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**Conspiracy Theory Incoming**
It wasn't the Master Chief, it was *gasp* ANOTHER Spartan on Earth! It's all a cover up by ONI and/or the UNSC.
: Halo 4 didn't ruin its canonicity, Halo 3 pretty much obviated it (it's clear
: that they didn't give the marketing people the full story of Halo 3,
: prolly for good reason.)
: Doesn't mean you can't partition it a bit in your head--maybe the Museum of
: Humanity does exist and those were real soldiers, they just couldn't have
: fought in a battle described in the diorama.
I think it's important to remember "ads for the sake of ads" - It's all eye candy, it's not meant to be canon, it's meant to move product. I know some people want to romanticize it and make it fit because Bungie, but dudes, ads.
Uprising, and the gap between H2 - H3
So, let's talk about Uprising. From what I remember, Uprising was supposed to come out before Halo 3 shipped and would bridge the gap between events from Halo 2 to Halo 3. But it didn't release on time. In fact, I want to say that it released late, very late.
Maybe I was the only one, but I really felt a huge disconnect from the main story almost instantly. As pretty as that first level was, and as nice as it was to be playing as the Chief again, I kept thinking "How did I get here? How did the Arbiter get here? What happened on the Forerunner ship? Shouldn't I be there first? Don't tell me this all happened in the blink of an eye- that's impossible.... Maybe the Forerunner ship could get here that fast but Not the Arbiter and Johnson"
I quickly took those questions and stuffed them , and focused on enjoying the story being told to me then and there. (I wish more people would have done that with Halo 4)
So, to circle back, in order for me to complete the story arc, to fill in the gaps I needed to have that extended fiction. I had to go out of the game to complete the story.
Isn't that the same mortal sin that 343 did with the terminals in Halo 4 that so many (myself included) lamented over?
I didn't browse these forums then, but I did Bnet. Was there any uproar here over that? Did anyone find it odd? Was it a big deal then?
H1-H2
What about the disconnect between H1 and H2? That is a big one. If you didn't read First Strike: You last saw MC floating in a derelict Longsword, and when you see him again he's on a Space Station above Earth somehow.
Granted, Bungie did a good job of explaining how and why his Armor is different in this transition, but not the how/why/when he got back to Earth. Want to fill in the gaps? Gotta go to the EU and read the book.
Oh no Rev didn't #1
I'm going to say something controversial to y'all. Ready?
I think that the gap between Halo 4 to Halo 3 was handled better than all of the other Halo games thus far.
Aside from 343's poorly chosen and explained aesthetic changes (see Forward Unto Dawn, MC's Armor, Hogs and weapons on the Dawn) the transition between the way Halo 3 ended and Halo 4 began is pretty solid.
When we left MC at the end of H3, he was asleep in cryo floating in a gutted FUD towards a mysterious Forerunner installation.
When we pick back up, he's waking from cryo, floating in a gutted FUD towards a mysterious Forerunner installation.
Unnecessary visual changes and flair aside, story wise, we're right on the money.
Now, a few people might chime in and say something like "Revenant, When they changed the Dawn for no raisin or when they changed the Chief's armor and just said nano-bots in one sentence and just left it at that it wasn't cool and really caused a disconnect for me, thus setting the mood for the rest of the game and therefore my enjoyment of the game"
And you know what? You'd be totally right, and I agree with you.
Some people are more affected by visual and artistic alterations than others. (see change for the sake of change, Levi, Loftus etc)
Others like myself, are more forgiving of visual changes but are more affected by the set pieces, environments, or theater from where we stopped to where we started again. (see disconnect between H1-H2-H3)
Oh no Rev didn't #2
If you sit down and think about it, Halo's story doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
If you take "average Joe gamer" who hasn't delved into any of the books, comics, videos, movies, and other media the games leave a lot to be desired. (Understandable, there is only so much you can put in a game and not bore the player to death)
I would argue that for a brief moment, 343 did a better job transitioning from H3's end to H4's beginning that Bungie did with H1-H2-H3.
I dunno about you guys, but my average gamer friends that played Halo always asked me those questions that I posed to you above because they didn't read the books or anything, and I honestly hated telling them "oh, yeah, they explained that, go read First strike".
Time and nostalgia are funny things.
Sure, we'll bitch till the cows come home about how if you really want to understand anything about the Didact leading into H4 you need to read the Forerunner saga by Greg Bear, and how not cool that is, or that you have to go out of the game for the terminals.
But tell someone they need to read First Strike to understand how Master Chief got home between H1 and H2, or they need to read uprising to see how he made it back to Earth and try to explain how the 'Believe' ad campaign fits and they'll do it with a smile on their face.
I don't see how that's fair, honestly.
All of them are equally consistent about how inconsistent they are on some level or another.
We all want to say we're not biased, but sometimes we are.
Final Speculation
If you've read this far, I thank you. I ramble sometimes because my mind has many things to say, and I love researching things to death and viewing all the angles.
I wonder, if people are more forgiving of Bungie's inconsistencies and EU because the story was so kick ass that it was just easier to overlook them and then after enough time, forget them. Perhaps it was all easier to swallow because a lot of us were much younger then.
I wonder if people are less forgiving of 343 committing similar actions because of the fondness for the story (and it's imperfections) above. I feel like 343's chapters into the EU are tighter, and more coherent on a lot of levels than what's come before, but they just don't interest or grip some people because while they might be more solid, they just don't have that kick ass feeling that's Bungie's did.
Does any of that ^^ make sense to you? Like, the story is put together well enough, maybe even better than previous ones, it's just that you don't care to read/watch/participate in it?
I know a few folks have expressed their displeasure that we're seeing the UNSC in a darker light, and that they like it better when they were the heroes... well, if you'll recall way wayyyyyyyy back to the first part of The Fall or Reach, the UNSC were already the 'bad guys' because they were squashing the rebels and colonists who wanted to be on their own, not part of the UNSC. And they wanted that freedom peacefully, very much a "hey, it's cool you guys are doing this, but we're not interested so we're gonna do our own thing and be neighbors, k? Wait... what are all those ships for? FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU war"
(All the Covenant ever did was distract the UNSC from fighting their own people. )
But maybe that's not the story you wanted to read, and that seems to be one story that 343 wants to explore more.
Hmmmm.
Sometimes I envy other gamers who would simply consume the Halo story in it's most simplistic, watered down form and then move on to the next. All they see is a story about a green armored super soldier, his sexy girlfriend and a bunch of bad aliens and space zombies.
Then they forget that shit and play multiplayer :P
Ahhhhhhh. Thankfully, there is a place where we can discuss this stuff- these things that average Joe gamer rolls his eyes or just blinks about.
HBO: Where everybody's got a theory.