@@Eskeletor_210 That explains why I had such a terrible time with that fight a month ago! But also weird, because I'm pretty sure I used my abilities in the attempt that didn't crash.
This actually explains Johnson's death in Halo 3. Sentinel Beams vaporize flood spores, so when guilty spark lasered him, all of the flood spores in Johnson's system were eradicated, making him unable heal the wound.
I always interpreted Regret's Flood form isn't _actually_ Regret. All of Regret's memories and personality would have been assimilated into the Flood consciousness, and we know that the Flood can use super cells to amalgamate into pure forms, so I took that as the Gravemind reconstituted a Regret-like avatar from raw Flood biomass, and then made it talk. It's actually pretty horrific when you think of it that way. It's just a bunch of necrotic flesh that the Gravemind is animating like a fucked-up sock puppet.
Either that or he's in a similar stage of infection as Keyes is the CE terminals where he's still quasi conscious but knows the flood is stripping him of his memories. Although your idea is somehow worse. Using a reanimated rotting corpse as a rhetorical device to manipulate your enemies is just next level evil.
@@phoenixjones7191 this is my interpretation too, the Flood doesn't always have to digest the host completely. Part of its aesthetic is that it's necrotic, and with creatures that don't need to be reshaped for combat or building materials, they can just be immobilized, have their brains plugged into the biomass, and that's really all that needs to be done. The Gravemind does sometimes keep characters around like Luc said in the video too
Perhaps the reason the covenant prophets weren’t turned into combat forms was due to their frail bodies but maybe they were still infected so that their vast knowledge of the covenant would be absorbed into the hive mind. And regret keeping his sanity (allegedly) was just the gravemind doing the same thing it did to the master builders wives and children
1:14 Also there's the detail you brought up of how Flood Jackal Snipers would've been Halo 2's versions of Combat Evolved's Rocket Flood but even worse to deal with.
But that’s impossible because how can 343 make FAN fiction when they totally completely Hate Halo? 🤔 The OC part is right though, the Endless are very original and i think that’s why I’m actually fascinated by them. I know this is an unpopular opinion but i don’t care: the Endless was the most interesting thing to me in Halo Infinite and I wish they revealed more. The Banished stuff just felt like “Old Man Yelling at Cloud”
it’s pretty clear the endless are a threat because of their connection to the mantle Despondent Pyre states the only thing the forerunners feared more than the flood was losing their power, in the same game Cortana (who also has an interest in the mantle) says there’s something worse than the flood on zeta halo there’s also a whole other part of that theory about how Cortana states a longer lifespan is essential for holding the mantle, and how the endless might not age/are biologically immortal (not invincible). Also if another separate theory is true it could explain how they survived the halo array
I wish Bungie/343 would've expanded on the fact that Chief and Johnson were both "infected" by the flood. Like, I always thought of those Gravemind "transmissions" in Halo 3 was just the Gravemind linking to Chief through his partial infection. Like, there should've been a novel about Chief and Johnson talking to each other about the voices they'd been hearing in the backs of their heads and how it just becomes more potent the closer they get to the floor as a whole.
I love that you still continue to make this type of content regardless of how long you’ve been doing this. Not only shows that Halo’s universe is damn near infinite, but also shows that you put in an insane amount of work and love into your content. Thank you for all you do for us and the community❤
I feel safe in assuming the prophets aren't immune to the Flood. That Prophet aboard the ship Half-Jaw had to fight his way out of during CE in the Halo Legends comic sure wasn't immune.
Not just that, but the Flood can, and have, faked resistance/immunity in certain groups/individuals for the express purpose of misleading research, defensive efforts, and lowering vigilance over certain types of infected people. The biggest failure of the Forerunners was treating the Flood like an animal, and not a hyper-intelligence that merely used hyper-aggression as a mask for its more devious methods.
