In Response To: The Fall of Reach vs. Halo: Reach *SP* (PhysshBone)
: I'm not sure where I should post these thoughts, especially in this honeymoon
: time over Reach. But this thread seems to be for the underwhelmed.
: When Bungie announced the game Halo: Reach, I was pretty excited about the
: idea of seeing the fall of Reach depicted in a Halo game. But, when I saw
: the teaser trailer, I was worried. You see, I've read all the Halo books.
: And the comics. And watched Halo Legends. (Uber-nerd) And what I have
: noticed, is that as more and more non-game fictions gets involved, it is a
: lot harder to reconcile the various events in the various media with a
: single, Halo canon. We have been told, that Bungie has some kind of
: "Halo Bible" sitting around, in which all the backstory is laid
: out so that new fiction and new games will all fit into the overall story
: arch. And here we have the first true test: how are the events of the
: battle of Reach depicted in the book as opposed to the game.
: The event in the teaser trailer that worried me was Carter's transmission
: that "there are Spartans on the ground." And then it turns out
: that these are Spartan-III's. According to the book Ghosts of Onyx, which
: is basically about the Spartan-III program, that program was so secret
: that no one outisde of a very few high ranking ONI officers even know that
: it exists. On a planet outside of UNSC space. Secret and expendeble. And
: now we learn that not only are they traipsing all over Reach, but that
: everyone seems to know about the Spartan-III program and Noble team,
: excpet Dr. Halsey. Wow, for a genius, she seems kind of dense. And if I'm
: saying that about the originator of the Spartan program, we have cause to
: worry.
: But that is the smallest of the plot problems that occur with the release of
: Halo: Reach. The biggest of them all, is actually the final missions of
: the game. We have to collect Cortana and deliver he to the Pillar of
: Autumn as she gets ready for the mission that may just end the war. What
: is that mission? Guess you'll have to read the book. But here's the
: problem. Accoriding to the book Fall of Reach, Captain Keyes did not board
: the Pillar of Autumn while it was on the planet, but rather when it was in
: orbit. He took a shuttle and did a tour of the outside of the ship before
: he docked and was given a tour of the ship by one of his bridge officers.
: Then we learn that Cortana is already on the ship, and so are all of the
: Spartans. No one has to deliver Cortano to the PoA, and no Master Chief in
: stasis in a cut scene.
: After everything is set, the PoA and its merry crew start heading out-system
: on its very important mission. But as they are about to enter slipspace,
: they receive a priority transmission. The Covenant has arrived. Egad!
: Keyes and co. have to scrub the mission and head back to defend Reach.
: What a shock! How did they get here? Wait a minute...according to the
: game, Keyes just barely survived a firefight with the Covenant back on the
: planet. He and the PoA barely escaped the Covenant by the skin of their
: teeth. So he shouldn't be surprised.
: Everything else up to this point, I can almost force into the canon. Covenant
: scouts arriving ahead of the main invasion fleet. Even Jorge's appearance
: with the Spartan-III Noble team can be explained by a line from Halsey's
: diary from the Limited/Legendary edition (she lied to all the other
: Spartans). But I cannot reconcile the ending of the game with the story
: from the novel. They're not slighlty different, they are completely
: divergent, as if from alternate realities.
: Halsey's diary is a great read. If you didn't get it, borrow it from someone.
: The ironic thing about the diary is that it ties into the novel Fall of
: Reach so well. References to the Keyes loop. Who Miranda Keyes' mother is.
: All that. And yet the game itself is so completely divergent. (am I
: repeating myself?)
: Sorry about the vent, and maybe I'm wrong about the whole thing. Maybe
: someone can help explain it all to me so that it makes sense.
: But I kind of doubt it.
Won't even try. As I said in another thread tonight, I don't envy the clean-up job 343i has after this to make this make some kind of sense.
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