: So I’m a long time lurker and first time poster, and I felt compelled to make
: a few points on this issue. This is going to be a bit long, but I’m going
: to explain why I don’t like Nylund’s The Fall of Reach and why I think it
: has outlived its usefulness as canon, and then I’ll get into how the
: retcons in Halo: Reach are beneficial, as they make the series as a whole
: make a lot more sense.
: To be frank, I don’t like The Fall of Reach. At all. Some of the reasons
: below fall into the realm of personal preference, but I include them
: because even though TFOR is often held up on a pedestal of brilliance, it
: is guilty of many of the flaws being pointed to in Halo: Reach’s story,
: often to a much greater degree. I appreciate that Nylund’s first Halo
: novel was the first deep exploration of the Halo universe, and that the
: games and other tie-ins that followed owe much to it, and I also
: appreciate that the book was written in six weeks and therefore isn’t
: going to be perfect. However, the numerous shortcomings of TFOR, outlined
: below, make it clear to me that ten years later, relying on the book as
: the basis for canon does more harm than good.
: 1) TFOR has no story arc to speak of, rather, it is a series of set pieces
: loosely strung together. This succeeds at embellishing some of the events
: eluded to in Halo: CE, but this basic lack of structure makes its story
: inferior to any of the Halo games, perhaps excluding ODST.
: 2) Characters in TFOR are at best flat and at worst inconsistent. The
: spartans are all essentially the same person, and no, being “the fast one”
: or the “the good sniper” does not count as personality. Likewise, Halsey
: is presented as though she should be a likable character, and is described
: as an inspirational figure. However, none of her actions support this at
: all, everything she does is either twisted and cruel or selfish and
: obnoxious. All Halsey is really good for in TFOR, or any of Nylund’s
: novels, is as a plot device and a source for exposition. The first time
: Halsey really made an impact as a character for me was in the Halo: Reach
: journal (which gives me hope for more good work like this from Nylund in
: the future).
: 3) Nylund’s obsession with old man history is boring and out of place. Nylund
: clearly loves reading about the heroic strategies and leadership of
: Western military commanders. I find this sort of old-fashioned
: glorification of sending people to their deaths a little off-putting
: myself, but the relevant issue here is that this is completely at odds
: with the boots-in-the-mud/guerilla warfare situation in Halo: CE. The game
: which served as the source material for TFOR was about the sort of hero
: that was fighting for the people around him or her, a focus which Nylund’s
: book ignores. Additionally, I found the descriptions of naval battles
: rather dry, and would have appreciated action sequences that were more in
: keeping with the sort of combat in the game.
: 4) Nylund made several frustratingly poor canonical choices that would be
: best to be done away with. The idea that nobody had ever seen or known
: about Elites until the attack on Reach is an obvious one. We know from the
: games that the Elites are consistently seen leading troops on the ground
: and are an essential part of the Covenant military. In TFOR, UNSC soldiers
: encountered and shot down Banshees and Wraiths, did nobody ever bother to
: check who had been piloting them? It’s also difficult to imagine planet
: after planet falling to armies composed entirely of Grunts and Jackals for
: nearly thirty years. Fortunately, it seems like Halo Wars, Legends etc.
: have done away with this bit of nonsense. There are other really
: canonically limiting elements in TFOR, however. No Mark V armor until
: right before the attack on Reach? Absolutely no knowledge of the
: Covenant’s motivation or leadership? I didn’t like this when Halo: CE and
: TFOR were the only two pieces of Halo fiction around, but now that the
: universe has expanded so much, these elements have been boxing stories
: into corners for too long.
: 5) Despite the title, the actual fall of Reach gets less than 50 pages in a
: 340 page book. It’s practically over before it begins. The explanation we
: get is cursory and unsatisfying, and, I think, unacceptable given the
: importance of the event in the overarching Halo story.
: To sum up, TFOR was sufficient when we had one Halo game, but the universe
: has exploded since that point. Even Nylund’s other novels leave elements
: of TFOR in a canonical grey area, and I think it’s about time the dead
: weight on the canon that TFOR represents be let go. And what better way to
: do that than a new game defining exactly what went on at Reach?
