the books can be used to introduce some great things to the game like they wanted to do for 4 and 5, 343 just needed to keep their storys in check, maybe some events could happen between the games and in the books to give them enough time to really build up so we can get to the action without concluding the story out of the games.
Ever since watching Sabertooth’s video, I really couldn’t care about a story that has retconned and course-corrected itself into oblivion.
343 needs to somehow find a way to restore the status quo of the Halo universe at the end of Halo 3, which Halo Infinite was somewhat trying to attempt.
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Honestly I was hoping for them to do some short story DLC campaigns.
Imagine it.
Instead of open world, they are a bit more of Halo’s more traditional linear mission playthroughs, playing as characters other than Master Chief and showing the events of Halo Infinite’s background narratives.
For example — Play as Spartan Gabriel Thorne once again as the UNSC Infinity is being devastated. In the aftermath of the attack, Thorne’s objective is to secure survivors of the UNSC Infinity’s crash landing. After all, Zeta Halo teleported away from the world it was in orbit around and the UNSC Infinity crash landed on one of the world’s moons which thankfully is hospitable. Thorne’s goals would be to gather survivors, locate key members of the crew such as Spartan Palmer, Doctor Glassman, Doctor Halsey, and Captain Lasky. His other objective would be to find and secure Roland to assess whether or not Roland was the reason as to why the UNSC Infinity was unable to adequately defend itself during the prior battle. Sure at the end of Halo 5 he was against Cortana; but was he perhaps a sleeper agent? Perhaps Cortana knew about the passphrase “Undone Iridium” and forced Roland to become her puppet for a short while?
Such a story DLC would be a nice change of pace, giving players a side-story to play through rather than another novel to sit and read.
Though given how development of Infinite has gone over the past year, I am not exactly hopeful for such a development. The only story DLCs we are looking forward to are the Act II and Act III of Chief’s narrative in Halo Infinite.
The story is what matteds most to me.
I’m pretty disappointed with how H5’s story has affected the franchise as a whole.
I would not be around if not for the story. In my perspective the story IS Halo, and the mp is a fun side-mode
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I remember in grade school I had some buddies get some Halo novels at the scholastic book fair (lol I’m old) and they read a few of them. For me the story was always about “man in helmet killing aliens, while doesn’t afraid of anything.” I don’t know much about the storyline since I don’t have $60 to shell out for the campaign mode.
Probably, I just don’t really care anymore.
With Halo 5 all but trivializing Halo 4’s story, and Halo Infinite trivializing Halo 5’s, I’ve never been so disinterested.
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Im mean geez im sure you can dumb down any story to just few words if you really tried, actually you know what give your favorite story and i’ll break it down plain and simple. you dont buy the game to watch some dude in power armor be badass, you buy the game to become that badass and get an interesting story too. it’s really all about the gameplay, the story matters but but i think gameplay matters just a bit more. Don’t diss because you don’t think it’s worth it.
The novels are now where the real story is happening and they’ve hit a phenomenonal run of form of late.
Yes. Every single Halo Campaign, both first person shooters and RTS, have good stories; some have great stories.
Of the shooters, Halo Infinite’s Campaign in terms of gameplay and story would rank as my 3rd favourite.
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Its honestly just scrapping one idea with a new one. Something with Halo 5’s plot created was that it was left with a confusing, and uncontrollable story. With Cortana controlling ** about every AI in the system, prob hundreds of Guardians that can each “police a solar system”, a mass expanding army…** how did you expect the protagonist to win in Halo 6 against Cortana who practically has everything.
The closure they chose to “beat imperial Cortana” I believe was their best option. I remember years ago when I was here, no amount of theorizing on these threads could I create for the UNSC to ever win against Cortana. It just didn’t make sense. Might as well scrap and start over, and that’s what they did
The thing in Halo Infinite plot, as it does follow some of the same aspects such as Atriox dying and reliving, a new enemy, and a newer yet to be revealed enemy… at least its a much more believable direction on beating them, while creating potentially new content.
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i would say cortana could’ve been weakened with how much bickering she does with warden. im still hung up on that one line where warden says he could’ve removed her from the domain if he wanted to. your right, she was stupid powerful so what sense does it make for them to trap her, wouldnt she have massive protection while she was busy on the ring, more than a single guardian at least. im still really confused what the banisheds whole deal is, i know atriox left the covenant and started the banished and now they’re fighting the unsc, thats kinda it? i just dont have that same feeling i get when i fight the covenant, they truly feel like “we’re evil and we gonna fight you because we’re bad”
They need to go back to basics and the roots. Gears 5 open world was not that good, but then they released Hivebusters and it was great.
