Little in the ways of oceans, and even less in clouds.
How about this, a ring wide fungus? Completely covers the world and soaks up any moisture? Then evolution takes place and different fungi eat each other, explaining the variance in color. Just a megalomaniatic thought.
Possibly glassed again. My comment should be on Installation 05, where the Elites blast 05’s surface to fractions. The ring’s intact, however.
Burning with upwards of 9000 (?) degrees Celsius (boils rivers before even getting there), seems to do a lot of things to fleshy material.
The superficial structures indicate a rough terrain, possibly a mountanous region. Farther up, scotches of blue and green and yellow indicate a wet-dry subtropical environment.
If the rings habitats were designed as flood deterrents why put a habitat on the rings in the first place? Cold hard metal deters parasites just fine, the rings could have just been large space stations with no habitat at all, that would deter flood growth just fine. The habitats seem to serve some purpose for life, what exactly though is tough to pin down since some of them seem uninhabitable.
The Halos were probably inhabited by Forerunners doing research on the flood or for emergency response purposes. These were built during the human-flood war after all.
I think that Installation 07 is similar to 04 and 05 (before 04 was destroyed and 05 was glassed) it seems to be a variety of prarie, possibly desert, mountain and maybe, just maybe a hint of forest and/or jungle.
p.s.
I have to say some minds think a like as I would have said this installation was similar to African terrain, but Kaijudomage beat me to it.
Comment by 0000 - Unknown Seer — May 5, 2008 @ 4:04 pm
Nice. Looks like grasslands leading into something like a badland kind of landscape. That’d make it habitable too.
The Halo Rings were made so that the Forerunners could contain and study the Flood (and kill all sentient life in the galaxy to rid the galaxy of the flood if need be). Perhaps the different climates and landscape features on the different Halo Rings allowed the Forerunners to study the Flood in a varity of environments. This would allow the Forerunners to learn a lot more about the Flood and its behavior than if it was just contained in a metal building.
Comment by Matthew Underwood — May 6, 2008 @ 10:42 am
I also believe that each ring has a variety of different environments. That was proven by both Installation 04 and 05. Most of the rings do appear to host multiple environments on thier surfaces. The installations that do not appear to do this, probably do, you just cannot see it in the pictures provided. I will look in the game myself to see if my theory is accurate.
Comment by Matthew Underwood — May 6, 2008 @ 10:46 am
i think that all the rings are supposed to come together and form a world in which the flood cannot live in and only the forerunner. also i believe when the rings come together that some how it will be fired and create a portal that leads to the forerunners or so the forerunners can come back when it is safe.
It makes sense to me that these rings are dynamic environments. They’ve been there for very long periods of time. Lets look at Earth first:
1) The fall of the Forerunner gives rise to the rise of humanity
2) The Earth’s own climate changed a lot through various natural activities since then until the present (2552)
It makes sense that the forerunner created them with uniform habitable environments for the reclaimers access but, with the forerunner gone there is nobody to oversee maintenance. It could be that the monitors and setinals could undergo repairs but, as we know, they are not invincible, immortal, or uncontrollable. It seems to me that these rings underwent the struggles of time in which only a few survived in their original condition.
The purpose of the rings was to study and contain the flood as well as a last resort WMD. The rings are assumed to be serving those purposes with or without a habitable environment. If the flood feed on sentient life than the uninhabitable environments would only serve as further containment measures. What are the flood to do without food? The forerunner were powerful and intelligent but, with their abscence nature the environment and nature prevail.
the crater looks like a meteor impact. maybe desert because of the deaths of live thanks to the impact?
and i think SMG90 is correct. the various climated could have been a product simply of the changing of the temperature. On earth climated change happens a lot to, think of the ice ages.
I agree with Kaijudomage, looks like an African climate, with Saharan-style desert, and then safari plains, and jungle further up.
I doubt Climate Change has ever occurred in any significant magnitude on the rings. Their environments are balanced by the ring’s systems itself and by their monitors. The experiments run would’ve needed a controlled environment, which was part of the rings’ creation in the first place. Climate change couldn’t be allowed.
