To be honest I am not sure it will actually give us more information than was presented in the audio logs. It seems to be just a novelisation of that.
Given previous books they probably aren’t going to give any more world building information or spell out the fates of any characters they have plans for. For example Shadows of Reach consciously avoids any background information on the Banished, they’re kind of just suddenly there and everybody knows they exist; occupying a human world. Sounds legit. We’ve got a mission don’t dwell on it. That really is the way most novels are wrote. They’re really just Bolter -Yoink!-.
The only major difference is that a book can ignore budget and they can actually put the Banished fleet on screen. I do hope they have the courage to address why the UNSC allowed the Brutes to amass such an armada; but I suspect this is a “just accept it” case.
Also as with Halo Shadows of Reach I am expecting them to completely avoid discussing the Created, the war against them and any speculation on the state of the Galaxy following their defeat. We’ll get obligatory mentions and then it’s stop the Banished digging up the Harbinger; we all kind of forget why we’re here. The fact that’s not very natural for the characters to do seems to not click with the authors. They’ve been fighting that war for a year and it’s why they are there; that should be their main focus.
I think they probably should have considered a full reboot or prequel at this stage. They were never going to be able to gracefully transition the story to whatever the hell is going on with the Klingons and Cthulhu.
In many ways, Halo’s modern narrative issues mimic 343’s development issues.
I think the key issue why books feel more important now, is because each game radically changing the situation, as 343 ping pongs trying to find a story people like.
As said above, all of Bungie’s games take place in the span of half a year. Each game continues the last narratively. There’s a bunch of stuff happening before and after that could be good to know, but for the most part because the story feels consistent you dont feel like you need to go outside.
h4 radically changed the situation. Elites were ‘bad’ again, explained only with a throwawayline. The Forerunners had had quite the overhall and now this didact man was the big bad.
h5 then shoved a bunch of that under the buss, had chief meet up with his squad off screen, and made cortana the new villain and started an AI uprising as the big bad…
h6 then brushed all that under the rug too. Now the banished are the new threat, and have been cortorted heavily from their rag-tag mercenary HW2 days into red covenant. There’s also the endless who we’re apparently supposed to be afraid of as the new big bad. Also this game loves giving hints at how they wrapped up h5’s plot, to tease those who were interested in it.
343 keeps resetting the narrative, and setting up new villains. The previous game can’t work to onboard players to the next, because 343 has changed the universe and rules to make their new villain important.
I think part of the issue as well is that these retcons and changes of direction have destroyed their integrity. If you look at what they repeatedly say it’s that this is a mystery story, from the state of the galaxy, to the Endless, the infinity, Cortana. That’s why we aren’t being told these things.
Most people do not see it that way. The common thread is frustration and annoyance rather than intrigue. How did you only have that much story after 6 years of wait. People can’t tell what’s being left open to interpretation and what the hacks have retconned/wrote out the story which we aren’t meant to prod at too much.
Take an example, Palmer. If this was a normal organic story, people would say that “oh well no body, means they will show up later on” and lead to speculation. Instead, there’s an element of doubt because the character is on the hate list and does that omission indicate that the character has been killed off unceremoniously and won’t be brought up. If they are just clearing the board entirely then we are being asked not to dwell too much about it. Which creates a clash, the game is presenting mysteries and yet also telling you not to question their retcon too much.
Also in the case of Infinite they did themselves no favours by not setting the board up. Whatever they do in 2025 has a ton of setup in terms of finally after eight years telling us what Atriox motivation is, what the squids are and how Offensive Bias factors into this. It’s bizarre that they thought a small scale intro story was the best way to bring Halo back. Not a bombastic and grand story but with a whimper.
Yeah, outside of the boring open world this is one of my biggest issues with the campaign.
Infinite feels like it has no confidence in itself. Its an extremely safe, small story, that spends its exposition time telling us about a much cooler game we didnt get to play.
A three-way war between the banished-cortana-UNSC? Big space battles? Exploding halo rings? Destruction of infinity? Homeworlds being destroyed?
Nah, have chief run around a park for a few hours and take out some brute campers, while telling the user how cool things could have been. Oh and there’s these guys called the Endless, they’re scarrier than the flood, and the ring is mysterious, trust us.
Okay, but that doesn’t mean it’s required reading. Whether or not it becomes required reading has more to do with how they handle the game’s story going forward.
This book is taking place in a time that’s meant to echo the Battle of Reach for Halo CE. In Halo CE we knew the Pillar arrived at Halo because they made a blind jump while escaping Reach. But we didn’t know anything else about the Battle for Reach itself, just that we lost and it was a big deal. For the game that’s all we actually needed to know. Infinite’s Battle for Zeta Halo is very similar. We know it happened, we know that in Chief’s 6 month nap humanity lost, and thanks to the audio logs we actually have even more in-game knowledge about what happened than we got for Reach in CE. But everything we need to know about the 6 month gap is explained very clearly in-game. We never needed to know more about who the dead Spartan IVs we encountered were. So like Fall of Reach before it this book will supplement Infinite’s lore by telling the story that came before, but isn’t required to enjoy it.
