Flaws of Halo 5's narrative and lessons to learn

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

Before (if anybody actually reads this, which I very much doubt anyway) you read this, I want you to know I love Halo (obviously) and don’t want to see it degrade into a mindless action shooter like it feels it’s on the path to becoming. I’ve grown up with this franchise and it’s universe, and I want that to continue to happen to others. And, contrary to what others may have thought about the overarching narrative, I believed it had potential, but it was brought down by plethora of flaws.
P.s. If you are reading this, thanks a lot, I’ll appreciate it
P.p.s. This was originally intended as an email to 343, but they’ll never read it so I posted it here, that’s why there’s a lot of direct address. (Don’t worry, I’m not blaming you for a broken script)
Flaws:
1- Lack of focus- You tried to tell a galaxy spanning story with 8 different playable characters along with a massive amount of side npcs, what made halo 4 so great was that it focused on developing only a handful of characters all with their own traits and motivations that were nicely explored, written with meaningful dialogue that (most of the time) lead somewhere.
2- Cortana- I didn’t really have a problem with cortana being the new villain of the franchise, it just felt out of nowhere and that lead to it feeling a little out of place. And (besides the part where she was taunting Osiris, I thought that was well done and in character) she just didn’t act like a cortana mad with power would (The final cut scene of “the breaking” was particularly awful). She sounded like the didact, and if you wanted her to why not just let the didact return after being “contained”? She was also given no development to becoming the totalitarian nut case we see in guardians, we’re just left to imagine about said development.
3- Locke- I never really did have much faith in Locke ever since nightfall, he felt generic, and boring for the most part. He could have had an interesting story, like, for example, if he was a bounty hunter (think boba fett, just less overrated) employed by ONI because he was the best, not caring for honour which could in turn contrast the chief and allow for great character development and set up the hatred evident in all the trailers. And he was humourless, and had little in the way of being relatable.
4- Speaking of the trailers… - I don’t need to say much about this, just look at the comment sections of the trailers. Just, to whoever planned the trailers, you should be ashamed of yourself. Massively ashamed.
5- The overall tone- I feel the direction of the tone here was far too lighthearted, instead of being the dark epic full of mystery (which it was promised to be) it felt like the avengers. I have no doubt this is because you have a marvel comic book writer heading the writing team.
6- The point of the characters- Whenever I write a story I have two rules: The characters must affect the world and, more importantly, the world must affect the characters. Halo 5 had neither of these. The primary example of this was that even if the master chief obeyed infinity instead of making that surprisingly anti climatic and clearly very rushed decision to disobey them, the story would have ended the exact same way, with all systems going dark and nobody able to stop cortana taking over.
7- The ending- I know that you wanted a cliffhanger ending (because that worked so well the first time) but you could have had a little more payoff than “took you long enough”. A simple exchange of words between 117 and the Arbiter would have been enough to have fans practically crying with nostalgia.
8- The guardians- Why have the subtitle of your game “guardians” when the very most interaction the player has with them is running down one for a grand total of less than a minute’s game time
9- Unanswered questions- There were so many of these but just for the interest of time I’ll only go through one, namely the warden eternal. “Oh, he’s not a robot” and “curse this form!” are but a few examples of hints to the player of a past that is never even touched upon outside of these frequent comments.
10- Over reliance on lore- It’s getting ridiculous now with how many halo books there are, and even more ridiculous is the fact that you have to read them (or their synopsis) to understand who certain characters are cough blue team cough. I feel sorry for new people just playing through the mcc and 5 and not knowing who on earth a lot of these people are. Not a good way to introduce fans 343.
11- The opening scene- This ties into my ninth point a bit, who is “us” and who is ONI for people who didn’t read the books.

There are many more additional flaws with the campaign, both with gameplay and narrative, but in all honesty I’ve already spent an hour or two on this, I think I’ve done enough for a fourteen year old with hours of revision to do

So, TL;DR: Git gud at writing Mr Reed (Or rehire Chris sclerf now he’s probably finished ME Andromeda or get Joseph Staten to write 6 instead of getting him voicing a grunt and writing a novella, 343)

And again, thanks for reading!

