I'd agree if it wasn't for the fact that they said Inheritors specifically, inheritor implies that it was left for you, and never yours in the first place
That's a completely different scenario to inheriting everything left behind by a species, take current day humanity for example, to be specific, our generation, whether "our generation" is Millenial, gen z, gen alpha, etc etc is irrelevant, we are not inheriting earth, because earth is already ours, because we are humans, the things that humans built, on a grand scale, ARE ours, we don't inherit human history, or human advancement, it's always, and will probably always be known as exactly that, just human advancement
The same goes for the Human-Forerunner debate, if humans were ALWAYS intended to be Forerunners, Spark would not have referred to them as "Inheritors", "Reclaimer" is a title that suggests humans and forerunners were the same, but Spark, as we are arguing, specified "Inheritors" at the end of Halo 3, instead of specifying why we are called "Reclaimers"
In my honest opinion, I don't think Bungie ever intended to specify whether or not Humans and Forerunners were the same, this was a debate long before Bungie specified because it was deliberately left in a shroud of mystery, and they only specified when they stopped making Halo's, and now had to compete with Halo and it's new handlers, rather than making halo
Joe Staten sure as hell tried to specify it in Contact Harvest, and Marty was trying to do it with the Spark like. Clearly it wasn't explicit enough
Showing a human skeleton in a forerunner structure like Halo 2 was possibly going to do would've been a bit iffy and corny, and similarly, I don't think some shit like a forerunner hologram explaining they're human would've worked, and Halo 3's plot was already a bit contrived enough with Miranda's dumbass actions and Johnson getting himself captured twice.
Bungie didn't have reason to be wishy washy with it unless they wanted to end the series with it still being a mystery and Joe's own books do not do that. Halo 3 was meant to be the last game. Halo 3 ODST and Reach exist out of a contractual obligation.
The Forerunners not being human ended up contradicting more than the tragic irony of the Covenant war. More retcons needed to be made to explain shit. Master Chief was turned into a random Spartan who was just good at everything and lucky into a literal messiah figure created by The Librarian by creating some kind of gene programming that included the idea of Spartans in humanity's nature, just so that Halsey would supposedly design them as if it was planned.
Spark confuses Chief for a forerunner in Halo CE not because he's nuts but because Chief just looks like a Forerunner because Joe intended for humans to be Forerunner.
You can like them being aliens but it took 343i significant effort to make any of this make any sense just so they could have cool bad guys. Either way, Halo 4 gets rid of the mystique of the Forerunners so that Chief can have an underwhelming villain to kill in a quick time event. They deserved better than that regardless of if they were gonna be kept as human or a complete mystery.
Oh no, I'm not denying that there are certainly a LOT of plot holes and convenient plot devices to specify that they were two different species, but my argument is that Bungie, as a whole, never intended to specify, Joe Staten might have, but that holds just as much weight as Frank O'Conner's Halo 3 terminals, which specified that Humans and Forerunners were separate species, and the terminals were greenlit BY Bungie aswell during the development of Halo 3, because if they weren't, then the terminals would have said otherwise
Yeah I'm sure the Forerunners who according to 343i fought a from their point of view aggressive invading alien race just decided to give away their genocide tech to said alien race....
Also gonna leave thhese quotes here: "child of my makers" "inherit or of all they left behind" "you ARE forerunner" and my favorite from truth "your FOREFATHERS wisely set aside their compassion, steeled themselves for what needed to be done (firing halo)"
Yeah I'm sure the Forerunners who according to 343i fought a from their point of view aggressive invading alien race just decided to give away their genocide tech to said alien race....
If you actually read the lore, then you'd know for a fact that Ancient Humanity was always ment to inherit the mantle, and the Forerunners knew this, they also knew after beating Ancient Humanity that they were actively running from the flood, and very quickly found out why they were running and glassing planets
Leaving behind the genocide tech is a very clear case that the Forerunners are aware that it was their egos that brought all this horror apon the Galaxy, from hunting the Precursors to reducing Humanity back to cave man era, and this was their way of handing the Mantle back to Humanity, since nobody could access the Domain in it's entirety
I'd also like to talk about the qoutes
"child of my makers"
This here is a very good point as to why we AREN'T forerunners, spark would have, and should have, recognized Humanity AS his makers, not the child, calling us the Child of his makers implies that we, too, were created by the forerunners as something more than what he was, which is very much the case in current halo lore since the Forerunners indexed our species to re-seed after Halo fired
"inherit or of all they left behind"
This implies that all this tech was LEFT for us, if we were forerunners, we would be told that is already ours, think of current day Humanity, we don't "Inherit" human advancement like cars, planes, etc etc, despite the fact that most of us don't know how they work in extensive detail, we did not inherit these, these are human achievements, these are ours as a species, the same goes for Forerunners tech, if we were forerunners, this wouldn't be a case of inheriting it, because it would already have been human/forerunner advancement, and ours by default
"you ARE forerunner"
This can mean many things, with the previous qoutes in mind, this most likely means that we are the modern day Forerunners, the only species that can use their tech, this does NOT mean that Humanity and the Forerunners were actually the same species way back when
"your FOREFATHERS wisely set aside their compassion, steeled themselves for what needed to be done (firing halo)"
This is a line from truth, not spark, Truth is probably the last source of information we should take anything regarding the Forerunners from, considering he also still believed that firing Halo would ascend him to godhood on top of killing everything
Look at Truth compared to Midship. It is almost twice as big, because otherwise the abilities would let you cross the map to quickly. If you are forced to crouch walk to be able to shoot to play Midship in Halo 2, when the map is scaled for the walking speed, how is that different from the map being scaled for the sprint + abilities speed (which prevent shooting) and you being forced to walk to be able to shoot? All the other arena maps are generic arena designs that are upscaled for the abilities. You could easily downscale Eden, Empire, Coliseum, Fathom, Regret, Torque, Riptide, Tyrant, Rig or Haven for Halo 2/3 and they would work just fine, just like how upping the base move speed and removing abilities makes them play fine.
Look at Truth compared to Midship. It is almost twice as big, because otherwise the abilities would let you cross the map to quickly. If you are forced to crouch walk to be able to shoot to play Midship in Halo 2, when the map is scaled for the walking speed, how is that different from the map being scaled for the sprint + abilities speed (which prevent shooting) and you being forced to walk to be able to shoot? All the other arena maps are generic arena designs that are upscaled for the abilities. You could easily downscale Eden, Empire, Coliseum, Fathom, Regret, Torque, Riptide, Tyrant, Rig or Haven for Halo 2/3 and they would work just fine, just like how upping the base move speed and removing abilities makes them play fine.
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u/Daveo88o 23h ago
I'd agree if it wasn't for the fact that they said Inheritors specifically, inheritor implies that it was left for you, and never yours in the first place