Forum:Disney getting serious with Star Wars canon
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Surprise, surprise! Disney is getting serious with the canon universe of Star Wars. Selected quotes from the op-ed:
| “ | A sci-fi universe with as long a tail as Star Wars can be death for new stories, though. Finding space among the EU to make a mark without being hamstrung by established ideas is difficult, and even keeping the EU somewhat organized is challenging. Its growth has been cancerous—like a tumor, it has no plan and no organization—it simply expands, blindly, as the collective fan engine shovels in new material. | ” |
This would appear to be the route 343i is taking. The hole is getting deeper and deeper. Only time will tell when they'll realize this inevitability.
| “ | Most of the EU is simply layers and layers of garbage. It's filled with thinly veiled Mary Sue characters, ludicrous minutiae, and a ponderous and plodding history (past AND future) of the galaxy. It's creaky under its own weight, and [Leeland Chee]'s pruning is a welcome change. In him, Disney has a person who intimately understands the core elements of what makes Star Wars, Star Wars. | ” |
Unfortunately, the same can't be said with Frankie (imo, anyway). Who can take up the mantle of responsibly ensuring that canon are given coherent, reasonable explanation and within a realistic realm, and not bent for the sake of making sales? I'm not sure anymore.
Comments
TL;DR: EU sucks... sometimes. I strongly suggest reading the article rather than relying on the selected quotes. — subtank 08:29, 11 January 2014 (EST)
- Did you seriously just compare the Star Wars EU to the Halo EU? Dude, Halo is magnificently maintained in comparison. Maybe under Bungie the EU stuff didn't really have much direction (though it did have some), but 343's stuff definitely does. Kilo Five, Forerunner, and Halo 4 were all tied together and complementary, and Initiation and Escalation seem to be leading into potential Halo 5 plot points. They aren't just random stories like the article is referring to about Star Wars. I really don't get what you're complaining about, this is literally the most coherent and quality period of Halo EU.
- Time will tell if the Halo universe becomes too fragmented with too many new secondary characters and too many new plotlines, but I seriously doubt 343's going to make too many mistakes there. Halo 2 was a lesson they will refer to, where too many directions and an unnecessary second point of view did exactly what so many Star Wars novels are guilty of. (Seriously, almost every single one has two or more main characters)--70.70.8.253 10:00, 11 January 2014 (EST)
- It's an observation: I was merely pointing out one of many possible futures of the Halo franchise as well as giving out my doubt of Frankie's handling of the Halo canon (oh, this is more of a criticism than it is a complaint). Halo franchise is comparable to the Star Wars franchise as it is already considered as the new "Star Wars" for this age (debatable of course). Whatever changes made to the Star Wars franchise will eventually be made to the Halo franchise as well. It chimes. It's the natural progression of entertainment franchise. Time will tell. :) — subtank 10:24, 11 January 2014 (EST)
- I agree Subtank. Halo 4 was a clear example of mishandling the Halo universe (and Halo gameplay) with all the inconsistencies and retcons. And it stretches even further with the whole Forerunner saga imo (splitting the Didact in 2, the humans being separate from the Forerunners). I was content with a more realistic story string & continuation of the Halo series but 343i did too much and also deviated towards unrealistic plot lines and science fantasy elements imo. And it seems like they may stretch the series thin with those "12" issues of Halo escalation. Not to say I don't like Halo escalation, it looks interesting (I haven't gotten a copy of the issues since I'm waiting for Mortal Dictata which will be my LAST Halo novel purchase). It seems like 343i is milking the series rather than supplementing it. That's why a lot of people said the series should have ended at Halo 3 especially after 343i's poor execution of Halo 4.--Killamint [Comm|Files] 11:48, 11 January 2014 (EST)
