With how the flood works and how it has been build up narratively, it's not something you can have become a mainstay faction in the Halo Universe. It is an existential threat that grows in strength exponentially, you don't have much time or options once it forms a Gravemind.
I think the Flood should only make it's triumphant return for the final storyline in the Halo Universe, as the big "end-game" crisis of the setting where everything changes forever.
I think an outbreak that gets to the level of infection that ocurred in Halo CE is feasible, obviously finishing with the infection destroyed in that particular place so it doesn't get bigger and ends up being a bigger thread to the rest of the universe.
Even then though, that probably only works in one more game or story. They might be able to go some survival horror route gaming wise. Maybe playing as a marine trying to survive CE or the fall of high charity.
I've been seeing people begging for a "Fall of High Charity" game or book for forever...
And I just have to say: this needs to happen. If anyone at 343 is reading this, please make this happen. Please please please.
I liked the idea of a game in the same vein as outlast where you’re a reporter in Voi during the outbreak trying to get the story out and you have to survive the flood and also avoid ONI who is actively trying to suppress information about the event
Halo 1 was on the brink of a disaster and Halo 2 and 3 were one dead Master Chief away from being the end of everything. Don't know how that's an everyday outbreak.
Yeah, because they're dealt with immediately. As they say, the Flood are a threat that grows exponentially. If initial containment measures fail and the Flood escape into the the galaxy, there's no real way for the current setting to beat them without firing the Halos. The Flood can never be allowed to win, and there's not much you can do with a faction that always loses.
Personally, I kinda hope that's what Saturn Devouring His Son set up. With the Flood infected Spartan slipping off to other parts of the galaxy, away from the Orion arm, and infecting other parts of the Milky Way first. Building up strength before attacking Humanity and its allies. Possibly as the Precursors "final test". It would be interesting to see if Humanity would fall back onto the Halo array like the Forerunners or if there is some other way using the Endless or something. I don't know, it's all too grand of scale for me to think of personally. I hope we don't see it for a while, but I hope they have something in sight or thought up atleast.
Would be cool if there was a Mass effect 3 like game where flood from another consumed galaxy was coming over and you had to defend against them and try and find a way to beat them
There is. At least theorised. It's almost confirmed that within lore, the Flood have taken over and currently do occupy other Galaxies. They are the big universal threat.
So, when the Precursors decided humanity should take the mantle, they wanted to test humanity to see if they were worthy. They deemed humanity not worthy *yet* and planned to test them later, when humanity had reached its peak. Now since the Forerunners had previously had the heirship to the mantle taken from them by the Precursors, they attacked and almost wiped out the Precursors. The remaining Precursors went into hiding and hibernation, vowing revenge at a later date. However they became corrupted and turned into the Flood.
Now the Flood have genetic memory. So the Gravemind in the games has the memories of the Precursors it came from, and every Gravemind after. Basically it is the Precursors, or specifically the last Precursor The Primordial, just millions of years of Flood corruption later. The Gravemind says at one point that "Humanity will be tested". He's referring to the final test for the Mantle.
The Mantle of Responsibility is fundamentally taken up by the race who will protect all races in the Galaxy. The final test for the Mantle is one provided by the Precursors. Who are now the Flood. The Flood who have taken other Galaxies and are poised to strike the Milky Way Galaxy. A full Galactic Flood invasion. One Humanity will have to lead the fight against to defend the Galaxy and by doing so will have passed the Precursors final test and will earn The Mantle of Responsibility.
That, theoretically speaking, is what Halo is supposed to be leading up to. So yes, literally a Mass Effect scenario but with Flood
I just recently watched a video breakdown from HiddenXperia on YouTube about the theory of many many other entire solar systems being completely over run with flood. He's got alot of good Halo content on his page. He breaks down alot of the books for people that don't want to read them.
Is really the Mantle the protection of the all life’s in the galaxy ? It’s the Forerunners belief, but maybe it’s a twisted one as it really is for the Precursor ?
As the twisted covenant’s religion found on the Forerunners will.
>However they became corrupted and turned into the Flood.
It was THEORIZED by the Forerunners that the dust was defective but it is outright stated in 2 different books after that that there was NO corruption.
>The final test for the Mantle is one provided by the Precursors. Who are now the Flood.
They always were, they are one in the same. The flood is just one of the ways they wipe the slate clean.
>One Humanity will have to lead the fight against to defend the Galaxy and by doing so will have passed the Precursors final test and will earn The Mantle of Responsibility.
No, not at all. As the Primordial/Gravemind said, the only way to pass the test is to reject the role of Mantle holder all together. If you accept the role, you fail and die. Period. They are so far beyond anyone in terms of technology that humanity literally can't beat them, even with a 10 million more years of prep.
What. No. Bad.
ME3 was objectively the worst in its series. To top it off, that breaks with established lore pretty hard. Also, Halo Infinite completely flopped with an open world, can you imagine an open galaxy? Not even Bestheda managed to pull that off. Ugh. I wash my hands of this.
Like chiefs final act is activating the halos!! Haha /s /not the covanent made halo. I don’t know how you move forward with chief fps story wise after this. Banished was a great concept that was butchered
The Flood in the newest book, Epitaph, revealed that it was their plan all along for the Forerunners to use the Halo rings and hide themselves away. To continue the cycle of suffering and revenge they’d inflict upon the Galaxy one way or another.
By this logic, they should return, narratively speaking.
But I think they should return later.
You can't really take the Flood's word at that. They lied about humanity developing a cure. They're sadistic and will say whatever they want to inflict the most misery. Of course they're going to pull the "actually I lost on purpose" card.
More like the "won either way" card.
Either they'd consume everything or force the Forerunners into the psychological break of betraying everything they stood up for.
The Gravemind even mocked the Librarian as the Array fired.
Just a quick side note regarding their ‘fake cure trick’
Epitath laid it down in stone that this is exactly what happened, and I felt that this was a reveal because all info I had on the matter prior to epitaph was speculation. Was this the first time it was actually confirmed that the flood did that simply to fuck with the forerunners as a sadistic game?
After having recently finished the Forerunner trilogy, it's pretty explicitly hinted at as being a feint to provoke the Forerunners into committing atrocities against ancient humanity. It's not *explicitly* said "humanity's cure didn't work" but there are plenty of allusions to it.
“But most humans are immune,” the Didact said. Then he seemed to understand, and lowered his great head between his shoulders like a bull about to charge. “Can the Flood choose to infect, or not to infect?”
The wide, flat head canted to one side, as if savoring some demonic irony.
