In Response To: 343GS Level Analysis *VERY Long* (skraeling)
: Analysis of the Forerunner Facility found beneath the swamps of the level
: Guilty Spark 343: speculation on the nature of the facility; analysis of
: the symbols and the lights as well as their correspondence to each other.
: And that's just the title. Kind of gives you an idea of how long the rest of
: it is. My apologies for how long this is. Also I apologize for not having
: any screenshots or maps. One thing I did to make things easier was
: seperate the whole thing into observations and analysis. Each observation
: is numbered so you can just skip to any analysis and there will be numbers
: directing to you which observations gave me the ideas that I had. One
: problem with my analysis is every time a pattern popped up that seemed to
: be a solution, I would find something that would break the pattern and
: bring me back to square one. I finally got so tired of this I just decided
: to post everything I found so far.
: I have done a search. Some of whats here has been said, but most of it is
: new, and whats already been said is specifically relevant to what hasn't
: been said yet.
: Observations:
: 1a)The trees outside the facility have a pulsating, green glow. So do all the
: Flood, in their chests and legs. Looking up close at the trees you see
: they have the same texture as the other trees, showing that they once were
: normal trees, and now are infected by flood.
: 1b)Most of the rooms in the facility have two levels. Floor level and a
: balcony/walkway level. These two never connect. The only way we ever make
: it from bottom to top is by artificial means, such as: a collapsed walkway
: and stairs made by covenant barriers. The only exception to this are the
: ramps that lead from the walkway level to the first flood room, where the
: Jenkins cinematic takes place.
: 1c)There are certain hallways, that connect two rooms together and loop to
: make a square. These hallways are one atop the other and have a
: ceiling/floor of glass so that whoever is on the walkway level has a safe
: and easy view of the floor level.
: 1d) Floodlings have a difficult time getting to the walkway level. They will
: walk on the bottom of the walkway but almost never get on top.
: Experimenting in the first room where you meet the flood I grenade hopped
: to the walkway. The Floodlings tried to get at me, climbing the walkway,
: getting to the edge, and then leaping off into the room. It was like a
: reverse waterfall made of Flood. Point is, as long as I didn't move to a
: corner they couldn't get me.
: 2a)Each door in the facility has a pair of lights, one on each side. These
: lights come in a range of colors, green, red, teal, and light blue. The
: Forerunner symbols also come in the colors green, red, teal, and light
: blue (with the exception of the violet elevator symbol.)
: 2b)The marker lights that are on each side of the doors also appear in two
: more places in the facility and one other place on Halo. One appears above
: each ramp that leads down to the first Flood room, these are red. On the
: level Halo a marker light appears above each entrance to the underground
: part of the structure where your marines are holed up, these are yellow
: and the only yellow marker lights on Halo. Back in the facility marker
: lights also appear on short blocks that come in sets of four bellow the
: flood "fish tanks."
: 2c)Certain rooms contain flood "aquariums" or "tanks."
: These glass holding tanks are obviously meant to be lifted up off the
: ground and then brought back down. When a tank is down on the ground,
: essentially closed, the marker lights on the blocks are green. When a tank
: is lifted up, essentially open, the marker lights are red.
: 2d)After you first meet the Flood some of the marker lights on doors have
: changed colors. Certain lights (most likely damaged) oscillate between
: many colors, cycling through red, teal, and light blue.
: 2e)Some marker lights are on. Some oscillate slowly between on and off. Some,
: most likely broken or damaged, oscillate very quickly and erratically. The
: slowly oscillating ones seem to be normal since the marker lights on the
: level Halo also oscillate slowly and steadily.
: 2f)Certain marker lights come in patterns. A light blue light will always be
: above or bellow a teal light and, obviously, vice versa. A light blue
: light will also appear on a door that leads to a door marked by a teal
: light, and vice versa. Only exception is when there are red lights. Green
: lights always appear on doors leading to an elevator going up. The only
: exception is when one green marked door doesn't lead to an elevator.
: 2g) The marker lights are elongated hexagons, standing vertically. But then
: there are a few that are horizontal.
: 3a) The Forerunner symbols always come in sets (excluding the violet elevator
: symbol). Either one next to the other or one atop the other. The only time
: they are one atop the other is in elevator rooms or above doors that lead
: to elevator rooms. The purple elevator symbol always appears on doors to
: elevators the go up. It is always to the left of the lower of the pair of
: symbols.
: 3b) Pairs of symbols never mix, i.e., a red symbol will never be paired with
: a green symbol. The same two symbols are always together and are always
: the same color.