Halo becoming the new Star Wars was inevitable when 343i took over the handling of the universe. Not to say it's all bad, but all the inconsistencies and retcons they've created have been annoying. Not to say they can't be better, but as it stands now that seems a bit far-fetched. @Killamint: I have Issue #1 of Escalation and I found the storyline to be quite interesting.--Spartacus Talk • Contribs 12:02, 11 January 2014 (EST)
- Kool! My only issues with the comic based on the images uploaded so far is artistic freedom. And that comes from seeing the "new" Arbiter (I HATE his "new" armor and how they retconned him into the "new" elites, which I hate by the way) and how the S-4's look like toy soldiers or ninja's. But then again I never liked the new armor designs anyway because its nothing more than armor pieces attached to a skin suit (IMO Reach's armor designs were the best). However I do like this new spartan :), just not her armor :(. As for 343i bringing back a lot of hardly used items from Halo wars and other Halo literature, that, I'm giving a huge thumbs up!!--Killamint [Comm|Files] 13:08, 14 January 2014 (EST)
- Edit conflict - I read that editorial shortly afer release and had a small chuckle at the writer's vitriol for the EU. He acts like only a small fraction of non-movie Star Wars is any good, conveniently ignoring KoTOR, the X-Wing multimedia franchise, and countless other highly successful and wonderfully written installments. Suffice it to say, I get that his real message is, "Too much EU ties the writers's hands for future projects," yet his comments come across as, "Ninety percent of the Expanded Universe is crap. Good riddance." As a long-time fan of the SWEU - I have literally hundreds of Star Wars games, novels, comics, and TV seasons - I'm disappointed that at least some of it will be thrown out the window. I can certainly appreciate the merit behind the decision from a creative standpoint, though.
- My real point of contention is that Halo technically doesn't have an expanded universe. There has been only one contiguous canon ever since the Bungie days, although they kept shout outs to the books fairly low-key. It wasn't until 343i's takeover that intermedia connectivity became the name of the game. The biggest difference between Star Wars and Halo is that the the former is (first and foremost) a movie franchise; while the movies tell the core story of the Skywalker family, all the genuine wordbuilding has been through the hands of untold thousands of writers, artists, game designers, and so forth since Splinter of the Mind's Eye was released way back in 1978. Halo, on the other hand, has a much more unified creative focus, especially under 343i. One might even argue that continuity these days is too intertwined in some respects: I understand that a lot of people unfamiliar with the books had trouble following the story in Halo 4, since the novels laid the game's canonical foundation. The key difference here is that those stories are meant to bleed into one another (enriching the experience), while the concern about the SWEU is that different creative teams will inevitably want to go in different directions.
- Of course, a younger series has less room for the continuity tangles that befall every long-running franchise. I'm not saying that Halo canon will forever remain as tight as it is today, but who knows? I'm with Subs in saying this: Time will tell.
- P.S.: Initiation is an utter letdown, though I really like the Kilo-Five series overall. My beef isn't even with everyone hating Halsey, except for Mendez suddenly turning on her; after all, ONI can spin whatever lies they want about her and few will question them. Nope, it's the flash-cloning thing. Seriously, Miss Traviss, you make it clear (even in the same chapter) that you've read Halsey's journal, so why on Earth would you hinge the good doctor's arrest on a plot that comes completely out of the blue? Does Parangosky really have the gall to think that her approval of the S-IIIs is less morally reprehensible? If there's one thing I won't hesitate to admit 343i have dropped the ball on, it's approving that particular scene, at least the way it's characterized. --Our vengeance is at hand. (Talk to me.) 12:18, 11 January 2014 (EST)
- I almost have to wonder whether Parangosky's hypocrisy was deliberate, that we were supposed to be outraged at it. Maybe I'm giving the writer too much credit. Mostly, I got bored with the Kilo-Five books.
