All Halo media in chronological order?

[Nexus]

so, im a huge lore junkie. when i get interested in a game im playing, i like to learn all of its history from top to bottom.

That being said, I was wondering in what order do you watch, read, and play all of the halo media?

Books, games, and short videos etc.

Ive looked up online but sadly i havent been able to find one that encorperates all ive seen. its mainly just the books and games where as im looking for the former as well as the opening trailer cinimatics like the one showing the previous noble six, as well as short videos such as halo legends.

thanks for any help and i look forward to getting started.

[TheFranubian]

Give me some minutes and I will link you an excel file with everything released so far in order.

[TheFranubian]

https://1drv.ms/x/s!AnggYnTNiuiZh9RFzw6MgkbRe1vwUw

There you go, the chronological order is from top to bottom. It includes everything.

Green is for books and short stories, yellow for multimedia (movies, series, audio-dramas), blue for comics, red for the games.

Don't bother splitting things apart, just read or watch each piece in one go. Life's too short to intentionally downgrade your experience of each novel or game by splitting them up like that, just do it in that order and that's it.

Otherwise you'd be sprinkling 1 chapter of The Fall or reach between every single media and you end up messing up the pace of that book, for example.

By the way, don't listen to the ignoramus that go "hurr durr The Fall of Reach isn't canon heh."

It is true that Bungie gave priority to the games' canon before the books, but that's no longer true with the new company behind Halo, 343Industries. Not to mention that Halsey's Diary (it's an extra written from her point of view, you should read it after you're done with Halo Reach if at all) and other documents here and there fix the gap between the book and novel, and the fact that Bungie had Eric Nylund (the author of the book) write the Diary and assist with the game.

So there.

[ΛΣGIS]

Originally posted by TheFranubian:

https://1drv.ms/x/s!AnggYnTNiuiZh9RFzw6MgkbRe1vwUw

There you go, the chronological order is from top to bottom. It includes everything.

Green is for books and short stories, yellow for multimedia (movies, series, audio-dramas), blue for comics, red for the games.

Don't bother splitting things apart, just read or watch each piece in one go. Life's too short to intentionally downgrade your experience of each novel or game by splitting them up like that, just do it in that order and that's it.

Otherwise you'd be sprinkling 1 chapter of The Fall or reach between every single media and you end up messing up the pace of that book, for example.

By the way, ignore the ignoramus that go "hurr durr The Fall of Reach isn't canon heh."

It is true that Bungie gave priority to the games' canon before the books, but that's no longer true with the new company behind Halo, 343Industries. Not to mention that Halsey's Diary (it's an extra written from her point of view, you should read it after you're done with Halo Reach if at all) and other documents here and there fix the gap between the book and novel, and the fact that Bungie had Eric Nylund (the author of the book) write the Diary and assist with the game.

So there.

Yo, this man deserves a medal.

[Snovicus]

Originally posted by TheFranubian:

Don't bother splitting things apart, just read or watch each piece in one go. Life's too short to intentionally downgrade your experience of each novel or game by splitting them up like that, just do it in that order and that's it.

But you're not getting the full story experience unless you stop playing Halo 2 after the first three missions, play Halo 3: ODST in its entirety, and then continue to play the rest of Halo 2.

[TheFranubian]

Originally posted by Snovicus:

Originally posted by TheFranubian:

Don't bother splitting things apart, just read or watch each piece in one go. Life's too short to intentionally downgrade your experience of each novel or game by splitting them up like that, just do it in that order and that's it.

But you're not getting the full story experience unless you stop playing Halo 2 after the first three missions, play Halo 3: ODST in its entirety, and then continue to play the rest of Halo 2.

It was never intended to be played like that, and it gives away some plot elements that are introduced in Halo 2 (like a certain betrayal by a prophet).

Not to mention that the final cutscene takes place between Halo 2 and Halo 3.

