I hadn't read a Halo book in my life when I beat Halo 4. I've played every Halo game beforehowever, and I understood Halo 4 fine. The main thing people seem to bring up is "How are there evil covenant". Well, if you have an ounce of common sense, you would know that there are different people with different personalities. We are not a hive mind. No reason all of say the Elites would be like that too. You saying "All of the Covenant are good now" is like saying "All humans are good!". There are always going to be people split off, such as terrorists. In the case of Halo 4, it's this storm faction. Anyways, despite the fact that YOU DON"T NEED BOOK KNOWLEDGE, I don't know why you guys would be against that anyways. Do I need to remind you all of Halo 2? If you hadn't read the book before that, you have NO idea how Chief got back to Earth, how the hell Johnson is even alive, what these weird new Aliens known as Brutes are....wow, you guys are hard on Halo 4, and you're okay with all that? Discuss why people insist you need to read novels to understand Halo 4, and why they get so angry despite you actually needing to read the novels to understand Halo 2.