This Halo looks like a desert with atmosphere. Perhaps the Forerunners left some Halo rings uninhabitable, or the were marred in a conflict. Perhaps the Flood infested some of the rings and left them like this when they were activated.
The fact that installation 04 is represented to be in pieces suggests that each holograph is a display in real time. When I first played through the game on co-op, I had noticed that a few of the installations seemed to be taken over by the Flood. Considering the Flood’s overarching reach, I think it’s safe to assume that the Flood had discovered some of the installations and had infected them, whether it had been before the demise of the Forerunners or after. The parasite may have even escaped the failsafes of any individual installation.
It seems more likely that the Flood have continued their expansion since being released in the Human/Covenant war.
Heres a thought that abruptly burst into my mind. How could there be any flood alive on the Halo rings if the Halo Array was fired? Could it be that the containment facilities on the Halo rings meant to store and study the flood were built to protect the contained flood from the pulse that should have eliminated all sentient beings? I find that unlikely, but it appears to be the only possible conclusion.
Ok. Those facilities were built to protect everything else from the flood. Needless to say that they worked really good. On top of that, it was noted in Ghosts of Onyx that he forerunners had developed suspended animation in slipspace, making subjects impervious in that state.
Perhaps the Forerunner constructed the rings to have different environments. Not everything breaths a Nitrogen Oxygen cocktail, maybe this ring is for them.
Though this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, since humans are the only encountered species capable of activating the Halo rings.
Personally, I consider this either a barren desert landscape or a dyed moon-like terrain. I can’t remeber how the atmosphere and landscape work, but if the Forerunners designed the Halo’s to somehow become what a planet would look like in that paticular part of the galaxy. Then again the Forerunners could have just built it as (what NS Loco said) a warning
Comment by 0000 - Unknown Seer — May 5, 2008 @ 3:37 pm
A hunter? Looks more like a flood infection form to me! Round with little legs and hairs sticking out of the top…
The Halo “Pulses” only killed sentient life, the food for the flood, not the flood itself, perhaps it would effect the grave-mind of a infection of sizable mass but surely not the infection forms…..
Comment by Remorse and Hate — May 22, 2008 @ 7:36 pm
Wait if the Halo Array annhialated all sentient life then what the hell is the Flood infecting on the rings. Are there like sentient species that have evolved on the rings or the Covenant is there…? For the people running this blog site I know this might seem like something a noob would say but I hope you know that you can sometimes take screenshots of cutscenes. If you want an example check out my fileshare on Bungie.net under Da3m0n 0m3gA. To avoid further confusion what looks like O’s in my name are actually zeros…
guys the surface of that ring is infact covered in flood i hunted down some bungie employies and they told me that much
Comment by coktail assasin — May 23, 2008 @ 6:32 pm
installation 01, reminds me of jupiter! the terrain looks some what similar. in my mind the flood infect each halo ring as they are created at the same time… {disclaimer} also at the end of ‘Halo 3’ when you beat it on legendary it show a “planet” i’m assuming that this planet is the homeworld to the speices called “the flood” by human tongue.
Comment by survivaljuice — May 23, 2008 @ 10:18 pm
Yeah, it seems that this ring is uninhabited or overrun by the flood. Could be intentional, or it could have had the atmosphere obliterated by an event (host star nova or towards the end of its life?)
On the First firing, thr halos killed all the combat forms in the flood fleet
Comment by Offensive Bias — May 25, 2008 @ 2:24 pm
the thing looks like flood flesh
Comment by Offensive Bias — May 25, 2008 @ 2:25 pm
id have to agree with te comments on the ring being overrun with flood. The surface itself is reminiscent of the flood environment.
Just a side note, would it be possible that the symbol above the ring is shaped like a flood parasite to remind other forerunners that its infected (possibly during completion of the ring? flood specimens were accidentaly released aand all the remaining forerunners who constructed the ring were the catalyst for the widespread infection?)so that they would be aware that the ring was infected and it should be avoided?
Either the ring is representative of a desert environment, or has been completely contaminated and covered by flood biomass on the habitable side of the ring. These arguments can be supported as follows.
The desert environment is likely because the Forerunner wanted to trip up the flood. By changing each ring’s habitat they could have hoped to stall any flood advance, at least for a while.
The biomass is likely merely because of the coloration and the fact that flood biomass itself is only moderately intelligent and would therefore be spared if it were behind enough shielding. In addition, the Flood biology may be much more highly resistant to radiation which I am sure the rings use.
