They're random, baby














The Halo Story


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Hiay all,
 One of the strong ties between the Covenant and the Forerunner has been the Forerunner symbol on the Elite's back. But we haven't taken much time to look at the symbols themselves. What can we conclude from them? Can we understand their meaning? I can guarantee that at least some of them have distinct meaning. And have we even found them all? Here are, in their entirety, all the symbols, at least that I have found.


 Also, I created high res icons (128x128) for MacOSX, when you can DL here. Windows may be able to view them, I'm really not sure. In the future, if people want it, I may also convert this into a font.

 So, what do we know about them?

 The glowing cyan ones are found on the control panel in the Halo control room.
 The non-glowing cyan one is found on the back of the higher-rank Elites. The yellow one is found on the Covenant plasma grenade.
 
All the others are found in various Forerunner structures, mostly on the level, 343 Guilty Spark.
 
 We can deduce that the purple symbol means Elevator or Lift or something similar, most likely, as it is seen above any door leading to one of the elevators in 343GS.
 Also, above the doors where large Flood storage rooms are, two of the red symbols always appear, leading me to believe that they are a warning of some sort.
 Another thing is that several of the symbols are variations of each other. There are a total of 16 unique symbols; the other 8 are rotations or croppings of the 16 main symbols. Of note is the fact that the cropped versions may not have been intended to be cropped. They appear on a wall or something, similar to the non-cropped version, but they are placed
(as decals) in such a way that part of their texture extends past the edge of the poly that they are on, thus clipping it off. But, in sake of being thorough, I have included them as separate symbols.
 So, what more can we learn from them? What meaning do they have? Send in your comments, ideas, and thoughts.

 Also, I'd like to take this time to point out one mystery that, as of yet, has been completely overlooked, as far as I've seen, Derelict. I remind you that the Halo is not the only Forerunner installation we set foot on, in Halo. The Halo itself, but also Derelict, the net level. It's quite intriguing. It's a small station, floating in space, with no Halo in sight. Though it appears to be at the lagrange (sp?) point between a large planet and a moon, just like Halo, and there is a sun directly above the station. Also of note is how the level seems almost a hybrid of Covenant lighting and Forerunner design, textures, etc. Let discussion ensue.

Thnax,
~Åstro the Space Duck


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