Halo Story Bible

The cover of one version of the Halo Story Bible.

"It is the ponderous collection of lies, damned lies, and half-truths from which the entire Halo Universe is constructed."

— Robert McLees

The Halo Story Bible, often shortened as the Story Bible, is a reference document created by Bungie to record information about the Halo universe for easy reference. As a developer's text, the Story Bible contains information to ensure consistency throughout the development of the Halo franchise.

The story bible originated as a document that could be printed as a series of ringbound folders, though over time has since expanded into an internal wiki for use by developers at Halo Studios following Bungie's departure from the franchise. This internal wiki is named the Halo Library, after the eponymous locations in the Halo games.

Overview

Bungie Story Bible and Halo Movie Companion

The only public image of the Halo Movie Companion, detailing the Grunts.

" You have read the official Halo Bible, haven’t you? Sadly, neither have I nor most of the millions of fellow Halo fans. As you may know, reading the Halo Bible is a privilege reserved for an extreme few who have an explicit and authorized “need to know”. The rest of the world is left to think, theorize, question, ponder, speculate and generally “float and sputter”."

— Recon Number 59 on Bungie.net.

The Story Bible (also known as the "Bungie Story Bible") originated during the production of Halo: Combat Evolved as part of supplementary material produced to support the game and other media like the novels. After Bungie's acquisition by Microsoft in 2000, Microsoft brought in the Microsoft Franchise Development Group (MSDFG) to help develop the world of the game. Eric Trautmann, Brannon Boren, Doug Zartman, and Halo: The Fall of Reach author Eric Nylund were responsible for creating the original Story Bible document alongside Bungie. Eric Nylund used the Story Bible extensively while writing The Fall of Reach. The strained relationship between Microsoft and Bungie in this period meant that Bungie almost cancelled The Fall of Reach, escalating into a confrontation in which Trautmann threatened to delete his documentation, something only resolved by the intervention of senior Microsoft executive Ed Fries. Ultimately Trautmann and Boren continued to work on the Story Bible in exchange for writing and editing dialogue for Combat Evolved, though this tension remained and Trautmann eventually ended his involvement with Halo after the release of The Art of Halo: Creating a Virtual World. While writing Halo: First Strike, Nylund credited the work done by Trautmann and Boren for making his job much easier.

After Trautmann's departure from the series, stewardship of the story bible became the domain of Robert McLees (one of the artists who had been instrumental to Combat Evolved and Halo 2) alongside Frank O'Connor. McLees noted that in the studio's early days everyone "wore multiple hats", so he had always been involved in writing to some degree, but fell into the role more as production continued. During the production of the Halo film around 2005, a section of the story bible titled the Halo Movie Companion was produced by Bungie for Peter Jackson, WingNut Interactive, and WETA Workshop to use as reference detailing the various aliens and technology of the Halo universe. The Halo Movie Companion was produced by Bungie's community team (including Lorraine McLees) in collaboration with an external studio, Kick Design. McLees later noted that much of the material in the early years of the franchise had been produced without much oversight from Bungie due to the rapid pace of production, so the Halo Movie Companion was the first time that the studio had ever properly sifted through their archives and publications to create a cohesive internal document.

When writing entries for the bible McLees would often consult other staff members at Bungie for their expertise, particularly if they had been instrumental in the creation of certain elements of the fiction, or other times make up content himself based on the needs of production and the questions asked by artists. McLees also noted that aesthetic satisfaction and "feeling good" was a priority for him over being specifically accurate to science, economics, or history. Similarly, he also noted that he had no qualms with overwriting elements of the fiction that he considered "crazy bad" such as the "110mm rotary cannons" described in First Strike. On the other hand, information that could be sourced from game assets (such as sizes, speeds, and so forth) was generally kept. Joseph Staten also consulted with McLees and O'Connor, the "keepers of the story bible", while writing the 2007 novel Halo: Contact Harvest.

Starlight Runner story bible (2008-2010)

In 2007 Bungie split off from Microsoft and became an independent studio again after seven years. Part of this agreement stipulated that Microsoft were to keep the Halo intellectual property, which would remain under development by a new dedicated studio 343 Industries. Around 2008 Microsoft contacted a veteran transmedia specialist company Starlight Runner for the task of assembling a new and updated Halo Story Bible. According to Starlight Runner's CEO Jeff Gomez, assembling the new Halo Story Bible was one of the biggest challenges of their career, accounting for everything seen in the Halo universe up until that point and one of the largest such story bibles they had ever created. The Starlight Runner story bible was around 2,000 pages in length, with Gomez citing the task of linking the Forerunners to the modern Halo story in a satisfying manner the most difficult aspect of production. Christopher Schlerf worked on the Starlight Runner story bible around this time, and later joined 343 Industries as the lead writer on Halo 4. Overall the writing process for Starlight Runner's story bible took around a year and a half.