Think about the system’s 04 and 05 were in as well. One gas giant, with a moon for 04, and just a gas giant for 05 (as far as we could tell). Relatively sparse systems with stable G-type stars. In the Cosmos, that’s as controlled an environment as you’re going to get. (I believe the Gas Giants were chosen due to the availability of Hydrogen in them, as used for fuel. Otherwise the rings would just orbit lone stars. Plus that’s just boring, orbiting a lone star)
This one seems pleasant to me. There seems to be no presence of the Flood on its surface. Granted there are some craters but there’s also a fair ammount of green and blue. Looks like a good place for a summer home.
what’s curious is that installations 04 and 05 were both varied and seemed to include many different types of climates and vegetattion, even deserts (the Maw) but all the other Halos look specialized.
int he video game this ring is the one closest to the activation panel so why would installation 07 be the one closest to the panel when installation 01 came first?
this is appernatly where the forerunners first made flood like creatures but they could not leave the ring as they couldnt survive on any planet that didnt have the exact conditions of that ring[ estimated precentage of habtial planets to proto flood in universe is less then 0.000000001%]
Comment by coktail assasin — May 23, 2008 @ 6:57 pm
This ring does seem similar to 04 and 05 in that it’s varied. Maybe the brown portions by the craters were once covered in vegetation till the meteor/asteroid hit. To answer why they have both specialized and variety Halos maybe it was once part of the Conservation thing the Forerunners were doing. The specialized ones were for Flood research while Variety ones are for supporting some of the species that they collected as part of the Conservation thing. But then again i don’t know why they would put the Flood so close to their food…
coktail, I said I would ignore you but that was outright wrong, the forerunners didn’t create the flood at all.
I do agree with Seth, however, and I was going to make a statement that installations (01 and 07) (02 and 06) (03 and 05(before it’s probable/theoretical glassing)) appear to be similar in landscape while 04 most resembles Earth, though I could be wrong about 03. I also want to say that the two circles in the glyph represent the infinity symbol but they seem too far apart and are separated by the +/crosshair looking thing with a swirly line flinging off the bottom inner circle.
the terrain i’ve noticed seems very earth-like, this halo ring also seems habitable for human life to grow more. it does also seems its mars-like for looking like dead plains or somesort of desert.
Comment by survivaljuice — May 23, 2008 @ 10:59 pm
Joel i disagree with you but i agree with OTfor2 the symbol does resemble Yin-Yang
maybe the forunner, just like humans, had different governments and one government had found a new bioweapon: the flood. The rings were probably originally made to test the Flood’s effectiveness in various environments, and on various species. when the outbreak happened, they were probably reconfigured to be used as weapons.
I agree with OTfor2, it does look kind of like a ying yang. I might be crazy, or i could just be the key to the answer, but if you look at the lower part of the ring were the largest crater is, you see a the outline of the white section of a ying yang. If you look close enough, you can see the black outline, too.
So, I’m going to go ahead and say there’s 2 environments here, the desert and the jungle. This is one of those “Indiana Jones” types of environments, which if you’ve seen the movies you’ll get.
And no, the Flood were night invented by the Forerunner, and yes, if they truly wanted there to be no risk of outbreak, they’d have made cold hard metal and the whole place uninhabitable. Robots don’t need to breathe, Flood might not either. So aside from any forerunner maitnence crews, they could use it to deter anyone from coming too close, and keep the flood contained.
THere is obviously an Atmosphere and it obviously has not been glassed look at the water its still there! Probably got hit by an asteroid and is trying to recover ( Forerunner didn’t put very good space defenses up as we learned from all the Halo games).
Comment by Firestarter-007 — June 2, 2008 @ 4:59 pm
dude i would love to make a summer home here. This looks like a plains type environment that is also very habitable. Maybe this ring had nothing to do with the flood but was made so the forerunners could enjoy themselves( with the ring also housing its cleansing weapon, of course)?
Doesn’t look uninhabitable to me. In fact, none of them look totally uninhabitable, some just seem to be a much harsher environment than others. There is life in all kinds of weird places, think about Antartica, the deep sea vents, the Sahara…. with our present day technology we can survive in all kinds of hostile environments, so we have to assume the Forerunners could have inhabited an even wider range of extremes.
