Halo Infinite Legendary Ending EXPLAINED! (Harbinger Origins, Precursors, DLC1 Theories & More) 

“Damn right it does”

I’ve been waiting for this

Yup

Well, none of your previous theories happened in the story, which made me feel the story kinds of lackluster

@@ItsJeepb now move out! Double time!

I hope that YOU know that you and HiddenXperia have been providing great content for years and are both wonderful content creators for the Halo community. Keep up the great work!

Hey you're cute. Built different

Ay I got into a ranked game with you earlier today and I just hit onyx

@@poisonl30n61 congrats man, been grinding a lot of ranked lately 😊

Appreciate that dude, and right back at ya, the amount of work and research you put into finding those tricks is utterly insane

Finna go get some more spartan cores even though everything is maxed out 😩

😂😂

I came back to watch this video and thought the same

If the endless aren't some devolved form of precursors imma be pissed

Yep. For me too.

Cap

She was just quoting Tupac "I ain't a killer, but don't push me, revenge is the sweetest joy next to-" you know the rest.

well their whole race was imprisoned to preserve the forerunner religous dogma so they would be rightfully angry. 343 games has races committing atrocities in the "name" of the mantle even though if they truly followed the mantle they would not follow through with such actions.

Before the forerunners found then they were just chilling, never attacked or anything. But the forerunners didn’t like that they could survive a halo ring, and locked them up.

Yes I heard that line 30x over playing through on legendary. That bitch had me on my ass for 3 hours until finally getting through it 🤣

they’ve been good at story telling and the books show it, halo 5 was going to have a whole different story, unfortunately they didn’t get their chance. Halo Infinite is where they actually were able to do a story in a game

Yeah because they got rid of that limp fish Brian Reed 😂 worst writer ever

The Forerunner trilogy and the build up of the Didact was top tier. Jul’s buildup was pretty good too. Just seems like they don’t know what to do with them once they get there.

@@TheDrewbe3 For how big a character the Didact was I think he should of lived in 4 and been the villain in 5

@@thegoat2985 agreed 100%. There’s this small part of me who still hopes he has an impact on the story somehow, either directly or indirectly

Huh that's a really cool catch! I will say he sounded super familiar but I haven't played SWTOR so I wouldn't recognise him from there

@@HiddenXperia Microsoft trademarked Halo: THE ENDLESS which is 100% dlc

@@jetstreamsam7853 Yup

@@HiddenXperia Darin De Paul, the guy who voices Grand Edict, also voices Samuel Hayden. That’s probably why he sounds so familiar.

@@HiddenXperia oh fuck, the sith emperor is multiversal

holy shit

Not really... Cortana went rampant because that's just how all human-developed AI age, it's just reaching the "expiration date." nothing to do with gravemind

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that holding the activation index, the torture at the hands of the gravemind, and floating in space for years with nothing to process sped up Cortana's rampancy. She had too much data and was given far too much time to review it over and over that she thought herself to death far faster than other AI. Look at Sloan for example he was 9-10 years old IIRC and was still capable of functioning at a pretty high level despite being deep into rampancy.

@@bnadit1949 It didn't help, but all smart A.I. only lasted 7 years, and she was in service for longer. But she was supposed to be somewhat special since she was made from a live flash cloned brain from Halsey. Other Smart A.I.s were made from people that had recently died.

@@jigawatt1.215 I think we have to look at the expiration of a smart AI like that of a gallon of milk. Sometimes it will expire before the date (rarely), but most of the time it will expire a day or two past it. The 7 years is a guarantee of no rampancy, but after that all bets are off and it could occur at any time. Also you make a good point, the way Cortana was made might have given her a longer lifespan to start with than other AI.

That last line "Offensive bias has been deployed" gave me chills. My jaw was on the floor. Can't wait to see where this goes.

@Benjamin Hausmann but there’s no dialogue whatsoever on easy, normal or heroic

Maybe offensive bias is helping? (I assumed it was what was left of Cortana actually.)

@@ZealStarMedia As you said, during the game, my theory was that Cortana was not actually dead, or at minimum some part of her was in the ring, helping us/the Weapon. But with the legendary ending, it is heavily implied then that it was in fact Offensive Bias in the ring helping us. Considering he was tasked with containing the Endless or whatever, that makes sense.

