Flood (Halo)

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Flood
Halo's Master Chief first encounters the Flood on Installation 04.
Game series	Halo Series
First game	Halo: Combat Evolved (2001)

The Flood are fictional parasitic alien life forms in the Halo video game series. They are introduced in Halo: Combat Evolved as a secondary enemy to the game's protagonist, Master Chief, and return in Halo 2 and Halo 3 to fill the same role. The Flood are driven by a desire to infect sentient life they encounter, and are depicted as such a threat that the ancient Forerunner were forced to kill most of themselves and all other sentient life nearly 100,000 years before the beginning of Halo in an effort to starve the Flood to death.

The player's discovery of the Flood in Halo: Combat Evolved is a major plot twist that is kept suspenseful and tense, and was one of the surprises reviewers noted positively upon release. The Flood's return in Halo 2 and Halo 3 was less enthusiastically praised. Reaction to the faction varied; while some publications found the Flood too derivative and a clichéd element of science fiction, Wizard Magazine rated them among the greatest villains of all time.

[edit] Game development

Concept art of a human combat form. The left hand has been replaced with tentacles, and the infection form's sensory apparatus sprout out where the head once was.

The Flood were added early in the game development stage of Halo: Combat Evolved, before the game had made its jump from the Macintosh platform and Bungie was bought by Microsoft; a design for one Flood form appeared as early as 1997.^[1] The early design for the Flood was done by Bungie artist and writer Robt McLees, who considers himself "the architect" of the Flood;^[2] the Flood's roots are reflected in some concept art of a "fungal zombie" that McLees did for the earlier Bungie game Marathon 2: Durandal.^[3] McLees also did all the early concept art for the Flood.^[4]

At one point, the ringworld Halo featured dinosaur-like terrestrial creatures, but due to gameplay constraints, these were dropped. An additional consideration was that Bungie felt the presence of other native species would dilute the impact and surprise of the Flood.^[5] Commenting upon the inception of the Flood, Bungie staff member Chris Butcher noted that "the idea behind the Flood as the forgotten peril that ended a galaxy-spanning empire is a pretty fundamental tenet of good sci-fi. Yeah, and bad sci-fi too".^[6]

[edit] Appearances

[edit] Halo: Combat Evolved

See also: Halo: Combat Evolved

The Flood make their surprise appearance more than halfway through Halo: Combat Evolved's campaign, during the mission "343 Guilty Spark". The Master Chief is sent on an extraction mission by Cortana to try and find Captain Jacob Keyes, who disappears in a swamp while looking for a weapons cache.^[7] The Master Chief finds that the Covenant have released the Flood accidentally, and the sheer numbers of the parasite overwhelm Keyes and his squad. While most of the UNSC Marines are converted to Combat forms, Keyes is interrogated by the Flood in an attempt to learn the location of Earth. Keyes successfully resists,^[8] but is assimilated into a Brain form before the Master Chief can rescue him. The emergence of the Flood prompts Halo's "Monitor", 343 Guilty Spark, to enlist the help of the Master Chief in activating Halo's defenses and preventing a Flood outbreak.^[9] When Master Chief learns of the devastation that Halo would cause if activated, he detonates the Pillar of Autumn's engines, destabilizing the ring and preventing the Flood from escaping.

The Flood are depicted as having a complicated lifecycle; small, base forms of Flood infect and mutate hosts into other forms, which ultimately repeat the cycle by spawning the smaller forms. The largest self-contained form that the Flood can produce itself, without using other biomasses,^[10] is an "Infection form". As its name suggests, the Infection form homes in on hosts (living or dead), attempting to drive sharp spines into the host and tap into the nervous system. This tap causes the host to be incapacitated, while the Infection form burrows into the host's body and begins the mutation process, bringing the host under Flood control.^[11] Depending on the size or condition of the body, the Infection form mutates the hapless host into various specialized forms in the continual drive for more food. Larger hosts are seen turned into Combat Forms, pushing its head to the side and growing long whiplike tentacles.^[12] When the body is no longer useful for combat, the host is further mutated into a Carrier Form, which incubates more Infection Forms to continue the cycle.^[12] The Flood also create forms not suited to combat; these include forms which interrogate and strip information from the minds of its victims,^[13][14] as well as creating command forms known as Graveminds.