What I read in the books says Sgt. Johnson has "Boren's Syndrome" - a neurological disease caused by his exposure to high-yield Covenant plasma - after using an entire crate of their plasma grenades and being exposed to the radiation they emit. That's the source of his jumbled nervous system, not the super-soldier program he was a subject in. Unless this was retconned without me knowing about it. Further, the attempted Flood infection that left some Flood DNA in his system gave him their regenerative properties, making him tougher than normal and halting the progression of his Boren's Syndrome, which would have been fatal as his nervous system continued to degrade - he had opted out of treatment and chose to return to the front lines to fight the Covenant as long as he could before his body failed, and the botched Flood infestation basically "saved" him from death by his Boren's Syndrome. There is even some speculation that the chemical "markers" the Flood left in his body after the failed infection serve to tell other flood forms "This one is already infested, go find another" - hence even after his nervous system was "repaired" by the regenerative properties of the flood infection form which couldn't subsume him, other infection forms "see" him as already "taken", and they ignore him. They still try to jump on him, and combat forms will attack him, but as soon as an infection form tries to infest him and attempts a nervous system connection, it thinks he's already taken and stops trying.
Boren's Syndrome is a cover up story by ONI.ONI didn't want the knowledge of Orion Program to leak so they made up a disease to cover up the side effects of augmentations.
The idea of Borden’s system was a cover for being part of Orion. I can’t remember the exact point it’s mentioned, but I do remember that it’s mentioned in a book somewhere
@@SuperTheast You might be right about that. But what I CAN absolutely remember is that the neurological problem he had was known by the UNSC, and he opted to go back to the front lines and die there instead of dying in a hospital back Earth-side. He was given the option. Whether his Boren's syndrome was a cover for Orion or not, he still had it, and the failed flood infestation cured it.
The stuff about the endless and their possible slipspace timestuff gives me an idea for a halo 7 id want. Mr chef and the gang are trying to stop the endless now in a proper resurgence from activating some kinda slipspace mcguffin when its misactivated and sends chief back in time to the fall of the forerunners(lets say after the didact is put in his corner but before the forerunners lose the capability to do anything). The chief then needs to team up with the librarian to defeat the endless in the past before the flood are able to win whichd trigger the halos. Imagine going down with some forerunner commandos and knights to a flood world or fighting on an endless megastructure partially in slipspace and finishing it with a warthog run while the final battle between mendicant and offensive plays out in the skybox. And odsts could be there somehow
@HiddenXperia I think youu missed The Sharquoi, colloquially known as Behemoths. A special species that were biomechanically altered by the Forerunners to fight the Flood. I presume they're also "Immune to the flood"
I have randomly become obsessed with flood lore once again there’s something oddly fascinating about them. Part of me kinda hopes that one day there will be a prequel to Halo that takes place during the final days before the Halo array is fired it would be interesting to see in a game just how bad the flood had become leading up to that point.
I wonder if the Infection form that tried to convert Mercy was just too weak, even weaker than the one that converted PFC W. Jenkins. So it was able to connect to Mercy's nervous system, but was too weak to actually start the conversion process.
that's probably why the gravemind started to directly consume him kinda like what happened to captain keyes (it appears i was talking about regret, not mercy)
In regards to mercy fighting off the infection form maybe the gravemind was trying to extract information form the prophet rather than turning him and when chief pulled the infection form off him he also could have pulled some of his spine out with the infection form this truth died pretty instantly
I would love to see the flood vs the replicators from stargate. Especially the Milky Way type which are basically a mechanical version in Stargate lore. They are one of the few races that are also probably immune to the logic plague purely due to arrogance and just simply not engaging the flood in conversation long enough to be infected
I actually feel like grunts and jackals would be a good species for the flood to infect. Grunta are small compared to Chief, but kind of the same as humans and the flood loves infecting humans... Plus they are a pretty hardy species. I also feel like jackals would be parkour ninja flood form.
In the halo “cryptum” book it is mentioned that the prophets species has a resistance to the flood’s infection. They were still susceptible but they had a strong resistance in fact the book even states that they could be infected by ancient humanity but infected prophets where unable to spread it to other species.
