These two quotes pretty much sum up my feelings about Halo’s storyline at the moment.
I just don’t feel like Halo’s story is even worth paying attention to anymore. It was interesting before 343, but now with retcons and lore changes happening in between major releases, books or at any moment, eh why should we even bother? We might buy something that’ll get retconned again. We’re still waiting on them to finish telling whatever story they were trying to tell in Infinite…
I really wanted to like the story, yet i have not played campaign.
After playing (multiplayer) and learning about what was done to the game I no longer felt it was something I needed to experience.
Based on the gameplay style of campaign, and not wanting to be any more disappointed in the overall game more than I already was.
I also didn’t want to spend the money on a short campaign.
Maybe the older I get, the less captivated I am on the story, and dont see the point in most of the things in game.
If i cant even care about some lame objective in a mp match, will I really care why I need to capture some base in campaign for some reason?
If the game was a whole game and i had to purchase it as a classic halo with campaign and mp, then best believe id play it, at this point, ill never experience the campaign again.
Honestly from a lore and story perspective the best part of the campaign were the audio logs. They also tie in really well with Rubicon Protocol
Halo 5 vs Halo Infinite … I played Halo 5’s campaign over and over, mainly because of the varied environment, on the other hand, Halo Infinite’s campaign, I have played through one time, and I barely made it through, because of boredom.
Oh really, I have to rescue more marines again, the useless marines, in an environment that look identical to the last place I was. I know, people have their own expectations of what a good game is, but come-on, Halo Infinite’s campaign is lifeless, and very much a shell of a game.
343 just took the only bits that were less buggy and pasted them together and wallah, there you have it, we got a lifeless campaign. It just shows the quality bar has been lower so much now for games and movies, people really can’t discern what quality is anymore, it’s great for the companies though.
Just an observation … I have also noticed, a lot of people who like the campaign also like to speed run it as fast as they can using the grapple hook, so I don’t think many of those people even care about diverse locations or story, a generalization I know, but I think a valid one.
1: The threat comes from a halo and who controls it.
2: Masterchief leads the spearhead to save earth from being destroyed
3: The theme of hope shining even in the darkest hour is rewarded.
Compare to halo 5.
It spends part of its time figuring out what’s been going on while chief was KO’d, and a larger part of its time with chief trying to destroy the halo and help esparza. If you don’t believe me, go back and watch the cutscenes and time them.
Going to the tower wasn’t about the past, it was about saving a spartan and figuring out what the mission is.
Going to the digsite wasn’t about the past, it was about figuring out what the covenant were up to, and you encounter squid brains who has an interest in loosing something ‘worse than the flood.’
Going to the reconstruction tower wasn’t about the past, it was about shutting down the halo’s attempt to resconstruct itself. (The thing the game is named for.)
Going to each of the four towers wasn’t about the past, it was about the prior effort, i.e. destroying the halo. (The thing the game is named for.)
Bassus was trying to keep you out of the dig site so you couldn’t figure out what they were digging for.
The spartan killer brothers were trying to kill you after you began retaking fobs and you blew up their AA guns.
Going to the silent auditorium to stop the squidface from unleashing whatever was ‘worse than the flood’ was yet another effort to save earth and had nothing to do with the past.
The game is not what you portray it as. This is demonstrable.
They also wanted a campaign that didn’t suck, didn’t arbitrarily villify the protagonists of the earlier games, and didn’t want elites to look like the genetically less favored cousins of inbred brutes. There was a lot to like about Halo 5’s campaign. There was a ton to dislike.
In that you discover a halo. You learn they want to use it, and that it’s a galaxy life-wiping weapon that’s meant to contain the flood. You blow it up and take out the threat of the covenant and flood all at once.
In infinite you have another halo, and it contains something ‘worse than the flood.’ The brutes know what it is, and will hold the galaxy at gunpoint with it. You kill their leadership so they can’t hold the galaxy hostage, ending the largest threat that humanity currently faces.
Compare to halo 5.
Agreed. Halo 5 mission 3 was my favorite.
If the marines are useless, you might be playing the game wrong. try loading a razorback up full of them and give them sniper rifles. That said, yeah, I feel you on the repetitiveness. Technically, there are at least six different biomes. Practically, all i remember is gray stone and green stuff.
People have been calling 343’s failures out for quite a while now. Even people who like the campaign don’t think it’s perfect. Give the people who enjoy things you don’t some credit.
Liking the campaign and thinking it got the biomes and diversity of environments correct are two different things. You can like something and still not be engaged by its boring aspects. Generalizing people’s opinions rarely enables understanding them.
The campaign is good. Whether or not it’s worth 60 bucks is up for debate. But I was satisfied by my purchase.
