Deciphering Halo Infinite's Banished Text 

you could convince me that the 'M' above my local mcdonalds has a mystical and deep ancient meaning with how well you put these together

there's also the chance that some of the text is written like how military names are written, for example the "UH-60 Black Hawk," or the "B-2 Condor."

Holy man. Hats off to 343 for expanding the lore so well and hats off to you for revealing it. This is what halos magic is about.

I felt those punches at 5:09 thats called getting hit with the truth.

This is quickly becoming one of my favorite RU-vid channels, I love these kinds of game deep dives

b5jtar, when pronounced the way we pronounced acronyms in the military, would sound like B 5 Jaytar, which sounds roughly similar to a lot of the acronyms we would say in the modern world. Not sure if this helps any. Has a kind of missile-sounding name.

The last symbol in Lowercase letter looks like auditorium (6 pillars and 3 life workers) I love the halo lore thanks for discussing this ❤️

The announcer at Annex Ridge references 3 dig sites (4-D, 4-E, and 6-E, I believe) during one of his announcements. The large Halo display within the main room has a holographic marker designating 3 areas close to one another. No such thing as coincidence...?

*Leave a comment* suggesting what mystery you'd like me to deep-dive into next! :D

Very impressed by your research and also the detail that was put into this game. They didn’t have to make an alphabet or a base-4 numerical system. They could have just made it vague nonsense. Despite the various issues with the game I can clearly see there was passion involved in making it. Maybe you could dive into some of the leaks and deleted content to speculate on what DLC we might be getting soon? I know there are plenty of channels doing this but I’d like to see your take on it.

I think this is what you would call 'Hard Sci-fi'. Where you go hard in detail of a fictional world's background and culture with all the small details and stuff to flesh it out by... a lot.

It's like Saturday cartoons with cereal, but for adults.

I love "as an imaginary archeologist"

Peer reviewed Halo lore. Awesome.

I bet it's military abbreviations. Like how "M4AR" Is "model 4 Assault Rifle". I'm guessing something like "Base/Build/Brute(-owned) #5 Joint Tactics, Assault and Recon"? Just off the top of my head (depends where this came from).

Not to sound overdramatic but your lore videos are genuinely SO GODDAMN COOL! I love it when the lore of the Ex-Covenant races gets expanded and this is EXACTLY the kind thing that fuels that, idk how you even uncovered this but you have 110% earned that imaginary archeological degree!

I'm so glad I discovered you, the rabbit hole has been wonderful n.n

The B5 J’tar sounds like something the brutes would use to classify something.

This is the type of research I do when I’m high past midnight but instead of making RU-vid videos on it I just go insane wondering why everything is like it is 😅😂😂

Dang, you’re so good at this. Season 2 is gonna be sweet since big updates are coming to both play modes

Great video! I think the Banished either speak"l33t" or they have an Ikea-like parts catalogue.

Red Nomster back at it again with the text. You already know it’s gonna be a good one. As for future mysteries.. hmmm… man I don’t know honestly! LOL you keep finding stuff I’d never even think about. I’m out here like “Grunt sandwich. Da Xbox. Who were the cavemen in Halo 3?!” and the answer is literally “it’s all memes, dude, wtf??” Honestly if you don’t have any current ideas for mysteries, I’d be down just to get your style of video going over a bit of the Halo lore that we know about. Maybe just delving into the history of a particular race and going over little known facts or details hinted at but not confirmed. The way you narrate these videos is so encapsulating. I know it suits the mystery style video more but like.. maybe starting off with a similar premise to this video where you share an ingame thing and then explore the reasons behind said thing. Have you ever wondered why the grunts are so hilarious? Let’s explore that mystery. XD I dunno. Whatever you think is fun! Don’t conform to us if you’re not interested.

How deep you go into this just blows my mind. Cheers this is great content.

the other 2 languages are the sangheili and the kig-yars alphabets with maybe some unggoy alphabet most likely

Keep em coming man I love this stuff

I love watching these videos once the game released i got a random recommendation for one of your videos and I have to say you produce some of the best halo content on RU-vid! Keep the gold coming!