They seem to have built the rings to be able to sustain specific types of life, possibly the native species of a variety of different worlds, along with a small population of Forerunner researchers, in order to study the Flood in conditions mimicking various Forerunner worlds without having to risk infecting their populations.
The rings, in my opinion, were a place for the relocation ships to leave certain species for research until a ship was avaliable. Perhaps for a sentient desert species that has yet to be seen.
Just because the rings were in a stable system does not mean that their climates are stable. A simple asteroid/meteor strike or even a simple change in the rotation, tilt, or revolution of the ring could issue in a change in climate. Just because the forrunner built the monitors and setinals does not mean they are perfect. Their purpose was to watch over and take care of the rings. We know that they were not invincible. 2401 was captured by the Gravemind and rendered rather useless. If somethng were to happen to the monitor and setinals (assuming that their maintenance significantly affects the ring and its environment) the climate and even stability of the ring could shatter. We know the flood impact environments first hand. In Halo CE it was apparent that Halo had it’s own artificail weather and climate systems (Cortana makes it clear on AotCR). A malfunction in one of the systems could have a significant impact on the rings environment. It seems that the Halos had different environment in different locations for a reason (possibly for aesthetics or research purposes).
In my opinion, the rings were constructed to be habitable but, the tests of time affected the installations in various ways. A lot of things could have affected the rings over time. I think we sometimes give the Forrunner too much credit and see them more as Gods like the Covenant do and not like another species that had the time to evolve and grow with its own imperfections.
i think the rings were built to be habitable as a way to test flood infection on a large scale. the forerunner were were very advanced, and probably did not need a giant planet-like world to do simple laboratory tests on the flood. instead, maybe the forerunner would allow the ring to flourish with life, and then infect it with some flood spores as a way to see how fast they could control the world, etc without risking anyones life. this would explain why some rings have wide varieties of climates (like earth) and some are large stretches of desert or ice, as those types of planets are probably common in the galaxy. as well, the forerunner would probably have been very interested to see if the flood could conquer an ice world. also, this is conjecture, but we’ve heard Guilty Spark say he has gone through multiple test firings of his installation. maybe, once the flood had conquered the ring, it was fired locally to start another round of tests. this to me would be the best way to actually test the damn things.
heres another interesting thought; when u first touch down on delta halo in halo 2, your fighting in some ancient ruins, which is a departure from the “normal” forerunner architecture, as its built from rock. maybe the forerunner placed a primitive, but sentient species on that halo, and they were the builders of the ruins? i could be totally wrong, but the ruins dont seem “forerunner-y”. of course, directly putting another sentient race in harms would seem to be against their mantle, but keep in mind that the halos were built as a last resort, so perhaps they began to cut some corners out of desperation. also keep in mind that a gravemind was able to form underneath the surface of this ring and no where else (im assuming there is only one gravemind at a time). we know that flood feed on sentient life, so this would explain why the grave mind formed here in particular.
anyway, sorry if i went off topic also, purely another guess, but maybe the circles inside the glyph have something to do with the solar system the ring is located in? in this case, a binary system? im not sure, but to me it would make sense for the glyph to either be the name of the ring, or its location in space; so maybe its naming the star system, not the ring itself
This ring is quite strange, has a jungle/forest look on the top, and a desert like environment. I think it’s either a deserts/plains environment with some water or jungle, or maybe once a plains/jungle environment that changed with that meteor/asteroid hitting the ring’s surface and killing much of the vegetation.
And as many said above, it does look something like Africa, I would say that the upper part looks like the Mediterranean with Africa below.
Roswellian’s on to something. The rings depicted here have a single surface, very different from what we saw on installation 04. Why would the rest of the rings have a single climate? We didn’t even see much diversity on 05.
The flood can obviously survive and thrive anywhere, even in space with 0 atmosphere and no much more temperature. Maybe the forerunner were testing where the flood liked to go on vacation? A tropical island by the silent cartographer, or hit the slopes by the control room?
