A week ago, I finished reading Greg Bear’s novel HALO SILENTIUM. Despite its great story, there were some things that obviously didn’t match HALO 4’s storyline. The noel had to be adjusted to HALO 4, as Greg Bear stated some time ago. But evidently not all of it could perfectly be aligned.
What confused me was that the Librarian’s imprint on Requiem told the Master Chief that the Forerunners had made plans for a last Great Journey. That journey has never been mentioned in any of the Forerunner books, I think. In fact, it rather seemed that the Forerunners were at the end of their existence when the Flood killed the few survivors of the war at the Greater Ark. Only a handful of them survived, most of them being Lifeworkers. The IsoDidact told the Florian called Morningriser that the remaining Forerunners would leave to another place and they would and meddle with the galaxy’s affairs anymore. Was that the Great Journey the Librarian was talking about? But how could she have known? She pursued the Ur-Didact and then went to Earth without knowing what had happened to the rest of the Forerunners. And she only learned of the IsoDidact’s success AFTER she left her imprint on Requiem.
The Librarian told the Master Chief that the Composer was taken from the Didact’s care. That wasn’t mentioned in the novel, however.
The Librarian also stated that she hid seeds from the Didact, leading to an eventuality. Halo Silentium didn say a single word about that. Not even why she would hid those seeds.
The Ur-Didact’s amplified madness caused by being exposed to nothingness for over one hundred millennia due to the fact that he could no longer atone with the Domain as the latter has been wiped out by the Halo Array’s impulse was a really great explanation. However, the Domain seemed to have survived. The Master Chief and Cortana were able to partially access it on Requiem.
But that’s a problem as well. Part of what the Player can see in HALO 4’s Domain Terminals appears to be wrong. For example, the conversation between the Librarian and the Master Builder. Although it’s quite possible that it hadn’t been recorded and therefore doens’t appear in the novel, it is quite weird that the Librarian says her husband has a different opinion of what steps to take against the Flood. She didn’t know about the Promethean Knights until she followed her husband to Requiem. So I wonder if the Promethean Knights had ever gone into action against the Flood or if the terminal videos are wrong.
Also the Didact searched for greater numbers of Composer conscripts. But how did he know that the humans had been transferred to the Halo Ring? The Didact composed the humans on Omega Halo and it was his first time to be at the Greater Ark. Obviously, it could not have happened as in the terminal video where he was considering to compose humans while watching a hologram of the Halo during a space battle with the Flood. And the subsequent conversation between the Librarian and the Didact didn’t really take place. The Librarian failed to kill the Didact while he was composing the humans. She did not land on the Halo Ring but pursued the Didact immediately when he left the Greater Ark’s location. The conversation was partly held when the Librarian confronted the Didact on Requiem.
I know that the Domain was able to change its records. That might be a reason for the different stories.
So these are some of the confusing points connecting the novel and the game.