Last week I introduced a new on-going column asking a “What if?” questions. The first “What if?” questions asked was:

What if the Covenant had not found humanity?

I received some responses from readers and here they are now:

GoodwillHunter jokingly scribes: I imagine the fanbase would be much less fervent for a game called “Settlers of Reach.”

kevinandrewjohnston writes: I think this question has a lot of variables. First though, if the Covenant had not found humanity, I believe that the reverse would have been true. Humanity was rapidly, expanding, and we have always been explorers. Eventually, we would find them.  The question then comes down to first contact.

D Town Ninja gets to the point of what my response is in his reply: Very interesting “What If?” I think that if the covenant hadn’t ran into us, things would have been much much darker for humanity. First, the insurrection war would have been much more drawn out, with alot more deaths on both sides. Might have even ended up with a split of humanity, so to speak. UNSC friendly with half of the colonies (probably the inner ones) and the insurrectionalists with the other half (outer). Probably wouldn’t have lasted long though, because both sides would eventually need each other, for supplies and whatnot. But unfortunately none of that really means anything, because once the covies attempted to light the rings, they would have realized they need a reclaimer. So really, nothing in the grand scheme of things would change. Still get an invasion, still have to light the ark, and we would still have to deal with a war with the covenant. The timeline would just be off. The road to ‘The Great Journey’ still would have to go through a human. But thankfully, we still would have Spartans, and would still kick the covies butt!

And my (HFFL) response to the question: First it should go without saying that the war with the Insurrectionists would have persisted for some time. Though ultimately I believe the UNSC would have won out, especially with having Spartans on their side. The cost of the war in human lives would have been high, though no where near as high as the war with the Covenant. I believe that for a long time humanity would have had an uneasy yet relatively peaceful existence. Undoubtedly, there would be a flair up form time to time form some Insurrectionist terrorist organization. Those would be quickly quelled by UNSC forces. Of course that would lead more and more colony folks to hate and mistrust the UNSC.

Spartans would have been glorified within the UNSC while demonized in the colony worlds. The fact that some of the Spartans came form colony worlds might have gotten out. If so, there would be yet more political turmoil and possibly a defection or two (or more) from the existing Spartan ranks to the colony worlds. Had that happened, we could have seen a “real” red vs blue kind of story where the UNSC Spartans wore Blue, while the Colony Spartans wore Red. (or vice versa, take your pick). I chose blue for UNSC since Chief was part of blue team.

No doubt Halsey’s hand in the Spartan program would have completely demonized her in the eyes of the Insurrectionists. This likely would have resulted in a bounty on her head. At this point, she probably would have had a Spartan bodyguard. Chief? Maybe. Most likely not. A tangent of that part of the story could have been that she would have been captured by Insurrectionist forces, led by those Spartans who defected. In this way, we’d have had a slightly similar story for Halo 3. Instead of Chief rescuing Cortana, he’d rescue Halsey instead.

In the meantime, the Covenant would have gone about searching for more Forerunner technology. They likely would have come upon Requiem with no resistance from the UNSC since neither faction had made contact with one-another. Had that happened, would the Didact have been released? Needing a Reclaimer to do so would have prevented the Covenant from wakening the Didact. However, they would have had a treasure trove of technology to harvest from Requiem which would have made them even stronger.

Humanity may have become a bit complacent by then since the majority of the Insurrectionist would have been wiped out or made to stand down. Most certainly the UNSC Infinity would not have had Forerunner upgrades, though likely would have still been built.

Now, this begs to wonder, would the Covenant ever find humanity? Since humans have a penchant for exploration, it is nearly without a doubt we would have made contact with them. First contact with the Covenant was with Brutes. Had humanity found Elites instead would this have changed things? Would the Covenant invite them into the fold? Or would they too have sought to destroy them, especially after seeing the size of the fleet humanity had (even if technologically inferior)?

If humanity would have joined the covenant, the secrets of the Forerunners would have begun to be unlocked. The rest of the covenant would have seen this happen. In turn they would have either used that to their advantage or taken captive humanity in why would become a bloody civil war between human and other race factions of the covenant. The Didact would have eventually been awakened as well and with the civil war in full swing, humanity could have taken a much harder hit. The reason for that being that the covenant would have known the positions of human worlds, those could have been given to the Didact for him to exact revenge.

So looking back at it all, it’s actually better, in a twisted way, that the Covenant found humanity as it did and the events in the official timeline played out as they did. Otherwise, humanity could have been wiped out of existence.

Whew…okay, I’d love to read your responses to my answer and the other answers as well, so feel free to post your comment s below.

In the meantime, here is week 2’s “What if?” question:

What if Cortana didn’t die at the end of Halo 4, instead was saved and reached meta-stability? (Meta-stability meaning she would have overcome rampancy)

-Sal