2

Thanks for putting a TL;DR for this wall of text.

But I actually enjoyed the Halo 5 campaign, not my favorite but I still liked it.

Original Halo will always be better unless 343i uses black magic.

I just think of Halo ending at Halo 3 and all this isn’t Halo Canon, just a new story.

But I do see your points and thinks its great t hat you took the time to write this, but unfortunately the quality of 343i Halo campaign will not improve much.

3

The TLDR Does not seemt o cover most of the wall.
Your number 1 point is wrong. Its told from 2 different perspectives arriving to the same place.

There is Locke and Chief. The story is not told from the eyes of Linda or Vale. They tag along and experience it with the main characters.
Number 6. You say the story would have ended the same. Except for the fact that Osiris only went looking for the Guardian on Sanghelios so they could follow Chief. Had chief never taken that Guardian over there Osiris would have never gone to Merridian and never tried to find their own Guardian to ride. Osiris would have been out in the Galaxy or on the Infinity. They would not have known what it was that was going on. Halsey never would have been needed.

Number 9…There are always unanswered questions. Not only that but the game was set up as a cliff hanger. Just like Halo 2.

4

> 2576836393959214;3:
> The TLDR Does not seemt o cover most of the wall.
> Your number 1 point is wrong. Its told from 2 different perspectives arriving to the same place.
>
> There is Locke and Chief. The story is not told from the eyes of Linda or Vale. They tag along and experience it with the main characters.
> Number 6. You say the story would have ended the same. Except for the fact that Osiris only went looking for the Guardian on Sanghelios so they could follow Chief. Had chief never taken that Guardian over there Osiris would have never gone to Merridian and never tried to find their own Guardian to ride. Osiris would have been out in the Galaxy or on the Infinity. They would not have known what it was that was going on. Halsey never would have been needed.
>
> Number 9…There are always unanswered questions. Not only that but the game was set up as a cliff hanger. Just like Halo 2.

First of all, thanks for the response, but, for the most part I have to disagree

  1. In this point I was trying to get across the fact that there were too many smaller stories for the amount of time the campaign actually took to finish, that meant that very little character development could take place. I think it would have just been better to give Locke Roland and have chief on his own, rarely talking at all
  2. But it would have ended the same way for the universe though, wouldn’t it?
  3. Yes, but it is unacceptable to charge 50 pounds for half of a campaign, at least, I think so
    and yes, admittedly the TL;DR was awful, I apologise
5

I like the passion you have for this subject, as someone who has read all the books and comics I still think the story could have been better myself. The whole thing felt rushed. They have said this is a saga not a trilogy, so why not take your time with the story? Jul’Mdama should NOT have been killed so quickly, a prolonged hunt to kill him would have better filled the promised “greatest hunt in gaming history” than what we got. We could have spent more time on Blue team hunting for Cortana and Osiris hunting for Jul’Mdama this game for the first 10 missions, then the last 5 could have been Chief disobeying orders and the ending pretty much staying the same. I blame some of this on the “walking to Mordor” levels we got to pad the mission numbers. I think Locke hunting for and defeating Mdama a little longer could have brought us to like his character a little more before he actually started going after and ultimately rescuing the Chief. Also I think they maybe should have had the Chief, you know, actually do something a little more wrong than going AWOL. If he inadvertently got some UNSC personnel killed in his quest, maybe we could have generated some empathy for Locke trying to chase him down and stop him. The story is as important to me for this franchise as the Multiplayer is, and I was let down by the execution of it.

6

Didn’t really read it word for word but scanning through it I don’t see how this points out flaws it’s more of another I didn’t like it there for its wrong type thread. They will never please the masses. I thought the story line for H5 was quite good. What I didn’t like though was the script. It wasn’t very well done at all. But that isn’t surprising since it was written by the same writer of Spartan Ops and their script sucked too.

7

But will agree that the trailers for H5 not really matching the actual game was lame as well.

