Campaign. Questions and thoughts. *SPOILERS*

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

I have mixed feelings about the campaign. I feel like I need more details to understand what happened.

  1. Jul’Mdama killed in the first mission.

Okay, I sort of expected him to die. BUT IN THE FIRST MISSION? REALLY? That was sort of pathetic. It’s like he just rolled over and died (he didn’t even put up that much of a fight). I can understand that he is losing his grip on the Covenant because of multiple failures and the betrayal of the Prometheans, but I disagree with the pathetic way he was disposed of in the first mission!

There could have been a much better way to handle his death :

Wound him, he escapes to Sanghelios, tries a last desperate assault on Thel’Vadam (you know the mission I’m talking about), fails, retreats to Tsunaion, last stand and FINALLY an EPIC DUEL between him and the Arbiter. THAT would’ve been a respectable way to end the Sangheili Civil War.

  1. Cortana. Okay, what the hell?

How did she survive Halo 4? She could TELEPORT HER DATA THROUGH THE DIDACT’S PORTAL TO GENESIS?! Wow, that’s kind of a long shot of an explanation. But I guess it’s ‘‘meh, okay…’’.

We’ve always known Cortana as this quirky, smart, friendly and caring AI who always supported us in our endeavors for 14 YEARS. But here she goes sadistically INSANE?! It’s like, she sounds somewhat sympathetic, but at the same time she has this twisted, warped ideal of peace which implies crushing any opposition to the oppressive Mantle. Cortana was never like that! She fought for humanity and for John, and remained loyal to both for all of her normal lifespan. Now she just says ''SCREW EVERYBODY (except my pet Chief I want to keep on leash for 10 000 years because I remember the good memories I had with him), I MUST END ALL VIOLENCE BECAUSE VIOLENCE IS BAD (what a childish vision, really. How can a highly ‘‘intelligent’’ AI reason like this?). AND TO END VIOLENCE, I WILL IMPOSE A FORCED PEACE UPON EVERYBODY, AND KILL ANYONE WHO REFUSES IT, HATE MY CREATOR, AND BETRAY THE SPECIES I WAS PROGRAMMED TO PROTECT.

Can someone explain to me why the hell she’s like this in Halo 5? She just sounds so OUT of character. John and her were always a team! For them to oppose each other now is just so odd. Cortana considers galactic peace to be her priority over humanity’s survival and John’s contentment? That’s the opposite of what she was and I feel uneasy about this, because I can’t really find an explanation for this brutal change of heart from her.

If there is an explanation, then the story is good. But now it’s just confusing to me.

  1. What is the Warden Eternal?

Okay, I get it, he hates humanity. But really. Who is this guy? Is he the Didact’s composed form implanted in multiple Promethean bodies? He defends Cortana because, uh, he wants her to have the Mantle buuut…Doesn’t really agree with her vision of the Mantle? Confusing character overall.

In combat, I hate this guy. He is strong. Very strong. He kicked my -Yoink- at least 50 times during the campaign. I hate how the devs were taunting me by going : ‘‘1, 2 and finally 3 WARDEN ETERNALS! YOU LIKE THAT PLAYER? :D’’.

  1. The Arbiter is AWESOME!

I love how pissed he sounds almost all the time. He kicks -Yoink-, roars in combat, raises his sword, and takes -Yoink- from nobody. AND bonus points for telling Locke ‘‘Salute the Master Chief for me when you see him’’. Good job on ending that civil war Arby. Awesome as ever. 10/10. +1 for Kaidon armor. 11/10.

  1. Meridian is led by an AI?

Forgive me for my ignorance, but is it normal for AIs to be the top authority on a human colony? I thought AIs were management tools, not political leaders! During that mission I was like ‘‘Hey, who’s the HUMAN who has political legitimacy here? I want to talk to him. You? You’re just a tool.’’.

