant for his own purposes, and in response to this the Arbiter would’ve removed his helmet and threw it on the ground rejecting the title that Truth gave him in the beginning of 2. Then the Arbiter would’ve learned what the Human Covenant War was started to cover up and given a better explanation for why the Elites called off their two decades plus war of extermination. Miranda Keyes is another character who took a noticeable drop in intelligence/competence and got killed because she flew a Pelican into the Citadel without any marines/ODSTs to back her up (then again, she parked her ship above a Flood infected region of Delta Halo in 2 so this seems to be in character for her). Johnson was still mostly the same and at least his death made narrative sense (would’ve preferred they didn’t kill him). Aside from several cool moments 3’s story mostly just spins its wheels and lacks depth. It’s abundantly clear that Bungie were just filling out a checklist of things that needed to happen and put little to no effort into figuring out how they’d connect. It’s fun, but the big reveals weren’t nearly as impactful as they would’ve been in Halo 2’s original ending. You’d think the story would’ve been more substantive considering what they had leftover. In addition to that I also have two issues with the gameplay that build up. The first is how they over corrected on the Brutes being broken bullet sponges in 2 and tried to make them fill the officer role left vacant from the Elites leaving the Covenant. As well as the fact that they effectively neutered dual wielding because the “pro players” complained about “it not being balanced/ruins the golden triangle” (I’m of the opinion the mlg/esports crowd can break their teeth chewing on gravel since they’re directly responsible for a lot of the balancing issues in Bungie and 343’s versions of Halo. They also have this truly bizarre elitism, despite the fact that if you took these same “high skill players” and put them into Quake Deathmatch or Unreal Tournament they’d be absolutely curb stomped). 3 was a lot of fun, but it definitely has its issues. One aspect of the story I actually really liked and was well written were the terminals about Mendicant Bias. Something I found really interesting about them was how the Logic Plague wasn’t part of the lore at the time and the reason why Mendicant joined the Flood was because the Gravemind of that era convinced him he had free will. This caused Mendicant to snap becoming Rampant (using the Marathon definition) and he then viewed his past servitude as a form of slavery and wanted vengeance against his creators. The pre-Rampancy terminals refer to Mendicant as “it”, and post-Rampancy terminals refer to Mendicant ad “he” implying the thing went from being a simple machine to becoming truly sapient. The reason Offensive Bias was created without free will to prevent this from happening again. It’s a shame the rest of 3’s story was vacuous.

I've thought about this many times before as a "what-if". If Operation: Redflag had gone through, even if they had somehow gotten into High Charity, and hell, let's even say they got one of the three High Prophets, they undoubtedly would just use it as a vehicle to betray the one who got captured, and as further propaganda against the Humans portraying them as demons. One has to wonder though, would the elites have been greatly offended? Or would they also feel an immense respect at the daring and insane operation? Maybe both!

Wow. And now I feel blind for missing that also. Lol

Haha yeah I'm still learning to get good at thumbnails and titles. What would you recommend?

@@Bornstellar731 you’re doing way better than my channel was when it was that size 😄 I would lean into the grimdark angle. Like a thumb with Master chief on one side and a space marine on the other side. Maybe an arrow pointing from one to the other. Both pretty big so you can see it when the thumbnail is small. Maybe will work, maybe not, but still ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ either way I’m subbing. Love this content.

I'll try to keep that stuff in mind and try it out 😎. I'm glad you like the content!

Thanks man!!

I'm glad you enjoyed the video! It's definitely not a nice universe to live in 😆

Imagine this man discovering what his story, what all their stories were, delivering this speech as a heretic on the other side this time

