- Juan Teran
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- Noble Member
Posted by: OrderedComa
*shrug* I never really got that feeling, it always felt silly to me and a bit unbelievable.
Maybe because it's unbelievable to think that Reach, the heart of the UNSC, could fall in a single day. Think about, all the equipment, all the soldiers, the Super Macs, the home of the Spartan-II soldiers. What we didn't know is that we would face a fleet of 300+ Covenant ships. The new "Halo: The Fall of Reach" book says that the fleet has 700 ships, which I try not to take that seriously. I mean, Lord Hood obviously said that line in Halo 2 as an exaggeration, I don't know who had the brilliant idea of taking that statement literally, but... well, yeah, I don't think about that too much.
It's not really silly to think that Reach fell in a single day, especially if your best defense is "the ground battles were lame". Now, that is actually a silly defense, because is like blaming it all on Nylund, no matter how well described the battles were, Reach was meant to fall in a single day, and by saying that Nylund did a bad job at describing those battles, you are missing the point of the novel.
As soon as they mention the Covenant in the novel, we are constanly reminded that we are losing our planets, billions of lives are being lost, and the Covenant have way more victories in the war, and if we don't think of anything soon, the human race may lose the war and finally face extinction. Hard to believe, isn't it? At the beginning of the novel, the Spartan-II Program was created as a response for the Insurrectionist Movement. And out of nowhere, this Covenant Empire appear, and from creating stability in the galaxy, we are now facing extinction, the plot changes dramatically as we read. The fact that we are constantly reminded of why the Covenant are winning this war is because we haven't seen the worst of them. You think that the plan of capturing a prophet came out of nowhere? They thought of that plan because it was the only way to finally stop this war, otherwise, extinction was a fact, it was only a matter of time.
Yes, the name of the novel implies that Reach will fall, oh no, spoilers ahead! But while most of us expect 300 pages of war and details of how the planet is slowly losing, we are given a origin story about the Spartans, about this war, about humanity! I constantly forgot that Reach was meant to fall as I was reading, the novel was pretty entertainning, and out of nowhere, the Covenant finally appear and start doing business. I gotta stress this once again, no matter how horribly written were those ground battles, this was meant to happen, Reach was meant to lose this fight, end of story, stop blaming in on Nylund, I doubt he was happy writing that Halsey journal, but you know, you gotta do it.
Remember when Nylund praised Bungie because "they took the Universe seriously". You know, instead of giving to the fans a lame artbook or boring crap, they were actually taking the time to create that Halsey Journal, which would expand the Universe, and even the future of the franchise. Yeah, when we thought that Bungie cared for the fans. When we praised Bungie as the guys who cared, who took the novels seriously... *sigh*...
At the end of the novel, you can't help but wonder "what's next?". What's going to happen to humanity, how long will it take the Covenant to finally find Earth? Will we succeed? It's just a horrible feeling of loss, the planet that represented our might, against a giant fleet of Covenant, no doubt about that, but what's left? What can we do? It ends with a powerful note, a bittersweet ending with an unclear future.
Posted by: OrderedComa
You do know that universe grow and change over time right, we didn't know about Grace, Li, or many of the other Spartans in First Strike at the time that TFoR came out and they weren't mentioned in it, yet they appear in First Strike. I would think that the same thing applies to the some of the stuff in Reach as well. And why would everything that's in the HSB today have existed at the time that TFoR was first published?AT LAST! Finally you accept that none of this crap was intended to exist when the Halo Universe was created. Sorry, can't help but feel joy that you finally said this, in the past you would constantly counter it "how do you know", but that lame excuse has finally disappeared from your posts, I'm so happy!