Nobody has said this but I feel like the 3 dots reflected from MC visor isn’t an endless like he thinks, but to me looks way more like a mendicant bias with red lights, possibly offensive bias in person.

@@handblitz4408 That is exactly what I thought as well. I mean, we know what the endless looks like because of the harbinger and she does not have 3 glowing eyes. However, guess who has 3 glowing eyes? Mendicant and Offensive Bias.

@@GSXone I feel like the endless is referring to the Precursors before they became the Flood, and the Forerunners and their monitors are trying to protect humanity from them. If I'm not mistaken, Zeta Halo is where the Primordial was buried or imprisoned.

When he said ‘assuming we get campaign dlc’ my heart sank. RIP my boy

@@idlecurator5365 same man, so excited to see where they take it, really enjoyed infinity's story, let's hope in the future with the supposed new game they're developing

Lmao never happening. GL

so we’re getting a new story every 3 months…..no way.

Where is this guys proof :/

@@orangy8549 More like every year or so...

Well, if the flood are coming back it's time to load some shotguns

If I remember correctly HiddenXperia mentions this in his older weapon explained video

Right, imagine if Cortana was actually infected with the logic plague back in halo 2/3. Then she could've been with the flood on zeta, possibly even a gravemind. Then we could use the weapon to successfully outmatch Cortana and the flood, just like offensive and mendicant. This is just off the dome, but imagine what 343 could've cooked up instead of this very small-scaled story that really only focused on emotions rather than big stakes in the galaxy

Yeah, in Halo 3 Mendicant Bias was helping Chief and Cortana and now Offensive Bias is helping Chief and The Weapon.

@@Master__Chief117 I agree. I really don't understand how cortana becomes good again. I thought she was a rogue fragment, not the same as the one who said goodbye in h4. The game was setting her up to be bad, and then somehow Atriox turns her good? idk

@@charliezen9121 I like to believe that 343 was originally gonna make something that aligns with the context you're talkin ab. But with development issues and scrapping the game. They had to go w this safe story. Yea but fr, cortana just turns good after she realizes she's stuck in a terminal? Lmao

not too mention Cortana said she WILL make amends. I think her consciousness, while fragmented, is still pulling strings.

Exactly, not to mention the similar role 'the weapon' has if you compare her to 'offensive bias'. Even her name implies it

I too thought it might be Cortana. I thought, what if Cortana isn't actually dead, and the fragments that she left behind were just copies of parts of her memories etc - because dont forget, Cortana is able to make copies of herself. It could be deliberate by Cortana, she creates a copy of herself, lets it be destroyed, plants the fragments to make it look like her death was real, but the real Cortana is still alive somewhere behind the scenes, helping MC. Perhaps the real Cortana and Offensive Bias join together or something... but i've no idea.

Big agree. Feels much more likely and satisfying

@@gr3ywolf144 im pretty sure she was helping him during the last mission. But i think she’s dead dead otherwise it ruined her sacrifice and atonement. Plus she literally killed hundreds of millions of people lol so i think she’s gone gone and the “weapon” who didn’t say what she wanted to be called but im pretty sure she’s gonna be called cortana, and thatd make it confusing having two.

I think their related to the dust the precursors became, maybe bonding to or becoming a species.

Yeah killing Atriox offscreen either meant he wasn't really dead or that we'd get an ODST/Reach style game/expansion that let you play as someone other then John during the 6 month period he was out. At least that was my kneejerk reaction when I heard he was "dead"

@@aharkey1077 Maybe that's the mission they sent Blue team to

Even though the grave minds line appeared, I want to say it was just homage to the original games. We have so many cases of that throughout this campaign.

@@aharkey1077 he's not dead

And her cylix symbol (the drawing, dunno what to call it) it was different from the ones shown at the end.

maybe something to do with the engineers studying and experimenting on the endless. maybe harbinger was the sample being studied. all experimental samples get special lables, maybe thats why she was seperate? She did say "they made me this way".

Ik you posted this a year ago, but I have to say they probaly found it with Cortana's help. The Legendary ending shows Cortana working with Atriox down in the cylix containment room(s). She keeps repeating something about knowing how you're going to die, insinuating she knows more about the timeline than somebody experiencing time in a linear fashion would know, which would explain her working with The Banished, possibly to maintain consistency within a timeline of events that she recognizes are required in order to reach the best possible outcome. Kind of like Dr. Strange seeing all possible timelines, and helping to push reality in the direction required in order to reach the desired outcome.

