The Flood are fictional parasitic alien

Extraterrestrial life

Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth...

 life forms in Bungie

Bungie

Bungie, Inc is an American video game developer currently located in Bellevue, Washington, USA. The company was established in May 1991 by University of Chicago undergraduate student Alex Seropian, who later brought in programmer Jason Jones after publishing Jones' game Minotaur: The Labyrinths of...

's Halo

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...

video game series. They are introduced in Halo: Combat Evolved

Halo: 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...

as a second enemy faction alongside the Covenant

Covenant (Halo)

The Covenant are a fictional theocratic military alliance of alien races who serve as the main antagonists in the Halo video game series. They are composed of a variety of diverse species, united under the religious worship of the enigmatic Forerunners and their belief that Forerunner ringworlds...

, and return in sequels 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...

, 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...

, and Halo Wars

Halo Wars

Halo Wars is a real-time strategy video game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox 360 video game console. It was released in Japan and Australia on February 26, 2009, in PAL territories on February 27, and in North America on March 3...

. The Flood are driven by a desire to infect any sentient life they encounter, and are depicted as such a threat that the ancient Forerunners were forced to kill 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 Flood's design and fiction was spearheaded by Bungie artist Robert McLees, who utilized unused concepts from the earlier Bungie game Marathon 2. The ringworld Halo

Halo (megastructure)

Halos are fictional megastructures and superweapons in the Halo video game series. They are referred to as "Installations" by their AI monitors, and are collectively referred to as "the Array" by the installations' creators, the Forerunners...

 was stripped of many of its large creatures to make the Flood's appearance more startling. Bungie environment artist Vic DeLeon spent six months of pre-production time refining the Flood's fleshy aesthetic and designing the organic interiors of Flood-infested space ships for Halo 3.

The player's discovery of the Flood in Halo: Combat Evolved is a major plot twist, 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 Flood has varied over the years; while publications such as The Dallas Morning News

The Dallas Morning News

The Dallas Morning News is the major daily newspaper serving the Dallas, Texas area, with a circulation of 264,459 subscribers, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported in September 2010...

found the Flood too derivative and a cliché element of science fiction, Wizard Magazine

Wizard (magazine)

Wizard or Wizard: The Magazine of Comics, Entertainment and Pop Culture was a magazine about comic books, published monthly in the United States by Wizard Entertainment from July 1991 to January 2011...

and PC World Magazine

PC World (magazine)

PC World is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal-technology products and services...

rated them among the greatest villains of all time.

Game development

The Flood were added early in the development of Halo: Combat Evolved, before the game had made its jump from the Macintosh platform to the Xbox

Xbox

The Xbox is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Microsoft. It was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe and is the predecessor to the Xbox 360. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console...

. A design for one Flood form appeared as early as 1997. 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." Another inspiration was Christopher Rowley

Christopher Rowley

Christopher Rowley is an American writer of both science fiction and fantasy novels.Rowley was born in 1948 in Lynn, Massachusetts to an American mother and an English father. Educated for the most part at Brentwood School, Essex, England, he became a London-based journalist in the 1970s...

's The Vang series. The early design for the Flood was done by Bungie artist and writer Robert McLees, who considers himself "the architect" of the Flood; the Flood's roots are reflected in concept art of a "fungal zombie" that McLees did for the earlier Bungie game Marathon 2: Durandal

Marathon 2: Durandal

Marathon 2: Durandal is the first sequel in the Marathon series of science fiction first-person shooter computer games from Bungie Software. It was released on November 24, 1995. The game is mostly set on the fictional planet of Lh'owon, homeworld of the S'pht, and once again the player takes the...

. McLees also did all the early concept art for the Flood.

Based on the behavior of viruses and certain bacteria, the Flood were intended to be "disgusting and nasty". The creatures were constructed from the corpses and bodies of former combatants, so the artists had to make sure the Flood soldiers were recognizable enough while changing their silhouette enough to differentiate them from the uninfected. Many concepts and ideas were discarded due to time constraints—initially, the Flood were intended to convert any species of the alien Covenant

Covenant (Halo)

The Covenant are a fictional theocratic military alliance of alien races who serve as the main antagonists in the Halo video game series. They are composed of a variety of diverse species, united under the religious worship of the enigmatic Forerunners and their belief that Forerunner ringworlds...

 into soldiers. "We didn’t have the resources to make it happen," McLees recalled, so they modified the game's fiction to suggest that some Covenant were too small or too frail to be combat troops. At one point, the ringworld Halo featured dinosaur-like terrestrial creatures, but these were dropped due to gameplay constraints. An additional consideration was that Bungie felt the presence of other native species would dilute the impact and surprise of the Flood.