As far as this one goes, the ark looks a bit sandier for the most part. This looks a little rockier, maybe like New Mexico or where those Jawas captured R2D2. I dont see enough green to say Jungle, but we haven’t seen a plains environment yet.
Well on the topic of different environments - and i don’t know if this has been said yet, i don’t have enough time to read all the comments - the different climates may be a way to study the Flood? Think about it, the only reason i can see so make so many different inhabitable places for the Flood is to see which one they thrive/cannot survive in. Thats my personal opinion.
Comment by Shadow Of Faith — July 24, 2008 @ 7:03 pm
Well. Some people need to read more about the flood.
Anyway, I don’t think this installation (which by the way is actually installation 01, vociferous got the rings backward) was hit by an asteroid. The simple reason is that if it was, it wouldn’t be there anymore. Think about it: that kind of impact would have been huge, and even the Forerunner materials have there limit (think Pillar of Autumn).
Comment by the silver fox — August 21, 2008 @ 9:10 pm
Then again, the explosion from the reactors WAS awfully big…but I’m unsure if it would have had the same effect as a asteroid. It seems to me that an asteroid the size of the one that killed the dinosaurs would just tear right through a Halo, but these are just theories.
Keep speculating.
442 out
Comment by the silver fox — August 22, 2008 @ 8:00 pm
Here’s a thought: the Forerunner built each Halo with different climates because they wanted variety? Be more aesthetic? Interesting? Having 7 gigantic metal rings would look bland and get old after a while.
Or, this ring could have been covered with massive oceans and landmasses like 04 was, but climate control was/is malfunctioning.
Or maybe the climates of each ring evolved separately over time.
Or maybe they are located at different points of their respective solar systems, and their climates are reflective of that (like how planets in our solar system have different climates; 04 is in a “Goldilocks” location, like Earth; this one is in a Venus-like location).
Hmm…looks desert-like, moon-ish. Possibly inhabitable.
Comment by Sephirose — March 24, 2008 @ 6:38 pm
I see a lot of green farther up, it could very well be jungle or plains type of environment…
Comment by Sangheili — April 1, 2008 @ 11:43 am
Mhm, craters. Should be fun to play in.
Comment by Calliopeia — April 3, 2008 @ 4:57 am
Seems to look kind of like Africa, considering that’s where the portal to the Ark was placed.
Comment by Kaijudomage — April 21, 2008 @ 4:27 pm
another form of harsh weather for the flood containent facilities.
why else would they make different surfaces on each halo?
Comment by Gangly Creature — May 3, 2008 @ 4:05 am
Looks kind of like the surface of Mars, with that brownish-red hue.
Comment by NS Loco — May 3, 2008 @ 7:17 am
Little in the ways of oceans, and even less in clouds.
How about this, a ring wide fungus? Completely covers the world and soaks up any moisture? Then evolution takes place and different fungi eat each other, explaining the variance in color. Just a megalomaniatic thought.
Comment by observer — May 3, 2008 @ 8:23 am
I’m thinking the Halo glyphs have something to do with their number.
Just a thought.
Comment by Foopaux — May 3, 2008 @ 1:11 pm
Could be tundra? Too cold to snow but leaves a vegetation line and barens.
Comment by Diddler — May 3, 2008 @ 6:28 pm
Possibly glassed again. My comment should be on Installation 05, where the Elites blast 05’s surface to fractions. The ring’s intact, however.
Burning with upwards of 9000 (?) degrees Celsius (boils rivers before even getting there), seems to do a lot of things to fleshy material.
Comment by Rez — May 3, 2008 @ 7:25 pm
The superficial structures indicate a rough terrain, possibly a mountanous region. Farther up, scotches of blue and green and yellow indicate a wet-dry subtropical environment.
Comment by Kabcr — May 3, 2008 @ 9:55 pm
If the rings habitats were designed as flood deterrents why put a habitat on the rings in the first place? Cold hard metal deters parasites just fine, the rings could have just been large space stations with no habitat at all, that would deter flood growth just fine. The habitats seem to serve some purpose for life, what exactly though is tough to pin down since some of them seem uninhabitable.
Comment by Indy — May 3, 2008 @ 11:06 pm
The Halos were probably inhabited by Forerunners doing research on the flood or for emergency response purposes. These were built during the human-flood war after all.
