The game starts off with all the cool things happening between the first day of the Infinity arriving at the ring yet we don’t experience it, just a cutscene. Then there’s a 6 month time gap, just like Cyberpunk, which is literally what we wanted to play through. It was filled to the brim with exploring the ring, fighting the knockoff Covenant, killing sentinels, and being the man himself Master Chief. But we don’t experience it, and its funny how 343 copied that aspect of having all the cool things and story cut out and put in a “6 month jump forward” even though what we’re left with is a boring, and unending fetch level.
The worst part about Infinite is that its a giant retcon of the story so far, they got so lazy and weren’t able to fix the impossibly bad storyline that the infamously terrible comic book writer brian reed got them into, that 343 decided to scrap the whole stories of H4 and H5. Now we’re left with a clean slate, but it steals so much from CE (a 21 year old game that sold better than all of 343’s Halo’s combined) and even bases the entire campaign on the second mission of CE, with some boss fight elements from Halo 2. Its just that 343 managed to forget to add in any badass heroic moments like the first 2 Halo games. Or even memorable moments in general. The whole game is so generic and bland that its not possible to remember a single scene from my time playing the game.
There aren’t any massive battles, regrouping with major characters to perform a violent assault on Covie/Flood/Forerunner forces. No epic musical cues when UNSC/Elite allied forces storm in to mount an offensive, no legendary introductions to massive enemy ships, awe inspiring embarking of new or powerful vehicles, walking into a new beautiful landscape or technological marvel for the first time. Everything about the campaign is a giant reference to CE and otherwise filled with cliches from other modern day video games.
Then the game ends with a cliffhanger but there’s no interest in finding out more about the story since it comes out in 2-3 years, far into the future when far better games like GTA6, Stalker 2, and the newest Call of Duty are slated to launch. Why would anyone who isn’t on microsoft payroll stay interested? The dlc that’s planned isn’t promising nor do we know anything about it. And the campaign was so lackluster there’s nothing they can do to make us care about the characters in it, especially with them all dead cause we killed them all. Atriox, the throw away villain from a strategy game, is supposed to be the main baddy who’s gonna “reshape the whole universe with endless tech” isn’t cool or convincing. He’s just a Mary Sue who can’t die because he’s always in a cutscene with heavy plot armor who teleports in just to disappear again by the end of the scene.
I’m 100% sure if microsoft doesn’t mothball Halo and shove 343 back under the rug indefinitely because of their acquisition of the biggest game makers in the industry, the next Halo game will completely overwrite what Infinite has done just like what happened to the games before it.