Finished The Campaign (spoilers, obviously)

Games Halo Infinite
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So, just finished the Campaign. This is the second game in a row where we’re left with a cliffhanger involving Atriox. I wouldn’t even say the first is resolved, and there was nothing from Halo Wars 2 that indicated he wanted an army of some Forerunner enemy.

I’m not impressed with the story. I like Chief. I like the Weapon. I like Fernando. I liked hearing Captain Keyes, and the flashbacks to the past. But everything else?

From Halo 5, where is Lasky? Where is Palmer? Where’s Halsey? Where’s Blue Team? Where’s Locke, Vale, Tanaka, and Buck (shouldn’t have to read a book)? Where’s Arbiter? Where are the Guardians?

Coming from Halo Wars 2, where’s the Spirit of Fire? Where’s Red Team? What happened on the Ark? How did Atriox and the Banished get from the Ark to this Halo ring? Where is Anders?

From the game itself, where is the Halo in the galaxy? What’s the state of Earth (aside from Sydney)? What’s the state of the galaxy? What’s the state of the UNSC on the rest of the ring? Was Infinity the only remaining UNSC stronghold in the galaxy? Who was the Harbinger? What did she want? Esheram was just some old Brute? The Spartan Assassin was just an Elite with red energy swords? Is Lord Hood dead? What actually happend to Cortana? Is she even really gone (the “not-goodbye” felt lackluster compared to their goodbye in Halo 4, so it doesn’t feel like the end)? How could the Banished possibly compete with the Guardians?

The game tells you essentially nothing. So much is glossed over, and just as much isn’t acknowledged (your story shouldn’t be told through optional audio logs, and even they are still vague). £55, and now I’ll have to wait for an inevitable DLC expansion to continue the story.

Writing is hard, and I almost certainly couldn’t do better. But it’s been six years since Halo 5, and this is all we’ve got? The Campaign feels like a proof-of-concept piece, in all honesty. The pacing wasn’t enjoyable, and when things started to pick up in the third act, the antagonist just dies? It was so awesome to be driving the Scorpion towards the Banished HQ with the Halo theme playing, and it just dropped off into nothing. The whole story feels disjointed, and I kept playing because I am desperate for a story. I love Halo, and it’s just left me feeling empty… I think this could have been better, and I’m disappointed that it wasn’t.

Additionally, not a fan of the open-world. I really don’t think it worked, but I’ve typed enough here. The story is the main concern of this topic, and I’d like to see if anyone else feels this way, or indeed, the complete opposite. Maybe you saw more than me, and I’ve missed out… I feel like part of me is just looking for why.

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Honestly I am disappointed, and what disappoints me the most is the disconnection with halo 5 and halo wars 2. I spent the whole campaign waiting to see why a boss had locke helmet on his shoulder, but in the end nothing was explained, I understand that nobody liked halo 5, but imagine that instead of seeing the Spartan Griffin, we would have seen Locke, or some known Spartan, it would definitely have been a sadder but memorable moment. Another problem is the lack of scenes with the pilot, we saw almost all of them in trailers so it was nothing special . Will we see it again? or they will eliminate it as usual, in the next game

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I feel the EXACT same way you do honestly. Been waiting so many years to get some questions answered and I finish this game with even more questions THAN answers. So disappointed in this story. And I literally play Halo FOR the story. But I literally cannot wrap my head around anything thats going on after Halo 3. 343 messed this game up hard. I blame them entirely for Halos downfall.

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This campaign is such a disappointment.

I really feel like 3 was the best end to chiefs story now. They clearly don’t now what to do with the story.

It has the same problem as halo5 where they wrap up the old enemy cause people didn’t like it then waste time with a weak build up of the next enemy.

Except this time we didn’t even get a proper look at the new enemy.

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It’s so mind-boggling that they’ve taken the Banished, whom were loved in Halo Wars 2, and just done absolutely nothing with them. They’re boring in Infinite.

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I enjoyed the game for the most part but I do have some random rambles

Fernando did not work for me at all. I get that he suppose to be an everyman having to survive next to the Chief, but his near constant complaining about everything the Chief was doing did not endear him to me.

The Amish monkey (I keep wanting to call him “Efrum”) was rather ineffective as a main antagonist, all of his “I will destroy you” type dialogue was not impactful to hear while I was single handedly demolishing his entire army.

It felt like they were trying to tell two stories at the same time here by filling in everything that happened while chief was out. The 343 games really should have just been the Cortana trilogy arc. Bungie did the big galaxy wide world building and wrapped it up pretty tightly, almost like it was mean to be the last game. Going forward should have been smaller more personal stakes.

While I am glad to be fighting Aliens over robots, having Cortana be largely resolved off screen without any input from MC was a huge bummer. After 5 games with her at our side in some way, what ever had to happen to her should have been at Chief’s hands.

The Banished don’t make sense to me other than being an easy way to get the fun enemies back into the game. I did not play halo wars 2 (just watched a 10 minute synopsis). The idea of a splinter group of Brutes from an already weakened covenant and subsequently having their home world destroyed getting as much power as they have is not feasible.

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They aren’t in a good place to be an interesting villain imo.

They’re a bunch of rebel guerilla fighters effectively. But they’ve made into this oppressive dominating force rather than showing them taking advantage of larger powers.

They’d have been more interesting with a rival faction. One you can see them outmanouvre or outsmart, but get crushed if they get too ambitious.

Effectively, the Banished are the underdog villain. The story of how they beat cortana might’ve been interesting but its already in the past.

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I can definitely see why you’d feel that way about Fernando, and I did find his constant complaining annoying a couple of times too. I cared at least a little when he was captured though, so there must have been something there. It definitely wasn’t equivalent to if a member of Blue Team or Lasky was captured though.

I agree with the two stories point too. I don’t think the Campaign ended the previous one well at all, as it was done off-screen, but then it didn’t even set up the next one well either. When I think back on the Campaign, it’s just a bunch of nothingness.

You’re also right about the Banished: the power and influence they’re meant to have in Infinite makes no sense. The game completely avoids the question of how the Banished dealt with all of the Guardians because there’s no way they could have done. Once again, it was just off-screen. They work as a gorilla-warfare enemy, that survive and win through sheer tactical prowess. But somehow between Halo Wars 2 and Infinite, they’ve become more powerful than the Covenant – but yet still couldn’t defend the Brute homeworld?

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.