I remember a time when it was assumed the flood was all-consuming and that no species whatsoever could avoid the infection, even trees and other flora, and the assumption was that the early bungie games just didn’t have the budget to make a combat form out of each and every unit type, I remember a time when the flood was still scary
Counterpoint for the Prophet's supposed immunity: The Legate a.k.a. Minister of Etiology in The Last Voyage of the Infinite Succor gets assimilated into the proto-gravemind near the end of the story and gets used as a «speaker» to taunt Rtas and warning him the Flood now have the command codes of the ship, with his dialogue clearly indicating that he isn't conscious at all.
Wow what a great Video and Content you made....awesome!! Love it!!! Full of important facts and notions that help understand the world of Halo and I think also ours!
I want a game where you play through the entire war from Johnson’s perspective, Harvest to the Ark (with obvious time skips) and a mission where you get to escape Installation 04 as Johnson.
Makes you wonder if the Librarian's gift to Master Chief also made him truly immune to the Flood. It still doesnt explain how Master Chief survived the attempted infection back in the Pillar of Autumn as the penetrator managed to break the skin and Mona Lisa proved that even a touch was enough to trigger an infection.
1 truth was being infected by flood spores, not an infection form, so it would have been slower Giving him time to To resist 2 the profit truth might have been stronger than we know
I think the Endless is immune to the Flood because they are Precursors, so they technically see them as the same species and ignore them. I definitely think the Endless have a central nervous system. I doubt you can use Precursor NEURAL-Physics without one. Also I seriously doubt that the Endless have time travel capabilities in a traditional sense. The Lore related to them involving the word “time” has been massively over analyzed What they have is being connected to Living Time. This isn’t Time Travel, it’s a Metaphysical Concept tied to the Mantle of Responsibility. You know who are also attuned to Living Time? The Forerunners and Master Chief. It’s basically the fabric of the Universe giving something plot armor. This is probably why the Forerunners did not purge them. They physically could, but it could have had massively detrimental consequences for the Universe just like the Flood did. Especially when the Reclaimer Symbols on Harbingers Armor is concerned…
I have a theory that the gravemind has complete control over every flood supercell, It would explain regrets consciousness, as well as the arbiter not being infected in halo 2.
On the surface the Endless' imprisonment seems cruel and unjustified. But there's still a lot we don't know about the situation. I will bet you one of the reasons it was done was to find out if the Flood could infect them because if they could then that's a HUGE problem. If they are susceptible to the Flood but immune to the Halos then they have no way of stopping the parasite if it gets ahold of these creatures. Would that justify imprisoning them all? That's hard to say but given the destruction the Flood are capable of and what an absolute horror show it would be if they managed to infect a species seemingly immune to the Halo Array you really can't blame them for it. Also the Infection Form likely stayed attached to Mercy because it was most likely strangling him. It wouldn't bother turning him into a Combat Form because of his fragility. However, that doesn't mean it wouldn't still kill him and use him as biomass. The best way for it to do this is to wrap its tendrils around his neck and literally strangle him to death which is still quite gruesome if you ask me. As for why he died instantly I always thought Chief ripping it off like he did just snapped his neck.
"You will be fooood. Nothing moooooore" Gravemind wasn't infecting him, he was killing him and turning his body into biomass, same as Truth. You, sir, are correct.
Engineers never get infected because the Flood are smart enough to not poke that hornet's nest by angering Halo players by killing these adorable guys.
Whenever Jenkins got brought up in the video I remembered it was said that the reason Jenkins was able to wrestle for control from the infection form was because it was old and didn’t have enough strength, mayhaps it is the same case with the prophet? (I don’t remember which one it was bruh)
In regards to the prophet of mercy not being turned into a combat form we were shown in a previous video that infection forms can choose not to infect a host they latch onto in favor of just consuming their hosts biomass so its likely that was what the infection form was doing to mercy eating him instead of infecting him.
The flood are able to assimilate knowledge from an infected host, no? I believe that in Mercy's case, the infection form was targeting him for tactical knowledge and scanning/transmitting that while Mercy was still conscious. By the time Master Chief came by, the infection form had done it's job and just stayed there because the body was too weak for anything else.
I don't think the Endless could be immune. What if they were locked away because should the Flood ever infect their species they could become immune to the Halo Array? That thought is terrifying itself.