@@aBadWizard Well, having seen it, Cortana is not in the ending. Maybe just before it, though? Just prior her - expiration? And even the Rubicon Protocol novel implies the Harbinger was found close to Outpost Tremonius...

@@aBadWizard Cortana had access to the Domain, and I think it held clues from the Precursors on how the timeline of Halo goes. I think its why Despondant Pyres refers to 'rings within rings' and everything being a form of infinite loop. I think the Precursors have set in motion a cyclic pattern of galactic evolution that results in the same events occurring in similar fashion over time. The Precursors were known to evolve and change constantly, in all manner of states of evolution simultaneously as a species. I think The Precursors are the height of their existence, The Flood their falling, and The Endless their evolutionary state of uprising. This is my theory overall at least. Halo's lore definitely is pushing towards Precursors having set everything in motion even to this point.

Seeing how the cylixs didn't have the same symbol as her cylix I doubt that's true.

You also gotta think if she's the endless too them why was she so easy to stop? The endless are suppose to be worse than the flood and she isn't worse.

But the Precursors had chosen humanity as the inheritors of the mantle. The Forerunners tried to prevent that by clinging to it and wiping out the Precursors, after that they "punished" humanity but lost the war to the flood. That's why they used the halos and went out with a bang, but the librarian returned the mantle back to humanity after the reset. So in a way the Precursors will prevailed anyway, that's why i don't believe the endless are the Precursors , because then they wouldn't be enemies to humanity. And everything points to the endless being the villains of the next game. They may be corrupted in some way like the flood though.

@@TheMalakasss I thought that first, but the precursors that came back as the flood were corrupted in origin, so they could be corrupted precursor

@@rushpatriot2866 The endless as a whole are supposed to be worse than the flood. I am not saying she is endless either because that was made rather unclear, but she is either closely related to them (maybe a servant of some kind, or possibly a non-combatant version of the endless) but I think really the main thing that is “worse than the flood” was their control over time. Something the forerunners had not yet achieved. It seems that the endless had used their power rather passively as they were completely backstabbed by the forerunners and locked down in Zeta Halo. It’s fairly possible due to the sorry state the flood had put the forerunners in that they panicked and locked them away because just the mere possibility of the flood being able to contaminate a being who has the knowledge to control time would devastating in itself. Can’t wait for DLC to figure out more🙏🏼

The Precursor's weren't hiveminded like the flood are. I believe that came when the Primordial gave himself to the flood, his intelligence served as the first gravemind. I personally think the Endless are a species that maybe the Precursors seeded before they left the galaxy. A species lying in wait to retaliate against the Forerunners for destroying the precursors. They may even be immune to flood infection, if they're immune to the Halo Array. I don't think they can control the flood though. I think their danger comes from the fact that they're more powerful than the Forerunners could ever hope to be--their fear was that they would lose their power, after all.

Precursors were independent and I think its unlikely they would just control the flood either. I'm not even fully subscribed that its precursors maybe it's an offshoot of precursors or an entirely new species.

Honestly them being a hive mind makes sense. We still don’t know what skimmers are but they don’t seem to intelligent. Maybe they are like ants and the harbinger is their queen or gravemind

But the precursors were pro-humanity and the Endless woman in the game says humans should not have the mantle.

I mean the Harbinger** she's obv not an Endless.

Do you know which track it is in the legendary ending? I love it.

@@TherapyGel Gareth coker - silent auditorium It’s even in Spotify lol

@@MATTx602 I found it through other means but you were incorrect. It's Endless by Gareth Coker. Thanks for the help anyways!

@@MATTx602 actually, its the deafuly Endless theme titled "Endless"

I'd be more interested in the Spirit of Fire than Osiris.

@@SGTRandleOneOne I just want to know what happened to Buck and his crew

@@lessiansaralonde620Buck and Dare got married, Tanaka witnessed it, as of now Locke is presumed dead after his helmet is molded to Hyperius’ armor. Vale is with the Arbiter.

