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This topic has moved here: Subject: In my opinion halo reach was better than the books talking about reach
  • Subject: In my opinion halo reach was better than the books talking about reach
Subject: In my opinion halo reach was better than the books talking about reach




Posted by: GrnDragn

Posted by: OniLink147

Posted by: GrnDragn

Posted by: xDarkomantis

Posted by: mojeda101
Bungie can do whatever they want with the Canon, it's their game.

Games>Books[/quote]Yeah, the books are based off the games. I think Bungie has set the campaign in a good direction.


Typical Bungie Fanboy response. You're knowledge of Halo Canon is laughable.

Typical whiner response. Your inability to realize that not every story universe is perfect is laughable.


Again, a typical Bungie Fanboy response. Don't fix what ain't broken, because you're only gonna ruin it. Bungie did that.

They extended the time period the Fall of Reach to take place over a realistic length of time for a military campaign. Big whoop. Personally it makes it feel like a larger scale battle to me. Besides if dates matter so much to you, then why didn't the inconsistency in dates on Jenkins' helmet cam bother you? And by the way I'm not a Bungie fanboy. I'm a Halo fan. Hence why I am going to move on to 343i. I may buy bungie's next game if it interests me.
I am with you on this

  • 02.08.2011 2:42 AM PDT

Dark Neptune, a young amateur astronomer whose gaming life is no different from other teenagers of his age, though he controls it more strictly then others.


Posted by: OniLink147

Posted by: GrnDragn

Posted by: xDarkomantis

Posted by: mojeda101
Bungie can do whatever they want with the Canon, it's their game.

Games>Books
Yeah, the books are based off the games. I think Bungie has set the campaign in a good direction.


Typical Bungie Fanboy response. You're knowledge of Halo Canon is laughable.

Typical whiner response. Your inability to realize that not every story universe is perfect is laughable.


That doesn't mean a story universe has the right to end up on the total opposite of Perfection.

  • 02.08.2011 4:55 AM PDT

Dark Neptune, a young amateur astronomer whose gaming life is no different from other teenagers of his age, though he controls it more strictly then others.


Posted by: OniLink147

Posted by: Dark Neptune

Posted by: OniLink147

Posted by: Dark Neptune

Posted by: OniLink147
The Battle of Reach didn't take place all at once. Reach didn't fall in a single blaze of glory. The first half of the campaign jumps around dates a lot, but that are forward recon by the Covenant. The actual Battle of Reac takes place during the second half of the game.(AKA Long night Of Solace onward)


No. TFoR made the Battle of Reach really like a warzone, just that as IT WAS A BOOK not all the "epic" elements could really be flashed out.

TFoR made the BoR look like a "Arrive, Invade, Destroy, We Win!" sort of victory for the Covenant. Halo: Reach just made the entire BoR look like we're fighting on some backwater colony.

What made me really laugh with H:R's story was that Noble Six took like 9 friggin days just to walk to New Alexandria after landing off the LNoS explosion, and wait, what, the city isn't even glassed yet? Doesn't Noble Six need to eat/drink and go toilet as well?

In summary; Halo: Reach, the game, made the Battle of Reach, the planet Reach itself, Spartan supersoldiers and Covenant forces alike look like a total joke.

And based on my observations, almost if not everyone who keeps insisting Halo: Reach didn't break canon never seems to read the original 9.5 year old novel the Fall of Reach. The closest thing they get is the "The journal says it all" counterpoint. Seriously.

I hope you're not suggesting I haven't read the books. Considering I was reading the books before I even played the games and that I have read every Halo book to the point where they are falling apart I find that a bit insulting. There is a difference between breaking canon and acceptable retcon. Halo has always had retcons. Hell every story in existence that has sequels or prequels have retcons. Halo Reach has retcons, I'm not denying that, but it did not break canon.


For the last, -blam! time, oh wai-.....never mind. I just remembered that....I am preaching to the converted.

I tired of argueing with people like you. Insisting you're correct when you do not have facts to back that up.

P.S. Minor retcons are tolerable and inevitable. 10 years into Halo, Bungie hasn't learnt to minimize these retcons, no matter how small (Big). *Sigh*

I'm sorry, but your little rant there made no sense. Your tired of arguing with someone who agrees that there are inconsistency and retcons? The only thing we're disagreeing on is whether it's story breaking or not.


No I am tired of stating the obviousness of Halo: Reach's canon-breaking story.

The moment H:R showed us a first glimpse of the final version of the first intro cutscene it already broke canon.

July 24, 2552, 07:28 Hours

Wait, what? That gives the Covies like just 6 days to report their discovery on Sigma Octanus and launch an Invasion force. Oh yeah. I forgot, it wasn't really clearly explained how the Covies even found Reach that early.

  • 02.08.2011 5:02 AM PDT
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Posted by: Dark Neptune

July 24, 2552, 07:28 Hours

Wait, what? That gives the Covies like just 6 days to report their discovery on Sigma Octanus and launch an Invasion force. Oh yeah. I forgot, it wasn't really clearly explained how the Covies even found Reach that early.


They discovered the location of Reach from a Forerunner artifact that was recovered during the Battle of Sigma Octanus IV which had indicated that Reach held another artifact.

Without tracking device, they would have been unaware of human presence on Reach which probably would have lead to another Regret attack.