For me yes. I love Halo and I want to see the Chiefs story continue.
I think Joe has his own plans and 343 is so held up with delivering the physical content that they can’t advance or build on the story. Cutting down on the main game. No campaign DLC. Dragging out the intro section of your multiplayer story across a year. They might still be working things out and their direction.
It’s hard to tell because I honestly can’t tell where they’re going. For all I know Atriox could time travel back with Zeta Halo to destroy Reach before Cortanas even created. Maybe Chief thinks he can convince Cortana to not destroy Doisac and he time travels back. For all I know there’s a twist that Cortana deleted her memories and is the Weapon this whole time. For all I know they will eventually add a Created Remnant faction. For all I know the Chief has been trapped in a Cylex by Cortana in a matrix like simulation.
At face value though. Xenos gonna die. Quite happy to see Chief beat Atriox and destroy the Banished. I don’t think I’ll enjoy it if the Weapon is just a random AI and you’re just asked to pretend it’s the same character with no consequences. Any “drama” would boil down to “well that was the other AI. She ain’t done nothing wrong Locke.”. I don’t see the merit of that direction over Chief saves Cortana.
Alternatively, Joe is going to seriously move the story away from the fixation on Chief/Cortana and the Weapon falls more into the background. Again, I have no idea.
So yeah it’s the uncertainty and the way the story was left. They abruptly tell you they retconned the prior game. You learn you basically missed an entire game and get an “incomplete” cliff notes version. The principal villains of Offensive Bias, Atriox and the Endless themselves don’t show up.
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i actually thought gears 5s open world was pretty great, i liked exploring it and with sera unique wheather and environments it was really a blast, infinite couldve learned that much from gears 5. kinda thought their mp was crap though, wish it had 3s loadout and more dynamic, asymmetrical maps, also something they could’ve learned.
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i don’t agree, but i do understand where you’re coming from. I think on many levels, infinite was a sort of apology.
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To the credit of OP… when 5 was new, there were many players saying it was time to move on from the campaign, and that the significance of the campaign being bad was low, because nobody cared about the campaign anymore. That attitude seems to be gone, now.
it tried to apologize more than make an actual good game
And yet, many people think infinite’s campaign was better than 5’s. : P But I do agree… I think 343 saw the death spin and stuck hard to the basics of halo story elements. To the detriment of the story of infinite, perhaps, but I do feel we’re at least on good tracks again.
story wise they can think what they want gameplay wise its probably the most boring halo campaign to play, not only that but it just feels like a very small fraction of each halo game just mashed into one, doesn’t feel or look like anything new.
what are the basics of a halo story, because whatever they are im sure infinite still doesn’t have them. is it a clear cut story because a game that has to spend most of its time explaining past events isn’t very good or how a story should be told, let alone a halo story. imagine if halo ce spent most of its time explaining reach and the covenant just draged on about how they destroyed reach and we can’t defeat them, it’s like why didnt they just make reach, they didn’t so we don’t feel like we missed an important part of the story. thats how i feel about infinite, that we missed out on something more important and exciting.
I don’t think they did stick to the basics of Halo story telling:
- Compare it to Halo CE
In that you have the big reveal of the threat of the Flood. You learn the nature of Halo and the treachery of Spark. Then it all escalated with a bang.
In Halo Infinite that escalation never occurs and they leave the vast bulk of the mysteries unresolved. We learns that Harbinger was planning something something dark side…. 
What are the Endless, why is Atriox determined to release them and what’s the deal with the Galaxy right now. That’s before you consider Offensive Bias being mentioned and if you take the Cortana stuff at face value. It basically ends at the Control Room where Cortana tells you something horrible is about to happen only that’s with the Zeta Halo monitor
- It’s actually A LOT of 343 making the game people said they wanted after Halo 4.
A good chunk of complaints about Halo 5 were that they had wanted/expected a Chief centric story where he has to deal with losing Cortana. I recall this being a big deal prior to Halo 5.
This is what they do with the Weapon. “Chief rhymes with Grief” as the Grunt propaganda neatly summarises it.
Also, an expectation was that the Didact made things personal by essentially stopping you saving Cortana. This certainly seems to be the role they’ve shoved Atriox into.
To speculate, it was in the ether prior to Halo 5 that Chief was possibly going to try and resurrect Cortana and that’s why there was all that beef with the UNSC. So are they setting that up in Infinite? Like you see Cortanas memories and you have a blank slate version; not to mention she literally starts absorbing and reliving those memories throughout the campaign.
But my point is that this is a big chunk of Halo Infinite story and is closer to Halo 4 than a Bungie game. It’s just Cortana isn’t the villain and you aren’t playing as Locke.