By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe.
Posted by: EagleBurn
Posted by: ajw34307
Posted by: EagleBurn
And you're silly to believe that 343i is going to let writers overcome their own ideas.
Ever hear of the Halo Story Bible? Yeah, that document with an outline of where the writers want the story to go. They don't just tell a writer to write something random for Halo.
I'd also like to point out that 343 is intent on continuing the story through novels. There is a trilogy about the Forerunners and a trilogy set post-Halo 3, the novels are becoming the primary method of storytelling until the games are released and I can promise you both novel trilogies will coincide with the new game trilogy in some form or other.
It's very simple, think of it like Star Wars.
George Lucas (Bungie) - Whatever he says, goes. Why? Because he's the creator.
Writers - Go by what the creator has created for them and adds to the story. If the creator changes the story to break the book's canon. Then the book changes, not the creator's story.
Fans - Their reaction/power
Which is utterly retarded. I'm glad you picked Lucas as your example, the SW prequels show exactly why the creator(s) having complete and total control over the story is not always a good thing. Lucas had nobody to challenge him because he was in charge of everything so he came up with shyte like Midichlorians and Jar Jar Binks, the "story" turned into a cluster-blam!- of special effects and was nothing more than a poor appeal to as many different demographics as possible.
The point of the fans is not to just go along and accept everything we get, those of us who have invested time into the universe deserve to see it treated the way it should be. It's also an insult to the writers when the developers decide to go and retcon/override parts of the story for no good reason, then people back up the developers because they want to put their own spin on it all. Well I'm sorry, if that's the case why the -blam!- would they hire people to write novels and other media in the first place?
I understand why you think it's unfair. But you have to realize that without Bungie, they wouldn't have a story to write about in the first place. So when Bungie wants something changed, the writers need to respect that. Not the other way around.
Yes, the books are awesome, but without Bungie, a Halo universe wouldn't even exists. So we need to respect any changes they want to their own story.
I can respect a change done for a good reason that's well justified. But Reach? 'twas truly the Phantom Menace of the Halo series, it's almost mind boggling at how complex the awfulness of that game was. It wasn't even necessary, we had 2 novels dedicated to the battle of Reach, why do we need a game that changes a perfectly good story for one that drags itself over a month with sterile, one dimensional, archetypal characters? There was no justification for that at all.
"Brevity is the soul of wit," said Shakespeare as he put down his Xbox controller and sighed. "Where-for art thou common sense?" he wondered in amazement as Bungie completely ignored everything they did right with ODST's story which they could have easily implemented into the game. Yes, the "flashback" missions.
Reach would have benefitted by having you switch perspectives between Red/Blue Team and follow the course of the novel. They could even have you playing as some ONI spec-ops field agent or a Sangheili returning to Reach and reliving the battle the same way the Rookie did in ODST. That's the way to get your audience emotionally involved, by showing something that's broken and explaining how it happened by living the experience. I see the ONI tower in ODST for the first time and various other visual clues which leave you asking questions, it's a principal rule in getting your audience to appreciate the experience.
This is what made Halo CE great too. People complain about the backtracking missions in the second half of the game but it's showing the result of your actions which led to things. It creates drama, the anticipation of how events converge is what makes a game exciting - like when John and Thel had their storylines converge on the Gravemind in the Library.
I look at Reach and see all the things it could have been, that is what disappoints me most. The story could have been brilliant in such a simple way, but it wasn't...