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This topic has moved here: Subject: Halo:Cyptum, Yay or Nay?
  • Subject: Halo:Cyptum, Yay or Nay?
Subject: Halo:Cyptum, Yay or Nay?
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  • 04.09.2011 4:27 AM PDT

The Razor.

For the honour of the Mirratord.

Yay. Best tie-in novel I've ever read; far superior to the other Halo novels.

  • 04.09.2011 4:30 AM PDT

"I Prefer Warm Halo, Sauted in Awesomesauce"

YAY!

  • 04.09.2011 5:35 AM PDT
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Adds a ton of lore to the background of Halo. I just wished the names sounded better though.

  • 04.09.2011 5:38 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

YAY!!!!

No doubt,i'm gonna reread it this weak.

  • 04.09.2011 7:25 AM PDT

-blam!- Was that actually blammed out? Or did I just type it? You'll never know.

*Flamesuit on*

Nay. I didn't find that what it added to the Halo background was very imaginative or interesting. It seemed like with such and awesome universe and lore to work with, it could have been so much more. The Haloverse has so much potential for awesome, but Cryptum just kind of ruined it with it's poorly conceived ideas for what happened in the past.

Really, the Halo series should be fleshing out the future, and leaving the past alone, at least for now. This just wasn't really needed, and frankly, not wanted (by me).

[Edited on 04.09.2011 7:31 AM PDT]

  • 04.09.2011 7:29 AM PDT


Posted by: dahuterschuter
*Flamesuit on*

Nay. I didn't find that what it added to the Halo background was very imaginative or interesting. It seemed like with such and awesome universe and lore to work with, it could have been so much more. The Haloverse has so much potential for awesome, but Cryptum just kind of ruined it with it's poorly conceived ideas for what happened in the past.

Really, the Halo series should be fleshing out the future, and leaving the past alone, at least for now. This just wasn't really needed, and frankly, not wanted (by me).


I've heard this before, about people saying it lacked imagination. But what I don't get is why do you think this? The whole concept behind the story is pure imagination. And poorly conceived? In what way?

You have to remember, it was pretty obvious our relationship with the Forerunners went a bit deeper then just inheriting the Mantle. The important question is: why are we inheriting this Mantle of Life? Why did the Forerunners choose us? What are we supposed to do?

And it is true that the future needs some story into it, post-Halo 3 and all, but we've already got that covered. Karen Traviss, she's writing a sequel trilogy to the Halo universe.

But in order for what is to be revealed about the Chief, the Precursors, Forerunners, Flood and humanity in general to make any sense at all, we need to know the story of the past. "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it." In this case, if we just pressed on without knowing the truth behind the Forerunners and Precursors, (especially the Ancient Humans) then we'd be completely lost when we started getting into the darker stuff that's bound to happen post-Halo 3.

There'd be things happening because of the Forerunners we wouldn't understand otherwise. Ever consider why 343 is writing two trilogies at once?

  • 04.09.2011 7:43 AM PDT

Have you seen my mind anywhere? I seem to have lost it...

0x0 x0x 0x0 000 000 x0x 000
x0x 0x0 0x0 0xx 000 0x0 000
x0x x0x x00 0xx 0x0 x0x 0x0

I have seen you future

For Years people have wanted to know more about the Forerunners. Now we finally have more knowledge about them and it is glorious. Granted they were nothing like what I imagined (much more devious, much more human), but the story was fascinating.

  • 04.09.2011 7:48 AM PDT

-blam!- Was that actually blammed out? Or did I just type it? You'll never know.


Posted by: ROBERTO jh
I've heard this before,


From me. This is my response in pretty much every "What did you think of Cryptum?" thread. And you're usually one to debate me on it. In fact, we always end up on opposite sides of things as far as I can remember Roberto.

Allow me to explain myself again. Yes the concept was pure imagination. Much like a six-year-old who starts playing make believe will have concepts which are completely imagination. The word imaginative is not measured by how much imagined things are in something. (That's not meant to be as biting as it may have sounded.)

The whole story was just disappointing to me. It seemed too linear, too done. The pre-human civilization human civilization concept is what I am mostly referring to when I say ill-conceived. I just have to ask, why? Why did that have to be? It didn't. The novel would have been perfectly fine without making up some super-advanced ancient human race. That's one thing that really got me in the book, was that the concept of the old humans was just so inappropriate.

