[worldofileana]

wish he was in the prequel missions (hopium)

[bloodgulchblog]

[bloodgulchblog]

Tumblr really doesn’t do this justice let me zoom in

THE TEXTURE

THE EFFORT

[bloodgulchblog]

LIKE

ACTUAL FINGERPRINTS

the art in this comic was fucking great i know i’m zeroing in on just a couple of panels but i promise you-

[pineconeeaterr]

I found my old art

[shenanisketches]

My piece for the Newgrounds Xbox Collab. Played the Halo trilogy for the first time over the summer and really enjoyed it.

[jetix]

Halo 2 skin for Windows Media Player 10

[nemo-namikaze]

Yesterday was Halo 2's 20th anniversary!

[corttana]

[isosayaka117]

Halo: Escalation | Thel ‘Vadam, AKA The Arbiter!!

[lover-of-robots-and-aliens]

“An insult, to be sure, but one with a modicum of respect ”

[jashadom]

I always wondered why Thel ‘Vadam (The Arbiter) and Rtas 'Vadum (Spec-Ops Leader/Shipmaster) had such similar last names. The only difference being a single letter. I mean, it’s not really something that irked me, I just always wondered why they choose to go that route when they could have decided on anything else for a last name.

Then, tonight, I noticed the actors names side by side.

Keith David. - Robert Davi.

A single letter…

[nemo-namikaze]

Needler, for no particular reason.

[ndas-sraom]

Our first look at a Sangheili training arena within a Halo game. Two swordsmen square off in the ring. It looks to be a holodeck recreation of Sanghelios if I were to guess, it is all beautiful.

[ndas-sraom]

Operation: METEORITE is exactly what story fans have been asking for for a long time. I can't remember how many innumerable times I've heard people dreaming of a Halo game where you just play the events of a book. It doesn't have to be galaxy threatening stakes, we just want story, to be within that world a bit longer. I've read that Troy Denning wrote these new prequel missions for Halo Studios, I am looking forward to seeing how it shapes up.

[broken-wings-and-bastard-kings]

Assault on the Control Room — Halo: Campaign Evolved

[broken-wings-and-bastard-kings]

343 Guilty Spark & The Library — Halo: Campaign Evolved

[thelvadams]

Master Chief in Mark IV Armour in Halo: Campaign Evolved

[bloodgulchblog]

Trying to articulate a sincere thought about Waypoint Chronicles even though I'm not done with it yet.

I don't know if this is the right way to describe this quality I feel this collection has, but the phrasing that comes into my head is "post-343."

Like, yes, of course Halo Studios is not really a separate entity from what 343i was but also the thing about the writing side of Halo is even though you could argue about exactly how many ships of Theseus we are deep at this point, it is undebatable there have been multiple changes of the guard.

Waypoint Chronicles at its best very much feels like it approaches mid 2010s Halo with a fresh perspective that is keenly interested, but also doesn't have personal skin tied up in its original making. What if we kick the foundations. What if we cared about this Halo. What if we liked ideas from this Halo and wanted to explore them. What if this is beloved and a bit nostalgic and interesting to flesh out. What if we treat it with seriousness and care but it's not precious or sacred.

And, as someone who spent the 2010s bitching rancorously about Halo and talking shit about everything... yeah. What if we cared about that Halo. What if it was fun sometimes. What if we grab the action figures that were already in the box and smack them around and get dirt on them and chip the paint. It doesn't belong in a museum, and it also doesn't belong in the Eternal Shame Hole. Sometimes it wasn't that good, but people engaged with those stories and they were what they were and their purpose is to be played with.

This is newer Halo looking back at older Halo and going "...can we play toys with this?" and that is what really makes it feel like we are in a new age, to me. We are not in the post-Halo-5 Void of Awkwardness anymore baby we are somewhere new. I'm still not sure precisely where that is or how I'm gonna feel about that in the years to come, but oh my god we are somewhere new.

[bloodgulchblog]

I eventually came to terms with and accepted 2010s Halo for what it was. It had problems. It didn't kill my dog or steal my car. Sometimes it really sucked. It was really fun actually. Sometimes it was sitting on a pretty good idea that was underbaked or underexecuted. It's part of the story now, it's the past, it's a well-established part of the backdrop. It isn't cursed, you can pick it up and look at it and thrash it around for fun without getting 18 years bad luck. You remember 2010s Halo? The good and the bad and the weird? It's old Halo, it was a decade ago, god remember where you were 10 years ago? How time flies.

And it's fun for me that Halo, such as Halo exists as an entity made out of all these stories, also seems to have processed whatever frustration and grief and wounded pride went into that and is now also moving ahead. 343 Halo happened. It is acceptable foundation to iterate on and mine for ideas and rotate in your mind and attack from surprise angles.

[ur-haruspis]

I think this is right on the money as far as how I saw it. I was deeply and profoundly invested in the series throughout those years, 2011 through 2015 in particular. Through all its highs and lows (and there were many of both) I was very excited by a lot of the concepts and themes that were coming up with stuff like the Prometheans and Requiem, the Chief and the Didact, the post-war political landscape, the SPARTAN-IV program, Halsey and Jul, Palmer and Halsey, the arms race for Forerunner technology, the nature of AI personhood, the Covenant fracturing into different groups each with their own unique flavor, etc.

The error I made at the time was, candidly, believing that it was all part of a unified vision that was ultimately going to take us somewhere. That obviously didn't really end up being the case. Creative teams changed, priorities shifted, and the result ended up being that there's just a lot of narrative flotsam and jetsam from that era.

Maybe some of it can't or shouldn't be salvaged, I don't know. I always hated the way the Created were introduced in Halo 5. To me, they were the extreme end of "This is a creative singularity that completely fucking breaks the universe." But I think we've been able to give them a favorable second wind with some of these short stories, which means I had to go and tell my 20 year old self to eat crow on that front.

Per the wisdom of Tony Gilroy, we want to leave more toys in the box than what was in there when we arrived - whether that's for ourselves in the immediate future or whoever comes after us years from now. I think the worst possible outcome for me creatively is to one day leave this in the hands of people who have the burden of making sense of some kind of mess we've made, meandering as a lot of post-2015 fiction was forced to do. This book doesn't solve that, but I think of it as just one of the bricks we're laying in a very long road. (Maybe two bricks if I'm being generous.)