I'd say his are the most Nylund-like among the rest of the series.
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Next Halo Book "Shadows of Reach" Announced | Set 1 Year After Halo 5, Cover Shows Infinite-Style Designs for Blue Team
- Thread starter Dancrane212
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I'd say his are the most Nylund-like among the rest of the series.
Depends who you ask. He wrote plenty of genuine canon fodder for Star Wars as well, so I wouldn't exactly line up for a copy of this.
wonder if it could be the race that the ship that crashed on installation 04 in the Guilty spark terminals belonged to? would be interesting to find out who it belonged to as it was implied it wasn't covvie or forerunner.
It's not the kind of thing they can just handwave away. I doubt they'll stick with it for long, but it is a major part of the story after the last game, so they kind of have to follow through on it at this point. But like I said, I'll be surprised if they drag it out past Infinite.
The cover looks very nice.
I will never ever understand the decisions they made with Halo 5's story post Halo 4. Maybe they could have made it work some other way, but man. Way to undo like what 2/3rds of your first game was about in such a damaging way
I will never ever understand the decisions they made with Halo 5's story post Halo 4. Maybe they could have made it work some other way, but man. Way to undo like what 2/3rds of your first game was about in such a damaging way
I haven't but I'll definitely give them a try. Any specific book you recommend as the starting point? Are they all good?
If you can still remember Ghosts of Onyx, give Last Light a try. A fair few of the characters in that come over from Onyx.
If you want something a bit more standalone, there's Silent Storm, which details one of the S-II's earliest engagements with the Covenant.
Both books also have direct sequels.
Nice, thanks! I loved Ghosts of Onyx and it's still somewhat fresh in my mind, but a re-read would be fine too.
Awesome username by the way!
Thanks :) Always loved the ship names in the Bungie games.
Yes, but I did think they will "save/restore" her. Maybe they pull a full Medicant Bias/Offensive Bias and have a NeoCortana defeat Cortana. (With Cortana regretting her actions after defeat)
I'll definitely check this out.
343i have planned Halo 5's end point even before Halo 4 was finished. The events in Halo Legends and even Cortana's behaviour in Halo 4 fits.
343i have planned Halo 5's end point even before Halo 4 was finished. The events in Halo Legends and even Cortana's behaviour in Halo 4 fits.
Hard to back out of it now. Not sure if it would be worse to resolve the whole thing offscreen or not. My votes on pull a Halo CE, wrap up Cortana by mid-campaign Halo 5 mostly and pivot to The Banished and Atriox as the main antagonist.
Looks like the cover is referencing the original Fall of Reach cover.
I loved the Nylund books, but I haven't read a Halo novel in years. This is making me kind of nostalgic though. Now I'm tempted to check it out when it releases.
Either way, I hope the story Halo: Infinite isn't too reliant on stuff from the EU like the last two. I read Glasslands just before 4 came out, which was the first Halo novel I had read since Ghosts of Onyx. Apparently that wasn't enough as I still had a bit of difficulty following the plot. I didn't know the Forerunner series was required reading in order the comprehend a mainline game. Halo 5 was only slightly better in this regard. For the original games, it seemed the EU stuff complimented and enhanced the mainline stories in the games, while the new EU tends to be a crutch at times. So far 343i has been saying the right things and implying Infinite will be something different than 4 and 5; I just hope that applies to the storytelling too.
I loved the Nylund books, but I haven't read a Halo novel in years. This is making me kind of nostalgic though. Now I'm tempted to check it out when it releases.
Either way, I hope the story Halo: Infinite isn't too reliant on stuff from the EU like the last two. I read Glasslands just before 4 came out, which was the first Halo novel I had read since Ghosts of Onyx. Apparently that wasn't enough as I still had a bit of difficulty following the plot. I didn't know the Forerunner series was required reading in order the comprehend a mainline game. Halo 5 was only slightly better in this regard. For the original games, it seemed the EU stuff complimented and enhanced the mainline stories in the games, while the new EU tends to be a crutch at times. So far 343i has been saying the right things and implying Infinite will be something different than 4 and 5; I just hope that applies to the storytelling too.
And you know this how? Halo 5 never had us facing a galaxy under Cortana's control.
Looks like the cover is referencing the original Fall of Reach cover.
Huh, I guess I haven't seen that cover in awhile cause that totally went over my head.
I don't think the story was bad, flawed but ok describes it for me. Even then that doesn't mean it can't work, it just needed better writing and more time to better flesh out. Heck, Halo 3 and Reach also were pretty bad with the story department.
It's art style choices in the game don't think about it too much.
This is basically where I sit with 5's story; it's not a bad story (I actually kind of like where it ends up, because it gives me some serious, "all of this has happened before, and it will all happen again" vibes), but it is poorly executed.
I do wonder if it would have been better if they hadn't clearly cut things out of the game, but my main issue with 5 (and this is something they did much better in 4) is the character writing. They feel more like individuals with personal motivations in 4, whereas everyone in 5 is just there to move the story forward. They're where they are because that's where the story needs them to be.
Two opposing opinions. :) Coincidentally, I remember when my friend, a massive Star Wars fan, was complaining what a terrible writer Karen Traviss was. I fully understood him when reading Glasslands - it was so bad I haven't touched Halo's expanded universe since then (luckily I had finished Greg Bear's trilogy).
Maybe it's time to go back to this universe, I enjoyed it immensely 10-15 years ago.
I only know Troy Denning from the recent Halo Silent Storm, which I enjoyed. But I might buy this new book just for the cover.