This indeed. It'd be interested to try to explain seeing as it feels like Neural Physics is how the Precursors manipulated things and it was neurons, in a sense, that the Halo's targeted. Who is to say, however, that Neural Physics was just one way the Precursors manifested their manipulations and simply changed "techniques," so to speak.

@@effortlessfury so how did these precursors die? How are they not masters of the universe?

@@jason2077 there is a theory they let themselves die so they could become the flood and infect the galaxy

@@jason2077 they just allowed the forerunner do their thing without imposing any resistance, they were in awe of the brutality their creation was capable of, just to be clear this point out that they are so confident of their prevalence in the universe that they basically didn't care , the flood was a judgement to their creations, and if I don't misremember the powder that would become the flood came from outside the Galaxy.

@@davidos8760 Except the Flood that we know is the direct result of corruption not the intended result of what the Precursors had planned.

Something akin to Starcraft 2's Hybrid perhaps?

Wibbly wobbly geneticsy...weneticsy?

Agreed. I thought The Endless was just a reference to the Precursors, but you said it.

Comments that didn't agr wel

Is it tho? Lol. Who the hell knows if we’ll ever get a new campaign in the future. I hope we do, and I hope they focus on something other than chief’s emotions. But 343 has to fix their fuck-up of a game first

"only 10 books"

Narrator: It was not, in fact, back

Saaaaaame, I really hope that isn't the end of her

Their screams echoing through the forerunner halls are really haunting

@@spencehead87 this will seem odd but I got the same vibes as when E.V.E. from WALL-E when she screamed.

You know who I'd like to assist chief 343 guilty spark

Ya doesn't the weapon have her core or whatever the harbinger took

Well, what flood is in range of the rings is destroyed. Everything else was, as you said, starved. At least to my understanding.

@@thatcarguydom266 but that would imply that wherever the remaining food source was destroyed and they were not, so I’d assume it didn’t destroy them all. I don’t know, probably some loop holes in the plot

@Beyond Hop3 then how would the smaller infected still be alive inside some halos like halo 1 implied

@@WeirdWolfGaming forerunners were experimenting with the flood after the war

@@friskydingooo7992 right, I know that, but on every ring? I thought testing was mainly done on zeta

Ikr it’s fuckin awesome makes me so happy

All I wanna know now is how often they'll release more Campaigns, I'd love at least a very very rough guideline for how often/ when Campaigns will come out

Yeah, just wait 10 years. Lol.

Yeah it was totally mendicant or offensive Bias as Offensive was an exact copy.

Which trailer?

the thing helping them is absolutely Cortana

@@ciaranreid5132 mendicant had a sort of yellow glow, I'm almost certain it was Offensive Bias (would also make sense because the colours of red/orange are associated with anger, rage, offence, combat, etc)

@@WestCoastShredders That's what I thought during the game, but after this video I think it is Offensive Bias. I think Cortana is really dead and The Weapon has named herself Cortana now, since she is an exact copy. Funny, another 'exact copy' of an AI. One that turned on its creator and the copy made to stop it, then the original in its final moments coming back to the side of its creator.

To be honest, i just took what he said at face value, that is, time was your ally, but now, beacuse the Didact had returned, and with him, the forerunners, it had abandoned us.

Im leaning towards the precursors controlling time in a biological way. That’s how they effectively “dodge” the halo rings by just skipping ahead in time to after the blast passes almost reflexively like a natural response to danger. If so, they would be unkillable and maybe undefeated in battle (think the aliens in Edge of Tomorrow) so yeah a worse threat to forerunner supremacy than the flood

@@RavusRiven I think like how Chief was evolved to the point where he was immune to the composer, the endless are immune to Halo. The power of time I think is more literal meaning while the galaxy starts back at square one the endless would have even more time to evolve.

The precursors didn't change plans lore stated the surviving precursors calling the flood and primordial abominations and corruptions of everything they stood for

as what he means by time in the book the flood evolved from a type of human dog like a chihuahua then started to infect humans after time the flood allied with the humans and started to attack forerunners like the didact who was a warrior a war lord and when attacked they would dissolve. time here was the essence of the flood teaming with humans.

Yes! I actually forgot to mention that in the video, very similar

Campaign maybe, but not much love in the multiplayer.