[Edited on 02.08.2011 5:22 AM PST]

  • 02.08.2011 5:16 AM PDT
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"Time was your ally human. But now it has abandoned you. The Forerunners....have returned. And this tomb... is now yours". - The Didact

I was talking about what was going on on the ground, not in orbit. I know the home fleet had already been routed.

The main characters of Reach are not elite pilots, they're Spartans, Spartans are not meant for ship-to-ship space combat, their strength lies entirely on foot. Yes, Bungie could have done more when you're taking out the Solace, but they still did plenty with that scene.

A comic is still vastly different than a video game, you do a great deal more with visuals in a comic, they take less time to make, and are not really that costly.


Sure they are footsoldiers,but they could add dialog from the spacebattle in the game or shows airbattles above your head.
Look at star wars battlefront II,you see massive battle above and around you,why couldn't bungie do that in Reach to show a full invasion on large scale.

And the solace level,there was nothing good except some glassed citys and the end of the cutscene.

They could have shows the UNSC fleet in orbit in a cutscene,just like Halo 2.

And you can see the UNSC navy in Halo 2.

Opening cutscene,you see patrol ships and ODP's
The covie fleet arrives,the fleet prepares to fight.

The bomb cutscene,you see dozens of UNSC ships .




Haha, ok that's funny, I can't help but laugh at all the comments saying "both sides are morons", they're exactly the same as in the other games.

I felt all those things playing through the game, maybe not as much as in the trilogy, but it still had plenty of epic battles for me, and I certainly felt the hopelessness of it during the game.

Because Noble Team was not involved in the space battle, we don't know when the Covenant beat the UNSC fleet, some ships did break through though, as evidenced by the Corvettes in New Alexandria.

Weren't there 25 ODPs? Well regardless of how many ODPs there were you seem to forget that they could rip through an ENTIRE Covenant ship in one strike, the with the number of UNSC ships there is enough to last much longer than 2 -blam!- hours, regardless of the 1:3 and whether it's what Bungie holds to or not. And the number of the Covenant ships at Reach hasn't changed at all, it's still 314+ or however many it was, the 750 thing was not how it was supposed to be, it was an editting mistake taking Hood's line about the fleet at Reach being 5 times bigger than the one at Earth in H2.

I think they could easily last a while, especially since I don't take the 1:3 ratio as total and complete fact, it is not utter law. The UNSC can and has won with much less ships than the Covenant before.


No this game portrays them as the largest retards insciencefiction.
One of their retard behavior:

-the UNSC didn't evacuated civilians,they jsut tried to keep it a secret for no reason.
-The brigde crew of the supercarrier were so drunk that they couldn't even notice that their corvette is being boarded and attacked,did they ever heard of radars?
-Reach hasn't any nukes????As Carter said.
..
...

I didn't felt the hopeleness in this game because bungie didn't portrayed it good.
But the last levels were great.

-And it still took weeks for the covie navy to break though the inferior UNSC fleet,those corvettes seems to be the ones who were already on Reach.

20 ODP's aren't enough.One covenant ship is a match for 3 UNSC ships,and the UNSC fleet was already outnumbered.And i think that all ODp's were destroyed before the "main fleet" came in,because it seems that a single supercarrier wrecked havoc with the UNSC fleet.If it didn't then where was the UNSC fleet during solace?

Which battles?Last time i checked the only spacebattles the UNSC won was when the UNSC outnumbered the covies,but it still led to heavy casualities at the UNSC side.

  • 02.08.2011 8:40 AM PDT


Posted by: OniLink147

Posted by: GrnDragn

Yes, it did. There's a difference between making small retcons for the benefit of story and completely retconning something "because you want to." Bungie did the latter. It was not necessary to Retcon an already existing, good story. Halo Reach made Reach look like a random farmer colony, not a militar stronghold. It also made everyone look like idiot; Humanity and the Covenant. The books showed that Human Commanders were brilliant, they were complete idiots here.
Why isn't a lot of the Fleet at Reach to defend already? Where are the Super MACs? Why is Captain Keyes about to go on his mission with the SIIs when Reach had supposedly been under assault for over a month? No-one knew that Reach was under assault in the books, yet Bungie said Campaign fit "perfectly" within' the Canon(lol!)
The Covenant in the books were brutal and pretty efficient when it came to destroying worlds. As soon as the battle in space was lost, the Covenant should have started glassing. New Alexandria shouldn't have even been there when you got there. Nor should it have lasted so long.

By dragging out the battle, Bungie made the Battle of Reach less compellling. It made the Covenant look like idiots, but in the books, the fact that Reach fell in a day to an overwhelming force was better. It truly made us lose all hope.

So Bungie made a huge retcon, but it was not for the benefit of the story. It was because they had gotten tired of Halo, and just wanted to be done with it.

To answer each of your points. Reach had an incredibly small population considering how large the planet is. And besides the book only places really described was the Spartan-II Training facilities, the Menachite Mountains, CASTLE Base, and the Generators. From how Nylund described it, it sounded like a lot of wilderness rather than super developed. So panicking and sending Longswords to bomb your own men and destroy any chances of defending the generators is brilliant?(lol) Now I don't think you realize how much space there is to cover when defending a planet. Reach only had 20 ODB's protecting it. They were most likely spread out very thin to protect the planet. Even if they were all facing the same direction, you still most likely would not see them on long Night of Solace.