I really enjoy how Troy Denning writes Blue Team in Halo Last Light. Eager to read this.
I assume this will do a lot of heavy lifting to wrap up a lot of lingering Halo 5 threads, and get the world state to where Infinite starts out at.
I assume this will do a lot of heavy lifting to wrap up a lot of lingering Halo 5 threads, and get the world state to where Infinite starts out at.
I have a feeling this book and the opening part of Halo Infinite is gonna do just that. Based on the hidden audio from the E3 trailer that people discovered in the QR code:
I feel like at least part of Infinite will involve you collecting fragments of Cortana from when she divided into 16ish parts at the end of Halo 4, and combining them back into "Your Cortana" from the first four games. Whether that ends with you defeating the evil Halo 5 splinter Cortana, I dunno. Probably in some capacity?
This is the first I've heard about the I Love Bees connections! Thanks for sharing!
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I still like the idea of a "new" Cortana that was mentioned in Halo 4 if the character *had* to come back. I felt it'd fit well with the whole "assembly line hero" narrative the games seemed to be going for at first.
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Oh god they're still using the atrocious Halo 4/5 shotgun design. Here I was hoping we'd go back to the classic design.
The cover art for this kind of makes me want some prequel games with Chief. I'd be pretty content if Halo Infinite (Provided its any good) was the only new Halo game for MP all gen long (Like R6 Siege) and got single-player expansions/standalones in the vein of ODST.
I wouldn't quite say his style is particularly close to Nylund, and honestly if anything he has a really nice focus on how characters process emotions during situations that I like. When I say Fall-of-Reach-era I mostly mean that Denning's recent books take place only a short time after the initial outbreak of the war (which is my personal favorite point in the Halo timeline because it's so initially hopeless and humanity has to really think outside the box in their tactics)
Is it really a retcon if it was planned all along? :P
Not saying that *is* the plan, but I've been assuming this whole time that...
5 Cortana is just a fragment (the one that disappears into the Didact's suit, presumably gets transported to the Composer's Forge alongside him, and either enters the Domain from there, or finds her way there after he's composed). I've also been thinking that this fragment carries some corruption from Cortana's time with the Gravemind, and is, perhaps unknowingly, acting as an agent of the Flood. Because they have to come back at some point, they're the ultimate antagonist in the galaxy.
This is why I said 5's plot gives me some "all this has happened before" feels - a super-intelligent AI turning on its masters and acting as an agent of the Flood mirrors the actions of Mendicant Bias during the Forerunner-Flood War, and I'm hoping that's where this is all pointing.
This is why I said 5's plot gives me some "all this has happened before" feels - a super-intelligent AI turning on its masters and acting as an agent of the Flood mirrors the actions of Mendicant Bias during the Forerunner-Flood War, and I'm hoping that's where this is all pointing.
For me it's just like, why kill Cortana at all In the first place. Like maybe we have to do that to get to evil Cortana, but also maybe we didn't have to. Even some sort of post credit thing or any indication in Halo 4 at all that Cortana was alive would have been better, something like the Halo 2 post credit sequence.
Or even just include it in the Halo 5 marketing instead of that hunt the truth campaign. We learn about her in level 2 - did we really need to hide the fact that she was still alive for 3 years up until release?
I think you're spot on, and agree. In one of the Halo 5 behind the scenes videos, Frank mentions that they knew where they wanted to take Cortana in Halo 5 even before they made Halo 4, which I've never forgotten. It's less of a retcon and more just some misdirection, and maybe course correction.
As someone whose favorite story within the Halo Universe is that of Mendicant Bias, I'm totally on board with that theory. Really excited to see where it all goes in Infinite.
Yeah, there's absolutely zero chance that they just clumsily decided to undo Cortana's sacrifice on the flip of a coin. This was all planned out.
Of course, plans can go awry, execution can be fumbled. That's all I think went wrong with 5 - they knew where they were going, but they fumbled the ball.
Here's hoping they nail it in Infinite!
well
it shouldn't have been done that way
it should have always been that she decays and starts screwing things up for everyone and starts taking things out on everyone for sometimes no reason... so it becomes a bit of a horror like story. Though a lot of stuff was kinda done right in H4 regarding cortana as she wasn't a big issue.
I don't mind that she came back out of nowhere... but I certainly do mind that she basically became the didact.
For me it's more like that she's been elevated from random AI helping you to literally the most important character in the universe monopolising multiple game's stories. I found Halo 4's focus on her kind of obnoxious but then in 5 it's digging in for the long haul.
I'm still convinced that Halsey was meant to end up the big bad of Halo 5, but 343i chickened out due to the negative reactions from the community after how she was portrayed in Spartan Ops and the Kilo-Five trilogy.
I mean, if you look at the story of Halo 5, a lot of the broad stroke stuff wouldn't change if you switched out Cortana with Halsey.
I mean, if you look at the story of Halo 5, a lot of the broad stroke stuff wouldn't change if you switched out Cortana with Halsey.
Well, this is interesting:
For those who don't understand: Halo Wars 2 shows an UNSC Fleet engaging a Banished Fleet in the proximity of Tantalus (3rd picture). Tantalus, is a planet (human colony) which is located in the same system (Epsilon Eridani) as Reach. This could possibly mean that Halo Wars 2 was foreshadowing this book.
For those who don't understand: Halo Wars 2 shows an UNSC Fleet engaging a Banished Fleet in the proximity of Tantalus (3rd picture). Tantalus, is a planet (human colony) which is located in the same system (Epsilon Eridani) as Reach. This could possibly mean that Halo Wars 2 was foreshadowing this book.