Again, pacing, by that same logic, you should account for the terminals and datapads too, not to mention Halsey's Journal.

And what would you even do with "Primordial" and "Silentium?" It has parts of the same chapters take place in the present... and the next paragraph 100,000 years before the current era.

I'd say that the best way to experience it is to just play the games before reading the books, chronological order isn't that important... but the books were written as the games came out even if they happen before.

You should just play the games and then bother with the external media, because at the end of the day... the only book that really matters is The Fall of Reach.

With First Strike, Ghosts of Onyx and Glasslands bringing some context to some questions you may have.
The Forerunner trilogy is a chore to go through, same as the rest of the Kilo-Five trilogy, and the other books don't really add a lot.
But hey, there you have them if you want to experience them in order, I don't know if I will bother re-reading them ever though, my idea was to kill the time between MCC releases by reading the books in order but some of them are a chore to go through.

Not looking forward to reading Mortal Dictata.

[Snovicus]

I was just kidding, but I do appreciate all of the thought and earnestness in your response.

[Psychedelic Adventurer]

Originally posted by TheFranubian:

https://1drv.ms/x/s!AnggYnTNiuiZh9RFzw6MgkbRe1vwUw

There you go, the chronological order is from top to bottom. It includes everything.

Oh hot damn, Imma Steal that. More people should be aware of Halo's Chronology.

Thank you for your contribution Franubian. Did you make this by chance?

[TheFranubian]

Originally posted by Psychedelic Adventurer:

Originally posted by TheFranubian:

https://1drv.ms/x/s!AnggYnTNiuiZh9RFzw6MgkbRe1vwUw

There you go, the chronological order is from top to bottom. It includes everything.

Oh hot damn, Imma Steal that. More people should be aware of Halo's Chronology.

Thank you for your contribution Franubian. Did you make this by chance?

You're most welcome, and yes, I did use some references from other people's chronologies, but changed around a lot of things (specially the post Covenant and pre-CE stuff) by looking into the exact date each story's main trunk happened in; a lot of timelines simply looked at the dates each material started at, for example.

Will try and update it as new material is released, but it seems like they pump out a new novel every evening.

Originally posted by Snovicus:

I was just kidding, but I do appreciate all of the thought and earnestness in your response.

Thanks, it's just that, eh, I am actually not that fond of how they've managed Halo's story. Halo 3 is pretty much worthless in the grand scheme of things and Halo 4/5 are a mess if you haven't read the books... I don't think that's how they should have gone about it.

Not to mention that it all feels so stale at this point in the books. In the Eric Nylund trilogy and Kilo Five (even if I hate that one), things happened. I do remember people being worried about Blue Team dying in First Strike or what would happen in Ghosts of Onyx.

But now, you can have the secondary villain of Halo 4's Spartan Ops appear in Glasslands and Onyx, yet they kill him off at the beginning of 5. The Forerunner Trilogy feels like fan-service, putting too much detail into the Forerunner-Flood war.

Just, dunno, doesn't feel rewarding to delve into the books anymore.

[TheFranubian]

Originally posted by sTeaLth:

Isn’t Forward Unto Dawn way too early in that list? I mean, it features the Chief and yet is placed well before Reach when he is a child. Did I miss something?

The Fall of Reach jumps around the entire timeline, it goes from when Chief was a kid to the literal start of Halo CE.

But, the creation of the Spartans are covered in other books (Silentium and some other), I put those earlier.

And I put The Fall of Reach after that because, while it covers a lot of different events, the main event (the battle for Reach) happens alongside the Reach game and before CE.

If you really wanted to have The Fall of reach fit perfectly, you'd have to, for example, read chapters 1-7 before Contact Harvest, then some other chapters after that, etc... it would get annoyingly complicated. The Fall of Reach covers from the year 2511 to 2552, so more than 40 years.

My recommendation is to start with The Fall of Reach since it does sum up the entire timeline and serves as a great introduction to Halo, then read the rest in order. Or, read The Fall of Reach in the spot I have put it at.