: 3c) The symbols sometimes appear rotated from their "original"
: version. Two symbols that are rotated appear above a door leading to an
: elevator. On the other side of this door the same exact symbols appear.
: So, although they both point left or right relative to your point of view,
: on oneside of the door it points east and the other side it points west.
: 4a) In the first flood room there are chambers in the floor. Some structures
: in the chamber look very similar to the pulse generators. These chambers
: are purple in color.
: 4b) Above each of these are pyramidal structures on the ceiling. These
: structures also appears in AotCR, on the floor.
: 4c) Beneath each flood tank and in every one of those side rooms the flood
: pop out of, there is a small platform on the floor. On top of it is a
: metal grill which closes of a purple shaft that leads deeper into the
: floor. The shaft happens to be large enough for a floodling to enter.
: Analysis and Hypothesis:
: Purpose of the Facility:
: The facility was designed for observation of experiments on floor level, from
: the relative safety of the walkway, whatever is on floor level isn't meant
: to get to walkway level (1b, 1c). The seperation of the two levels in each
: room indicates that whatever was on the floor level was meant to be
: imprisoned there. Most likely this meant the flood since they have a hard
: time getting to the walkway (1d). But the flood can get onto the walkway
: although it is very difficult. I suspect then that either the facility was
: not meant for the flood, or, the facility was used for creating and
: observing new strains of flood until one new strain of flood was able to
: esape, thus causing "the first outbreak" of the flood. That is
: purely conjecture, however.
: There are also the flood infected trees in the swamp (1a). If the trees had
: been recently infected, then their severed limbs and branches would be
: visible on the ground, but there arn't, so most likely they were infected
: a long time ago. All these facts point to the most likely possibility that
: flood forms were released within the facility for observation in a
: controlled environment. Then, either they were intentionally released to
: observe their effect on an ecosystem, thus infecting the trees, or the
: flood infected the trees during the first outbreak.
: The small purple shafts mentioned in (4c), I suggest, were meant for testing
: weapons against the flood. The chambers in (4a) have what appears to be
: pulse generators in them. It is also quite possible that the purple shafts
: are linked to the purple pulse generators and the pulse travels the shafts
: to where the flood are being held, in locked rooms and those glass tanks
: (2c) that the purple shafts appear in. This could have been an early
: attempt to see if the pulse generators could kill the flood themselves
: rather than their food. (4b) is just a miscellanious observation.
: The Lights:
: The problem with the marker lights is that they seem to form a pattern and
: then, blam, the pattern is broken by some rogue light. Observation (2f)
: shows how the lights form a pattern and then there is one exception that
: breaks that rule. The lights can obviously change color (2d, 2c) red being
: the most dominant. It would seem that the blue and teal lights always come
: in a pattern, but then something happens that changes them to red,
: probably for the purpose of a warning. The problem with this is that
: sometimes there is a red marked door, but bellow it is a teal or blue
: marked door leading to the same room. If the color of the lights is a
: warning not to enter a room then it makes no sense that two doors give
: different messages about the same room.
: All the marker lights come in pairs, but some pairs conflict. Although
: usually both lights will oscillate or be horizontal (2e, 2g) there are
: some pairs where one is ON and the other oscillates between on and off. Or
: one is verticle and the other is horizontal. This makes little sense since
: they both mark the same door.
: To add to the confusion there are the lights marking the Flood
: "tanks" or "aquariums" (2c). Red meaning, dangerous,
: and green meaning, safe. But this doesn't necessarily fit with the other
: lights. Green lights always appear on doors leading to an elevator that
: goes up, how would this fit with the meaning of "safe".
: The Symbols and the Lights:
: The fact that the lights correspond to the symbols' colors (2a) seems almost
: to be mere coincidence. And yet it seems too much to be a mere
: coincidence. The symbols and the lights always come in pairs. The symbols
: always coming in the same exact pair. They both always appear at doors.
: Whatever their meaning, it would seem that to understand it you would have
: to read them together as a whole not as two seperate lights. The colors
: add to the confusion The green symbols having nothing to do with where the
: green lights appear, the same with all the other colors. And there are no
: purple lights, even though there is a purple "elevator" symbol.
: The Symbols:
: Ah yes, the number one mystery of the Guilty Spark level. And I still havn't
: solved the it. Not even whether the symbols are Forerunner or Covenant
: (just because the actual symbols are forerunner doesn't mean that they
: were the ones that drew them on the walls.) Damn those symbols. But here
: is what I do know. The symbols do not point in a certain direction (3c).
