When he was the lead writer for 343 Industries, Jeremy Patenaude helped shaped the science fiction space opera saga told by the Halo video games, while also writing Halo: The Essential Visual Guide, co-writing Halo Mythos, and penning the short story “Sacrifice” that was included in a now unavailable special edition of Troy Denning’s novel Halo: Shadows Of Reach.
But while he may not work for 343 anymore (and 343 is Halo Studios now), he’s still contributing to the Halo saga with the new novel Halo: Empty Throne (paperback, Kindle, audiobook).
In the following email interview, Patenaude talks about what inspired and influence this sci-fi story, as well as where it fits into the Halo-verse.
To begin, what is Halo: Empty Throne about, and when and where is it set in relation to both the games and the other Halo novels?
Broadly speaking, Empty Throne deals with the events which immediately precede the opening cinematic of Halo Infinite. It’s somewhat in lockstep with Troy Denning’s Shadows Of Reach and Outcasts, and just before most of the events in Kelly Gay’s Rubicon Protocol.
Rather than interact with Infinity’s assault on Zeta Halo and the subsequent fallout of that operation (which all of the above do), Empty Throne tells the story of what’s happening back at the ranch, with the many characters not involved in that specific operation. Humanity’s heroes and enemies were not sitting on their hands and waiting around to see what would happen.
Empty Throne follows a number of key figures who are caught up in a breakneck race against time (and one another) to fill a power vacuum that could in many ways determine the outcome of a post-Cortana galaxy. These are personalities who have deep roots in Halo‘s history, so their individual motivations and threads do not appear de novo — in many ways, they are the culmination of everything that’s come before.
Did you originally come up with the idea for Halo: Empty Throne thinking it might work for the game, like maybe as an add-on for Halo 5: Guardians, or were you trying to think of an idea for a novel?
I think this was always a novel in my mind. There are too many narrative complexities that would likely have a hard time translating well into the game space, especially if we’re thinking of a shooter.
That said, one specific sequence early in the book where a Spartan takes down an entire convoy of frigates feels like it could be a really entertaining Halo mission.
So could dogfighting in war sphinxes.
And was it always the idea that you would write this book, or that someone else would? Because there’s been times when 343 came up with an idea and then asked an author to actually write it.
Coming off Halo Infinite‘s launch, there was a desire internally to have a novel that helped frame and contextualize the universe for some of our newer players — essentially a single book that could bring everyone up to speed on the last twenty years while, at the same time, introducing a new generation of heroes and villains. Since most of my work at Microsoft involved universe building behind the scenes and helping our authors tell their stories in that broader space, I started personally noodling on this idea until it became an outline.
The more I considered the complexities of such a book, the more I felt like this was probably something that needed to be developed in-house. In my view, there were too many potential stress points for us to put that burden on an external author, as amazing as they all are. Working on licensed products is already challenging enough for authors on the outside, and this kind of project would have been needle-threading a field of landmines.
Eventually those outlines and discussions with Jeff Easterling [a franchise and narrative writer at 343, and co-author of Halo: Mythos] resulted in plans to write this novel myself. And after leaving the studio in early 2022, the Halo team was gracious enough to let me finish the fight on this project.
So then, where did you get the idea for Halo: Empty Throne?
To be honest, the book’s various story threads all come from different sources.
The central story, at least for me, is probably the Spartan and the young girl on the cover. The seed of that story originated way back, while working with Eric Nylund as he wrote Halsey’s Journal for The Fall Of Reach (circa 2010). Most of the specifics of that story, however, started to develop for me around 2014 / 2015. The current version features the same characters and overall arc, though obviously in a very different context now since that was long before Halo Infinite.
Everything else in Empty Throne pretty much flowed from narrative ideas that surfaced during Infinite‘s development and more than a few late-night Halo Encyclopedia editing sessions over Thai food with Jeff Easterling. To that end, though this novel began as onboarding effort for new Halo players, I still wanted its feet firmly planted in Halo‘s deep and rich lore so that it felt familiar to some of the earliest Halo stories. I didn’t want to have new characters that are totally unrelated to the past — I wanted them to be the next generation of characters we’ve already known and loved for decades. As an old school Halo fan who pored over the first Halo novels over twenty years ago, my hope was to capture some of that magic here while setting the table for future exploration.
And, as you said, Halo: Infinite was already out…
Infinite was already out when I began writing this, but some of the conversations that occurred during the course of the game’s development fed into Empty Throne‘s story. It was certainly easier with the game already being out in the wild, because the variables were mostly “known knowns.” When a book is being developed in parallel with a game’s development, it can have all sorts of challenges and pressure points that we didn’t really have here.
That being said, most of the writing for this book did occur when I wasn’t on the team anymore, and so I hadn’t been read-in to all their current top secret plans. Having been on that side of the fence for twelve years, for the first time I was on the receiving end of tasting my own medicine.
That said, I’m actually surprised they let me get away with as much of the crazy stuff I wanted to include as I did. If I had still been there, I would have probably shot some of that down. (Thanks, Jeff and Alex for looking the other way.)
Like other Halo novels, Halo: Empty Throne is a sci-fi space opera novel. But are there any other genres at work in this story? For instance, with so much of it being about a rogue A.I., do you think it might be a little cyberpunk?
