Problem with the current Halo

Community Halo Universe
1

As you may know, Halo’s Lore is vast and huge and the players and fans have followed every bit of it, but there’s a problem with the current Halo…
A lot of the games require you to actually read every novel and comic out there in order to understand what’s going on.
Those who never watched Forward Unto Dawn wouldn’t know the significance of Thomas Lasky and his role aboard the Infinity, or better yet, WHAT the Infinity even is if you haven’t read the Kilo Five series.

Spartan Ops feautured Serin Osman from the Kilo Five books and a lot of people I talked to never knew who she was or why she was so important.
Now we have Halo 5: Guardians coming out and no one would even know who this Agent Locke is or why he’s even going after the Chief in the first place.

Petra Janekec, a famous reporter next to Benjamin Giraud is another character featured in PETRA in Halo Evolutions when it was re-released to add new chapters, no one really had a clue who she was or her importance either if you haven’t read the books or comics.

I love the lore of Halo, but what happened to the game itself just telling you instead of everything requiring you to study up on a subject before playing.

A perfect example of studying before playing is Halo 4 when Cortana mentions the Infinity like its been part of the games since Halo Combat Evolved, even goes on saying it was just a rumored project and that’s about it and the game was expecting the player to even know about all this stuff.

Like I said, Halo has a lot of lore, but shouldn’t be a school project to figure out what the -Yoink- is going on in this weeks episode of Halo.

2

The thing is, people who read the lore don’t have to look up the extended universe…we know. I am happy Halo is becoming more complicated. I’m happy casual fans get to feel like idiots because they made a comment without considering the extended universe. This will make them look stuff up and get enveloped in the lore. Lore exposure is exactly what Halo needs, it is by far one of its underrated qualities by the masses.

Besides, the multiplauer bros don’t care either way, were really only talking about lore fans.

3

The lore isn’t really all that complicated to keep track of. I would argue that in regards to Halo 4 343 did go overboard, though they admitted it. But if someone follows the lore on a consistent basis it isn’t that hard to follow. Thomas Lasky? Truth be told, Lasky developed fine without Forward Unto Dawn in Halo 4. You may not know his backstory, but the same pretty much applied to Captain Keyes in CE and nobody complained. The Infinity also was in the same role as the Pillar of Autumn. Was it terribly important to know the backstory of Serin Osman in Spartan Ops? She was Lasky’s superior and ran ONI, that says the whole story far as I can see. As for Agent Locke, the bare details we know show he is an ONI agent and Spartan tasked with finding Chief and whatever his motivations are will likely be learned in Halo 5 itself. Is that a problem? We didn’t really delve into the Arbiter’s backstory either, yet again no complaints. With Petra…does it really matter if you did not know who she was prior to Hunt the Truth? She is a cool reference if you do know her so you can go, “Hey, that’s Petra, sweet!”. Otherwise she is another reporter who gets very pissed off easily.

I get where you are coming from, but some of the problems seem arbitrary when previous Halo games and lore had the same issues, yet no complaints.

4

I don’t necessarily think it’s a “problem” quite in the way you say it is.

Halo is so much more than just a video game franchise. In fact, the very fist lines of dialogue in ‘Halo: CE’ reference events you would only understand if you’ve read ‘The Fall of Reach’. Heck, the entire background of the Master Chief character and the Human-Covenant War itself only make sense if you’ve read the books. But in the end the game still tells it’s own story well enough - even to someone who doesn’t know the lore. This same reasoning applies to ‘Halo 2’ and ‘Halo 3’. Now I will admit that ‘Halo 4’ did stumble a bit. But not because it had major connections to the lore, but because it didn’t explain them well enough in-game. It was severely lacking in some pretty basic exposition. But this is something that can easily be done better in ‘Halo 5’.

The Extended Universe has always heavily informed the events of the games, and it’s always been up to the player whether or not they’re going to make themselves aware of that. Because what it boils down to is that you simply can’t tell a story as expansive in scale and scope as Halo strictly through something so narratively limited as a first-person-shooter.

The “need to know” information about the things you listed are available in the content in which they appeared.

  • Thomas Lasky - XO of the UNSC Infinity (this is literally how he introduces himself).- The Infinity - it’s a huge, powerful new human spaceship. The game makes this apparent without having to read the books.- Serin Osman - the head of ONI, and a very powerful govt./military official. The game makes this apparent without having to read the books.- Petra Janechek - a well known investigative reporter. #HUNTtheTRUTH tells you this without you having to read the comics.- Agent Locke - a Spartan-IV who has been assigned to look for the Master Chief. The commercials tell you this without you having to have watched ‘Nightfall’.Now, wether or not you want to know more than that is up to you. And obviously, knowing more will indeed help you understand the story and the series as a whole better. This goes for any multimedia franchise. It’s not a “school project” or “homework” - looking into the lore and background stories is fun for most fans, and is usually a natural part of the process when you’ve come to love a series. But in the end it’s still up to the fan themselves to take that first step. Halo has been developing through games, books, comics, and short films for nearly 15 years now, so honestly I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the story to not be holding fans’ hands anymore as it continues to grow and become more interconnected. Now does this mean that the content of the games shouldn’t have to explain important ties to the EU? Of course not. But at the same time I don’t think people should expect to be spoon-fed all the details that inform certain characters and plot-points either.
5