[Dr. ~ shatter proof ~]

Originally posted by TheFranubian:

Originally posted by Psychedelic Adventurer:

Oh hot damn, Imma Steal that. More people should be aware of Halo's Chronology.

Thank you for your contribution Franubian. Did you make this by chance?

You're most welcome, and yes, I did use some references from other people's chronologies, but changed around a lot of things (specially the post Covenant and pre-CE stuff) by looking into the exact date each story's main trunk happened in; a lot of timelines simply looked at the dates each material started at, for example.

Will try and update it as new material is released, but it seems like they pump out a new novel every evening.

Originally posted by Snovicus:

I was just kidding, but I do appreciate all of the thought and earnestness in your response.

Thanks, it's just that, eh, I am actually not that fond of how they've managed Halo's story. Halo 3 is pretty much worthless in the grand scheme of things and Halo 4/5 are a mess if you haven't read the books... I don't think that's how they should have gone about it.

Not to mention that it all feels so stale at this point in the books. In the Eric Nylund trilogy and Kilo Five (even if I hate that one), things happened. I do remember people being worried about Blue Team dying in First Strike or what would happen in Ghosts of Onyx.

But now, you can have the secondary villain of Halo 4's Spartan Ops appear in Glasslands and Onyx, yet they kill him off at the beginning of 5. The Forerunner Trilogy feels like fan-service, putting too much detail into the Forerunner-Flood war.

Just, dunno, doesn't feel rewarding to delve into the books anymore.

You utter, utter, nerd.

love it.

[Nexus]

Originally posted by TheFranubian:

https://1drv.ms/x/s!AnggYnTNiuiZh9RFzw6MgkbRe1vwUw

There you go, the chronological order is from top to bottom. It includes everything.

Green is for books and short stories, yellow for multimedia (movies, series, audio-dramas), blue for comics, red for the games.

Don't bother splitting things apart, just read or watch each piece in one go. Life's too short to intentionally downgrade your experience of each novel or game by splitting them up like that, just do it in that order and that's it.

Otherwise you'd be sprinkling 1 chapter of The Fall or reach between every single media and you end up messing up the pace of that book, for example.

By the way, don't listen to the ignoramus that go "hurr durr The Fall of Reach isn't canon heh."

It is true that Bungie gave priority to the games' canon before the books, but that's no longer true with the new company behind Halo, 343Industries. Not to mention that Halsey's Diary (it's an extra written from her point of view, you should read it after you're done with Halo Reach if at all) and other documents here and there fix the gap between the book and novel, and the fact that Bungie had Eric Nylund (the author of the book) write the Diary and assist with the game.

So there.

what about the terminal videos? where do those place in the timeline?

[TheFranubian]

Originally posted by Nexus:

Originally posted by TheFranubian:

https://1drv.ms/x/s!AnggYnTNiuiZh9RFzw6MgkbRe1vwUw

There you go, the chronological order is from top to bottom. It includes everything.

Green is for books and short stories, yellow for multimedia (movies, series, audio-dramas), blue for comics, red for the games.

Don't bother splitting things apart, just read or watch each piece in one go. Life's too short to intentionally downgrade your experience of each novel or game by splitting them up like that, just do it in that order and that's it.

Otherwise you'd be sprinkling 1 chapter of The Fall or reach between every single media and you end up messing up the pace of that book, for example.

By the way, don't listen to the ignoramus that go "hurr durr The Fall of Reach isn't canon heh."

It is true that Bungie gave priority to the games' canon before the books, but that's no longer true with the new company behind Halo, 343Industries. Not to mention that Halsey's Diary (it's an extra written from her point of view, you should read it after you're done with Halo Reach if at all) and other documents here and there fix the gap between the book and novel, and the fact that Bungie had Eric Nylund (the author of the book) write the Diary and assist with the game.