Read the journal for a partial explanation on the S-II's mission although, but yes it's a bit strange. And on that last part. Do you have any idea how military campaigns actually work? Really? Besides there were other planets that were similar in the Fall of Reach. On Jericho VII(From the prologue) it mentioned that the UNSC had been fighting for days against the Covenant. The there was the Battle of Harvest which lasted a long time as well. The first half of the game was recon by the Covenant, not the actual attack force.


I couldn't agree more, you got a good head on those shoulders Link (nice username, btw, Legend of Zelda ftw :D )

Talking to GrnDragn here:
And the Covenant don't start glassing right away at all, that is a misconception, they start glassing when they get tired of fighting, if they lose too many men and the fight starts getting out of hand, that's when they break the glassing beams out.
Addressing you Keyes question, why cancel a very crucial mission if the attack on Reach is something that can easily be mopped up? The mission would have already been scrapped by the time that Six and Emile got to the Autumn, so he's not gearing up to go on Operation Red Flag, he's preparing to flee the system after picking up the Package.

The only retconning Reach did was to extend the battle and shift events around a bit to keep the story making sense. Everything from Reach and everything from the tail end of TFoR can and still does happen. The SMACs would be spaced out around the planet, and we don't know how close they are to Reach itself, they could easily be out in the debris field hidden and obscured by all the floating debris.

And it looks nothing like a "random farmer colony", it has military bases, a -blam!- HUGE city on the same level as Coruscant in Star Wars in building size, and we see more military concentrations and installations than we've seen in any other game to date, excluding Halo Wars, 'cause it's a totally different genre.

I think that if TFoR had come out around now it too would be getting plenty of criticism from the fans due to its lack of the description of Reach's fall despite being named for said event. The actual event itself takes up less than a fourth of the book!

Retconning the length of the battle provides for many more stories that can be told about Reach's fall, it was a good decision, TFoR having Reach fall in a little under an hour does not make sense, this is humanities military hub, and they're fighting a Covenant force that they could easily beat because the Covenant outnumber only about as much as they have at other battles where the latter got their asses handed to them on a silver platter. And plus they have Keyes there, Captain -blam!- Keyes, the greatest military mind of that era next to Preston Cole, plus a few SMACs, they can rip through the hull of a Covenant vessel in one god-damned hit. The timing does not make any sense given all the facts.

  • 02.08.2011 9:10 AM PDT

On Waypoint I'm rocketFox;
http://halo.xbox.com/forums/members/rocketfox/default.aspx

Old GTs; RebelRobot, Flamedude

The story of the game Halo Reach was, in my opinion, poorly chosen. It does not mesh well with the book leaving glaring inconsistencies or just plain old mistakes. I'm not sure why so many people defend the storyline when it is so obvious that could have been so much better. The book contains much more interesting material and I still struggle with the games storyline being shoehorned needlessly into the conflict.

The fact is; Reach was a military stronghold. We never saw this side of the battle, so what is the point? The game is meant to be dramatic and epic and we saw a side story. It would be like creating a World War 2 war film about one of the easier beach landings whilst other soldiers stormed Normandy at the very same time out of sight; a poor choice for action.

  • 02.08.2011 10:00 AM PDT

I am a practicing traditional Catholic.

I would like to say something poignant and logical. But I don't think it would do any good. You're all so caught up in hatred against Bungie's finest game that I expect you would try to find a way to twist any post out of original context.
The answer? All loyal (and true) Bungie fans, get out alive while you still can because we're in for another sorry epidemic of the Reach forum event...

Note: OrderedCobra, you can be proud of yourself. I agree with your points entirely. Finally some sense.

[Edited on 02.08.2011 10:23 AM PST]

  • 02.08.2011 10:17 AM PDT

By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe.

Posted by: Magna117
I would like to say something poignant and logical. But I don't think it would do any good. You're all so caught up in hatred against Bungie's finest game that I expect you would try to find a way to twist any post out of original context.
The answer? All loyal (and true) Bungie fans, get out alive while you still can because we're in for another sorry epidemic of the Reach forum event...


Bungie's finest game? You're joking, right?

  • 02.08.2011 10:23 AM PDT

I am a practicing traditional Catholic.

Posted by: ajw34307
Bungie's finest game? You're joking, right?

Nope. Not.at.all.

[Edited on 02.08.2011 10:26 AM PST]

  • 02.08.2011 10:25 AM PDT

By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe.

Posted by: Magna117
Posted by: ajw34307
Bungie's finest game? You're joking, right?

Nope. Not.at.all.


Reach's story was awful. It shouldn't even be considered canon because it didn't adhere to the Halo Story Bible, it was merely a conglomeration of events designed as fan-service and nothing more.

The characters were bland, one-dimensional and the generic military archetypes that one would expect from something like CoD or GoW. There was no character development, Kat and Jorge were the only ones who stood out.

Matchmaking really doesn't interest me, it's fun to play with friends but gets boring quickly. The Golden Triangle of Halo's gameplay that has worked for 9 years has been broken with the inclusion of Armour Abilities. Not to mention how awful the majority of the maps and level design are.

Firefight, though customizable, is nothing at all like the tense survival mode in ODST. I don't feel motivated to play it, the enjoyment has been sucked out of it.

