Dear 343…Listen, firstly I would like to thank you for not only proving that a universe considered “silly” by many professional game journalist can still produce emotionally compelling characters as well as beautiful environments 
You’ve not only proven that you are capable inheritors of the halo franchise but trustworthy caretakers of all the stories it encompasses. Truly thank you…
Now that being said , I wanna say something that’s been gnawing at the back of my head.
343…your better than this.
No offence but as much as I want to shout to the heavens that, “Halo 4 is amazing” or even “Halo is an excellent game” , all I can bring myself to say is “it will have to do”.Some would say thats enough for a first attempt but I know for a fact that with all that talent and money you have/had, you could have made this game so so much better. For example;
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Why do armour abilities have to be the same in multiplayer and campaign ??!!
Seriously the more I think about it the more I believe this was a wasted opportunity. I mean how awesome would it have been auto sentry armour ability granted you the ability to summon sentinels or advanced forerunner golem type AIs in and only in campaign. Not only would that have changed the dynamic of how players act during it but it would have been canonically accurate if you said cortana’s understanding of forerunner tech allowed chiefs armour to have such upgrades while Spartan IV’s suits were inferior therefore only able to summon small miniture auto turrents during war games and spartan ops. -
why is characterizing the elites in game suddenly a crime ??
I know what you’re going to say, “of coarse they wouldn’t get characterised, the main enemies are the Promethean” but thats whats really confusing me. If you gonna squeeze in an old enemy at least give them a reason and purpose to being there. So far i’ve read 20+ reviews and judging from what I’ve read the covenant were either a confusing annoyance or completely disregarded.And I know you have already explained that they are a rouge faction but a good game story doesn’t need the devs to explain story developments, a good story weaves the explanation into the game play so that the players naturally learn about it. A good way of showing the shift in covenant structure would have been to either;
[/li]- Have a level on a convernant ship where with exploration you find out how the storm faction came to be
- Have more elite only squads which would be led by zealot class to show the difference in their military structure
- Introduce a new elite character who would mention the state of sanghelios during a mission.
I could go on but you get the point. Without proper ingame explanation,all the effort Halo 2 spent into giving the elites culture and motives for their acions was completely ignored in favour for the Halo 1’s mysterious and aggressive feeling; which would have worked if we didnt have 5 games with them already. Rather than trying to make them seem more alien perhaps a better way wold’ve been to try to make them seem more complex. Just as your trying to evolve the human characters in your game, dont you think its
high time the elites were finaly elevated from simple bullet sponges to “people” with different characters and motives within the games (just like halo 2)instead of as frankie put it"a quite little corner." (sorry beamish)
Also my other minor complaints include lack of forerunner vehicles ,diverse enemy types and so forth…( you’ve probably heard them all by now with the -Yoinking!- you’ve been getting from the fans). All of these points are easily negligible by themselves but when combined with other problems they add up.And thats what I mean; for every good thing we get with the game were also gonna get 2 bad things . For example I am really looking forward to spartan ops but at the same time I hate the fact that I have to get gold membership to play it, meaning that if I couldn’t afford xbox gold membership then I would only have a six hour campaign to look forward to. That is probably one of the most disappointing things about the game.The game feels stripped down(maybe for the better, who knows)and for a game that is touted as “microsofts most expensive game”,“the father of console shooter”, “Halo’s big return”, a game released in 2012 along side assassins creed, dishonored, far cry 3, 343…this isnt good enough.
Now again I want to stress that even though I’ve basically spent 5000 words -Yoinking!- about the game, I have no doubt in my mind that I will buy it and eventually come to love it.I already love the story, the level design, the characters(well the one character aside for chief and Cortana who was characterized during the campaign), the weapons and the Prometheans. Heck there are about 20,000 + people in Dallas playing right now, watching and loving your game even though a lot of people were negative about it. But all Im asking 343i is for you to give Halo franchise the sequels they nee…they deserve. Sequels that would make the developers who made it proud and the fans proud of playing them for generations to come
Yours truly
Just a fan
(I’ll be pretty surprised if a 343i employee reads this)