the suit jacks him off: origins

Bungie was working on "Halo: Combat Evolved" as a spiritual successor (and even true sequel) to their Marathon series. Originally VERY hyped for a Mac release, Bungie sold out to Microsoft at the last minute.

There were vast troves of hype around this release. Sooo much speculation about the green shooty cyborg, ties to Marathon, etc. People were clamoring for lore.

So, Microsoft ordered the creation of a tie-in prequel novel, in contention with Bungie. With just seven weeks, Eric Nylund was commissioned to contrive a sci-fi universe around game.

Questions answered included the following:

• What were Spartans?
• Who as the Master Chief?
• How did they find this Halo ring?
• What were the Covenant and what did they want?
• What was Reach and what happened on it?
• How did John and Cortana come to meet?
• Most importantly, Can a "videogame tie-in novel written by an outsider on a seven week deadline" not suck ass?

Ultimately, Halo: The Fall of Reach turned out to be a decent military sci-fi novel. Despite circumstances, it was good! "The Fall of Reach" along with "First Strike" and "Ghosts of Onyx" make for easy recommendations for Halo fans.

P.S. "The Fall of Reach" is the story from which the photoshopped excerpt of Halsey describing the "autojacker" mechanism comes from, based on the famous Dril tweet.

the suit jacks him off: TRUE origins

There were a handful of Halo novels released during Bungie's tenure, of mixed but generally good quality.

When Microsoft took over the franchise and put "343 Industries" at the helm, the floodgates of gamerboy rage opened. Fans seethed over many things, including:

• Halo 4 art style change
• Forerunners aren't humans and get a backstory
• Ethics in games journalism
• 343i RUINED Halo

One thing 343i did that was genuinely annoying was releasing many more Halo novels. It became impossible to keep up! Karen Traviss's Glasslands trilogy was one of my favorites, but was controversial for painting Catherine "Genius Wizard who Kidnaps Children" Halsey as evil.

Of these many releases were the "Forerunner trilogy", by Greg Bear. The trilogy takes place ~100,000 years prior to the games, following the story of the Forerunner's creation of the Halo ring. It's a crazy, Asimov's Foundations level of backstory.

What's notable about Greg Bear's "Forerunner trilogy" is, despite being set up for gamer rage for removing the mystery of the enigmatic Forerunner empire, it was actually very well received. It's a pretty fantastic shining part of the Halo novels, and cements a certain amount of legitimacy to the world.

I don't know how to explain this, but one of the main antagonists of the Halo series cucks himself by grooming a kid to become a clone of himself, and nobody in the Halo community has even commented on this. I believe this post will be the one and only result for "Didact cuck". I think there's a lot of untapped comedic potential here!

Something else it sets up is that the events of the Halo universe were planned far, far in advance by the Forerunners. Even including John's Mjolnir.

That is to say, if the suit jacked him off, you have the Librarian to thank for that.

the suit would never jack him off

The Halo universe has had many hands to characterize it, with the story direction wavering all over the place.

The main character "John", being a blank slate who was never intended to have a backstory, has had many re-characterizations over the years. He's lost his original disconnected pragmatism and scant humor, and is currently an empathetic-but-broken warrior with some concept of "nobility".

The main turning point for John's recharacterization was in Halo 4, which currently marks roughly the halfway point in the timeline of the Franchise (both in terms of chronology and in release dates.)

IMO, Halo 4 is the shining example of the series, with the most compelling narrative of the bunch. It is the only game which I believe to be both (1) consistent with the established facts of John's character, while also (2) providing meaningful characterization with relationship to the overarching narrative.

With the bad reaction to Halo 4, 343i reversed course, dropping the threads established with the game and never finding solid narrative ground. The tragic result is each following game was a soft retcon of the prior, slowly filling a "plot purgatory" which started growing with Halo: Reach.

the main character is Cortana

Something I failed to mention here is something that most Halo fans fail to ever see: Cortana is the main character of Halo.

For those who don't know: Cortana was created as a brain-ghost clone of Catherine Halsey, the super-genius who is responsible for a vast amount of scientific advance and discovery in the Halo universe. Halsey herself is a genesong-clone of a 100,000 superalien known as "The Librarian".

Whereas John barely speaks for the first three games, Cortana is constantly driving the plot. Getting you through situations, getting you out of jams, driving you to locations, and making the discoveries. Her will is constantly the driving force behind the stories in the games.

Halo 4, ironically, breaks from this. The story is that Cortana is at the end of her operational lifespan and is dying. John, either in denial or simply not understanding, holds out hope of saving her. He insists on finding a way to save her, and they go for one last ride.

John only has space for his character to be meaningfully explored in Halo 4 because of the setting of isolation and the peril Cortana finds herself in.

what's the TLDR

Despite everything, some of the Halo books are good.

are you sure the suit doesn't jack him off

No. Halsey would've designed them with a buttplug, as the prostate is a more direct path to sexual stimulation.