Been playing the campaign since not too long after launch, and I just finished it. It took me this long because I’ve spent most of my time on Infinite on multiplayer. And in the campaign, I found every armor locker, artifact, core, killed every target, found most of the audio logs and some of the skulls and Easter eggs, before I got around to finishing the story. I think the only other time a Halo campaign took me this long was the first time I beat CE (it was only my 2nd FPS and I was terrible at it).
Overall impression: not my favorite Halo campaign by any means, but it had some nice moments and fun gameplay. Lots of nods to classic Halo. The actual story felt kind of short, despite the game taking me this long to finish. And it felt like not a lot really happened in it. Seemed like a lot of time was spent explaining what happened between 5 and Infinite. I find myself wishing 343 would just choose a story and stick with it. Each entry in their continuation of the Halo series feels like a reboot that disregards the previous game, rather than really building off the previous story and having a more cohesive series the way Bungie did.
For sure it wasnt awful but I find most of what people tend to praise is pretty surface level and shallow.
Honestly the pilot wasnt my favourite character nor was he terrible but id have much preferred more continuity roland, lasky and palmer being early missions and a slowly expanding cast of supporting characters that built up a central outpost would have felt much better imo.
Have all the marines meet there, slowly unlocking and building new things from the infinity’s rubble.
I feel the exposition would have benefited with that approach and served to actually deliver the new fan on ramp that was promised but certainly is not present in infinite.
By making much of it auxiliary content found through optional npc interaction and leaving the pacing of the core campaign narrative with less baggage, especially where new or casual fans are concerned. The implementation of Atriox and co just wasnt very good.
Some fun stuff there for sure but bogged down by so many abandoned story threads and half done characterisations.
Marines werent executed as well as I hoped tbh.
Much of the story was pandering to nostalgia but also felt wholely disconnected to 5 and 4. And by extension CE-Reach.
Atriox could have occupied the ring but cortana should have been responsible for her own downfall and hints of the didact and logic plague scattered in each encounter.
And roland as major part of ending her as has long been hinted.
This wouldnt have hurt cortwona either.
The dialogue in general is just far more flowery than bungie games and its a small thing that I feel hurts the tone and feel of the 343i games narratives.
The lack of biomes is noticed.
New environmental elements are something Halo should have long invested in imo.
As is the lack of a third faction.
Prometheans are actually easily salvaged into a really fun amd unique faction to fight but thats a whole other thing.
The big issue here is this thing was just not near finished and there was undoubtedly major cuts to narrative and gameplay features that left it all feeling a bit hollow.
It was fun, my nostalgia made many moments emotional but it just feels like every facet and character was under baked and under utilised to some extent and clearly thats an upper management issue be that rotation of leads or lack of direction or constant respecing of engine goals.
Slip space seems to be problematic and open world design didnt get the time needed to make it worth the inclusion imo.
Had fun but honestly as a fan that invested in so much auxiliary narrative and marketing rhetoric about legacy for it to be at best skin deep and at worst dismissed in the product that launched it certainly leaves me very eager for a new franchise to pick up where bungie left off because infinite for me wasnt a disappointment but rather an admission that time invested is not respected.
What hurt the most for me was beating the game on legendary and getting an in game item, hell even a nameplate woulda been cool. I didn’t even realize that legendary came with extra cutscene. Overall decent gameplay, I think it would have been super boring playing the game on any difficulty below legendary. Anyways Ill tell ya there is some pride looking at almost 99% of other players in multiplayer haven’t beat the game, let alone on legendary.
I was playing on easy and actually found the game a little challenging at some points. But I also don’t like playing optimally, and I’m just not great at FPS in general. The best I’ve done solo in Halo is beat CE on heroic.
No hard feelings. Beating Halo CE was extremely challenging for me too. Halo Infinite campaign is very different with the idea of having an open world when exploring and playing. I’ve still yet to fully complete the campaign.
I beat it on Legendary my first time. Then went back and did it again on normal and finding everything. Then beat it a third time finding what I could on legendary again.
Ive beatin all the games on Heroic except 5. I didnt play 5 at all, but I did watch all the cut scenes to get an idea of what went on. I enjoy legendary with friends more than solo. Actually using different tactics throughtout the game. Solo legendary isnt fun for me. But I too think the campaign needed more. I liked it, but it just didnt feel right to me. Infinite in terms of situation is no different from CE. Stranded once again on a Ring with minimal resources. But CE had more. It had more story. In Infinite, all we had was the Banished and a very angry lady. I know future content is coming some day, but there should have been tons of stuff at launch. As an open world game, it still felt very linear. Yeah there’s things to find (ie, HVT, outpost, easter eggs, skulls and logs) but the game felt very empty to me. Side missions would have been nice to have. Like, for instance, marines are trapped in a forerunner cave, they need help getting out. Then we find something cool inside. Like an artifact weapon that needs multiple pieces. Find them all and you get the weapon. Or a forerunner vehicle of sorts. So much could be there, but sadly it isnt.
I spent like 3 hours on campaign last night trying to finish up achievements. never saw a brute throwing a grunt.
Also I’m surprised how short and easy this campaign was. So far I’ve done my first playthrough on heroic which feels like easy compared to the other games.
Almost a year in and still no mission replay… that’s all I’m waiting on to get the rest of the skulls and audio logs. mission replay works. not sure why it hasn’t been added in an update yet.
P.S still waiting on september drop pod update. hopefully they’ve got a lot of fixes to implement this month.
I think the biggest problem with the game is no mission replay and nobody talks about it. It’s the absolute most basic thing. Nobody plays the game because you literally can’t go back and replay the game.
