Pre-amble
I've always loved video games. Still play my NES and N64 to this day, wish to hell I still had a Sega. Some classic games on those systems like Tecmo Superbowl, Goldeneye and NHL 95 respectively. The big catalyst however, was my introduction to Halo and the Xbox sometime in late 2001.
(My memory is escaping me at the moment but it may have been the summer of 2002 when Brett first got an xbox with Halo. I recall playing it at his house on Hess Road at night in the sweltering heat. And since the game didn't launch until November of 2001, summer of '02 is making sense, but then Brett doesn't wait that long to get shit so probably he got it around Christmas that year and I'm just confusing events from 5 years ago. But I digress.)
Halo just felt natural the first time I played it. The xbox controller (the big boy not the gay s-type) just molded into my hands as if it had been there all my life. And i was good at it, much like Goldeneye, very good. Since I had no real money to speak of at the time, I couldn't afford the $300+ price tag, and subsequently spent a lot of time over at Brett's old place on Hess, playing the campaign and multi-player. Eventually other people got xbox's and we began to utilize the system link feature and attracted larger crowds for multi-player.
The thing with me and video games is this. They have to be fun to play. They need a good replay value, and most importantly, they need a good story line. With Goldeneye, you were James Bond, re-inacting the hit movie. With sports games, you're trying to win a championship. Halo was the first shooter game I ever played that had an interesting and deep backstory to it. The main character is a genetically enhanced super-soldier fighting a relentless alien enemy hell bent on destorying humanity in the semi-near future.
Soon after the game was released, we discoved there was a novel that acted as a prequel to the game and a second novel that re-hashed and expounded on events in the game. Around that time, Halo 2 was not far off on the horizon as was a third novel. Halo: First Strike came out a few months before the Halo 2 game and it remains one of the better sci-fi books i've ever read. I will say that after reading those 3 novels, I was completely hooked into the story line. Its just so deep and compelling you can't help but love it. It often gets overlooked by outsiders. (With a pending movie on horizon its fixing to become the next Star Wars.)
Then, in Novemeber 2004, Halo 2 was released. To celebrate, I staged a 36 hour plus gaming session at my house with about 15 other people. Picked the game up at midnight, rushed back to my house with shawn and bandit and launched into the campaign mode, eager to see what the story had in store. Somewhere around 10am, I sat back on my futon, miffed. The game was over, a huge cliff-hanger type ending, and many a question and feeling of disbelief running through my head. A short break followed then around 1 we began an epic 14 hour. 16 man multiplayer session. But all the while I couldn't stop thinking about the story. It had taken a departure from the awesome path the first game and the novels had laid out and I wasnt sure I liked it. Over the next few months a lot of negativity was published about the game's ending and the plot. Being that I had some free time and was at the time, being a huge nerd, I decided to write my own halo story, just for fun, the way I thought things should have unfolded. So I did. Then, like with all things I try to do, I got busy and forgot about it for 2 years.
Enter this year, 2006. News came out there was a 4th Halo novel in the works and silence had been broken about Halo 3 coming out for the 360 in 2007. The news of another halo novel reminded me I had started to write one myself. I dusted it off and added a little to it and did some editing. Then i learned of a contest in which participants could win an advanced signed copy of the new book if they submitted an original piece of Halo fiction. The catch, had to be 5,000-12,000 words. So I started outlining and eventually got down to more writing. The deadline for the contest was in October. Needless to say I procrastinated and never finished the story, though I did outline the whole thing. Ive since read the latest novel, "Ghosts of Oynx" and I must say it disappointed me. I still think the story that I started writing in 2004 then added onto in 2006 is pretty sweet.
In light of this I'm gonna start posting the chapters here. It was planned out to be 5 chapters, not including the prologue and epilogue. I have completed the prologue, and the first 2 chapters, with part of chapters 3 and 4. So starting tomorrow, I will post the prologue, then the rest of the chapters every couple days. I'm mainly doing this so i'll actually finish the damn thing and because I enjoy it. So like i said, I'm a nerd and this post probably bored the hell out of you if you made it this far but tomorrow will be good. Promise.