And from a writing perspective, the novel had too much going on. So much. You've got the Forerunner, humans, Precursor, Flood blah blah blah blah blah. Sometimes a novel which has many plots can actually be riveted, but the author didn't pull it off that way. It seemed cluttered. As if he had a whole lot of ideas that he wanted to jam into one series, when really, there's enough to say about the Forerunner that he could have made the whole series just about them without tying in ancient humans so largely.

I don't mind knowing the past in the Haloverse, I just mind that now the information in Cryptum has become the offiial past in the Haloverse. It really is more like a fanfic than something that should actually be canon. Because of Cryptum, what had potential to be an amazing background is now ruined forever, unless someone wants to make a game about it, overriding Cryptum. And really, a story this big, a portion of the Halo story this huge and important, would be best told through a game. Because even I forget sometimes, that the Halo series is video games first. This sort of story should have been reserved for, and probably would have been told better, as a game.

[Edited on 04.09.2011 8:00 AM PDT]

  • 04.09.2011 8:00 AM PDT

Yay.

The way they were fleshed out made them seem truly advanced. To think that even this amazingly advanced civilization fell to the flood makes what you do in h1-3 that much more significant.

And going through halo 1-3, seeing this locations and knowing what significance they help really make what you do in them seem so much more important have have so much more intrigue.

  • 04.09.2011 9:21 AM PDT


Posted by: dahuterschuter

Posted by: ROBERTO jh
I've heard this before,


From me. This is my response in pretty much every "What did you think of Cryptum?" thread. And you're usually one to debate me on it. In fact, we always end up on opposite sides of things as far as I can remember Roberto.

Allow me to explain myself again. Yes the concept was pure imagination. Much like a six-year-old who starts playing make believe will have concepts which are completely imagination. The word imaginative is not measured by how much imagined things are in something. (That's not meant to be as biting as it may have sounded.)

The whole story was just disappointing to me. It seemed too linear, too done. The pre-human civilization human civilization concept is what I am mostly referring to when I say ill-conceived. I just have to ask, why? Why did that have to be? It didn't. The novel would have been perfectly fine without making up some super-advanced ancient human race. That's one thing that really got me in the book, was that the concept of the old humans was just so inappropriate.

And from a writing perspective, the novel had too much going on. So much. You've got the Forerunner, humans, Precursor, Flood blah blah blah blah blah. Sometimes a novel which has many plots can actually be riveted, but the author didn't pull it off that way. It seemed cluttered. As if he had a whole lot of ideas that he wanted to jam into one series, when really, there's enough to say about the Forerunner that he could have made the whole series just about them without tying in ancient humans so largely.

I don't mind knowing the past in the Haloverse, I just mind that now the information in Cryptum has become the offiial past in the Haloverse. It really is more like a fanfic than something that should actually be canon. Because of Cryptum, what had potential to be an amazing background is now ruined forever, unless someone wants to make a game about it, overriding Cryptum. And really, a story this big, a portion of the Halo story this huge and important, would be best told through a game. Because even I forget sometimes, that the Halo series is video games first. This sort of story should have been reserved for, and probably would have been told better, as a game.


In a trilogy, try not to expect much out of the first story. From a story perspective, its the weakest (usually), in that it sets everything up for the next two. Star Wars IV had the weakest story of the original trilogy, Batman Begins (of the two released) was inferior to Dark Knight in every respect, and so on.

I will agree on one thing though: it did seemed crammed in, and I sometimes would forget how we got to where we were. It seemed rushed, which is surprising coming from one of the greatest Sci-Fi writers of all time, Greg Bear. Though Cryptum is the only book I've read of him, I know his reputation.

As for the whole thing about Ancient Humanity, a few things to consider.

For one, there needed to be some surprises in the book. Second, there needed to be some explanation for the Forerunners admiring us in the terminals. Third, there needed to be a reason for why we can subconsciously use Forerunner artifacts. We needed an incentive to take up the Mantle and so on.

