In September 2010, Halo changed forever. Halo: Reach, a prequel to Bungie’s Halo trilogy and the last game developed by the studio while under Microsoft’s umbrella, messed with established canon and introduced controversial features that fundamentally altered the Halo gameplay loop. (I still love you, Armor Lock.) Then Bungie moved on. But Halo sure didn’t.
To this day, fans still debate the impact Halo: Reach had on the series.
Released Sept. 14, 2010, for the Xbox 360, Reach details the Fall of Reach — a critical event in Halo lore when the antagonistic Covenant faction of religiously genocidal aliens bombs the human stronghold planet of Reach to smithereens. You’re cast as the faceless, nameless Noble Six, the newest member of an elite squad of armored supersoldiers (called Spartans) tasked with defending the planet. Spoiler alert: You fail.
Reach directly sets up the events of Halo: Combat Evolved, the first game in the series. At the start of Combat Evolved, the interstellar-capable Pillar of Autumn spaceship appears in the orbit of a mysterious ringworld called Halo. Onboard are Halo protagonists Master Chief John-117 (a Spartan) and Cortana (an AI). A Covenant fleet quickly arrives and attacks the ship.
So is Halo: Reach canon or not? It’s a question fans have debated ever since 2010. While the prequel thoroughly details the Fall of Reach itself, many of the overarching narrative events were chronicled in the final act of Eric Nylund’s 2001 novel The Fall of Reach, which is also considered canon. And there are some plot points that don’t exactly line up. (The Fall of Reach was also depicted in the now-canceled Paramount Plus Halo TV show. Though statedly set in an alternate timeline, everyone unanimously agrees this interpretation of the events was The Worst. We can ignore this one.)
In The Fall of Reach, Master Chief battles his way onto the Pillar of Autumn with Cortana in tow. But in Halo: Reach, Noble Six escorts Cortana to the ship; an end credits scene shows Master Chief already aboard, suspended in cryosleep. In The Fall of Reach, Cortana acquires the coordinates for Halo from an artifact from a lost civilization, found on a planet light years away from Reach. But in Halo: Reach, the coordinates are attained from an artifact already on Reach itself. Broad strokes, and there are a few more minor divergences — like implications about whether or not all Spartans besides Master Chief are killed in the Fall of Reach — but those are the big ones.
Almost immediately after the release of Halo: Reach, fans started raising these questions. “Which storyline is canon: Halo Reach, or Halo Fall of Reach? *spoilers*,” poses one thread on Gamefaqs from 2010. The following year, devotees of the original lore incorporated the website haloreach.isnotcanon.net, which is exactly what it says on the tin, even likening some of the events of Halo: Reach to the infamous addition of midi-chlorians to Star Wars fiction. (The site finally closed in 2024.)
You’d think time would quell these queries, but no. Both the primary r/Halo and r/HaloStory subreddit — the latter being dedicated entirely to discussion of Halo lore — are regularly populated by threads that restart the debate:
- “How exactly is Halo Reach not canon?” one fan asked in 2019, sparking chatter about which details Halo: Reach acknowledges and doesn’t.
- “Halo Reach and Fall of Reach cannot both be canon, you have to pick one and I am sorry to say, the game takes priority,” someone else said that year, resulting in a bunch of feedback from fans, in full “well actually” mode, claiming you don’t have to pick one.
- “Halo Reach vs The Fall of Reach, which one is canon?,” one fan asked in 2020, again wondering whether the games trumped the book canon.
- “Can we really consider Halo: Reach to be canon to the lore in any way?,” another person asked in 2022, complaining that “It’s clear bungie did not even try to make this game accurate or consistent.”
- In 2023: “As fans of both the book ‘Halo: the fall of reach’ and ‘Halo Reach’ what is the more definitive story of how Reach fell[?]”
- In 2024: “Cortana’s creation in Reach retcons the books.”
- In 2025, it’s simply: “Which reach is Canon?”
The boring answer is: Both versions are canon. Halopedia, the ultimate arbiter of Halo lore, decrees both The Fall of Reach and Halo: Reach as canon. Drawing on internal rules from Halo developer Halo Studios (née 343 Industries), Halopedia editors don’t apply a canonical hierarchy to various mediums, saying any officially sanctioned Halo media is part of the timeline. This effectively means you’re free to believe what you want, to justify any leaps of logic you need to square up the story in your head. (If you’re curious and have 30 minutes to spare, this video from the Halo Canon YouTube channel does yeoman’s work in untangling the threads.) Or you could continue to debate it. No one’s stopping you.
In this, Halo: Reach has proved at least one old cliché true. For all the Covenant’s pontification about the “Great Journey,” it’s not the journey that matters. It’s the destination.
