01-171 Abased Eidolon

Despite my own speculations I do like your theory, so I'm interested in reading your revised version when you're done rethinking And that is an excellent question! How indeed did the Forerunners manage to defeat the very ones that gave their civilization the technology to thrive? Maybe the Precursors, in all their wisdom, didn't expect the Forerunners to attack so suddenly? Or maybe the Precursors just weren't that good at fighting? It's hard to say, and hopefully the last book of the Forerunner Trilogy will tell us exactly what happened back then! Ha, you're too kind! And when the time comes and you truly want me to help explain the book; I'll gladly do it! I'll take any chance I get to talk about Halo Lore, haha.

Nah, you're correct. They were War-sphinx pilots and all died in battle with the Ancient Humans. Back then Humans had Precursor tech, so I'm sure they would have more of an easier time fighting Warrior-servants than present time Humans. Anyways, yeah I'm fairly certain that all of the Didact's kids would have been Prometheans had they not been killed.

Unfortunately I have to disagree. Mainly for this reason: IF the Precursors were in fact an ultimate version of the Flood. The pinnacle of their evolution. How come the Forerunner were able to defeat them, when the lowest forms of the Flood devastated their entire race? As well as the Ancient Humans'. Being the grandest form of Flood, the Precursor should have no problems ending any rebellion, but they couldn't. Another reason is the Precursors upheld the Mantle. They either created it or it was handed to them by some other species that died off long ago. While the Flood, by design, consume everything in it's path with no rhyme or reason other than to grow and consume more. It is a sickness. A disease. A parasite. Now picture this. The Precursors are the King of the Galaxy. They rule justly and everyone has a good time, but then there is a problem. The King has two sons. Two Princes of roughly the same age that are both gunning for being the successor of their great father and take over the Mantle. Obviously these two princes represent the Ancient Humans and the Forerunners. The problem the Precursors had was: How would they be able to choose the best successor? Making both Princes preform a test would be the best way to solve who would be the next to uphold the Mantle. And so the King, the Precursors, created and began testing with a pale powder with odd properties. They found that it was capable of taking over another creatures cells and converting them to another cell, thus creating the first Flood, which most likely lead to the creation of the Primordial. During this time one of the Princes, the Forerunners, overheard that the King held the other Prince in high regard rather than the other. This made the Forerunner resent the Precursors. Becoming scornful. The Prince attacked the King and took the Mantle for himself. Because of the Forerunner-Precursor war. The Flood test was never perfected and was still very volatile and aggressive. But it was too late. The Flood-Ancient Human war went underway. The Ancient Humans defeat the Flood and prove themselves worthy, while the Forerunners would be destroyed by their arrogance from having defeat the Precursors and thinking that they were the true holders of the Mantle. The first two books in the Forerunner Trilogy by Greg Bear. I recommend them, they're pretty fantastic with lots of information!

Exactly, and there could be a "good" side that comes in that is following the Arbiter's lead. It's a possibility

The Primordial is no more a Precursor than The Gravemind(Halo 2 & 3) was a Human, sangheili, Jiralhanae, etc.. The Primordial was just a Gravemind, albeit a perfect Gravemind. Most likely made entirely out of Flood supercells. Now. [WARNING: spoilers ahead] The Flood Powder that Ancient Humans discovered was, more likely than not, created by the Precursor that were forced out of the galaxy during the Forerunner-Precursor war. The Primordial could have been one of the many results from testing that powder, but before they could finish the war happened and the Primordial was left behind. The Ancient Humans took up residence on a Precursor world and discovered how to use the Precursor technology much to the Forerunner's chagrin. They would also eventually stumble across the imprisoned Primordial and discover a way to communicate with it. Not liking the answers it gave them, the Ancient Humans ceased communication and placed a new Timelock over the stasis field it was in. During the Ancient Humans discovered a mysterious ship that contained a cargo full of containers with a fine pale powder. They started testing with this powder and found that it greatly increased pleasant features of the favorite animal (I forget it's name). Eventually odd benign growths appeared on the animals. Things started to fall apart when the animals began eating said growths. The Flood cells were evolving thanks to the ingestion of the growths. The Ancient Humans had been feeding on the animals and now growths began appearing on them. Thus begins the first Flood outbreak. The Ancient Humans lost world after world and in a panic they started taking over new worlds in Forerunner territory. Obviously this angered the Forerunners and would lead to them attacking the Ancient Humans. Now they had a war on two fronts and despite the Flood, the Humans succeeded in fending off the Forerunners for a very long time. Until they found a way to end the flood once and for all, but it was at a great cost. The Ancient Humans reverse engineered the Flood cell so it would attack the original Flood cells. And then the Ancient Humans preformed the ultimate sacrifice. They infected themselves. This new Flood cell succeeded in it's mission and chased the others out of the galaxy. However, now the Ancient Humans no longer had enough man power to fight the Forerunners and eventually they lost. The Forerunners didn't know the reason why they took the planets and saw them as unprovoked acts of aggression. The Forerunners proceeded to punish the Ancient Humans and stripped them of all technology and devolved them. splitting them into many different sub-species. But the Ancient Humans knew that the Flood would be back, and as a last strike against the Forerunner. They destroyed all information pertaining how to defeat the Flood. And we all know what happened after that. In closing. The Precursor are NOT the Humans or the Flood.