If you look at the story of Halo as one massive tale, with each installment like its own chapter rather then a seperate story, it might make a little sense. Halo has alway been a mystery, always had fantstically deep undertones. If you look at it now, you can see that the contemporary universe and the Ancient universe are linked by humanity. We are the only constant, the only ones capable of unlocking the universes secrets.EG: The Forerunners can't understand or activate the Precursor artifacts, but humanity can activate and use them to an extent. The Covenant can't use Forerunner artifacts, but we can.

The contemporary universe is like humanity reachieving past greatness and reconnecting with their old selves, finding its role in the universe as guardians of all life. The Forerunners would have had little incentive to make us their heirs without us having proved worthy in their eyes. A bunch of cavemen with next to no technology don't make good universal guardians. A bunch of cavemen with the capacity to do create a vast interstelar empire does.

The only other obvious race to inherit this duty would have been the Prophets, but they're too self-serving to hold the job.

Plus you have to consider the story bible likely had a lot of this already noted down, Bear just expanded on it. I'm just here as an observer, not one to make criticisms about a story thats not even finished yet. So lets just wait for Cryptum's 2 and 3 before we decide whether it was worth it.

  • 04.09.2011 10:02 AM PDT


Posted by: Sigma617

Posted by: dahuterschuter
*Flamesuit on*

Nay. I didn't find that what it added to the Halo background was very imaginative or interesting. It seemed like with such and awesome universe and lore to work with, it could have been so much more. The Haloverse has so much potential for awesome, but Cryptum just kind of ruined it with it's poorly conceived ideas for what happened in the past.

Really, the Halo series should be fleshing out the future, and leaving the past alone, at least for now. This just wasn't really needed, and frankly, not wanted (by me).


I kinda know what you're saying. You've of course read the Halo 3 Terminal transcripts? Those were bloody brilliant. Best story I've ever read. Gives me the bloody goosebumps to this day. I expected the whole of Cryptum to be this good. instead it was shock factor after shock factor and canon contradictions... While Cryptum was a beautiful book, Greg Bear just can't write in the style that made the Transcripts ultimately satisfying.


Well most of the events from the Terminals haven't occurred yet, we've only seen the declaration of war issued by Mendicant Bias and the Flood by their attack on the Forerunner capitol. And there are still two more books to come. I personally loved Cryptum, it was probably the best out of all the Halo books I've read.

OT:
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!!! Is what I say to Cryptum, Ashbot. Quite possibly the best book out of all the Halo books so far. I just loved how it turned what we thought we knew about the Forerunners inside out, upside down. and turned it all around.

What do you think about the Prisoner? Do you think he's the Gravemind or strongly connected to him in some way like most of the Universe forum does?

  • 04.09.2011 10:53 AM PDT

I guess Yay, but I still don't have it. I live in Europe and can't find 'em anywhere. And Bungie doesn't ship stuff to Europe so i don't know how to get it. Any suggestions?

  • 04.09.2011 11:03 AM PDT

An assassin will always carry on, even after death.

Yay. Cryptum has opened a hundred thousand years of Halo's history, it's made Halo something truly unique, much more than an FPS

  • 04.09.2011 11:14 AM PDT

Wake me when the jews are gone.


Posted by: Mr Evil 37
Yay. Best tie-in novel I've ever read; far superior to the other Halo novels.
dont you dare say this again cryptum may be super yay but Nylund is the father of halo

  • 04.09.2011 11:36 AM PDT


Posted by: thearbiter2104
I guess Yay, but I still don't have it. I live in Europe and can't find 'em anywhere. And Bungie doesn't ship stuff to Europe so i don't know how to get it. Any suggestions?


You can't order it off Amazon or Ebay or something like that?

  • 04.09.2011 11:42 AM PDT

http://www.halo-forum.com

Hell to the Yay mofo!

  • 04.09.2011 12:03 PM PDT

Adepto In Meus Campester
Posted by: ParagonRenegade
You were totally and absolutely correct in every way, I don't know why we were arguing, you're so amazing I should never have doubted you.


Posted by: Mr Evil 37
Yay. Best tie-in novel I've ever read; far superior to the other Halo novels.

This. Best Halo novel yet. I eagerly await the sequels.

  • 04.09.2011 12:40 PM PDT