Maybe that’s an odd title. Allow me to explain:
343 has said that the demo mission takes place ‘a roughly a third of the way into Campaign’. So at this point, I’m going to hope this is 3 or 4 missions in, because if the Campaign is only 6 levels long, I will be pretty unimpressed. That’s 3 or 4 missions without even contacting any new enemies. So we’re still going to be fighting former Covenant forces for a third of the game? Don’t get me wrong, I understand the need to refamiliarise players with a variety of combat scenarios, including on-foot and vehicular combat, and the Covenant is the perfect enemy with which to do that. And I also understand that enemy factions/‘classes’ two and three in Halo: CE were both introduced in the final third of the game. That said… fighting Covies alone until a third of the way in? One of the most anticipated aspects of H4 is fighting a new enemy, and if that won’t come until a significant portion of the Campaign is out of the way, the excitement of the new game will have dulled (if only slightly). That said, it’s Halo Yoinking! 4, so I’m sure pretty much all of us still playing by that point will be enormously excited to press on. Eh. Just a thought.
My other concern harks back to Halo 3’s E3 ‘06 trailer, when John stumbled upon the Ark portal. Bungie told us this took place a third of the way into the game too. I don’t know about everyone else, but that became the primary story focus at the beginning of the game for me, and all the stuff in between: Johnson, the pelicans, the capture and rescue, Hood and Keyes’ plan to assault the dig site, and the attack on Crow’s Nest and the subsequent evacuation and fleeing; all of that was meaningless as a result. Now, the Infinity is nowhere near as big a mystery as what everyone assumed was the Ark was back then, and I have every confidence that 343 will provide a compelling handful of missions between the start of the game and the point demoed, so I’m not too concerned about that. Just thought it was something that could be discussed.
Maybe John has to find a Cartographer (again).