I've never read any of the Halo books. I know a few things about the EU from reading summaries online and hanging out with fellow Halo nerds. I probably know a bit more about Halo lore than the typical Halo player.

That said, I had a hard time enjoying Halo 4's campaign because of this:

"I thought we had a truce with the Covenant?"
"A lot can happen in four years."

The Elites, who had always had a united front in Halo 2 and Halo 3, were now fighting us? After all the work we had done as the Arbiter and the Chief in the previous games, now we were enemies again? I spent most of the game wondering why we were fighting who I could only presume were the Arbiter's friends.

This is the same reason why I couldn't enjoy Spartan Ops. Here were these Covenant, exploring a Holy Land of theirs, and ONI was sending in Spartans to murder them without cause? What happened to our peace treaty with them? Why was this reversal of the central plot point of Halo 2 and Halo 3 never adequately explained?

It turned out that if you had read the books, the plot in Halo 4 made more sense. Turns out the Elites you were fighting were the Arbiter's enemies, not his allies! If only 343 had put that information in the game, front and center, in the first campaign level.

I fear that Halo 5 is going down a similar path.

In Halo CE, 2, 3, and 4, it's heavily implied that Master Chief is the only Spartan II left alive. No other Spartan IIs are seen or mentioned. Master Chief is spoken of as humanity's last hope, the only one of his kind. A song in the Halo 2 OST is even entitled The Last Spartan.

If there were other Spartan IIs bouncing around the galaxy, surely they would have been mentioned at least once? Surely Hood or Johnson or Halsey or either Keyes would have alluded to them? Surely they would have shown up when the Covenant invaded Earth, when The Flood showed up in Africa, or when Truth was about to wipe out all life in the galaxy?

If there are other Spartan IIs out there, that is a huge revelation. It's the kind of thing that needs to be explicitly called out in the game and explained. Where have they been all this time? Why has no one ever mentioned them?

But instead, it looks like Halo 5 begins in medias res, with Chief hanging out with these never-before-mentioned Cousin Olivers. This completely unknown crew conveniently drops into his lap. This "family", which has never been seen or mentioned by anyone previously, appears right when he's at his lowest point.

It's similar to if Return of the Jedi had opened with Luke flanked by a team of Jedi. Sure, ANH and ESB implied that Obi-Wan, Luke, and Yoda were the last of the Jedi, but if you had read the books, you would see that many Jedi escaped Vader's purge...

If 343 wanted to include Blue Team in Halo 5, they needed to have planted the seeds of their existence already. They needed to have mentioned them in Halo 4, or in Spartan Ops, or in Halo 2: Anniversary.

I know there is a full and detailed history of Blue Team in countless Halo tomes. I know there are stories about their training days, their adventures with Chief, their time on Onyx.

But the story in the Halo games should be able to stand on its own. For the average campaign player, their sudden appearance just smacks of lazy writing.

I hope I'm wrong this time. I hope the game explains their history satisfactorily. But given 343's record with Halo 4's story, I'm not very hopeful.