: My first hypothesis is that the symbols serve the same purpose as the
: symbols on the Pillar of Autumn (Cryo B, Bridge, Engineering) which
: basically show you where you are, where you're going, or where you're
: coming from. I conjecture that the rotation of the symbols is the
: equivalent of adding a letter after a number or word like Cryo A and Cryo
: B, or Area 51 and Area 51b. Both areas are basically the same thing, and
: serve the same purpose, they just are located in different spots on the
: map.
: Whatever the symbols mean or stand for, it seems that you have to take both
: of them to get the full meaning. Since the same two symbols always appear
: together (3b) it would seem they were part of the same "word".
: Observation (3a) makes it easy to think that when one symbol appears atop
: the other, the top symbol refers to what is on the upper floor and the
: lower symbol refers to what is on the lower flour, since top/bottom
: symbols appear at elevators.
: The "elevator" symbol appears on the door to an elevator, and it is
: on the left of the other symbols (3a), so it would be assumed that when
: two normal symbols are side to side that the one on the left refers to
: what room you are entering or going into. The one on the right refers to
: what is behind you are where you're coming from. Perhaps this is correct,
: it seems to make sense based on all the symbols I've seen. There is one
: flaw. Why don't any of the symbols mix? Always the same two symbols appear
: with each other. If they refered to two different places why would they be
: always side by side? Whatever the reason, it appears important that they
: be side by side. Even when they are atop one another they are rotated
: clockwise so that they are in fact side by side, although from our point
: of view they are one on top the other. The only symbol that doesn't rotate
: is the red symbol that accompanies the red "flood" symbol. See
: how the patterns keep falling apart.
: The Covenant: One thing that doesn't quite seem right with the idea that the
: Forerunners made the symbols is that they never appear on top of
: elevators. The purple symbol, and in fact most other symbols, appear on a
: door that leads to an elevator going up. Always up. This doesn't make
: sense for the Forerunners, but it does for the covenant. The covenant
: don't know where they're going, but they know where they've been. So as
: they travel deeper into the facility they mark down where they just were.
: They specifically mark the elevators going up, in case they need to make a
: quick escape back to the surface.
: The Forerunner: The idea that the Covenant would make the symbols doesn't
: seem right to me however. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I think
: it's more likely that the Forerunners made the symbols.
: If the Forerunner did draw the symbols then a theory posed on this forum
: seems very possible. The idea is that the symbols represent levels of
: armor or environment suits necessary to be worn in the areas. This is
: possible since flood testing was taking place in the facility. Also it
: would make sense in conjunction with how the symbols always appear in
: pairs and almost always are side by side. The two symbols could represent
: a range of suit levels: "Do Not Procede Unless You Are Wearing A
: Class 8-12 Environment Suit". The only problem with this is that it
: doesn't explain the elevator symbol.
: One more thing about symbols. We all know the red "flood" symbol
: appears on many multiplayer maps. But so does a particular blue symbol
: that also appears in the Guilty Spark facility and on the blue base. Since
: blue and red teams are always opposing each other, it seems that the red
: "flood" symbol and the blue symbol represent opposing concepts
: or opposing locations in the facility itself. Also, mutations of these two
: symbols appear on the Two Betrayels control panel.
: I have heard people mention symbols on the level Halo. I cannot for the life
: of me find them, on the large structures or elsewhere.
: Also, I have heard people claim that they will translate the symbols, years
: ago. I have yet to see anyone post their translation. So I will inflict
: upon you the names that I have given the various symbols: (Note: Some of
: the symbols are green even though in the game they are teal. Also the
: cropped symbols are accidently cropped, not intended to be that way.)
: Symbols
: Violet: Up Elevator
: Green: Spiral, Sentinel (it looks like a birds eye view of a sentinel to me)
: Teal: Pincer, Beetle
: Blue: Yin Yang, Blue Base
: Red: Flood, Bad Waffle
: There, I think I'm done. Well, I hope I'm done. I'm never going back there
: again.
An excellent outline, and I applaud you for working so hard on it. If I may suggest something, it is that these different colored sybols correspond with the Silent Cartographer ones (the actual map projection)...which leads me to believe that the Covenant did indeed release the Flood because I do not think Keyes gets to the swamp until the beginning of AotCR (the miscrepencies on AotCR aside, such as the blood on the floor in the latter part and the lone dead hunter in the chasm)....come Halo 2, I suspect at least parts of your analysis will be shed with further light.
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