Forge is fantastic, but there's only 2 good maps to Forge on. It's bollocks, Forge was what I spent most of my time on on Halo 3, now we're given 2 maps (1 of which you have to pay for).

Reach is awful, the worst Halo game yet.

  • 02.08.2011 10:37 AM PDT

Posted By:GrnDragn
Sure they are footsoldiers,but they could add dialog from the spacebattle in the game or shows airbattles above your head.
Look at star wars battlefront II,you see massive battle above and around you,why couldn't bungie do that in Reach to show a full invasion on large scale.

And the solace level,there was nothing good except some glassed citys and the end of the cutscene.

They could have shows the UNSC fleet in orbit in a cutscene,just like Halo 2.

And you can see the UNSC navy in Halo 2.

Opening cutscene,you see patrol ships and ODP's
The covie fleet arrives,the fleet prepares to fight.

The bomb cutscene,you see dozens of UNSC ships.


The cutscene opening Halo 2 was not that impressive, you see like maybe two ODPs and like three ships drifting past your view. In Battlefront II you only see a capitol ship for the two factions looming in the sky and that's all it shows.

The Solace was in the middle of nowhere, the only UNSC force nearby was the stuff at Anchor 9, and you still had to fly a good distance to the Solace from there. And no, the Solace wouldn't see the Saber's land on the Prayer, the distance they were from each other was extreme, you can only barely see the Solace when you're outside, I wouldn't have been able to see anything going on around the Ardent Prayer other than the fight between Savannah and Prayer, if I could see anything at all.

No this game portrays them as the largest retards insciencefiction.
One of their retard behavior:

-the UNSC didn't evacuated civilians,they jsut tried to keep it a secret for no reason.
-The brigde crew of the supercarrier were so drunk that they couldn't even notice that their corvette is being boarded and attacked,did they ever heard of radars?
-Reach hasn't any nukes????As Carter said.
..
...

I didn't felt the hopeleness in this game because bungie didn't portrayed it good.
But the last levels were great.

-And it still took weeks for the covie navy to break though the inferior UNSC fleet,those corvettes seems to be the ones who were already on Reach.

20 ODP's aren't enough.One covenant ship is a match for 3 UNSC ships,and the UNSC fleet was already outnumbered.And i think that all ODp's were destroyed before the "main fleet" came in,because it seems that a single supercarrier wrecked havoc with the UNSC fleet.If it didn't then where was the UNSC fleet during solace?

Which battles?Last time i checked the only spacebattles the UNSC won was when the UNSC outnumbered the covies,but it still led to heavy casualities at the UNSC side.


1.They were evacuating civilians, did you not play the level Exodus? They've been evacuating New Alexandria for at least five days, what, do you think they're going get them all out instantly? Evacuating such a large city as New Alexandria would take many, many, many days.
2.See above section dealing with the LNoS.
3.That is a weak point yes, but one weak point does not make the entire story suck, and that is pretty much the only one. They could have used something else to destroy the LNoS, but the Slipspace "bomb" was pretty awesome.

That's just your opinion then, 'cause I felt the utter hopelessness, I almost didn't want to play because it was depressing.

4.We're not in space, we don't know when the orbital defense were finally lost, and it's not impossible for a couple ships to break through the defenses.

Yes, I know that's what the books say, and that is how about what the odds were at Reach, there aproximately 314 Covie ships, and I think a little more than half as many UNSC ships, the same odds as all the other recorded fights, plus the SMACs, the odds are basically even, that is a fight that should have dragged out for a while, even if the generators got knocked out the UNSC ships should hold their own, especially with such brilliant minds as Captain mother--blam!- Keyes at Reach.

No, all the Super Carrier did was engage the ground forces and lay waste to the Viery Territory and all forces there, and then it was going up into space, and the LNoS mission happened before it could do anything to the Home Fleet. Why send multiple ships to attack it and probably their asses handed to them when you're going to use Operation Uppercut?

The Battle of Sigma Octanus IV, the Battles of Harvest, to name what I know, there might be more, I haven't read every scrap of Halo material I can find yet.

  • 02.08.2011 12:35 PM PDT

Posted By:
Reach's story was awful. It shouldn't even be considered canon because it didn't adhere to the Halo Story Bible, it was merely a conglomeration of events designed as fan-service and nothing more.

The characters were bland, one-dimensional and the generic military archetypes that one would expect from something like CoD or GoW. There was no character development, Kat and Jorge were the only ones who stood out.


Haha, back to that stupid static again are we? I don't believe you have ever seen the Halo Story Bible, how do you claim to know what it contains and what breaches canon with it? hmmm? I haven't seen it either, but I know your claim is ludicrous, all it is is a bunch of information pertaining to the Haloverse and God knows what else, it serves much the same purpose as any author's notes would, it is essentially Bungie's notes for the Halo story, and if it is indeed the "author's notes" it would be a constantly changing and evolving thing that the story writers add and take away from. It has obviously changed and evolved quite a bit since Halo's inception, it is no longer the same as whatever Eric Nylund saw when Bungie gave him what he needed to write TFoR.

TFoR now exists within the greater picture of Reach, which can easily hold both Halo: Reach and TFoR within itself, neither one need be non-canon, they can, and do, coexist together as one whole.

