unforum

[Ranger D]

[Halo 2] It's Official: ILB is NOT Halo canon

[astrovanman]

I think that if you own the rights to a story like Halo and you purchase the services of someone, i.e. Eric Nylund or Sean Stewart, to create suppliment, then you should damn well know what's going to be written, and be ready to nix ideas that don't go with the original story before you allow them to be published. I'm sorry Bungie, but you led all your fans in one or two directions and then you cut them loose because you didn't write it yourselves. Boo, I say. Not cool.

[MNPundit]

I have to agree, it wasn't very cool. All in all, making something non-canon where it was once canon doesn't strike me as very professional. I mean they can do what they want of course, but if they WERE to throw out all the extra stuff it would be disappointing.

I wouldn't be too offended at the tone of the answer though, the whole interview was like that and I would think it stems from their attempts to keep interest in the story up by given answers that are deliberately mysterious (not the Bees answer of course, but the novelizations). All in all I'd say they dropped the ball again over at Bungie.

The continuity problems (and arguements) with modern Robotech are legendary within that community. But even Robotech never designated the extra stuff as cannonical or not until they had to and they had comics, movies, original source material and books to deal with!

[archon]

Everybody relax, breath into the brown paper bag, it'll all be okay.

I was bummed too when I learned that Joe didn't think of ILB as "canon" Halo story, but so what? I don't mean this to come out as an open insult to anyone, but it was pretty obvious when 4orty 2wo started including things like Marathon's rampancy in Halo that ILB had deviated quite a bit from the established Halo fiction. We all had fun with I Love Bees, right? Without Bungie's approval, I Love Bees would've never even existed. Bungie has done bunches of fun games in the past that aren't part of the Halo canon storyline, but that doesn't make them any less fun. If I remember correctly, one time I talked with SpaceBass he said that the story behind 4orty 2wo's The Beast was much, much better than the movie A.I. turned out to be, too. When I Love Bees was going on, much of Bungie was in final crunch mode for Halo 2, and the story to Halo 2 had been done for a long time prior to I Love Bees.

Does it suck that the stuff included in I Love Bees probably won't ever be touched on again in Halo mythology? Sure, but they were two different games to begin with. It's just unfortunate that the universes don't coincide with eachother perfectly.

[vector]

Im not really sure where people got the idea that it was cannon to begin with. all we ever heard was that the ILB writers had access to the Halo bible when makeing the story, this never ment that the story of ILB was to be put into that same bible. I thought it was pretty apparent when at some of the live trainings the Halo people running the events knew nothing of ILB other than they were saposed to play the final message from Melissa. Yes Bungie produced the project, that just meant that they paid for it and let 4orty 2wo do what they do which is create incredable stories that add flavor to the product that they are creating advertising for. Would i love to see a game based on the 1.1s hell yes. but its not going to happen. Will i be looking for ILB clues in any future Bungie games, of course but i dont expect it. Why? ILB was simply not the main focus of Bungie. it was an experiment. they didnt need ILB to advertise the game, the market was already there. So basicaly ILB was what it was, an incredible game that i am proud to have had something to do with it and i dont feel slighted in the least by Bungie.

[regnevah]

perhaps some jealousy that after playing ILB, halo 2's story just doesn't seem as deep in some ways

[INCyr]

[thunderclap8]

[Puts comic book nerd hat on]

I'll use the same approach I do with all the various incarnations of, say, Batman over the years. Continuity is the collection of stories that make up the concept of 'Batman' to me.

Doesn't matter what someone tells me is canon or 'in continuity' as long as I can resolve the stories I like to make sense.

[Take off comic book nerd hat]

I didn't describe it too well I think, but suffice it to say that ILB is canon for me and that's the important part.

[thebruce]

I'm not too worried about ILB being canon or not, because really the only major link to Halo 2 is the reference to the master chief near the end, and the artifact (or the reason the convenant came to earth). Halo the game will never touch on previous 'versions' of spartans, at least I don't see it happening in the near future, and planet and ship references, well, if they change, oh well. Happens in movies all the time... a quick reference to something, and some people remember that, and jump all over the writers for continuity problems the next time something changes it... *shrug*

ILB fits very well into Halo 2 as it is... if the next game says Coral was never attacked, for example, oh well... we know Bungie didn't write ILB, so I know ILB is separate from Halo 2. But it still fills in the introductory events to the game.

Really the only thing that bothered me was Joe saying the books may or may not be canon. I mean, come on, these are the Halo novels. If they're not canon, then they're "based on" Halo. At least before we had the sure-fire continuity of the books through the games. Now just by that statement, the novels feel like 'fan-fiction', and now do we really know anything about Halo outside of what the games revealed? I've got a rift now between the books and games where once they were joined at the hip... that may sound extreme, but hey, it's either 100% accurate or it's not... blah
ah well... Halo 1-2, the 3 novels, and ILB, -- [i]all are very great plots and stories[i], whether they connect or not...

[vector]

Id say that Bungie's canon is looking more and more like a pop gun. Maybe we have all given Bungie too much credit for being inovative, when the really are just good a licencing out thier name to people who are accualy creative and visionary.

[Nova]

[Nova]

[vector]

Guess what i ment is not that they dont have vision, but that they dont accualy have much vision past the video games and what we see in the games. Everything else seems to just be fluff to them. Often durring ILB people would pull information from the books beliveing them to be the offical word of Bungie, but it appears now that they done even really like where those books took them. They seem less interested in an imersive story that is really deep and more in just putting out a really good game. Which i canot fault them for, its what they do. They dont write books or do ARGs. They let others that are good at what they do produce those. They are also smart enought not to be too over manage the books and ILB so that they can flurish on thier own and not worry abou the details.

[NSA]

I agree with theBruce, ILB can fit in with Halo 2 whether its considered "canon" or not. All I got out of Joe's statement was that we most likely will not be seeing the "Jersey & Kamal go to White Castle", or any other further adventures.

To me, the ILB storyline did not really reveal any great mysteries of the Haloverse, so removing it doesnt change my overall view of things really. Like Bruce said, if suddenly Coral wasnt attacked or if Troy existed as something else, that might be strange but not totally unforgivable. However, I do hope they keep the info from the books as much as possible, but I also understand stories change and evolve, and what they approved 3 years ago for a book may not fit with where the story is TAKING THEM today. I would love to hear more about the Marines and ODST's that fought on the surface of Halo 04 and died aboard the Truth & Reconciliation ... but so-far they only exist in the novels and thus are in a kind of quasi-canon limbo I guess.

I think since Coral was mentioned in the Halo 2 Booklet, we may be hearing more about it, and it would make sense that it was attacked, since it apparently housed a large Forerunner artifact. As usual, we'll have to wait and see.

[thebruce]

now if Bungie themselves did write the books and ILB, then I'd br upset if they started changing things... that's like Roddenberry changing Kirk's middle name from Tiberius to Jamie just for the movies...
hehe