I’m surprised you didn’t mention the Didact. That would have been the biggest case of “what is going on” to someone who didn’t know. They’d just pick up the game and be like “accidentally wake up a Forerunner who just so happens to want to kill all Humans.” The other points, I don’t think mattered too much. It’s minor stuff like that that should be included to get people interested in Halo lore. But major stuff like the Didact and the Librarian left unexplained, that’s bad storytelling.

6

And that’s the Way I like it.

7

Though it’s helpful, there’s no need to check out a bunch of backstop to get the general gist of what’s goin on, I didn’t and was not disappointed at all. Now going back and reading the Forerunner Saga and other canon helped expand my understanding and provide depth, though some parts aren’t really essential, such as Foward Unto Dawn. It provides a little background and I suppose supports Lasky’s support of Chief but isn’t really essential.

8

> 2533274807399716;1:
> A perfect example of studying before playing is Halo 4 when Cortana mentions the Infinity like its been part of the games since Halo Combat Evolved, even goes on saying it was just a rumored project and that’s about it and the game was expecting the player to even know about all this stuff.

Cortana’s explanation doesn’t really give much less than the books did (or at least, what we needed to know). Spartan ops fills in what little more there is.

The real problem is the Didact and Jul feel like flat, cartoony villains without their associated books.

9

You should look at the Expanded universe and side stories as enriching element you lose nothing from not taking it in, but gain everything when you do.

10

I’m all for it being that way to. The game tell the story enough but if you want to go deeper it the player choice.

11

> 2533274830366691;9:
> You should look at the Expanded universe and side stories as enriching element you lose nothing from not taking it in, but gain everything when you do.

Except for your paycheck, unless you use Halopedia for everything and that’s not really experiencing it.

12

I did forget about Jul Mdama and The Didact, two major players in the new Halo coming out and I only knew who he was cause I pushed through the boring Forerunner series (and that’s hard for me to say since I’m a big fan of the Forerunners…) but my friend Demian has never read the books and was completely lost when the Didact came out of nowhere (he only knows about the Halo 3 Terminals and from what we gleamed from that a while back was he was dead.)

13

> 2533274807399716;12:
> I did forget about Jul Mdama and The Didact, two major players in the new Halo coming out and I only knew who he was cause I pushed through the boring Forerunner series (and that’s hard for me to say since I’m a big fan of the Forerunners…) but my friend Demian has never read the books and was completely lost when the Didact came out of nowhere (he only knows about the Halo 3 Terminals and from what we gleamed from that a while back was he was dead.)

Boring?

Was your friend confused about the Gravemind? Or Truth?
Those are the two biggest antagonists of the original trilogy and both had much less introduction than the Didact did.

The Didact had an entire cutscene explaining his motives and why he is here. We never even learned why we were at war with the Covenant in the first place throughout any of the original games.

14

> 2533274807399716;1:
> As you may know, Halo’s Lore is vast and huge and the players and fans have followed every bit of it, but there’s a problem with the current Halo…
> A lot of the games require you to actually read every novel and comic out there in order to understand what’s going on.
> Those who never watched Forward Unto Dawn wouldn’t know the significance of Thomas Lasky and his role aboard the Infinity, or better yet, WHAT the Infinity even is if you haven’t read the Kilo Five series.
>
> Spartan Ops feautured Serin Osman from the Kilo Five books and a lot of people I talked to never knew who she was or why she was so important.
> Now we have Halo 5: Guardians coming out and no one would even know who this Agent Locke is or why he’s even going after the Chief in the first place.
>
> Petra Janekec, a famous reporter next to Benjamin Giraud is another character featured in PETRA in Halo Evolutions when it was re-released to add new chapters, no one really had a clue who she was or her importance either if you haven’t read the books or comics.
>
> I love the lore of Halo, but what happened to the game itself just telling you instead of everything requiring you to study up on a subject before playing.
>
> A perfect example of studying before playing is Halo 4 when Cortana mentions the Infinity like its been part of the games since Halo Combat Evolved, even goes on saying it was just a rumored project and that’s about it and the game was expecting the player to even know about all this stuff.
>
> Like I said, Halo has a lot of lore, but shouldn’t be a school project to figure out what the -Yoink- is going on in this weeks episode of Halo.

Ok, I agree with part of your premise, but I gotta point some of stuff out.

"Those who never watched Forward Unto Dawn wouldn’t know the significance of Thomas Lasky and his role aboard the Infinity, or better yet, WHAT the Infinity even is if you haven’t read the Kilo Five series."