The characters are only stereo-typed because the stereo-types for quads are mostly true, you have a marksman, a techie, a leader, a "tank", a CQB guy, and an average guy who can do almost anything. And that's where any similarities end, Emile is the only character who fills any sort of character stereotype. I agree with most of them suffering a bit of lack in character development, but it doesn't really hurt the story, they had enough for me to like or dislike them. More could have been done, but there is no sense in dwelling on past things that can't be changed.

  • 02.08.2011 12:48 PM PDT

"What do you hear?"
"Nothing but the rain."
"Then grab your gun and bring in the cat."
"Boom, boom, boom!"

Posted by: ajw34307
- SNIP -


Opinions, opinions, opinions. Come on. =P

Posted by: ajw34307
Reach's story was awful. It shouldn't even be considered canon because it didn't adhere to the Halo Story Bible, it was merely a conglomeration of events designed as fan-service and nothing more.


Doesn't fit into the extended universe bible but fits perfectly into the game bible. Confusing right?

And if it was fan-service, then we would have been playing the book.

  • 02.08.2011 12:56 PM PDT
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Posted by: manwith
The game would have been boring if everyone had worn the same green suit of Mark V, and all acting like Noble Six.

That's you opinion. My opinion is that would have been awesome.

  • 02.08.2011 1:53 PM PDT


Posted by: Lord Snakie
Posted by: Sorta Kinda Yea
You never break canon. Halo:Reach broke canon, ergo Halo:Reach bad.

I could have actually said this better myself, but the sentiment rings true no matter how you put it.

I'm an indie game dev. That might make me seem like a nobody, if you know anything about indie games, but I like to think I'm an exception to the rule. My series isn't even in development yet and it has over 120 pages (Calibri / SS / 11-point) of pure backstory, not including the prequel novellas that my team and I are working on. In short, I've got a fair bit of experience in creating and writing for a universe, if not so much actually implementing it.

With that experience, I can tell you one thing for certain: it is beyond easy to never need to retcon anything. It is, in fact, the first thing that we took protection against in the development of the tale. We have five concrete dates in our universe tagged for potential game development, and if we made a game for each one of those in order, at this very moment, nothing would conflict with each other. We've made certain of it. In game development, if you either have to or choose to retcon material, someone is not doing their job correctly.

Just because it made it "cooler" doesn't mean it's acceptable, because it's not, and it never will be. Bungie's case is slightly different, because The Fall of Reach and the other novels were mandated by Microsoft, but it's not that different; Bungie largely accepted and ran with Microsoft's canon, and that means that they should have played ball to the bitter end, not keep going until that bitter end and then suddenly decide to drop it and say, "woops, our bad, we don't care anymore."

Retcons are a sin, no good developer should ever have to use them. I might go so far as to say any developer that does isn't fit to have AAA titles.


As long as you don't have to deal with the likes of Micro$oft, everything you have said makes sense. As long as you remain independent you can do things however you like. When someone else starts footing the bill things get more complex. When Micro$oft foots the bill things can get... complex.

It was Micro$oft's decision to publish books. Bungie had to go along with it. Bungie is a game developer, not a book publisher. Micro$oft gets Nylund to write a book, orders Bungie to give him the backstory, and then turns him loose. Sure, Bungie gets some "input", but Micro$oft wants a book out there.

Another case in point: Halo Wars. Ensemble is happily writing a sequel to Age of Empires when Micro$oft walks in and says, "It's not Age of Empires any more. It's Halo Wars. You've got fifteen minutes. Get to work."

Video games and books are two very different media. Books are passive and games are active. A video game that precisely paralleled a book would be excessively long and probably boring. Recreating The Fall of Reach in a video game would have been a disaster of epic proportions. More so than what some of you think Halo:Reach is now.

These days the campaign is just the warmup for multiplayer. Trying to create an epic campaign that makes you want to continue in multiplayer is not as easy as some would believe. How many games do you have that are gathering dust on the shelf because one or the other (or both) didn't measure up? How many of you still play the other Halo titles even if you don't like Reach? How many people play Halo that have never read a single book?

Halo:Reach broke canon? So what. Blame Micro$oft.

  • 02.08.2011 1:57 PM PDT

By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe.

Posted by: OrderedComa
Posted By:
Reach's story was awful. It shouldn't even be considered canon because it didn't adhere to the Halo Story Bible, it was merely a conglomeration of events designed as fan-service and nothing more.

The characters were bland, one-dimensional and the generic military archetypes that one would expect from something like CoD or GoW. There was no character development, Kat and Jorge were the only ones who stood out.


Haha, back to that stupid static again are we? I don't believe you have ever seen the Halo Story Bible, how do you claim to know what it contains and what breaches canon with it? hmmm? I haven't seen it either, but I know your claim is ludicrous, all it is is a bunch of information pertaining to the Haloverse and God knows what else, it serves much the same purpose as any author's notes would, it is essentially Bungie's notes for the Halo story, and if it is indeed the "author's notes" it would be a constantly changing and evolving thing that the story writers add and take away from. It has obviously changed and evolved quite a bit since Halo's inception, it is no longer the same as whatever Eric Nylund saw when Bungie gave him what he needed to write TFoR.


All the novels were written with reference to the Halo Story Bible, Nylund and Staten have said this in the past that it was done to keep the novels within canonical bounds. The document is filled with everything-canon in Halo, since Reach's story differs from the novels, common sense dictates it has broken canon.

  • 02.08.2011 2:41 PM PDT
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I just play for fun. MLG can kiss my ass.


