: It's much more believable and richer than humanity simply being the
: Forerunners who personally regressed themselves when they needed their
: ingenuity the most. Such a grand species going from a Halo to a cave of
: their own accord is something I really doubt would ever happen.

The Forerunners did activate the array voluntarily. They wiped themselves out in the galaxy and, believing that the Flood were gone and feeling that the F did not deserve the mantle, the Didact reseeded the galaxy and left it to us.

They did not go to the cave, they restored us to our caves.

: Even then,
: Bungie's intentions with the Human-Forerunner connection seems vague. 343
: Guilty Spark speaks very strangely. He refers to John like they've met
: ions ago, and despite being almost entirely human, is referred to as a
: Forerunner.

We covered this ground years ago. Have you forgotten, did you miss it all, or have you a new point to make?

: It honestly seems like 343i's geas and related structures are
: rooted well in Bungie's mythos for Halo.

Are you talking about (Nylund?)'s speculation about how the Chief could understand F stuff?

If his speculation was true then we wouldn't just recognize F glyphs we would be using them ourselves. They would have been independently reinvented by all human cultures. He wouldn't have seen the glyphs as foreign he would have seen them as "English". And we would probably have one human language.

Anyone who ever drew a doodle would start recognizing words/concepts. They would soon realize that they knew an entire language and alphabet. If this was common then we would have a universal language. If even snippets were recognized by many people then we would have the basis for a universal human language.

The geas and multiple personalities are story telling poison because they make it too easy. You don't need to show people working stuff out (they just have an ancestor remember it for them). You don't need to create a credible reason why your characters go out of their way to do X (their geas made them do it).