Comment by Diddler — May 4, 2008 @ 9:31 am
erm Forerunner - Flood?
Comment by Ansi — May 4, 2008 @ 9:54 am
My bad
Comment by Diddler — May 4, 2008 @ 7:07 pm
I think that Installation 07 is similar to 04 and 05 (before 04 was destroyed and 05 was glassed) it seems to be a variety of prarie, possibly desert, mountain and maybe, just maybe a hint of forest and/or jungle.
p.s.
I have to say some minds think a like as I would have said this installation was similar to African terrain, but Kaijudomage beat me to it.
Comment by 0000 - Unknown Seer — May 5, 2008 @ 4:04 pm
Nice. Looks like grasslands leading into something like a badland kind of landscape. That’d make it habitable too.
Comment by Diddler — May 6, 2008 @ 7:01 am
The Halo Rings were made so that the Forerunners could contain and study the Flood (and kill all sentient life in the galaxy to rid the galaxy of the flood if need be). Perhaps the different climates and landscape features on the different Halo Rings allowed the Forerunners to study the Flood in a varity of environments. This would allow the Forerunners to learn a lot more about the Flood and its behavior than if it was just contained in a metal building.
Comment by Matthew Underwood — May 6, 2008 @ 10:42 am
I also believe that each ring has a variety of different environments. That was proven by both Installation 04 and 05. Most of the rings do appear to host multiple environments on thier surfaces. The installations that do not appear to do this, probably do, you just cannot see it in the pictures provided. I will look in the game myself to see if my theory is accurate.
Comment by Matthew Underwood — May 6, 2008 @ 10:46 am
i think that all the rings are supposed to come together and form a world in which the flood cannot live in and only the forerunner. also i believe when the rings come together that some how it will be fired and create a portal that leads to the forerunners or so the forerunners can come back when it is safe.
Comment by Matt — May 6, 2008 @ 3:12 pm
It makes sense to me that these rings are dynamic environments. They’ve been there for very long periods of time. Lets look at Earth first:
1) The fall of the Forerunner gives rise to the rise of humanity
2) The Earth’s own climate changed a lot through various natural activities since then until the present (2552)
It makes sense that the forerunner created them with uniform habitable environments for the reclaimers access but, with the forerunner gone there is nobody to oversee maintenance. It could be that the monitors and setinals could undergo repairs but, as we know, they are not invincible, immortal, or uncontrollable. It seems to me that these rings underwent the struggles of time in which only a few survived in their original condition.
The purpose of the rings was to study and contain the flood as well as a last resort WMD. The rings are assumed to be serving those purposes with or without a habitable environment. If the flood feed on sentient life than the uninhabitable environments would only serve as further containment measures. What are the flood to do without food? The forerunner were powerful and intelligent but, with their abscence nature the environment and nature prevail.
Comment by SMG90 — May 6, 2008 @ 11:08 pm
the crater looks like a meteor impact. maybe desert because of the deaths of live thanks to the impact?
and i think SMG90 is correct. the various climated could have been a product simply of the changing of the temperature. On earth climated change happens a lot to, think of the ice ages.
Comment by thijsbos — May 8, 2008 @ 2:34 am
I agree with Kaijudomage, looks like an African climate, with Saharan-style desert, and then safari plains, and jungle further up.
I doubt Climate Change has ever occurred in any significant magnitude on the rings. Their environments are balanced by the ring’s systems itself and by their monitors. The experiments run would’ve needed a controlled environment, which was part of the rings’ creation in the first place. Climate change couldn’t be allowed.
Think about the system’s 04 and 05 were in as well. One gas giant, with a moon for 04, and just a gas giant for 05 (as far as we could tell). Relatively sparse systems with stable G-type stars. In the Cosmos, that’s as controlled an environment as you’re going to get. (I believe the Gas Giants were chosen due to the availability of Hydrogen in them, as used for fuel. Otherwise the rings would just orbit lone stars. Plus that’s just boring, orbiting a lone star)
Comment by Dante — May 9, 2008 @ 1:51 am
The symbol. It’s Yin-Yang.
