And god did Bungie hate the existence of those novels. The push for them at all was mainly on the Microsoft side of the Bungie/MS relationship, with involvement from the Halo Franchise Development team, which is essentially the precursor to 343.
That's all irrelevant to the end result. We had a good EU, and we had a cohesive narrative on the game side of things as well. Perhaps Bungie's sentiment towards them was for the better.
Personally, love the Forerunner Saga, was okay with Glasslands and Thursday War, hated Mortal Dictata.
Yeah I'm in the minority when it comes to these sentiments. The grounded, moral grey-area, political-espionage angle was much more captivating thanthe technobabble, space magic, walk-a-thon angle of Bear's work, IMO
It's far from required reading. Short of Blue Team's sudden appearance in H5, most things are at least touched upon in the games, if not straight up explained.
If by 'explained' you mean hidden away in terminals, or
Exposition condensed into a single cutscene, then perhaps it wasn't required reading. But more than a few people walked away from H4 not having a clue who/what the Didact & Librarian were, why humanity was a target, or even that Ancient Humanity was a thing. That's a
terrible way to handle getting the audience up to speed on the universe.
These things should not be "touched on", or hastily explained. They should be experienced.
I'm not sure what book you're referring to. The only "crucial" info I remember being release post H5 was the conclusion to the Absolute Record arc.
Absolute Record isn't crucial, because almost no one even played Spartan Ops. Questions like "wtf is the domain and why should I care?" and "How is Cortana alive? I just saw the ship get nuked" have answers that players should be privy to, not just people who follow the EU.
I agree with you there. Although Jul's development in general was piss poor, regardless of whether it was the books or the games.
I disagree, Jul is one of the best characters (if not THE BEST) in all of Halo.
Then Bungie failed. CE doesn't make a lot of sense without The Fall of Reach or at least reading the game manual, and Halo 3 is full of plot holes. Bungie just knew how to make the games fun enough to distract you from asking too many questions.
CE makes plenty of sense without reading anything at all. Which parts didn't make sense? You quickly learn that you are the last of a breed of super soldiers, and after your ship crash lands on an alien artifact, you must uncover its secrets before your enemies use it to finalize their genocide on humanity. That's the plot.
You even learn
through gameplay that humans have some connection with Forerunner tech that the covenant might be jealous of. You don't need to know
anything external to follow this self contained story.
Plot holes are really a different discussion from EU management. We can have that discussion, but H5 is a giant plot hole in and of itself.
It really didn't. I'd say it didn't do a great job of delivering the necessary information to the player, but it's all there.
Sorry man, terminals are essentially additional reading. Only a fraction of players ever access them, so "it's all there" is really an empty comment. You don't tell critical stories via hidden Easter eggs
On it's own, Halo 5 does make sense. Almost everything necessary is explained (who Osiris is, what's going on, etc). Blue Team's existence is the notable standout.
Major plot points are completely ignored.
- where did this Cortana come from
- why is she compelled to rule instead of serve as programmed
- wtf is the domain
- why was Cortana able to talk to chief after he got knocked out by a Hunter?
- why is Blue team listening, without question, to a guy who says he heared the voice of a dead friend moments after he got knocked out.
- why is she calling all these Guardians to Genesis only to redeploy them right back where they came from
The lack of Master Chief was not the problem, if you ask me, however. Chief & Blue Team levels should have been cut entirely. The problem with them is that they spoiled any mystery about why Blue Team went AWOL, and confirmed way too quickly that Cortana was alive.
Perhaps that would've been better. But the "mystery" was contrived in the first place.
Imagine, instead of playing as Blue Team, you return to Infinity and find these legendary Spartans are now rogue. Then, on Meridian, when you first encounter the Warden Eternal, that's when you first hear about Cortana.
I think H5 would be to early reveal Cortana as the main baddie. They should have first established the rules of the universe? How can a rampant AI be spared? are there more massive Forerunner Weapons? What is the domain? who are the new faces of the UNCS and why should I care about them? The Cortana angle was never earned.
