: 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.

At what you want Bout 343s writing, but it is impressive how they have reconciled numerous things to fit. For example, 343GSs statement at the end of H3 and his "last time you asked me" HCE statement makes sense now, assuming we're correct about Chief being imprinted with the IsoDidact.