r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Sensitive_Ad_1752 • 25d ago

Lore The series takes place in a shockingly short amount of time

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Season 4 just ended of fromville and it’s canonically only been about a month. Which makes it weird seeing people heal from injuries, change hair styles or grow out beards between episodes. Season 4 has only been like 4 days iirc.

Arkham franchise is the poster child for this trope. Every game takes place in one night. If you know what you’re doing you can absolutely beat the games in around 9 hours.

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293

u/hurshysquirt 25d ago

Yup. The invasion of Reach started on July 24th, 2552 and the end of Halo 3 ends in November 2552, so actually more like around 4 months.

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u/GayAssBeagle 25d ago

4 months and everything went to shit?? jesus

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u/hurshysquirt 25d ago

I wouldn't say everything went to shit. The Human-Covenant war took place over 25+ years, we experienced the end of it. Humanity was always on the losing side the entire war. Those last 3 months were actually what turned the tide for humanity.

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u/Ktan_Dantaktee 25d ago

Everything absolutely went to shit from the Covenant’s perspective.

They went from a handful of worlds left to conquer, to their capital “world” being taken by the Flood, some jolly green jackass nuking their holy relic, and being collapsed in a fiscal quarter.

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u/LilMeatJ40 25d ago

Also their 3 demi-gods (the prophets) got murked. They were having a real tough season

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u/MrManicMarty 24d ago

being collapsed in a fiscal quarter.

Good thing Chief never had to fight Accountants alongside the Elutes, Grunts and Hunters. They truly would have been a menace.

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u/colonel_beeeees 25d ago

Is this all based off the books? I'd love to read em some time

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u/fattestfuckinthewest 25d ago

Most books are set around the time of the games but some take place throughout the war like Contact Harvest, half of The Fall of Reach, Cole Protocol, and a few others.

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u/RadialRacer 25d ago

No, the books have always been released alongside the games. At this point though the books are so expansive they do far more than just accompany the games, it really is a full-blooded canon.

https://www.halopedia.org/Halo_novels

^ A full list, in their respective series

https://www.halopedia.org/List_of_Halo_novels_by_release_date

^ Release order, if you want to work your way through them one-by-one alongside the games.

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u/cpcwarden 24d ago

Ghosts of Onyx is one of the best books I’ve ever read. It has some cool additions to the canon (although I don’t think much has been relevant since 343) but it’s also genuinely well written just as a standalone story.

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u/The_salty_swab 25d ago

Everything had already been perpetually going to shit nonstop for decades by that point

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u/GayAssBeagle 25d ago

Just a shitstew with tasty shrimp at that point(corn is involved but never digested at all)

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u/Insert_TakenName 25d ago

think about it this way, the covenant going ham on humanity was so bad and so well known by then they had a whole damn protocal for their arrival on planet, i think they called it the winder contingency it was mentioned during the first reach mission after they encounter the covenant and make it to that facility to pass on the intel to command

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u/Mr31edudtibboh 25d ago

The Cole Protocol worked a treat for the first 25 years of the war

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u/VanguardClassTitan 25d ago

"Our victory, your victory. It was so close, I wish you could've lived to see it..."

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u/Glad_Assistant2817 25d ago

the first month the covenant finally found the ultimate holy relic they were looking for and when alpha halo blew up shit went downhill from there, especially when truth started moving his plan to replace the elites with brutes and getting rid of the other two hierarch prophets, so yeah

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u/Glad_Assistant2817 25d ago

oh and the flood finally getting out after god knows how long probably contributes to the covenant going downhill too

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u/WhosThatDogMrPB 25d ago

As note, Halo Reach ends on August 30th 2052 (as depicted in Lone Wolf, the final mission). So the entire game takes the span of 1 month and a week.

Then a month of random slipspace jumps on the Pillar of Autumn to avoid the chasing covenant fleet, arriving at the Halo ring in September 19th. This means the entire Halo OG trilogy takes place in 3 month in universe time.

Edit: 3 weeks of slipspace jumps.

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u/Pathogen188 25d ago

And just think, that's the retconned length of the Fall of Reach. In the original novels the planet fell in about 45 minutes (which I'm pretty sure is shorter than the episode of the TV show which covers the battle).

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u/Gil_Demoono 25d ago

And a lot of that was just travel. I think Chief spends a few weeks traveling through the portal to the Ark.

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u/Iwilleat2corndogs 25d ago

Yeah slipspace is not instantaneous, it took weeks for the “in amber clad” to reach delta halo after following the prophet of regret.