Posted by: ajw34307
Posted by: OrderedComa
Posted By:
Reach's story was awful. It shouldn't even be considered canon because it didn't adhere to the Halo Story Bible, it was merely a conglomeration of events designed as fan-service and nothing more.

The characters were bland, one-dimensional and the generic military archetypes that one would expect from something like CoD or GoW. There was no character development, Kat and Jorge were the only ones who stood out.


Haha, back to that stupid static again are we? I don't believe you have ever seen the Halo Story Bible, how do you claim to know what it contains and what breaches canon with it? hmmm? I haven't seen it either, but I know your claim is ludicrous, all it is is a bunch of information pertaining to the Haloverse and God knows what else, it serves much the same purpose as any author's notes would, it is essentially Bungie's notes for the Halo story, and if it is indeed the "author's notes" it would be a constantly changing and evolving thing that the story writers add and take away from. It has obviously changed and evolved quite a bit since Halo's inception, it is no longer the same as whatever Eric Nylund saw when Bungie gave him what he needed to write TFoR.


All the novels were written with reference to the Halo Story Bible, Nylund and Staten have said this in the past that it was done to keep the novels within canonical bounds. The document is filled with everything-canon in Halo, since Reach's story differs from the novels, common sense dictates it has broken canon.


No, Bungie has the final say on canon. It did not break canon, it put the canon in a more realistic light, but retards like you can never see that. Bungie fans unite!

  • 02.08.2011 2:57 PM PDT

By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe.

Posted by: Caaaarrrl
Posted by: ajw34307
Posted by: OrderedComa
Posted By:
Reach's story was awful. It shouldn't even be considered canon because it didn't adhere to the Halo Story Bible, it was merely a conglomeration of events designed as fan-service and nothing more.

The characters were bland, one-dimensional and the generic military archetypes that one would expect from something like CoD or GoW. There was no character development, Kat and Jorge were the only ones who stood out.


Haha, back to that stupid static again are we? I don't believe you have ever seen the Halo Story Bible, how do you claim to know what it contains and what breaches canon with it? hmmm? I haven't seen it either, but I know your claim is ludicrous, all it is is a bunch of information pertaining to the Haloverse and God knows what else, it serves much the same purpose as any author's notes would, it is essentially Bungie's notes for the Halo story, and if it is indeed the "author's notes" it would be a constantly changing and evolving thing that the story writers add and take away from. It has obviously changed and evolved quite a bit since Halo's inception, it is no longer the same as whatever Eric Nylund saw when Bungie gave him what he needed to write TFoR.


All the novels were written with reference to the Halo Story Bible, Nylund and Staten have said this in the past that it was done to keep the novels within canonical bounds. The document is filled with everything-canon in Halo, since Reach's story differs from the novels, common sense dictates it has broken canon.


No, Bungie has the final say on canon. It did not break canon, it put the canon in a more realistic light, but retards like you can never see that. Bungie fanboys unite!


You're just butthurt because half the Universe forum told you you're a blithering moron for insisting that the ODST concept artwork is Marathon. Troll on.

The novels were infinitely more realistic than the game, 9 years worth of canon supported it until Reach came along. I might direct you to this thread. Reach - being a mandated project from day 1 - was Bungie's big middle finger to Microsoft and their way of alienating any of their fans with a wider appreciation for Halo's literary mediums.

Blind, ignorant fanboys reject this because you're too in-awe of Bungie to think they can do wrong, your post here is the perfect example.

  • 02.08.2011 3:03 PM PDT
  • gamertag: [none]
  • user homepage:

I just play for fun. MLG can kiss my ass.


Posted by: ajw34307
Posted by: Caaaarrrl
Posted by: ajw34307
Posted by: OrderedComa
Posted By:
Reach's story was awful. It shouldn't even be considered canon because it didn't adhere to the Halo Story Bible, it was merely a conglomeration of events designed as fan-service and nothing more.

The characters were bland, one-dimensional and the generic military archetypes that one would expect from something like CoD or GoW. There was no character development, Kat and Jorge were the only ones who stood out.


Haha, back to that stupid static again are we? I don't believe you have ever seen the Halo Story Bible, how do you claim to know what it contains and what breaches canon with it? hmmm? I haven't seen it either, but I know your claim is ludicrous, all it is is a bunch of information pertaining to the Haloverse and God knows what else, it serves much the same purpose as any author's notes would, it is essentially Bungie's notes for the Halo story, and if it is indeed the "author's notes" it would be a constantly changing and evolving thing that the story writers add and take away from. It has obviously changed and evolved quite a bit since Halo's inception, it is no longer the same as whatever Eric Nylund saw when Bungie gave him what he needed to write TFoR.


All the novels were written with reference to the Halo Story Bible, Nylund and Staten have said this in the past that it was done to keep the novels within canonical bounds. The document is filled with everything-canon in Halo, since Reach's story differs from the novels, common sense dictates it has broken canon.


No, Bungie has the final say on canon. It did not break canon, it put the canon in a more realistic light, but retards like you can never see that. Bungie fanboys unite!


You're just butthurt because half the Universe forum told you you're a blithering moron for insisting that the ODST concept artwork is Marathon. Troll on.

