Are the Halo books any good? And which ones are worth reading

>>385890528
>Are the Halo books any good? And which ones are worth reading if so?
If you enjoy the Halo universe, yes.

I liked The Fall of Reach, The Flood, First Strike, and Ghosts of Oynx.

I haven't played 4 or 5 so I'll be reading Contact Harvest and The Cole Protocol soon.

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>>385890528
this, also Ghost of Onyx. Basically anything Eric Nylund

>>385890528
If you enjoy the Halo Universe, you're going to enjoy the books. As for 343: Microtransactions.

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I forgot the name if the book, but it shouldn't be hard to find, it was just the novelization of the first game.
Also, Halo Wars 2 looked pretty interesting before I found out I can't play it on Windows 7. Fuckin bummer.

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Fall of reach is really good. And i really liked Contact Harvest, alot of people don't like it but i just like hearing more about sgt. johnson.

>>385891213
Literally two of the worst books I've ever read

>>385890528
The forerunner trilogy is stabil. The ending goes full eldritch abomination.

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>>385891661
Why so, and what would you recommend otherwise?

>>385892161
He's a shitter. Ghosts of Onyx is generally considered the GOAT Halo book.

>>385892161
Its dead

>>385892403
But you just said it sucks... or is it a different anon?

>>385890528
>Also, how did 343 manage to colossaly fuck up such a based art style and aesthetic?
Because they focused on the Marvel Cinematic Universe style superhero stuff instead of the mysterious horror. Just another thing that the MCU has ruined; as for the books:
Contact Harvest
The Fall of Reach
First Strike
Ghosts of Onyx
Cryptum
Silentium
Those are all the good ones.
Primordium is okay but basically walking: the book and The Flood is only worth it for some sporadic EU ties. All the other ones are mediocre-bad. Avoid the Kilo-Five trilogy at all costs.

>>385895761
Also read the Marathon Story and the IRIS ARG/Halo 3 Legendary terminals. Those are probably the best pieces of writing Bungie is responsible for
http://marathon.bungie.org/story/
http://halo.wikibruce.com/Iris

First Strike was pretty good.

Lorefag here, yes

343, despite absolutely having no clue how to advance the state of the universe itself, has actually done a good job in recent years with the novels: Even if the large meta-narrative the lore is going in is bad, the novels themsleves in recent years have all been great on an indivual basis.

>>385891523
The Flood.

>>385895761
You clearly gave up on the novels after the Kilo 5 books, because you don't have Broken Circle, Last Light, or any of the other novels form 2015-present listed.

The first two kilo 5 books weren't even that bad

>>385896982
>>385895761
Also

>Evolutions
>medicore or bad

Fall of Reach and Ghosts of Onyx are two decent books. First Strike was pretty boring though.

The Flood fucking sucked. Dietz can't write a decent fight scene to save his life and he used 15 different names for the Master Chief which got annoying.

Also there's so many canonical errors it's embarrassing.

I haven't read them in ages so take this with a grain of salt, but I remember enjoying The Flood, Ghosts of Onyx, and Contact Harvest, with Fall of Reach being the best and First Strike being an interesting glimpse at the Covenant.

However, one of the best Halo-related things I've read was a fanfic, the name of which I forget. It was polished and popular enough that some of the events and characters of it were referenced in actual canon and I'd heartily recommend it to anyone interested in the lore if I could remember the name, but it shouldn't be too hard to find.

>>385898037
Fistful of arrows?

>>385896982
I gave up the novels after reading Hunters in the Dark after it gave Vale the most flat out insane backstory possible and messed around with the Ark/Forerunner lore.
You're right about my dropping of Halo lore at large in 2015. Halo 5 killed my desire to read further. I'll likely only return to Halo lore when the Flood/Precursor/Forerunner stuff takes prominence, or if the Cortana rampancy plot ends up being portrayed more akin to the cryptic style of Marathon instead of Brian Reed's Marvel trash

>>385898037
Sounds pretty neat, can you remember any specific details to help search for it?

>>385898548
Give Last Light and Broken Circle a try, as I said.

>>385898483
>>385898604
I went digging for it just for you two. "The Enemy of My Enemy" by Katsuhiro. I read it many years ago, the first chapter was released when I was still a senior in high school. I remember it being fantastic though, and stylistically very similar to Nylund.

>>385895761
I'm kind of tired of lazy shitposting don't you have anything better to add instead of bitching about a medium that entirely different? And explain your dumbfuck reasoning instead of spewing retarded /tv/ memes to get your point across.

>>385898776
Hey thanks mate. I'll check it out, but I'm usually weary of fanfic because it's either low quality or goes too far with the romance. I mean, fan fiction is like 90% gay shit.

>>385898861
>a medium that entirely different?
That doesn't have anything to do with what I said.
>retarded /tv/ memes to get your point across.
How is it /tv/? In Halo CE-Reach the direction of the series, while it did have some witty banter here and there, emphasized Spartans as unique supersoldiers (with John having intense amounts of luck out of cryptic connections to the player and being the archetypal hero if you want to connect it back to Marathon/Myth), not superheroes. The Covenant and the Flood were both portrayed as domineering, massive forces that humanity had no chance against. Cortana's rampancy is missing all of the cryptic mystery or interesting philsosphy of Marathon, instead replacing it with the most braindead "I'm going to hold the entire galaxy hostage for peace" plot possible. Just compare the Avengers-style opening cutscene of Halo 5 to anything in the series before. Compare the music, which blares horns and strings every few seconds. Everything is designed to highlight these mass produced Spartan IVs as superheroes.
There's no more subtlety, it's all like splash pages or action scenes taken straight out of your average Marvel movie/comic. I chalk a lot of that up to Brian Reed but it's just a general failing to understand what made Halo special on 343's part. If you can't see the clear superhero comic influences plaguing Halo today, and the abandonment of the fundamental Marathon-esque aesthetic of the series, then I'm afraid you're blind.

