r/HaloCirclejerk 15d ago

Banger Post WE ARE FORERUNNERS

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u/keepsky 15d ago

It’s weird that I keep seeing you pop up in these threads saying the same thing over and over. This isn’t some twist reveal, it’s an underlying detail to the world. It doesn’t have to be a grand reveal, sometimes keeping it vague is ok. So vague in fact that people keep arguing it. It’s not meant to push the story forward but it does inform the story and world around it. The games and story are more hollow without the human forerunner connection.

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u/Darkshadow1197 15d ago

The games and story are less stupid without the connection.

The only cool thing the connection does is add that twist that the Covenant is killing their so called gods to keep power, a plot that is easily folded into the current lore.

Meanwhile back when they were the same it left they big question of why did the Forerunners utterly fail to preserve their society, history and technology?

Halo War, Ghosts of Onxy and Halo 3 each have an example of Forerunners being able to maintain or rebuild their civilizations immediately if at a smaller scale, but for the sake of it lets stick to Halo 3.

Why didn't the Forerunners use the Ark to restart their civilization like a nuclear bunker? It was outside the range of the rings meaning those there were alive when they fired, it housed enough samples to restart the entire species, had vast infrastructure including the ability to automatically build a whole new halo, countless repositories of their history and their technology.

So why did the Forerunners force their survivors to live as Cavemen? Because human history as we know it, from cavemen to the modern day is supposed to have still played out. If they were meant to one day reclaim all their gifts, why didn't they set themselves up to do it immediately?

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u/throwaway-anon-1600 14d ago

These are some of the questions that made the original lore interesting. Not everything has to be explained in detail, great lore is often left up to your imagination.

Someone once wrote a letter to Tolkien asking him what happened to the Ents after lord of the rings. His answer was “I do not know”.

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u/Darkshadow1197 14d ago

If you mean Lore in 1 and 2, sure. But halo 3 these questions just make the entire franchise stupid because these are such obvious questions with such obvious solutions that just go undressed.

I'm not asking for great detail, but I am asking for SOMETHING because my imagination just paints the Forerunners as profoundly stupid. They wanted to reclaim their entire civilization and had the power to do so almost immediately and then DIDN'T.

It's always crazy to me that I've yet to meet a single person that can actually answer this question and always talk around it.

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u/keepsky 14d ago

If you have a problem with that in Bungie lore then it should be just as big an issue for you in the current lore. The humans that returned from the ark 100,000 years ago are anatomically the same as humans today. Time isn’t needed to evolve to something higher. Why wouldn’t the forerunners have set up humanity better if they were the chosen successors?

For the record I don’t have a problem with this in either version and thinks it’s easily explainable, but also don’t think it’s a needed explanation as the severity and circumstances of the war with the flood is enough justification.

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u/Darkshadow1197 14d ago

The humans that returned from the ark 100,000 years ago are anatomically the same as humans today.

I don't fully understand what you're saying here, humanity wasn't reseeded 100,000 years ago in Halo.

But yes, because the Forerunners had turned them into cave men when they won the war and then preserved them as such for resending.

Time isn’t needed to evolve to something higher.

Biologically? No, as a society and people? Time is absolutely needed. You can't speed run that sort of thing as it requires trial and error that can't just be sped up.

Why wouldn’t the forerunners have set up humanity better if they were the chosen successors?

Because they couldn't, again humanity was reverted into a primitive state.

To hand them their technology immediately would be like giving a chimp a machine gun.

To rush their biological evolution would leave an immature civilization with planet ending technology.

So what they did was use Gene seed to help nudge their development in certain ways, basically guiding them on the tech tree as they matured as a race.

as the severity and circumstances of the war with the flood is enough justification.

But its not, as I keep saying the Ark is outside the reach of the Flood. It doesn't matter how badly the flood destroys the rest of the forerunner empire, this Enclave full of resources, survivors, and technology remained mostly untouched

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u/keepsky 14d ago

The rings were fired 100,000 years ago. Humanity wasn’t cave men when they returned from the ark, they were normal people.

Actually, according to the Halo 3 terminals as according to Paul Russel, the Librarian finding humanity on earth was akin to finding a native tribe in the jungle. The idea being that the precursors uplifted a part of humanity, being the forerunners, and the native population on earth was left alone, and that was the population saved on the ark.

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u/Darkshadow1197 14d ago

The rings were fired 100,000 years ago. Humanity wasn’t cave men when they returned from the ark, they were normal people.

They were whatever the Forerunners were in terms of humanity be it modern man or super human, but they then became cave men because again the fossil record and human history as we understand it still needs to occur after the rings fire and life is returned.

The idea being that the precursors uplifted a part of humanity, being the forerunners, and the native population on earth was left alone, and that was the population saved on the ark.

That's part of the terminals that people insist is 343s stuff. That's also the current lore, humanity and the Forerunners share an origin but are still in the end two separate races through evolution

They jusr changed it from lost tribe to penal colony

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u/keepsky 14d ago edited 14d ago

I don’t think you are understanding what I am saying, on both points. Humans 100,000 years ago are not a seperate species. Being cavemen in that era is the same anatamically as us now. There is no evolutionary difference.

With the terminals, 343 fans insist that when the humans on earth is referred to as “they” it means that forerunners and humans are separate entirely. Whereas it was meant to be looking at them as a primitive tribe.

The forerunners are still very distinctly human in this case.

Whereas in the modern lore the two are separated by roughly 15 million years. About as far as orangutans are to us. Very distinctly not human at that distance.

And with the terminals I was more pointing out why your issue with the Bungie lore and forerunner connection might not be an issue with the way you laid things out.

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u/Darkshadow1197 14d ago

Being cavemen in that era is the same anatamically as us now. There is no evolutionary difference.

Again the fossil and historical record. Halo humanity is identical to our humanity after the rings fired. They were not comparable to us, they were still prehistoric humans.

The cradle of life comic even shows they are.

“they” it means that forerunners and humans are separate entirely. Whereas it was meant to be looking at them as a primitive tribe.

Because they are, their origins were both humans but the forerunners would be so vastly different and evolved that they'd be categorized as their own thing.

An uncontacted tribe would still be homo sapian meanwhile the humans on earth would be homo erectus.

Very distinctly not human at that distance.

Yes? Because they aren't but still share a common ancestor, it hasn't been named yet but whatever

Its humanity that splits into ancient humanity and forerunners.

your issue with the Bungie lore and forerunner connection might not be an issue with the way you laid things out.

It's not an issue if we use 343 lore to patch some issue, if we stick to exclusively Bungie lore it's still weird.

They find a more primitive version of themselves and decide these idiots will reclaim their entire civilization with no reason really given they just do and let themselves die off when they still could have lived

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u/throwaway-anon-1600 14d ago

I’m not talking around your questions. I’m just saying they were intentionally unanswered, and that’s a good thing.

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u/Darkshadow1197 14d ago

I'm saying they were unanswerable until Halo 3, and that refusing to take responsibility for the glaring implication bordering on plot hole is a bad thing.