MP needs work but the core is still great, I see what you're saying. Just proves if you give devs time to make it worth your while, they will.

@@deadshota736 teenager, let me see you see you develop and make something half as good as Halo Infinite

@@MrKevin-wu8re I don’t need to be a five star chef to say McDonald’s food taste bad. Mp has actual issues that I know will eventually get worked out but saying something is without flaw because you can’t make it is stupid.

@@17Baggs More of a Burger King guy?

Oh man I would LOVE an underwater level, Halo 2 teased us so hard with that and I wanted mooooooooore

I hope the DLCs are decent sized and worth it. I mean they’ll do a good job but every DLC out this year have been like $40 for 15 minutes of a side story. I really hope it’s deep and timely

@Office of Naval Intelligence,where is the REDACTED or the black ink in the comment ?

Yeah I don’t like the whole notion of something being more dangerous than the flood. I mean, the flood literally came within a few moments of killing off all life in the galaxy, and then universe. If this threat isn’t precursor related (which the flood technically are) I’ll be pretty upset. Hoping this isn’t Dragon Ball Z where some new ultimate villain is just conjured up out of nowhere for the sake of making games.

@@randomrandomnesss2188 That's exactly what I'm worried about, that they just pulled another ancient alien threat out of nowhere to have something new to shoot at for 10 years. The only possible way they can be a bigger threat over the Flood which WON and forced the Forerunners to genocide the galaxy is if they are a derivative of or a client race that can bring back the Precursors.

Sorta hoping that the Endless are just precursors like the Primordial. As long as they're not even older creatures since I don't know how much more "But there was an even MORE forgotten about threat" I can take.

Idk about them being more of threat mainly bc it the flood come on but the possibility that they're like a species the precursor made to be more like them in way like they're one their more favorite species that was peaceful until the forerunners locked them away and now they're back and looking to reanimated the rest their species and bring back the precursors, ascend to becoming them or just seeking revenge and then taking over. Idk there lot cool possibilities.

@@Bms010 If you consider this though: from the mind of a human, the flood is worse. from the mind of a forerunner, losing power is worse From the forerunner perspective, the flood breaking out again is hardly a sweat, just relight the halo and reseed, BUT if there are beings which can assume the mantle of responsibility (or always had it) and are also immune to the effects of the halo, they'd easily rather have the Flood break out again, than the endless. Consider also the implications that the endless are the truth to shatter the lies of the forerunners: What are the lies of the forerunners? Simplified, they are two things: 1. Forerunners had the mantle of responsibility 2. Humans are the reclaimers to that heritage (remember, humans in halo are descendants of modified humans crafted by the forerunners) Thus, the concern of Cortana, that the endless are indeed the greater threat, is justified, because they are the only beings that have the power to and intent goal of, destroying any vestiges of the forerunners, humanity. The lie is that humanity are the reclaimers, that is spun by the forerunners, thus if the endless succeed, humanity must be destroyed or bear the punishment that the precursors (flood) had in mind for the forerunners. It also makes sense why the grave mind introduces himself saying "I? I am a monument to all of your sins" Not only is this a direct statement against humanity, but also against the covenant. One are the inheritors of a lie thrust upon them from their creation, and the other deluding themselves to be real inheritors to that lie. Thus, the Flood, the Endless, are the correction of the sins of the forerunners, everything that humanity is and was. The master chief/humanity is the weapon, the plan, the ultimate hope of the forerunners of escaping the judgement, sentencing, and execution of their sins. And thusly, from the perspective of the precursors/flood/endless, they must be utterly crushed, and possibly all life in the galaxy (seeded by forerunners, thusly all built on a foundation of lies). They want to punish, then start again, that was always the plan, even with the Flood. Basically, this entire time, we have been led to believe that humanity once actually held the mantle, that they lost it, and are now reclaimers of the heritage the forerunners left behind, that the gravemind and his flood are evil and only intended to bring death and destruction to the universe, guess what? All forerunner lies. In the Halo universe, from an objective view, humanity ARE the bad guys, the Gravemind was always right, if thats not the ultimate mindfuck and perfect conclusion to the series, I do not know what is. I hope this is the case, and this would be putting the chief up against some pretty absurd odds, so if this is the case, its probable it will not end well or happily for him, which would probably be the best way to conclude it.

