I enjoyed the Halo 5 Campaign, and the hidden Intel scattered around the levels helped me appreciate the rich lore that Halo currently has. But I do think that the story could have been much better than what we have. There were things that I LOVED:
-Buck’s humor(lol)
-The fight between Chief and Locke during Unconfirmed
-Blue Team. Hands down
-Seeing the Arbiter again!
What I was most happy about was just having a Halo game in general, because to be honest, and I don’t want it to be extreme, but we could have just got nothing at all. I’m glad to have gotten a new game anyway to enjoy. It brings us together, as I see it. But I don’t want to drift off for too long. There were many things that I didn’t like about Halo 5’s story as a whole:
-Jul Mdama’s untimely death in the first mission.
I firmly believe that Jul could have been used better in Halo 5. Spartan Ops gave so much development to his character, as well as Halo: Escalation, only to have Locke jab him to death. He could have escaped from the battlefield in Mission 1 and remained hidden until Sanghelios, in which he encounters the Arbiter during Sunaion. It could have ended as a grand finale; the ending of the covenant remnant, eluding back to the days were the Arbiter plunged his sword into the Prophet of Truth! It wasn’t an experience-ruiner, but I felt as if it was a wasted opportunity to show how dedicated the Arbiter is to ending the Covenant. In the end, the game conveyed that just fine. But Jul shouldn’t have been killed so quickly.
-Cortana, for the love of god.
I don’t want to sound biased or seemingly rant, but I wasn’t too pleased with Cortana’s return. Halo 4 ended her life perfectly. Seeing her return almost immediately made Halo 4’s ending pointless(I don’t want to use that word, but I can’t think of nothing else). Making her the enemy put me on edge as well; She’s with us for most of the games(1,2,3,4,5, technically Reach), just for us to fight her? I didn’t like it, and to put it bluntly, she should have just stayed dead. The Warden Eternal should have been the main enemy of the game, and for a time, it felt like he was, until Cortana returned. Suddenly, it circled around her being the true villain. I didn’t like it.
-Hunt the Truth/ONI presence felt like it didn’t exist.
Hunt the Truth made us believe that Chief was a traitor; it made us wonder if we could really trust our hero. I, for one, loved the Hunt the Truth series, and I thought it would at least be mentioned in Halo 5, yet, it was nonexistent. ONI hardly had a presence(I believe Locke was that presence, correct me if I’m wrong) in the game. There was hardly a hunt in this game anyway; Chief just left to follow Cortana without authorization, and Osiris followed suit to find him. It felt like a game of hide-and-seek, rather than a big game hunt.That was also a wasted opportunity, but it didn’t bother me as much as Cortana’s return and Jul’s death. Halo 5, to me, made it seem like we would literally be HUNTING down our hero; the greatest hunt in video game history. That would have been awesome, and technically, that exists in Halo 5, only up to Unconfirmed :/.
There were minor problems that I had with the story as well:
-I felt as if the Warden Eternal had no backstory; he was just there to defend the Domain, give Blue Team passage, deny Fireteam Osiris passage, and protect Cortana. I sometimes wondered who he was as a human before his composure(if that applies). Why is Warden the way that he is?
-Perhaps new players not familiar with the extended lore would not warm up to Blue Team; they would just appear to be new SPARTANS only existing to accompany John, after for the longest time, newcomers expected John to be the only SPARTAN of his kind left. Perhaps it would lead to a potential dislike for the rest of the Blue Team members aside from John. I would have liked a cutscene explaining where the rest of Blue Team comes from, maybe even a playable section taking place on Reach, leading to the beginning Blue Team cutscene.
-The beginning cutscene with Halsey and Cortana had no purpose. It may have, but I saw no purpose. Who was she talking to? Locke? Herself? That interrogator from Halo 4’s beginning cutscene?
Aside from that was just game issues for me:
-Too few Blue Team missions
-Wardens are OP(The Breaking >.<)
-Squad AI get themselves killed a lot. This needs not explanation.
-Enemy AI kills too quickly :’( in Warzone, at least)
However, the bad definitely does not outweigh the good:
-I enjoyed the banter between the teams
-The intel found within the missions was a blast to find and understand
-Buck made the game 117% better
-Locke felt like a good contrast to John(I think that was 343’s intention, correct me if I’m wrong)
-Arbiter
-Blue Team
-Sanghelios(Even though our time there was short lived)
-Halo 5’s legendary ending leaves me excited and hopeful
I do not hate the campaign. I like it. But it needed much more work. I felt as if it did not reach the levels of enjoyment that the previous games reached. All we can do now, as a community, is help one another, be constructive, and hope that the next games will be much better. That’s all.