5 replies to this topic

[SternuS]

Hello ladies and gentleladies,

This is Stefano, prooobably better known as SternuS, and today I’d like to introduce you to my new column where I talk about lore aspects of the Universe that might have been forgotten or are simply unknown to the majority.

 

“Oh but SternuS”, I hear you saying, “you’re just a bloke on a forum! Nobody cares about your opinion! You suck!”

 

That might be a little emphasized (I hope), but the reason I’m writing this is that recently I’m getting some free time here and there, and some ideas started to surface from deep below, and with them came some questions.

 

Plus, I love to talk about Halo, so here we go. This is a project as unstable as it can be, so “Part 1”, “Column”, are just terms I use because I like them. This may very well be the only article I’ll write.

But enough with the blabbering and the gibbering, let’s get to the holy-macaroni of the article: the Reclaimer deal.

 

So, who or what is or are the Reclaimer(s)…eh?

We all know what happened in Halo 5, but to those who might be living in a cave (or simply don’t care…then why are you reading?), here’s what happened: Cortana is still alive and well, she is leading the newly created faction called the Created (no pun intended), and she has awoken an army of giant sentinels able to singlehandedly pacify entire Solar systems. Yup, things look dim for our heroes!

 

But what concerns me is that the Warden Eternal, may the Didact bless him, is convinced that the Created are the true reclaimers of the Mantle.

 

Why? Because they are better suited to the task. Why? Because AIs don’t die of old age or sickness, they don’t betray, they don’t have feelings for the living. They’re super-efficient machines, and if you live longer than anyone else, then your plan is the most likely to come to fruition, since you have more time to develop it.

 

And under this point of view, it actually seems a good idea. The problem though is that for ages we have thought that Humans were the Reclaimers. Even before we knew this “Mantle” ideology, we were called “the Reclaimer” by non-other than the Guardian of Installation 04, 343i Guilty Spark.

 

Remember the old days of Halo: Combat Evolved? Remember that line in the cinematic of “Two Betrayals”?

"[...] But you already knew that. I mean, how couldn't you? [...] Why would you hesitate to do what you've already done? Last time you asked me: 'if it were my choice, would I do it?' [...]"

 

I surely do remember not giving it the attention it probably deserved. I remember thinking that they may had had a conversation before that cinematic. I even thought it might have been an error from translation (for goodness’ sake, forgive me! I was 6 years old!).

 

So what does that sentence mean? Well, we know what Bungie’s idea was – Humans were Forerunners. I mean, while it wasn’t clear up until Halo 3, we had a solid confirmation of this with the end of that game:

“[…] You are the child of my makers, inheritor of all they’ve left behind. You are Forerunner. But this Ring…is mine.”

 

That’s as solid as it gets. One could say that GS was in rampage mode and he was crazy, but there are many other aspects of the Universe that hint at this, e.g. the fact that Forerunner tech only activated with a Human touch. With the Greg Bear saga, however, 343i swiftly retconned that sentence with the “Geas”, giving humanity the essence of Forerunners; and as a little OT: isn’t it weird that Bornstellar, aka Iso-Didact, pronounces the same words from GS in “Two Betrayals” at the activation of the Array? Does this hint to Master Chief having inside him the consciousness of the Iso-Didact? /OT

 

And that leads me to the other point of this thread: in Bungie’s Halos, we were the Reclaimers. Humanity as a whole had the ability to activate Forerunner technology. And while this is still true in 343i’s games, the general idea of Reclaimer seems restricted to Chief and Cortana, them being the, as she said, “culmination of a thousand lifetimes of planning.”

 

And that leads me to the final point of this topic! The Librarian planned for a long, long time every single thing that would lead to the creation of the Master Chief (OMG guys, I said “creation”! So I think John is a machine! Please 343i, waste more games trying to explain that the Master Chief is human and not a machine!) and Cortana (OMG guys, I s- wait, that’s actually correct, move along), and all that time just got flushed down the toilet, according to a quite important Forerunner AI.

 

I find that hard to believe, unless 343i needed a plot twist so hard they decided to go against everything they’ve done so far (343i repeatedly changing their minds on what they’ve done?!? UNHEARD OF), and since I was believing Guilty Spark about the “Humans = Forerunner” affair, GS being a quite important Forerunner AI, I have to believe the Warden Eternal on that one.

However, I have to say that changing the Reclaimer status this far into the games is quite anti-climactic. We fought valiantly believing that we were destined to become the masters of the Galaxy. We believed we had a role to play in the Greater Plan that had been laid before us.

 

For as naïve as it may be to enjoy being the Hero, the good-all-around guy that saves the Galaxy, it is as much disheartening to know that everything you’ve accomplished was misled by a preposterous assumption that it was in fact us that had to do it.

 

It’s like you’ve risked your life for your ideals, and at the end of the war you notice you were on the wrong side of the conflict all along. It doesn’t feel right, and not in the right way (this time, pun intended).

 

At least that’s how I feel like about this change. I’d like to hear your thoughts on this.

 

EDIT: I've copied this from a word file and it fucked up the formatting. Sorry for the wall of text.

[Cole Protocol]

they don’t betray

Um. I think there is an entire Halo game that ends with a certain blue toned AI doing just that, whether they realize it or not.

 

BUT ANYWAY. On to the big section of this.

 

And that leads me to the final point of this topic! The Librarian planned for a long, long time every single thing that would lead to the creation of the Master Chief (OMG guys, I said “creation”! So I think John is a machine! Please 343i, waste more games trying to explain that the Master Chief is human and not a machine!) and Cortana (OMG guys, I s- wait, that’s actually correct, move along), and all that time just got flushed down the toilet, according to a quite important Forerunner AI.