You're partially correct. The servants of the abiding truth have been around for a long time. They were never really part of the Covenant, however, as they saw the reverse engineering of Forerunner tech the san'shyumm did to be blasphemous. It was only after the Great schism, with the help of ONI and Ex-Covenant members, were the servants able to acquire ships for a fleet. The servants of the abiding truth are the "Covenant" enemies seen in trailers. Unngoy and Kig'Yar were either employed or enslaved to be in this group and there could even be Jiralhanae at some point, since a small group of them have remained loyal to the sangheili. How they found Requiem is as of yet, unknown.

Aurora Cygnus was the Ancilla that got removed by the rampant one. The one that seeks revenge is 3530 RG. Now we just need to find out what RG stands for so it can have a proper name. And going off how most Monitor's are named with the theme of the Forerunner's guilt (Guilty spark, Penitent Tangent, Mendicant Bias, etc...) my personal guess to it's name is: Repentant Gift More than likely wrong, but I kinda like how 3530 Repentant Gift sounds. Or maybe 3530 Rueful Gavel? 3530 Rueful Grudge? I could go on, but I'm tired. Hopefully we'll find out what RG stands for.

My apologies, it was three AM and I was kind of out of it. Looking at it now, I see that I didn't express my thoughts correctly. I was mostly trying to argue against how you were saying that a rampant Ancilla wouldn't "guide" us or give us hints. And that just because and A.I. or Ancilla is rampant that does not mean that it is incapable of guiding someone. Guilty spark did this in the Library, but it was quite obvious that he was in stages of rampancy. so rampant A.I. and Ancilla are still capable of coming up with detailed plans and performing actions. They've just gone a little crazy. And no longer act to their initial programming the way they should anymore. I hope that makes more sense.

Rampancy does not rob an A.I. of it's intelligence, mind you. No rampancy just makes go against it's normal programming. And this is a rampant Ancilla. Possibly Metarch-Class. It's goal is clearly getting revenge on it's Creators. "Guiding" us is just one step in it's plan. Again rampancy does not make A.I. or Ancilla "stupid" in any way, shape, or form. It just makes them very, very, very, dangerous.

Halo Wars took place 20 years before Halo: CE, so bringing it up is a moot point. Not to mention that the Flood infection was destroyed along with the shieldworld. And it is not known whether or not the Flood is held on each and every Halo. As so far it looks like there are none located on Installation 03, since it is ONI controlled now, however it is too early to say since Glasslands didn't go into detail about that Halo. some were brought to Installation 07 when it went rogue, and Installations 04 and 05 were the only two confirmed to host Flood research facilities, besides the Gas Mining facility. We also have to take into account that the Gravemind during the Original Trilogy most likely brought all the Flood he could en masse through the portal to the Lesser Ark to stop the firing of the Halo Array. so no. They're not still out there. The only way they'll be back is if another outbreak occurs, but I'm fairly certain that for that to happen the Precursors will have to appear at some point with more of the powder, or send it by way of another derelict ship.

The "Covenant" enemies are the servants of the Abiding Truth. They really have no ties to the Covenant other than they are using the abandoned tech leftover from the Great schism and eventual fall of the Covenant. Truthfully the Covenant no longer exists. After the war most species returned to their home planets, but some stuck together. As the sangheili still do business with some of the Jirahanae, Unngoy, and Kig-yar. On sangheilios there was a divide. some wanted to finish fighting the Humans and other just wanted to set their planet straight and pull their species back onto it's feet. The Arbiter was instigating a mutual cease fire with Fleet Admiral Lord Hood. And all seemed to be going well with a cease fire actually being achieved. However, in the background ONI sent out Kilo-Five to sabotage the sangheili from the inside out by dealing with the leader of the servants of the Abiding Truth. During the Glasslands they(the servants) found out they were able to just take the warships that they desired without much protest as their hierarchy was in much disarray. However it hasn't been told just how they got a hold of a fleet yet. We could find that out during Halo 4 or in the next book of the Kilo-Five trilogy. Also, the servants of the Abiding Truth are a sect of Religious fanatics that still believe the Forerunners to be their Gods. Even knowing that they made the rings as weapons and not instruments to send them on a Great Journey. They also don't mind incorporating Human tactics into their own. Their leader is very fond of using Human phrases.

