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Posted by: ROBERTO jh
There is in fact a Story Bible, presumably with the core ideas of where the story will end and what the answers are. A lot of the smaller bits, like characters and places and such, are made up as they go along, but at least with 343i's case, everything is predetermined. They've said many times they know how it ends.
And if the theory that the Cortana Letters are still relevant holds true, Bungie did have the core idea for the entire story as we see it laid out from day 1.
Watching the developer commentary for Halo 1 and 2 that came with the Legendary Edition of Halo 3, it's quite clear that almost none of what we see today was laid out from the begining. They had originally, at least for a short time, a pre-planned story for 2 or maybe 3 games, but that was ditched during Halo 1's development and things like the The Fall of Reach were written to bring in more back story to what was there (the original storyline idea for the Halo games could have perhaps been ditched BECAUSE Microsoft wanted to have these novels and tie-in stories, but that's all speculation on my part). Joseph Staten has said in interviews during the Halo 3 development or post launch that the Cortana Letter's became out of canon before Halo 1 ever released when they decided to go the route that the story has gone now, and that some of Cortana's going crazy dialog in Halo 3 was a way to bring the Cortana Letters back in a little bit and give them a new application.
The Halo Bible is a living document with facts and details that are added and taken away all the time as has been said in a few interviews. What it's not is a complete story or collection of specific stories that are all pre-planned. Writing every story for an entire universe almost never happens. There are probably historical events and timelines of locations for basic story ideas, but getting more specific than that usually just tends to lead to terrible writing. When people write stories things usually need to grow more organically over time as ideas unfold and new possibilities come to bear, and characters develop their own voice and personalities.