343’s ‘Halo’ Trilogy No Longer Just A Trilogy, Here’s What That Means

GameSpot UK is reporting that 343 Industries’ post-Bungie Halo trilogy – or Reclaimer story – is no longer confined to just Halo 4, 5 and 6, but tons of games beyond that. This explains a lot regarding why their tease during the Microsoft conference was number- and subtitle-less. But what does it really mean? Let’s dig in a little deeper.

Halo 4 Can Be The Bridge Story It Always Wanted To Be

In my Halo 4 review, like many others out there, I complained about the game’s story. It began and ended in a kind of self-encapsulated experience without much explanation about who the Didact was or why you were fighting him. It felt like you were being introduced to a story-in-progress that had started with the Forerunner books and ended with you not reading the Forerunner books and wondering what the hell was going on. Science-fiction has this terrible habit of going for the unjustified bigger threat with the larger laser in each new iteration to raise the dramatic stakes and Halo 4 was no different. (Yeah, I realize that Bungie set up the Forerunners to do this, but hear me out.) As that game ended, I was left wondering where they could possibly take the story as they’d sewn up everything a bit too much, leaving Halo 4 to feel like it was a bridge story to another trilogy, rather than the first act of something larger. With all these new stories that Microsoft is letting 343 build out the universe proper.