For Halo 3, it was decided a new visual language for the Flood was needed. The task of developing the new Flood forms, organic Flood terrain, and other miscellaneous changes fell to Vic DeLeon, Bungie's Senior Environment Artist. With the addition of mutable forms in Halo 3, the only fictional constraint on the designer's imaginations was that the Flood altered the DNA of its victims by digesting. Early concepts of what became "pure forms" featured the creatures wielding an array of weapons via tendrils, while forms like the Flood Infector and Flood Transport concepts never made it into the final game. Flood-infested structures were designed as angular to counterbalance Flood biomass, as well as provide surfaces for the game's artificial intelligence to exploit and move on. New additions were designed to be multi-purpose; exploding "growth pods" that spew Flood forms were added to the game to adjust pacing, provide instant action, and add to the visuals. Endoscopic

Endoscopy

Endoscopy means looking inside and typically refers to looking inside the body for medical reasons using an endoscope , an instrument used to examine the interior of a hollow organ or cavity of the body. Unlike most other medical imaging devices, endoscopes are inserted directly into the organ...

 pictures provided further inspiration. Bungie used Halo 3s improved capacity for graphics to make a host's sudden transformation into Flood form more dramatic; two different character models and skeletons were fused and swapped in real-time.

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

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...

 is sent on an extraction mission by the artificial intelligence 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, ...

 to find Captain Jacob Keyes, who disappears in a swamp while looking for a weapons cache with which to fight the alien Covenant

Covenant (Halo)

The Covenant are a fictional theocratic military alliance of alien races who serve as the main antagonists in the Halo video game series. They are composed of a variety of diverse species, united under the religious worship of the enigmatic Forerunners and their belief that Forerunner ringworlds...

. The Master Chief discovers that the Covenant have released the Flood accidentally, and the sheer numbers of the parasite overwhelm Keyes and his squad. Keyes' squad are turned into soldiers for the parasite, while Keyes is interrogated by the Flood in an attempt to learn the location of Earth. Keyes successfully resists, but is assimilated by the Flood before Master Chief can rescue him. The emergence of the Flood on the ringworld Halo prompts Halo's resident artificial intelligence 343 Guilty Spark to enlist the help of the Master Chief in activating Halo's defenses and preventing a Flood outbreak. When Master Chief learns of the devastation that Halo would cause to humanity and all other sentient life if activated, he detonates the human ship Pillar of Autumns engines, destroying the ring and preventing the Flood from escaping.

The Flood are depicted as having a complicated lifecycle. The largest self-contained form that the Flood can produce itself, without using other biomass, is an "infection form". The infection form seeks hosts (living or dead), attempting to drive sharp spines into the host and tap into the nervous system. The host is incapacitated while the infection form burrows into the host's body and begins the mutation process, bringing the host under Flood control. 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 forms for combat, growing long whiplike tentacles, while mangled and disused hosts are turned into incubators for more infection forms. The Flood also create forms not suited to combat, which interrogate and strip information from the minds of its victims or serve as a central intelligence

Gravemind

The Gravemind is a parasitic intelligence in the Halo 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...

 to drive the infestation.

Halo Graphic Novel

The 2006 comic The Halo Graphic Novel expands upon the Flood's release from Halo in two stories. The first, Last Voyage of the Infinite Succor, takes place at the same time 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. 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. Whereas the Flood are only hinted at being intelligent in Halo: Combat Evolved, the Halo Graphic Novel shows the Flood have a hive mind

Group mind (science fiction)

A group mind, hive mind or group ego in science fiction is a single consciousness occupying many bodies. Its use in literature goes back at least as far as Olaf Stapledon's science fiction novel Last and First Men ....

, assimilating the knowledge of their hosts rapidly. Lee Hammock, writer of 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 encounters 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".

Halo 2 and Ghosts of Onyx

The Flood make a return appearance in 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...

, first after being released on a Forerunner facility near Halo, and again on Installation 05 or "Delta Halo". The Flood on Delta Halo are led by the Gravemind

Gravemind

The Gravemind is a parasitic intelligence in the Halo 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...

, a massive creature that dwells in the bowels of the ring. Gravemind brings together the Master Chief 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...

 and tasks them with stopping the Covenant leadership from activating the ring. In the meantime, Gravemind infests the human ship In Amber Clad and crashes it into the Covenant space station of High Charity. Once there, the Flood sweep through the city, before Gravemind appears and questions Cortana. As the Flood spread across Halo and infect High Charity in Halo: Ghosts of Onyx

Halo: Ghosts of Onyx

Ghosts of Onyx is a novel by Eric Nylund, set in the universe of the Halo video game series and released on October 31, 2006. Ghosts of Onyx was the fourth Halo novel published, and Nylund's third contribution to the series...

, the Covenant form a blockade in an effort to prevent the parasite from leaving its prison.