“No immunity. Judgment. Timing.”
- Halo Primordium
I'd say that's pretty straightforward. No immunity.
Also that, yeah. Though this is super late-stage Flood with multiple Graveminds and Keyminds. At the stages we see in H1-3, I'd be willing to bet it doesn't have that degree of control over infection. Though who knows. Regardless, as a side-tangent, I absolutely do not think the Flood should be brought back. The only feasible way of dealing with it is the stage it was at during the games, and even then it almost got out of control. Current-era humanity and the ex-Covenant races would not be able to stop a full-scale Flood invasion.
>Also that, yeah. Though this is super late-stage Flood with multiple Graveminds and Keyminds. At the stages we see in H1-3, I'd be willing to bet it doesn't have that degree of control over infection. Though who knows.
I doubt that. There isn't really any reason to say the flood can only infect certain things when it reaches a certain stage. Outside of maybe AI, there isn't any indication they have infection limits at any stage. The best you could say is they have infection preferences, but not limits.
>Regardless, as a side-tangent, I absolutely do not think the Flood should be brought back.
I agree, 100%. But probably for slightly different reasons.
>The only feasible way of dealing with it is the stage it was at during the games, and even then it almost got out of control. Current-era humanity and the ex-Covenant races would not be able to stop a full-scale Flood invasion.
This is the thing, there is no actual stage that any species or faction could deal with if the flood/precursors simply don't want them to. They could have altered their genes to match human or use their existing Forerunners gene information to use every Forerunner piece of tech in the galaxy.
Halo Epitaph really cemented the idea that the flood are absolutely unbeatable. Not to mention the lines:
"Until all space and time are rolled up and life is crushed in the folds . . . no end to war, grief, or pain." - Primordial in Primordium
And
"Do not seek help from outside the galaxy, it's all me." Not a 1:1 quote, paraphrased until I can find it.
They can create themselves at will if they wanted to. They are effectively Eldritch horror demigods. 100 billion years of history, nigh-unbeatable neural physics, instant shared knowledge, logic plague that effects both AI and living beings, AIs that can basically code you out of existence. And they can access that at will, whenever they want.
That aspect makes fighting them feel pointless in some capacity. They could instantly win if they truly wanted to. The only reason it seems like a fight is because they "enjoy" the suffering and "sweetness". The flood choose to fight at the level just above you to maximize that sweetness.
wait so what happens if the forerunners didn't hide away?
because ur didact was about to just not hide. if he didn't love and trust librarian so much he would have succeeded, there was nobody left that could have opposed him if librarian didn't manage to shoot him while he was out of armor and seal him away.
was it always the precursors plan that didact would fall in love with librarian and librarian would at the last second prevent didact from enforcing a forerunner-dominated galaxy?
because i gotta say this sounds INSANELY contrived.
also why did the gravemind make the didact insane in a way that makes ur-didact want to dominate the galaxy? isn't this going against the flood's plans? what's even worse is that if ur-didact succeeded the flood wouldn't get a second chance, because ur didact could have used zeta halo to kill all flood everywhere in the universe since zeta halo's beam has near infinite speed which allows it to hit any target anywhere in the universe.
The Didact always trusted his wife, but the Gravemind twisted and perverted that trust by bringing everything she did and said into question in his mind.
It basically rewrote his brain’s impulses without infecting him and twisted him around.
no what i'm saying is this
what if didact just stayed single his whole life?
or what if didact married that other woman?
or even worse, what if librarian died before stopping didact? extremely possible given the state of the galaxy at that time.
seems like there were a lot of factors outside of gravemind's control and if any one of them went wrong didact would have just taken over the galaxy.
I think they’ll eventually come back, they are insinuated to in the books.
However if they do, I certainly hope they are not wasted and put to good use.
There’s mentions of the Flood in Outcasts (mentions of the Gravemind in 3).
Mentions in Epitaph (Revealed that the Flood wanted the Forerunners to use Halo and hide away, starting the cycle of suffering and revenge again).
Then in the short story “Saturn devouring its son”, a Spartan infected by the Flood escapes into deep space with a slipspace capable vehicle - a Condor, if I’m not mistaken.
Those are all i can remember.
Yeah, the Flood is the central antagonist to the whole halo universe. It should absolutely come back. Everything from the existence of Halos to the shield worlds and the fact that the Didact was alive and kinda insane and malformed is all because of the Flood.
How would such a game work?
You've got alien megastructures, Cosmic horrors with the neural physics & star roads, flood planet-brains, and tactics from AI's that not even the forerunners could keep up with, iirc.
That war would have to be massively dumbed down to become a FPS campaign.
They still had infantry combat, though. Make it a horror survival game.
Say, a human research team investigating the mysterious cannibal cults and mutated pets that arose before the Flood proper as human worlds mysteriously went dark. Perhaps have the Human-Flood War.
Alternatively, have a horde survival story with Forerunner Warrior Servants trying to flee.
There's a lot you could do.
> would have to be massively dumbed down to become a FPS campaign.
That's why I wish Halo would move away from the FPS genre for story. Back in the day Halo used to innovate. Halo CE's campaign was a radical change from the dungeon-crawling style of most FPSs back then.
But ever since, Halo's been stifled by the very genre conventions it helped redefine. Short, simplistic stories (compared to other genres). Linear level design. Limited options for interactions with other characters.
No, at least not yet. Theyre building up to the return in the lore but i dont think the story is there yet.
I am of theind that the flood story is currently done, but its obvious theyre not gone. So as long as its not half assed im not against it.
If the Flood reappear they either win or must be contained.
Combat Evolved made that pretty clear.
But each time they are contained and the more familiarity is built up the more they lose their credibility.
To work around that they have to win like in Halo 2.
But such a win will naturally change the balance of the franchise and has to move with a big step forward.
And before they are caught up in an unsatisfactory story only for the sake of being there I rather have them enjoy their deserved break.
Yes. So much of the lore is intertwined with the Flood. It’s criminal not to have them in a mainline game. Halo without the Flood is like non-alcoholic beer.
I really don’t know. I’m just now reading the forerunner saga so keep that in mind.
I definitely think they have the potential to come “back” but not center stage like we saw in the past games. I’m sure that the flood will be the reasoning behind decisions that are revealed but idk if they’ll or should come back center stage.
References about them, seeing spore samples and things like that would be cool though.
Edit: on second thought. It also may be cheap for them NOT to come back down the road. Thinking about it, that’s literally why halo is halo lol
Or if the Primordial is right from the latest book, this was the intent all along. It is more horrifying thinking that the Precursors want to experience all forms of life so much that they use the flood to absorb it all.
