: A number of points there.
: According to Staten's matrix ILB (canon or not) is considered a tertiary
: source, as it's marketing materials, not a novel or a game.
: As such, I do accept its general outline as canon where it does not conflict;
: however my threshold for what I consider a conflict is lower than, say,
: for the novels.
: I do not say that none of the events of ILB ever occurred. What I do say is
: that given its status and the distance of its story from the main one,
: details in it are less useful for interpreting and predicting things in
: the main story arc.
: That's what I really object to. People try to argue "ILB is canon"
: and then go way beyond the general outline of its plot, to suggest that
: minor elements or characters in it are far more important than they are,
: to suggest that those elements will soon appear in the primary sources
: (the games) and clamor for those minor elements to be included, and then
: are disappointed when they are not.
: ILB is what I would call "flavor text"-- it gives a bit more depth
: to areas the games are not concerned with, but that doesn't mean that
: things that go on within its story are particularly relevant to the main
: arc, and where they do relate directly to the main arc, I think they are
: much less authoritative than any other source.
: Also, ILB never felt to me like Halo. It felt like a bunch of people playing
: make-believe that they were in Halo. Just a personal preference. Just as
: people who really like the drama want it considered canonical because they
: like it, I was not particularly impressed and feel better about a
: Haloverse where ILB is strictly peripheral.
: As an example of the above, someone came into #hbo the other day and demanded
: to know why some people considered his theory about the Keep It Clean
: trailer invalid. He saw the digits "S1" somewhere in the
: trailer, has decided this means "Spartan 1" and since there are
: Spartan 1s in ILB and ILB is canon, this must mean the ODST protagonist of
: Halo 3: Recon is a Spartan 1.
: This kind of thinking makes my head hurt, and it's a direct result of thining
: about canonicity in terms of binary switches: something being either canon
: or not canon. Spartan Is are, of course, canon. But they are peripheral.
: ILB is a tertiary source full of peripheral information that people love to
: drag into theories about what's going on center stage in the Haloverse,
: and these theories never pan out. Some lead to expectations about the
: games and gameplay that cannot and will not be met: like people thinking
: the novels mean that multiple Spartans in the next game will be playable
: (advanced between H1 and H2 as well as between H2 and H3) or that Spartan
: Is or Spartan IIIs will be playable characters.
: ILB is a Pandora's box, as it is full of peripheral information that is of
: little relevance to the major events of the story, all of which get
: plastered with the broad label "CANON" based on Bungie's
: "approval" of its creation (that was approval of its initial
: creation from Bungie materials, not review, approval, or
: editing/modification of the final product, which is a BIG difference) and
: then used as fuel in theories that make the Halo story appear a lot more
: confusing than it really is, and I think make many fans less interested in
: examining the important parts of the story at the expense of cataloguing
: trivia.
Thanks, Narc. That seems like a really good answer. And, as I expected, it appears that we agree more than we disagree. While I personally like ILB and found it quite enjoyable, I also object to the use that fans make of it to fuel wild speculation or expectations for the games. It always seemed to me that while ILB was fairly canonical, it clearly had little to do with the stories, themes, and flavor of the games (essentially a "civilian" story while the games are unstintingly military, for instance) and therefore should not be extrapolated from to predict where the games were headed.
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