First thing that came to mind when I saw the Promethean Knight was that it looked very much like a space pirate. Of course it would be ridiculous to "claim" that they, for lack of a better term, ripped off the Metroid style, since all we saw was a few minutes of a small part of the campaign. The rest of the game could be drastically different.

The Flood, for all intents and purposes, has been defeated. It was confirmed not to be in Halo 4. And if they do show up in Halo 5, it will most likely not be as we know it. From the Original Trilogy anyways. In what form would they appear? It's hard to say, but if the Precursors that fled our galaxy during the Forerunner-Precursor war return they may have more containers of the original powder substance that led to the creation of the Flood. And if they decided to use the powder on themselves then we could see possible creatures much like the Primordial. A Flood/Precursor hybrid. Hell. The whole Flood incident could very well have been a test the Precursors were conducting to find out the properties of that powder. Of course this speculation rests on the sole educated guess that the Precursors had anything to do with the ship that contained the powder. But with given evidence it should be safe to assume they did. However, until the last book in the Forerunner trilogy comes out, that should be taken with a grain of salt. Anyways. My point is that the Flood forms we know will probably never be seen in the games again. BUT. I'm sure the Flood will be mentioned many times and possible new forms will be encountered at some point after Halo 4.

This is true. but couldn't the Conventus Facility be on Requiem? I'm sure the shieldworlds have enough room to contain a few Facilities. I don't think Conventus is on Installation 010, since the awakened and hostile Ancilla, 3530 RG, seems surprised that Installation 010 exists. so my guess is it's either on Requiem or somewhere close by.

It's really just a fusion of the BR and DMR. Unscoped it behaves similar to the BR and while scoped it behaves like a DMR. My guess is it will be a psuedo-power weapon and not regularly available.

Thank you! I was getting ready to pull my hair out... Anyways I strongly believe and agree that these Constructs are just shieldworld defense mechanisms. The prefix of "Promethean" could also be because the Didact, the top ranking Promethean, ordered the construction of the shieldworlds in response to Master Builder, Faber's Halo Array before he went into self-exile. And in his honor(?) or his Rate's honor all of the Constructs were given said prefix. This leads into the symbol we see at the end of the trailer. It bears a strong resemblance to the Didact's but it has obvious differences. My personal reason for this is that it could be the overall symbol for the Promethean Rate. And it is used by the Ancilla that watched over Requiem prior to Aurora Cygnus, but of course that is purely speculation, albeit based on knowledge gained from the books, games, and ARGs.

The Infinity is a very large ship. It is bound to have many, if not all, of the different UNSC occupations on board. The 'soldiers' are most definitely Marines and it's branches, as that is the main infantry force of the UNSC. However, it is said that the Infinity was repurposed for a more peaceful mission, so it's possible that the Marine presence is very small. Again, however, the "peaceful mission" could just be a cover-up for it's true purpose, since we know that the Infinity is the home of the Spartan IV program.

It's just an artistic change, much like how Elites have changed looks in the past three games. You'll just have to deal with it

