Gravemind
Encyclopedia
Halo (series)
Halo is a multi-million dollar science fiction video game franchise created by Bungie and now managed by 343 Industries and owned by Microsoft Studios. The series centers on an interstellar war between humanity and a theocratic alliance of aliens known as the Covenant...
universe. While only one Gravemind is ever seen in the games, the title is given to the final stage of Flood evolution. The Flood is a highly-infectious parasite which is released several times during Halos story. The Chief
Master Chief (Halo)
Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 is a fictional character and protagonist of the Halo fictional universe, created by Bungie. Master Chief is a player character in the trilogy of science fiction first-person shooter video games Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, and Halo 3 and will appear in the...
and the Arbiter
Arbiter (Halo)
Arbiter is a fictional ceremonial, religious, and political rank bestowed upon alien Covenant Elites in the Halo science fiction universe. In the 2004 video game Halo 2, the rank is given to a disgraced commander as a way to atone for his failures...
(Thel'Vadam, during the course of Halo 2
Halo 2
Halo 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie Studios. Released for the Xbox video game console on November 9, 2004, the game is the second installment in the Halo franchise and the sequel to 2001's critically acclaimed Halo: Combat Evolved...
and Halo 3
Halo 3
Halo 3 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie for the Xbox 360 console. The third installment in the Halo franchise, the game concludes the story arc begun in Halo: Combat Evolved and continued in Halo 2...
) are captured during their separate missions on Delta Halo, or Installation 05, by a Gravemind, which resides in the bowels of the ancient Forerunner ringworld, where the Flood creature forges an alliance between the two foes in order to stop the activation of the ringworld — an event which would destroy all sentient life, and, therefore, starve the Flood. The character is voiced by Dee Bradley Baker
Dee Bradley Baker
Dee Bradley Baker is an American voice actor. He is noted as his long-running-role as Klaus Heissler in American Dad! and other various characters including Squilliam Fancyson in the hit TV series SpongeBob SquarePants, Nightcrawler in X-Men: Legends and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance...
.
Making its first appearance in Halo 2, the Gravemind was introduced to dispel the idea that the Flood is a mindless virus. The character was designed by a Bungie Studios team, including artists Robert McLees and Juan Ramirez, and slowly developed into a massive creature with tentacles and a frightening level of intelligence. Driven by a desire to spread, the Gravemind is cunning and manipulative
Psychological manipulation
Psychological manipulation is a type of social influence that aims to change the perception or behavior of others through underhanded, deceptive, or even abusive tactics. By advancing the interests of the manipulator, often at the other's expense, such methods could be considered exploitative,...
; he forges alliances as often as he tries to consume his allies, tricking the Master Chief into aiding him while infecting the Chief's compatriots at the same time. The character was not well-received by many critics upon his appearance in Halo 2, and reviewers including 1UP.com
1UP.com
1UP.com is a video game website owned by IGN Entertainment, a division of News Corporation. Previously, the site was owned by Ziff Davis before being sold to UGO Entertainment in 2009....
found his role in Halo 3 confusing and without clear motive. More positively critic Aaron Sagers
Aaron Sagers
Aaron Sagers is an American entertainment journalist, syndicated columnist, author, paranormal personality/pundit and founder of ParanormalPopCulture.com, a popular culture Website which covers the "entertainment of the unexplained." He has appeared with Zak Bagans as a celebrity guest judge on the...
used Gravemind as an example of a "frenemy
Frenemy
"Frenemy" is a portmanteau of "friend" and "enemy" that can refer to either an enemy disguised as a friend or to a partner who is simultaneously a competitor and rival. The term is used to describe personal, geopolitical, and commercial relationships both among individuals and groups or institutions...
" — the creature's appearance made the Master Chief's fight against the Flood more personal and more dramatic.
Design and attributes
Master Chief (Halo)
Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 is a fictional character and protagonist of the Halo fictional universe, created by Bungie. Master Chief is a player character in the trilogy of science fiction first-person shooter video games Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, and Halo 3 and will appear in the...
dwarfed by the Flood intelligence.
