Halo...and Why I Hate the Current Writers...

(Warning, there will be some language in this, if that will bother you then your probably should read. Likewise, due to the nature of this post, there will be HEAVY amounts of spoilers....ye have been warned)




The Halo community and the whole series are really starting to depress me to no end...this has been building for a while now and the dam is finally at its breaking point and spilling over....so to get right to it... I fucking HATE 343Industries....or as I will more than likely refer to them henceforth...343Idiocy -__- Even worse than they are however is Karen Traviss (henceforth known as Travissty)....that's when everything went down hill and all this shit in the story started, when 343i brought that incompetent...hack in to write for a bit of series. And what makes the community so horrible is that most of them are ally just eating this crap right up and acting as if it's the way things have always been or how things should have been all along Though that by itself would be at least something I could at least loosely tolerate to a degree...but the way a great many of them have started turning around and bashing Bungie, the creators of this wonderful series in the first place, and acting as if they're some sort of illiterate morons who couldn't tell or write a good story to save their lives and acting as if 343i is the second coming of Christ, that is what really pisses me off and makes me want to just slap them all. And how these people act like anyone who even dares so much as contradict them in any way is automatically wrong and some sort or retarded child for disagreeing with their bonkers assumptions.

The first problems with 343i comes in the form of Karen Traviss and the novels they hired her to write, and boy are they fucking awful. For one thing, Traviss has made it quite clear in her comments about her writing style that she doesn't do any</b> research on whatever series she is writing for, she won't read whatever books came before, or watch the movies, or play the games at all. And it's very obvious that she didn't as well, as none of the canon characters she includes are anything like themselves or what has been established as their personality or character traits, nor is her portrayal of the way the societies or cultures function. Take her writing with Star Wars for instance, she portrayed the Jedi as "evil" fascists who should be despised and portrayed Obi Wan as if he was some sort of scum. In Halo, she acts as if the Sangheili (better known as the Elites) are utter simpletons and complete morons only good for being pointed in the direction of an enemy and telling them to go kill it. In 343i's idea of the Halo lore the Elites are no longer the strong back-bone of the Covenant and the force holding it all together, now, they're portrayed as being no more intelligent or civilized than the Brutes...if not worse. And on top of that, both Traviss and 343i act as if every single piece of technology has just suddenly disappeared except for a handful of ships, vehicles, and weapons the number of which could be counted on one hand and are all falling apart and the Elites somehow magically forgot how to do anything with technology over night. The whole scenario that's been set up is beyond implausible and just outright breaks the willing suspension of disbelief. The Great Schism is equally ignored and almost treated as if it had never happened at all. In each one of the books that Traviss has put out so far, there are Brutes living on Sangheilios and going about their daily business as if nothing had ever happened between them and the Elites beyond the two species disliking each other...oh and that reminds me of another thing, the Elites seem to have forgotten how to farm and manage agriculture over night as well, despite the main source for their in depth characterization and the book that focused a fair amount on their society and how things were structured making it quite clear that there were Elites who were farmers as well as filling up almost every other position in society and walk of life you can think of.

The biggest issue with both 343idiocy's and Travissty's portrayal of the Elites though is outright ignoring all of the character development and growth that Bungie had the Sangheili go through as a species and treating it as if it never even happened. We go from all of the media produced from Halo 2 onward showing that the majority of the Elites respect and valued humanity, considering them worthy opponents and almost their equals as well as becoming human sympathizers as the war between the Covenant and the UNSC dragged on and some form of peace treaty and alliance being hinted at coming about very soon, to a complete 180 of characterization and they suddenly all hate humans again and would jump at the chance to kill them all and resume the genocidal war. The only Elite who 343i and Traviss show as being anywhere close to liking humans or what we knew to be true about them before Bungie left, is the Arbiter. He is the only one who is treated as being favorable, the majority who share his opinon, and that growing number of Sangheili youth who were human sympathizers that Bungie mentioned around the time of Halo 3? All gone, vanished without a trace, not even mentioned, treated as if they don't exist and never did exist. The only differences of opinions concerning humans with 343idiocy's Elites is some not thinking they're ready to go to war again yet, that is the only difference between any of them. None of the Elites supporting the Arbiter are doing it because they agree with him, the only reason they're even on his side is they don't think they can go back to slaughtering humans at that time and think they need to rebuild from the Great Schism and the war first. That is the only set of opinions there are, every single Elite character we see in 343i's current works despise humans and want nothing more than to see them all wiped out, and we even get one of the characters that Traviss created coming out and saying in no uncertain terms the exact same thing, that every single Elite hates humans and is just looking for an excuse to go to war again. And the fanbase is just eating this fucking shit up with no problem and acting as if they're nothing wrong with what they're doing and it's always been this way! These links are from interviews of Karen Traviss or from her own blog page showing exactly what I'm talking about when I say she doesn't do research or thinks she knows better than the writers who came before or that she can just do whatever she wants: www.karentraviss.com/page10/in… (the blog link is the one with the most information and examples of what I'm talking about)
flugelmeister.wordpress.com/20…