More great work, can't wait till this channel blows up massively

Dude, good stuff, I love watching Halo theory videos, there’s nothing else just quite like it, hope that folder of Halo 3 Sandtrap theories just got a new friend

best halo channel of 2022

The symbols atop the excavation laser might be a nice place to visit.

Great video bro! Buzzing for your breakdowns when DLC drops👀

your content is one of the best out there when it comes to Halo Mysteries recently!

My new Fav. Halo Channel

Perhaps look at where they are found, perhaps infer meanings and then that should tell us more. Also one of the symbols is the banished symbol

Another absolute banger video

This video is perfect red. Loved it.

Why hasnt someone in 343 contacted you yet and either gave you a easter egg or brought you in. Your single handily exposing and boosting the game lore and intrigue on your back. Lol quite honestly this has become the only channel i get excited about updates from.

Another great video man, that was really impressive how you broke down the brute counting system. (Also, if you ever need a video editor, keep ya boy here in mind maybe?)

0:58 I don't know how many times I've done that. I really should do it more often in games though...

Ok you’re absolutely brilliant! Great vid!

Oh yes I’m already enjoying before the video starts, as a kid putting the Star Wars VHS into the video tape player.

This was really interesting to learn about.

I wonder if the stalker rifle or shock rifle have any of these symbols on them? Or maybe some of the vehicles?

Some might say this is nonsense and thus a waste of time. But the way I see it, even if there was no meaning, perhaps your ‘translation’ would still create a new tool for the devs to use when writing the banished language. Or maybe it is true and the Devs did create a code for us to unravel, either way it’s fun.

Great breakdown and excited to learn more. Did you notice that the banished logo/symbol replacing “XYZ” also looks very similar to the Endless symbol on their tablets? Any connections?

A really intresting topic and it got me thinking that the alphabet could acctuly have 49 different letters, we don’t know how the banished encrypt there information so we can assume that almost like they count to 40 they could have 49 diffrent letters aswell. And just like the greek alphabet they maybe aren’t sorted as the english alphabet(ABC) and instead has somthing like XJL or BCA who knows.

I wish my membership of the Chumash tribe could be of use here, but I got nothin.. Good video though. This is one of my favorite Halo channels.

Hell yeah!

u r talented af

Part of me genuinely wonders if there's any correlation with the banished language and the covenant language since the banish originally formed from the covenant and just like with vehicles they kind of brute Style it so it's possible they could have taken forms of the covenant language and correlated that into the banished language with some of their own unique twist to it

Behold. Red uploaded a video

i caught the base 4 aspect before you even mentioned it. regardless the "missing" lowercase letters need more attention.

Nice! Do some video about ancient humans??

I could in only imagine what a future species would think of us using random numbers and letters for model numbers on objects

I would believe the second set of symbols are more Phonics than letters. I mean C can make the K or S sound so C doesnt exist. And maybe a missing vowel?

Good and talented persons always succeed in their work. So let's be that person and win the battle 👍👏👌👍❤️🙋🏽‍♀️👍👌👏

4 months late but do you think the text on the bases could just be some weird banished version of a production or military code or whatever?

I think b5jtar make sense, considering banished mentions bases? With C-3 and like that, and jtar being a banished name, which i dont think can be discarded considering the name gbraakon also sounds like a meaningless word for us

I think it'd make more sense that they have their own alphabet, rather than different symbols for the same English letters. I DO like your analysis of their numbers and counting system, though!

Now I wanna hold hands with you 😂

"Attempts to roughly translate one word". Video ends...