: Halo: Reach does a number of things right that TFOR didn’t bother with. We
: get a coherent look at the people and cultures of Reach, rather than some
: cloak-and-dagger military entity that we are told is benevolent despite
: all evidence to the contrary. Our principle cast of spartans (while not as
: fleshed out as they could be given the rather short length of the game)
: are diverse in their perspectives and believable as capable soldiers that
: have been working together for some time. We get a story about people who
: care about what happens to one another, and who care about what they are
: fighting for, something the broad narrative strokes of TFOR never got
: across. We get to see retaliation against the Covenant on the ground, in
: the air and in space. We meet enlisted soldiers and devoted militia. Halo:
: Reach suffers somewhat from keeping the story too strictly focused on
: Noble team, which makes the broader strategic picture difficult to follow,
: but the game succeeds at giving the impression of a world at war, with
: everybody trying everything to succeed, something that the brief space
: battle in TFOR was lacking.
: I’ve established that based on personal taste, I would rather the story told
: in Halo: Reach be canonical than that of TFOR. But the retcons in Halo:
: Reach do improve the overall canon. Let’s go through them: 1) Brutes and
: Drones. Obviously these hadn’t been created yet when TFOR was written, but
: they have contributed so much to the story as a whole since their
: introduction (well, the Brutes anyway) that insisting that their first
: appearance was a month or two before the end of the war is foolish. I
: welcome the adjustment of canon in order to accommodate the Brutes with
: open arms.
: 2) The invasion of Reach begins a month earlier. This allows for a much more
: interesting story to be told than what happened in TFOR. We know Reach has
: the largest UNSC presence of any human colony, and would present a
: formidable challenge for the Covenant. It’s one thing for the Covenant to
: simply obliterate the best the UNSC has in a stand-up fight, but the Halo
: story is about so much more than evil invading aliens. I love the idea
: that the Covenant opted to bypass Reach’s orbital defense grid by
: discreetly slipping their army in directly to the planet’s surface. I also
: like the idea that the motivation behind the full scale attack was not
: just to eradicate the humans, but to access the Forerunner secrets under
: the planet’s surface. I don’t mind the fact that we’ve never seen cloaking
: or slipspace navigational precision on this scale before, because, with
: the exception of the second half of Halo 2, we were never looking at the
: full might of the Covenant military.
: 3) The business with Cortana and the location of Installation 04. The way
: Halo was found in TFOR never made much sense to me. The Covenant invade
: Sigma Octanus 4 to find a Forerunner rock in a museum which has
: coordinates to the mythical means of their god’s divination. They get said
: rock, but instead of heading to Halo, what they have been searching for
: for generations straightaway, they devote a good chunk of their resources
: to attacking Reach. Then when the Autumn is fleeing Reach, Cortana decides
: to ignore Cole Protocol and follow these random intercepted coordinates,
: for reasons never explained and which are inexplicitly never questioned by
: any other characters. The above is pretty typical of the awkward,
: roundabout plotting of TFOR and Nylund’s other Halo books. In Halo: Reach,
: we get something much more eloquent. Halsey has been studying the
: Forerunner relics, and knows of their importance to the Covenant and their
: potential as far as ending the war. How much she knows specifically is not
: clear, but mysteries like this are what make the Halo story great.
: Nevertheless, while she knows that her knowledge would be useful in
: exploring Halo, she herself would be a liability. So she creates an AI in
: her image based on her own mind. In this version of the story, Cortana’s
: purpose is to find Halo and use it to end the war. This ties the entirety
: of the Halo universe together extremely well. There was always a weird gap
: between the focus of the story before and after the discovery of Halo, and
: Halo: Reach uses Cortana to bridge that gap.
: Halo: Reach’s story isn’t perfect, but I don’t think the thread’s authors are
: giving it due credit for streamlining and improving a canon that was
: previously disjointed and outdated.
Great example of someone having a particular opinion and being able to express it without snark, hyperbole, condescension, etc.
Well done.
- m
|