The novels were infinitely more realistic than the game, 9 years worth of canon supported it until Reach came along. I might direct you to this thread. Reach - being a mandated project from day 1 - was Bungie's big middle finger to Microsoft and their way of alienating any of their fans with a wider appreciation for Halo's literary mediums.

Blind, ignorant fanboys reject this because you're too in-awe of Bungie to think they can do wrong, your post here is the perfect example.


Just to let you know, on the armor forum I found out I had looked at the avatar instead of the link and I apologized.

  • 02.08.2011 4:05 PM PDT


Posted by: OrderedComa

Posted by: OniLink147

Posted by: GrnDragn

Yes, it did. There's a difference between making small retcons for the benefit of story and completely retconning something "because you want to." Bungie did the latter. It was not necessary to Retcon an already existing, good story. Halo Reach made Reach look like a random farmer colony, not a militar stronghold. It also made everyone look like idiot; Humanity and the Covenant. The books showed that Human Commanders were brilliant, they were complete idiots here.
Why isn't a lot of the Fleet at Reach to defend already? Where are the Super MACs? Why is Captain Keyes about to go on his mission with the SIIs when Reach had supposedly been under assault for over a month? No-one knew that Reach was under assault in the books, yet Bungie said Campaign fit "perfectly" within' the Canon(lol!)
The Covenant in the books were brutal and pretty efficient when it came to destroying worlds. As soon as the battle in space was lost, the Covenant should have started glassing. New Alexandria shouldn't have even been there when you got there. Nor should it have lasted so long.

By dragging out the battle, Bungie made the Battle of Reach less compellling. It made the Covenant look like idiots, but in the books, the fact that Reach fell in a day to an overwhelming force was better. It truly made us lose all hope.

So Bungie made a huge retcon, but it was not for the benefit of the story. It was because they had gotten tired of Halo, and just wanted to be done with it.

To answer each of your points. Reach had an incredibly small population considering how large the planet is. And besides the book only places really described was the Spartan-II Training facilities, the Menachite Mountains, CASTLE Base, and the Generators. From how Nylund described it, it sounded like a lot of wilderness rather than super developed. So panicking and sending Longswords to bomb your own men and destroy any chances of defending the generators is brilliant?(lol) Now I don't think you realize how much space there is to cover when defending a planet. Reach only had 20 ODB's protecting it. They were most likely spread out very thin to protect the planet. Even if they were all facing the same direction, you still most likely would not see them on long Night of Solace.

Read the journal for a partial explanation on the S-II's mission although, but yes it's a bit strange. And on that last part. Do you have any idea how military campaigns actually work? Really? Besides there were other planets that were similar in the Fall of Reach. On Jericho VII(From the prologue) it mentioned that the UNSC had been fighting for days against the Covenant. The there was the Battle of Harvest which lasted a long time as well. The first half of the game was recon by the Covenant, not the actual attack force.


I couldn't agree more, you got a good head on those shoulders Link (nice username, btw, Legend of Zelda ftw :D )

Talking to GrnDragn here:
And the Covenant don't start glassing right away at all, that is a misconception, they start glassing when they get tired of fighting, if they lose too many men and the fight starts getting out of hand, that's when they break the glassing beams out.
Addressing you Keyes question, why cancel a very crucial mission if the attack on Reach is something that can easily be mopped up? The mission would have already been scrapped by the time that Six and Emile got to the Autumn, so he's not gearing up to go on Operation Red Flag, he's preparing to flee the system after picking up the Package.

The only retconning Reach did was to extend the battle and shift events around a bit to keep the story making sense. Everything from Reach and everything from the tail end of TFoR can and still does happen. The SMACs would be spaced out around the planet, and we don't know how close they are to Reach itself, they could easily be out in the debris field hidden and obscured by all the floating debris.

And it looks nothing like a "random farmer colony", it has military bases, a -blam!- HUGE city on the same level as Coruscant in Star Wars in building size, and we see more military concentrations and installations than we've seen in any other game to date, excluding Halo Wars, 'cause it's a totally different genre.

I think that if TFoR had come out around now it too would be getting plenty of criticism from the fans due to its lack of the description of Reach's fall despite being named for said event. The actual event itself takes up less than a fourth of the book!

Retconning the length of the battle provides for many more stories that can be told about Reach's fall, it was a good decision, TFoR having Reach fall in a little under an hour does not make sense, this is humanities military hub, and they're fighting a Covenant force that they could easily beat because the Covenant outnumber only about as much as they have at other battles where the latter got their asses handed to them on a silver platter. And plus they have Keyes there, Captain -blam!- Keyes, the greatest military mind of that era next to Preston Cole, plus a few SMACs, they can rip through the hull of a Covenant vessel in one god-damned hit. The timing does not make any sense given all the facts.


Thank you, it's nice to see that someone else agrees with me. It's hilarious that everyone claiming Reach is canon breaking keeps bringing up the same problems, then when those problems are explained they claim that we're "Blind Bungie fanboys".

  • 02.08.2011 4:37 PM PDT

Please don't hype for games...
They'll just fall short of your expectations and you'll complain for months.

Posted by: nightspark

Posted by: Beowolfe
I will direct you here to see why Reach's story sucks, game story-wise
And logic wise, Reach was an abomination. Things didn't make sense, both sides acted like retards during the battles, and Reach was portrayed like some random farming colony. There was barely ANY urgency throughout the first 85% of the campaign, and there was no team feeling at all.