Comment by OTfor2 — May 9, 2008 @ 5:56 am
It possibly Moon and destert like
Comment by Commder Paul — May 9, 2008 @ 11:55 am
I think the atmosphere’s of the rings were built differently to test atmospheric affects on the flood.
Comment by silentblade117 — May 10, 2008 @ 11:30 pm
Weird Bungie made this ring not very pretty and it is #7.
Damn they should had used installation 1, 2 or 7 for Halo cuz of the different environments.
Comment by Sorrento — May 16, 2008 @ 12:04 am
for Halo 2 that is.
Comment by Sorrento — May 16, 2008 @ 12:04 am
This one seems pleasant to me. There seems to be no presence of the Flood on its surface. Granted there are some craters but there’s also a fair ammount of green and blue. Looks like a good place for a summer home.
Comment by Chris000 — May 16, 2008 @ 7:21 am
I have to agree with NS Loco.
it really does look like Mars.
And is it just me, or does that crater and curve look amazingly similar to this?
http://www.mpc643.org/gallery/solarsystem/MoonImbrium.gif
The moon’s lunar sea. Maybe Bungie just colored it rust-red to depict mars?
Comment by GundamX67 — May 23, 2008 @ 5:39 am
what’s curious is that installations 04 and 05 were both varied and seemed to include many different types of climates and vegetattion, even deserts (the Maw) but all the other Halos look specialized.
Comment by Seth — May 23, 2008 @ 12:55 pm
int he video game this ring is the one closest to the activation panel so why would installation 07 be the one closest to the panel when installation 01 came first?
Comment by Garry — May 23, 2008 @ 2:22 pm
DEFINITLY THE ORLY OWL IN THE GLYPH
Comment by Lemmonade — May 23, 2008 @ 6:15 pm
this is appernatly where the forerunners first made flood like creatures but they could not leave the ring as they couldnt survive on any planet that didnt have the exact conditions of that ring[ estimated precentage of habtial planets to proto flood in universe is less then 0.000000001%]
Comment by coktail assasin — May 23, 2008 @ 6:57 pm
This ring does seem similar to 04 and 05 in that it’s varied. Maybe the brown portions by the craters were once covered in vegetation till the meteor/asteroid hit. To answer why they have both specialized and variety Halos maybe it was once part of the Conservation thing the Forerunners were doing. The specialized ones were for Flood research while Variety ones are for supporting some of the species that they collected as part of the Conservation thing. But then again i don’t know why they would put the Flood so close to their food…
Comment by Da3m0n 0m3gA — May 23, 2008 @ 6:58 pm
coktail, I said I would ignore you but that was outright wrong, the forerunners didn’t create the flood at all.
I do agree with Seth, however, and I was going to make a statement that installations (01 and 07) (02 and 06) (03 and 05(before it’s probable/theoretical glassing)) appear to be similar in landscape while 04 most resembles Earth, though I could be wrong about 03. I also want to say that the two circles in the glyph represent the infinity symbol but they seem too far apart and are separated by the +/crosshair looking thing with a swirly line flinging off the bottom inner circle.
Comment by Joel — May 23, 2008 @ 9:07 pm
the terrain i’ve noticed seems very earth-like, this halo ring also seems habitable for human life to grow more. it does also seems its mars-like for looking like dead plains or somesort of desert.
Comment by survivaljuice — May 23, 2008 @ 10:59 pm
Joel i disagree with you but i agree with OTfor2 the symbol does resemble Yin-Yang
Comment by deathless — May 24, 2008 @ 11:38 am
maybe the forunner, just like humans, had different governments and one government had found a new bioweapon: the flood. The rings were probably originally made to test the Flood’s effectiveness in various environments, and on various species. when the outbreak happened, they were probably reconfigured to be used as weapons.
Comment by Reuben — May 25, 2008 @ 5:09 am
I agree with OTfor2, it does look kind of like a ying yang. I might be crazy, or i could just be the key to the answer, but if you look at the lower part of the ring were the largest crater is, you see a the outline of the white section of a ying yang. If you look close enough, you can see the black outline, too.
