What’s the plot of the novel, The Fall of Reach?

What is the Fall of Reach novel plot?
Here’s a summary. In short, the humans and the Master Chief fight against the alien Covenant forces until they eventually end up at the Halo as found in Combat Evolved.
Or a longer version!
The Fall of Reach novel, written by Eric Nylund, opens with the civilian Dr. Catherine Halsey and Lieutenant Jacob Keyes traveling to meet John, a six-year-old boy. Dr. Halsey reveals to Keyes that John is one of 150 children who possess rare genetic markers making them suitable for conscription into the SPARTAN-II program, a secret experiment with the aim of creating super soldiers for the UNSC to quell rebellions.
Seventy-five of the children are kidnapped by agents of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and replaced by clones engineered to die of natural causes shortly after so no one around the children are suspicious in the future. From this point on, the recruits are known only by their first name and a three digit number. John-117 and the rest of the children are drilled and trained by Franklin Mendez and John demonstrates leadership of his fellow Spartans leading to his promotion to squad leader.
In 2525, the Spartans undergo a series of surgical enhancements which turn them into highly efficient super soldiers at the cost of crippling or killing more than half of the original seventy-five. The Spartans are also equipped with powerful MJOLNIR battle armor, designed to respond as quickly as the soldier’s thoughts. John-117 is given the rank of Master Chief Petty Officer.


The Spartans are highly successful, but they experience a mission priority shift after a collective of alien races known as the Covenant begin obliterating human colonies, declaring humanity’s destruction as the “Will of the Gods”. Mendez leaves the group to train the next generation of Spartans as John and his comrades first face the Covenant.
By 2552, the war against the Covenant is going dreadfully. The technological superiority of the Covenant means that space battles heavily favor the Covenant, and the UNSC can only win engagements by suffering tremendous losses. To prevent the discovery of Earth or other human colonies, Vice Admiral Cole creates the “Cole Protocol“, which forbids direct slipspace jumps to planet Earth or any other large population location and mandates the destruction of a ship before it can be captured by the Covenant.
Jacob Keyes, now commander of the destroyer Iroquois, discovers four Covenant ships arriving at the Sigma Octanus System, and single-handedly destroys three of them; his heroics earn Keyes the rank of Captain. The Covenant conspire to overrun Sigma Octanus IV, searching for a mysterious ancient artifact. Despite an expensive and exhausting fight, the human forces manage to repel the Covenant, and Keyes intercepts a coded Covenant transmission from the surface before the Covenant retreat. The Iroquois heads to Reach, unwittingly bringing a Covenant tracking device with it.
Soon after, Keyes is given the command of the UNSC cruiser Pillar of Autumn for a secret mission; the Spartans are to capture one of the Covenant’s religious leaders, a Prophet, and barter a truce. Dr. Halsey also introduces John to the artificial intelligence Cortana, who would assist the Spartans by residing in their MJOLNIR armor. Before the mission can begin, however, Reach is attacked by a massive Covenant fleet.


John 117 and Cortana reach the Pillar of Autumn, but most of the other Spartans are presumed killed as the Covenant vitrify the surface of Reach, turning the landmasses into glass.


Cortana initiates a slipspace course based on the ancient glyphs intercepted by the Covenant at Sigma Octanus, the course takes them to a massive ringworld known as Halo, setting the stage for the events of the Xbox game, Halo: Combat Evolved

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Source: Amended from Wikipedia

Will there be other Master Chief games?

So if the Master Chief is not going to be a huge factor in the Halo: Reach Xbox game (not what the link thinks!), what becomes of him in terms of people continuing to play his character?

I’m a betting man so consider the farm on the table that Mr Chief will appear in more Halo games. Especially when Frankie from 343 Industries clears it up succinctly:

“As for Master Chief, odds are he will be seen again. “I think that (his) fate, Cortana’s fate and the identity of that giant, dark planet at the ending (on the game’s hardest skill level) – that’s a spoiler – are probably big mysteries that would be irritating if they were just cliffhangers,”

“We do have a plan that goes out at least six years,” he says. “Eventually, it will become very apparent that there is a plan for the way the canon all ties together and the way the comic books and the novels all tie together.”

