Tired of book plots lacking a conclusion

It's just because 343i wants that long term investment so you'll keep giving them money for bad books.

ONI Recon Bravo wrote:

I really don't understand why Troy Denning has two trilogies going on at once, especially since neither of them seems to have any major impact on the larger plot. Halo: Oblivion is just...it's like he was contractually obligated to do a trilogy but he only had enough ideas for two books, so we got characters walking around a desert for pages on end.

Oblivion is completely unnecessary. Silent Storm was much better and accomplished what it set out to do: expand on Chief's origin story.

There are a few factors at play (and probably some more that I'm not privy to since I'm not a 343 employee).

1. Contractual obligations can complicate a story. An author can be contracted to write a book, then the book gets traction so another one is ordered. But then the third book that would conclude the story is held in limbo until the higher-ups at 343 determine there is enough interest to warrant the investment in a third book.
2. The need to keep things under wraps for Infinite could be putting a lot of stuff on hold. The stuff with Rion Forge might need to remain on hold until we see what happens in Infinite, for example.
3. Sometimes the author of a particular series just hasn't been able to write the book that 343 wants. They may be under contract, but the terms of the contract might dictate an open-ended date for when the book is due, within reason of course.
4. And here's the hard one to swallow: 343 just doesn't want the story to continue because they are focusing on something else right now. A lot of the stories we want continued are from stuff that happened a long time ago and 343 may just want to focus on more current lore.

A lot of this is complicated by the fact that 343 treats all lore as equal. Back in the Bungie days, everything was secondary to the games. So if someone wanted to write a book back then, Bungie wasn't overly concerned about how that story would affect the game story. Now with 343, every story has to fit within the overall narrative, which can limit what stories can be told.

Like if the third book following Last Light and Retribution has a chance of conflicting with the Created Uprising, it might get scrapped. Under Bungie, the devs might shrug and not care about what happened in that hypothetical third book. But with 343, the story would absolutely have to fit with the current narrative, so it wouldn't be published for fear of conflicting with that narrative.

Traviss i can understand, but how is greg bear bad? I've loved the books he's written for halo

I did try to listen to it, but frankly the way HiddenXperia constantly interrupts Marty to give his own 'take' on each siatution and the way his voice sounds made me annoyed enough to stop watching. He just should have sat there and let the man talk.