Bro, nice attention to detail... Perhaps 343 has finally understood the community and what they want...

Gimme that lore, all that juicy lore...

Extreme flaw in your logic. The Forerunners MADE the rings, they do not pre-date the Forerunners. The Forerunners specifically made them to fight the flood, and they were constructed at the behest of Master Builder Faber.

@@williameldridge9382 OP means the artifact rings found throughout Zeta Halo, not the Halo's themselves.

@@Adam-xn2hg im confused cause if the endless were imprisoned or whatever how did they have time to build all these artifacts and whatnot

I feel like only a master story writer could pull that off. So many moving peices qnd factions would be near impossible to keep track of especially when looking through one or two characters eyes

@@charlesmartiniii1405 well we do have Joseph Staten back.. he could pull it off

Wouldn't that just be a gravemind? 🤣

@@abby4400 I mean like whole planets are taken by the flood.. whole star systems

@@sonicsawblade what I mean is that when you said "the flood assimilating the endless" hiddenxperia makes it seem like the endless could be precursors so I think it's kind like the same creature. Just a theory

Infected endless cant be killed with halos, just imagine

The flood were never killed by halos the halos killed all life so the flood starved to death

And yeah if they make the flood sound irrelevant just to hype up this “endless” I’m gonna need a new controller

The Flood aren't even on the ring, except in containment and research facilities. Very much doubt they'll appear in the game.

@@icefarrow7959 They may be in containment facilities but those are still on the ring and there has been multiple Flood break outs from those types of facilities on other rings, definitely think we'll be fighting them again at some point on Zeta if not then the Ark

Yes this. Can anyone answer?

My thoughts exactly

They could have incorporated older technologies into it when they built it, things they found much like we're finding the rings.

It's likely that they placed the artifacts on the ring. They did it before in Halo 2 on Delta Halo with those old stone structures.

Probably something to do with time and slip space. If you move faster than light, time slows for you but the distance you need to travel stays the same. You're just moving incredibly fast compared to the universe around you. If something glitches or some unforeseen problems arise, in theory you can technically end up years past from when you set out traveling but due to the way light works in space. Where you set out from would technically still be in the time you set out. That's my theory anyways.

My biggest question from halo as a whole what came before the precursors and could the beings before the precursors be the endless and the precursors help the forerunners seal them away before the forerunners eradicated the precursors

This is exactly what I thought. It felt like the narrative was driven hard that Cortana's echo was responsible for supressing the connection, helping the weapon, and opening the portal. She even left a pre-recorded message that specifically made fun of what she assumed the weapon would say. She likely left behind programming on triggers to help when needed.

Exactly what I thought, don’t know how he ignored Cortana completely

A question. If the conversation by the Grand Edict happened 76 years after the Halos fired, weren't all the Forerunners dead? But here is one talking and he mentions the engineers will be busy. So did all the Forerunners not die then?

@@fourlamb1 Just of the top of my head, any Forerunners that were on the Ark when the rings were fired survived because the Ark is outside the galaxy and so is outside the range of the Halos. Apparently if any of them were in slipspace at the time they would have survived as well. Parts of Halo: Silentium and Halo: Fractures follow Forerunner characters post-firing.

@@LukeRobertsArt I see, thanks for the info matey.

Y E S ! Y E S ! Y E S ! O H. M Y. G O D.

Agreed. I feel more that this is Cortana helping. She showed up at the end saying I hope it worked out. I planned it and only had a few milliseconds. To me that makes her the one doing all this...I do however thing Offensive Bias could show up but that particular ending I think was Cortana or at the very least...her plans, echos etc. activating.

also why didn't they explain the harbinger teleportation abilities

It seems more like he's listening to something rather than being wary of it.

I thought the same

Yeah, when Xperia got to that point, the moment I saw those three Splinter Cell-looking glowy eyes, my thoughts _immediately_ drifted to powerful Forerunner ancillas seen throughout the lore. I was _sure_ he was gonna say that it was Offensive Bias, it would fit in perfectly with the theory he was crafting.

Yes. Where in modern lore neither Fuchs halo fans

Absolutely, I love it so much

@@HiddenXperia It honestly sounds like its straight out of a climactic fight from an old Bungie Halo game!

holy shit this theory really expands the whole view!