In the 343 Halo games, yes. But in the original games it was always implied and even outright stated once, that Humans were Forerunners. There is a good video on this subject, and a good segment of a larger Halo 4 critique that talks about this, as well. But I'll condense a few examples: For one, the smoking gun, is just that people on the original Bungie team were genuinely confused when Halo 4 came out and stated they were separate species. So that's just a point from the original creators. On that note, Halo 2's original ending had The Ark being on Earth (much of Halo 2 was rushed and a LOT of content was cut, much of which was incorporated into Halo 3). In the Ark, or this installation, the Arbiter finds coffins with human skeletons in them, showing that the original inhabitants and creators of this Forerunner structure, were indeed Humans. In Halo CE 343 Guilty Spark assumes Master Chief knows of the function of the Halo rings in the opening cutscene of Two Betrayals. "...but you already knew that- I mean, how couldn't you!?" He says after explaining that the Halos kill all sentient life to the Master Chief. He assumes this familiarity because, seeing as the Chief is a Reclaimer, he thinks he should know of his legacy. This is retconned back into the lore in the Forerunner trilogu book Silentium, with a different explanation. Then in The Maw, when 343 Guilty Spark shuts down the self-destruct of the Autumn when Chief and Cortana are on the bridge, he goes through the Autumn's systems and says, "you can't imagine how exciting this is! To have a record of all our lost time. Human history, is it? Fascinating." That comment is remarked on coyly in the Halo CE developer commentary by Marty O'Donnell, as well. Spark says "our lost time". But of course, at the end of Halo 3, he says the smoking gun line to Master Chief: "You are the child of my makers; inheritors of all they left behind! You ARE Forerunner. But this ring, is MINE." I hope that clears it up a bit!

@@Bornstellar731 thanks for explaining! I wonder how different the franchise would be if they stuck to that original plot, guess we'll never know.

@francisallen4599 Something he forgot to mention is that the only Bungie era stuff that had humans being separate were the few things Frank O’Conner had direct control over like the Iris campaign and one third of the terminals. Frank O’Conner was then appointed head of 343 by Microsoft, despite being relatively low ranking and having almost zero involvement with the main story.

Yeah I should have clarified I was focusing primarily on a Human perspective and why you (the general audience member), wouldn't want to be alive in this universe haha. Also unfortunately my personal life has been hectic in the leadup to Christmas so I haven't been able to respond and update as effectively 😅

I will say though, the Covenant's inner structure is definitely nightmarish for the Unggoy and it itself was an incredibly oppressive caste society. Not to mention the, yk, exterminating and subjugation of races lol

@@Bornstellar731 I think you should make a follow up video to this explaining some of the other grimdark elements of halo like the grunts, formation of the banished, and the structure of forerunner rates

@Bornstellar731 (Sorry for the horrifically late response) That explains it. I don’t think I’d want to live in it either. I really wish they’d delve more into humans vs humans conflicts. It’s really unfortunate how aside from a few books and the atrocious show you almost never see stuff related to the Insurrections or Spartans being used for their original purpose. I know this will cause some people to implode, but I’ll say it anyways. I personally think a CoD or a Battlefield style game could work really well for that conflict (Infinite Warfare could work as a good base to build on, and from what I’ve heard the current version of Battlefield 2042 is actually really good). If done right with multiple campaigns they’d be able to show how there were no true “good guys” or “bad guys”, with both sides having plenty of blood on their hands and committed some pretty nasty war crimes. I’d want it to be morally ambiguous and delves into the kinds of things you’d see in Spec Ops the Line and that cancelled Rainbow 6 Patriots game. Speaking of Rainbow 6, I’m sure you’ve seen the short trailer for the Halo cosmetics they added. Personally, I think they should’ve made it be UNSC vs Rebels, with that style of gameplay being perfect for showing what fights between normal humans in Halo would be like. Do you think you’ll do a video talking about what it’s like for the members of the Covenant? Some of my favorite Halo stories delve into the inner workings of the Covenant and how the various member species interact with each other. Too bad they don’t delve more into that.

The deeplore of Chrischan is an absolute nightmare lol. Daniel Larson's too

Yeah😂. Daniel Larson is another excellent cow. Just like Chris a lot of the people who mess with him are arguably just as bad and in some cases worse. But, at the same time it’s VERY hard to feel bad for him since he’s a truly horrible person and so many of his problems are self inflicted (plus, Daniel admitted to liking kids the wrong way). Both of these idiots still manage to fall for slight variations of the same tactics. The lore on my boy Wingo is also pretty good. It was so funny when he and Boogie fought and how Boogie didn’t even land a single punch. The ONLY way that fight could’ve been better is if Boogie were to pull out the same gun he used the scare off Frank Hassle (in a residential area) and shot Wings dead. It would be like that scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark where Harrison Ford was sick the day of filming so instead of doing an elaborate sword fight they just let him shoot the guy and end the scene. That fight was one of the few times where I was genuinely really proud of Wings and thought he could turn his life around. Unfortunately, shortly after the fight he went back to his old ways.