8

> 2533274816788253;6:
> Didn’t really read it word for word but scanning through it I don’t see how this points out flaws it’s more of another I didn’t like it there for its wrong type thread. They will never please the masses. I thought the story line for H5 was quite good. What I didn’t like though was the script. It wasn’t very well done at all. But that isn’t surprising since it was written by the same writer of Spartan Ops and their script sucked too.

Yeah, I do admit that quite a bit of the post was all down to my personal preferences and I apologise for that
But in saying that there were a few objective flaws mentioned like the plain non-existence of character development, the cliffhanger in a game that’s been hyped for years and is full price, and like you said in your other response, the blatantly false advertising .

9

> 2533275022572941;4:
> > 2576836393959214;3:
> > The TLDR Does not seemt o cover most of the wall.
> > Your number 1 point is wrong. Its told from 2 different perspectives arriving to the same place.
> >
> > There is Locke and Chief. The story is not told from the eyes of Linda or Vale. They tag along and experience it with the main characters.
> > Number 6. You say the story would have ended the same. Except for the fact that Osiris only went looking for the Guardian on Sanghelios so they could follow Chief. Had chief never taken that Guardian over there Osiris would have never gone to Merridian and never tried to find their own Guardian to ride. Osiris would have been out in the Galaxy or on the Infinity. They would not have known what it was that was going on. Halsey never would have been needed.
> >
> > Number 9…There are always unanswered questions. Not only that but the game was set up as a cliff hanger. Just like Halo 2.
>
>
> First of all, thanks for the response, but, for the most part I have to disagree
> 1. In this point I was trying to get across the fact that there were too many smaller stories for the amount of time the campaign actually took to finish, that meant that very little character development could take place. I think it would have just been better to give Locke Roland and have chief on his own, rarely talking at all
> 6. But it would have ended the same way for the universe though, wouldn’t it?
> 9. Yes, but it is unacceptable to charge 50 pounds for half of a campaign, at least, I think so
> and yes, admittedly the TL;DR was awful, I apologise

Remember Halo 2 when they introduced Lord Hood? Think of his as Roland. This game is not being told from Rolands point of view. He is there to add to it. Not develop it.
As to ending the same…What did Halo 2 accomplish? It would have ended at Earth regardless. Truth would have taken the key ship. The Elites would have revolted. Nothing changed.

Half a campaign? See to me it was full. It told a story that was good enough for me to want more. It took me over 12 hours to beat on Legendary. Anyone who thinks that they were talking about normal difficulty as the single player time is fooling themselves.

10

> 2576836393959214;9:
> > 2533275022572941;4:
> > > 2576836393959214;3:
> > > The TLDR Does not seemt o cover most of the wall.
> > > Your number 1 point is wrong. Its told from 2 different perspectives arriving to the same place.
> > >
> > > There is Locke and Chief. The story is not told from the eyes of Linda or Vale. They tag along and experience it with the main characters.
> > > Number 6. You say the story would have ended the same. Except for the fact that Osiris only went looking for the Guardian on Sanghelios so they could follow Chief. Had chief never taken that Guardian over there Osiris would have never gone to Merridian and never tried to find their own Guardian to ride. Osiris would have been out in the Galaxy or on the Infinity. They would not have known what it was that was going on. Halsey never would have been needed.
> > >
> > > Number 9…There are always unanswered questions. Not only that but the game was set up as a cliff hanger. Just like Halo 2.
> >
> >
> > First of all, thanks for the response, but, for the most part I have to disagree
> > 1. In this point I was trying to get across the fact that there were too many smaller stories for the amount of time the campaign actually took to finish, that meant that very little character development could take place. I think it would have just been better to give Locke Roland and have chief on his own, rarely talking at all
> > 6. But it would have ended the same way for the universe though, wouldn’t it?
> > 9. Yes, but it is unacceptable to charge 50 pounds for half of a campaign, at least, I think so
> > and yes, admittedly the TL;DR was awful, I apologise
>
>
> Remember Halo 2 when they introduced Lord Hood? Think of his as Roland. This game is not being told from Rolands point of view. He is there to add to it. Not develop it.
> As to ending the same…What did Halo 2 accomplish? It would have ended at Earth regardless. Truth would have taken the key ship. The Elites would have revolted. Nothing changed.
>
> Half a campaign? See to me it was full. It told a story that was good enough for me to want more. It took me over 12 hours to beat on Legendary. Anyone who thinks that they were talking about normal difficulty as the single player time is fooling themselves.