The other big problem is the treatment of Doctor Halsey, the woman that the Office of Naval Intelligence picked and hired to head and manage the Spartan Program, by both Traviss and 343i. They both act as if Halsey is the most vile person to have ever been born to humanity and someone that every single person ever should despise...they even go so far as to compare the woman Josef Mengele....I mean COME ON "Dr." Josef, fucking Mengele!!!!!!!! Seriously, fucking seriously? There absolutely no reason to make such a comparison, it's just beyond incomprehensible. One is an insane freak of nature doing evil shit just to find out what happens and doing things like "hmm, I wonder what happens to people if I put bleach in their brain", and the other is someone augmenting kids who were kidnapped by kidnapped by the government in order to save the human race....tell me, how does that even come close being equatable? And there are all of the things that they both get wrong about the Spartan Program. Like for instance, and this is somewhere that Traviss' lack of research shows through, acting as if the Flash Clones of the kids were deliberately engineered to die...Traviss doesn't seem to understand what flash-cloning is in Halo, it's not like normal cloning at all, at least when it comes to humans. You can flash clone a human (meaning creating an exact copy of the person at that exact stage of their life), but the cloning process doesn't work perfectly on something on a smaller scale like organs, which is what flash cloning is meant for. Any human you attempt to flash clone will quickly develop complications in the form of natural ailments, either the kind that lead to organ malfunctions or diseases that target the brain or nervous system. In any case, in most cases involving a flash cloned human, they will quickly develop complications and then die. But Traviss doesn't seem to know this (and 343i never bothered to even try correcting it), or she just simply doesn't care, as she has her characters acting as if these were clones that Halsey had intentionally designed in order that they would die. And suddenly, absolutely everyone hates Halsey, even if they never did before. Chief Mendez, the man who trained the Spartans had an excellent working relationship and friendship of a sorts with Halsey years suddenly turns into a whiny, bitchy two year old with PMS constantly complaining about Halsey and how evil she is and how she's the worst example of humanity ever. And Halsey suddenly completely hates herself as well, acting almost like a masochist and just looking for someone to punish her because she's so horrible and just rolling over and sniveling like a baby whenever Mendez verbally attacks her or in the end when Parangosky is ranting and raving like the fucking hypocrite she is. All of the canon characters that Traviss touches are perverted and no longer in character at all, it's almost as if she replaced the cast with different people entirely and tried to just poorly dress them up and disguise them as our well known and beloved characters.

And another thing that both of them get wrong when it comes to the flash clones in addition to what I already mentioned, that it was something that Halsey did all on her own and no one in ONI or the UNSC knew about until she had already done it....now, ignoring for the moment what the book that introduced the Spartans said and implied about the flash clones, does that sound even remotely like something one lone scientist would be able to accomplish on a high priority, top-secret project all on her own, of her own volition without the people in charge finding out? No? I didn't think so. Now, what The Fall of Reach (the first book and the one that introduced the Spartans and much of the rest of Halo) seems to imply, if not directly outright state, is that the flash cloning was something that ONI had been planning on doing all along, with or without Halsey, just as they had been planning on kidnapping kids all along. 343i and Karen Traviss though act as if the whole of the Spartan II Program was Halsey's idea and that she pitched it to ONI and the UNSC....as opposed to the other way around. ONI were the ones who approached Halsey to head up the project, and initially she refused and turned them down, she only changed her mind when she sat down and really analyzed the Insurrection and the mounting chaos and what the prospective outcomes were (almost complete annihilation of the human race leaving billions dead and the remaining survivors thrust into another set of Dark Ages) and came to the conclusion that the Spartan II Program was humanity's only means of guaranteed survival and continued existence. The final straw is mischaracterizing Halsey herself, they both portray as what is essentially an emotionless psychopath obsessed with only knowledge and whatever she can learn before she finally dies and not caring about anything or anyone else....which is a blatant falsehood, especially when it comes to the Spartan IIs. Halsey spent a great deal of time with them, playing games, teaching them, she could even identify each individual Spartan regardless of whether they were wearing their armor or not and always referred to them by name first and foremost and not numerical designation or rank. And those Spartans who were injured or died during the augmentation process (which Halsey thoroughly tested both in computer simulations and on chimpanzees before even entertaining of the idea actually getting near the Spartan candidates with it as making the augmentations as safe she possibly could...heck, she even wanted to delay augmenting them and putting it off to try and make the augmentations even more safe), she invested the time, resources, and work to repair them and give them as much of a return to normal living as she possibly could, regardless of whether they could be put on active duty as a Spartan or not. The Spartans all viewed her as a mother figure of sorts as well. Now tell me, does that sound like someone obsessed with or only caring about data, information, and hard facts and logic?

