STACK 132 October Issue

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with the best intentions – cleaning up an
unlikely statistic that doesn’t bear scrutiny,
fixing scale on spaceships in cinematics, or
stuff like the date and geography mismatches
between Halo: Reach the game, and The Fall
of Reach novel. Ultimately the games drive the
story more powerfully than any other aspect,
and their needs have to take precedence.
But now that we have all of our game and
extended fiction under one roof, we can
better avoid inconsistencies, or at least
take responsibility for when spack
filler has to be applied. As the
universe gets bigger and more
complex, there are more areas
for inconsistency and errors to
emerge. So all we can do is
clean it up and put measures
in place – including several
staff devoted to just that – to
prevent it from happening
again at a granular level, and
make smart choices to stop
it from happening at a higher,
planning level.
visit FEATURE GAMES
Frank O'Connor is the man in charge of all things Halo lore related at 343 Industries.
We pulled him out of the archives and threw some questions at him.
What was involved in changing/discussing
lore when the development shifted from
Bungie to 343 Industries?
One of the last things I did as a Bungie
employee was to finish collating and wrapping
up some story bible assets and requests for
Bonnie Ross, who had been charged with
handling the transition. One of the things that
really excited me, and perhaps was the seed of
why I ended up [moving to] 343, was Bonnie’s
passion for the story.
She knew the bible was kind of a
hodgepodge of ideas that had and hadn’t
made it into the games and lore, but she was
determined to make it a foundation on which
future Halo games and stories could be built.
So her original idea was to expand and enhance
what we already had. In the end, the hand-off
spanned the development of ODST and Halo:
Reach, so the material was growing even as
the baton was being passed to Bonnie. And
when I decided to follow that baton, I took
the opportunity to build
the bible and its content
into something much more
fundamental. Thanks to
Corrine Robinson, Jeremy
Patenaude and the franchise
squad, what once was a big
pile of paper and printouts is now a digital,
navigable reference guide to everything in the
Halo universe, with links to the associated
game assets, music, 3D, cross-references – you
name it.
Has there ever been an occasion when
you’ve been caught out in terms of lore?
Inconsistencies?What happens then?
Yes. It happens all the time. Sometimes
The
Lore
Makers
The Number of Halo Units
Sold as of July 2015
• Halo: Combat Evolved - 6.43 million
• Halo 2 - 8.49 million
• Halo 3 - 12.04 million
• Halo 4 - 9.49 million
064 OCTOBER 2015