So? It’s obvious from context that the Infinity is an important, and powerful ship. And like you bring up later, Cortana mentions that it was just a project during the events of Halo 1-3. Nobody actually needs to know that Lasky was saved by Cheif, it’s not integral to the story, it’s only mentioned when Lasky says I didn’t think I’d ever see you AGAIN.

"Spartan Ops feautured Serin Osman from the Kilo Five books and a lot of people I talked to never knew who she was or why she was so important.
**Now we have Halo 5: Guardians coming out and no one would even know who this Agent Locke is or why he’s even going after the Chief in the first place."**Again, Serin is obviously a higher up from context, and for anyone who knows about basic lore, it’d likely be ONI. So people who hadn’t read the books probably didn’t realize she was a S-II washout or the head of ONI. That fact alone really wasn’t all that important to the plot. And nobody really knows who Locke is outside of Nightfall, so I fail to see your point there.

"I love the lore of Halo, but what happened to the game itself just telling you instead of everything requiring you to study up on a subject before playing."
That would be very lazy writing. Seriously. Think about how out of place it’d be to have all those things constantly explained, say the same way the Librarian tried to summarize Humanities struggle against the Flood and Forerunners.

15

Halo 4 had problems and wasted opportunities, but according to 343 they have recogniced the problems and try to avoid them with Halo 5. Though we don’t have any concrete examples yet.

> I get where you are coming from, but some of the problems seem arbitrary when previous Halo games and lore had the same issues, yet no complaints.

Lore is something that accumulates over time. And previous games did leave room for improvement. People learn to demand more from video game stories in ~10 years. Compared to Halo 3 we now have to deal with two timelines:

Forerunner timeline to understand the Didact and Prometheans, Composers, Humans vs Forerunners, Flood vs Forerunners etc. This was previously backround info, but now it has the center stage since Didact became the new nemesis. The past events now have multiple direct effects on current timeline events.

The 2550s timeline. The current situation in the galaxy with all the different factions, time of uncertain peace, unclear borders and fragile alliances. No more convenient humans vs aliens vs space zombies, Humanity fights for survival- setting.

When people have trouble comprehending why Elites are your enemies in Halo 4 when they were all allies in Halo 3, the games have failed to break out of “video game logic” prison on their own. People are used to thinking Halo storyline simply: aliens are bad, humans are good. After 343 took over the universe was intended to move towards less black and white approach. Heroes don’t always win. Humans aren’t always good. There are multiple factions with different objectives across all different races.

Halo 4 failed to establish a solid foundation for that. It didn’t build the universe at all. Besides Bond-villian monologues from the Didact, “bad guys” got no screen time. Jul didn’t even make an appearence once in the campaign, the Covenant were sort of “just there”. It’s like they reverted back to Halo CE. We didn’t learn what was going on with them, what was their agenda etc. We learned next to nothing about the state of the galaxy post Human-Covenant war (something that is bound to be essential information in the future). It was a wasted opportunity that 343 has to compensate for in Halo 5 instead of dividing the burden of exposition equally across all games.

One more reason why I think the story should have a longer runtime.

16

I’m all for the game telling it’s own story and not relying so heavily on the EU, that was my biggest complaint against Halo 4 even though I did read K5, but your examples are very lacking.

17

Wait, I don’t understand the problem. You do not have to read the EU to understand anything in this book. Like in the games you never got Truth’s motivations or Gravemind’s, same as the Didact. You just knew they were against humanity. If you wanted to know why, for any of them, you read the books. I think that the other mediums do not take away from the games, but add onto it if you so choose. And if you don’t, you still get a good story in the games. About MC saving the world from the Didact and Cortana’s relationship with John.

18

Maybe

19

With Halo 4 I agree that there was an over reliance on the EU with regards to its story, despite the fact that I even read the EU material before playing the game. If the story however becomes incoherent or if the EU becomes an “instruction manual” of sort for the lore, sort of like prerequisite reading, then I expect my free digital copy of said EU material with purchase of the game. I’m pretty certain 343 recognises this and will work to balance the EU for Halo 5.

20

Honestly I think what made the Didact and Jul jarring is not so much that they had EU, its more that they felt contradictory to the past 3 games unless you knew the EU.

H3 ended with elites being our begrudging allies. h4 has them pick up again with only a line like “these guys seem more fanatical than usual”.

In the Didact’s case, h3 terminals generally get really wonky with the didact. They don’t imply he’d be on requiem (and the h4 terminals don’t mention there being 2). There’s no implication the original one is alive (or is even on a human-hating rampage) until a book that came out after h4 so he felt contradictory and confusing even if you had read the first 2 books.

Infinity might have felt kind of awkward after the devastation of h3, but honestly bungie liked big exaggerated phrases on everything in that game…

The main problem is Jul and the Didact are your two main antagonists. When your two main villains feel awkward it sours the whole work. Compared to Truth where we generally expected there to be some kind of leader,and the Gravemind which wasn’t contradictory and framed heavily as a new discovery (“What is THAT?”).