Covenant Technology and Glyphs

[Predjudice]

I see a lot of people taking images from Covenant equipment, specifically various glyphs, claiming they are directly Forerunner. Now I have to argue this simply isn't the case. They Covenant did not simply find huge weapon caches, High Charity, the armour and shielding suitable for their species to wear or their fleets of advanced ships floating around for them to use.

Throughout the Halo series, it has been made clear that the Covenant technology is imitative, rather than innovative. They absorb and utilize technology without fully understanding it. All this technology is based on Forerunner relics, but is of Covenant construction and design. The differences in design are very clear between Covenant and Forerunner systems. Covenent designs are fluid and organic. They don't use straight lines anywhere. Forerunner designs are angular and geometric; they either use perfect circles or straight lines.

This is reflected in the glyphs we observe between the two, where Covenant glyphs appear more organic, with inter-crossing curves and shapes, where confirmed Forerunner glyphs are always geometric, with straight lines and circles at precise positions.

Forerunner


Covenant


If we can agree on what is Forerunner and what is not, perhaps then we can eliminate a lot of the speculation. The fact is that virtually every piece of equipment used by the Covenant will have some of their symbols on it and without this distinction, we're chasing a lot of dead-ends.

[smallfry]

Lucid observation.

[VectorScalar]

Thank you for pointing out a general error in identifying the origin of glyphs. IIRC, in the novel The FLood, there is a statement that Covenant symbols are almost exactly like Forerunner symbols, only stylized with calligraphic features/flourishes. I always took it to mean that it was like the difference between modern printing (Forerunner in this analogy) and Middle English Font Script (think antique Shakespeare manuscripts). A better analogy might be Arabic printing to ornate Arabic calligraphy. There might be something useful in examining Covenant symbols separately.

[Orpheus]

yeah, but in Ghosts of Onyx
[spoiler]Voro 'Mantakree reads forerunner, albeit he's not very good a reading it[/spoiler]
so Covenant and Forerunner can't be all that different, although you are right in the difference of the glyphs.
It'd be like Snow Crash then reading Hamlet, there'd be a difference but overall you could find out what it means

[ODST Epsilon]

yeah, but in Ghosts of Onyx
[spoiler]Voro 'Mantakree reads forerunner, albeit he's not very good a reading it[/spoiler]
so Covenant and Forerunner can't be all that different, although you are right in the difference of the glyphs.
It'd be like Snow Crash then reading Hamlet, there'd be a difference but overall you could find out what it means

We need to remember that the Covenant basically based their entire culture off of the Forerunners so it would be likely that as they found more and more Forerunner stuff they were able to recreate the language, at least in a readable form for the Covenant to use. So it's likely that the differences would be, like people have pointed out, comparing ancient versions of a language to a modern version. They'd be fundamentally the same, but the changes that took place over the years would make it more difficult.

[Air Sparrow Hawk]

I've noticed that the symbols tend to be circular-based. Perhaps Bungie is taking a page out of Earth's history as a lot of civilizations had many beliefs on circles, the American-Indians for example.