A six year plan for Halo which includes saving the Master Chief from permanent hibernation on half a space ship? Okay Frankie, wake me when you need me….

Any one taking bets on what the first Micosoft produced game will be?

The Package Plot Halo: Legends

This week’s Halo: Legend’s anime film on Halo Waypoint via the Xbox Dash is the first of two parts called The Package.

The Package’s plot follows the hero from the xbox games, the, er.. legendary Master Chief and four specially chosen Spartans as they launch out on a stealth cruiser into the heart of a massive Covenant fleet in a bid to recover a valuable intelligence asset.

This anime proves that Spartans are adept at fighting in zero-gravity and are adept at piloting never-before-seen light attack vehicles. The Spartans’ target is a Covenant CCS-class Battlecruiser using the Booster Frames ships.

Once Master Chief locates the target he and the Spartans blast their way on board the ship, where the action gets hand-to-hand as they fight through an army of Covenant troops in order to recover the most important Human intelligence resource there is….

The Package was put together by Casio Entertainment and ‘visionary’ director Shinji Aramaki, who’s Appleseed films are among the more popular anime films in the western world.

Above: The target of the Spartan’s Attack
Below: John 117 on a Booster Frame

Here’s the Promotional trailer for The Package – it gives a great shot of the Spartan’s attacking the Covenant space ship.

Check out more Halo: Legends, with The Duel and The Babysitter.

Lego Master Chief

Here’s a sweet as cheese Master Chief made of Lego…. check out the story of how this spartan came into being here. Seems like lego and the Chief is all the rage….

Master Chief image from Halo 4 Trailer

Do you need me Cortana?

Here’s the Master Chief about to Re start the Fight in Halo 4!

Also announced today at E3 was a remake of Combat Evolved to be released November this year to celebrate 10 years of Halo.

Better than the Avengers?

Better than the Avengers?

More great work like this can be found here.

So what did we think of the Halo 4 game play from E3?

Well, I think this image above sums it up. There’s the Chief, chatting with Cortana with the Covenant flying overhead to some urgent target. It’s Halo and it’s looking like it 343 have nailed the ‘Halo feel’.

Initial I am impressed by the amazing colour palate that’s been put on display for the first time at today’s E3 Expo.

I’m so impressed by the palate, I want to talk about the colour green. The Master Chief has always been green. When the first images of the big green guy were released a few months ago, I was drawn to his new hue of verdant wonder. Now, we can see that the game will have amazing greens:

They are just perfect and it looks like any game play set in the forests of the planet Requiem will simply be a delight to play in and shoot the Promethean Knights and Crawlers!

Much has already been made of the UNSC Infinity. We’ve already heard how it is going to form a major component of the multiplayer game play, which seems to be a nice twist from what we have been feed in recent years. The live action trailer featuring the ships crew is pretty darn impressive too.

Like how the Pillar of Autumn was a space ship that was a fairly important character in Halo: Combat Evolved, the Infinity appears destined to have a central role in Halo 4. At the very least it’s gonna be a source of Ammo, Warthogs and cannon fodder UNSC soliders for the Chief to utilise in game. The campaign suggests there will be at least one mission that revolves around our green guy making his way to the ship.

I think the design of the Infinity is an excellent example of the attention to detail and ‘the getting it right so that it’s Halo’ mentality that 343 Industries has long been proclaiming as their design directive.