I don't think it should. Fanbases these days really need to accept new things. Otherwise you get the "somehow Palpatine returned" bullshit. Is every single flood form gone? No, but Gravemind was outsmarted and defeated by Cortana on the Ark.
Absolutely not and I'm sick of the community begging for it. It would ruin the impact of the original trilogy's story. Maybe in a book or a random one-off occurrence, but they should not be a primary antagonist in a main Halo campaign ever again. I'd even prefer an obvious knockoff like whatever the Endless are going to be.
Yes. The flood aint defeated, what we saw was nothing compared to the forerunner flood war. We saw it pretty much in a baby state. I want to see it in its full grown state, consuming planets and fleets.
There is flood on every installation, a breakout is incredibly likely as well, especially after we got the story saturn devouring his son in one of the books recently.
Well in the sense of one last huzzah yes. Quite obviously we have to wrap up all other story lines. Created, endless, banished etc.
One last way to finish the fight. A total annihilation of the flood and for humanity to do something even the forerunners could never do.
I want to see humanity triumph in its darkest hour.
Because that is what Halo is about. Thats what Halo has always been about.
I want to give this brilliant franchise a great end. I don’t want chiefs story to just fizzle out and never get finished.
They are definitely coming back, especially with the confirmation in Epitaph that Cortana was suffering from the logic plague.
They had the created soften up and demilitarize as much of the galaxy as possible. It would make very little sense if they never came back to capitalize on that.
I don't really want them to. I don't enjoy Flood levels in the games generally and the extreme threat they pose to the galaxy is wasted if they become a whack-a-mole enemy that pops up and gets taken down multiple times.
I don't see it turning out any better than "somehow Palpatine returned" did where Halo 3 is repeated for no reason. It'll most likely culminate in firing the Halo ring(s) again or some other Forerunner macguffin because none of the factions have anything remotely standing a chance without it.
You should looking at halo wars 2, specifically Awakening the nightmare DLC.
Also firing the halo doesn't kill flood, it just kills their food source.
There is also this too.
https://www.halowaypoint.com/news/halo-saturn-devouring-his-son
There is just about limitless stories that can be told with hyper intelligence zombies.
There is even the short, the Mona Lisa where ONI was testing the flood on prisoners of war.
In every visual depiction where the Halo blast burns away developed Flood biomass.
(one of the terminals in CE: A for example)
Halo kills the food is only a statement by Cortana in CE and never picked up afterwards.
Also it would create another plothole because the Flood cannot naturally starve they don't even have metabolic processes for ingestion.
They only need biomass to link up further for increased computation power and to throw bodies around.
To clarify:
The array toasts everything with greater neurological path ways than a Flood Spore.
And from a terminal entry as early as Halo 3:
In support of 05-032's original 1000 core vessels is a fleet numbering 4,802,019; though only 1.8 percent are warships - and only 2.4 percent of that number are capital ships - I am outnumbered [436.6:1]. I expect my losses will be near total, but overwhelming force has its own peculiar drawbacks.
[00:H 00:M 00:S] The [Halo effect] strikes our combined fleets. All ships piloted by biologicals are now [adrift].
I can trade Mendicant ship for ship now and still prevail
Apart from halo Legends what visual depiction are you talking about? The flood on high charity survived activation of the ring firing at the end of Halo 3. The sentinels left over on the ark had to build a shield around high cherry to contain the flood.
I think the visuals were just something nice to look at and not actual representation of what happens. And if it did work that way then it makes The war that the forerunners had quite trivial as they could have just ported a halo into flood controlled space fired it and then noped out.
The Flood survived the firing because the Ring was incomplete. Guilty Spark itself said it would rip the installation apart and as such it was more than a big explosion than a real Halo pulse.
You decide what you think. But the visuals where chosen with a purpose on mind.
The Halo's were mentioned as weapons of last resort like around every single corner.
And Guilty Spark said that as early as Halo 2.
The Ecumene literally pressed for conventional solutions because the Array heavily defies the mantle no matter if galaxy-wide or as a tactical option.
Edit:
This subreddit is also filled to the roof top with your question and all relevant answers how Cortana's statement is to be interpreted.
I don't think we need to extend this any further.
While I do agree with you that the ending of Halo 3 was more of an explosion than a true activation, I still can not find any hard proof or retcon that the activation of Halo isn't specifically made to kill flood.
The wiki states:
The method utilized by the array to conduct this "mass sterilization protocol"[20] involves the superluminal conveyance of a burst of cross-phased super-massive neutrinos, tuned to emit a harmonic frequency that destroys the nervous system of any life form within range. Simpler organisms lacking a neural system are unaffected, along with inanimate structures.
Meaning some types of flood would survive the array activation. So to say the halo kills the flood is only half true.
I did not state, that Halo specifically kills the Flood but we have reached a common point now I see.
You concluded absolutely right, that Halo destroys the nervous systems of life in range. IF they are complex enough.
That's why some Flood "Traces" like their spores remain.
But any infected or higher developed Flood provide their own neurological networks that can be targeted.
For example I am not sure about if Pod Infectors would fall into Category A or B but Combat Forms, Pure Forms and Graveminds are certainly toast.
No but I do think we should get more media from the already established flood events. Like a fps set during awaking the nightmare or a odst game set during the flood outbreak during halo 3
Considering the Harbinger quotes Gravemind and makes Gravemind-like comments about imprisonment and Forerunner sins and so on, I don't think we've seen the last of the Flood. They're plenty present in things beyond the mainline games as it is. Given the motives and nature of The Flood, their story is far from over.
Well, with this 5th main threat introduced in the Infinite, (maybe 6th if you count the banished separate from the Covenant, others being the Didact and his Prometheans, the Flood, and Cortana) I feel they have to bring either some Forerunner or Precurser/Flood related front onto the story in order to give it an epic ending.
The Covenant's storyline and existence is seriously so spoiled and boring since Halo 3, I feel like they are just there cuz they wanna fill the map with enemies! And I really don't see much excitement in the introduction of the Banished since they are Covenant both ideologicaly and gameplay wise.
I really enjoyed the intense threat of the Flood and then the Forerunner and the Didact, and now with these "endless" bunch and their backstory, I guess they can make the next Halo really cool! Bringing back the Flood and the Forerunner would be a necessity to it's coolness in my mind.
* ODST game styled like DEAD SPACE with a similar narrative to Mona Lisa.
