In light of what others have asked about the Banished, do you ever feel like the narrative writers (not all, but by-and-large) haven’t been interested in telling stories about morally complex aliens—writing them as people, in other words?
After years spent waiting for the post-war setting, for me the Kilo Five trilogy’s messaging signaled that 343 weren’t interested in telling that kind of story, especially after more years of alien terrorists who really want to kill humans again constantly being centered (while seemingly ignoring that the Great Schism was A Thing) and with the Swords of Sanghelios being deemphasized to the point where only a paragraph in the 2022 Encyclopedia’s “Splinter Factions” section was dedicated to them while the Banished got three dozen.
With some of the new story shards and Halo: Outcasts I feel like things are starting to turn around, but I do worry that they’ll shift back.
I don't know anything about anything for real but I think what's going on is this:
First and foremost, before it is anything else, Halo is an investment Microsoft is trying to make money on. The way it does this is primarily by selling purchases in a live services video game where you compete at running around shooting other players and (only recently) sometimes computers. They do make money on merch and things like books and such, but it's not remotely as much as they make on shootman video game.
They have a huge incentive to continue telling stories where running around shooting is the main action. Ergo, the stories Halo's writers tell need to create excuses to have this action and to make that part seem fun and enticing.
(The fact that Halo's pvp has never really had anything to do with events occurring in the lore doesn't really matter, once they have the campaign story excuse game for the multiplayer. "It's a training exercise for Spartan-IVs" was a very late addition, and oldschool Halo didn't bother framing it at all because nobody cared. Frankly, I think most people who play Halo PVP still don't really care.)
So, Halo's not interested in post-war and anything that amounts to recovery because it doesn't do a lot to contribute to Halo's core goal of making shootgame money that keeps convincing Microsoft that the people who make Halo should get the paychecks they need to afford to live indoors and eat food.
I do think there are people working on Halo who are interested in and curious about these ideas, and I really do think the Arbiter and the Swords of Sanghelios and the Sangheili in general are house favorites. (Why else would they be finding excuses to continue bringing the Sangheili into the games even if they can only fit them in as part of the Banished now, when the Sangheili are the species the Jiralhanae probably hate the most?)
Honestly, Halo isn't good at deep or complex characters of any species most of the time and when things are good it's because someone managed to give them some extra love somewhere. Halo has never needed a watertight, emotionally intelligent narrative. It just sometimes skates close on things like the Arbiter, and even though the Arbiter's arc is easily the strongest part of Halo 2's story the gamers hated it and that's why it was so curtailed in Halo 3.
They gotta make shootman games, and sell the shootman games, and that requires an acceptable enemy. For a while they were pivoting toward having Forerunner enemies, but now those are associated with an unpopular time in Halo (especially Halo 5). And Halo is at an age where it feels like every new thing about it is "trying to return to the roots" so... shooting familiar-looking aliens that people have nostalgia for.
Frankly, this is the biggest reason why I'm sighing and waiting for them to bring back the Flood again even though I'm really just not looking forward to that. It feels inevitable.
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