Unlike the mindless 'zombie' nature of most Flood, the Gravemind is depicted as intelligent and cunning, and acts as a collective mind
Collective intelligence
Collective intelligence is a shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making in bacteria, animals, humans and computer networks....
driving the Flood. It lyrically speaks prose in a form of trochaic or iambic heptameter. While capable of subterfuge, Gravemind is seen to use the brute strength and sheer numbers of the Flood to further its aims. When attacking planets, the Gravemind of the Forerunner's time used smaller craft as ablative armor
Ablative armor
Ablative armor is armor designed to negate damage or destruction to itself from the process of ablation. In contemporary spacecraft, ablative plating is most frequently seen as an ablative heat shield for a vehicle that must enter atmosphere from orbit, such as on nuclear warheads, or space...
, sacrificing countless Flood so that larger ships can land and infest major population centers. In a more strategic move, Gravemind uses logic to sway the Forerunner's own artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
, Mendicant Bias, to his side. While Mendicant Bias had been specifically created to defeat the Gravemind, the Flood leader convinces the AI that the Flood is a utopian ideal, and that its conquest of the galaxy is inevitable. While the Gravemind's motivations and goals are not made expressly clear in Halo 2, Halo 3 reveals Gravemind's ultimate goal is to consume all thinking beings in the galaxy.
The Gravemind's physical form is depicted as composed of rotting corpses and biomatter, towering nearly eighty meters high as seen in Halo 2. Gravemind resembles a large Venus Flytrap
Venus Flytrap
The Venus Flytrap , Dionaea muscipula, is a carnivorous plant that catches and digests animal prey—mostly insects and arachnids. Its trapping structure is formed by the terminal portion of each of the plant's leaves and is triggered by tiny hairs on their inner surfaces...
with many tentacles, but is capable of movement and linguistic communication via its large mouth formed from overlapping fleshy 'leaves'. Though an animal, the Gravemind's somewhat plantlike appearance has drawn comparisons to Audrey II from the 1986 film Little Shop of Horrors due to the tentacles about a central mouth.
Halo 2
The Gravemind makes his first appearance halfway through Halo 2s campaign. Using his tentacles to save the Master Chief and Arbiter from perishing, Gravemind brings them face to face in a chasm on Delta Halo. Gravemind reveals to the Arbiter that the ring's architects, the Forerunners, died when they activated the installation in order to stop the threat of the Flood; the Master Chief verifies what the creature says, having stopped the firing of another ring in Halo: Combat EvolvedHalo: Combat Evolved
Halo: Combat Evolved, frequently referred to as Halo: CE, or Halo 1, is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios. The first game of the Halo franchise, it was released on November 15, 2001 as a launch title for the Xbox gaming system, and is...
. Though the Arbiter does not accept the truth immediately, Gravemind sends the Master Chief to the Covenant city High Charity and the Arbiter to the Halo's control room in order to stop the deluded Covenant from killing all sentient life a second time. Though he promises an alliance, Gravemind has ulterior motives. His Flood infest the human ship In Amber Clad and makes a slipspace jump into High Charity itself, in an effort to use the station to escape the confines of Halo. Having taken over the city, Gravemind questions the A.I. Cortana
Cortana
Cortana is a fictional artificially intelligent character in Bungie's Halo video game series. Voiced by Jen Taylor, she appears in Halo: Combat Evolved and its sequels, Halo 2 and Halo 3, in the prequel and epilogue of Halo: Reach, as well the novels Halo: The Flood, Halo: The Fall of Reach, ...
, who was left behind to destroy High Charity if Halo was activated. Gravemind says that he has questions that he will ask, and Cortana agrees to answer them. A short story in the 2009 Halo: Evolutions anthology details the conversations that follow.