On a side note, the Halo Effect only affects creatures with “…sufficient biomass to sustain the Flood” – Guilty Spark, Halo 1. So if small pockets of flood were dispersed around the facility they could have easily survived the initial firing of the rings.
I think it’s more of a desert that flood biomass you notice that the flood chagne the atmoshpere in the place they are in to an eerie sick green/yellow color This ring has that on land not in the atmosphere( if it were it wouldn’t copy such jagged lines so closley, but I’m no expert in alien atmospheres) Maybe this is part of a test the Forerunners had going to see which enviroment the flood were weakest in? or maybe this ring is just a desert enviroment with no rhymm or reason.
Comment by Firestarter-007 — June 2, 2008 @ 4:47 pm
Well, I would say the Forerunners design for the Halos was for studying the Flood and their development and status in different atmospheres or climates available in the galaxy, either to find a cure or a weakness or something like that. My opinion about this ring is not so different from the others, it’s a gigantic Flood mass or a desert-like atmosphere, the latter being my favorite because if it was a Flood infection, that mass would probably be a gravemind or worst, ’cause the gravemind in Halo 2 wasn’t that big, as far as I could see, and that gravemind is controlling the flood. Or maybe this is a big biomass with not much power as the Delta Halo Gravemind.
Anyway, it could be both, ’cause the surface is all lumpy flesh-like.
That is just plain’s instalation 04 was the same way in part’s of it if you remember. It’s still perfectly habitable. It’s not a giant flood carpet. And the planet you see at the end of Halo 3 is not the flood homeworld. If you were a true fan of this site you would have read the article on that planet. It is a shield world.
Comment by reclaim_ARK00 — June 28, 2008 @ 5:48 pm
you people are incorrect, the ppl on halopedia have finally figured it out that u ppl are incorrect so the correct order of the rings are there look it up
This ring is often mistaken for Installation 07 because of the order of the rings in the level the Covenant. Although it is not so because Installation 05 is the 5th ring from the platform on which Truth and the brutes reside rather than the direction in which the player enters the area. (whereas the 5th ring in from the entrance has a volcanic surface, and this is obviously not so as Delta Halo had an identical surface to Installation 04)
I honestly think that this halo is infested, i doubt that if the gravemind was truly concerned that S117 would be capable of defeating him. For the gravemind i would say that the pawns were sent to the Ark maybe it went to the ark as well, however the GM seems to know things from its first appearance and will just reform again.
I don’t think that the fight is truly finished, nor do i think that we have seen the end of the halo series. The MC destroyed the most effective weapon at combating the flood. Things may escalate if they are controlling the installations.
The Gravemind has been able to effectively shutdown all installations if this is the case. Unless the forerunner world holds another weapon, created by the forerunners after they eradicated the flood.
With the latest increase in bungie ARG style messages i have a feeling that halo 4 or some major part of the story is about to play out.
If anything thing this ring would likely need to be inhabitable by humans(excluding flood-infected rings) becasue they descended from Forerunners.
This ring might be infected but otherwise is probably an arid desert climate with the library in a mountain crater filled with water.
The bright white is probably sand and the brown and black are craters and mountains.
Comment by Wrath of T3nma — November 18, 2008 @ 10:30 pm
it really looks like flood on that ring
Comment by generalMADLee — December 20, 2008 @ 1:39 pm
you know humans & the covanat probably aren’t the only sentinent races mabe another race found the ring & broke containment & that could be how the flood spread
oh I missed tis in my last comment the flood are definetly not defeated I suspect the flood that came to the milky way is just a scouting force. out there there is probably a flood armada controling numerous other galaxys whitch is probably why the forerunners kept flood specimens they knew they would fight them agin.we cold be seeing anasty war again and it would take a miricle to win as it took in the Human-Covanat war.
also the enviornment test would make scense after all the rings are flood reaserch facilities and we did see deserts on the ark remember halo 3 personaly its probably dessert & flood becuse we know the flood are on all the rings for study & heat & cold are there weaknesses
Firstly, to push away any confusion: I didn’t have time to read all the comments. But in the few i did read, there were a few theories as to why some of the Rings were infected by the Flood even after activation. This is because specimens of the Flood were kept for research on the Rings and the pulse emitted to kill Sentient life would not effect those test subjects inside the quarantined area. This is so that if the Forerunners plan to survive the activation inside the Shield Worlds worked, they could then go back and carry on studying the Flood. I believe that the quarantine areas didn’t work as well as expected and so after activation the specimens escaped and bred using the corpses of the wiped out sentient life already on the Rings.