They did say it would take 8-12 hours to beat on Normal…
Besides, the levels felt short themselves. At least compared to Halo 2’s 13 missions. Blue Team missions were normal length.

11

> 2576836393959214;9:
> > 2533275022572941;4:
> > > 2576836393959214;3:
> > > The TLDR Does not seemt o cover most of the wall.
> > > Your number 1 point is wrong. Its told from 2 different perspectives arriving to the same place.
> > >
> > > There is Locke and Chief. The story is not told from the eyes of Linda or Vale. They tag along and experience it with the main characters.
> > > Number 6. You say the story would have ended the same. Except for the fact that Osiris only went looking for the Guardian on Sanghelios so they could follow Chief. Had chief never taken that Guardian over there Osiris would have never gone to Merridian and never tried to find their own Guardian to ride. Osiris would have been out in the Galaxy or on the Infinity. They would not have known what it was that was going on. Halsey never would have been needed.
> > >
> > > Number 9…There are always unanswered questions. Not only that but the game was set up as a cliff hanger. Just like Halo 2.
> >
> >
> > First of all, thanks for the response, but, for the most part I have to disagree
> > 1. In this point I was trying to get across the fact that there were too many smaller stories for the amount of time the campaign actually took to finish, that meant that very little character development could take place. I think it would have just been better to give Locke Roland and have chief on his own, rarely talking at all
> > 6. But it would have ended the same way for the universe though, wouldn’t it?
> > 9. Yes, but it is unacceptable to charge 50 pounds for half of a campaign, at least, I think so
> > and yes, admittedly the TL;DR was awful, I apologise
>
>
> Remember Halo 2 when they introduced Lord Hood? Think of his as Roland. This game is not being told from Rolands point of view. He is there to add to it. Not develop it.
> As to ending the same…What did Halo 2 accomplish? It would have ended at Earth regardless. Truth would have taken the key ship. The Elites would have revolted. Nothing changed.
>
> Half a campaign? See to me it was full. It told a story that was good enough for me to want more. It took me over 12 hours to beat on Legendary. Anyone who thinks that they were talking about normal difficulty as the single player time is fooling themselves.

First of all, I have played through the campaign three times, once on legendary, and I don’t think that adding artificial difficulty is a fair excuse for the games length
Secondly, it’s almost as if you think I automatically prefer bungie efforts, when really, I didn’t enjoy halo 2 that much, maybe even less than 5, I had exactly the same problem with the cliffhanger when I first played that (luckily for me I also had 3 at that point)
And seriously, good for you if you enjoyed it, I’m not here to annoy you or argue with you, I just wanted to share my thoughts.
But I didn’t see the point of the hood argument, they were both pretty underdeveloped I think

12

On point one you misunderstand the relevance of eight playable characters. Only one of them matters, the rest are just a way to make a player feel a little more invested if he’s playing co-op and somebody else already took the Chief. And the only place in Halo 4 where there was decent writing and character development was Spartan Ops. IMO.

Cortana. I think the problem here is that people continue to leap to the same mistaken conclusion that you have. Namely, that she is a villain. This is what comes when video games and comic books become the new literature. People cannot conceive of a story that doesn’t have a bad guy. This one not only doesn’t have one, it doesn’t need one. Finding a compelling way to have conflict without having the tired and worn out ‘good guy vs bad guy’ trope is a masterful stroke. What could be more dramatic than two good guys who just don’t agree? Of course, I’m sure my reading of the story will be completely undermined by Halo 6 and the revelation that Cortana really is a maniacal, power-hungry tyrant waiting to enslave the universe. Oh, well…

I understand your observation about “the point of characters,” but I’ll say that with a franchise that has gone on as long as this one has, some installments you spend developing characters and some installments you settle down to moving the story forward. In a perfect world they would find a way to do both at the same time every time, but alas. Not the world we live in. There will always be high-water marks (Spartan Ops) and low-water marks (okay, none that I can really think of here, not even Guardians), that’s just the nature of a franchise with longevity.