Well said

But the Flood were out and about doing their thing before Humanity and the Forerunners ever met. The Forerunners weren't even aware of either species until humanity enacted Exterminatus on a Forerunner planet that had been infected by the Flood. Or, are you suggesting that the Precursors used knowledge of the future and released the Flood as part of a grand chess match, playing the extra long game knowing events would lead them to now?

@@shazmodeus2795 I'm not saying they knew the future in the paranormal/magic sense, but in the 4D chess sense. But yes, that's exactly what I'm saying

@@shazmodeus2795 wrong the flood was not around before forunners

Yeah, gotta be careful with power creep, considering just how large and powerful the flood were built up to be, a galaxy-wide threat, while we haven't heard of The Endless before now (though I guess that's the point, trying to imprison and 'hide' them away, convenient).

The Endless aren't more powerful than the Flood. But, they can't be destroyed by the one thing intended to destroy literally all sentient life in the galaxy. They are a bigger threat to the Forerunners than anything else, but Cortana's words do confuse this idea. Maybe she's just been misled by the words of the Forerunners? She is pretty gullible post-rampancy.

It is because flood and Endless are both came from same species:- The precursors. And yes flood also want go control the mantle. The whole point of flood is preserve life but not let anyone have a free will of it's own. Diversity is not a concern when central point of flood is to preserve life. Endless evolved in it's own way and they believe they should have control of the mantle The whole Halo universe is always centered around mantle of responsibility. Those who hold mantle hold ultimate control of the universe. Although Precursor technically died their successor species the flood and endless believe that because they are created by precursor (well technically all are and flood are literally created by primodial which he asume control and become forst gravemind) believe they are the ones who should have control of mantle.

Plus, it's generic and boring

I largely agree, tho one could look at it in mind with that the monitor said about the forerunner's real fears being about losing their power and legacy. If the endless were immune to the rings, they could maybe outlast the forerunners and then it wouldnt be up to the forerunners what the future thought of them. Kinda like how this grand edict was saying, they cant be allowed to control time (by outliving them maybe). So perhaps the idea that the endless are more dangerous than the flood is a reflection more of the forerunners' vanity and pride than the actual strength of the endless themselves

Splitscreen canceled lolololololol

Yup

Here's a theory, what if the endless are like the meddlers from hcea terminals.

@@Ori--pw5vw Those were the Covenant

@@AlbertusSalvatierra it’s not. The meddlers arrived on Alpha Halo & Delta Halo shortly after the firing of the rings. The Covenant didn’t exist yet.

What's scary is that the Endless could potentially force a human to activate the ring and kill every species except for themselves.

Being: 1 + 1 = 3 Human: *literally loses their mind*

I don't see a contradiction here. If the endless and precursors are the same thing....

@@iisgray The harbinger states that " humanity isn't the future, we are" and yet the precursors wanted humanity to suceed them and take the mantle upon themselves. Even in the flood form they tried to prevent the fall of humanity and even retreating to not force ancient humanity fo fight a two front war with the forruners

@@Brother_Rony and yet, humans *do* still get infected by the flood. What changed? Nothing. Humans being meant to take on the mantle was just another lie the Forerunners made up to make their actions more justified. Why would the precursors give the mantle to anyone? Accept other races as equal, maybe, but give up their position and just... Die? Disappear? Why would they say "we're giving it to humans"? Under any context it doesn't make sense and has always bothered me. Bothered me that anyone would name a successor when you don't need a successor, and bothered me that the flood were nicer towards humanity.... until they weren't. And if we were their successors, why didn't the human forerunner war start earlier? We should have been avenging them. But we weren't, we seemingly ignored it, seemingly didn't even know a war happened. We just colonized space and fed weird dust to our pets without thinking twice about it. It makes far more sense that the precursors were never going to give up their position, but that the Forerunners expected them to anyway, because as a society they're power hungry dicks. When they realized they were never going to ascend while the precursors lived, they did a quick genocide. And as unjustifiable as that genocide was, it still made more sense to say the motive was because precursors chose a short lived war fueled group of races as their successors when the enlightened forerunners we're the obvious choice than it would be to admit the Forerunners weren't even enlightened enough to make a call like that. They just wanted power for themselves and took it.