The final straw in all of this is ONI, BOTH 343idiocy and Karen Travissty have them doing things no division of the government would be able to get away with or keep secret for very long. And all of what they have them doing is inane, incompetent idiocy as well. Everything they've had them doing is treason of the highest degree, from keeping people as prisoners against their will and using them as essentially slave labor (Halsey), to going behind the government's back and trying to betray and stab their newfound allies in the back as well as arming the enemies of both the UNSC and the Elites. Rather than supporting the legitimate government of the Elites and the Arbiter, you know, the group that would be providing stability after the war and keep the peace after the war going....you have ONI supplying weapons and money to the radicals in Elite society that would kill humans as soon as look at them and are currently trying to depose the Arbiter and will cause nothing but chaos and bloodshed of the highest magnitude. None of what they're doing is anything that would ever happen, either in real life or in Halo due to the way the UNSC has been established as being set up and organized. Rather than ONI being a branch of the UNSC and subservient to the chain of command established by the military hierarchy....they're being treated as if they're some sort of completely separate entity that can get away with everything no matter what and can go about doing whatever the hell they wish without any kind of consequence or struggle to get there or achieve their goals. Not only is this just completely retarded and nothing that would happen in either Halo or real life....it's horrid writing, as I'm sure you should be able to guess. If characters (whether hero or villain) just get whatever it is they're trying to achieve without any struggle to get there, then you have a bunch of one-dimensional card-board cutouts running through a card-board cutout story with all of the depth and emotional investment of a turd. What 343i's and Traviss take on ONI boils down to is essentially an attempted copy-paste of Cerberus without any of the depth or facets to it that make it interesting and a good villain/extremely dark anti-hero. They have them doing all kinds of things that the UNSC should know about almost as soon as ONI even attempts to do it themselves or orders someone to do it. Like for instance kidnapping Halsey as soon as Maggot Parangosky's team of minions, stooges, and goons get inside Onyx. For one, the Spartans wouldn't just sit idly by and let it happen because ONI doesn't have the authority to arrest anyone of their own volition, and for two, Lord Hood is not an idiot, he knows that Halsey was at Onyx, he's not going to believe a word ONI says if they try to claim that Halsey died in the fighting, especially if said claim is coming from Parangosky or one of her stool-pigeons, ONI is trusted about as far as they can be thrown and that is a 1,000 times more true about Parangosky, no one trusts ONI, and she is trusted even less. Nor would he just not debrief Blue Team, the Spartan IIIs, and Mendez after they were all rescued, and they would not keep silent about Halsey, unless they wanted to face the same charges of insubordination and whatever else Parangosky and her minions would as Hood is the de-facto leader of the UNSC, the highest ranking officer in the whole military. He outranks Parangosky and her orders mean absolutely nothing if he orders them to give him the truth. So, Parangosky being able to kidnap Halsey and/or keep her as some kind of slave is completely out of the question. And then, for another one, we have Osman (Parangosky's evil little apprentice and the leader of the mindless puppet squad that "arrested" Halsey), the apparent head of ONI in Halo 4, ordering the assassination of Halsey in Spartan Ops....again, something that ONI does not have the power or authority to make the call on and not something that they'd be able to keep hidden, ESPECIALLY when Lasky, the captain of the UNSC Infinity and the one who she gave the order to, is opposed to it and would not keep quiet about it and send word back to HIGHCOM and Lord Hood. ONI would find themselves disbanded and those in charge and complicit to such usurpations of power thrown out on their asses in a cell faster than you can say "Forerunner".