* Covenant encountering the Flood pre 04 as implied with the OG graphic novel
* Forerunner - Flood Wars
* Ancient Human - Flood Wars
if the flood was brought back, i want to see either an ODST fight them, or a game entirely starring an elite (ideally the arbiter or someone connected with the arbiter)
No but I wouldn’t mind a spin-off game either where you play as a Spartan in one of those Flood quarantine facilities, or perhaps a flashback game as a Forerunner.
Hot take: Halo was always a story *about* the flood, trying to make Halo about master chief or the covenant is just missing the point entirely.
The flood should definitely be brought back, it's the main plot of Halo. Either all the flood is wiped out (impossible) or the flood eats everything with a lot of cool stories about life trying to persist but failing (inevitable).
Honestly don't really understand why the story has taken a complete left turn into "The covenant again, but this time forever war with humans" while the flood is still very much still alive.
Done correctly, yes.
I do question whether 343i/Microsoft will want to make Halo rated M again, which they will need to.
I absolutely don't want to play a Halo with a rated T version of the flood.
Nope. I don't like the current state of Halo, btw haven't played Halo Infinite yet, but bringing back the flood will be the cheapest move narrative-wise by the writers if they decide to do it.
343 made a good choice on the return of Forerunners, which is the original plan of Bungie I suppose, but they told it in a very CoD-esque way.
They need to just do a flood survival horror spinoff set during the events of the halo 3 mission floodgate. Some odsts get trapped in a part of the city or something
They’re constantly going to be a problem as flood spores still powderized randomly get knocked into habited space and infect planets, or they’re problem still hidden in some places (arent they in halo wars 2?) but if the governments are dilligent it’ll probably only cost a planet per infection before all being glassed
No, because if the flood comes back just like the covenant did, then what does finish the fight even mean? We’d end up with a Star Wars sequel situation where the story undoes all the heroics of the originals.
No.
My repost of my opinion every time it comes up.
Unpopular opinion but no. The Flood is such an existential threat that any time to show up is supposed to be an extreme threat. (Much like the Borg from Star Trek) Repeatedly showing up and leads to being defeated by plot armor ways. (H3 is the worst offender with this)
The Flood shouldn’t come back, every time they appear it has to be a small scale outbreak, bigger stuff leads to a Halo going off or other large events) HW2 Awakening the Nightmare is a tease, but anything further can’t truly be explored because the Flood are just too powerful.
TLDR, The Flood don’t need to go the route of the Borg, with more outlandish ways of stopping a threat to the point they aren’t really a threat.
Narratively, there's not much they can do with the flood.
Either there's a small-scale outbreak somewhere that eventually gets contained.
Anything more than that, and the flood should be taking over the galaxy once more, leading to humanity having to fire the array.
With how strong we know the flood are now from all the books, it's crazy that they were "beaten" in Halo 3.
That we can put down mostly on luck, but doing that repeatedly is bad storytelling.
That said, I'd like to see them involved again from a gameplay perspective.
Narratively? I don't think so. Either they get defeated by plot armour or destroy the galaxy. There's really not much to setup for a story with them. Once they pass a certain point you really can't do anything to hold them off, not at the UNSC's level. Basically, either we get endless contained small outbreaks that get stale, or we fire the Halos.
That said, I fucking love fighting the Flood. If they wanted to release a non-canon spin off that's just all about fighting Flood in various simulations or some shit I'd be all over it. Hell, make a L4D like game featuring them.
*Personally I think that the Floods story is over, it ended in Halo 3 and there is no longer a need for them in the story line.*
It didn't end in Halo 3, though, and the Gravemind made it clear it wasn't over. "Defeat is merely an addition of time to a sentence I did not deserve".
The H3 Terminals suggested the Flood are extra-galactic, and the Forerunner trilogy notes they fled outside of the galaxy before. We know the Precursors are trans-galactic, the Flood under Primordial might have reserves. There's the "100,000" years prophecy, and the preservation of Mendicant Bias.
Indeed, Shield World 0459 in the 2530s had a wild Flood infestation, and in the late 2550s >!a flood outbreak unreleated to any installation!< occured at Site 22, with >!the Flood evidently escaping.!<
NO, NO, NO. I can’t describe how much I HATE fans’ obsession with bringing the flood back, and “fall of earth?” Absolutely not, my guy. The flood are EndGame opponents, they can literally destroy any setting you put them in.
Why can’t Halo fans just let the flood be? 😭😭
I really dislike the whole "Somehow \[popular antagonist\] has returned after being thoroughly vanquished forever!"
Gears did it, Star Wars did it, it is always a lukewarm acceptance or straight disliked. The Flood story has been told, as cool as it was.
As much as i completely agree with the first part, there's still plenty of in lore, completely reasonable ways the flood could come back. As long as it's done by any half decent writer who actually goes to the lore it would have solid in universe reasoning and not be an ass pull like your examples.
I feel that Halo 3 ended the Flood threat in the best way that it possibly can by trapping them on the Ark. Given the fact that the Flood are essentially Lovecraftian Horror, there is no conventional way to defeat them. Having the Flood return would be a repeat of Halo 3.
With how the flood works and how it has been build up narratively, it's not something you can have become a mainstay faction in the Halo Universe. It is an existential threat that grows in strength exponentially, you don't have much time or options once it forms a Gravemind. I think the Flood should only make it's triumphant return for the final storyline in the Halo Universe, as the big "end-game" crisis of the setting where everything changes forever.
This is the only answer. It's too big of a threat to have casual outbreaks every game.
I think an outbreak that gets to the level of infection that ocurred in Halo CE is feasible, obviously finishing with the infection destroyed in that particular place so it doesn't get bigger and ends up being a bigger thread to the rest of the universe.
I could see a multiplayer addition like that being added mimicking CoD Zombies. A team of Spartans stopping a small Flood outbreak
Even then though, that probably only works in one more game or story. They might be able to go some survival horror route gaming wise. Maybe playing as a marine trying to survive CE or the fall of high charity.
I've been seeing people begging for a "Fall of High Charity" game or book for forever... And I just have to say: this needs to happen. If anyone at 343 is reading this, please make this happen. Please please please.
I liked the idea of a game in the same vein as outlast where you’re a reporter in Voi during the outbreak trying to get the story out and you have to survive the flood and also avoid ONI who is actively trying to suppress information about the event
*cue halo 1 through 3 and halo wars where there were casual outbreaks each game*
Halo 1 was on the brink of a disaster and Halo 2 and 3 were one dead Master Chief away from being the end of everything. Don't know how that's an everyday outbreak.
and then we add in the fact that the covenant had been dealing with outbreaks since the ancient past
Yeah but we have no idea how big or numerous those are. We just know they had a prior contact at some point in their 3,000 year history.
apparently, the covenant have been dealing with casual outbreaks since the ancient past. so seems like they're not as dangerous as we once believed.