Comment by TeH PiKacHu — May 26, 2008 @ 10:22 am
So, I’m going to go ahead and say there’s 2 environments here, the desert and the jungle. This is one of those “Indiana Jones” types of environments, which if you’ve seen the movies you’ll get.
And no, the Flood were night invented by the Forerunner, and yes, if they truly wanted there to be no risk of outbreak, they’d have made cold hard metal and the whole place uninhabitable. Robots don’t need to breathe, Flood might not either. So aside from any forerunner maitnence crews, they could use it to deter anyone from coming too close, and keep the flood contained.
Comment by Codexx — May 27, 2008 @ 3:09 am
The system was probably screwed up when Instillation 04 was destroyed, leading to its “Deserting”
Comment by Verses Fatum — May 29, 2008 @ 5:52 pm
THere is obviously an Atmosphere and it obviously has not been glassed look at the water its still there! Probably got hit by an asteroid and is trying to recover ( Forerunner didn’t put very good space defenses up as we learned from all the Halo games).
Comment by Firestarter-007 — June 2, 2008 @ 4:59 pm
dude i would love to make a summer home here. This looks like a plains type environment that is also very habitable. Maybe this ring had nothing to do with the flood but was made so the forerunners could enjoy themselves( with the ring also housing its cleansing weapon, of course)?
Comment by desert rat — June 4, 2008 @ 8:27 pm
To me this reminds me of the envitonment that the multiplayer map Epitaph is surrounded by. just athought. Could be located on this ring.
Comment by Chris — June 9, 2008 @ 7:02 pm
Doesn’t look uninhabitable to me. In fact, none of them look totally uninhabitable, some just seem to be a much harsher environment than others. There is life in all kinds of weird places, think about Antartica, the deep sea vents, the Sahara…. with our present day technology we can survive in all kinds of hostile environments, so we have to assume the Forerunners could have inhabited an even wider range of extremes.
They seem to have built the rings to be able to sustain specific types of life, possibly the native species of a variety of different worlds, along with a small population of Forerunner researchers, in order to study the Flood in conditions mimicking various Forerunner worlds without having to risk infecting their populations.
Comment by K — June 13, 2008 @ 11:40 am
The rings, in my opinion, were a place for the relocation ships to leave certain species for research until a ship was avaliable. Perhaps for a sentient desert species that has yet to be seen.
Comment by Spartan-039 — June 16, 2008 @ 6:33 pm
Just because the rings were in a stable system does not mean that their climates are stable. A simple asteroid/meteor strike or even a simple change in the rotation, tilt, or revolution of the ring could issue in a change in climate. Just because the forrunner built the monitors and setinals does not mean they are perfect. Their purpose was to watch over and take care of the rings. We know that they were not invincible. 2401 was captured by the Gravemind and rendered rather useless. If somethng were to happen to the monitor and setinals (assuming that their maintenance significantly affects the ring and its environment) the climate and even stability of the ring could shatter. We know the flood impact environments first hand. In Halo CE it was apparent that Halo had it’s own artificail weather and climate systems (Cortana makes it clear on AotCR). A malfunction in one of the systems could have a significant impact on the rings environment. It seems that the Halos had different environment in different locations for a reason (possibly for aesthetics or research purposes).
In my opinion, the rings were constructed to be habitable but, the tests of time affected the installations in various ways. A lot of things could have affected the rings over time. I think we sometimes give the Forrunner too much credit and see them more as Gods like the Covenant do and not like another species that had the time to evolve and grow with its own imperfections.
Comment by SMG90 — June 22, 2008 @ 11:32 pm
i think the rings were built to be habitable as a way to test flood infection on a large scale. the forerunner were were very advanced, and probably did not need a giant planet-like world to do simple laboratory tests on the flood. instead, maybe the forerunner would allow the ring to flourish with life, and then infect it with some flood spores as a way to see how fast they could control the world, etc without risking anyones life. this would explain why some rings have wide varieties of climates (like earth) and some are large stretches of desert or ice, as those types of planets are probably common in the galaxy. as well, the forerunner would probably have been very interested to see if the flood could conquer an ice world. also, this is conjecture, but we’ve heard Guilty Spark say he has gone through multiple test firings of his installation. maybe, once the flood had conquered the ring, it was fired locally to start another round of tests. this to me would be the best way to actually test the damn things.
