Um no...before Greg we had no idea what these things were capable of. Before those three novels we hadn't a clue. Halo was on it's own sub level far below Star Wars and even Star Trek. We had the Halos and shield worlds. That was it.

I take it you never read the Halo 3 terminals, which depict Forerunners casually destroying stars. Much of the Forerunner trilogy is based on those terminals.

I'm pretty sure you just made that up. The H3 terminals do not mention anything but the Didact, Librairian, and the two AI the Didact created; offensive and mendicant. The gravenind too

[quote] Recommendations: It is my opinion that any system where there is evidence that the enemy has established a physical presence is lost and must be razed. [b]This fleet currently retains the capacity to force premature stellar collapse; I advise that this be established as standard operating procedure for all compromised systems forthwith.[/b] We cannot fight this war by half measures if we intend to win. [/quote] Terminal 2, upon initial access (IE: Before the screen gets all screwed up and sends you to a new message). All Terminals in Halo 3 have an initial access message that can be read briefly before the terminals send you to the messages of Librarian, Didact, MB and so on. These initial recordings detail the logistics and statistics of the war with the Flood in battle reports. That the Forerunners could destroy stars casually enough that it became a [i]modus operandi [/i]is a feat pulled from these initial reports.

Shit did I missed that or forgot about it

Probably missed it. I only know about it because I read them online; like I said, it's impossible to read the full message in time before the terminals force you to read another message. So fans recorded the messages by re accessing the same terminal multiple times to avoid the lockout timer. Here's all 7 terminals' transcripts. http://www.halopedia.org/Halo_3_Terminals#The_terminals