For me, the most sickening thing about Halo 5 is that the events of the campaign are, like all the others, set in stone. Unless 343 decide to retcon the campaign (and Escalations by extension, which is something I highly doubt they will do), then we are faced with a storyline that has been tainted by this farce. I don’t care if the topic gets locked for this, but Brian Reed has effectively ruined Halo’s narrative like Halo 5’s multiplayer ruined the social aspect of the franchise. It is because of the events of Halo 5 that Halo 6’s campaign looks set to be a war against Cortana (who was confirmed KIA multiple times until now), her army of Created (which should not even exist because there was never any tension between AIs and humans to begin with) and the Guardians (which are just plot devices. Let’s face it.).
Furthermore, I was reading another topic on the forum when I saw something in the text. “Arbiter was just a cameo. He was never integral to the plot.”
This confirms my worst fear of Halo 5. Arbiter’s appearance in the campaign was merely to appease the demands of whatever part of the fanbase they answer to. Neither he nor his Swords of Sanghelios played any serious role in the campaign, other than beating back the Storm to allow Osiris to get through to the Guardian. 343 are deliberately tarnishing the Sangheili by taking the focus off of their culture and their code of honour, and by changing their appearance to make them look like monsters one would want to kill on sight. Finally, as seen in the opening cutscene of Halo 5’s campaign, 343 are also making the Elites inferior to the Spartans in terms of combat. The original Halo games portrayed the Elites as fierce and very well-trained warriors. Now they are little more than bloodthirsty barbarians who only exist to kill all humans. For me, this is particularly angering as I have grown to love the Sangheili, especially the Arbiter. He had changed from being a mindless slave of the Prophets to a powerful and inspiring leader. Now under 343, he has faded into the background.
As for Cortana, the only thing that comes to mind here is that her return was a combination of the will of the fanboys who suffered a heart attack after Halo 4, and 343’s “good thinking”. As many before me have speculated, I believe Cortana’s heel turn was for little more than shock value. It makes her sacrifice in Halo 4 meaningless, and for everything that 343 said about her death and how Chief would have to go on without her, it makes them outright liars. Furthermore, I just cannot being to comprehend this whole “Created hating on Creators” idea. Where in the name of God did that come from? And I’m pretty sure this wasn’t in the comics/books either. The Didact would’ve made the perfect villain for this game, but he was killed in Escalations. Remember how 343 thought it was a good idea to tie the games more closely to the lore? Yeah, not so good now is it? Thanks to Escalations, which saw the Didact killed and the Janus Key taken out of the picture completely, Halo 5 was left nothing to work with, so I imagine 343 were stuck in a quagmire of sorts. Combined with key members of staff leaving, they were left with only one option: Brian Reed.
Which brings me to my next point; ONI. All that build-up, all of that surmising Hunt The Truth put out there, and it turns out ONI was not the Big Bad after all. isn’t that just well and good? No it’s bloody not. I was expecting a storyline where ONI wanted Locke to bring Chief in using a double meaning. The UNSC ordered that Chief be arrested for the events on Biko, to which ONI responded. But the truth behind their deploying Locke was to ensure he couldn’t get to Halsey, because if he knew that ONI tried to assassinate his mother figure, he would probably retaliate. After all, Halsey wanted revenge for Palmer shooting off her arm (which was somehow magically resolved before Halo 5), setting up the possibility of a side story running alongside the main narrative. I was actually looking forward to fighting ONI. Instead we get this.
To conclude, there is Blue Team. I will not lie; I did not read the books, but I was aware at the time of Halo 5’s release (and even before that) that Chief and his fellow Spartans in Blue Team were very close. Their debutant cutscene did well to show off their intelligence and prowess in combat, but that was where the buck stopped (No pun intended).
For the rest of the game, they operated like a hivemind. Whatever Chief wanted, they followed without question. Fred did well to question Chief’s mentality at first, but again, that was all 343 had to show for their promises. Cortana’s death was shown to have affected Chief from deep within his ironclad helmet, instead 343 leaves him be the machine. They had such a marvellous opportunity to truly put the sting into the Chief’s normally stoic character, but they decide it’s better off that instead of showing that even the strongest among us can be broken, he should remain robotic and silent. Blue Team were supposed to fill the void of Cortana, while also creating tension between them as regards Chief’s mentality. What was he looking for? Why did he suddenly go rogue? A complete waste of opportunity. Nothing more, nothing less.
Something definitely happened before the game shipped out. I can’t imagine what though. The bottom line is that I am NOT satisfied with the end product, following three years of development, and they had the gall to call Halo 4 a flop? By all accounts, Halo 4 was way better than this steaming pile of Yoink!.