: I'd been hoping the follow-up to Ghosts of Onyx could've gone in a more
: esoteric direction given the vastness and potential of the setting the
: characters were left in. Maybe a Rendezvous With Rama (or Eon) type story
: but bigger and with Spartans. But almost anything would've been preferable
: to what we got.

: I don't believe that the basic kind of military sci-fi Halo stories should no
: longer be told, just that there's room for so much more. The books and
: comics and such would be an optimal channel to explore some of the more
: alien corners of the setting, something you can't necessarily do in a game
: (or you could, but something more experimental wouldn't necessarily jibe
: well with general audiences and may distract from the fun). The two
: categories don't need to be mutually exclusive either; you could
: conceivably use the Spartans et al. as the POV characters in more big
: idea-oriented stories as well (for example, the hypothetical GoO follow-up
: that never happened). Right now, all the expanded universe media is used
: to tell the exact same kinds of stories as the games do.

: But even the archetypal military science fiction/space opera that the
: Haloverse has traditionally been is preferable to the sketchy comic
: book-ish direction the series' writing and art have taken under 343's
: tutelage. Can you have fun? Absolutely. But the humor shouldn't come from
: the unintentional comedy of something that takes itself way too seriously
: but is too incompetently put together to be viewed with anything other
: than amusement. Case in point, 343i decides the Grunts are no laughing
: matter and turns them into these supposedly dark and gritty versions of
: themselves - all the while providing unintentional comedy by presenting
: their main antagonist as a walking disco ball with vampire fangs.

: I'm going off on a tangent here, but the same thing happened to the Mass
: Effect series. Without going into too much detail, the third game tries to
: convince me it has something profound to say about transhumanism and the
: nature of life and conflict while the memory of fighting a silly tryhard
: cyborg ninja is still fresh in my mind.

The only thing I have to add to this awesome post is that Kai Leng still made for a better boss fight than the Didact.