Let me explain. Actually, let me build up to this first. When I tell stories, dammit, I tell them fully and completely, including every last insignificant detail!
Halo was a special thing for me back on the original Xbox. It still is. In fact, I'm listening to the soundtrack to the first game right now. In FLAC format. But for a time, it was my absolute favorite game. It still has a firm grasp on my heart, as you can tell by the following photo.
Not Pictured: Todd MacFarlane Custom Brute Xbox 360 Controller, because I can't find the damn thing.
My world view was admittedly still pretty small back then. I had never played Half-Life at the time, or even heard of it, to be honest. The only reason I ever even heard about Halo was through my cousin, one of my only friends at the time. Not a very good friend, but I didn't develop any of those until about my sophomore year of high school. Those guys are AWESOME. But anyway, he had an Xbox, I had Gamecube (we both had a PS2). We had pretty much always had different systems. He had a Playstation, I had an Nintendo 64... actually, that's as far back as it went. We both had a Sega Genesis (anyone who calls it the Mega Drive is a Communist). In fact, I'm pretty sure I was born with the controller to one in my hand, as impossible as that would've been time-wise. And the logistics are simply... oh right, Halo. Anyway, it was something to us both. I assume it also had an impact on him, as he recently joined the United States Marine Corps. I can't say with CERTAINTY he developed an interest in shooting things until they died because of Halo, but I can say that regardless. Also, he probably really wishes he could call himself a Space Marine. Maybe someday. I'm getting off topic again. You should get used to that.
When I first played Halo, it was something special to me. Like I said, my world view was small and this was new. I adored the game. I played it with him endlessly. It was a point of pride when we beat The Maw on Legendary together and got the little bonus bit in the ending. I convinced my parents to buy me an Xbox for the sole purpose of playing Halo myself. Yes, I bought a console for the sole purpose of playing this game. It was THAT important to me. But what really got me going for Halo was when I was in a Barnes and Noble one day and I saw a book. Halo: The Fall of Reach. My little 12-year-old brain was intrigued. I read the back description. "A prequel...? ... MORE Spartans? My god." I had to possess it. So, I poked my Mom in the ribs and demanded she buy it for me, because I was a tiny annoying brat when I was twelve. And my Mom, being the saint that she is, bought it for me. I immediately went home and read it. And it blew my mind.
I am not going to try and argue that it was a deep, meaningful book. It's not. It's entertainment, plain and simple. Events happen. They are awesome. You are entertained. It's not deep and symbolic, but it's engaging and you want to know how the story goes. I absolutely loved it and I still enjoy reading it to this day. As soon as I was able to, I bought the second book, The Flood. This book is still my least favorite among the 5 Halo novels I've read (I haven't gotten around to The Cole Protocol yet. Odd, since I bought it on release day), but it was still cool. I wanted more. And then I heard the news.
They were making Halo 2. Holy shit.
It was during the time I had truly discovered the internet and thus, was on top of the hype like crazy. Every time something new was announced about the game. I HAD to have this game. I treasured my copy of Electronic Gaming Monthly that previewed the game like it was made of gold bouillon and the mark was going through hyperinflation. I don't care if no one gets that joke, it's funny to me. Beyond that, I still view my greatest failure on the internet is not finding out about the ilovebees alternate reality game sooner. This game was going to be the greatest thing ever.
Now, anyone even remotely aware of Halo can assure you that Halo 2 was far from the greatest thing ever. It sold like crazy and in fact became the fastest selling anything ever in history, until Halo 3 which broke that record in its first day. But this game... this game traumatized me. This game is what gave me my first taste of true disappointment. You know the kind I mean. Maybe as a kid, you didn't get the toy you wanted on Christmas. Maybe you threw a fit. Maybe you were let down. But odds are, if you still got anything you wanted, it wasn't true disappointment. No, true disappointment is like finding out that Santa isn't real by seeing the fake Santa at the mall remove his beard and take a shot of whiskey. While fucking your mom.
Okay, maybe not that extreme, but you get the picture. And my condolences if that actually happened to anyone. That's the gist of it, though. Something that fundamentally changes you and makes you realize the world isn't the bright, sunny place you thought it was. Something that makes you realize that people aren't perfect and sometimes, people do terrible, terrible things. I imagine The Phantom Menace was like this for many adults, as well. "Gee, the world may suck, but at least there's still Star Wars."
But moving back to Halo 2, it was a massive disappointment in my eyes. Prior to the game, Halo: First Strike had come out, which filled in the time gap between Halo 1 and 2, and also brought back MORE SPARTANS! They weren't all dead after all, including my favorite from The Fall of Reach, Linda. Because I have always found female snipers to be the single most awesome thing alive. Sexiest too, but that doesn't really apply when they're dressed in full combat armor. Also, judging from the descriptions in Fall of Reach, they'd be anything but sexy. That leads to my first real complaint about Halo and will begin the long, long descent from there. The Halo canon is INCREDIBLY inconsistent between mediums.
The first sign of this comes when comparing the end of First Strike with the beginning of Halo 2. First Strike ends with the alien conglomerate of species, The Covenant, finding Earth. Earth, at this point, is the last human-settled world with something like 10 Billion people on it. Earth makes contact with Master Chief and his team of Spartans and tells them that the Covenant have found Earth. And the book ends there. Well, it ends a few pages later after some foreshadowing of Halo 2's plot that makes no sense until you've played the game. But anyway, my point remains. The book ends with the Earth under attack by Covenant, the Master Chief and multiple other Spartan IIs off in space somewhere and they head back toward Earth to fight the Invasion. Remember this. It is important.
So Halo 2 begins on a space station above Earth, with Master Chief arriving back with Sergeant Johnson, the only black man in the entire United Nations Space Command. Also, the closest thing to a badass normal the games get. Anyway, they Chief gets into his new armor (in-game reason for the obviously different armor the graphical enhancements allowed) and they're both about to get all kinds of medals and stuff for the events of the first game. "But wait!" you might exclaim, "Why are they having an award ceremony during the middle of an alien invasion?" A fine question! And the answer is "they're not, because THE INVASION HASN'T HAPPENED YET!". That's right, they retconned the book. The Covenant haven't hit the Earth yet. So already, they have fucked with their own canon. And it's not like the book was outsourced. To some novel-writing factory in Taiwan (do they even have those?). No, Eric Nylund, the author of 3 of the 6 Halo novels is on the Bungie staff and in fact is one of the lead writers for the games. I mean, I can understand if they didn't want to start the game with the Covenant being on Earth, but if that's the case then GOD DAMMIT DON'T PUT IT IN THE BOOK! I mean, the man had to have been in the Bungie office frequently while he was writing the book. And even if he wasn't, 5 minute phone call. Tops. It's fucking worth it for consistency.
The tragedy only begins there and I will continue this in my next post.
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