unforum

[Ranger D]

Bare with this first paragraph, so you at least know where I'm coming from:

Let me tell you what got me interested in ilovebees. It was because I was a Bungie fan. I played the Marathon series and while it didn't have the best graphics, it has an incredibly immersive story line. "These guys now how to tell a good story." was what I thought. When my friend got Halo 1, we didn't turn off the xbox until the game was finished. Since then, Bungie was off the radar for me until I heard about ilovebees. It was confusing at first, but when I started reading that Bungie may be behind this thing, I was 110% in for the whole ride. Why? Because in my mind, Bungie knew how to tell a good story.

Yes, ILB was amazing, and exceeded my wildest expectations. I had fun playing it, made some new friends, and know where a whole lot of pay phones in SF are. I'm not discounting ILB in anyway, and we all know it could stand on it's own with completely different content. Easily. But another part of what made ILB fun and interesting was that it was part of a whole; expanding from something else in a new way, creating something greater than the sum of it's parts. What harm could including this as canon possibly cause? If you can't tell us, make a freaking excuse why it's not canon. The artifact created a time warp effect creating a separate timeline where the ILB events transpired, but is not in the real timeline that the games and books (the jury's still out on them) are. How hard was that to come up with?

I hope Bungie gets their freaking ducks in row. Soon. If you are going to spend time and money and energy creating a unified franchise, at least put some time into saying why something is not official. Now, if your goal is to NOT create a unified franchise or tell an amazing story through different mediums, just come out and say it. Say "We really just wanted to whore out the Bungie and Halo franchises to make as much money as possible. We don't care about continuity and don't know how to manage time and resources very well." I may be taking some 'creative liberty' there, but you get my drift. (Although the H2 SE DVD clearly points out their poor time management skills).

So what we can assume is this:
-There will be no characters from ILB in a Halo game. Ever.
-None of the events in ILB will be mentioned in a Halo game. Ever.
-There will be no "Thanks to the Crew of the Apocalypso" in a Halo game, and Bungie won't thank it's fans for playing ILB. (Someone please prove me wrong with a link)
Then again, Bungie, at some point in the future could decide to include ILB in Halo canon. We'll never know.

This whole think reminds me of the boy who cried wolf. Pretty soon, your integrity gets shot to hell.

[archon]

[MNPundit]

[Nola]

I would dismiss this as an unprepared executive's foot-in-the-mouth remark. These guys aren't gods and not everything they blurt out is 'canon'.

[Ranger D]

I like facts. First we have the puppetmaster IRC chat found here...

[ubersaurus]

[astrovanman]

[archon]

Imagine this scenario if you will:

You're Bungie/Microsoft. You've dumped untold millions of dollars into the Halo franchise, and its served you well thus far. So you decide to contract a wacky bunch of Alternate Reality Game designers in a cool attempt to get publicity for your product. You give them a million bucks.

Do you:
A) Supply them with enough background material and a representative from your company to make sound business decisions regarding your franchise

or

B) Let them go with God and have free range to say and do whatever it is they feel like

Now we've seen the results of decision A. Let's pretend that the good people behind The Beast weren't behind I Love Bees for a moment and Microsoft went with B.

Suddenly the Master Chief has the terrible AIDS, Cortana is a two-bit hooker working the red light district for quick doses of electro-crack, and Captain Keyes dances nude with various Flood-added appendages flopping out and tickling the UNSC brass.

[NSA]

[adfegg]

Halo was my first experience with Bungie, so I'm not all that familiar with the company, but I did get the impression that Halo only told a small part of a larger story they'd worked out - most of which wouldn't see the light of day.

So I had hopes, and still do, that ILB had been taken from this larger story.

[Fenwicked]

I'm seeing a lot of confusion around here about what canon is. One thing it isn't is subject to our approval. Bungie created the Haloverse, and they own it. They will shape that universe and that story into exactly what they want it to be. PERIOD. Just because a supplemental story was good, or evoked emotion from its readers, does not make it official canon.

Now don't get me wrong here, I'm not arguing against the quality of ILB or the books. I have and have read all three books, and thoroughly enjoyed each one. And I love ILB as much as anyone else here. I think it's an absolute shame that these things aren't considered canon. But Bungie has the final say on this one. There's no such thing as "Canon to me," or "It'll always be canon in my mind." These statements are equally as absurd as claiming that John Kerry is the President of the United States, simply because you think he should be. Someone down there said something along the lines of "Just because Bungie says it, doesn't make it canon," which couldn't be farther from the truth. Official canon is defined specifically by what Bungie says.

I know I sound like a total a-hole here, and I'm really not trying to. But this has been bugging me. It sucks that Bungie doesn't want to include ILB or the books in their official Halo universe. But that's the way it is. There really can't be an argument about this.

[Clayfoot]

[CROSSPOST] Spring 2005 Chicago Hivemeet

[adfegg]

I suppose we'll always have fanfic.

[SuperJerms]

[INCyr]