I think it’s still firmly in sci-fi space opera territory. Empty Throne has plenty of large-scale naval battles, dangerous encounters with alien critters, and an ancient technology that everyone seems to be after. In fact, on that last one, with no certainty that I’d ever have another opportunity to tell a story in the Halo universe, I wanted to tell a distinctively Halo story in this book, even if that meant relying on some familiar and occasionally controversial tropes (i.e. the ineffable Forerunner tech MacGuffin).
For me, more important than treading brand new ground, I wanted this book to capture the spirit of the earlier Halo stories, which all came with similar themes and concepts. And since this book would be a starting point for a number of new characters and plot threads going forward, it was important to me that it wasn’t too exotic and experimental in its format — I wanted it to feel like a classic Halo novel. If new readers were introduced to Halo in this book, it really needed to call back to Halo’s legacy of storytelling in a real way.
All that being said, there are more than a few spy thriller moments in Empty Throne: deep espionage, intrigue, betrayal, 5D chess played by government agents we’ve never known the identities to (but now do!), and a handful of SCIF-style briefings. Oh, yeah, there’s also a high-speed siege bike chase in a massive city. So, maybe this book also has something for fans of Tom Clancy and Mission: Impossible?
Halo: Empty Throne is your first novel. Are there any other writers, or specific stories, that had an influence on either what you wrote in Halo: Empty Throne or how you wrote it?
The words “first novel” sound terrifying to me. Thank you for that.
You’re welcome.
Most of my work in Halo was done sub rosa where there is safety in numbers and anonymity. I worked on several stories that don’t have my name attached to them, but that’s certainly not the case with this one. Like I said, terrifying.
In terms of influence, Halo‘s former and existing authors are honestly the first that come to mind. Hopefully people see a threading of style that echoes the work of folks like Eric Nylund, Joseph Staten, Troy Denning, and Kelly Gay. It was really important to me for this story to both feel familiar to our old readers while introducing the key aspects of our canon to potential new ones.
In addition to that, I think most of my universe building toolset comes from what I’ve learned from J.R.R. Tolkien (I’m sure no one has ever said that before!) and the more introspective, philosophical bits are probably from C.S. Lewis. I’m a big fan of The Silmarillion and Perelandra.
What about non-literary influences; was Halo: Empty Throne influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games? Aside from the Halo ones, of course.
Not a lot of non-literary influences, to be honest, but I did discover that I’m most productive writing prose while listening to instrumental post-rock, post-hardcore, and djent. While writing this book, I was definitely impacting my Spotify Wrapped in some interesting ways: Cloudkicker, Silent Planet, Olympus Lenticular, and Chris Turner’s Steezy, to name just a few. So maybe they were all influences? I’ll let the readers judge.
Some Halo novels have been stand-alone stories, but some have been part of subseries within the Halo series. Kelly Gay’s Smoke And Shadow, Renegades, and Point Of Light are one example, as they’re in what’s referred to as the Rion Forge & Ace Of Spades novels. At the risk of terrifying you again, is Halo: Empty Throne a stand-alone novel within the Halo-verse or the first in a subseries?
Most of those series like Kelly’s were by-design (at least in my mind), though some kind of developed over time. When you have incredible authors, it’s easy to bring them back to the table and let them play around in a specific corner of the universe they’ve already carved out.
Is Empty Throne one of those? I think this book is certainly just the beginning for its characters and their stories, but I’m not entirely sure who will be writing those and whether they’ll be part of a single series or even separate ones. I think we’ve created enough room for either, but that’s probably more of a Halo Studios question?
Now, this is normally the point when I ask the person who wrote a Halo novel if they think their story could work in the game. But as you said, Halo: Empty Throne would not.
Certain parts could definitely be compelling missions in a Halo shooter. Who wouldn’t want to infiltrate an old drydocked frigate in the slums of Venezia with a hybrid team of Spartan-IIs and Sangheili?
But the entire novel probably wouldn’t work for reasons that I think will obvious as one reads through it. There’s a lot of backstory to cover when you’re setting the stage of any Halo novel, no less one with the intent of gathering up many of the threads from two decades of storytelling and getting everyone up to speed in one fell swoop. There’s a good bit of exposition and some tense discussions that probably wouldn’t translate well, at least, for a shooter. But maybe another genre?
Finally, if someone enjoys Halo: Empty Throne, which previous Halo novel would you suggest they read next?
I’ll suggest three for slightly different reasons:
Kelly Gay’s Rubicon Protocol, because it helps contextualize and frame the parallel operation in Halo Infinite, and in many ways, it both flows from and runs alongside some of the key events of Empty Throne. Also, Kelly is absurdly talented.
Troy Denning’s Shadows Of Reach, because I think it’s a master class in military sci-fi that does a great job capturing the intensity and glory of Eric Nylund’s first Halo novel, The Fall Of Reach. It also has some similar themes and notes with Empty Throne that I think complement each other well.
Joseph Staten’s Contact Harvest. This is probably my personal favorite Halo novel and hopefully readers of Empty Throne will see how much inspiration I drew from it. There was so much universe building and so many memorable characters in that book. I think Empty Throne is the first full-length novel since Staten’s where someone who worked directly on the IP was writing it. That’s a tough act to follow. I hope this book did some measure of justice to Staten’s storytelling legacy there.
