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April 18, 2002

Well Mr. Security Officer are you the 10th military Mjolnir Mark IV cyborg?

Unlike the Marathon Story, we were given a definitive answer to the "Who are we?" question. Halo: The Fall of Reach explains in detail the origins of the Master Chief, leaving little room for Marathon-style speculation. Does that stop us? Never! :-) One of the great things about a Bungie game is the Story: At once detailed and specific, yet with enough ambiguity to allow for rampant crack-pipe ponderings. ;-)

Sit back, relax, and go with the flow...

Alex Stevens (alexstvn@maine.rr.com) writes:

The following may be a rehashing or reworking of ideas or theories that I cannot claim credit for, and some are my own take on the (very complex) matters involved.

- The Master Chief -

The first subject I want to tackle, is the recent Jason Jones interview, where he flatly stated that the Master Chief is the same cyborg from the Marathon series. The question becomes, are we to take him literally, or was that statement merely that the folks at Bungie got the feeling as they made the game that, at an inside level with nothing official, it was basically the same character or type of character.

For the sake of argument, I choose not to take Jason Jones literally, but I could, of course, be completely mistaken.

- The Timeline -

There are a couple of interesting theories on the particular timeline of Halo, and I'd like to take a close look at each one. One of the popular theories is that Halo takes place many thousands of years after the original Marathon series, even though if one were to interpret the date as if it was AD, it would appear to take place BEFORE Marathon.

To expand on the theory, some have argued that perhaps the human race was all but completely destroyed through a catastrophe of stellar proportions, an alien invasion, the prior triggering of a Halo or Halos, etc.

The idea being that humanity slowly crawled it's way through the ages again, re-discovered space flight, but lost all knowledge of the past. Along with this theory comes the idea that humans ourselves were the forerunners, and had to be nearly completely destroyed by Halo(s). The other fact that compliments that theory is that no one has been on Halo for 100,000 years approximately.

The theory sounds not only reasonable, but after a review of the facts, almost plausible, but there is one critical hole in it if we are to assume that Halo is taking place thousands of years after the Marathon series:

Two key names. "Marathon class cruiser" and "Mjolnir Mark armor". If we were the forerunner and Halo took place 100,000 + years after the Marathon series, it would have to be quite a coincidence that those two names were used for the exact same classifications of ships/armor. Too big a coincidence for my liking.

If we are to still adopt the above theory as true, we would be forced to conclude that if we were the forerunners, that Halo takes place before the Marathon series, but not too much time before, as we're limited to a narrow window - that window being the fact that the Master Chief is a Mark V, while the cyborg in Marathon is a Mark IV. As others have mentioned, as the Marathon was in flight for 300 years, it is indeed possible that during that time advances in technology could have been made to produce the next level of Mjolnir cyborgs, but that does limit us to a relatively short period of time, and it throws out the theory that the Master Chief is literally the same cyborg from the Marathon series.

- 343 Guilty Spark -

Expanding on the timeline issue again, there has been theories of 343 GS as actually being an incarnation of Durandal. If we are to believe that the timeline is before the Marathon series, it is seemingly impossible that 343 GS could in fact be Durandal, just as it is impossible that the Master Chief could be the same Mark IV cyborg.

The only way around this is if Durandal could have somehow found the Halo very shortly after his creation, and managed to corrupt or take over its network, and embody himself in Guilty Spark. He would indeed have a window, albeit a short one to do this, as the launch of the Marathon was in 2472 AD, before the Halo incident in 2552 (assuming we believe that year to be AD). It's possible, but it seems like a rather thin theory with more holes than not.

It is tempting to believe that Guilty Spark is in fact Durandal, as he carries the same sarcasm, arrogance and humor, though given the current information we have, the timeline MUST then be several years after the Marathon series. It is possible that Guilty Spark is NOT Durandal after all, but IS in a state of rampancy.

Then there are the allusions Guilty Spark makes of having known us before, many years ago. We can interpret this two ways: Either Guilty Spark IS Durandal, and believes us, rightly or wrongly, to be the cyborg from Marathon in the past, or Guilty Spark is an entity unto himself and believes us to be a member of the forerunners.

- The Flood -

We know very little about this species, save that they are very nasty indeed. It's still up in the air whether or not they were harvested as a potential weapon by the forerunners, studied as we study deadly viruses today for research and potential cures, or created as a sort of deadly bio-weapon.

As we at this time simply have a lack of information on the subject, I am leaning more towards the theory that the flood was not created, but was in fact contained and isolated for simple research purposes. This, however, remains to be seen.

- The Covenant -

Little is known about them as well. There are no Marathon tie-ins that I can see yet, so they, as do the flood, appear to be their own beast. It has been argued by some that perhaps the Covenant were the ones who created the flood, but I toss that theory out the window myself.

As for their intense, religious-based hatred towards humans, I can only speculate. There have been a few theories that have caught my attention, such as perhaps us having had contact with them in the far past as the forerunners, and some transgression having taken place that we have forgotten but they have not. This is an interesting theory, though if true then obviously the timeline must be 100,000 + after the Marathon series.

- The End Game -

It's all very puzzling, isn't it? Knowing Bungie, I'm not sure whether or not we'll ever get a definitive answer on even half of the theories and issues raised here, however I have no doubt that more information that would either expand or destroy some of the theories will come to light, either in the context of the sequel to Halo, or in another form like the Cortana letters.

I guess we'll just have to be patient...

:-)

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-mnemesis




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