Were was I, oh yeah, I'm aware that the Halo Universe has been expanded in these last 10 years. For example, I remember that the Elites were seen for the first time during the Fall of Reach, after more than 20 years of war, these guys finally revealed themselves. But then I played Halo Wars, and it appears that they already knew about the Elites, 20 years before the Halo event, so what gives? They retconned this, but how much did it affect us? I can live with this, it isn't that much of a change. The same can be applied with the Brutes... I guess? I mean, in First Strike, they said that it was the first time the Chief had seen a Brute, and yet, these ape bastards appeared for the first time in Harvest. Again, not much of a big deal, it's not what I would call disrespectful to the fans. So yeah, I hope that statement clarifies we are aware that the Universe grows, and there must be some changes THAT WE CAN ACCEPT. We aren't close minded and complain about everything, we just happen to like the Halo Universe, and after watching this new direction we were shocked. We care about the stuff we like, and the general consensus of Halo: Reach is "it's retarded!" You think that I constantly post these long ass posts just to annoy you guys? Hasn't it occured to you that I like the Halo Universe and just express my frustration of this horrible Campaign? If you guys choose to be offended by my post, that's your problem. But no, that Juan guys is a -blam!- idiot, let's keep misspelling his name, it'll show him that we, the Bungie/Noble Team supporters, are serious business!
Quoting Harry Shearer, voice of Principal Skinner in The Simpsons:
"That's so wrong. You're taking something that an audience has built eight years or nine years of investment in and just tossed it in the trash can for no good reason, for a story we've done before with other characters. It's so arbitrary and gratuitous, and it's disrespectful to the audience."
Posted by: OrderedComa
And how exactly does having an ancient omniscient AI council of vagueness (which I do not put much stock in as the data pads sound a bit like the ravings of a madman and we don't know anything that whole deal yet, I'm playing the "wait and see" game on this issue) disqualify Contact Harvest from anything? An AI can't mess around (or have someone do it for him) with the Slipspace equipment/nav data on a cargo-bot to have it wind up in the path of the Covenant and lead them to Harvest?
Because they just happen to create an absolute counsil of ancient A.I.s that has direct control of all the Universe. It's stupid, it's lame, it's just a sad attempt to... I don't even know what they were planning by creating this counsil. I just hope that it is never elaborated in the future and just happens to be an easter egg.
There goes Halsey's brilliant idea for creating the Spartan-II Program, that fateful encounter those Jackals had with that ship that lead them to Harvest. Hell, they wanted to contact the Flood? WHAT?!? So am I supposed to believe that if the Flood appeared in Reach, you guys wouldn't mind because this ancient counsil already knew about them?!? WHY?!?
Posted by: OrderedComa
Parangosky didn't say how she was going to get the Covenant lured to Reach, just that they would be and that Reach would be the sacrificial lamb for RED FLAG.
Which makes no sense, why Reach? Why not Coral? Onyx? Any other "unimportant" planet, I mean, assuming that I found this plan acceptable to begin with. The Covenant can ask for reinforcements at any time, so again, why Reach?
Why sacrifice this extremely valuable planet filled with soldiers, valuable equipment, THE SPARTANS-II, ships, vehicles, you name it! It's just too -blam!- stupid for me to accept this. Hey 343I, thanks for making everyone more stupid, just accept that Halo: Reach happened and that's it, if you never explain it we understand why, don't ruin more the Universe of the game. Halo Legends, those comics no one cares about, all forgiven, just stop expanding the importance of this -blam!- game, we all hated it!
Posted by: OrderedComa
think like Order 66 in Revenge of the Sith
George couldn't come with something intelligent to remove all the Jedis from the Universe, and created that stupid order. Oh, and just happens to be 66 because it reminds us of that evil number, how creative!
Posted by: OrderedComa
So yes, someone at least was smart and knew that the plan was not so smart, at least using Reach as the lamb to be slaughtered.
So what if someone opposed to the plan, it happened, there's still no difference in the end. They can add as many elements of people opposing to this plan, but the fact that it happened makes it unimportant to me.
Posted by: OrderedComa
Keyes did know about the plan, maybe not the exact specifics (I'm sure ONI would have told him at least something if the LNoS had not been destroyed by Noble).The problem is that the ship had already 3 weeks in Reach, what were they planning to do? Gosh, nothing in Halo: Reach makes sense.343I tries to repair it and now it's our own damn fault that Reach fell.
What about the UNSC Iroquois, wasn't that the reason the Covenant found Reach? At least that made sense.
[Edited on 01.01.2012 2:00 PM PST]