I completely agree with the criticism that the game is becoming too entangled in its own lore. The barrier-to-entry for new players gets higher with each new title. Not sure what the answer is here, I just know it’s a problem.

Good post. Keep it up.

13

  1. There was definitely a lack of focus. So much was going on so quickly, and the campaign was so dense, that you didn’t really have time to process anything before we were thrust on to the next thing. A slower pace with a bit more money going towards cut scenes would have helped a lot.

  2. I get what they’re going for with Cortana and the connections to Halsey being willing to do anything to protect humanity. I understand it. But yes, it feels fully out of nowhere. Basically she went through all of this development in the two years between stories and we missed all of it, so it didn’t come off as an organic character change.

  3. Here’s the thing. In the beginning, Chief had almost no character to speak of. He was a cool voice who threw out a few one liners. He was not any more complex or interesting than Locke. We’ve just had tons of time to get attached to the chief.

But I will admit Locke needed some more personality. i know people complained about the expressive emoting spartans in Halo 4, but this wasn’t a good counter point. More time to understand his motivations and backstory instead of leaving them a mystery would have helped I think.

  1. Agreed.

  2. Pretty much agreed.

  3. That’s hard to say definitively. After all, if Locke wasn’t sent after them he wouldn’t have helped The Arbiter win his war against the Covenant. That’s pretty major.

  4. I was also waiting for Arby and Chief to say literally anything to each other.
    Arby: It is good to see you, old friend.
    Chief: nod Likewise
    Me: crying

8 and 9. Eh.

  1. Disagree. I think they’re using just enough of the Lore. I mean, other than Blue Team’s history with the chief, what was so confusing that reading a book would have made clear? (I guess pretty much everything with Halsey. If you only know her from the games, i imagine it’s quite confusing)

I would have liked it better if there were just one or two flashbacks to their time in boot camp or early in the covenant war. They showed the spartan training facilities in the opening cinematic of 4, so why not delve a little deeper? Maybe they could use a strategy that is similar to something from their past, and boom, flashback.

14

> 2533274794912367;13:
> 1. There was definitely a lack of focus. So much was going on so quickly, and the campaign was so dense, that you didn’t really have time to process anything before we were thrust on to the next thing. A slower pace with a bit more money going towards cut scenes would have helped a lot.
>
> 2. I get what they’re going for with Cortana and the connections to Halsey being willing to do anything to protect humanity. I understand it. But yes, it feels fully out of nowhere. Basically she went through all of this development in the two years between stories and we missed all of it, so it didn’t come off as an organic character change.
>
> 3. Here’s the thing. In the beginning, Chief had almost no character to speak of. He was a cool voice who threw out a few one liners. He was not any more complex or interesting than Locke. We’ve just had tons of time to get attached to the chief.
>
> But I will admit Locke needed some more personality. i know people complained about the expressive emoting spartans in Halo 4, but this wasn’t a good counter point. More time to understand his motivations and backstory instead of leaving them a mystery would have helped I think.
>
> 4. Agreed.
>
> 5. Pretty much agreed.
>
> 6. That’s hard to say definitively. After all, if Locke wasn’t sent after them he wouldn’t have helped The Arbiter win his war against the Covenant. That’s pretty major.
>
> 7. I was also waiting for Arby and Chief to say literally anything to each other.
> Arby: It is good to see you, old friend.
> Chief: nod Likewise
> Me: crying
>
> 8 and 9. Eh.
>
> 10. Disagree. I think they’re using just enough of the Lore. I mean, other than Blue Team’s history with the chief, what was so confusing that reading a book would have made clear?
>
> I would have liked it better if there were just one or two flashbacks to their time in boot camp or early in the covenant war. They showed the spartan training facilities in the opening cinematic of 4, so why not delve a little deeper? Maybe they could use a strategy that is similar to something from their past, and boom, flashback.