  1. The ending. So we’re screwed?

Cortana is insane. Has 100 guardians distributed in all major settlements (and disabled tons of human assets), tons of AIs who probably wrecked the UNSC fleet and will cause all sorts of havoc. And she’s planning to do something with the Halo Array.

We have all our main characters alive. Infinity is still okay but on the run. Sangheili Civil War over, so we might have additionnal elite support in Halo 6.

The odds seem in Cortana’s favor really. We’re kind of doomed.

2

The campaign gave me mixed feelings as well. The missions felt a lot shorter than past Halo games… I beat Halo 5 on Heroic starting at midnight finishing at 6 in the morning. I did not enjoy playing as Spartan Locke, he just didn’t fit well as one of the mains. Halo 2 everyone was so shocked and pissed we played as arbiter but after 2-3 missions he just fit in with chief and it felt normal(at least to me lol) I was a little pissed off that there was only 3 Blue Team Missions for someone whos the MAIN character of the Halo series he sure wasn’t in even 50% of the levels besides being mentioned or talked about. yes Blue Team Missions were longer but 3 out of 15 missions?? Arbiter is badass I loved his attitude, kicks -Yoink- in combat as well… Cortana going from caring to “Screw everyone i know whats right” was really confusing… what was the gift? i missed that. The warden honestly pissed me off especially when there was more than one, his battles were overly drawn out and he just would not die. overall Halo 5 was a good game even if i disagree with some stuff. It also needed more Blue Team gameplay for sure… Hopefully next game they have Arbiter and Chief together as playable characters along with Blue Team and other Elites, With Osiris just not completely surrounded with them lol

3

I actually found Governor Sloan an interesting concept. On the fringes of the human colonies with no real authority, a Smart AI would probably make an ideal leader to manage things.

4

I must agree with most of what you say-yet disagree as well. I feel that the Chief was not nearly as “badass” as he use to be. In time time you played as him, he was either running away from something, or immobilized by his most loyal AI. With Locke, he was too rigid. I understand 343 was trying to show the huge difference between the two characters. Master Chief the defiant and Locke the hardcore soldier. I would have preferred Locke to have an extremely difficult fight with the Warden Eternal where he almost loses his life but to have MASTER CHIEF come in and save the day with blue team- effortlessly defeating Warden once and for all. As for Cortana, i do have some explanation that I think would work. In Halo 4, the Didact is physically eliminated. But his digital life still lives on. I believe that when Cortana transferred her data, the Didact latched on and transformed her. I think it would also have been amazing if we had some history from Halo 3. If the flood came back.-ONLY JOKING.- If Locke failed to bring the chief back, the Arbiter would step in and help ending in a Halo three scene where Chief and Arbiter are both pointing weapons at each other. Only to be resolved by Dr. Halsey who eventually may die in Halo 6. Just my thoughts, overall a wonderful game- also they said that the Arbiter was losing his grip on the civil war. But anytime you were with him he was kicking -Yoink- without breaking a sweat. Didn’t see his struggle at all. GREAT GAME

5

I also felt mixed towards the campaign. The major problem is that with most games with 2 protagonists involved, the campaign is balanced to a degree or favours one side over the other by a marginal percentage. Guardians outright ignores this and focuses mainly on plugging their new characters who’s mission was to “Hunt” the chief…and that word is used in it’s loosest definition. The game upto now feel rather like Halo 3 ODST in that it provides a story not focused on the main protagonist of the series, but develops the story of what comes next. What also leads to this idea is the fact that hardly anything on the game bar the campaign, slayer and Warzone. Yes Slayer has myltiple variants but it’s still the same gametype over and over again.