And those are just the big issues, there are hundreds more small ones, both connected to these, and just ones that stand on their own. Like for instance, the Didact being portrayed as some sort of twisted, raging, homicidal, insane, evil fuck in Halo 4.....for absolutely no reason at all, no explanation given, no logical reasoning or set up for it....just 343i yet again violating both the story we were given by Bungie, as well as their own. As the way the Didact is presented and portrayed in Halo 4 is completely contrary to their own canon and portrayal and depiction that they gave in both Cryptum and Primordium, their own books that they approved and released. If it was their intention all along for him to be turned into a demented shit-head ranting and raving about humanity being the biggest evil ever and needing to be destroyed and essentially making himself out to be an expy and repeat of Truth and the Prophets all over again, then 343i sure did an absolutely horrible job making sure the writer of the Forerunner Saga knew that and getting it across in the books. Almost everything that 343idiocy or the people they've been hiring has been one massive disappointment and piece of crap after another. They've successfully stripped all depth the characters and story ever had and turned into a generic, one-dimensional, shallow nightmare. As much as I never thought I'd ever say this......I might just be done with Halo *sigh* I'll keep myself to excellent pieces of work and writing that Bungie produced or oversaw production of during their time, but 343i? I think I'll just be staying away from them and their fucked up view of Halo -___-

EDIT/ADDITION/ADDENDUM:
Well, I've been hearing more about Silentium lately (the last book in the Forerunners Saga), and needless to say, I am now even more disappointed in 343i and their attempts to tell the story. Halo has always been fairly based in reality with all of its technology and so on, there was never any tech introduced that was completely and totally unbelievable or impossible. Highly unlikely things or things that stretched the bounds of how far one was willing to believe if taking the series completely and totally seriously? Sure, but that's no different from most sci-fi series, a fair amount of which, to my knowledge, take far more liberties with reality and what should at all possible.

In any case, now? Now 343i has decided to take Halo completely away from that tone and turn the series into something similar to a sci-fantasy...Precursors are no longer treated as if they are immensely powerful race with technology we can barely comprehend now and would take years and years to make any kind of real sense of, but still a completely mortal, fallible, normal race like the rest of the galaxy, albeit the most highly advanced race ever seen (something like the Reapers in Mass Effect). Oh no, now? Now they're some sort of Cthulu-inspired god monster from beyond reality that it is impossible to defeat or kill or thwart in any way. The very laws and rules of the universe bend to their every whim and they can do whatever the hell they want to without any kind of effort or the kinds of energy or resources that would be expected to accomplish such a task and everything automatically goes their way or they can turn any situation or event into an outcome they want......this is the kind of thing I'd expect in mythology, supernatural type stories, or fantasy....not something that is supposed to be fairly realistic and fairly heavily based in reality like Halo was before. Now Halo is essentially like Warhammer 40K (please excuse any mistakes in 40K's lore or any like that, my knowledge is not the great when it comes to this series, I apologize if I mess anything up or get something very wrong, I mean no offense to Warhammer 40K fans whatsoever), with what is essentially demons and magic powers and literal gods/supernatural beings....now that works for Warhammer 40K as it's been that from the very beginning and what it was always intended to be, sci-fantasy (for lack of a better word or genre classification)....but on something that was never even close to that, like Halo, it doesn't work at all. It'd be like trying to make Warhammer 40K as realistic as possible and everything suddenly inspired or based on reality.....it just doesn't work. It doesn't fit the tone of the series, it doesn't fit the style, and it doesn't fit the themes.

And then we have issues with the Flood, 343i decided to greatly overly complicate them and try to make them more than they ever were, and more than what they ever should be. Now suddenly the Flood are the Precursors (and this is where what I was talking about with never ever being able to kill or destroy the Precursors comes in), they are literally the current incarnation of the Precursors, not some creation of theirs gone horribly wrong or horribly right, or something they found, or something not even connected to them at all but rather its own thing. Nope, now they're Precursors and that's it, they're supposed to be some sort of dust the Precursors turned into that would rebuild their true forms later. Another mistep is taking the whole thing with the Flood being evil way too far. They were never evil in the definition that springs to mind for most people when they hear the word, no, they were evil because of their desire to force every being in the universe into being one with itself. Now though? Nope, now they're also just raving psychopaths....do you see what I mean by 343i stripping all depth from the series now? The whole reason the Flood are running around doing their thing is in order to essentially gather every living thing together for one long session of mind-rape and torture for all of eternity. As opposed to before where the Flood were seemingly just trying to unite every being into one mind and putting an end to all suffering, war, and strife (kinda like what Harbinger and Sovereign say about themselves and the rest of the Reapers now that I think about >_>) that comes from being unique and individuals. Now they're just sadists with no purpose beyond trying to make anyone that ever was or will be as miserable as possible.