Yeah, thanks for the reply. I completely forgot to consider how the master chief was practically the same case a decade ago. But I do think when you’ve got great personalities like buck on your team Locke feels quite boring by comparison.
And I have to disagree on 10 because of stuff like the mantle and the domain and of blue team. I suppose it’s probably just me desperate to get my friends into halo though.
And I absolutely think that they should have done something like you said

15

> 1- Lack of focus- You tried to tell a galaxy spanning story with 8 different playable characters along with a massive amount of side npcs, what made halo 4 so great was that it focused on developing only a handful of characters all with their own traits and motivations that were nicely explored, written with meaningful dialogue that (most of the time) lead somewhere.

There are probably around the same number of active character in halo as a standard RPG. Though this is what 343 has been trying to do. Bungies run with Halo just focused on killing the aliens, defending the human race, and finishing the fight with Cortana and Friends. Our notion of military structure was only know if you touched the books. 343 seems to making sure that the character you see are character you already know or soon will in more depth. We already know buck, Cortana’s future has been foreshadowed for a while, Locke is our introduction of Oni’s love of dirty work + nightfall, if anyone read the first few halo books they already know blue team, Halsey has been in a number of books her character is well established but gamers dont know who she is, John is a bit of a side character in the Halo universe as there are many key plays and moving parts, there have been books on the Covenant wars with Arbiter, His female officer i think is getting a book, I believe Vale is getting a Book, Palmer had a Comic, Lasky had Forward Unto Dawn as an intro. Halo 4 did do a good job of changing the focus of the games, changing the focus from just the mission and being a green killing machine to these are living breathing people going on these mission, that develop as people. which was a theme for the chief, determining who was the machine.

> she just didn’t act like a cortana mad with power would (The final cut scene of “the breaking” was particularly awful). She sounded like the didact, and if you wanted her to why not just let the didact return after being “contained”? She was also given no development to becoming the totalitarian nut case we see in guardians, we’re just left to imagine about said development.

the way ive been looking at it is that cortana sounds like she always does, however this time we are on the receiving end… we can just float and sputter. Though when she is giving her “we will be the light for which all things flourish under” yes she did sound like the didact. ive heard she has one thing in common with him, both may have been influenced by the gravemind. Supposedly Logic Plague from the Gravemind is what turn the Forerunner AI against them… and its contagious.

“i will not allow you to leave this planet”

> 6- The point of the characters- Whenever I write a story I have two rules: The characters must affect the world and, more importantly, the world must affect the characters. Halo 5 had neither of these. The primary example of this was that even if the master chief obeyed infinity instead of making that surprisingly anti climatic and clearly very rushed decision to disobey them, the story would have ended the exact same way, with all systems going dark and nobody able to stop cortana taking over.

my first response should be an example that all of these characters have affected the world, even if it cant all be crammed into 1 game. I believe the Chief had some awareness of the situation we didnt. Going off the radar for cortana was what she wanted (to protect the chief and his family) and likely his only option to get to her without resistance. they did kinda waltz in there while osiris had to beat the door down. i assume it was cortana’s doing, sending the argent moon adrift to be in range of the master chief.

> The ending- I know that you wanted a cliffhanger ending (because that worked so well the first time) but you could have had a little more payoff than “took you long enough”. A simple exchange of words between 117 and the Arbiter would have been enough to have fans practically crying with nostalgia.

the reason it “worked so well the first time” (sarcasm) was because it literally came out of no where, as it was setting up the next mission. It would be like going to commerical during a football game in the middle of a play. halo 5 handled it much more carefully. I dont think anticipated how whiny its fan base would be. i bet 95% of them didnt know there was a blue team. Her exchange was enough, i know her history and how she feels about the chief. Thats her being Motherly. ha, tho she is a cold women. It would be out of character if she started crying and unloading a journal of feelings and hugs.