- On a more on-topic note, I think the sheer saturation of Star Wars, and the (mostly) carefully planned nature of Halo's EU are radically different. The SW novels have a...well, a varied degree of quality control. On the one hand, you get the magnificent Thrawn Trilogy and the Hand of Thrawn Duology, but then you get others, like the Jedi Search trilogy, where the characters are either badly characterised or outright detestable. I follow a similar policy to my Classic Who collection - read the reviews first, try to get a grasp on which ones are great and which ones to avoid. And then there are just the weird stories, that just don't fit, largely from the comics. As I understand it, the rights for the comic stories have changed hands many times, although LucasArts largely supervised the Star Wars games. When it comes down to it, all Lucas has ever really cared about was the films. Which is a fine policy in a way, since it allows you to discard everything without actually discarding it, because it was never "G Canon" in the first place, and focus on what's best for the movie. And even if that means Thrawn may not have existed in the next trilogy, I will be supremely gratified if it also erases something like the Yuuzhan Vong, which sound incredibly awful for Star Wars, or the Darth Caedus silliness. Marvel and DC have rebooted their continuities how many times by now just to keep things straight? I think it's about time Star Wars got the same treatment.
- But with something like Halo, you just don't get that saturation or the contradictions they bring with it. 343's been surprisingly deliberate in its expanded universe entries, even if I haven't been able to care much about it since Nylund 's last book, while maintaining a solid output. The quality control has been much better - you don't have the Halo equivalent of Palpatine's mutant three-eyed son, the magical Glove of Darth Vader, or that time Han and Chewie found a planet of zombies and let them pass on. For better or worse :P
- And regarding 70.70.8.253's assessment of Halo 2 - I actually think Halo 2's story is still the most interesting of the "main" Halo games, precisely because it tried to do different things. Many fans will disagree that it was for the best, but giving a Covenant's eye view of things made the universe feel more vast, and I still regret they reduced the Arbiter to a sidekick in Halo 3. -- Qura 'Morhek The Autocrat of Morheka 19:40, 11 January 2014 (EST)
- Frankie has always painted in rather broad strokes when it comes to canon, and I've always taken him as more of a community guy than a fiction one anyway; he's the guy who comes to a forum to tell people to calm down and then drops a silly "a wizard did it"-caliber explanation of why something is the way it is. It's apparent he's more concerned with the big picture and direction than fictional minutiae like how the Chief's armor can look different or whether an ONI stealth ship is a prowler or not. As far as I'm aware, Mr. Vociferous strikes me as the guy with most canon knowledge in the studio, though I'm not entirely sure whether he's able - or willing - to exercise full control over what makes the cut and what doesn't, canon-wise. To me, so far, 343i has managed the factual side of the fiction relatively well (aside a few notable missteps) - it's the quality of the writing I'm more worried about. 343's in-house writers are somewhat of a mixed bag: Brian Reed's work in Initiation doesn't exactly fill me with confidence (quite the opposite in fact), while Chris Schlerf did a semi-decent job with Halo 4 (for all its faults), but since he quit we can't expect to see more of his work.
- The less I say about the Kilo-Five novels the better - I suppose Karen Traviss' style just isn't for me. While everything that can be said about Halsey has already been repeated ad nauseam, it's not just Halsey (or the out-of-character Mendez and the flash clone contrivance) to me - I feel the Kilo-Five books were a huge opportunity missed in simply telling the story of how the galactic status quo got from Halo 3 to 4; mainly because we barely see the transition since most of it's apparently already happened by the time Glasslands opens. That, and now we'll never get to see what Nylund's version of the shield world plot would've been like; he clearly set the characters - his characters - up for a future story which, alas, never got realized. Overall, it feels like the Kilo-Five books considerably shrink the appropriately epic scale of the universe Nylund used to play with, not to mention their almost complete disregard for technological believability (see: Pelican with a slipspace drive).
