Fuck Canon (Patreon)

Apologies to those who've already heard this diatribe from me in the past, but I've had a crusade against Canon for some time…

Not these guys.

Well… they're a big company, so they've probably done something shitty in the past, but different topic.

The Halo Television show's in the horizon and I hold absolutely no thoughts about it whatsoever. All we've got is a trailer so far which I find to be pretty… basic? So until we can watch the show for ourselves, I'm reserving judgement.

Perhaps I'm just not a good person to judge it at all, because just the concept of a show starring Master Chief doesn't interest me. While Chief can be a great character for moments in gameplay, and in Bungie's games at least facilitated the gameplay, Chief just isn't a very interesting character to follow.

He's a much better character to play as rather than watch for multiple hours.

He can work as a side character like in Forward Unto Dawn, where's meant to be an anomaly. Someone unique who can single handedly alter the course of the story, just like you as the player normally do for other characters in the games.

However, it seems as the series has progressed, that we're actually using and focusing on the Chief more than we did at the start, which is not normal for a franchise… and I think we all know why.

Locke was the attempt to give audiences someone new to follow. Giving him the leading role not just in Halo 5 Guardians, but also his own Television series, Halo Nightfall.

Now, I've not read the Kilo Five Trilogy of Novels, but its lead character is somebody who was in the Spartan II Program alongside people like The Master Chief, but whose body was ruined by Dr. Halsey's augmentations, who she now utterly despises.

That. Is. Awesome.

You can just mention that to me, and I'm immediately compelled to read them.

But I've played Halo 5 Guardians… and I still don't know what Locke's story was.

He was a dude tasked with finding The Master Chief?

…Which he did?

Congrats?

Now, what does all of this have to do with Canon?

Halo's leaders have fundamentally shifted their main-games, and their heroes, for the sake of a canon that I'm willing to be, 90% of their audience isn't familiar with in the slightest. Do you really mean to tell me that most people playing Infinite watched Halo Nightfall, read a trilogy of books, listened to an audio-drama podcast, and bought a comic?

Is this seriously a significant number of people?

The original Halo games had none of these connections to external stories, and they sold millions of copies, probably because you didn't need any external knowledge to delve into them.

Here's another way of putting it.

Grand Theft Auto has no universe connections, no long running plotlines, no trilogies of novels, no notable comics, no movie, animations, television show, or podcast… and it's the most profitable entertainment product in the history of mankind.

So… what the fuck?

Why not just be like GTA and do whatever you want?

Why can't Halo's stories just come from someone who wants to tell a personal story within a universe that fits it? That's what most of the best Halo stories stem from. Hunt the Truth was pushed by a marketing team who wanted to innovated in a new space, and was written mostly by them. The Kilo Five trilogy directly addresses several dark aspects of the Halo universe akin to ours in the real world. Halo 4's Cortana plotline was directed by Josh Holmes whose Mother was suffering from dementia during development!

Stories need this inspiration.

They don't need to connect to a world.

They need to connect with an audience.