All of you people who claim that the longer duration made it better, and I'd like to ask why. It made sense that Reach fell within a day, at least when we're talking about space control. It also brought far more of a shock factor; one day, everything's fine, the next, your largest military base is obliterated. That has some intense emotional impact right there. It showed that even though the UNSC was strong, their enemy was still stronger.
Reach lasting a month, especially with what they showed us, made NO SENSE. What you're saying here is like if I claimed that it takes an entire day to burn a 8" by 17" piece of dry paper.

I see Reach more like Contact Harvest than The Fall of Reach.


Yea, the harvest campaign is actually long enough to establish character investment etc.

  • 02.08.2011 5:32 PM PDT

Please don't hype for games...
They'll just fall short of your expectations and you'll complain for months.

Posted by: hotshot revan II
Which battles?Last time i checked the only spacebattles the UNSC won was when the UNSC outnumbered the covies,but it still led to heavy casualities at the UNSC side.


If I remember, in Evolutions, Cole blows up a few hundred by sending a sun into nova.

What about Ghosts of Onyx, when the NOVA bomb blew up and entire elite fleet?

  • 02.08.2011 5:36 PM PDT


Posted by: ajw34307
Posted by: OrderedComa
Posted By:
Reach's story was awful. It shouldn't even be considered canon because it didn't adhere to the Halo Story Bible, it was merely a conglomeration of events designed as fan-service and nothing more.

The characters were bland, one-dimensional and the generic military archetypes that one would expect from something like CoD or GoW. There was no character development, Kat and Jorge were the only ones who stood out.


Haha, back to that stupid static again are we? I don't believe you have ever seen the Halo Story Bible, how do you claim to know what it contains and what breaches canon with it? hmmm? I haven't seen it either, but I know your claim is ludicrous, all it is is a bunch of information pertaining to the Haloverse and God knows what else, it serves much the same purpose as any author's notes would, it is essentially Bungie's notes for the Halo story, and if it is indeed the "author's notes" it would be a constantly changing and evolving thing that the story writers add and take away from. It has obviously changed and evolved quite a bit since Halo's inception, it is no longer the same as whatever Eric Nylund saw when Bungie gave him what he needed to write TFoR.


All the novels were written with reference to the Halo Story Bible, Nylund and Staten have said this in the past that it was done to keep the novels within canonical bounds. The document is filled with everything-canon in Halo, since Reach's story differs from the novels, common sense dictates it has broken canon.


The Halo Story Bible is not just limited to the novels, it contains all information on the Haloverse, and that includes the games and such things as Halo Legends or the comic books. It;s the notes for the entire story, not just the games, or just the books, it deals with the entire Halo universe. Anything to do with the Halo story is pulled from it, regardless of the media it is.

  • 02.08.2011 5:43 PM PDT


Posted by: OniLink147

Posted By:OrderedComa

I couldn't agree more, you got a good head on those shoulders Link (nice username, btw, Legend of Zelda ftw :D )

Talking to GrnDragn here:
And the Covenant don't start glassing right away at all, that is a misconception, they start glassing when they get tired of fighting, if they lose too many men and the fight starts getting out of hand, that's when they break the glassing beams out.
Addressing you Keyes question, why cancel a very crucial mission if the attack on Reach is something that can easily be mopped up? The mission would have already been scrapped by the time that Six and Emile got to the Autumn, so he's not gearing up to go on Operation Red Flag, he's preparing to flee the system after picking up the Package.

The only retconning Reach did was to extend the battle and shift events around a bit to keep the story making sense. Everything from Reach and everything from the tail end of TFoR can and still does happen. The SMACs would be spaced out around the planet, and we don't know how close they are to Reach itself, they could easily be out in the debris field hidden and obscured by all the floating debris.

And it looks nothing like a "random farmer colony", it has military bases, a -blam!- HUGE city on the same level as Coruscant in Star Wars in building size, and we see more military concentrations and installations than we've seen in any other game to date, excluding Halo Wars, 'cause it's a totally different genre.

I think that if TFoR had come out around now it too would be getting plenty of criticism from the fans due to its lack of the description of Reach's fall despite being named for said event. The actual event itself takes up less than a fourth of the book!

Retconning the length of the battle provides for many more stories that can be told about Reach's fall, it was a good decision, TFoR having Reach fall in a little under an hour does not make sense, this is humanities military hub, and they're fighting a Covenant force that they could easily beat because the Covenant outnumber only about as much as they have at other battles where the latter got their asses handed to them on a silver platter. And plus they have Keyes there, Captain -blam!- Keyes, the greatest military mind of that era next to Preston Cole, plus a few SMACs, they can rip through the hull of a Covenant vessel in one god-damned hit. The timing does not make any sense given all the facts.


Thank you, it's nice to see that someone else agrees with me. It's hilarious that everyone claiming Reach is canon breaking keeps bringing up the same problems, then when those problems are explained they claim that we're "Blind Bungie fanboys".


I know what you mean, it feels like no new arguments are ever introduced, everybody seems really entrenched in their pursuasion, I try to at least listen to the opposition and will concede to them if they have a really good point, or admit flaws in my own theories. The "Blind Fanboy" argument certainly gets old, defending something does not make one blind, the fanboy part is true though :P I always laugh and take it as a complitment, makes them mad, haha.

  • 02.08.2011 6:23 PM PDT