So there.

what about the terminal videos? where do those place in the timeline?

To be fair, I didn't factor those in because there are just too many (specially if you count the text-based terminals from Halo 3). But there it goes:

The Halo CE terminals number 2+4+5+6+7+8 are set after the Forerunner Saga. 1+3+9+10 are set during Halo CE. Terminal 11 is set after Halo CE.

Halo 2's terminals 1+2+3 happen shortly before Reach, 4+5+6+9+11+13 happen right after CE, 8+10 are set before Broken Circle, 11 is after Cole Protocol, 14 is set before Reach. 15 is set after First Strike and before Halo 2/Ghosts of Onyx.

The Halo 3 terminals are set during the Forerunner Saga, with the exception of the final terminal which happens during Halo 3. The "Cortana terminal" takes place between 2 and 3.

The Halo 4 terminals take place during the Forerunner Saga, they tell the same story as those books. The "Prologue" terminal takes place directly before Halo 4 starts.

The Halo 3 ODST terminals are set after the initial cutscene and the "Mombasa Streets" level.

[Psychedelic Adventurer]

Originally posted by TheFranubian:

The Halo 3 terminals are set during the Forerunner Saga, with the exception of the final terminal which happens during Halo 3. The "Cortana terminal" takes place between 2 and 3.

Always liked how 343 managed to actually not contradict the canon of Bungie's forerunners, even in the terminals. The Forerunner books 1&3 coincidentally, are my favourite Halo books of all time.

[TheFranubian]

Originally posted by Psychedelic Adventurer:

Originally posted by TheFranubian:

The Halo 3 terminals are set during the Forerunner Saga, with the exception of the final terminal which happens during Halo 3. The "Cortana terminal" takes place between 2 and 3.

Always liked how 343 managed to actually not contradict the canon of Bungie's forerunners, even in the terminals. The Forerunner books 1&3 coincidentally, are my favourite Halo books of all time.

Actually, there were some small inconsistencies between how the Didact was portrayed in some Bungie media (I think the problem was between Halo 3 and Halo 3: Iris, the marketing ARG campaign). So they wrote two Didacts (ISO and UR) to fix that.

Also, Bungie wasn't sure themselves of whether the Forerunners were humans themselves or another species. While some data pads back in Halo 2 featured the Forerunner hand structure (two thumbs per hand), there were still indications here and there during the Bungie days that the Forerunners were humans.

So in short, there were differences and inconsistencies within Bungie itself, 343 did help fixing them (same as they did with The Fall of Reach and Reach, in a way).

[Nexus]

Originally posted by TheFranubian:

Originally posted by Nexus:

what about the terminal videos? where do those place in the timeline?

To be fair, I didn't factor those in because there are just too many (specially if you count the text-based terminals from Halo 3). But there it goes:

The Halo CE terminals number 2+4+5+6+7+8 are set after the Forerunner Saga. 1+3+9+10 are set during Halo CE. Terminal 11 is set after Halo CE.

Halo 2's terminals 1+2+3 happen shortly before Reach, 4+5+6+9+11+13 happen right after CE, 8+10 are set before Broken Circle, 11 is after Cole Protocol, 14 is set before Reach. 15 is set after First Strike and before Halo 2/Ghosts of Onyx.

The Halo 3 terminals are set during the Forerunner Saga, with the exception of the final terminal which happens during Halo 3. The "Cortana terminal" takes place between 2 and 3.

The Halo 4 terminals take place during the Forerunner Saga, they tell the same story as those books. The "Prologue" terminal takes place directly before Halo 4 starts.

The Halo 3 ODST terminals are set after the initial cutscene and the "Mombasa Streets" level.

alright. also i think the placement of broken circle is wrong.

It should be before the Duel as it takes place before the signing of the peace treaty. also in the duel you can clearly see the hunters and other covenant species where in the book it mentions when they found said species. therefor it cant be before then