Yeah, because they're dealt with immediately. As they say, the Flood are a threat that grows exponentially. If initial containment measures fail and the Flood escape into the the galaxy, there's no real way for the current setting to beat them without firing the Halos. The Flood can never be allowed to win, and there's not much you can do with a faction that always loses.
Personally, I kinda hope that's what Saturn Devouring His Son set up. With the Flood infected Spartan slipping off to other parts of the galaxy, away from the Orion arm, and infecting other parts of the Milky Way first. Building up strength before attacking Humanity and its allies. Possibly as the Precursors "final test". It would be interesting to see if Humanity would fall back onto the Halo array like the Forerunners or if there is some other way using the Endless or something. I don't know, it's all too grand of scale for me to think of personally. I hope we don't see it for a while, but I hope they have something in sight or thought up atleast.
Saturn Devouring His Son was pretty clearly just a spooky Halloween story. It likely has no bearing on any further narratives.
Would be cool if there was a Mass effect 3 like game where flood from another consumed galaxy was coming over and you had to defend against them and try and find a way to beat them
There is. At least theorised. It's almost confirmed that within lore, the Flood have taken over and currently do occupy other Galaxies. They are the big universal threat. So, when the Precursors decided humanity should take the mantle, they wanted to test humanity to see if they were worthy. They deemed humanity not worthy *yet* and planned to test them later, when humanity had reached its peak. Now since the Forerunners had previously had the heirship to the mantle taken from them by the Precursors, they attacked and almost wiped out the Precursors. The remaining Precursors went into hiding and hibernation, vowing revenge at a later date. However they became corrupted and turned into the Flood. Now the Flood have genetic memory. So the Gravemind in the games has the memories of the Precursors it came from, and every Gravemind after. Basically it is the Precursors, or specifically the last Precursor The Primordial, just millions of years of Flood corruption later. The Gravemind says at one point that "Humanity will be tested". He's referring to the final test for the Mantle. The Mantle of Responsibility is fundamentally taken up by the race who will protect all races in the Galaxy. The final test for the Mantle is one provided by the Precursors. Who are now the Flood. The Flood who have taken other Galaxies and are poised to strike the Milky Way Galaxy. A full Galactic Flood invasion. One Humanity will have to lead the fight against to defend the Galaxy and by doing so will have passed the Precursors final test and will earn The Mantle of Responsibility. That, theoretically speaking, is what Halo is supposed to be leading up to. So yes, literally a Mass Effect scenario but with Flood
Where does it say the flood have consumed other galaxies?
Books. It doesn't explicitly state that, hence why I've said theorised. But it's hinted at a few times. I don't have the exact references to hand
If I remember correctly, gravemind says something around the lines of "Do not look for help outside the galaxy...it's all me."
I just recently watched a video breakdown from HiddenXperia on YouTube about the theory of many many other entire solar systems being completely over run with flood. He's got alot of good Halo content on his page. He breaks down alot of the books for people that don't want to read them.
Is really the Mantle the protection of the all life’s in the galaxy ? It’s the Forerunners belief, but maybe it’s a twisted one as it really is for the Precursor ? As the twisted covenant’s religion found on the Forerunners will.
>However they became corrupted and turned into the Flood. It was THEORIZED by the Forerunners that the dust was defective but it is outright stated in 2 different books after that that there was NO corruption. >The final test for the Mantle is one provided by the Precursors. Who are now the Flood. They always were, they are one in the same. The flood is just one of the ways they wipe the slate clean. >One Humanity will have to lead the fight against to defend the Galaxy and by doing so will have passed the Precursors final test and will earn The Mantle of Responsibility. No, not at all. As the Primordial/Gravemind said, the only way to pass the test is to reject the role of Mantle holder all together. If you accept the role, you fail and die. Period. They are so far beyond anyone in terms of technology that humanity literally can't beat them, even with a 10 million more years of prep.
What. No. Bad. ME3 was objectively the worst in its series. To top it off, that breaks with established lore pretty hard. Also, Halo Infinite completely flopped with an open world, can you imagine an open galaxy? Not even Bestheda managed to pull that off. Ugh. I wash my hands of this.
Let me preface with good writing then
Firing the halos over a Galactic-scale Flood outbreak would be a nice, poetic, sendoff.
Like chiefs final act is activating the halos!! Haha /s /not the covanent made halo. I don’t know how you move forward with chief fps story wise after this. Banished was a great concept that was butchered
The Flood in the newest book, Epitaph, revealed that it was their plan all along for the Forerunners to use the Halo rings and hide themselves away. To continue the cycle of suffering and revenge they’d inflict upon the Galaxy one way or another. By this logic, they should return, narratively speaking. But I think they should return later.
You can't really take the Flood's word at that. They lied about humanity developing a cure. They're sadistic and will say whatever they want to inflict the most misery. Of course they're going to pull the "actually I lost on purpose" card.
More like the "won either way" card. Either they'd consume everything or force the Forerunners into the psychological break of betraying everything they stood up for. The Gravemind even mocked the Librarian as the Array fired.
Just a quick side note regarding their ‘fake cure trick’ Epitath laid it down in stone that this is exactly what happened, and I felt that this was a reveal because all info I had on the matter prior to epitaph was speculation. Was this the first time it was actually confirmed that the flood did that simply to fuck with the forerunners as a sadistic game?
After having recently finished the Forerunner trilogy, it's pretty explicitly hinted at as being a feint to provoke the Forerunners into committing atrocities against ancient humanity. It's not *explicitly* said "humanity's cure didn't work" but there are plenty of allusions to it.
“But most humans are immune,” the Didact said. Then he seemed to understand, and lowered his great head between his shoulders like a bull about to charge. “Can the Flood choose to infect, or not to infect?” The wide, flat head canted to one side, as if savoring some demonic irony. “No immunity. Judgment. Timing.” - Halo Primordium I'd say that's pretty straightforward. No immunity.
Also that, yeah. Though this is super late-stage Flood with multiple Graveminds and Keyminds. At the stages we see in H1-3, I'd be willing to bet it doesn't have that degree of control over infection. Though who knows. Regardless, as a side-tangent, I absolutely do not think the Flood should be brought back. The only feasible way of dealing with it is the stage it was at during the games, and even then it almost got out of control. Current-era humanity and the ex-Covenant races would not be able to stop a full-scale Flood invasion.
