Say what you will about the actual story of the Halo games, but there's definitely a rich universe there to dig into. There are the games, yes, but there are also novels, comics, and an anime series. And in addition to the upcoming anniversary edition of the original Halo: Combat Evolved, the series is celebrating its 10th birthday with a big hardcover art book called The Great Journey: The Art of Building Worlds. It's a meaty love letter to fans of the series, filled with plenty of insight into almost every aspect of its design, from cities and characters to technology and wildlife.

As the name implies, The Great Journey is primarily concerned with how the world of Halo was initially conceived. It's filled with detailed sketches and stunning concept paintings. The book's 190 pages are smartly organized into seven different categories, each looking at a specific aspect of the world, from architecture to weapons to characters. As you'd imagine from an art book it's somewhat light on text, but what is there does a great job of making sense of the images placed in front of you.

Aside from a brief introduction and a foreword by 343 Industries' Frank O'Connor, the actual text in the book is limited to a few paragraphs, and sometimes just a few lines, per page. It can be as little as a simple caption detailing a particular piece or as in-depth as actual quotes from the artists themselves describing why they made certain decisions. And this is where the book gets especially interesting. For example, when concept artist Shi Kai Wang explains how he came up with the look for the lowly grunts.

The grunts—well, they were fodders. But I wanted to make them fodders that looked iconic, which is where the backpack came in. Later we used those backpacks as a way to differentiate between variants, and ultimately a fun way to blow them apart.

You probably never put much thought into the design of the grunts when killing them en masse in the game. But accompanied by various sketches showing off vastly different versions of the backpacks and even frog-like creatures that were potential design options for the grunts, these kinds of small notes help put the art into context. They provide neat insights that will be especially interesting to those types of people who like to dig into the lore.

Of course, the reason that the text is relatively sparse is because this is an art book, and in this regard it doesn't disappoint. It's simply beautiful. There are large spreads of gorgeously detailed paintings, depicting everything from large-scale space battles to futuristic cityscapes. It's the kind of book that you can open up to just about any page and find a great-looking piece of art to enjoy. Because The Great Journey encompasses so much of the series—not only the different aspects of its creation but also all of the different games and even the anime—the art is varied and eclectic.

Basically, if you're the kind of person who's interested in how something as minute as the wildlife in the Halo games was conceived, you're likely to get a lot out of The Great Journey. It's pure fan service, yes, but it's very well done, offering not only a beautiful collection of art to pore over, but also interesting facts to make that art more meaningful to fans.