>>385890528
I prefer the books over the games actually. They are not masterpieces, but quick to read and interesting sci fi.

>>385900430
>ust compare the Avengers-style opening cutscene of Halo 5 to anything in the series before

This is a bad example to use in a halo lore thread considering the opening of Halo has the most lore accurate depicitions of spartans actually cutting lose seen outside of the books

>>385900782
>They are not masterpieces
Cryptum and Silentium are

>>385900929
*opening of halo 5

>>385900929
>considering the opening of Halo has the most lore accurate depicitions of spartans actually cutting lose seen outside of the books
In terms of the fact that they're as agile and strong as their descriptions in the novels made them out to be, sure. Not in terms of aesthetic direction and visual identity, which is what my entire post was about.
It's also absolutely retarded from a gameplay perspective to have a 3 minutes sequence full of moves you can't pull off in gameplay, but that's less about story and more about why 5's campaign was complete garbage.

>>385900430
>implying he's even played Marathon
Most Halo lore fans nowadays are the same audience that superhero movies appeal to, anon. No need for sci fi horror, just make Spartans really strong and cool.

>>385901135
I mean to be fair pulling off those types of manuvers in any video game would be difficult as fuck due to how specific the animations would have to be, I think the new movement mechanics in 5 generally do a good job for what they are.

>>385896982
Hunters in the Dark was fucking awful

>>385900052
I understand completely, that's literally the only fanfic I've ever actually read more than a few pages of. I don't recall it having any romance at all, it has more of a The Fall of Reach/Contact Harvest vibe than anything else.

>>385901762
I didn't say every novel released in 2015 onwards was good, I just said many of them are

>>385901298
And you think anything post Halo CE is anything like Marathon outside of monitors?

>>385902067
Certainly. 3's terminals and Reach's datapads were basically Marathon lore extended. ilovebees and IRIS also fall under that. I imagine Librarian/Didact as it was portrayed in 3, and even the Forerunner Saga would've mirrored Yrro/Pthia too. Halo 3's Cortana moments were obviously Marathon references as well. Gravemind carries that tone as well.
Hell, Halo 4 even did a somewhat okay job of throwing some mystery into Cortana's rampancy. Above all, the fundamental focus on metanarrative- Marathon's greatest story mechanic- was obviously present through the Bungie series.
I mean, you do realize Marathon wasn't just about crazy AI, right?

The Eric Nylund books are good. Everything after that varies in quality.

>>385900929
>considering the opening of Halo has the most lore accurate depicitions of spartans actually cutting lose seen outside of the books

There's a big difference between showing Spartans dropping from high altitude and having excellent reflexes like they would in the books, and having a giant retarded action sequence were every Covenant vehicle conveniently suicides into the Spartans so that they can do acrobatics on top of them all so that the camera can follow a dumb, incoherent action sequence meant to appeal to the sort of lowest common denominator brainlets who watch capeshit movies.

Old Halo games and what little I've read of the books felt a lot less like a modern blockbuster movie and more like "Starship Troopers combined with Aliens but most of the ayylmaos are space Muslims", it was by no means totally realistic but it at least consistently kept a fairly believable tone, nu-halo doesn't even remotely do that.

>>385902685
>I mean, you do realize Marathon wasn't just about crazy AI, right?

I've never looked into Marathon but wasn't this what Halo was all about?

>>385903015
Well, there was an avalanche during all of this iirc so vehicles being disordered would make sense.

>Old Halo games and what little I've read of the books felt a lot less like a modern blockbuster movie and more like "Starship Troopers combined with Aliens but most of the ayylmaos are space Muslims", it was by no means totally realistic but it at least consistently kept a fairly believable tone, nu-halo doesn't even remotely do that.

Sure, but the halo books are still like this, and the modern games really don't show stuff out of bounds of that or what the older games did: There's the infamous "what if you miss" thing from H2, and in the books, you have linda shiping banshees out of the sky while hanging upside down off of a rope tied to a moving aicraft in the books and the like

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>>385903938
>There's the infamous "what if you miss" thing from H2, and in the books, you have linda shiping banshees out of the sky while hanging upside down off of a rope tied to a moving aicraft in the books and the like

That "what if you miss" thing was really subtle in the way I think a lot of people miss what just happened. It was probably one of the most insane moments in the entire series.

Miranda Keyes asks Admiral Hood permission to attack this, what, five kilometer long giant alien vessel that has energy shields and beams of pure fire that can cut through entire UNSC ships armour like it's soppy butter. Hood says NO, a ship that big is too risky for her to attack in her fucking starship.

Chief asks "to give them back their bomb" and he just says permission granted after a slight pause.

>>385890528
Halo books are pretty fucking good, at least the ones I read were (everything up until The Cole Protocol).
>that fucking slipspace battle in first strike

>>385903938
You still don't understand what's wrong with that scene, please go watch some kino and learn about cinematography, the way halo 5s opening is directed is as dumb as capeshit, it's breaks muh immersions more than anything in the books, and even besides shitting on the tone and style of the series it's just fucking trash in the first place.

>>385904229
Hoods not a retard. If anyone could pull that shit off it was going to be the Chief.