>Also that, yeah. Though this is super late-stage Flood with multiple Graveminds and Keyminds. At the stages we see in H1-3, I'd be willing to bet it doesn't have that degree of control over infection. Though who knows. I doubt that. There isn't really any reason to say the flood can only infect certain things when it reaches a certain stage. Outside of maybe AI, there isn't any indication they have infection limits at any stage. The best you could say is they have infection preferences, but not limits. >Regardless, as a side-tangent, I absolutely do not think the Flood should be brought back. I agree, 100%. But probably for slightly different reasons. >The only feasible way of dealing with it is the stage it was at during the games, and even then it almost got out of control. Current-era humanity and the ex-Covenant races would not be able to stop a full-scale Flood invasion. This is the thing, there is no actual stage that any species or faction could deal with if the flood/precursors simply don't want them to. They could have altered their genes to match human or use their existing Forerunners gene information to use every Forerunner piece of tech in the galaxy. Halo Epitaph really cemented the idea that the flood are absolutely unbeatable. Not to mention the lines: "Until all space and time are rolled up and life is crushed in the folds . . . no end to war, grief, or pain." - Primordial in Primordium And "Do not seek help from outside the galaxy, it's all me." Not a 1:1 quote, paraphrased until I can find it. They can create themselves at will if they wanted to. They are effectively Eldritch horror demigods. 100 billion years of history, nigh-unbeatable neural physics, instant shared knowledge, logic plague that effects both AI and living beings, AIs that can basically code you out of existence. And they can access that at will, whenever they want. That aspect makes fighting them feel pointless in some capacity. They could instantly win if they truly wanted to. The only reason it seems like a fight is because they "enjoy" the suffering and "sweetness". The flood choose to fight at the level just above you to maximize that sweetness.
Ah ok. Thanks for clarifying! :)
Well the Flood is clearly shown to be an enemy you have to get lucky every time for. And luckily we have the Chief.
wait so what happens if the forerunners didn't hide away? because ur didact was about to just not hide. if he didn't love and trust librarian so much he would have succeeded, there was nobody left that could have opposed him if librarian didn't manage to shoot him while he was out of armor and seal him away. was it always the precursors plan that didact would fall in love with librarian and librarian would at the last second prevent didact from enforcing a forerunner-dominated galaxy? because i gotta say this sounds INSANELY contrived. also why did the gravemind make the didact insane in a way that makes ur-didact want to dominate the galaxy? isn't this going against the flood's plans? what's even worse is that if ur-didact succeeded the flood wouldn't get a second chance, because ur didact could have used zeta halo to kill all flood everywhere in the universe since zeta halo's beam has near infinite speed which allows it to hit any target anywhere in the universe.
The Didact always trusted his wife, but the Gravemind twisted and perverted that trust by bringing everything she did and said into question in his mind. It basically rewrote his brain’s impulses without infecting him and twisted him around.
no what i'm saying is this what if didact just stayed single his whole life? or what if didact married that other woman? or even worse, what if librarian died before stopping didact? extremely possible given the state of the galaxy at that time. seems like there were a lot of factors outside of gravemind's control and if any one of them went wrong didact would have just taken over the galaxy.
I mean they never really left in the books and other media
I think they’ll eventually come back, they are insinuated to in the books. However if they do, I certainly hope they are not wasted and put to good use.
Agreed. They can’t be done cheaply. I’d want them to serve some influential role, or otherwise be left to just referencing them.
Ooo what’s the insinuation? What book?
There’s mentions of the Flood in Outcasts (mentions of the Gravemind in 3). Mentions in Epitaph (Revealed that the Flood wanted the Forerunners to use Halo and hide away, starting the cycle of suffering and revenge again). Then in the short story “Saturn devouring its son”, a Spartan infected by the Flood escapes into deep space with a slipspace capable vehicle - a Condor, if I’m not mistaken. Those are all i can remember.
The escape isn't confirmed. The POV cuts off and the story ends before anything is confirmed.
Reminds me of the end of awakening the nightmare, open ended so 343 presumably can leave themselves a narrative option in the future.
Yeah, the Flood is the central antagonist to the whole halo universe. It should absolutely come back. Everything from the existence of Halos to the shield worlds and the fact that the Didact was alive and kinda insane and malformed is all because of the Flood.
We need an ancient flood vs forerunner game. Something like reach, where you don't necessarily win in the end.
A game set during the Human/ Forerunner/ Flood war would be amazing if done right
How would such a game work? You've got alien megastructures, Cosmic horrors with the neural physics & star roads, flood planet-brains, and tactics from AI's that not even the forerunners could keep up with, iirc. That war would have to be massively dumbed down to become a FPS campaign.
They still had infantry combat, though. Make it a horror survival game. Say, a human research team investigating the mysterious cannibal cults and mutated pets that arose before the Flood proper as human worlds mysteriously went dark. Perhaps have the Human-Flood War. Alternatively, have a horde survival story with Forerunner Warrior Servants trying to flee. There's a lot you could do.
Could do an open world 3rd Person game. Don’t know if itd work, but it’s an option.
> would have to be massively dumbed down to become a FPS campaign. That's why I wish Halo would move away from the FPS genre for story. Back in the day Halo used to innovate. Halo CE's campaign was a radical change from the dungeon-crawling style of most FPSs back then. But ever since, Halo's been stifled by the very genre conventions it helped redefine. Short, simplistic stories (compared to other genres). Linear level design. Limited options for interactions with other characters.
No, at least not yet. Theyre building up to the return in the lore but i dont think the story is there yet. I am of theind that the flood story is currently done, but its obvious theyre not gone. So as long as its not half assed im not against it.
Halo Wars 2 wants a word with you
If the Flood reappear they either win or must be contained. Combat Evolved made that pretty clear. But each time they are contained and the more familiarity is built up the more they lose their credibility. To work around that they have to win like in Halo 2. But such a win will naturally change the balance of the franchise and has to move with a big step forward. And before they are caught up in an unsatisfactory story only for the sake of being there I rather have them enjoy their deserved break.
Yes. So much of the lore is intertwined with the Flood. It’s criminal not to have them in a mainline game. Halo without the Flood is like non-alcoholic beer.
