By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe.
Posted by: Sp4rksLT
God, ajw, domdom, both of you. What the hell? Both of you are like zealots, blinded by fanaticism. One of Bungie the other of 343.
It's funny because you display more of the zealous fanaticism on the side of Bungie than domdom and I combined for our respective sides of the argument. Plus, I deplore a number of choices 343i have made and freely accept that they're not perfect. However, their handling of the lore and interweaving the universe through all aspects of the media is infinitely better than what Bungie did.
Stop and use normal and comprehensive arguments, both of you, not assumptions (especially you ajw, you always use assumptions to break others assumptions).
Erm... what? I have assumed nothing, everything I've said in relation to the lore has been supported with evidence from Halo 3's Terminals and the Forerunner Saga - as this is the main feature of the argument. I'd kindly request you don't start making this kind of bullshyte up to try and get your point across.
Just as a comparison to Halo I'll take Marathon. Anyone could write 300 maybe 500 pages about it. It was really mysterious and a lot was left to assumption. And boy was it a great shooter story wise. And shooting wise too. You could even SKIP the story if you weren't paranoid enough to check every last corner. And talk about Infinity. The main character went out of space-time bounds. Did they make Marathon 4 to explain how his existance continued? Nope, left to fan assumptions.
Ha, on the subject of assumptions you've just gone ahead and said that it was a GOOD thing in this paragraph. Mental gymnastics abound, eh?
Halo series had this huge magic and mystery surrounding forerunners, and that's what I really liked. Some people will agree, some will not, but the mystery was great. Remember the conspiracies? How everyone in the Universe forum wanted to know what was written in the Halo bible. How people made theories of forerunners (and hell, some fanfic is better than that Bear dude wrote) It made Halo feel deeper and the universe more vast than when explained. Because mysteries, you see, don't have any bounds. I think some things don't need explanation and should be left for your heart and your brain to fill in the gaps as YOU see fit. And that was totally fine.
I most certainly do remember those days, and you know what? Nothing has changed. There are still theories being made, they are still of the same size and proportion because the Halo universe still has as much depth (more, some would argue) as it did before.
A mystery left too long becomes repetitive and dull. Frankly, I was getting tired of wandering around the same inert grey structures and never getting any answers. What good is a theory if you can never have an answer for it? Halo has been building towards this 'bigger picture' since 2006, the IRIS Campaign and Halo 3's Terminals were the final stepping stone before reaching shore and unveiling the mystery.
Now really, like I said before, 343 are trying their best to sever their ties to Bungie's Halo bible and the Bungie era canon and to continue on with the post-Reach 343 phase Halo canon. Because it's easier for them to expand on, because they don't have to ask the writers at Bungie or wherever what they intended to expand upon had they released more books.
I beg your pardon? No idea where you're getting this from, you cannot "sever ties" from a universe with 10 years worth of established fiction just because it has moved on to another developer. Again, this is just you making Bungie out to be some idyllic 'do-no-wrong' company so you can use that as leverage to attack 343i.
And from games only point of view, hell, mysterious ending was just about fine. Cliffhangers aren't a bad thing when executed properly. Anyone seen Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels? Did anyone demand a sequel for that?
1) It wasn't a mysterious ending, it was a cliffhanger ending and as long as we're expressing our opinions as fact here Halo 3's was most definitely NOT executed properly. All the plot points leading to the inevitability of Halo 4 converged on the final mission where we learned that we're not truly going to defeat the Gravemind, only delay his return; we're still going to have the issue of 6 Halo rings primed and ready to fire on demand; the Flood will still be out there and most important of all Mendicant Bias is sending John to the Forerunners.
If Halo 3 was truly supposed to be the end of the story, they'd have left John dead at the end of the game instead of adding the extra 2 scenes where he goes into cryo and is seen drifting towards Requiem. None of this 'open-ended' tripe.
We knew that Chief either rests forever, or goes on some new adventure, but really do we need to know what happens to him? He ended the war, went through enough. Let his god damn character rest, will ya?
Then you clearly haven't been paying attention throughout the games - the Human-Covenant war is just a small part of a much larger picture. Joseph Staten created the character of Mendicant Bias which in turn kickstarted a whole chain of events building up to the inevitable Halo 4 - his goal in Contact Harvest is pretty much an exact reflection of his goal at the end of Halo 3.
343 IS created for the sole purpose of milking Halo. And like I said before, it's up to them to either try to make quality content for as long as they can, or just surrender and try to make as MUCH content as they can.
They've been around since 2007 and this is their first Halo game... Quality is subjective, but clearly they're doing something right because Halo's fanbase is still massive and they're often praised for the work they've done in interweaving the lore and producing quality products. Halo Evolutions, the Forerunner Saga, the Kilo-5 Trilogy - all have their ups and downs but this is absolutely no different from when Bungie was developing Halo.
Because from what I've seen,
Bungie time unexplainded mysteries > 343 explained partial BS. (not all the time, but mostly, and personal preference yet again!)
You cite personal preference, but once again pass it off as gospel. IMO 343i have had their share of screw ups with the Halo Encyclopedia and certain narrative choices in Glasslands (portrayal of the Sangheili, Halsey and creation of Spartan-IVs) but to me the good massively outweighs the bad and they're making a conscious effort to make the Halo universe more potent through interweaving the fiction whereas Bungie generally ignored it in the games and when it came to making Reach's story they completely bollocked it up.