My disapppointements on Halo Rubicon Protocol :

Community Halo Universe
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So I finished the book and even if I knew it will be only about UNSC surviving on the Halo, I’m still disappointed by some points :

The Infinity :
I had high hopes to see the space-battle between the Infinity and the Banished, but like the game, the story begins as soon as the Infinity is defeated. The destruction of the biggest ship of all humanity deserved well more than a short cinematic and two chapters !

Apparently, the Infinity came out from slipspace and was immediately attacked by the Banished fleet. Space is too vast for it to be a coincidence and there is no explanation of how the Banished did it. I would like to believe that 343 is preparing a big reveal for us, but I am also very afraid that it is just an incoherence they would simply ignored

The Animals :
Also, I was hoping to discover the Halo animals that we didn’t see in the game due to technical issues during development, but we were only allowed to see birds, gazelles and other prey, nothing very exotic.

Maybe the Halo Fracture killed them all, or maybe the Banished kicked them all out, but it’s such a shame not to see any of them in-game or in the book (especially books have no technical issue…)

Equipment : grapple hook, thruster, drop wall, repulsor, threat sensor
We used power up during all the campaign and they never appeared in the book ! A quick mention of the grappling hook is made in Halo Reach, but none is made in this book !

The Harbinger and the Skimmer :
A new species is cool, but they weren’t enough presented. They appeared like a secondary faction and there is still a lot of thing we don’t know about them. This was the last chance to do something with the Harbinger before her death, but she just served to torture Lucas Browning.

To finished on a positive point, I’d liked to visit the place we discovered in the campaing and the enemy like Chak Lok, Escharum and more important, Jega !

And you, did you liked Rubicon Protocol ?

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I liked it. It was a good book. I know a lot of questions didn’t get answered. But seeing how savage the Banished are to their enemies, made me want to kill them even more.

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OP

Honestly I actually thought we did get a lot of animals. There’s that bit where the Brutes trap some dear to eat and there’s some references to scavenging.

Yeah the space Battle raises more questions than answers. If they are going with a traitor telling them about the plan to kill Cortana and Atriox hijacking this; I just don’t buy that. How could the Banished have a bigger fleet than the UNSC? When we see Cortana actively trying to exterminate them.

The Harbinger and Skimmers are even worse. They spend so long on this and don’t give you an inch more than what’s stated in the audio logs or game. Why bother teasing a mystery and not resolving it?

I didn’t like how OP they made the Brutes in this. It’s jarring in game your Spartans mow down entire armies of Covenant.

I hated the way the characters act. They’ve just destroyed Skynet. That should absolutely be the most important thing in the minds of these characters. They shouldn’t care about another Covenant splinter group that are a few tactical nukes away from extinction. But the characters act like Cortana being destroyed is an afterthought that they forget about for most of the novel.

I was slightly confused to learn that the pylons we see in game are communication devices. The Weapon should have told you that so you could contact the UNSC yourself and she never tells you about this message in particular.

I did like how the book is unequivocal about the Banished being evil and the setup being about getting vengeance on them. Only occasionally is there an attempt to make you feel sorry for the animals after they got their home World destroyed. But mostly it’s in line with how I’d like this to go. Indeed I’d rather Chief had kicked Escharum off the Halo Ring like the villain here instead of lovingly giving the Brute a graceful death. :roll_eyes:

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It’s nothing compare to the first trailer we saw years ago.

Me neither, but it’s would be better than just a coincidence

343 absolutely want to make us forget about Cortana, so even the characters don’t speak about her !

That would be a spoiler to Rubicon protocol if she did. Also, they were very busy with Escharum and Harbinger

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could’ve made it a side mission, i feel like that should be a rule in open world games, Have Side Missions!!!

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I was disappointed too.
It felt like nothing really happened apart from the events we already learned about in the game.
No new information about the Endless, the ring, lost characters or barely anything.

It just felt like a more detailed retelling of Infinite’s audiologs.
And the only interesting protagonist was Lucas Browning.

I just hope the communities: ““don’t put significant events in the books”” attitude isn’t damaging the quality of Halo’s extended universe.
Because that’s how it felt imo with how underwhelming this book was.

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Rubicon Protocol is fine. It’s fine. It tells a mildly interesting story in a competent way and that’s all I can really say about it.

Probably its biggest problem is that all the Spartans feel like the exact same bloody character. Gay can write good characters- look at Rion or Spark- but none of that really carries to this. Everyone’s all “Duty to Earth, I’ll give my life, sacrifice, honour, blah blah blah”.

The Mortal Revery should have been played up WAY more. They spend the first half of the book wandering around the ring as a guerilla force against impossible odds and then they spend the second half of the book wandering around the ring as a guerilla force against impossible odds. It’s difficult to have much tension when they’ve already been in this exact situation and got out of it fine. The Revery’s fall should have been the big end of second act all is lost moment, but it isn’t and the characters don’t seem to particularly care much.

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I think Halo really needs a book to describe the Created domination over humans and aliens. Bad Blood, Shadow of Reach and Legacy of Onyx, showed a little on that, but not so much, and I’m affraid it will be the same for the futur book Halo outcast.
And more important, we need to see how the Banished fighted them and what happened in the galaxy after Cortana death !

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I haven’t bought it yet.