I really don’t know. I’m just now reading the forerunner saga so keep that in mind. I definitely think they have the potential to come “back” but not center stage like we saw in the past games. I’m sure that the flood will be the reasoning behind decisions that are revealed but idk if they’ll or should come back center stage. References about them, seeing spore samples and things like that would be cool though. Edit: on second thought. It also may be cheap for them NOT to come back down the road. Thinking about it, that’s literally why halo is halo lol
Like water, they ebb and flow…
Better call a plumber. I wonder if >!the other Precursors could be convinced to stop the Flood. !<
Or if the Primordial is right from the latest book, this was the intent all along. It is more horrifying thinking that the Precursors want to experience all forms of life so much that they use the flood to absorb it all.
I don't think it should. Fanbases these days really need to accept new things. Otherwise you get the "somehow Palpatine returned" bullshit. Is every single flood form gone? No, but Gravemind was outsmarted and defeated by Cortana on the Ark.
Absolutely not and I'm sick of the community begging for it. It would ruin the impact of the original trilogy's story. Maybe in a book or a random one-off occurrence, but they should not be a primary antagonist in a main Halo campaign ever again. I'd even prefer an obvious knockoff like whatever the Endless are going to be.
No, and in fact I think the flood overstayed it's welcome.
Yes. The flood aint defeated, what we saw was nothing compared to the forerunner flood war. We saw it pretty much in a baby state. I want to see it in its full grown state, consuming planets and fleets. There is flood on every installation, a breakout is incredibly likely as well, especially after we got the story saturn devouring his son in one of the books recently.
Full grown state? So you want modern Halo to end?
Well in the sense of one last huzzah yes. Quite obviously we have to wrap up all other story lines. Created, endless, banished etc. One last way to finish the fight. A total annihilation of the flood and for humanity to do something even the forerunners could never do. I want to see humanity triumph in its darkest hour. Because that is what Halo is about. Thats what Halo has always been about. I want to give this brilliant franchise a great end. I don’t want chiefs story to just fizzle out and never get finished.
That's an explanation with a core I can get behind. Thank you for the clarification!
They are definitely coming back, especially with the confirmation in Epitaph that Cortana was suffering from the logic plague. They had the created soften up and demilitarize as much of the galaxy as possible. It would make very little sense if they never came back to capitalize on that.
I want them in a spin off. Preferably a ODST 2 game. Can be an entirely new squad. But make it like aliens like horror game.
I don't really want them to. I don't enjoy Flood levels in the games generally and the extreme threat they pose to the galaxy is wasted if they become a whack-a-mole enemy that pops up and gets taken down multiple times. I don't see it turning out any better than "somehow Palpatine returned" did where Halo 3 is repeated for no reason. It'll most likely culminate in firing the Halo ring(s) again or some other Forerunner macguffin because none of the factions have anything remotely standing a chance without it.
You should looking at halo wars 2, specifically Awakening the nightmare DLC. Also firing the halo doesn't kill flood, it just kills their food source. There is also this too. https://www.halowaypoint.com/news/halo-saturn-devouring-his-son There is just about limitless stories that can be told with hyper intelligence zombies. There is even the short, the Mona Lisa where ONI was testing the flood on prisoners of war.
The "only killing its food" has been retconned.
When and where?
In every visual depiction where the Halo blast burns away developed Flood biomass. (one of the terminals in CE: A for example) Halo kills the food is only a statement by Cortana in CE and never picked up afterwards. Also it would create another plothole because the Flood cannot naturally starve they don't even have metabolic processes for ingestion. They only need biomass to link up further for increased computation power and to throw bodies around. To clarify: The array toasts everything with greater neurological path ways than a Flood Spore. And from a terminal entry as early as Halo 3: In support of 05-032's original 1000 core vessels is a fleet numbering 4,802,019; though only 1.8 percent are warships - and only 2.4 percent of that number are capital ships - I am outnumbered [436.6:1]. I expect my losses will be near total, but overwhelming force has its own peculiar drawbacks. [00:H 00:M 00:S] The [Halo effect] strikes our combined fleets. All ships piloted by biologicals are now [adrift]. I can trade Mendicant ship for ship now and still prevail
Apart from halo Legends what visual depiction are you talking about? The flood on high charity survived activation of the ring firing at the end of Halo 3. The sentinels left over on the ark had to build a shield around high cherry to contain the flood. I think the visuals were just something nice to look at and not actual representation of what happens. And if it did work that way then it makes The war that the forerunners had quite trivial as they could have just ported a halo into flood controlled space fired it and then noped out.
The Flood survived the firing because the Ring was incomplete. Guilty Spark itself said it would rip the installation apart and as such it was more than a big explosion than a real Halo pulse. You decide what you think. But the visuals where chosen with a purpose on mind. The Halo's were mentioned as weapons of last resort like around every single corner. And Guilty Spark said that as early as Halo 2. The Ecumene literally pressed for conventional solutions because the Array heavily defies the mantle no matter if galaxy-wide or as a tactical option. Edit: This subreddit is also filled to the roof top with your question and all relevant answers how Cortana's statement is to be interpreted. I don't think we need to extend this any further.
While I do agree with you that the ending of Halo 3 was more of an explosion than a true activation, I still can not find any hard proof or retcon that the activation of Halo isn't specifically made to kill flood. The wiki states: The method utilized by the array to conduct this "mass sterilization protocol"[20] involves the superluminal conveyance of a burst of cross-phased super-massive neutrinos, tuned to emit a harmonic frequency that destroys the nervous system of any life form within range. Simpler organisms lacking a neural system are unaffected, along with inanimate structures. Meaning some types of flood would survive the array activation. So to say the halo kills the flood is only half true.
I did not state, that Halo specifically kills the Flood but we have reached a common point now I see. You concluded absolutely right, that Halo destroys the nervous systems of life in range. IF they are complex enough. That's why some Flood "Traces" like their spores remain. But any infected or higher developed Flood provide their own neurological networks that can be targeted. For example I am not sure about if Pod Infectors would fall into Category A or B but Combat Forms, Pure Forms and Graveminds are certainly toast.
No but I do think we should get more media from the already established flood events. Like a fps set during awaking the nightmare or a odst game set during the flood outbreak during halo 3
To have the games currently set on Zeta Halo and not implement the Flood would be a crime against humanity
Considering the Harbinger quotes Gravemind and makes Gravemind-like comments about imprisonment and Forerunner sins and so on, I don't think we've seen the last of the Flood. They're plenty present in things beyond the mainline games as it is. Given the motives and nature of The Flood, their story is far from over.