Johnson being immune while the two squads were entirely wiped out got me thinking. I love the series, but I was super disappointed by ODST. I was hoping for a tactical shooter, like a rainbow6, with the player being horribly outmatched (lore said at that point that humans were screwed, out numbered by a foe with superior weapons). Instead, we got ODST that played like they're Spartans, their personal energy shield was renamed "adrenaline", you could still easily kill a brute in melee, etc. I would still LOVE to get a tactical shooter in the Halo universe, playing as non-enhanced special forces, in scenarios that demand planning to overcome. BUT tangent aside, but keeping with the idea of branching away from the super soldier run'n'gun game style. What if, a horror survival game where you play as a regular human (marine or civilian), trying to survive a flood outbreak. Like Alien Isolation, but with the flood.
Another interesting thing is that 343 continues prophets having a different relationship to the Flood. Infected Prophets would rarely infect other species.
I like to think that all the grunts/jackals/drones that get converted into flood are almost exclusively the biomass that makes up the Gravemind and such. Good bodies = soldier, bad body = meat for the meat God
What if Gravemind actually used the infection form to capture one of the prophets for chiefs sake of getting information or just to separate the leadership of the covenant?
Wasn’t Sergeant Johnson’s immunity retconned by Bungie? I could have sworn they made a statement or put out some sort of comic that said he just fought his way out, not that he was actually immune.
It could be that the first prophet did create an early and unfinished version of a cure which delays infection and is passed down through genetics but having the slightest downsides of becoming diluted with time hence why it didn’t really do much for the covenant prophets
You know whats easier than having a corporation have your banking info? Setting aside a day to cancle the debit card on the accounts and get a new one.
If the flood come back in the future I want them to win. Grow so far and wide that chief has to Hail Mary to fire the entire array to prevent them. Just imagine chief, arbiter, maybe a couple squads of ODSTs, and some marines being all that’s left on one remaining ship. Always on the backstep, always fleeing. A dark future of the halo galaxy. It’s like the necromorphs. If it keeps coming back it was always meant to win. The flood is the great filter.
Sgt. Johnson is not actually immune to the Flood. This was retconned by Bungie since Nylund sorta went against what they wanted for the Flood. It was first included as a thing in First Strike, But Bungie did not like the idea of anyone being immune to the Flood and then reiterated on numerous occasions that Johnson is not immune to the Flood and that Boren's Syndrome is simply a coverup of the Orion project.
13:23 if the precursors created the Xalanyn as revenge. Man that would be one of the coolest stories ever in the Halo universe. Imagine if the Endless are indeed the true heirs of the precursors and then somehow they find a way to weaponize the Flood and use it for the reclamation of the Galaxy.
On the subject of regret being conscious: One possibility is that the gravemind allowed him to remain conscious just for memes, but another possibility is that regret wasn't conscious at all, but was rather a fully infected flood form that was simply perfectly mimicking regret's voice, personality, beliefs and mannerisms in order to use as a manipulative tool against the arbiter. The gravemind has pulled of far more sophisticated and insidious things than that. It's not like he... you know... has access to the entirety of your knowledge and thoughts after your assimilation or something.
Frankly, there's a distinct possibility that Truth, Mercy and Regret were resistant to the Gravemind's influence because of the sheer size and power of their respective egos. Truth especially is at the very height of his hubris, declaring "I SHALL BECOME A GOD" even as he's literally being eaten from the inside by the Flood AND throttled by the Arbiter. Even the Gravemind's literal cosmic-scale ego pales in comparison to what a self-absorbed dickhead Truth is.