Halo 3
Gravemind is one of the primary antagonists of Halo 3. While the Master Chief and Arbiter have returned to Earth in order to stop the Prophet of Truth, the religious leader of the Covenant, from activating a Forerunner artifact buried in Africa, Gravemind turns High Charity into a Flood hive and sends an infected cruiser to Earth in an effort to infest the planet; this plan fails, and a message from Cortana informs the Master Chief and allies of the existence of the Ark, a special installation built by the Forerunners outside of the Milky Way galaxy where all the Halos can be fired remotely. Gravemind, the Arbiter, and the Master Chief all want to stop the High Prophet of Truth from activating the rings, so the Flood once again ally with the Chief and Arbiter. As soon as Truth is killed, however, then Gravemind betrays both the Master Chief and the Arbiter, The Chief escapes the Flood's clutches and rescues Cortana from High Charity. Despite being tortured by Gravemind, Cortana has managed to keep a secret safe from the Flood; she has the activation index of Installation 04, which she captured from 343 Guilty Spark during Halo: Combat EvolvedHalo: Combat Evolved
Halo: Combat Evolved, frequently referred to as Halo: CE, or Halo 1, is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios. The first game of the Halo franchise, it was released on November 15, 2001 as a launch title for the Xbox gaming system, and is...
. Using the index, Cortana can activate the local ringworld, destroying Gravemind but sparing the galaxy's sentient life. Gravemind finally gains this knowledge, but too late; the Master Chief escapes with Cortana, destroying High Charity in the process. Gravemind survives the blast and attempts to rebuild himself on the new ring. Despite his best efforts, the Master Chief and company activate Halo, stopping the Flood once again. Gravemind, resigned to his defeat, nonetheless insists that it will only slow—not stop—the Flood.
Reception
Critical reception of the leader of the Flood was generally poor. In a review of Halo 2, Mike Leonard of the AllXbox community said that the introduction of the Gravemind character had him "rolling my eyes hard enough to get motion sickness from seeing the back of the inside of my skull"; Leonard went on to say that the "Little Shop of Horrors reject" ruined the "cool" of the Halo franchise. Staff from GamesRadarGamesRadar
GamesRadar is a multi-format video game website featuring regular news, previews, reviews, videos, and guides. It is owned and operated simultaneously in the UK and US by worldwide publisher Future Publishing...
singled out the appearance of the Gravemind as a sign the Halo series had jumped the shark. "Until Gravemind showed up, we were pretty sure we understood the Halo series' story," they wrote, but that the appearance of a Venus Flytrap
Venus Flytrap
The Venus Flytrap , Dionaea muscipula, is a carnivorous plant that catches and digests animal prey—mostly insects and arachnids. Its trapping structure is formed by the terminal portion of each of the plant's leaves and is triggered by tiny hairs on their inner surfaces...
-like creature with an ego and "a tendency to spout philosophical drivel" was unexpected. Jeremy Parish of 1UP.com
1UP.com
1UP.com is a video game website owned by IGN Entertainment, a division of News Corporation. Previously, the site was owned by Ziff Davis before being sold to UGO Entertainment in 2009....
bemoaned the fact that Gravemind was never explicitly stated to be the Flood leader in either Halo 2 or Halo 3 and was hardly seen in the third installment. Publications also took issue with the fact that the character's motivations were never fully explored; the South Florida Sun-Sentinel said that the "unique and compelling characters" of Halo 3, such as Cortana and the Master Chief, were overwhelmed by Gravemind.
More favorably, Aaron Sagers
Aaron Sagers
Aaron Sagers is an American entertainment journalist, syndicated columnist, author, paranormal personality/pundit and founder of ParanormalPopCulture.com, a popular culture Website which covers the "entertainment of the unexplained." He has appeared with Zak Bagans as a celebrity guest judge on the...
of the newspaper The Morning Call
The Morning Call
The Morning Call is a daily newspaper based in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in the United States. The newspaper is owned by the Tribune Company, whose other publications include the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and Baltimore Sun....
saw Gravemind as a perfect example of a trend in pop culture called a "frenemy
Frenemy
"Frenemy" is a portmanteau of "friend" and "enemy" that can refer to either an enemy disguised as a friend or to a partner who is simultaneously a competitor and rival. The term is used to describe personal, geopolitical, and commercial relationships both among individuals and groups or institutions...
". A frenemy, according to Sagers, is a friend or rival "with whom [the protagonist] feuds; an individual who reinvigorates the sense of self-worth and drives up one's visibility in the public's eye." Gravemind, operating as a frenemy, served to personify the Master Chief's otherwise nebulous fight against the Flood. Will Prusik of PlanetXbox360 listed the Flood as one of the great video game aliens, and that the revelation of a central Flood intelligence was a good idea despite the Gravemind's resemblance to Audrey II.