The video game industry has seen its fair share of expansive Sci-Fi universes, but few have been quite as prolific as Halo. Debuting all the way back in 2001 with Halo: Combat Evolved, the Halo series immediately made a name for itself not just for its stellar FPS gameplay and world design, but also for its engrossing narrative and enticing world-building. Though Halo: Combat Evolved can be completed in under 10 hours, it's abundantly clear from the get-go that there's much more to the Halo universe than first meets the eye.

Over the course of the next two decades, Halo would continue to flesh out its universe via a few different avenues. While Halo's five mainline sequels and its handful of spin-off games all added new characters and pivotal moments for the franchise's overarching timeline, it's actually Halo's vast library of novels and comics that have explored its galaxy the most, and it's these novels that should act as the basis for the future of Halo's video game output.

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Halo's Future Should Look to Times Before Combat Evolved

Halo's Past Has Already Been Well-Explored

The very first Halo game takes place in the year 2552, and the rest of the mainline series takes place in the decade that follows. In the canonical Halo timeline, the vast majority of the series takes place towards the end of the Great Human-Covenant War, and the most recent 343-led entries take place during a period of time known as the Reclaimer Era. While these periods are undoubtedly the most iconic in the franchise, there's a lot more story to Halo's universe, with much of it taking place before Halo: Combat Evolved.

When it comes to exploring the Halo universe's past, just two Halo games have tried to fill in those gaps, with Halo Reach taking place days before Combat Evolved, and Halo Wars taking place 21 years before it. While these games do a decent job of fleshing out the Human-Covenant War's factions and major events, they still only scratch the surface of the Halo timeline. For more of an extensive look at Halo's past, fans need to turn to the novels.

There are currently over 30 novels set in the Halo franchise, and each one goes a long way in fleshing out the surprisingly intricate Sci-Fi universe. The first set of Halo novels, most of which were written by Eric Nylund, actually established a good portion of the Halo universe that's since been used as the basis for the rest of the Halo game series, such as the Fall of Reach, the Spartan-III program, and the events that take place between Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2.

While many of Halo's most popular novels focus on the start of the Human-Covenant War, its early years, and the period following its end, there are also a handful of popular Halo novels that dive deep into the universe's past. Greg Bear's Forerunner Saga is the perfect example of this. Over the course of three books, the Forerunner Saga manages to flesh out almost 150,000 years of lore, detailing the rise and inevitable fall of the Forerunners, their war with humanity, and their eventual firing of the Halo Array.

Future Halo Games Should Adapt These Stories

The Halo universe is so much bigger than many fans realize, and it's about time the Halo games started capitalizing on all of that untapped lore. While it might be a tad confusing to base a whole Halo game around the ancient Forerunners, there's still a ton of material surrounding the start of the Great Human-Covenant War that could be adapted into a video game, with Joseph Staten's own Contact Harvest - a novel that details the very first encounter between humanity and the Covenant - being a great place to start.

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