First, let's get this out of the way. No advertisement campaign and AGR has been 100% accurate for Halo. Not a single one. Halo 2's "I Love Bees" (The Axon Clips) only really connected with Halo 2 at the very end, and even then it's events are "ehhh" in terms of canonical accuracy. Halo 3's "Believe" ads showed events far-flung into the future (which may be subject to change, now,) and the famous "Believe diorama" depicted an event that never happened. Likewise Halo 4 showed the Master Chief getting captured by the Didact and "scanned". Again, never happened.
Which brings us to Hunt The Truth. Yes, the Chief and Locke never had a showdown while the Infinity burns in the background. Meridian didn't happen or look like that. However the Guardians did rise. Blue Team was declared AWOL. And the events of Hunt The Truth: Seasons 1 & 2 did happen.
Hunt the Truth: Season 1
Glasslands by Karen Traviss introduced a few issues into the Halo Universe. Some of them, such as Halsey being compared to "Space Hitler" were cleared up and amended by Halo 4 and Escalation. One detail in particular is addressed by Hunt the Truth, however, and that is the widespread dissemination of information regarding the Spartan II program by Admiral Parangosky.
The Spartan program has always existed as rumor and myth to the soldiers of the UNSCDF. Stories whispered in the dark of augmented, inhuman soldiers captured as kids. We see hints of this in Spartan Ops: Episode 3, when Madsen is passing rumors with DeMarco. "Story goes she kidnapped a bunch of kids." In Episode 4, when Thorne is speaking with Halsey, she mentions that it's still "Quite classified". This is in 2557, four years after the events of Glasslands. This was the beginning of the fix.
In 2558, Benjamin "Ben" Giraud was contacted by ONI to write a story on the origins of the Master Chief. It's clear that at this point in time, the nature of the Spartan II's is still relatively unknown, even among soldiers. It's all rumors and classified secrets. As the story goes on, Ben's story begins to unravel, and he's soon stumbling onto the truth of the Program. But when he goes to tear it all down, ONI gets to him first and "exposes" him as an Insurrectionist conspirator. His research, the truth, is discredited on live TV as Insurrectionist conspiracy, and he's locked away indefinitely.
The leak of information (written by Traviss) is now bottled up canonically. Did it still happen? Sure. But now it can be easily dismissed and passed off in-universe as rumor and hear-say. As we see in Spartan Ops: Episode 4, the information has been classified once more. And from Ben's perspective, ONI Section II has put a lid on the civilian sector.
Hunt The Truth: Season 2 much more closely tied-in with Halo 5 than Season 1, however I don't believe Season 1 was ever intended to be a direct link to Halo 5. We get rumblings of Chief going AWOL and potentially being a traitor (on a prior Op, but it puts the idea out there,) and we hear whispers of deep space anomalies causing disturbances and gravitational fluctuations. But it's not until Season 2 that we get more perspective on the Guardians - and the colonies that are briefly mentioned in the first level.
Season 2 doesn't really set out to fix anything, and more narrates how things are beginning to unravel even before Cortana shuts everything down. We've got ONI agents defecting from the government, Ilsa Zane running a Rebel outfit and quite potentially remaining a huge problem. And now two AI (Black Box and Pharo) who know things about the events.
All in all, Hunt The Truth adds a compelling facet to the events leading up to Halo 5 that could still very much come in to play with Halo Infinite, and tells a story that's more canonically impacting than The Axon Clips or any other ARG or ad campaign.
Which brings us to Hunt The Truth. Yes, the Chief and Locke never had a showdown while the Infinity burns in the background. Meridian didn't happen or look like that. However the Guardians did rise. Blue Team was declared AWOL. And the events of Hunt The Truth: Seasons 1 & 2 did happen.
Hunt the Truth: Season 1
Glasslands by Karen Traviss introduced a few issues into the Halo Universe. Some of them, such as Halsey being compared to "Space Hitler" were cleared up and amended by Halo 4 and Escalation. One detail in particular is addressed by Hunt the Truth, however, and that is the widespread dissemination of information regarding the Spartan II program by Admiral Parangosky.
The Spartan program has always existed as rumor and myth to the soldiers of the UNSCDF. Stories whispered in the dark of augmented, inhuman soldiers captured as kids. We see hints of this in Spartan Ops: Episode 3, when Madsen is passing rumors with DeMarco. "Story goes she kidnapped a bunch of kids." In Episode 4, when Thorne is speaking with Halsey, she mentions that it's still "Quite classified". This is in 2557, four years after the events of Glasslands. This was the beginning of the fix.
In 2558, Benjamin "Ben" Giraud was contacted by ONI to write a story on the origins of the Master Chief. It's clear that at this point in time, the nature of the Spartan II's is still relatively unknown, even among soldiers. It's all rumors and classified secrets. As the story goes on, Ben's story begins to unravel, and he's soon stumbling onto the truth of the Program. But when he goes to tear it all down, ONI gets to him first and "exposes" him as an Insurrectionist conspirator. His research, the truth, is discredited on live TV as Insurrectionist conspiracy, and he's locked away indefinitely.
The leak of information (written by Traviss) is now bottled up canonically. Did it still happen? Sure. But now it can be easily dismissed and passed off in-universe as rumor and hear-say. As we see in Spartan Ops: Episode 4, the information has been classified once more. And from Ben's perspective, ONI Section II has put a lid on the civilian sector.
Hunt The Truth: Season 2 much more closely tied-in with Halo 5 than Season 1, however I don't believe Season 1 was ever intended to be a direct link to Halo 5. We get rumblings of Chief going AWOL and potentially being a traitor (on a prior Op, but it puts the idea out there,) and we hear whispers of deep space anomalies causing disturbances and gravitational fluctuations. But it's not until Season 2 that we get more perspective on the Guardians - and the colonies that are briefly mentioned in the first level.
Season 2 doesn't really set out to fix anything, and more narrates how things are beginning to unravel even before Cortana shuts everything down. We've got ONI agents defecting from the government, Ilsa Zane running a Rebel outfit and quite potentially remaining a huge problem. And now two AI (Black Box and Pharo) who know things about the events.
All in all, Hunt The Truth adds a compelling facet to the events leading up to Halo 5 that could still very much come in to play with Halo Infinite, and tells a story that's more canonically impacting than The Axon Clips or any other ARG or ad campaign.
