My copy of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary arrived today! But... I have no idea when I'll find time to play it. I still haven't finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution; I haven't even started Batman: Arkham City; I'm already playing Star Trek Online; and Star Wars: The Old Republic gets released next month. And, of course, I have this whole pesky college thing that gets in the way too.
So, I finally put in a little bit of time today with Anniversary (not much, though; I'm still onboard the Autumn prior to landing on the Halo). Playing with the Grunt Funeral Skull on certainly makes the game a little more... interesting. I quickly lost count of how many times I died due to a plasma-exploding Grunt after I had killed it, though I'm also using that explosion to good effect against other Covenant.
^Well I'm not aware of official word from Bungie / 343 but I do know that the authors and publishers have worked directly with Bungie on some of the books. And in Halo: Evolutions a few of the short stories were written by employees of Bungie.
All of the books are canon. Edited to add: Definitely agree with Skywalker's suggestion below. I can't speak to the Evolutions anthologies re: quality or the various comics, as I haven't read those.
The only Halo book I'd recommend avoiding is The Flood, partly because it's basically just an adaptation of the first game, but mostly because it was written by the notoriously terrible William C. Dietz (yes, he of recent Mass Effect: Deception infamy).
Yeah most of the books are good excluding the flood. Fall of Reach is by the best. It holds up on its own
I'm reading Cryptum and it's not bad. I agree with what was said upthread, The Fall of Reach is the best.
A few behind-the-scenes shots from Halo 4: [yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=f6UL63Zo-uo[/yt]
Halo 4 is the cover story for Game Informer's May issue, and details have started appearing online: See the link for information regarding the new co-op and multiplayer modes. IGN is saying that the invaders onboard the Forward Unto Dawn are Covenant and that they've broken the truce with humanity, but I don't see anything in the NeoGAF post to suggest that peace has failed.
Ok, those snippets of story are satiating me. I just hope for purely fanboyish canon reasons that the armor is the same and the ship is the same in those early missions. And that the covvies that attack are Jackals, because they're the type who would board a wreck and scavenge what they can, and then didn't really observe the rebel insurrection among the covenant. I'll happily buy a Human truce with the Sanghelli and Unggoy, but the Kig'Yar, Jiralhannae and whats left of the San'Shyuum would still be a pain, albeit a diminished threat without the support of the Sanghelli. Now im getting excited. Ish.
it appears that Karen Traviss' Glasslands series is going to be the lead-up to 4 haven't read any of the forerunner books yet but it looks like a bunch of Dyson spheres have popped up in the galaxy, so, hostile forerunners?
^^^I was thinking the same thing, hoping that the Top Secret UNSC mission was in fact that of the Port Stanley, reuniting the Chief with all the other remaining Spartans but with the introduction of the UNSC Infinity I think its more likely to be that super carrier ship.
OXM has a list of "11 Things You Need to Know About Halo 4." Unfortunately, it sounds like at least some Sangheili will be at odds with the Chief.
Traviss is writing Halo books now? Good. Her style meshes with that universe much better than it did with Star Wars.
She's writing at least a trilogy*. Glasslands has been out since October, though I haven't read it yet. The Thursday War will be released this October. I still need to find time to read Greg Bear's Primordium, and to pick up the Evolutions anthologies. (* I say "at least a trilogy" because it seems the announcement about Glasslands indicated she was signed for "a multi-book series" without indication as to how many books that would be. Some sites I've looked at cite her current books as a trilogy, while the Halopedia Wiki says that the current post-Covenant War book series has "multiple unannounced sequels.")