Infinite’s campaign was quite slow, but in some ways I kind of feel like that is exactly what was called for. We needed something to patch up the the holes left by five, as well as something to give a FINAL AND ABSOLUTE goodbye to Cortana. She would still have been better of staying dead in 4, but Infinite did a fairly goo job in fixing that issue. It’s greatest flaw was absolutely the fact that it left way more questions than it answered, but at least it has me exited for future DLC. If half the rumors regarding the SOF and her crew are accurate, then were in for a wild ride.
I can forgive the mistakes that are constantly repeated in the multiplayer each game 343 has released, but I can not forgive them for destroying Halo’s story for me. Who knows how long it’s going to take before Master Chief’s story is properly concluded now.
this whole game was very disappointing, just from the engine demo where they showed off multiple environments like forests, deserts, wide open plains and i’m assuming a beach, large animals roaming about, day/night cycles and changing weather. the only things they kept were forest, wide open plains and day/night cycles, so not off to a great start. the banished we got for infinite was also disappointing.
like what happened, they had all sorts of weapons and vehicles in halo wars 2, the variaty we got is some weird combo between CE and 2. they had scarabs and all sorts of transport vehicles in halo wars 2, the most we see for Infinite is a phantom, and ugly one too. which brings me to the next point the artstyle.
this “new” art style is trash, it takes so much from the original it just feels like a lazy copy and paste. they shoud’ve just went with the halo wars 2 style. all the banished stuff looks plain and blocky now.
im just sighing so much making this post thinking of everything they got wrong in this game. i really think they should scrap it. retell the story, completely make a new game and preferably get people who will stay on board for the development of the game from start to finish so there’s no miss communication between any part of it.
Yeah, the Banished designs in infinite were another thing I took issue with. They looked a lot more interesting in HW2. Some of them were ok, but a lot of them were either closer to classic Halo designs (which is cool, but doesn’t feel like it makes sense for the Banished) or felt like the Cabal in Destiny. Either would be fine if they didn’t already have a very neat blueprint from HW2 that they could’ve utilized better.
I really liked the campaign and I’m hopeful for future content.
I’m looking forward to the new achievements they’re adding with co-op/mission select.
I beat Infinite on Heroic while exploring and collecting the skulls. After I beat it, I ran through it again on easy in a sitting for the speed run achievement. Then I did Legendary. Anything I was missing after that I got on my Heroic save.
BUT - I haven’t played the campaign since, which is honestly a shame.
(I’m most proud of beating H2 on Legendary by myself.)
The thing about Halo Infinite’s campaign is that its marketed as A Master Chief Story. However, no where it means that way at all. There is no sense of direction that Master chief does anything more than the direct mission campaign with the Weapon. Because EVERYTHING besides the main missions are about something else. In summary, all the side objectives are about what happened before Master Chief woke up.
Each side-objective you find is about the history of everyone as they mention each other pretty often. Even in the new novel, “The Rubicon Protocol” has more indept storytelling than the Master Chief campaign, where a lot more interesting things happen (Such as a spartan and brute creating a temporary truce to survive off a broken island part of the ring).
As the content does feel empty, 343i really express making the ring “full of mysteries”. The mysteries aren’t really about the ring, but what actually happens before Chief wakes up. If you really pay attention to them, they really do make the story feel more alive.
If you set the game on easy and go through the story without doing anything else you can complete the campaign very quickly. Think I did it in 5-6 hours on a second playthrough. There aren’t actually that many combat encounters and it actually emphasises how little actually happens.
You’re right, it’s a very short campaign and nothing really happens. The tension and stakes remain incredibly small scale. The game decides to with-hold most of the things it teases like the Endless and Atriox. Which isn’t reasonable for a series that drops games every three to six years. Destiny 2 still had a more complete main campaign but this is very much an intro story.
I wouldn’t have said that it actually spent that long on explaining what happened after Halo 5. For one, it doesn’t. You basically get a few cliff notes and a lot of Cortana asking you to forgive her for things we never saw her do.
Most of the Cortana missing year is crammed into two missions at the very end of the game in a few very brief and cryptic cutscenes. The crypt beneath the House of Reckoning and the Silent Auditorium. But the majority of the game is Escharum goading you, the Harbinger being cryptic, Pilot complaining about how screwed they are and refreshing new players on some of the Halo CE to 4 lore.
What focus they gave is mostly concerned with trying to sell the Weapon as a character and that personal drama. Which is good until they show their hand at the very end. They start off with the Weapon being a painful reminder of having lost Cortana, to “oh it’s basically Cortana you can just head canon that Halo 4 and 5 never happened”. It was incredibly transparent and I am not a fan of that. In Halo 4 when Cortana says that might happen it’s not meant to be a good thing and a bitter reminder of Chiefs greatest failure.
My impression was that they did the absolute bare minimum to explain away the Created/Halo 5 ending and that was only because they had to address Cortanas death in order to set up the Weapon. To the point where certain things like Earth occupation is shown and you’re reminded of this only for it be casually dropped as a non issue. Even though protecting Earth is, ostensibly what you’re trying to killing all these cursed Xenos.
I’m looking forward to collecting some of the Armour unlocks on the harder difficulties when the coop modes come out and playing with friends through difficult missions!
The only complaint I had about the campaign was that the audio logs were not in specific places (but I guess the audio stories would not be in chronological order had they been done differently).
Another way of doing it could have been audio logs in specific places (i.e. Audio log 1 is at place x, Audio log 2 is at place y etc.) but that listening to the audio logs only unlocks once you have all of them from a set (people who are going to bother to collect all the logs will also bother to listen to each log once they have been collected).
Just some small criticisms of the Campaign and what I look forward to (without even mentioning expansions).