heres another interesting thought; when u first touch down on delta halo in halo 2, your fighting in some ancient ruins, which is a departure from the “normal” forerunner architecture, as its built from rock. maybe the forerunner placed a primitive, but sentient species on that halo, and they were the builders of the ruins? i could be totally wrong, but the ruins dont seem “forerunner-y”. of course, directly putting another sentient race in harms would seem to be against their mantle, but keep in mind that the halos were built as a last resort, so perhaps they began to cut some corners out of desperation. also keep in mind that a gravemind was able to form underneath the surface of this ring and no where else (im assuming there is only one gravemind at a time). we know that flood feed on sentient life, so this would explain why the grave mind formed here in particular.
anyway, sorry if i went off topic
also, purely another guess, but maybe the circles inside the glyph have something to do with the solar system the ring is located in? in this case, a binary system? im not sure, but to me it would make sense for the glyph to either be the name of the ring, or its location in space; so maybe its naming the star system, not the ring itself
Comment by roswellian — June 23, 2008 @ 11:10 pm
This ring is quite strange, has a jungle/forest look on the top, and a desert like environment. I think it’s either a deserts/plains environment with some water or jungle, or maybe once a plains/jungle environment that changed with that meteor/asteroid hitting the ring’s surface and killing much of the vegetation.
And as many said above, it does look something like Africa, I would say that the upper part looks like the Mediterranean with Africa below.
Comment by Antonio — June 25, 2008 @ 5:18 pm
Roswellian’s on to something. The rings depicted here have a single surface, very different from what we saw on installation 04. Why would the rest of the rings have a single climate? We didn’t even see much diversity on 05.
The flood can obviously survive and thrive anywhere, even in space with 0 atmosphere and no much more temperature. Maybe the forerunner were testing where the flood liked to go on vacation? A tropical island by the silent cartographer, or hit the slopes by the control room?
As far as this one goes, the ark looks a bit sandier for the most part. This looks a little rockier, maybe like New Mexico or where those Jawas captured R2D2. I dont see enough green to say Jungle, but we haven’t seen a plains environment yet.
Comment by BaconPR — July 15, 2008 @ 12:20 am
Well on the topic of different environments - and i don’t know if this has been said yet, i don’t have enough time to read all the comments - the different climates may be a way to study the Flood? Think about it, the only reason i can see so make so many different inhabitable places for the Flood is to see which one they thrive/cannot survive in. Thats my personal opinion.
Comment by Shadow Of Faith — July 24, 2008 @ 7:03 pm
Well. Some people need to read more about the flood.
Anyway, I don’t think this installation (which by the way is actually installation 01, vociferous got the rings backward) was hit by an asteroid. The simple reason is that if it was, it wouldn’t be there anymore. Think about it: that kind of impact would have been huge, and even the Forerunner materials have there limit (think Pillar of Autumn).
Comment by the silver fox — August 21, 2008 @ 9:10 pm
Then again, the explosion from the reactors WAS awfully big…but I’m unsure if it would have had the same effect as a asteroid. It seems to me that an asteroid the size of the one that killed the dinosaurs would just tear right through a Halo, but these are just theories.
Keep speculating.
442 out
Comment by the silver fox — August 22, 2008 @ 8:00 pm
Here’s a thought: the Forerunner built each Halo with different climates because they wanted variety? Be more aesthetic? Interesting? Having 7 gigantic metal rings would look bland and get old after a while.
Or, this ring could have been covered with massive oceans and landmasses like 04 was, but climate control was/is malfunctioning.
Or maybe the climates of each ring evolved separately over time.
Or maybe they are located at different points of their respective solar systems, and their climates are reflective of that (like how planets in our solar system have different climates; 04 is in a “Goldilocks” location, like Earth; this one is in a Venus-like location).
Comment by Cross — August 25, 2008 @ 4:38 pm
Sorry, replace separately with differently in the third idea of my last comment
Comment by Cross — August 25, 2008 @ 4:40 pm