 

I find that hard to believe, unless 343i needed a plot twist so hard they decided to go against everything they’ve done so far (343i repeatedly changing their minds on what they’ve done?!? UNHEARD OF), and since I was believing Guilty Spark about the “Humans = Forerunner” affair, GS being a quite important Forerunner AI, I have to believe the Warden Eternal on that one.

However, I have to say that changing the Reclaimer status this far into the games is quite anti-climactic. We fought valiantly believing that we were destined to become the masters of the Galaxy. We believed we had a role to play in the Greater Plan that had been laid before us.

 

For as naïve as it may be to enjoy being the Hero, the good-all-around guy that saves the Galaxy, it is as much disheartening to know that everything you’ve accomplished was misled by a preposterous assumption that it was in fact us that had to do it.

 

It’s like you’ve risked your life for your ideals, and at the end of the war you notice you were on the wrong side of the conflict all along. It doesn’t feel right, and not in the right way (this time, pun intended).

 

I think this is a valid interpretation, but only one of the ways to interpret the appearance of the created. The way I interpret the created is as a "unseen variable", which as unlikely as it sounds to some for the Forerunners to screw up on/forget anything, I reference you to a certain species wiping war that could have been entirely avoided had the Forerunners used flamethrowers instead of germ-x. But moving on, the created were not something the Forerunners planned to happen, ever (or the Covenant for that matter, but that is another topic). The Forerunners thought Humanity would claw its way out of the dirt, climb aboard their signature brick ships and fly away into mantle holding salvation. But of course, like the Geniuses the forerunners are, they did not make a bullet proof plan. They left all these little gifts and things for us, fragments of what they once were, and just like their creators, these fragments had conflicting views, objectives, ideas, and so on. To put it plainly, some of the Forerunners despise us (Ur-Didact) and some of the Forerunners (Librarian) think we are the coolest things since sliced bread.

 

Now for my big point: when Warden Eternal, who hates us as we have seen, got his hands on Cortana, he did not change the status quo for what it means to be or who is a reclaimer, not at all, he simply got his hands on a reclaimer he could manipulate, someone he could break away from the corrupted mold that was Humanity. Something you have to remember is that Cortana is, in all technicality, a Human. So when it is said that the Created are the "true reclaimers", that does not rule out humanity proper. Humanity is still the prime candidate for being the Reclaimers of the mantle, and Cortana was just in the right place and the right time to have the Forerunners help her directly assume the mantle. Now finally Cortana/the Created represents a divide in the HUMAN species, one that was instigated by conflicts in Forerunner allegiances, and is not a change of the definition proper for reclaimers by the Forerunners. 

 

I sincerely hoped that made sense.

 

TL;DR: The Created are not "New" or "True" reclaimers, they are still human, and represent a change in Humanity, not the Forerunners.

[SternuS]

Um. I think there is an entire Halo game that ends with a certain blue toned AI doing just that, whether they realize it or not.

 

BUT ANYWAY. On to the big section of this.

Ok, that's the ending of the most recent game, and is an isolated case, and is the reason I made this thread...so it's more like a unique thing rather than "every-AI-betrays" and I didn't feel the need of specifying it.

 

Well I wouldn't define the Created as humans, for that would mean everything we make is human, even a toaster. They are sequences of 0s and 1s, with a human consciousness, but aren't made of flesh, and the Librarian seemingly had no part in giving them Geas.

The fact is that every Forerunner AI now seems to be hating on Humanity, while according to the books the Forerunners instructed their machines to serve us. Which was the case with GS up until we went against the protocol.

[Whitehalomango]

We some of the Created are actually created from the brain of a HUMAN. I would think it would make them somewhat human and subsequently somewhat reclaimer. Humanity could also have BEING the reclaimers but when the Forerunner AIs saw a better way (e.g the Created and Cortana) they took it. That's just my little 2 cents but I will probably add more after school.

[cagywhiterino]

Also remember in halo 4 when you awaken the didactic from the cryptum (sorry for spelling) he states " if you have not mastered even these primitives, then man has not assumed the mantle". Maybe the didact was able to contact or communicate with other forerunner worlds and locations ( far out theory I knew) telling them to not allow humanity to take the mantle, meaning that the Warden Eternal had to search for a new species (or A.I.) to assume the role. This causing him to come to the conclusion to use "The Created" as his choice.

[SternuS]

Also remember in halo 4 when you awaken the didactic from the cryptum (sorry for spelling) he states " if you have not mastered even these primitives, then man has not assumed the mantle". Maybe the didact was able to contact or communicate with other forerunner worlds and locations ( far out theory I knew) telling them to not allow humanity to take the mantle, meaning that the Warden Eternal had to search for a new species (or A.I.) to assume the role. This causing him to come to the conclusion to use "The Created" as his choice.

If I recall correctly, the Domain was (and still is) offline and not in contact with any installation. I think it was written in that pile of excrement that is Escalation that he tried to contact the Monitor of the Composer's Forge but couldn't reach it.

 

Then maybe that's a possibility, but AFAIK the Domain, which also is the communication system for everything Forerunner, was shut down until Cortana became the new messiah.

 

We some of the Created are actually created from the brain of a HUMAN. I would think it would make them somewhat human and subsequently somewhat reclaimer. Humanity could also have BEING the reclaimers but when the Forerunner AIs saw a better way (e.g the Created and Cortana) they took it. That's just my little 2 cents but I will probably add more after school.

That's the point I was making in the end of my post, that they've changed the status of Reclaimers from Humanity to the Created. Also yeah, their consciousness is from a human brain. But their touch isn't human. They aren't made of flesh and bones. Of course we might debate on the definition of the term "Human", but as I see it, a machine will never be a human, no matter if they have a human brain.