The Didact: Everyone seems to think he will be the enemy in Halo 4. Personally I believe this to be false. sure the Didact disliked humans and thought they were a violent race and a threat to the Mantle, but he hardly classifies as an "ancient evil". I'm also against him being Composed and becoming Rampant, as he was nowhere near the Composer when he activated the Halo Array. so the chances of him being an Ancilla are very low. I believe the symbol we see at the end is the general symbol for the Promethean Rate, of which the Didact belonged to. Which also explains why the Forerunner Constructs that guard Requiem are title Promethean Knights, Crawlers, Watchers, etc.. It may also be because the Didact ordered the construction of the shieldworlds. Medicant Bias: I have to disagree with this as MB is described as a teardrop shaped monitor with a green "eye-light" and not a ginormous ball. MB somewhat passed his Rampancy stage after being in pieces for a very long time in which he thought about what he did and how he betrayed his Makers. I do not think he would attempt another attack. It is possible he was destroyed when the Lesser Ark was destroyed, but it is unknown. Cortana: Highly unlikely as she is not "ancient" nor "evil", but she will be having difficulties with Rampancy during the game, but will most likely reach Metastability. My theory: Personally I believe this new antagonist will be a Metarch-Class Ancilla. >/[0-575-07716-6] It has deceived you for too long, it has deceived my makers for too long. I was the one they trusted, I was the one that saved their lives countless times. It turned them against me, how could they have not have seen the truth. This so called devoted construct has taken what I should have earned, claimed what I had shaped. The damage is too great for it to be swept aside. I now have something that the construct failed to protect, and they will know for what they had should have known. As it says here an Ancilla is talking about how Aurora Cygnus took it's place in protecting something. The Ancilla thinks that it was betrayed because it feels that it did more to help it's Makers, the Forerunners, than AC and the praise that AC gets is wrongly given. Because of this, this Ancilla goes Rampant and the Forerunners are forced to shut it down. Why they didn't destroy it is unknown, but now this Ancilla is awake once again and wishes to exact revenge. I believe the something that AC was protecting was the shieldworld, Requiem. Which makes the Rampant Metarch-Class Ancilla the previous caretaker of Requiem.

You're correct about the Promethean Knight, but the ball is not a Cryptum. If I'm not mistaken in the book of the same name Cryptums were described as cylindrical not spherical. The ball is most likely a Metarch-Class Monitor. Possibly a new design for Contender-Class Monitors.

Apparently you have been under a rock for some time. The Assault Rifle is in Halo 3, Halo 3: odst, and Halo: Reach.

The new bipedal enemies are Forerunner Ancillas (Forerunner Artificial Intelligence) that are most likely designed for protect the shield world, Requiem, on which Halo 4 will take place (for at least the first half). These Forerunner Constructs are called Prometheans, Most likely named after the Forerunner Warrior-servant class of the same name. The four-legged Constructs are also named Promethean, Promethean Crawlers to be precise. The "sentinel" I think you're referring to is actually called the Watcher. It is a defensive type Construct that Promethean Knights can spawn from their backs. And the Flood has been confirmed to not be in Halo 4. The shield world is meant to protect from the Halo Array and the Flood. Much like a Galactic safehouse. And so the Flood was never taken to these worlds. As a final note the Forerunners could show up in the flesh, but as of right now it seems unlikely and we'll be stuck dealing with their Rampant Ancillas once again.

Didact never really "hated" humans, but he saw them as extremely violent and a major threat to the Mantle. He even held a Warrior's respect for the Humans he fought against as shown when he spoke to the Lord of Admirals before he was killed, so he could later be imprinted on Chakas. And like you said he strongly opposed the creation of the Halo Array and lost. But before he went into self-exile the Didact had several shield worlds constructed (in secret I believe). And this brings me to believe that the Didact is not the enemy. While he certainly had some contempt (although it was lessened after he was imprinted onto Bornstellar) I don't think he can be classified as an "Ancient Evil". I believe the enemy to be a Rampant Metarch-Class Ancilla that the Forerunners locked away and became active again (this is supported by the Aurora Cygnus story). Also something worth noting, at the end of the E3 trailer we see a symbol resembling the Didact's own, but filled in and larger. This COULD be the general symbol for Prometheans as the Ancilla Constructs are known as Promethean Knights, Crawlers, etc. There is also a voice saying "I have waited long for this day, Reclaimer" (something around those lines) and as far as we can tell only Forerunner Ancillas have been known to call Humans, Reclaimers. Another theory could be that this new threat is the Master Builder in Monitor form. As he truly hated Humanity and sided with MB and the Primordial.

Personally I don't think it's the Didact. He may have fought humans, but I have a hard time seeing how he can be classified as an "Ancient evil". As he wasn't evil, just a Warrior-servant that fought for his people and in the end he became friends with Humans (in a way). If it had to be any of the Forerunners I would think that it was the Master Builder, Faber. As his fate on Installation 07 is unknown and he was in cahoots with the Primordial and MB. They probably used the Composer and placed the Master Builder into a Metarch-Class Monitor (the giant ball). However if the Aurora Cygnus dealio holds any weight then I believe that the Ball is very angry and rampant Metarch-Class Ancilla that feels betrayed by the Forerunner and now awakened it wants to exact revenge on the only remaining link it has to it's creators, Humans.

Hmm.. interesting. Could you (or anyone) provide a link to where it talks about him being a Gravemind? Or is it just located in one of the books?