> 8- The guardians- Why have the subtitle of your game “guardians” when the very most interaction the player has with them is running down one for a grand total of less than a minute’s game time

maybe if we run on them for a few hours we can change the Halo name to just Guardians. since our naming of the game will become dependant on how long we run/interact on/with something. Halo: Reach will now just be Reach. Halo 3: ODST will now just be Earth: ODST, Halo Wars will now be UNSC Planet Defense. The Guardians are a series of galactic weapons which will be used against its inhabitants, like the halo rings. pretty standard stuff, thats why its there.

> 9- Unanswered questions- There were so many of these but just for the interest of time I’ll only go through one, namely the warden eternal. “Oh, he’s not a robot” and “curse this form!” are but a few examples of hints to the player of a past that is never even touched upon outside of these frequent comments.

might be like the prometheans, a person downloaded into a machine but with the ability to multitask and occupy multiple bodies. 343 guilty spark is made from the mind of an ancient human named Chakas, As Cortana is made from the mind of Halsey. The Warden might be similar, or a mind preserved/trapped that can only act out through his warden Marionettes.
.

> 10- Over reliance on lore- It’s getting ridiculous now with how many halo books there are, and even more ridiculous is the fact that you have to read them (or their synopsis) to understand who certain characters are cough blue team cough. I feel sorry for new people just playing through the mcc and 5 and not knowing who on earth a lot of these people are. Not a good way to introduce fans 343.

Its kinda funny that most people are complaining “Halo 5 has no story” then they figure out there are books that grant some insight into what might be happening… then “there is to much story”. But this is the task 343 has been given, create games that acknowledge the greater halo universe, and not skip around the issue like bungie. They cant just be fighting the covenant forever, going from one halo to the next turning the lights off.

16

> 3- Locke- I never really did have much faith in Locke ever since nightfall, he felt generic, and boring for the most part. He could have had an interesting story, like, for example, if he was a bounty hunter (think boba fett, just less overrated) employed by ONI because he was the best, not caring for honour which could in turn contrast the chief and allow for great character development and set up the hatred evident in all the trailers. And he was humourless, and had little in the way of being relatable.

how about noble 6. Another Hyper Lethal Vector on par with the chief, with a history we do not know, an agent of oni. they say hardly anything, fight, then get killed off. fitting end for “an efficient lone-wolf assassin, having single-handedly broken organizations and made entire militia groups disappear.” at least we know who Locke is and we can expect to see him in future game and develop as a character the same way the chief has.

Though id be fine if everyone wants to play a Witcher 3 Length Halo game where everyone can have all the story they could ever want, til their eye bleed out.

17

It’s surprisingly simple. These issues wouldn’t exist if

  1. the campaign runtime would be longer
  2. 343 knew how to use the time they have in a meaningful way.

No matter what difficulty you play on, the amount of actual story content doesn’t change. And there simply isn’t enough story content. The cast is bigger than ever, but there are less cutscenes than in Halo 4. The game is too short.

But even that small amount of story is stretched thin. Chief is chasing after Cortana and gets captured. Locke chases after Chief and prevents him from being captured. That’s it. That’s the story of our main cast. The only reason Locke exists is to nullify any effects Chief’s actions might have had. As for the rest of Blue Team and Osiris, they do even less.

There are two stories in Halo 5 with actual consequences, they just don’t belong to the main characters. Arbiter’s war to free his homeworld, and Cortana’s rise to power.

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> 2533274963840114;17:
> It’s surprisingly simple. These issues wouldn’t exist if
> 1. the campaign runtime would be longer
> 2. 343 knew how to use the time they have in a meaningful way.
>
> No matter what difficulty you play on, the amount of actual story content doesn’t change. And there simply isn’t enough story content. The cast is bigger than ever, but there are less cutscenes than in Halo 4. The game is too short.
>
> But even that small amount of story is stretched thin. Chief is chasing after Cortana and gets captured. Locke chases after Chief and prevents him from being captured. That’s it. That’s the story of our main cast. The only reason Locke exists is to nullify any effects Chief’s actions might have had. As for the rest of Blue Team and Osiris, they do even less.
>
> There are two stories in Halo 5 with actual consequences, they just don’t belong to the main characters. Arbiter’s war to free his homeworld, and Cortana’s rise to power.

I whole-heartedly agree with everything you’ve said