Apply the key to the banished computers and used audio log screens

On the topic of why the translation doesn’t make sense: I think you, sadly, might be correct. It’s known that there was a lot of outsourcing done where others would work on various parts of the game for a length of time before leaving the project. I wonder if these texts were written by a potential individual who was very keen on creating a language of some kind only for whoever actually placed the language into the game to not understand their specific ordering OR not think the player base would actually decipher it. Looking at the symbols, it’s super obvious to US that it’s relevant. A level designer might just simply not care as much, especially if they weren’t even from the same company as whoever did the textures in the first place. It’s a possibility that the textures were even created by one individual person. I wouldn’t be surprised. :( But I hope somebody at 343 sees this video and either realizes the possible mistake OR confirms your translation is wrong. But there’s basically absolutely no way your translation of the numerical symbols is wrong. The second I saw them, it was very apparent. It’s like a combination of the Roman Numeral system and basic tally marks. It isn’t as simple as just lines with the 5 being a diagonal across the previous four, but it doesn’t seem like they have a special symbol for “this value below the next symbol” the way Roman numerals use IV instead of IIII or XL for saying 40 instead of just XXXX. So they have unique symbols for 4 and 4 groups of 4 (16) but 3 isn’t notated like 1 before 4 it’s just three ones. 15 isn’t 1 before 16 it’s just a the mark for 4, 4, 4, and 1, 1, 1. Hence the combo of both systems.

ur a genius

What if the extra symbols are just accented and the big boi is just their marker

@gudi I would not be able to do this at the time my brain hurts trying to understand this 😵‍💫

B5 could stand for Base 5

The symbol you marked for forty doesn’t make sense as forty because based on this system, you wouldn’t need a new symbol until 64 because you have icons for everything up to 63.

Considering the structure of the Banished, they most likely use military style acronyms.

I can’t believe you called it “Banished” and not “Ban-ish”

Havent watched yet but they seemed to me like numerals

that poor grunt :(((

What if the Banished language is a bastardization of all the species combined?

Just a thought, but could some of those symbols stand for punctuation?

Are there any long bits of this writing found in the world? Then you could use frequency analysis. This uses stats of the most common letters. The most common letter is e for example. Pun not intended.

4:20 Why does your adams apple look like Mr Incredible?

What makes you think the last number is 40? Given that the symbols are in base 4 and change at 4 (4^1) and 16 (4^2) wouldn't it make more sense to be 64 (4^3)?

Is it at all possible that it’s not a language but is really a cipher?

Is it possible that the translation is correct and that b5jtar is just a serial number for this particular building, since they had hundreds of them ready to drop? Are they present in the very first mission when you jump from one to the other before reaching the pelican?

Seems like an angram to me. Have you tried running it through decryption software?

Bungie launched witch queen on 222 and savath means 12 and un is 1 so 222+121=343 ?

I had a question like do you really think the banished use alphabets such as 'c' considering the brutes more simplistic approach towards stuff why would they over complicate their language or do you think that there language might use different words for the h sound like the sound 'p as in pilot' and 'ph' as in phone

What about the flood ?. I mean. The gravemind?. Where did it come from?. What is it exactly.. ?

This is 100 percent exactly like siva in destiny pleaae go look qt the symbolw

but what if the brute alphabet doesnt have some words, or have new, unknown words, like the greek alphabet with the letters delta, sigma, omega and xi?

Has 343 seen your videos? I'm sure some of the developers would love it

What if it's like the Japanese alphabet? They have 3 alphabets. Hiragana, Katakana & Kanji. Maybe their just sound vovels of sorts & not based off the Latin alphabet.

There's soemthing growing on your neck

Bruteish or Jiralhanese?

At the 6.00 minute mark when he's looking up at the sky, there appears to be a structure or ship or something with lights. It's right in the middle of his health bar, right next to the ring. At quick glance it just looks like stars. But when you look closer, there are 3 rows of stars/lights with groups at the top of the screen that are rounded off into a curve. The lines and groups at the top just seem too perfectly lined up to be randomly placed stars in the sky. And it also looks like there is an outline along the edges of it as well. Not sure if anyone else noticed this or not. So I'm not sure if it's just me or if there really is something there. Any thoughts?

That looks b5(hjl)taR… lowercase H J and L look the same. H might have a flat bottom on the rightmost segment, but J and L really look exactly the same AFAICT. Still meaninglessness unfortunately

The extra symbol should be 64 in base 4. Also I am not sure why you count down on the left hand after passing 15. This numbering system requires 1 hand per place value, so counting over 15 requires 3 hands (or a second brute). If you have actual reasoning for this I would like to hear it.

Bro I don’t know how to tell you this but, you really think 343 spend all this time money and resources creating a fake alphabet or do you think they just designed random banished looking symbols to get the job done quicker.

You need to solve the odst mystery with all the symbols, you are the choosen one