As many of you know Halo was a huge sucess, and I feel that the main reason for it, besides the many ways to kill someone, was the story and its characters. I mean who doesn't like watching those interludes and such. Myself having read the books behind the series can see the many shortcomings in the game, would of loved to have seen the Battle for the Butte as described in the book by the Helljumpers but anyway back to the point.

In Halo 2 as we have all seen; the Covenant are on Earth and so is the Master Chief. Sounds like a great time right, well this is where I am concerned, what gave Halo all of its depth will not be there in Halo 2. Eric Nylund (the author of the series), recently released the next book in the series, First Strike. In it he details that the Covenant do in fact know the location of Earth and are moving to strike it with about 500 assault class cruisers, but they are stopped thanks to the heroific efforts of the Master Chief and his SPARTAN team. I am not sure of all the details yet, but it does seem that Microsoft plans to continue to the story with a single Spartan, when in fact three survive from Reach, they are resecued by the heroic commander.

I do hope and pray that Microsoft is working closlely with the author of the series and that he has given them some insight into where he is taking Halo, if not there is a possibility that Halo 2 will not live up to Halo in terms of story, in terms of Multiplayer I cant wait to get my hands on it. A lack of story will hardly take away from what makes Multiplayer so good, but being able to kill people many different ways wont win in the "shock and awe" its predecessor earned and we all want Halo to say popular so as to see the conclusion of the novels as well as maybe seeing Microsoft following the first book in the series (THe Fall of Reach) that allows us to experience Spartan Training, until then I will continue to scour the internet for up dates to this post.