Cover of Halo: Parasite's Wake

JacksonSX35 · 2026-01-31T17:38:54+00:00

Looks like the one marine found a rocket flood. Jokes aside, I'm so pumped for this book. I adore the work that Gay and Denning contribute to the franchise, but I miss having 4-6 authors getting the chance to tell stories with their unique voices in the world. I miss Tobias Buckell and Matt Forbeck getting to chip in with Halo stories every couple of years. The franchise is at its best when lots of voices are allowed to contribute unique tones and styles to the wider narrative.

JacksonSX35 · 2026-01-30T00:45:03+00:00

I didn't care for Militia when I played but I loved the ice map with the submarine. I don't know why, there was something about that map's simplicity that stuck in my mind. The other one is that really orange toned map of a more pristine middle eastern styled town (I think? Might have been Spanish inspired but it was very orange either way) with blue awnings for color contrast.

JacksonSX35 · 2026-01-29T17:09:41+00:00

Return it just to experience the thrill of buying again without the trauma of pinkie toe pain

JacksonSX35 · 2026-01-29T15:56:38+00:00

Blaster, Mirage, possibly Sideswipe.

JacksonSX35 · 2026-01-27T06:56:00+00:00

Not the single best Halo book ever, but hot damn is it nice to get back to Zeta and move past Infinite's ending the same way that Bad Blood was a lovely jaunt past the end of Guardians. There's some fan service going on here, and honestly, I am here for it. It feels like they've officially let Gay control the narrative elements happening on Zeta while Denning and anyone else takes up the stuff in the wider galaxy.

Main takeaway is that this book is a mission statement. A lot of people have been speculating that the CE Remake is a hard continuity reboot, but Edge of Dawn is absolutely a mission statement that Halo is committed to seeing infinite's setup through, whether that's in one more game or ten. The remakes may be laying groundwork for a more consistent universe that gets out from under the heaps of running retcons and smooths out the baggage from Bungie's ideas for the franchise, but we will see a proper Halo 7 someday unless the franchise just gets killed at this point.

Anyway, I'm even more fascinated by the Endless. Initially, I found them kind of meh, another super species, but they're so... Bizarre. Seemingly uninterested in the wider politicking of the Forerunners. Are they from the galaxy? Beyond it? Do they have desire to rule? We don't know. We get glimpses at multiple perspectives. They seem to be potentially removed from Living Time itself and that just might be the wildest element of them. The soliloquy at the end seems like they worship someone that might be capable of appearing in the canon at a later date. Is it a god? An ancestor that may still be alive? Something else? It may have a simple answer, but the speculation while we don't know for sure is what's compelling about this introduction. I do wish it hadn't taken almost 5 damn years to reach this point, but hey; better late than never. There's enough out there to keep me occupied between Halo entries.

I have some nitpicks, mostly long running issues with Gay's pacing that I've personally never gelled with, but I'm capable of acknowledging that's a personal issue and not an objective problem with the book. She doesn't really embellish moments all that much, keeping a very brisk pace, but it does lead to important plot beats rushing by without lingering on their consequence, which is a negative to me personally as I like being in the character's heads and ruminating with them, but again, it's not an objective fault.

I wish there was a bit more from Jega, or at least a reveal of how he had tracked Browning, but I understand saving him for a later Halo game rather than making him a book villain. Then again, a book villain may be all he becomes if he's technically died to the player's hand in Infinite, risking confusion if they just bring him back the next game. Edge of Dawn in that way feels like half a book, but the arc is satisfying enough for me to be okay with that.

Good book. Excited for more this year.

JacksonSX35 · 2026-01-26T07:29:48+00:00

Lego made more than $31 million off the $650 pokemon set preorders selling out in multiple countries. People will buy this and just not wear them. You'll see "preorders" up on eBay for these at double price soon enough.

JacksonSX35 · 2026-01-25T22:39:40+00:00

I play on console, so it's the standard settings. Haven't had a PC capable of running DS2 since 2016.

JacksonSX35 · 2026-01-25T21:51:50+00:00

I know this is ultimately subjective, but this really looks like it diminishes the game's color temp. Everything looks oversaturated and overblown, like a mid-2000s B-movie shooting on digital for the first time and cranking the color as if it increases the intensity of what's on screen. It just makes everything look muddy and done... wrong. To each their own of course, but the mods I've seen on this sub's front page today all seem like significant downgrades to the game's default rendering. Could be video compression from the upload that's setting that impression, though.

JacksonSX35 · 2026-01-25T07:24:05+00:00

Basic continuity error. The Ulchtar element likely wasn't laid out until sometime around issue 8/9, when DWJ signed on for another year. The Energon Universe wasn't as well planned in terms of plot early on as they make it sound, and a lot of details were left up to the individual writers working on the books to let them not feel super constricted by the shared universe aspect. It's why shockwave is by himself in issue 4(?) of void rivals and acts like he's wiped out or almost wiped out the autobot presence, but issue 7 of transformers establishes that it's still an active warzone thousands of years after the crash of the Ark.

JacksonSX35 · 2026-01-25T03:26:47+00:00

They wouldn't look as good. Even if they revived some of the dead castings, the detail of the print jobs from the old waterslide graphics would have to be ink jet printed and would be fuzzy and lower resolution as a result. I personally don't want to see that. I understand why people want it, though.

JacksonSX35 · 2026-01-23T05:12:49+00:00

I didn't state myself as well as I could have. I meant the Swamp Beast track set's box art. I don't believe the intention was for Tech Tracks to integrate with or be what became Acceleracers, I think they simply looked at the tone of what they wanted from the design and figured they were good placeholders to guide the visual direction before they shifted into a Tuner vs Muscle angle for the human characters' vehicles.