Halo Infinite does vilify Cortana like Halo 5. In Infinite we learn that it was billions, not millions who died and they consciously chose to continue with the idea that it was because she was like Halsey instead of Rampancy or Logic Plague. The difference is that you get some cliff notes where she has a change of heart.
Well I am more concerned that the Elites are written as suddenly being okay with the Brutes having tried to genocide them and betraying their entire species so that Atriox can build a new Empire on Zeta Halo. Not to mention they keep screaming about Daemons and the Gods but are part of an Atheist anti Covenant movement supposedly. Plus they’re not wearing Banished armour despite being traitors
Halo Infinite is very much a part 1 and isn’t comparable to Halo CE. You haven’t killed the Brute leadership, you kill the replacement the moment before the actual leader shows up. The game is very clear the Banished are still present and that the threat is still there. Nothing actually changes as a result of your actions since 343 save the resolution to these conflicts for future instalments.
In Halo 5 Chief tries to talk Cortana down and he fails. This has a dramatic set of consequences. Nothing changes as a result of killing Escharum and the Harbinger. They’re non entities, two Xenos dead in the middle of nowhere who are only going to get passing mention. We don’t even learn what exactly they were threatening to do since I suspect Atriox and the other Endless are meant to actually get those plans off the ground. So they’re trying to avoid rehashing the story and leaving the floor open to escalate in a future instalment.
halo 5 wasn’t about controlling halo it was about a new threat rising and trying to stop it, kinda like what infinite does but you actually feel the threat of the guardians, the endless feel like all talk and no bite. Chief does tries to confront cortana head on in 5 while locke deals with the covenant, still similar. cortana builds a pretty large army and we’ve seen how much damage the prometheans and guardians can do, hearing the screams of people on meridian as a guardian is just waking up actually makes me feel scared and excited for what it could’ve been like to fight one.
really it’s about how they make the enemies feel like a threat, in the story the banished sound like an unstoppable force but in gameplay they’re kinda boring, they don’t have any fun new weapons or vehicles, it really makes me question how they won. your right the game doesn’t spend most of it time explaining the past, it just throws abunch of nothing at me and expects just to go along with it.
for me i was hoping the story would continue where 5 left off but it just ends up skipping past all the good parts so now i really gotta go look for it. for all the people that complain 5s story was left out in the books infinite feels like it does the same thing. like what happened to the prometheans, guardians, and warden, am i just to assume they all died? how did the banished know where zeta halo was? Probably my biggest grievance with the game is why did they think it was best to knock chief out instead of letting us join the fight!?!!?
I think if Infinite hadn’t of ended up with so much cut content it might of had more impact, I do enjoy Infinites campaign and like the semi open world, I think H5 just did too much damage and this is the 1st step trying to rectify it, with Jo Staton back on board for whatever campaign comes next, it should hopefully be alot better in terms of biomes, more bang moments etc.
But of course there are those who liked H5, so it’s open to interpretation from each player how they feel, seems divided.
Maybe if Infinite had started with a cutscene that helped tie in H5 and Infinite better it would of helped satisfy some people, even if that was a cut scene and then went to 6 months later with a battle on Infinity perhaps
There’s two problems:
Cortana and the human AI conquering the Galaxy kind of is. Currently they’re relying very heavily on Chief being isolated on Zeta and not aware of events; but they can only drag that out for so long before it begins to make the world and stakes confusing.
If you were absolutely determined that you did not think that story could be sold in a game. Even though the Culture is common enough a trope that Stellaris has it as a civic option. Well, ask the writers to do one, maybe two little books where you go through Cortana having her version of the Culture and disaster Rogue Servitor run. Have Infinity be Battlestar Galactica and Atriox be John Connor fighting the nasty AI stopping him taking the Galaxy over.
Instead, they’ve essentially procrastinated and what books they have done talk around the conflict. So you’re left with a massive one year gap and an entire war skipped. Realistically you would have to have done the work to establish some sort of Geth/Quarian deal.
From concept art it looks like they initially planned for a game set between Halo 5 and Infinite but decided to relate this with flashbacks. They have a lot of heavy lifting to do to explain how the UNSC goes from golden age, to being occupied by AI and suddenly on the back foot against a random Covenant splinter group who don’t even have their homeworld anymore.
It seems like the story no longer matters to the industry. The books are kind’ve petering out, the game story just can’t rally around anything consistent or cool… the tv show just ignored the story and stamped a halo badge on some random b-movie sci-fi.
Once 343 realizes that the story and the universe are more important than the sandbox and the multiplayer retention, Halo will be off the hook again.
I really enjoy the story and look forward to it. 
What I don’t enjoy is 343 not making a War Mode for Multiplayer and using the whole Halo Universe and not just the heroes of humanity. Halo has so much to offer its community but having the same gameplay experience for 20 years is beyond boring. Arena Mode can still be in the game. But Halo needs a large scale combat mode that’s base off the lore and what people expect from a Sci-Fi Universe game.
