It's not even that that bothers me. I'm fine with 343i fleshing out the forerunner backstory. It's the sheer inevitability of humanity's successes that I dislike. It undermines the significance of every human triumph and makes their struggles much less compelling.
Forerunners didn't choose humanity to be the reclaimers because they saw a potential in the young species to become a galactic civilization greater than their own. No, they chose humanity to be reclaimers because they already had a galactic civilization greater than their own. Humans didn't survive the war against the Covenant because of the perseverance of the human spirit or anything like that. No, they had a secret council of guardian angel AIs making all of the decisions behind the scenes. Fujikawa and Shaw inventing the slipspace drive and allowing humanity to travel across the galaxy? That's not special, they're just retreading old ground. Humanity's few successes in the war? Was that impressive thinking and willpower, or was it all planned out by completely superfluous AIs?
There's just no, "Humanity, fuck yeah!" feeling to it.
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