Comment by Captain EVA — April 10, 2009 @ 10:24 am
Sorry, got carried away speculating with the comments about the Flood still being alive after the Rings were activated that i didn’t remember that the Flood are not directly affected by the pulses emitted from the rings…in fact, the pulses only wipe out the sentient life that the Flood feed on so that they do not have anything to ‘breed’ from. Sorry lol ๐
My theory was, in fact, more fact, as if the Rings did wipe out the Flood, the specimens in the quarantined area would still not be affected…but anyway, i was still kind-of wrong.
Comment by Captain EVA — April 10, 2009 @ 10:33 am
what do u mean specimens the still live but they grow of old age
ok i got a question if the rings killed all sentient life and the flood were suppose to starve to death why are they still around? its been a hundred milliona(im a bad speller) just die already. and how does the flood know when to make a grave mind do they have a langue or way of talking to each other?
Okay, I’m just going to throw this out there. The glyph looks like a Hunter.
Let that marinate.
Comment by Urk — March 24, 2008 @ 7:53 am
This Halo looks like a desert with atmosphere. Perhaps the Forerunners left some Halo rings uninhabitable, or the were marred in a conflict. Perhaps the Flood infested some of the rings and left them like this when they were activated.
Comment by Psi Gun — March 24, 2008 @ 9:15 am
That, or it is a plain/prairie, and is inhabitable.
Comment by Nick — May 2, 2008 @ 9:33 pm
This one looks like Venus, which is very hot and uninhabitable, which could be the Forerunners way of saying “keep out”.
Comment by NS Loco — May 3, 2008 @ 7:19 am
Maybe a hole developed somewhere on the surface or the ring stopped spinning, expelling the air and loose matter.
Comment by observer — May 3, 2008 @ 8:08 am
The fact that installation 04 is represented to be in pieces suggests that each holograph is a display in real time. When I first played through the game on co-op, I had noticed that a few of the installations seemed to be taken over by the Flood. Considering the Flood’s overarching reach, I think it’s safe to assume that the Flood had discovered some of the installations and had infected them, whether it had been before the demise of the Forerunners or after. The parasite may have even escaped the failsafes of any individual installation.
It seems more likely that the Flood have continued their expansion since being released in the Human/Covenant war.
Comment by iBrick — May 3, 2008 @ 12:17 pm
Probably a desert world. Be perfect if monitor 07 had a dirty mexican accent. “This a love song fukr”
Comment by Diddler — May 3, 2008 @ 6:33 pm
Conclusively a rough, dry, desert environment.
Comment by Kabcr — May 3, 2008 @ 10:16 pm
Heres a thought that abruptly burst into my mind. How could there be any flood alive on the Halo rings if the Halo Array was fired? Could it be that the containment facilities on the Halo rings meant to store and study the flood were built to protect the contained flood from the pulse that should have eliminated all sentient beings? I find that unlikely, but it appears to be the only possible conclusion.
Comment by [B]Rad — May 4, 2008 @ 12:27 am
Ok. Those facilities were built to protect everything else from the flood. Needless to say that they worked really good. On top of that, it was noted in Ghosts of Onyx that he forerunners had developed suspended animation in slipspace, making subjects impervious in that state.
Comment by Diddler — May 4, 2008 @ 9:04 am
maybe thats flood on the surface , lots of flood.
Comment by Ansi — May 4, 2008 @ 9:37 am
Perhaps the Forerunner constructed the rings to have different environments. Not everything breaths a Nitrogen Oxygen cocktail, maybe this ring is for them.
Though this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, since humans are the only encountered species capable of activating the Halo rings.
Comment by Stephen — May 5, 2008 @ 10:39 am
Personally, I consider this either a barren desert landscape or a dyed moon-like terrain. I can’t remeber how the atmosphere and landscape work, but if the Forerunners designed the Halo’s to somehow become what a planet would look like in that paticular part of the galaxy. Then again the Forerunners could have just built it as (what NS Loco said) a warning
Comment by 0000 - Unknown Seer — May 5, 2008 @ 3:37 pm
A hunter? Looks more like a flood infection form to me! Round with little legs and hairs sticking out of the top…
Comment by Joel — May 7, 2008 @ 12:02 am
The Halo “Pulses” only killed sentient life, the food for the flood, not the flood itself, perhaps it would effect the grave-mind of a infection of sizable mass but surely not the infection forms…..
