I agree that the Kilo-5 Trilogy gets a lot of unnecessary flack, but to be fair they definitely have their weaknesses. The entire team of main characters was basically interchangeable to me besides Phillips in the first book and half the second, she has a few buttons she presses too often ("as the humans say"), and the books are saddled with a lot of somewhat ungainly lore shoveling to set up the games ("Set up Jul! And the Didact! And we have to wrap up Ghosts of Onyx as fast as possible.) Mortal Dictata really feels like the novel Traviss wanted to make thematically, and the others are just earlier ruminations on the same theme with table-setting.
I Definately think there were flaws, but nothing I think was deserving of the sort of negative criticism her work received. I felt like the team had pretty distict characters besides the two male ODSTs (I can't even remember their names tbh).
Jul M'dama was a really excellent character. I don't feel like he was just being setup for the games - he ended up having a tiny roll in the games when it's all said and done.
I do think it's inappropriate to do all of a principle character's development in extended media - but there's nothing stopping the dev from properly introducing a character in-game who's already been introduced in literature. 343 has failed here at every turn - Didact, M'dama, Blue Team
I went into it prepared for Halsey to get hammered, so that may have softened my reaction to it. I did find it weird that people would hate Halsey for what she did, but would give Parangosky and Mendez a pass. I can't help but feel THAT is the 'ungainly lore shoveling to setup the games' moreso than Didact and M'dama.
Having the series first announced as "post Ghost of Onyx" also improperly calibrated expectations about what was going to be coming.
I didn't have this issue because I crammed through everything years later. I can see how that would be upsetting.
To this day I still don't understand why they decided to start the 343 era literally with the final cutscene of Halo 3. Having Infinity be a long-shot weapon that missed the conflict it was designed for was interesting, but pumping out new Spartans by 2553 just felt like too much of a rush, considering especially until Hunters in the Dark there was no conflict with back-dating things a bit more and having a more gradual ramp up to the status quo circa Halo 4.
Also, in hindsight it's kind of funny that people were complaining about the K5 Trilogy making humanity "unstoppable" and look like they survived the war just fine, and now that 343 wipes away the status quo and puts humanity on the back foot with the Created people are upset again.
I'm also someone who felt like humanity got too powerful too quickly. But it's pretty sloppy narrative execution to immediately wipe out an arc like that. It begs the question, what was the point of making Humanity so powerful in the first place.
This is a common theme with basically every narrative arc 343 has presented in-game since they took over. Something huge is introduced, then quickly forgotten about.
"OMG We're direct descendants of an ancient space fairing society, entitled to the Mantle and went blow-for-blow with the people the Covey's worship as gods. Cheif's got a geas imprint that kinda-sorta makes him space Jesus, and a badass Forerunner wants revenge " -->" fuck all that, the Created are here"
"Humanity runs the galaxy" --> "Humanity ain't shit"
"Gotta get the Janus Key" --> "what key?"
"Gotta kill Halsey" --> "gotta save Halsey"
"M'dama's a master manipulator, a charismatic leader, and a thorn in the side for the UNSC and Sanghelii best efforts--> "M'dama is a baffoon"
"Cortana is dead" --> "No she isn't she just murdered a 300 million people"
I understand that many of these arcs havent been well recieved. But the total lack of connective tissue between entries isn't helping matters at all. They need to start seeing things through to their logical conclusions, even if they are going to minimize the importance of a particular arc.
