So I was heavily invested in the story since CE and read the extended lore to get my Halo fix. Then Halo 5 shipped. Long story short, I am not exactly jumping with excitement for whats in store.
From the teaser, there seems to be a date on the pelican dashboard indicating the year is “2560”. So that’s 2 years after the end of H5. So I wanna know…
Is there any published lore after the end of H5 Guardians? OR even educated guesses? I know the ring is most likely Installation 07 but can anyone gimme a rundown on what happened/might’ve happened leading up to Infinite? I’m just looking for anything that might get me excited about whats to come, cuz after H5 I am pretty indifferent about Halo’s mainline story.
All I personally know for sure has taken place is Matt Forbeck’s novel, “Bad Blood,” which picks up directly after Halo 5’s campaign and leaves off at some indeterminate time afterwards (if I’m remembering correctly). Again, I may be mistemembering this, but I’m almost certain the main plot events of that book can’t have taken place over the course of more than a few months, at the very longest. It doesn’t really address a lot concerning Chief or Blue Team’s situation going into Infinite, either- “Bad Blood,” is Buck-centric just like “New Blood” was before it (That one took place all over the place time-wise, but mostly focused on Buck’s induction into the S-IV’s).
Anyways, both of these are great reads if you like Buck and the ODST crew. They’ll give you a tiny bit of window dressing for the state of things following H5 (some Created mayhem) but not a ton. And like I said, almost nothing at all substantive on MC or Blue Team.
That’s all I’m aware of, and as one last disclaimer, everything I’ve said here is all from memory. Happy to accept corrections from those more up to date or with better memory than mine. And, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn there exist other works that occur chronologically following Guardians- this is just the only one I’ve personally read/seen.
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> All I personally know for sure has taken place is Matt Forbeck’s novel, “Bad Blood,” which picks up directly after Halo 5’s campaign and leaves off at some indeterminate time afterwards (if I’m remembering correctly). Again, I may be mistemembering this, but I’m almost certain the main plot events of that book can’t have taken place over the course of more than a few months, at the very longest. It doesn’t really address a lot concerning Chief or Blue Team’s situation going into Infinite, either- “Bad Blood,” is Buck-centric just like “New Blood” was before it (That one took place all over the place time-wise, but mostly focused on Buck’s induction into the S-IV’s).
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> Anyways, both of these are great reads if you like Buck and the ODST crew. They’ll give you a tiny bit of window dressing for the state of things following H5 (some Created mayhem) but not a ton. And like I said, almost nothing at all substantive on MC or Blue Team.
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> That’s all I’m aware of, and as one last disclaimer, everything I’ve said here is all from memory. Happy to accept corrections from those more up to date or with better memory than mine. And, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn there exist other works that occur chronologically following Guardians- this is just the only one I’ve personally read/seen.
Cool…I’ll look up a synopsis for those books on YouTube.
Do those books make you feel excited for infinite or not really?
I don’t think they will be very important/relevant to what happens in Infinite, so… Not really? I’ve enjoyed them, though, which helps ameliorate some of my misgivings about 343’s handling of the series since they made Halo 4. Which isn’t to say that I’m super optimistic for the future of the franchise, now, but I’m certainly less doom-and-gloom about it than I have been for a long time. Mostly because of books like Forbeck’s Buck series, Troy Dennings’ “Silent Storm” and “Oblivion” these are set way back in the 2520s-2530s Blue Team adventures, and so on. Also the throwback art and music direction we’ve seen in the E3 trailers for Infinite (Especially E3 ‘18, the 2019 trailer isn’ t nearly as good in my opinion) is encouraging to me.
If you’re a fan of pre-343 Halo storytelling, I’d for sure check out those books by Troy Denning and Matt Forbeck. Plot synopses are likely available, but I’d encourage you to actually read through them if you can- it’s been a long time since there’ve been such quality “classic” Halo stories to sift through. Gregg Bear’s Forerunner trilogy scared me off of reading Halo for a long time, but I’m glad I came back to these.
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> Gregg Bear’s Forerunner trilogy scared me off of reading Halo for a long time, but I’m glad I came back to these.
That was the last Halo book series I’ve read. I read everything from FOR to Bear’s forerunner trilogy. I loved Bear’s forerunner books, it was a challenging read for me at the time (I was a youngin). But after I thought Kilo five was TERRIBLE I couldn’t even finish it and left such a bad taste in my mouth I haven’t picked up a halo book since, which is a shame. I hated the demonization of Hasley felt so unnecessary. You are inspiring me to pick up a Halo book again though.
I definitely understood what they were after with the Forerunner trilogy. But to me, the heightening of the proverbial brow to high-concept, high-detail, epoch spanning sci-fi didn’t quite fit my favorite flavor of Halo.
I skipped over Kilo Five as well, although I am a massive fan of Karen Traviss’s work on the Gears novels, I got about five pages into one of those and just wasn’t feeling it (not a fair shake, admittedly, but no one’s ever given me too much grief for having passed over these).
You definitely should check out Forbeck’s and Dennings’ latest stuff though! Not particularly high concept stuff, but it gets back into a groove of military future sci-fi action that I’ve been sorely missing since the original first five or six books.
As others have pointed out, only Bad Blood really follows up on Guardians in any meaningful way. There’s a short story in (Fractures was it? Correct me if I’m wrong please.) where Osman manages to make an escape to an isolated world following the AI Uprising, but likely won’t tie into Infinite in any meaningful way since I get the feeling they’re going to be simplifying the story here and omitting most ties to extended reading for the overall plot. Finally, there’s Legacy of Onyx which involves a guardian, but its ending gives the feeling that it won’t tie into Infinite’s story either.
It does however, end with one of the Guardians getting wrecked. I’d imagine little ol’ Cortana would be a smidge peeved over that, even if it was just one of them. Shows that there’s still folks out there capable of fighting back at the very least.
I insist in reading more of the books and other media alike. If you like to read them already. They are all great in additions to the story and even their own side stories.
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> You are inspiring me to pick up a Halo book again though.
You definitely should. While I enjoyed the Kilo Five trilogy, it’s definitely an outlier in terms of Halo series that I fully understand why people wouldn’t enjoy. I probably won’t even reread them myself they’re quite difficult to get through. I’d recommend Renegades in particular, especially if you’re a fan of the Forerunner trilogy (there is a short story precursor, Smoke and Shadow, that’s not the best but is enjoyable and quick to get through). Renegades pays off that cliffhanger at the end of Primordium and, imo, it was fantastic.
Now as for OPs question, Legacy of Onyx and Bad Blood are the only books that could have any significant impact on Infinite if I recall correctly. All we know from them is that pretty much everybody on Infinity (Blue Team, Osiris, Buck, etc.) and Onyx (Tom and Lucy) is safe as of the few months after Halo 5. No idea what happens in the years between that time and Infinite. Hopefully we’ll get a book in the next couple months to explain some of that, or the game does it really well without overwhelming newcomers somehow.