: I'll file it away in my head canon alongside machiavellian Truth and the
: Earth actually being the Ark.

: Halo 3 messed up a lot.

The trouble was they didn't have a full story when they started, much like the creators of Lost. But, sometimes I wonder how much the H2 scheduling/technical issues diverted things.

For example, H:CE seems to make humans == forerunner with forgotten history. The Prophet's desire to destroy humanity could be that humans were left behind like some deviant sub-group, or because humanity's presence undermined their religion and power base.

H2 seemed to try to continue in this vein. I always though the "ancient preserved structures" on Delta Halo were meant to be preserved architecture from Forerunner's (humanity's) true early beginnings. They planned on it coming to some sort of a conclusion on Earth, I think, but we all know what happened and we got the ending we did.

Something happened between H2 and H3, and perhaps even after H3. My guess is that Bungie wanted Halo to be done, but others wanted it to be the beginning of a longer saga. Where the Ark was originally to be on Earth, it was moved to an external installation. I think the Ark was supposed to be in the Earth (or similar), that humans were supposed to be awakened and re-educated at some point after the firing of the Halos, and something went wrong.

But that's all lost.

The weirdest thing about H3 is 343GS's statement in the end "You ARE Forerunner!". This is hard to resolve, even after mental gymnastics. It's almost as if Bungie were making a statement in the face of a tide it could not control.

I'm not making judgments about whether it's for better or worse, just speculating.

I think, in the end, things really got scrambled by the H2 issues.