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The Gravemind is a parasitic, hive mind 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, in which the Flood becomes a superorganism. The Flood is a highly-infectious parasite which is released several times during ''Halo''s story. The Chief and the Arbiter (Thel'Vadam, during the course of Halo 2 and Halo 3) 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. 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 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; 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 found his role in ''Halo 3'' confusing and without clear motive. More positively, critic Aaron Sagers used Gravemind as an example of a "frenemy" — the creature's appearance made the Master Chief's fight against the Flood more personal and more dramatic. ==Design and attributes== Early Concepts for the Gravemind were done by Bungie artist Robert McLees. McLees is known at Bungie as the "architect of the Flood", and had done the early concepts for the Flood forms in ''Halo: Combat Evolved''. McLees' original drawings were then added to by Juan Ramirez. The Gravemind's form and design constantly changed during development. Early versions of the creature had a basic shape of a mass of tentacles, with a jagged tear in one large appendage forming a rudimentary mouth. Later on, the mouth was studded with the skulls of human and Covenant corpses for teeth.〔—Staten: "...as originally designed, the Gravemind was this seething mass of corpses right, his teeth were skulls and he talked from the shadows. When we moved to the world where we wanted him to have lip sync and actually speak... maybe not the best decision in the world."〕 This design was later revised due to practical considerations about lip syncing the character for speech. Despite these design changes, the Gravemind's size was always meant to be huge; early concepts showed the Master Chief 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 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, sacrificing countless Flood so that larger ships can land and infest major population centers.〔"MB: 2 hours ago 12,423 small recreational vessels appeared inside () orbital perimeter. Hidden within that vast swarm were seven massive freight carries. The smaller craft were employed as ablative armor, allowing the carriers to descend through the atmosphere; landing on top of major population centers. Despite the fact that the naval garrison was aware of the likelihood of just such an attack, their ability to effectively defend against it proved insufficient. This has always been the enemy's (operandi ): () your opponent's ability to process information with so much noise that no meaningful resistance can be put into action."—〕 In a more strategic move, Gravemind uses logic to sway the Forerunner's own artificial intelligence, 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.〔—(Online version ) (requires Microsoft Silverlight.)〕 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 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.〔—O'Donnell: "It's not a plant, it's not Audrey, although I don't know why I keep thinking about Audrey."〕 For ''Halo 2: Anniversary'', the Gravemind now has three flesh-flaps that protrude and dangle towards the front of its head, each one decorated with teeth. It is also given a different sort of mouth, one that resembles a lipless mouth with fangs. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Gravemind」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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