Comment by Remorse and Hate — May 22, 2008 @ 7:36 pm
Wait if the Halo Array annhialated all sentient life then what the hell is the Flood infecting on the rings. Are there like sentient species that have evolved on the rings or the Covenant is there…? For the people running this blog site I know this might seem like something a noob would say but I hope you know that you can sometimes take screenshots of cutscenes. If you want an example check out my fileshare on Bungie.net under Da3m0n 0m3gA. To avoid further confusion what looks like O’s in my name are actually zeros…
Comment by Da3m0n 0m3gA — May 23, 2008 @ 6:23 pm
guys the surface of that ring is infact covered in flood i hunted down some bungie employies and they told me that much
Comment by coktail assasin — May 23, 2008 @ 6:32 pm
installation 01, reminds me of jupiter! the terrain looks some what similar. in my mind the flood infect each halo ring as they are created at the same time… {disclaimer} also at the end of ‘Halo 3’ when you beat it on legendary it show a “planet” i’m assuming that this planet is the homeworld to the speices called “the flood” by human tongue.
Comment by survivaljuice — May 23, 2008 @ 10:18 pm
Yeah, it seems that this ring is uninhabited or overrun by the flood. Could be intentional, or it could have had the atmosphere obliterated by an event (host star nova or towards the end of its life?)
Comment by SRI-Emperor — May 24, 2008 @ 3:20 pm
On the First firing, thr halos killed all the combat forms in the flood fleet
Comment by Offensive Bias — May 25, 2008 @ 2:24 pm
the thing looks like flood flesh
Comment by Offensive Bias — May 25, 2008 @ 2:25 pm
id have to agree with te comments on the ring being overrun with flood. The surface itself is reminiscent of the flood environment.
Just a side note, would it be possible that the symbol above the ring is shaped like a flood parasite to remind other forerunners that its infected (possibly during completion of the ring? flood specimens were accidentaly released aand all the remaining forerunners who constructed the ring were the catalyst for the widespread infection?)so that they would be aware that the ring was infected and it should be avoided?
Comment by JohnM3E92 — May 26, 2008 @ 4:39 am
Either the ring is representative of a desert environment, or has been completely contaminated and covered by flood biomass on the habitable side of the ring. These arguments can be supported as follows.
The desert environment is likely because the Forerunner wanted to trip up the flood. By changing each ring’s habitat they could have hoped to stall any flood advance, at least for a while.
The biomass is likely merely because of the coloration and the fact that flood biomass itself is only moderately intelligent and would therefore be spared if it were behind enough shielding. In addition, the Flood biology may be much more highly resistant to radiation which I am sure the rings use.
On a side note, the Halo Effect only affects creatures with “…sufficient biomass to sustain the Flood” – Guilty Spark, Halo 1. So if small pockets of flood were dispersed around the facility they could have easily survived the initial firing of the rings.
Comment by Hunter — May 26, 2008 @ 8:20 pm
I think it’s more of a desert that flood biomass you notice that the flood chagne the atmoshpere in the place they are in to an eerie sick green/yellow color This ring has that on land not in the atmosphere( if it were it wouldn’t copy such jagged lines so closley, but I’m no expert in alien atmospheres) Maybe this is part of a test the Forerunners had going to see which enviroment the flood were weakest in? or maybe this ring is just a desert enviroment with no rhymm or reason.
Comment by Firestarter-007 — June 2, 2008 @ 4:47 pm
It looks like Venus’ surface.
Comment by Chris — June 9, 2008 @ 7:05 pm
Perhaps it has a mixture of both Flood biomass and desert terrain.
Comment by Spartan-039 — June 16, 2008 @ 6:17 pm
Well, I would say the Forerunners design for the Halos was for studying the Flood and their development and status in different atmospheres or climates available in the galaxy, either to find a cure or a weakness or something like that. My opinion about this ring is not so different from the others, it’s a gigantic Flood mass or a desert-like atmosphere, the latter being my favorite because if it was a Flood infection, that mass would probably be a gravemind or worst, ’cause the gravemind in Halo 2 wasn’t that big, as far as I could see, and that gravemind is controlling the flood. Or maybe this is a big biomass with not much power as the Delta Halo Gravemind.
Anyway, it could be both, ’cause the surface is all lumpy flesh-like.
Comment by Antonio — June 24, 2008 @ 8:35 pm
That is just plain’s instalation 04 was the same way in part’s of it if you remember. It’s still perfectly habitable. It’s not a giant flood carpet. And the planet you see at the end of Halo 3 is not the flood homeworld. If you were a true fan of this site you would have read the article on that planet. It is a shield world.