- Thinking back, the only post-Nylund works I can honestly say I've found above average quality are The Forerunner Saga and Forward Unto Dawn. You can't go wrong with a sci-fi heavyweight like Greg Bear, and even though I did dislike the retconning of the Halo 3 terminals which are still some of my favorite bits of Halo fiction (and I still think they could've averted some of the contradictions with just a little more control), everything Bear added to the universe made it all worth it in the end. Well, maybe except Primordium, which felt largely extraneous. Some of the things that people tend to take issue with, like the establishing of ancient humans and Forerunners as separate species (though it's not like something of the sort wasn't already suggested in Iris, the Halo 3 terminals and the Bestiarum), were already decided by 343i before they brought Bear on board and he just built on that foundation. Forward Unto Dawn managed surprisingly well for a production of its scale, though it's clear it would've benefited from a heftier budget.
- One of my disappointments with 343i's tenure to me (so far at least) has been their disregard for many of the plot lines that were left hanging from the Bungie/Nylund days. We never hear what happened to the majority of Gamma Company, or where all this Assembly/Slipspace fractal storage stuff is going, and even Mendez and Blue Team get pretty much forgotten about in favor of the Infinity crew. Not to mention Half-Jaw and the Shadow of Intent, which don't even get acknowledged in the Kilo-Five books. The suggestion that the Spirit of Fire will appear in Escalation, as well as the Arbiter's inclusion, are both steps in the right direction, but how they'll be handled remains to be seen.
- Morhek: as far as Halo equivalents of Star Wars "WTF" moments go, Ilsa Zane's augmentations and the concept of "Spartans with no armor" come close to the Glove of Darth Vader in downright outrageous silliness. --Jugus (Talk | Contribs) 09:40, 12 January 2014 (EST)
I haven't seen confirmation of this, but have heard rumors that Joseph Staten is working for Microsoft again. Is this true? Because, if so, then perhaps he could handle the canon again, and make sure Halo stays plausible. Tuckerscreator(stalk) 15:13, 12 January 2014 (EST)
Ah, [here's the proof]. Hopefully we'll hear his Grunty voice again. Tuckerscreator(stalk) 16:53, 12 January 2014 (EST)
- Hopefully we do! Given that, I wish they would bring back Eric Nylund as well...--Spartacus Talk • Contribs 20:48, 12 January 2014 (EST)
- Interesting how that article presents a slightly different version of the Microsoft rep quote seen here. The rest of it's the same, but the Polygon one adds the claim that "Joseph is not working directly on the next Halo title.". Still, note the careful wording - he doesn't say Staten won't be involved with Halo at all, just that he's not directly working on the next game. Given his job description, though, it seems he'll be to MS Studios what Frankie is to 343, steering the ship, so to speak, and acting as the studio's public face instead of getting heavily involved in the development of individual IPs. Still, I'm just as hopeful he'll be able to lend his talent to the Grunts again. Halo 4's beastly gibberish-speaking cave troll Grunts got nothing on good ol' Staten. Maybe with Mr. "Doom III" Scott stepping down as Art Director we'll get to see some humor and elegance in Covenant designs again. That's one other thing that makes me hopeful - Halo 4's aesthetics were a massive letdown to me, but with the changes of Creative and Art Directors, it could be that the next game will have a less generic visual style. --Jugus (Talk | Contribs) 01:39, 13 January 2014 (EST)
- I 100% agree with you about the aesthetics of Halo 4. The only new designs I liked were the Mantis, SAW, Railgun, sticky detonator, Strident-class frigate (not the retconned FUD), the Mammoth, the Infinity, Requiem, and some of the forerunner machines & weapons. Other than that, everything else is mediocre - the GEN2 armor/helmets, the Didact's armor, chief's retconned armor, the storm rifle (why oh why did they let go of the plasma rifle), and the retconned covie species. Also the grunts in H4 sound like constipated squirrels.--Killamint [Comm|Files] 13:08, 14 January 2014 (EST)
- Lol Don't they? They sound stupid, completely unlike the previous Halos. I was laughing at the Grunts in the other games but I'm like WTF at these new ones. Too many unnecessary changes 343i made just to make the game "theirs". The same can be said about the way the Warthog engine sounds - 343i screwed that up too. But enough of me bashing 343i, going off topic.--Killamint [Comm|Files] 12:36, 15 January 2014 (EST)
- A couple more thoughts about 343i's enemy design. Halos 2 and 3 had this running arc to make Covenant more relatable and elegant in their own ways while still keeping them alien. Along comes Halo 4, and everyone looks like a Locust knockoff. This doesn't make sense from a storytelling standpoint either. The change from 3 to Reach (which wasn't as drastic as this one) was justifiable as Reach is set in a time before the Covenant's arc from foreignness to familiarity over the course of the original trilogy. Even if we were seeing a more ragtag group than before, they shouldn't completely negate that development. It's not just the Covenant either: another victim of 343's bad design decisions is none other than the Didact. For all the hype and buildup he got, having him look like a silly Power Rangers villain was an anticlimax to say the least. While Silentium does a decent job explaining why he acts the way he does, a respectable and sophisticated look might have communicated at least some of the complexity his character should have. His current incarnation might as well be wearing a t-shirt saying "I'm evil!". The same goes for the Prometheans: for all the pre-release hype about how they wanted to make them relatable and elegant and explicitly not like "robot monsters", they look and act an awful lot like robot monsters.