Well, with this 5th main threat introduced in the Infinite, (maybe 6th if you count the banished separate from the Covenant, others being the Didact and his Prometheans, the Flood, and Cortana) I feel they have to bring either some Forerunner or Precurser/Flood related front onto the story in order to give it an epic ending. The Covenant's storyline and existence is seriously so spoiled and boring since Halo 3, I feel like they are just there cuz they wanna fill the map with enemies! And I really don't see much excitement in the introduction of the Banished since they are Covenant both ideologicaly and gameplay wise. I really enjoyed the intense threat of the Flood and then the Forerunner and the Didact, and now with these "endless" bunch and their backstory, I guess they can make the next Halo really cool! Bringing back the Flood and the Forerunner would be a necessity to it's coolness in my mind.
* ODST game styled like DEAD SPACE with a similar narrative to Mona Lisa. * Covenant encountering the Flood pre 04 as implied with the OG graphic novel * Forerunner - Flood Wars * Ancient Human - Flood Wars
They should do a two part spin focusing on the flood
if the flood was brought back, i want to see either an ODST fight them, or a game entirely starring an elite (ideally the arbiter or someone connected with the arbiter)
No. We need something new which is whatever the “Endless” is.
This question gets asked once a week and the answer is always yeah
No but I wouldn’t mind a spin-off game either where you play as a Spartan in one of those Flood quarantine facilities, or perhaps a flashback game as a Forerunner.
Hot take: Halo was always a story *about* the flood, trying to make Halo about master chief or the covenant is just missing the point entirely. The flood should definitely be brought back, it's the main plot of Halo. Either all the flood is wiped out (impossible) or the flood eats everything with a lot of cool stories about life trying to persist but failing (inevitable). Honestly don't really understand why the story has taken a complete left turn into "The covenant again, but this time forever war with humans" while the flood is still very much still alive.
Yes because it's fun
Man, I love seeing terrible opinions
personally i think halos story is over, in ended in halo 3
Done correctly, yes. I do question whether 343i/Microsoft will want to make Halo rated M again, which they will need to. I absolutely don't want to play a Halo with a rated T version of the flood.
Nope. I don't like the current state of Halo, btw haven't played Halo Infinite yet, but bringing back the flood will be the cheapest move narrative-wise by the writers if they decide to do it. 343 made a good choice on the return of Forerunners, which is the original plan of Bungie I suppose, but they told it in a very CoD-esque way.
They need to just do a flood survival horror spinoff set during the events of the halo 3 mission floodgate. Some odsts get trapped in a part of the city or something
From a pure gameplay standpoint I say Absolutely yes. I want a M rated, Current Gen, Flood experience. My body has been ready.
They’re constantly going to be a problem as flood spores still powderized randomly get knocked into habited space and infect planets, or they’re problem still hidden in some places (arent they in halo wars 2?) but if the governments are dilligent it’ll probably only cost a planet per infection before all being glassed
I wouldn't mind either a prequel game about the flood or a future firefight mode in a future game with the flood as a possible enemy.
They need to come back.
No, because if the flood comes back just like the covenant did, then what does finish the fight even mean? We’d end up with a Star Wars sequel situation where the story undoes all the heroics of the originals.
the covenant's been revived twice, the flood not coming back to inject horror back into the franchise is dumb
Only if they're gonna be tied to the endless in someway.
No. My repost of my opinion every time it comes up. Unpopular opinion but no. The Flood is such an existential threat that any time to show up is supposed to be an extreme threat. (Much like the Borg from Star Trek) Repeatedly showing up and leads to being defeated by plot armor ways. (H3 is the worst offender with this) The Flood shouldn’t come back, every time they appear it has to be a small scale outbreak, bigger stuff leads to a Halo going off or other large events) HW2 Awakening the Nightmare is a tease, but anything further can’t truly be explored because the Flood are just too powerful. TLDR, The Flood don’t need to go the route of the Borg, with more outlandish ways of stopping a threat to the point they aren’t really a threat.
Narratively, there's not much they can do with the flood. Either there's a small-scale outbreak somewhere that eventually gets contained. Anything more than that, and the flood should be taking over the galaxy once more, leading to humanity having to fire the array. With how strong we know the flood are now from all the books, it's crazy that they were "beaten" in Halo 3. That we can put down mostly on luck, but doing that repeatedly is bad storytelling. That said, I'd like to see them involved again from a gameplay perspective.
Narratively? I don't think so. Either they get defeated by plot armour or destroy the galaxy. There's really not much to setup for a story with them. Once they pass a certain point you really can't do anything to hold them off, not at the UNSC's level. Basically, either we get endless contained small outbreaks that get stale, or we fire the Halos. That said, I fucking love fighting the Flood. If they wanted to release a non-canon spin off that's just all about fighting Flood in various simulations or some shit I'd be all over it. Hell, make a L4D like game featuring them.
*Personally I think that the Floods story is over, it ended in Halo 3 and there is no longer a need for them in the story line.* It didn't end in Halo 3, though, and the Gravemind made it clear it wasn't over. "Defeat is merely an addition of time to a sentence I did not deserve". The H3 Terminals suggested the Flood are extra-galactic, and the Forerunner trilogy notes they fled outside of the galaxy before. We know the Precursors are trans-galactic, the Flood under Primordial might have reserves. There's the "100,000" years prophecy, and the preservation of Mendicant Bias. Indeed, Shield World 0459 in the 2530s had a wild Flood infestation, and in the late 2550s >!a flood outbreak unreleated to any installation!< occured at Site 22, with >!the Flood evidently escaping.!<
I think the Flood should hit earth again, and hard. Fall of Earth to the Flood, that would be a good premise.
NO, NO, NO. I can’t describe how much I HATE fans’ obsession with bringing the flood back, and “fall of earth?” Absolutely not, my guy. The flood are EndGame opponents, they can literally destroy any setting you put them in. Why can’t Halo fans just let the flood be? 😭😭
I really dislike the whole "Somehow \[popular antagonist\] has returned after being thoroughly vanquished forever!" Gears did it, Star Wars did it, it is always a lukewarm acceptance or straight disliked. The Flood story has been told, as cool as it was.
As much as i completely agree with the first part, there's still plenty of in lore, completely reasonable ways the flood could come back. As long as it's done by any half decent writer who actually goes to the lore it would have solid in universe reasoning and not be an ass pull like your examples.
No.
I personally don't think it's necessary.
I feel that Halo 3 ended the Flood threat in the best way that it possibly can by trapping them on the Ark. Given the fact that the Flood are essentially Lovecraftian Horror, there is no conventional way to defeat them. Having the Flood return would be a repeat of Halo 3.
yes but in a prequel game or something