During a panel at PAX for Halo 3: ODST's production in 2009, Joseph Staten stated that, if printed and stacked, the Halo bible would be around 12-13" (30-33cm) in height. Staten also noted that during the later years of Bungie's work on Halo they collaborated with 343 Industries to create, update, and maintain a joint story bible with them, through which projects like ODST (and presumably Halo: Reach) could be included.

Under 343 Industries, custodianship of the Story Bible remained the duty of Frank O'Connor, who had moved from Bungie to the new studio and now held the title of Franchise Manager. Around 2010 the bible was still a physical document which was printed and bound across four black-and-silver looseleaf binders which were kept locked inside a metal cabinet in the studio. These could only be accessed by O'Connor, and specific sections were sent to external authors when working on Halo material as-relevant to their projects. The Forerunner Saga author Greg Bear was sent a section of the Story Bible that weighed 10 pounds (4.5 kg) and was watermarked with unique codes so that any leaks could be traced back to their origin. Starlight Runner's story bible, alongside Bungie's Halo Companion for the Halo film project, were provided to the studios involved in the production of Halo Legends for use in creating those animated shorts. According to O'Connor, the release of the Halo Encyclopedia (2009 edition) was not a release of the story bible, though the book's editor Tobias Buckell was provided portions of it for use in his contributions to both it and his other stories Halo: The Cole Protocol and Dirt. In a 2013 keynote speech, O'Connor estimated that around "85%" of the Story Bible's contents were public knowledge.

Halo Library

"You have Halopedia and Halo Nation, those are the public wikis, we actually have an internal one for us. We have the Library and the Index, which is a repository of information - everything from images and concept art to just full encyclopedic articles, and in those encyclopedic articles we have information on stuff that is not public you know, holes that are filled in, information that maybe is for a future telling or is fodder for a different time."

— Jeff Easterling discussing the internal wiki at 343 Industries in 2018.

343 eventually formed the Franchise Team within the studio, bringing on writers Jeremy Patenaude, Jeff Easterling, and Kenneth Peters to oversee the Halo canon. In 2023 Patenaude left 343 Industries and was replaced by Alex Wakeford. Between 2015 and 2016 343 Industries regularly published snippets from the Story Bible on Halo Waypoint and Halo Channel as "Universe" encyclopedia entries. After this time they worked to collate information from the past 20 years of fiction into an internal wiki named the Halo Library, including cohesive lists of colonies and their status, in-universe companies and signage, and more. This was necessary as the Halo franchise had grown so large that a printed physical document was unsustainable to manage, and the story bible that existed at the time had not been sufficiently updated. The internal wiki is more suited for supplying reference to external outsource developers, comic artists, writers, and the production for the Halo TV show.

During the development of Halo Mythos: A Guide to the Story of Halo, new additions were incorporated into the story bible to fill gaps and bridge parts of the Halo Universe. This occurred again with Halo: Warfleet, with thousands of words written about spacecraft in the Halo setting that ultimately went unused in the final book but remain in the Story Bible (now an internal wiki rather than a print document) for future reference. The 2022 edition of the Halo Encyclopedia incorporated lots of material from the Halo Library, alongside new material written for the book.

343 Industries (now Halo Studios) considers unpublished material from internal documentation to be apocrypha, that is; not canon until officially-published and subject to change at any time, but useful for other developers and writers to reference.

Released entries

Some less-sensitive material from the Story Bible was published in the Halo: Combat Evolved: Sybex Official Strategies & Secrets strategy guide. Various portions of the Story Bible, including weapon- and vehicle-related information, have been posted on Bungie.net as well. The Halo Encyclopedia (2009 edition) also contains new information on canon, and some of its content originated from the Story Bible.

In 2007 several entries on weapons were released on Bungie.net as a series of reports titled Machines, Materiel and Munitions from the Human-Covenant Conflict, 2525 - Present.

Versions

• Version 5.0: by November-December 2001, the 5th version of the Story Bible had been created. Eric Trautmann, with Brannon Boren, John Howard, Eric Nylund and Doug Zartman are credited as preparers.

• Version 6.0: By April 21 2003, the 6th version of the Story Bible had been created. William C. Dietz was added to the credits.

Trivia

• During a private question and answer session, Martin O'Donnell jokingly claimed that he had memorized every chapter and verse of the Halo Story Bible.
• On February 12, 2010, both Martin O'Donnell and Frank O'Connor joined host Chris Cashman in his booth during a special session of 1 vs 100. When answering a fan's question about continuity in the Halo universe, both of them jokingly referred to the Halo Story Bible.