I don’t know why 343 didn’t use a novel to cover the events of the one year gap.
You could easily cover most of the story and lore in a single novel.
It’s clearly not going to be followed up on in future game titles. So it’s a blank canvas at this point. To me, there three things which 343 has not done in any Halo media even after 7 years. All the novels they’ve made are honestly about everything other than the Created War and consciously avoid giving you any relevant information or actual context.
For example Shadows of Readh doesn’t mention the Created occupation of Doisac or the Brutes hatred towards the Created despite this being a huge part of the game.
But just think, 7 years and they’ve never had:
A Cortana POV during that one year gap.
The POV of a human during the Created occupation of Earth or another human world.
A POV from the Infinity as it goes Battlestar Galactica.
With just these three things, honestly that covers the vast majority of it.
Why write 6 novels that claim they’re about post Halo 5 that are just Spartans digging for relics when you could just write one novel and cover pretty much everything? Hit the nail on the head once and then you can tell random stories about Spartans racing to get to the artefact.
You get to see Cortanas plan from both her warped perspective and get a sense of the scale of what she’s doing.
You then have a human POV be that an ordinary person or some resistance type deal and get to see the consequences of that. Like really 7 years and apart from one piece of abandoned concept art they have not given any indication of what that’s like. The Encyclopedia provides some bizarre narration on it but that’s about it.
You also context for the Infinity fighting the good fight before it’s destroyed and convey its role in that fight. Something all of the books they have done fail to do entirely.
I don’t see why not. People who want closure on Halo 5 get what they want. People who hate Halo 5 don’t have to put up with that in a game. You have a novel that isn’t just “let’s get to the artefact!”. There no real lore conflict since the game evidently intend to ignore the state of the galaxy and repercussion of the conflict anyway. If they felt they weren’t constrained by Halo 5 ending then quite clearly they don’t mind not referencing the novels.
Like I already know the novel with the Arbiter they’ll give cursory mention to the Created. Leave Sanghelios soon as possible as a small strike team hunting for some artefact and get tunnel vision as they wander about in the wilderness. In fact I bet he’s more concerned about other elites than he is about Cortana.
I just want to see them address the three points in a novel after 7 years.
Cortana POV
Occupied Earth POV
Battlestar Infinity
Personally I wasn’t a fan of the reset. A full retcon would have had less issues and I lost a lot of respect for them over skipping over the cliffhanger n killin off Cortana.
I don’t really care too much about those bits being fleshed out. Is there a mystery there? It feels like they need to push the narrative forward in a big way and I am not sure how invested I am in Chief killing the Banished over this polite disagreement.
Definitely don’t care about the Endless; that’s literally just pest control. You’ve just lost Cortana and this floating clown floats over to you telling you she’s the Lord of Darkness. It’s like, alright then. Shrugs.
But yeah, if they did a novel I’d rather they just for once addressed the core of the Created War instead of churning out all these side stories that dance around the subject. After 7 years it is past a joke.
I would love to never see that book. But that’s because I personally believe 343 should scrap every single bit of Halo lore they’ve created and start over. Every single part of the story they’ve touched since they acquired the IP has been either incredibly bad or just a huge disappointment. Actually I don’t know if that’s true. I’ve not read any of the novels they’ve released, but I think the state of their video game plots speak for themselves. Halo 4, Halo 5, Halo Wars 2, and Halo Infinite have all had some of the most god awful campaigns I’ve ever played, from a storytelling perspective.
I could see all those done as short stories for another Evolutions or Fractures Anthology type book. I don’t think any one of those stories would really be able to fill up a whole novel (maybe the Infinity one) on their own. Honestly, I’d add to that list wanting to have explained how exactly the Spirit of Fire ends up at the Ark.
Anyone of those could easily cover a 200 page novel in the format 343 likes to write. This isn’t Game of Thrones.
Ultimately all the Halo books are short sci fi stories.
Writing about AI takes over galaxy, people dealing with it and Infinity fighting it; that’s more than enough to cover the kinds of novels they write.
Take Shadows of Reach. It amounts to
We need box.
Red Covenant also want something where box is.
Fight with people against red covenant
Set up stuff with the Ark for tie in
Explain how they get Weapon and Atriox got back from Ark
That’s literally it.
These are not complex stories and the points I outline are central lore points which 343 for 7 years point blank decided aren’t relevant to that period. You compare this to even a Horus Heresy novel and the gap in quality/complicity of the writing is kind of dire.
I don’t care about Bucke getting a new team of interchangeable Spartans.
I don’t care about generic Xenos Warlord before I kill them. They’re meat.
I don’t care about insurrectionists who don’t like the Man.
All I want is for them to address these 3 things in some format and believe me a novel is scraping the barrel.
Just to address another dude. You don’t have to buy it if you don’t like it and there are dozens of other stories about Space Marines killing Xenos. I am sure 343 will not be prevented churning out another version of that story of getting to the artefact. So I wouldn’t be worried. You will get your UNSC vs Banished things.
Personally I still dont see why a the desperate abandoned threads cant all be tied i to a satisfying cohesive whole. Infact it would be pretty straightforward my only worry is 343i have failed time and time again to carry the scifi aspects of their narratives on the back of the human elements.
Primarily seems to be a stylistic issue.
But flood, didact, cortana are all a single thread of logic plague.
Humanity, prometheans and forerunners are another.
Both easily intergrated into story and gameplay and both with logical answers in universe that can be conveyed through gameplay and dialogue in a manner digestable for even the most casual player.
Infinite emphatically failed to bridge the gap between long time, lapsed, 343i era and new fans on a narrative level.
If anything it made things worse.
The arbiter troy denning book might be something of a 5.5 who knows.
But honestly whats the point in caring.
The ball wasnt dropped it got punctured and burnt.
If time travel really is the next move then the well is dry creatively.
Such a shame so much potential.
Guardians had a solid concept same a 4 and infinite but execution is disastrous.
Because none of the main story should be told outside of the game.
343’s biggest mistakes storywise are the fact that you need to read extra material to understand the in game story.
Play Halo 1-3 and everything you need is there, but the books at the time expanded on it.
Halo 4-Infinite take huge narrative jumps between games, covered in books, spin offs and comics. I shouldn’t have to play Halo Wars 2 to follow the main story.
The Created War should have been told in Infinite, Cortana’s story should have been told in Infinite but the backlash from the community to H5 meant the story was abandoned and the Weapon retcon was introduced.
While i think its a false narrative that you need to rwad books to follow the story of 4, 5 or infinite.
I agree that 343i rely on external media too much.
However that logic essentially ignores the premise op has established for this discussion.
That being these plot points being abandoned and not getting an in game continuation.
So the book route is at least more respectful of fans who have invested the time to keep up with the universes narrative as a whole.
Cause infinite essentially side steps everything interesting 343i have done with lore in favour of ooh endless worse than flood, one bad side quest, forget the past, uhm time travel maybe or not atriox is dead but also hes alive which is pretty damn poor if we’re being honest.
So what you’re saying is that there are lots of holes and 343i can utilize those holes to connect various aspects of the Halo universe? I love the idea of a Cortana POV.
Obviously, Cortana is an AI, but we see this drastic change in her ability, connection and relationship with Spartan 117 through Halo CE, Halo 2, Halo 3 and through the entire franchise. I’d love to see that dynamic furthered explored and shared.
Huge agree. They should have started a new story somewhere during the war, then eventually brought the story towards finding chief, and eventually he would become an NPC.