@@iisgray It is like being a parent and watching your children and hoping they'll do better. We know that humanity was supposed to inherit the mantle both from ancient humanity and it was stated by surviving precursors themselves. The forruners (as the egoistical douchebags with a superiority complex that they are) executed genocide upon the precursors to hide the fact that the precursors changed their mind and decided that humanity and not the forruners should inherit the mantle (it was originally supposed to be the forruners). As far as we know they never seen themselves as gods, didn't even understand the concept of violence and seen that the universe was a evolving thing and that one day it would evolve out of them too. The flood just ate humans because it was the only source (as humans caused the flood to spread amongs its systems) and was probably aimed to be a test of sorts

@@iisgray Also since the forruners were the "chosen ones" significantly longer then humans were they evolved technically much faster and even hid the fact that they killed the precursors. During the weighing days of the forruner empire, most of them didn't even know that they killed them. They were taught that they chose the forruners and then simply vanished. Some humans believed at the same time that humans were supposed to get the mantle and that was viewed as highly heretical.

@The Gent so what?

@@ryanmcglennon7214 imagine finding reading a book hard lmao.pathetic

@@ryanmcglennon7214 Audio books. Free on RU-vid....

@The Gent PFFFFT Most good stories are in the books/Spin-offs.

@@ryanmcglennon7214 u identify as an attack helicopter! Than you verrrrrrryyyy muchhh!!

But that would assume the precursors didn't already deem humanity worthy

I really like this theory, makes more sense than the precursors themselves coming back because we've seen precursors, and they don't exactly fit in those little containment units lol

Issue is the relics and likely the endless to are to old.

I wrote something similar, but to sum it up, the precursors had foresight that the forerunners just wanted to maintain power and so giving them control over the mantle would be a bad move, and humanity was too closely rated to forerunners and to be safe the precursors just made a new version of themselves, far less advanced but still inherit much of their understanding and control over neural physics. After the forerunners thought they wiped the precursors out, they claimed the mantle for themselves, than all the flood stuff happened, and in a last ditch attempt to maintain their power, they handed the mantle and their legacy to humanity, their closest relatives. Than they discovered the Xalanyn and that they were the intended reclaimers, so the remaining forerunners seeked to detain them in order for humanity to reclaim their legacy and the mantle, since they so feared losing their power. Check the latest comments and you should find mine there :)

@@maxj9204 It may be true though the precursors are shapeshifters so they dont really have one physical form . Also maybe those containers contain their essence not their physical bodies .

Even Gravemind aided him once

@@Number_5 Who is technically the most intelligent being in the galaxy.. so that must count for something :P

Wait. He’s been helped by both bias’ ??? When? I don’t remember that

@@lucasa4955 mendicant pulled some strings in the shadows of halo 2 and/or 3 (I’m not 100% sure as I haven’t finished the halo 3 campaign yet) but I’m sure he has videos on it all!

Makes me wonder how far Nobel 6 would have gone if he was also lucky & had a super adnace AI watching his back.

Who are the Meddlers

Correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t the Pillar of Autumn missing for a week after going into slipspace escaping reach

They are indeed the same.

​@@SLAD3 I wouldn't call that missing. Slipspace just takes time to navigate through, it's not supposed to be instant. Pretty sure it took In Amber Clad around 2 weeks to get to Delta Halo from Earth

Today's canon fodder mentioned something of "Created cells". The may ve still active, just fragmented.

@@josuemonroygarcia9125 oh joy. Time to kill some robots!

It'd be a huge fucking payoff if all the lore nerds predict the precursors return. It'll be a 'i knew it!' moment

I agree. A new form of the precursor/flood mystery. Not just a new baddie.

I was skeptical of The Endless; I wanted to know if this wasn't just a brand-new invention out of nowhere. Having some ties to things we already know makes me feel much more hopeful.

I didn't even think about the impact to the rest of their homeworld that makes so much sense!

Oh for sure i imagine it must have been traumatic for them to watch billions of creatures simply drop dead out of nowhere (i could see there being zero solute having been dropped on their planet due to them flying under the radar till after the array was fired)

Forerunners really showed up and pulled a pikachu :o

It could have possibly something related or forunner.

I remember seeing that too… not to mention that when flying around the islands you can see what seems to be the wings of a crashed Cortana Guardian off in the distance