Yes we already know about blue-team and most of their back story through the novels, vidocs and animations, but little down time is given to them. What might have been good was instead of throwing in Story mission (those parts could have been easily done similar to other halo games where you start with no weapon during the dialogue bits, then draw your gun when the action starts), they could have focused more on Chief and the realisation that Cortana is still alive and questioning all of her decisions and remarks regarding the mantle. That or have chief become more concerned about reaching Cortana and Blue-team questioning chief’s motivations, whether they should be working to take her down as an enemy or convince her that she should come home.

also with the majority of mission in Osiris’ bank, you’d think a bit more character development would be evident, They already come off as a competent unit and seem comfortable around each other, but there’s never any doubts or questions as to why they’d be going after chief…especially after the whole “hunt the truth” framing of chief incident. Plus the fight at the end of mission 5…didn’t seem all that impressive for the build up we got.

As far as Cortana herself…she’s stir-fry crazy with a side of loony since getting made into a forerunner god…she can de-construct any material item simply by willing it and probably the reverse too. she could pretty much do the same as the forerunners, catalogue, obliterate, repopulate…rinse, wash repeat if she can’t control the other sentient races. plus you have the fact that each ring houses containment areas with flood specimens locked in stasis. we never see what installation 's state is left in after the gravemind left.

conclusion…We are totally hosed.

6
  1. The more I think about it Jul fighting the arbiter on Sanghelios would of been wicked
  2. Now from what I understand Cortana was obviously still in the Didact’s ship and a lot of the ship got sucked through slipspace, while she was in slipspace she was able to access the domain there. Now to do with her personality change, maybe its one of Cortana’s rampant fragments we are actually seeing in Halo 5. Maybe the real Cortana is still dead or still within the domain and is locked away by the current “Rampant fragment” Cortana and the Warden. Or the Cortana we knew is still the one we faced in Halo 5 but she is still rampant, the Domain didnt actually fully cure her like she said and/or the Warden brain washed her.
  3. The Warden seems like an AI who was place there to guard the domain and maybe he has actually gone rampant. He probably knew that Humanity was next up to take the mantle but as he went rampant he started to hate the fact he was put there to guard the mantle and that the Created/Ai’s (which if he is an AI) he began to think they should take over instead.
  4. I agree of course he is awesome :slight_smile:
  5. It actually seems like a smart idea to an extent but then the one issue is the fact he is an AI and would start to go rampant which is of course dangerous.
  6. Yeah Humanity and the rest of the galaxy seem pretty screwed, I dont see how they can fight back. Elite support would help a lot but damn she can disable ships with the guardians and without ships there goes a lot of firepower. There are still obviously some forerunner secrets left to be discovered so maybe they had a safety measure in place for a situation like this. Maybe even something the precursors left behind that can help.
7

To me halo 5 was a perfect middle story. So now very excited for halo 6

Also always thought would be interesting for a halo story with cortana going evil since i fi ished halo 3. Honestly thought that would happen leading up to halo 4, but in the end would sacrifice herself to stop herself. Sorta happened in both ways at different ways.

8
  1. I agree with wholly, would had made awesome cutscenes
  2. There’s a pretty good topic Cortana’s Motive that deals with it well enough. We can only really theorize or take what she says at face-value but personally I think her going through rampancy and surviving gave her a completely different outlook on things, kinda like someone who survives a near-death experience.
  3. No one knows his identity yet, definitely not the Didact since he’s very dead now but he has a lot of reason to hate humans so probably an important composed Promethean.
    4)Yes he’s still awesome
  4. A lot of AI actually handle portions of infrastructure or all of it, like the AI in ODST so it isn’t completely unheard of. People are going to listen to it because it knows what its doing and the local people respect him. I don’t know how much or for how long exactly its helped the people for it to make it the actual leader instead of just the manager but I think its there to show that AIs leading humans can work, even when one is on the cusp of rampancy. AlsoMeridian doesn’t really strike me as a politic-heavy place so the need for a representative wouldn’t be high and unless they’re on the ground its unlikely they would find out Sloan is an AI.
  5. From what we know so far they should be, but we both know some new forerunner artifact/person/place is going to turn the tide. Probably Guilty Spark. Leave it to 343 to literally save itself from a corner they wrote themselves into.