Comment by Nate — June 27, 2008 @ 12:27 am
venus…thats what i see.
Comment by reclaim_ARK00 — June 28, 2008 @ 5:48 pm
you people are incorrect, the ppl on halopedia have finally figured it out that u ppl are incorrect so the correct order of the rings are there look it up
Comment by garry — July 8, 2008 @ 9:39 pm
This ring is often mistaken for Installation 07 because of the order of the rings in the level the Covenant. Although it is not so because Installation 05 is the 5th ring from the platform on which Truth and the brutes reside rather than the direction in which the player enters the area. (whereas the 5th ring in from the entrance has a volcanic surface, and this is obviously not so as Delta Halo had an identical surface to Installation 04)
Comment by SPARTAN-117 — August 3, 2008 @ 3:02 pm
I honestly think that this halo is infested, i doubt that if the gravemind was truly concerned that S117 would be capable of defeating him. For the gravemind i would say that the pawns were sent to the Ark maybe it went to the ark as well, however the GM seems to know things from its first appearance and will just reform again.
I don’t think that the fight is truly finished, nor do i think that we have seen the end of the halo series. The MC destroyed the most effective weapon at combating the flood. Things may escalate if they are controlling the installations.
The Gravemind has been able to effectively shutdown all installations if this is the case. Unless the forerunner world holds another weapon, created by the forerunners after they eradicated the flood.
With the latest increase in bungie ARG style messages i have a feeling that halo 4 or some major part of the story is about to play out.
Comment by Tao298 — September 25, 2008 @ 5:33 am
If anything thing this ring would likely need to be inhabitable by humans(excluding flood-infected rings) becasue they descended from Forerunners.
This ring might be infected but otherwise is probably an arid desert climate with the library in a mountain crater filled with water.
The bright white is probably sand and the brown and black are craters and mountains.
Comment by Wrath of T3nma — November 18, 2008 @ 10:30 pm
it really looks like flood on that ring
Comment by generalMADLee — December 20, 2008 @ 1:39 pm
you know humans & the covanat probably aren’t the only sentinent races mabe another race found the ring & broke containment & that could be how the flood spread
Comment by Dragrath — March 30, 2009 @ 8:36 am
oh I missed tis in my last comment the flood are definetly not defeated I suspect the flood that came to the milky way is just a scouting force. out there there is probably a flood armada controling numerous other galaxys whitch is probably why the forerunners kept flood specimens they knew they would fight them agin.we cold be seeing anasty war again and it would take a miricle to win as it took in the Human-Covanat war.
Comment by Dragrath — March 30, 2009 @ 8:45 am
also the enviornment test would make scense after all the rings are flood reaserch facilities and we did see deserts on the ark remember halo 3 personaly its probably dessert & flood becuse we know the flood are on all the rings for study & heat & cold are there weaknesses
Comment by Dragrath — March 30, 2009 @ 8:54 am
Firstly, to push away any confusion: I didn’t have time to read all the comments. But in the few i did read, there were a few theories as to why some of the Rings were infected by the Flood even after activation. This is because specimens of the Flood were kept for research on the Rings and the pulse emitted to kill Sentient life would not effect those test subjects inside the quarantined area. This is so that if the Forerunners plan to survive the activation inside the Shield Worlds worked, they could then go back and carry on studying the Flood. I believe that the quarantine areas didn’t work as well as expected and so after activation the specimens escaped and bred using the corpses of the wiped out sentient life already on the Rings.
Comment by Captain EVA — April 10, 2009 @ 10:24 am
Sorry, got carried away speculating with the comments about the Flood still being alive after the Rings were activated that i didn’t remember that the Flood are not directly affected by the pulses emitted from the rings…in fact, the pulses only wipe out the sentient life that the Flood feed on so that they do not have anything to ‘breed’ from. Sorry lol ๐
My theory was, in fact, more fact, as if the Rings did wipe out the Flood, the specimens in the quarantined area would still not be affected…but anyway, i was still kind-of wrong.
Comment by Captain EVA — April 10, 2009 @ 10:33 am
what do u mean specimens the still live but they grow of old age
Comment by Alertfiend — July 5, 2009 @ 3:08 am
ok i got a question if the rings killed all sentient life and the flood were suppose to starve to death why are they still around? its been a hundred milliona(im a bad speller) just die already. and how does the flood know when to make a grave mind do they have a langue or way of talking to each other?
Comment by christian — July 27, 2009 @ 3:57 pm
Looks like some area in the arabian desert
Comment by Antdog — March 23, 2010 @ 1:01 am