And so long as they write the next big Campaign expansion well (which they should, Jo Staten teased that he’s working directly on the script for it and all of the Halo stories he dipped his fingers into were excellent), it won’t be required reading for that either.
Halo CE could get away with that because the Fall of Reach is only important in as much as we lost a fortress world to some aliens. UNSC for all we know has many such worlds and the Galaxy isn’t really changed by this event. It’s part of the backdrop instead.
Whereas the destruction of the Infinity, death of Cortana, collapse of the Created Empire and rise of the Banished; those are colossal changes to the setting. Arguably more so than the Great Schism. Including the fates of characters that have been around for a decade or more in the case of Cortana. Yes, they haven’t really set up what the Banished and Created Empire were at before Halo Infinite; but that just compounds the problem.
It’s weird because they act like it’s a clean slate and don’t have to address these changes. Anecdotal evidence but all mates kept asking me “what the hell is going on?”. Just complete bewilderment and confusion the whole way through. But you could not understand that game unless you played Halo 4 and 5. It very consciously references both games and the whole personal story with Chief would make no sense. You can’t have it both ways having call backs and tying the personal story to that whilst not addressing the lore changes.
Edit
What I want to know is how on Earth a mortally wounded Chief survived being in deep space for six months with no food or water or oxygen. When his suit is also meant to have lost its power supply…
Yeah, I do wonder if now Joe is at the helm he’s going to make even more changes to the story. The Banished and the Endless were not his idea and it would restrict him creatively if he had to make those stories work. Plus I think he has to make the decision between continuing the Love Story with the Weapon or moving the series back towards being a sci fi military genre game.
I wish they’d either distanced themselves more from halo 5, or just made a proper sequal to 5. This feels like they’re trying to do both, and in turn strangling the new story they’re trying to set up.
I too am a passionate fan of the games and it’s true it feels like a lot of the story for the past 10 years has been over other sources of media movies, tv, anime, comics, and books. But I think that speaks more about the substance of 343i campaigns and their stories. Sometimes especially in H5’s case, it feels like a bulk of the story and lore was offloaded to other media. I would like to see this improvement and for the games to pack more lore and story in general into the campaigns however I would hate to see these other forums go away as well. The Halo franchise has had some of the deepest lore and interesting stories through these other forums.
The game itself explains all you need to know about it though. The main story does an excellent job explaining exactly what happened to Cortana, and Atriox. While the Audio Logs give you more than enough info on what happened to the Infinity, and other UNSC forces.
It really doesn’t. You get a partial and possibly not even true answer to what happened to Cortana. But you could drive a tank through the holes they leave.
For example, what’s happened to Earth? We are reminded it was occupied by the Created and then, presumably, all the Created just dropped down dead once Cortana deleted herself and humanity was freed? Atriox says her Empire is gone and to which she says “not yet”. That’s extremely ambivalent and vague. 343 in a canon fodder article even admitted that the State of the Galaxy is meant to be a mystery. So they by their own admission haven’t given you information in Halo Infinite to establish what’s going on.
Which is important because it’s directly relevant to the story. Is help on its way? How vulnerable is Earth to a direct assault by the Banished? How bad is the situation in the wider galaxy? Did we win? Without that context you’re, what, killing the apparently numberless hordes of Banished on a barren island in the middle of nowhere. The stakes aren’t being made clear.
With Atriox it’s not even funny. He’s been around for five years, there’s no excuse for them not providing a motivation for what he’s doing in seeking the Endless which began with his quest for the Ark. Frankly it had better be a dam good and interesting explanation to be worth what’s looking like an eight year wait if the 2025 DLC rumour is true. Why would a Brute just after power want to release Cthulhu? For a supposedly smart Brute he’s being very stupid on that if power is his goal.
Plus, what is the deal between humanity and its AI now? Are they all prisoners now? Were they all exterminated like the Quarians did to the Geth? If not, why? If there is Created Remnant how do they factor into things? I have a suspicion that there’s going to be some kind of reconciliation that is abridged in the multiplayer cutscenes. But none of that is being established in campaign.
I like that Halo is more than just a game. There are books, comics, movies, cartoons, and online media. The Halo universe is very vast. You don’t have to read the books to know what they are about to expand the story. Sure if you want the fine details you will have to take the them to read them. I have only read a couple of the books. Most the time I just read online what they cover. It would be cool to get some sort of in game cut scene or something to help fill in what books cover.
I’m not saying the other forms of media should go away I just feel like more of it should be in the game I’m not much of a book reader I’m more of a game player
To be honest. Halo infinite and 343 have a lot of capacity to be the best halo game of all times but the issue is, or they don’t want or they’re afraid of something.
One thing they could be afraid of is to lose this halo essence that makes halo different from other games. But sadly it doesn’t matter because 343 adopted Power Rangers, kamen raider and other Japanese references for his armour design. I meant its not bad but. They can do it better than that honestly.