- As a lesser gripe, I'm not a big fan of the new Forerunner architecture either. To me, Halo 3 struck the perfect balance between Halo CE's featureless, monolithic desolation and Halo 2's more visibly archaic, ornamented and warm-toned aesthetic (love Paul Russel's work on the Citadel, for example). It got across that sense of deep history and timelessness appropriate to the Forerunners, while still seamlessly embedding advanced technology to that environment. In Halo 4, the high-tech aspect is turned up to eleven, but this makes Forerunner tech look too new - it's just all sterile and tediously silver-gray surfaces punctuated by colorful lights. Dim the lighting and you get Tron, basically. While you it's true that the Forerunners should easily be capable of maintaining their structures in a pristine condition, it also removes the mythic ambiance they used to have in the earlier games and which is also thematically retained in Greg Bear's novels (from the way the Forerunners themselves are portrayed to the overall tone and language used).
- Back on the original topic of canon, 343i has recently put up a new job opening for a curator of the overall canon, allegedly with the task to not only review new material but actually determine what makes the cut to the final product. This does make me hopeful for the future, although I'm not sure if it extends to the aesthetic side of things - so far, 343i's philosophy seems to have been to treat the "facts" side of the canon as entirely separate from the visuals and don't really pay much attention to consistency in that area. The impression I've gotten is that they see the art style of any given piece of media as separate from the universe itself and thus none of it matters; OR that the visuals of every new work overwrite the previous work and it's no big deal because it's just the art style. Good for them, I suppose, but it's frustrating when you try to reconcile things like the Dawn's redesign.--Jugus (Talk | Contribs) 00:07, 20 January 2014 (EST)
- Completely agree with you on the Covenant and Forerunner aesthetics. I think the Elites don't look too bad, but they need helmets for the signature profile. And I was absolutely not a fan of the new Jackals. My biggest gripe wasn't even how the Didact looked (though he did look extremely goofy, like all Forerunners apparently. I would have preferred Space Elves, because at least they'd look the part). It's that they showed him AT ALL. I've said it before, and I'll say it again - the big draw of the Forerunners is the MYSTERY. It's like bringing back Helen of Troy and Achilles - they're figures of legend, and come with cultural baggage when we think of them, but seeing them, in the flesh, as ordinary people ruins the mystique. Even if they'd kept them in full-body armour, if the Librarian has used a face mask to convey her elegant gentleness. Hell, in his armour the Didact doesn't look half bad, but once the face comes out he loses his menace. It's hugely frustrating for me.
- Also glad to hear someone going to fill Frankie's old job. I'd apply, but I don't think a fanon writer living thousands of miles away who can't afford to move, and hasn't finished a degree yet, is who they're looking for :P -- Qura 'Morhek The Autocrat of Morheka 02:30, 20 January 2014 (EST)