I should not have played through it on Heroic. Didn’t expect it to be as hard as it was… certain areas. It made remembering story scenes hard as I focused on the levels themselves, the enemies, and all the pretty sights.
So…
343 Industries had a very hard thing to do, and I feel they kinda sorta made it work. Rather than write themselves out of the corner they put themselves in with Halo 5, they moved down the wall and took a step out. Admirable, and even really good in ways. Underwhelming in others. Hopefully some fun DLC stories come out to explore more content that was cut or that is fresh.
Graphic fidelity: 8/10. Prettiest Halo game with great production quality.
Art Style: 8/10
Musical score. 8.5/10. I wish there were more bombastic orchestra pieces that Halo 3 had. I had listened to half of it after it was leaked way before launch. Pretty dang good music that deserves an isolated listening.
Levels: 7/10. Needs more variety of level design, biomes, and obstacles. Awesome distances to grappleshot around, which is always fun, seeing a ring like this is pretty cool, but it just needed more variety of levels…
which brings me to the open world concept. I dont think it was necessary. I like open world games; they provide fun, lots of places to play in and learn about the world. Halos is not utilized all the way. Its repetitive. Fun! But repetitive.
Enemy and Friendly AI: 8/10. Encounters are a large part of what makes this campaign fun.
Cinematics: 8/10. Less circular cutscenes. More single takes, more longer takes, more variety of angles. Regardless, every scene is top notch in presentation.
Narrative: 6.5/10. I need to watch the cinematics. I must have missed a lot of details from the first half because I was lost a lot. And I played on Heroic, which should not have been THAT hard for me; Ive beaten CE through 5 on Legendary Solo for petes’ sake. But the story was okay so far. The big grand narrative is good - you can tell how hard it has been for the UNSC - and you feel that the Banished are a big threat. The smaller scale narrative was, once again, showing that 343i tends to take fan criticisms way too far for story. Either emotional, or grand, or intimate, and never a good middle ground. Actually, Halo 4 is that. That one has some of the best writing in the saga.
Master Chief and the Weapon are terrific! They are a great new team, as with the pilot. I like the character arcs they go through, but I wish they had more substance. Not as drawn out. Escharum is cool and I started to feel for the guy after learning something about him on Discord tonight (hes already dying from something). I liked his taunting, but I wish we saw him on the ring just once before the great boss fight.
Atriox obviously leaves more to be desired, and I think we will have that.
Cortana leaving the message and saying goodbye was heartfelt, but not the emotional highpoint it should have been. That scene needed to be longer - more reasoning spoken of, more of Chiefs reaction, and more understanding for the audience, and maybe even anger, from his new AI friend. Although she did show that when the hologram of Cortana showed her blowing up the brute home world.
The Endless are intriguing given they aren’t just another Flood type; they are actual beings. Im excited to learn more!
343i has a bad habit of tossing out plot threads in these games that still could have worked or worked better. The Guardians, the Didact, evil Cortana, Fireteam Osiris. Lets hope they don’t do this moving on.
Campaign writing - AI barks: freaking 10/10. Absolutely the BEST of the entire series.
Campaign writing - character interactions: 7.5/10. Really good dialogue, but not as narratively revealing as it needs to be. Leaves context on the ground instead of making sense of what came before. That was gonna be hard.
Campaign writing - emotional involvement: 8/10. They do quite well here. Its easy to tell, as a writer myself, that 343 writes far more emotionally involving, more human, plots than Bungie. Honestly, both studios have their strengths for writing stories. I feel for Master Chief. And I think most of us do too; he’s getting tired of war. His emotional stoicism is being pealed back. His humanity is adding layers on his development that he didn’t get in the Bungie days. He has to confront loosing Cortana, but the Weapon and him mesh so well together its just wonderful. But for all of that, it wasn’t enough to really tug at the heartstrings. At least for myself. I have high expectations for 343s writing team. They CAN do great writing.
Escharum was a good villain for wanting one last great fight. Atriox seems the quieter one that will eventually battle chief, and probably loose in some grand, emotionally powerful boss fight. But he ;has the ring to delve into.
Performances: 8.5/10. Maybe 9. Strong voice acting, amazing motion capture. Well done! The Weapon… so adorable. John… so well performed. Atriox and Escharum and the Harbinger and the Pilot, all great. Audio logs were great too. Those should have been integrated into the gameplay a lot more, if 343s writing team saw how to make this a big bomastic, grand adventure. Which is can be after more content comes.
Campaign - overall: a strong 7/10 for now. I cant wait for more story!
Multiplayer: Rough around the edges, exhausting, but fun, thrilling, and entertaining: 7.5/10. Needs tweaking, fine tuning, content, and better customization.
The game needs Forge and Co Op Campaign, and more content all across the board, to be a great game.
Halo Infinite: 7.5/10 thus far. I dont really care about taking the averages of the above right now. 343 Industries’ best effort so far.
EDIT: Narrative: 7.5/10. Almost like 7.75 or 8 using GameInformers scoring system.
Overall: 8/10. STill lingering questions. Still needs content and tuning. Still needs co op and forge. all that stuff might make this a 9/10.