I really don’t like doing things like this but I feel like its needed right now. After many many hours of looking at Halo 5 in depth I realized how much Brian Reed has messed up Halo 5. Now I know its not solely his fault, there’s a team that thought this was passable. The campaign had its really good moments but the fact that Halo 5 almost completely ignored the events of Halo 4.
As a long time fan of the extended fiction, I felt that what hes done to a lot of the characters was really lame and completely unnecessary. He was a comic book writer at Marvel before he joined 343 and basically that’s what Halo 5, Spartan Ops, and Escalation felt like. It completely felt like it didn’t really fit in the Halo universe. Hes had his moments like introducing characters like Jul Muldama who was extremely interesting and not like any Halo “Villain” we’ve seen before. But the way he goes about their actions is just plain weird and stupid. I hated how he handled the Didact and the way he just killed Black Team OFF SCREEN.
I made an article asking who the main writer of Halo 4 was, but what I didn’t ask is why hes no longer writing Halo 5 or for 343 in general. Going through Halo 5, they really missed the boat on a lot of opportunities for character progression (Locke especially here and Blue Team). To me it felt completely disrespectful to the characters and universe that’s had so much time invested into it. The story was very generic and felt like it had a lot of its soul ripped out. Arbiter felt so unimportant and what the hell happened to Lasky? His personality has completely changed and is nothing like he was in Halo 4.
I was very disappointed in Halo 5 and while I don’t hate Reed, he really needs either leave or find some way for himself to improve. This is just my thoughts (not all of them) and I would like to know yours. Please be respectful in this thread. I don’t want this topic thread to be seen as an attack but how we can find ways to improve Halo’s story in the future. We need answers and more explanations. Sorry if what I said seems like i’m whining (probably am) but I feel like I’ve ignored this for too long.