Here are some other negative changes, which are more just changes to their own canon than anything else really. The noble purpose behind the Forerunners all rising up and attempting to destroy the Precursors, completely thrown out the window in order to further 343idiocy's bullshit agenda about the Forerunners being evil, horrible, vile monster who are some of the worst tyrants and despots ever. In Silentium the only reason they even did anything is because they were convinced that they weren't being given the Mantle and instead someone else would be getting it....how unbelievably petty and one-dimensional, if your goal is to destroy the very heart and soul of the series and piss on every single thing Bungie ever said or did when it comes to Halo? Then job well done 34-fucking-3idiocy, I applaud you dipshits....good job, you've completely raped and violated a series beloved by millions of fans the world over....who unfortunately the majority of seem to be too blind to see what you're doing and just happily eat up whatever bullshit and maiming of the Halo lore you throw at them >___< When in both Cryptum and Primordium it was said and made pretty clear that the Forerunners rose up in rebellion because they learned that the Precursors completely eradicated any species that didn't fit their standards or didn't please them.
Or take for instance the stunning and fantastic achievement of the Forerunners by beating back and almost completely exterminating the whole Precursors species....now? It's something the Precursors just let the Forerunners think they did, and the Precursors all really just went and hid and took on completely new forms instead.
Or Humanity driving back the Flood 10,000 years before the events in Cryptum because of the "cure" they developed. I use air quotes around the word 'cure' as even in Cryptum and Primordium it wasn't really a cure, it was more like a counter infection or viral attack launched against the Flood by them infecting people who'd be inoculated with the "cure". It wouldn't counter-act or save anyone from infection, if you got infected you were still completely screwed, but what it would do was start destroying the Flood cells on a molecular level and this would then spread from Flood form to Flood form as they encountered or interacted with each other.......but now, nope, you guessed it, the Precursors just let them think that happened, they weren't driven out by any effort or solution from Humanity's efforts to save themselves and the rest of the galaxy from the Flood, nope, they just let them think they won and decided to go hide and come back later when the whole galaxy was ripe for the picking and they would have more species and races available to devour so they could mind-rape for all of eternity.

And the very last thing that's recently come to my attention? It has to do with the Spartans, no, this isn't anything to do with Halsey or the origins of the Spartan Program or anything like that. Nope, this is about the Spartans personally, and Master Chief in particular.

Now you have the community arguing that all Spartans are nothing more than mindless drones and machines doing whatever they're told to do with no thoughts or individuality of their own, have no feelings or emotions,, no humanity and are completely and totally inhuman, and are just complete sociopaths with them all claiming Master Chief as the worst and most mentally imbalanced and the worst of all the other negative bits talked about above. In addition they act as if his whole world revolves around Cortana and he's some sort of lost thing without her with no idea what to do and completely helpless. Failing of course to remember that Chief spent the whole damn Human-Covenant War without having Cortana around or any AI for that matter...Cortana has only been around for a year, at most, and at least half of that time Chief didn't even have her around because she was left on High Charity (yes I know they were together for all the years between Halo 3 and Halo Fuck, but seeing as he was neither awake or conscious during that time it doesn't count). In addition to making flawed assumptions about his character, and the rest of the Spartans, that they've only ever cared about the UNSC and protecting it, rather than what their whole purpose was from the very start....protecting and safe-guarding the whole of humanity. Not the government or any individual group, no, from day one their whole entire drive and purpose in their own eyes was to serve the whole human race. And the sad thing is...I can actually see all this fucking load of sodding bullshit is something those fething bosh'tets from 343idiocy intended and/or wanted to come across in the game....it's not just something some completely offbase fan came up with through their own false interpretations :/
This is a link I made showing both the original post and my response to it, bear in mind that it wasn't all about the subject of Master Chief, so there are a couple other topics of conversation in those posts. docs.google.com/document/d/1xN…

....and that's all, I'm done...just done, I'm done with this fucked up Halo community and most definitely anything produced by those morons over at 343idiocy -___- *sigh* I'm pretty sure that from this point forward I will be having as little to do with the Halo forums and the products produced by 343i as possible. Oh don't worry, nothing Halo related that I've started working on or planned on doing is going anywhere, and my love for the story from before 343i took over Halo is completely and totally undiminished, I don't plan on going anywhere, I just don't think I'll ever be going to Halo Waypoint anytime soon...or ever >_> Undecided on whether I should give up Bungie.net or not, as they seem to have a more balanced population...Halo Waypoint? Say anything bad about 343i's story and you can expect to have your head bitten off and thoroughly chewed by the whole forum population faster than you can say "Great Journey".