[edit] Halo Graphic Novel

See also: Halo Graphic Novel

The 2006 one-shot Halo Graphic Novel expands upon the Flood's release on Installation 04 in two stories. The first, Last Voyage of the Infinite Succor, takes place at the same times as the Master Chief hunts for Keyes during Halo: Combat Evolved. The Flood manage to pilot a Covenant dropship off Halo, and crash-land the vessel in the hangar of a Covenant agricultural ship, Infinite Succor. Successfully assimilating most of the Covenant and wildlife aboard the ship, the Flood are stopped by a Covenant strike team led by Rtas 'Vadumee, who sets the ship on a course into the nearby sun.^[15] The second story, "Breaking Quarantine", details the escape of Sergeant Avery Johnson from the clutches of the Flood, immediately after Keyes' squad is overrun during Halo. Due to a pre-existing medical condition, the Flood parasites cannot infect Johnson and attempt to kill him instead.^[16] Whereas the Flood are only hinted at being intelligent in Halo,^[17] the Halo Graphic Novel shows the Flood have a hive mind, assimilating the knowledge of their hosts rapidly.^[18]

[edit] Halo 2 and Ghosts of Onyx

See also: Halo 2 and Halo: Ghosts of Onyx

The Flood return in Halo 2, released accidentally on Delta Halo.^[19] The Flood on Delta Halo are led by the Gravemind, a massive creature that dwells in the bowels of the ring. Gravemind rescues both the Master Chief and the Arbiter when they are nearly killed in separate engagements, and sends each in different places in an effort to stop the Covenant Hierarchs from activating the ring.^[20] In the meantime, Gravemind infests the human ship In Amber Clad and crashes it into the Covenant space station of High Charity.^[21] Once there, the Flood sweep through the city, before Gravemind himself appears and begins questioning the A.I. Cortana.^[22]

[edit] Halo 3

See also: Halo 3

The Flood reappear in the Halo 3 mission "Floodgate", on board a damaged ship that managed to escape from the quarantine around Delta Halo. While the infestation of Earth is prevented by vitrification of half the African continent,^[23] the Gravemind follows the Master Chief and his allies to the Ark aboard the infested High Charity. Then the Master Chief and the Arbiter form an alliance with Gravemind to stop the High Prophet of Truth from activating all the ringworlds, but as soon as Truth is killed, Gravemind quickly turns on the Chief and Arbiter once again.^[24] The Master Chief fights his way to the center of High Charity, freeing Cortana and destroying the city, but Gravemind attempts to rebuild himself on the Halo under construction by the Ark.^[25] Realizing that lighting the ring will destroy only the local Flood infestation and spare the galaxy, the Master Chief, Arbiter, Cortana and Sgt. Johnson proceed to Halo's control room; despite Gravemind's best efforts, the ring fires. This ends the threat of the Flood- for a time; Gravemind confidently predicts that the Flood's progress has only been temporarily slowed.^[26]

[edit] Cultural impact

[edit] Merchandise

The Flood have been featured in several series of Halo action figures, produced by Joyride Studios. For Halo: Combat Evolved, Joyride produced a Carrier Form and Infection form bundle.^[27] Halo 2's series contains both a human Combat Form and Infection form (bundled with the Master Chief), which were released after the video game had hit shelves.^[28][29] For Halo 3, all the action figures were produced by McFarlane Toys. While the first series did not feature the Flood, the third series release featured a new human Combat Form.^[30]

[edit] Critical reception

The surprise appearance of the Flood during Halo: Combat Evolved was seen as an important plot twist.^[31] Actress Aisha Tyler said that "[every time the Flood appear], even though I've played it a million times, is a totally terrifying moment."^[32] Gamasutra, writing about video game plots, gives the example of the Flood not only as an important reversal to the story of Halo, but a textbook example of how games and their stories are made more interesting by twists in the plot.^[33]

Despite this, the response to the presence of the Flood in Halo 2 and Halo 3 was mixed. A panel of online reviewers noted that the Flood appeared in Halo 2 for no obvious reasons, and were simply described as "aggravating" to play against.^[34] Similarly, reviewers including Victor Godinez of Dallas News felt that the Flood were too derivative of other sci-fi stereotypes, and functioned as "space zombies".^[34][35] Gamecritics.com noted in their review of Halo 3 that even though the Flood looked better than ever, their single strategy of rushing the player proved tedious.^[36]

Lee Hammock, writer of the Halo Graphic Novel story The Last Voyage of the Infinite Succor, described the basis of the story as a way to showcase the true danger of the Flood as an intelligent menace, rather than something the player happens upon and shoots. Hammock also stated that the story would prove the intelligent nature of the Flood, and "hopefully euthanize the idea that they are just space zombies";^[37] this treatment was received positively by critics.^[38] In 2006, Wizard Magazine ranked the Flood as the 77th Greatest Villains of all time.^[39] More recently, MTV ranked Flood possession as a "great gaming moment",^[40] stating that "with the power of the Xbox 360's graphics, this reanimation comes to vivid, distressing life, more memorably than it had in the earlier games. Here are the zombies of gaming doing what they do worst. [...] It's grisly and unforgettable."^[40]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Flood (Halo) article at Halopedia, a Halo wiki
• Flood Archives at Halo.Bungie.Org