Reddit reviews Halo Encyclopedia: The Definitive Guide to the Halo Universe

This is the cover image for the Encyclopedia , For anyone interested

Luckily for you, there are quite a few resources full of info on the Halo Canon. Whatever you're looking for, you'll find here.

• Halopedia is arguably the best resource for everything Halo, but you'll probably suffer SCP Syndrome and get dragged in for hours and forget what you were there for in the first place.
  
  
• The Halo Story subreddit has a lot of Q&A type posts dating back for years, so whatever questions you may have are probably already answered. If for some reason your questions aren't there, just post them and the awesome community over there will help you out.
  
  
• There are two massive "Halo Bibles" that have been published so far, with the older Halo Encyclopedia covering almost everything released up to Halo: Reach and the new Halo Mythos covering everything from the fall of the Precursors to the months leading up to Halo Wars 2. Mythos, in particular, has some beautiful artwork that could help you get an idea of the mood you'd want for your campaign.
  
  As far as youtuber's go, there are two main ones that I'm aware of. I'm sure there are more, and if anybody would PM me or comment below, I'll add them to the list.
  
  
• Halo Canon, who has videos on almost any topic imaginable.
  
  
• Halo Follower, who focuses more on the "real world" side of Halo, but does have an awesome lore playlist
  
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  Edit: After some quick googling, I've discovered that there is a fan-made Halo RPG called Halo Mythic, which has its own subreddit at /r/HaloMythic/

I didn't say it had the biggest, most expansive universe. I'm not dumb.

But I'm a really big fan of the books, which got me looking into the expanded universe. I know Halo doesn't have movies or TV shows or a million bajillion books like the Star Wars/Warhammer ones, but I think for what it is, it's pretty good.

You've got the story arc of the games which introduces the humans and the Covenant and their conflict, then the books show how the conflict started, the human history before the Covenant, the Covenant conflict within itself, and the conflict betweeh humans, covenant, and flood (and all combinations of those) in places not seen in the game. The comics help flesh that out as well.

And then the Forerunner novels that just started coming out are fleshing out the ancient times of humanity and the covenant and stuff like that. It's looking more and more like the Marathon games are tied in with Halo, so all that backstory and that universe could probably be lumped in with Halo. Not to mention that the books also deal with the different factions of the Covenant which from there splinter off into their own backgrounds.

And then you have the ARG's with their whole background and stuff like that.

I think it really hit me when I got the Halo Encyclopedia link and it really fleshes stuff out, and anything that you want more info on, you could probably get.

I'm definitely not saying it has the largest universe or anything like that. But for what started out as a pretty straight-forward series of FPS games, I think it fleshed itself out very nicely.

Sorry if I don't make sense at times, I'm terrible at articulating my thoughts. :P

If your really serious about this, this book is really great. There is a table of contents so you can look up exactly what you want to know, or what you find interesting. But other than that, playing through the games (Halo CE, 2, 3, ODST, Reach, wars, and 4) would be the best way to build a connection to the characters as your boyfriend has.

>Which is what we were discussing. Almost all Halo fictional non-fiction has been described using some sort of in-universe voice. Terminals. Halsey Journal. Bestiarium.

I don't see the relevance of this point, or at least I do not see what you mean. The Forerunner trilogy, terminals, and the Mythos are not experienced in the same manner as most of the Halo fiction, so whatever point it is that you're trying to discuss here, I think you're getting off on the wrong foot. That short list gives us information via in-universe materials, and character's relating personal stories. Most of the books, and games have us riding along inside the character's heads, or in the third person. There's no ambiguity in the latter's material because their basis is not "This story was found inside a Forerunner data cache". unlike the prior list which does consist of material like that.


>I'm arguing that it's abundantly clear that while the Curator is the one narrating, he's just a mouthpiece for the authors themselves. Therefore any biases or coloring is irrelevant, since the authors are the absolute highest and irrefutable canon.

Can't agree seeing as character bias is an almost inherent trait of fiction, regardless of whether or not they're the author's mouth piece. However I'm not going to tread down that road with you, seeing as the discussion with the other guy resulted in you getting hot headed. Since you so hotly contest this point though, perhaps you should consider asking Grim about it. Maybe he'll give you a solid answer.

>plus the fact that Curator has knowledge beyond that of the UNSC and Guilty Spark

That's a pretty bold claim considering we already know the UNSC is/was in possession of many ancient materials now. Can you actually back this up?

>makes it clear that he doesn't feel Mythos is fully canon, as he directly calls into question Mythos' accuracy of the events, and in addition considers it acceptable to take the Primordial's logic-plague strings over that of Mythos should you feel like it,

You're glazing over parts of your earlier discussion. Questioning accuracy, isn't necessarily questioning canon. Mythos is canon simply because it's 343i's newest encyclopedia, and therefore an addition to their canon, however this wouldn't be the first time Halo has had misinformation in an encyclopedic release. If it introduces the perspective of a different character, then it doesn't make all of that character's interpretations indisputable fact. You can assume this if you want, but I wouldn't say there's a solid basis for it.

>despite the franchise's unambiguous policy that recency = priority.

It's ambiguous enough that 343i has made efforts to clarify inconsistencies in Canon Fodder questions, forum posts, ect. In regards to Staten's earlier comments, Staten is no longer helping head off Halo's larger narrative. Using quotes from him for this subject isn't really much beyond questionable. His word is no longer close to being law.

I was referring to this one. I would love an updated one with all the EU after halo 3.

http://www.amazon.com/Halo-Encyclopedia-Definitive-Guide-Universe/dp/0756688698