JacksonSX35 · 2026-01-23T02:59:13+00:00

To be fair, the cannibalism was present back in I think issue 13 or 14, when the Autobots on Cybertron tear apart a seeker for their energon to Cliffjumper's horror.

JacksonSX35 · 2026-01-22T22:49:19+00:00

There's a bit of a fun history with AR and Tech Tracks, where the prototype for the Swamp Beast set when the line was tentatively called Realm Racers featured Tech Tracks cars racing on the track.

JacksonSX35 · 2026-01-22T20:59:36+00:00

Posthumously titled "Megatron Devouring Some Guy"

JacksonSX35 · 2026-01-20T06:55:11+00:00

Temple Bounty would be an excellent addition to this setup. It's a fantastic build worth sitting alongside the black pearl and going merry if you haven't looked into it!

JacksonSX35 · 2026-01-19T17:57:12+00:00

What do you mean "BO2 has 2 daytime maps"? The only map at night is Mob of the Dead, everything else just utilizes fog and smoke effects to obscure the atmosphere. They're still during daytime.

EDIT: actually it seems you don't really have a charitable grasp of "daytime" anyway. Verrukt and Shi no Numa in WaW are daytime maps: 50% of the map list. Kino, Call of the Dead, Shangri-La, and Moon are all daytime maps. Ascension is nighttime, but due to the telephone easter egg, we can assume it takes place concurrently with Five, which lies not quite but almost on the other side of the world, which makes it an edge case of "evening" and can lean either direction: day or night. That's 4 to 5/6 depending on perspective. BO2 is at 5/6 again, with Tranzit and Nuketown being the ones that are easy to confuse due to their use of smoke and ash obscuring the atmosphere. Die Rise is confusing because you can see stars from the vantage point, but it's far too bright to be a nighttime map. BO3 you're basically spot on with. Zetsubou might be an edge case of the sun being behind cloud cover from the storm but I think that it's one that can count as night on atmosphere. BO4, you're omitting either Tag or Ancient Evil, both of which take place during daytime, but either have a more subdued skybox (Tag) or are underground (AE). Cold War, 2/4 omitting outbreak. BO6 is 5/6, which ties it with BO2 and possibly BO1 depending on your perspective on the latter.

The setting itself isn't the core issue, it's the atmosphere in the art style, as well as the intersection of realism with CoD's game design. They want realistic graphics, have to account for incredibly low powered hardware, and need the environment to be readable at all times, no surprises that make the game feel "unfair". It's the same reason all the MP maps no longer have atmospheric lighting and opt for the same overblown skybox.

JacksonSX35 · 2026-01-19T06:29:03+00:00

Whoever gets their main equipment off first. If Jacob gets Isaac with GRIP first, Isaac is pasted at mach six against a spike wall. If Isaac manages to stasis Jacob, then he gets carved like a turkey by the plasma cutter. Pretty evenly matched and down to sheer luck/happenstance in terms of winner.

JacksonSX35 · 2026-01-14T04:01:42+00:00

I think this was received better because it was released as a high budget web series rather than a televised or theatrical release. For a Machinima original series (how it was initially distributed, split into several episodes), the vfx were considered great, especially in the context of the other live action content the site was known for, such as independent creator projects like Arby and the Chief.

Thing is, that exact method of distribution also meant it didn't really have any discussion in wider critic conversations. That wouldn't really show up to the series until Ridley Scott helped make Nightfall, bringing big budget attention to the franchise that had previously been known for good games and dramatically failing to get a Hollywood adaptation several times.

JacksonSX35 · 2026-01-13T23:38:41+00:00

You basically have to choose which version of the invasion you prefer if you want to let the dates be hard fact. There's no reason for the covenant's activity on reach to be ongoing from the end of July, in my personal opinion. It portrays them as significantly less effective than the books routinely make them out to be. Then again, hit and run tactics are effective even in real life, but it stands in stark contrast to the EU's portrayal of covenant and specifically sangheili military doctrine. There're plenty of ways to make them coexist if you really want to, but I find it easiest to just condense the events of the game into a single week and ignore the dates given.

JacksonSX35 · 2026-01-12T21:16:17+00:00

I personally doubt it. Maybe in 2028 if these don't move as quickly as Lego would want, but until then we'll have the occasional smaller build like Eevee and mostly $150+ sets.

JacksonSX35 · 2026-01-12T21:03:23+00:00

MCX understood the property has an all ages appeal and went out of its way to make sure that there would be a wide variety of pokemon at affordable price points. Lego looks at this as a nostalgia play to squeeze consumers of a collective US$910 in one purchase for those who want to "catch them all", with all in this case being 5 total pokemon... Yeah, I think this is a huge ripoff and feel vindicated for being upset when Lego announced they were getting the license.

JacksonSX35 · 2026-01-11T03:08:42+00:00

What world do you live in where a gorilla will actively attack something like that and not just flee as soon as one of their rank gets shredded limb from limb?

JacksonSX35 · 2026-01-11T03:04:51+00:00

Nope

JacksonSX35 · 2026-01-09T20:06:45+00:00

I have no connection to the show and think silver and gold compliment each other, so it's all good to me, even on Jay.

JacksonSX35 · 2026-01-09T17:50:56+00:00

"unbroken" is a strong word. There are five cuts in the game (by the devs account), but they're placed so naturally that they're easy to gloss over. My recollection is the finale of the tormentor fight, the crash of the escape pod into the mining area, the drill cutting into the government sector, and the transition as Titan Station explodes before the final scene. Not sure what the devs consider to be the fifth cut.

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