@HiddenXperia I have a thought question for you and everybody else here in the comments. A little backstory first. The other day I was talking with my brother who just turned 21, and I myself am 26. Not a significant age gap. Personally, I grew up playing Halo. My cousin introduced it to me when I was about five or six and I fell in love with the game instantly. So, naturally when my brothers came along I tried to share it with them as well, because I have such a passion for the game and the story. Now that we are older, this brother that I was talking to plays a lot of the reboot modern warfare series as well as warzone. I personally don't have a lot of interest in the reboot series, nor do I enjoy war zone or Battle royals in general. Multiplayer isn't really my thing. Now when my brother and I were talking the other day, he is currently playing through the Halo 5 campaign. As we were talking about it he was saying that he liked the older Bungie era Halos because they felt nostalgic and he likes to remember growing up with me and playing them together. But from a gameplay perspective, he says he likes Halo 5 more. (He also hasn't played Infinite yet.) Now in his own words, he says that he likes the gameplay for Halo 5 because " it feels more like a 'his generation' game, while the older Halos feel more like a 'my generation' game." He says that Halo 5 feels, "more faster paced" and "more like Call of Duty" so that's why he likes it. Now the question. Honestly, when he said that, it kind of struck a nerve with me. Not with him, but with what he said. I don't think that Halo should feel like Call of duty. I think that Halo should look and feel like you're playing Halo. And Call of Duty should look and feel like Call of Duty. Now, I'm not against admitting that I may be a little biased. That's true. However, liking both of those game series, or at least the older Call of Duty games, I feel like both games should have their own distinct feel and style. Is there going to be some bleed over? Absolutely. That can't be avoided. But for my brother to say that he likes one because it feels like the other kind of irks me. So my question is, what do y'all think? What is your guys's opinion on this? Do you think it's okay that Halo 5, in the words of a younger person, is like Call of Duty? Or do you think that it's okay if the games are similar? Or is there a point of view or thought here that I am just not seeing? Let me hear your thoughts please.
About regret and the idea of flood immunity, just remember too that the primordial i think it was was able to summon the "consciousness's" of the..what was it the lord of admirals to the librarian? im sure he could of just pulled his consciousness out of the overall collective to hear from him in that moment
Hearing about the Prometheans being former elite warriors composed into digital essences and planted into robot bodies makes me wonder if we could ever see something like that for humans. Maybe Spartans get turned into AI and implanted into the Spartan robots that we saw in Infinite’s concept art? I know Halo likes its mirrors between humans and forerunners so idk
For the Prophets, I'm willing to chalk it up to strong-willed individuals being able to fend off the mental control for a time even if their body fails. And Mercy's infection form may have been a weak one like Jenkins'
7:39 i mean yes and no? As per the First Strike book Halsey said that his medical record showed him receiving some type of poisoning with the amount of plasma grenades he detonated on one of his missions. It was curable with a lengthy time treatment but he didn’t complete it cause he wanted to get back to work.
I imagine once there's an active gravemind, if an infection form gets ahold of a creature that wouldn't make a good combat form but has a lot of valuable information, they immobilize it and go into interrogation mode, like what happened to Keys. The infection form woud absorb its knowledge and either transmit it to the gravemind using telepathy, or just learn everything the host knows and scuttle off to the nearest hunk of biomass and plug itself in like a flash drive. Some other flood entity could come scoop up the husk for biomass later.
What if the endless just surided the firing of the halos because they were stored in Zeta Halo within those "caskets" just like all the other species, just to be reinstalled afterwards. But somehow their memories weren't erased?
Weird to think that grunts and jackals arnt more valuble hosts than humans are. Considering the Jackals are straight up taller and more nimble (that one marine death in H4 on The Composer level is a great example) and Grunts may be smaller on average but they have a lot more mass, they could definitely put in way more force than any of us
I don't think there are only 2 choices here. It's not just (a) become a combat form, or (b) be immune. Keys and the Prophets were valuable intelligence targets for the Flood. I believe that the Flood absorbs the more intelligent entities more slowly, in order to keep their brains in tact and extract knowledge. There's no need to preserve a brain if you are just going to turn biomass into mindless combat-form drones, but Keyes and the Prophets needed to be handled carefully during the process.
I don’t think that the endless are related to the precursors, I think they’re one of the only species in the universe that aren’t created by the precursors making them extremely resistant to the flood and therefore infected by the precursors. The Precursors probably knew that the Endless would be able to fight back against them, so the Precursors made them into Allies rather than trying to eradicate them, telling them they would be spared from their wraith
Pretty sure a grunt and jackal would be chosen over humans cause the size difference is prevalent, grunts a small from a Spartans perspective, but huge to a normal persons perspective