What about the creatures that the Master Chief got to go a couple of rounds with? In what would appear to be a first for Halo, it appears the Chief might have finally met his match in the form of the Promethean Knight, a dude with an ass so big he can hide the Promethean Watcher inside it.
That final Knight we saw, totally kicked the Chief’s ass and appeared to have actually knocked him out with a punch to the head. This is a good point to raise that the campaign revealed that the Chief appears to have the ability to rumble in the jungle in a kind of boxing mode (as opposed to the traditional melee option). Could be interesting, and probably a real challenge when taking on a Knight on legendary mode. I totally dug the shield they deployed but the re-turn of the grenades by the Watcher seemed a little corny….
At least we know who this fellow was now….
I think, at first flush, those Promethean Crawlers are going to be really annoying bastards like those Clickers from the Gears of War series. Time will tell.
What else does the campaign reveal to us? There’s a wicked new Light Gun that’s left by the Promethean Knight, that’s a kind of souped up carbine of sorts. I’m picking it will be a player favourite. I’m pretty keen to see how the Scattershot turns out in practice too!
“I have long dreamt of this day, Reclaimer.”

Such is the line at the end of the trailer which hints at what might be the main protagonist of Halo. Given Requiem is a Forerunner planet, I’d be pretty confident this is the Diadact – given Frankie has said the Halo novels Cryptum and Primordium are direct tie ins to the Halo 4 campaign, I think this is likely fella to get the plot rolling along. Indeed, the symbol that is displayed when the line is uttered is that of the Diadact himself.

The campaign material also makes a direct reference to Cortana’s forthcoming rampancy. It’s clear that this is intended to be a major plot point for the Halo series. It will be interesting to see how her state of mental decay influences plot developments.
So what’s with that big orange ball that’s chasing / guiding the Infinity to the ground? Some kind of Monstrously Large Monitor or security agent?
We also got to see a fancy new HUD which reveals some kind of Predator like visor mode, reminiscent of the ODST version. The HUD also suggests that when parties such as Cortana communicate with the Chief, there will be a video interface of some sort.
And one thing that was revealed on the Halo Waypoint site was the mechanical suit, which looked pretty cool.

Halo 4 Plot Points leaked deliberately by 343 Industries?

Were the Halo 4 Plot points leaked deliberately by 343 Industries?

Did you watch the A Hero Awakens video yet? Did you spy the page of writing? A keen eyed Halo fan did and zoomed it up for all to see. Turns about it was some plot points of Halo 4. This was surely no accident as Frankie will have well learnt from his days at Bungie to put tit-bits and clues in promotional trailers.

Here’s a summary of some of the plot points that were revealed. Spoiler alert!

• When Master Chief awakes, the Forward Unto Dawn is boarded by a bunch of Covenant – they are looking for something, not the Chief.
• The Covenant, a particularly religious remnant led by the Elites, have come in search of Requiem to find and look for a Forerunner weapon cache.
• The Covenant also believe Requiem to be the place where a living god is being kept – they wish to find and wake him up to enlist his aid in fighting humanity.
• Main antagonist is called Didact, an ancient Forerunner. He is the being the religious Covenant believe to be a living god.
• Dr Halsey, who made a cameo in Reach, makes an appearance as the Chief wants her help to find a solution to Cortana’s “problem”
• Cortana is able to project multiple versions of herself at once – multiple Cortanas
• A climatic battle involving the Chief, Didact and Cortana takes place
• A character has, or appears to have, telekinesis

Interesting how so much was gleaned from a page or two of writing wasn’t it? To be fair, the page of text looks like it has annotations on it, so it’s a draft and most likely not the final works. It does fit in with what we already know about Halo via the games and novels.

Said pages from the promotional video

For those not up with the play, Cortana’s problem is her impending rampancy. The Didact is the dude who featured in the Forerunner novel, Cryptum and Requiem is the planet on which Halo 4 is mostly set. Dr Halsey is what I call the ‘mad doctor’ who started the whole Spartan programme and is basically the Master Chief’s mother.
Interesting times ahead for the Chief and Cortana eh?

Sweet sketch of the master Chief

Here’s a the start of a sweet sketch / colouring of the Master Chief which is reminiscent of the Halo 2 era by Redditor kirstyglanville. I think it’s pretty sweet, you can check out the full work here.