Halo 3

The Flood reappear in the 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...

mission "Floodgate", on board a damaged ship that escapes the quarantine around Delta Halo. While the infestation of Earth is prevented by the destruction of half the African continent, Gravemind follows the Master Chief and his allies to the Ark aboard the infested High Charity. Though the Master Chief and Arbiter form a tenuous alliance with the Flood to stop the activation of all the Halo rings, as soon as the firing sequence is stopped Gravemind turns on the humans. The Master Chief fights his way to the center of High Charity, freeing 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, ...

 and destroying the city, but Gravemind attempts to rebuild himself on the ring under construction by the Ark. Realizing that lighting the ring will destroy only the local Flood infestation and spare the galaxy, the Master Chief, Arbiter, Cortana and Sergeant Johnson proceed to Halo's control room, activate the ring, and escape. Gravemind leaves the Master Chief and the Arbiter with a final warning that his defeat will only delay the Flood's goal of consuming all sentient life. Halo 3 added new capabilities to the Flood, including the ability for the parasite to infect enemies in real time. The Flood are also seen to produce a mutable "pure form" which can mutate into several other Flood types.

Merchandise

The Flood have been featured in four series of Halo action figure

Action figure

An action figure is a posable character figurine, made of plastic or other materials, and often based upon characters from a film, comic book, video game, or television program. These action figures are usually marketed towards boys and male collectors...

s, produced by Joyride Studios. For Halo: Combat Evolved, Joyride produced a Carrier Form and Infection form bundle. Halo 2s series contains both a human Combat Form and Infection form (bundled with the Master Chief), which were released after the video game. Reviewer Aaron Simmer of Armchair Empire.com expressed the sentiment that Joyride's models could not totally capture the ghoulishness texture and detail of the Flood. The action figures for 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...

were produced by McFarlane Toys

McFarlane Toys

McFarlane Toys, a subsidiary of Todd McFarlane Productions, Inc., is a company started by Todd McFarlane that makes highly detailed models of characters from movies, comics, musicians, video games, and sport figures...

 and although the first series did not feature the Flood, the third series featured a human Combat Form.

Critical reception

The surprise appearance of the Flood during Halo: Combat Evolved was seen as an important plot twist and a scary moment even after repeat playing of the game. Gamasutra

Gamasutra

Gamasutra is a website founded in 1997 for video game developers. It is owned and operated by UBM TechWeb , a division of United Business Media, and acts as the online sister publication to the print magazine Game Developer...

, 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. Mark Binelli of Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

credited the appearance of the Flood as an excellent way to keep players on their toes by forcing them to adjust their strategies, as well as being a twist as radical "as if, several levels into a game of Pac-Man, the dots suddenly began to attack you".

Despite the positive acclaim in Halo, 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. Similarly, reviewers including Victor Godinez of The Dallas Morning News

The Dallas Morning News

The Dallas Morning News is the major daily newspaper serving the Dallas, Texas area, with a circulation of 264,459 subscribers, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported in September 2010...

felt that the Flood were too derivative of other sci-fi

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 stereotypes, and functioned as "space zombie

Zombie

Zombie is a term used to denote an animated corpse brought back to life by mystical means such as witchcraft. The term is often figuratively applied to describe a hypnotized person bereft of consciousness and self-awareness, yet ambulant and able to respond to surrounding stimuli...

s". Daniel Weissenberger of Gamecritics.com noted in his review of Halo 3 that even though the Flood looked better than ever, their single strategy of rushing the player proved tedious over time. GamesRadar

GamesRadar

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...

's Charlie Barratt listed the Flood as the worst part of Halo, contrasting what he considered fun, vibrant and open levels before the Flood's appearance with confined spaces and predictable enemies.

The Flood have been recognized as some of the greatest game villains. Wizard Magazine ranked the Flood as the 77th Greatest Villains of all time, Game Daily ranked them 5th of their "Top 25 Enemies of All Time", and PC World

PC World (magazine)

PC World is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal-technology products and services...

ranked the Flood the 31st "Most Diabolical Video-Game Villains of All Time". Electronic Gaming Monthly

Electronic Gaming Monthly

Electronic Gaming Monthly is a bimonthly American video game magazine. It has been published by EGM Media, LLC. since relaunching in April of 2010. Its previous run, which ended in January 2009, was published by Ziff Davis...

ranked the Flood in their top ten list of "badass undead". MTV

MTV

MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....

 considered Flood possession in Halo 3 as a "great gaming moment" of 2007, stating that "with the power of the Xbox 360

Xbox 360

The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...

'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." IGN

IGN

IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...

 listed the Flood as the 45th best video game villain, describing them as one of the most hated video game villains in the history of video games.

External links

• Flood Archives at Halo.Bungie.Org
  Halo.Bungie.Org
  Halo.Bungie.Org, often referred to as HBO, is a fansite created in 1999 by Claude Errera and two associates as a news site for the Bungie video game Halo: Combat Evolved. The site was started in 1999 as Blam.bungie.org based on the project's development name before it was called Halo...