This whole thing how Plasma, Hardlight, and Energy weapons being weaker then bullets is beyond stupid and doesn’t even make any kind of sense. 
Bungie and 343 logic is like taking a Japanese WW2 sword and putting it in Star Wars and saying the WW2 sword is stronger than a light saber. 
I can literally imagine the rants people would make on YouTube of how stupid that would be. Which is why it needs to change.
Unfortunately you can’t make big-time retcons or 180 pivots in stories and still earn emotional investment. It’s just a casualty of lack of a cohesive vision–would anyone really be surprised if there was a new enemy in the next Halo or DLC, and the Endless were shelved or hand-waved away the same way the AIs were?
If every story point is subject to abandonment or retcon, none of it’s really worth following. 1-3 and Reach/ODST told a good story, even if it flew by the seat of its pants. 4/5/infinite haven’t had any meaningful continuity or arc, and large swathes of “important” content are relegated to books (that almost nobody reads) or audio logs (that almost nobody listens to).
Ask the Star Wars folks about how well it goes when you just hit reset for every new installment.
This is the problem with T-rated game. The Endless will never be able to bring back the fear and dread that the Flood once had. Sadly the Endless will be way to much like a Saturday morning cartoon villains.
You’re not wrong!
The more that the playerbase is appeased by cosmetic stores, the less that the capitalists will value the world or the story.
That’s on the right track to be certain.
The final result of Halo Infinite’s story is really well executed when you think about all the limitations they probably had when making it: it had to be open world, “escape” Halo 5’s style of story, it had to feel like Bungie’s Halo and reintroduce what the series used to be to current audiences, have the Covenant enemy types, etc.
So they basically made it like Halo CE’s story, where Reach happened before it in terms of continuity, but you’re beginning to play it in the middle of a conflict that is ongoing. So they used some of the main story and the optional content of an open-world to allow more interested players to bridge the gap through audio logs.
It all led to a very unique style of storytelling in my opinion. Replaying the game made me appretiate it a lot more, maybe watch some “story explained” or “who are the Endless” videos on YouTube to help as well.
I believe Halo Infinite’s long term plan is to release several campaigns on this continuously updated engine, gameplay and Zeta Halo, so maybe we’ll finally get direct continuity from 343.
I just hope the real Cortana is recovered somehow, as I think she’s an essential part of Halo, and with talks of there being time travel in the Endless story, who knows. Maybe in future campaigns the player will be able to choose between using Cortana or the Weapon .
Thank you! I have said that myself. Chief & Weapon’s story and interactions are one of my favorite highlights in the entire series thus far.
I would say that story matters at least a little bit. But the presentation and execution of said story was always performed better by Bungie.
With CE, Bungie really just focused on the cool factor and feelings of “badassitude,” so the detailed minutiae of the story wasn’t as important as it would be with their later installments. But with each installment, they were able to keep the overall story consistent and cohesive while still giving it at least a fair bit of expansion.
And they were able to sprinkle in just enough story elements like drama, tension, suspense, etc. without being too heavy handed, which would have left player feeling like they were watching a generic sci-fi drama film rather than enjoying an interactive, player-experience.
But with 343’s entries of Halo 4/5, it feels like 343 just had to do their own thing and try to make THE HALO GAME. But personally, the stories of Halo 4 (and especially Halo 5) feel like a Michael Bay-esque cheap dramatic knockoff of classic Halo. With their entries of Halo Wars 2 and Infinite, I feel like that as far as stories goes, they feel more like Halo because they call back to those classic feelings that the original trilogy invoked (and even Halo 3 ODST and Reach to an extent).
Let’s take two characters from Halos 4/5 and Halo Wars 2/Infinite and compare them.
Halo 4/5: Captain Thomas Lasky: Basic, Vanilla, Bland. Spartan Agent Jameson Locke: Boring, Uninspired
Halo Wars 2/Infinite: Captain James Cutter: Cool. Spartan 092 Jerome: BADASS. Even Professor Ellen Anders, she’s got some sass, wit, etc.
With the former two characters, 343 thought they were going deep, compelling characters by making them all brooding, somber, and painfully doing a LOT of talking. It just wasn’t interesting. Also, Unlike in Halo 4/5 (each of which had a different villain that was retconned out of existence), Halo Wars 2/Infinite had an at least somewhat central villain in Atriox, whose introductory scene, badass.
I think I’ve rambled on long enough with my opinions. TL;DR, with Halo Wars 2/Infinite, 343’s taken better steps in their Campaign narrative that do a better job in invoking the classic feelings coming from the classic-era Halo titles, something they failed to do when they released Halos 4 and 5 and tried desperately to do their own thing.