H5 Story Scribbles (Not Arc)

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Okay, so I’m not a lore guy. I’m also not a big movie critic. I don’t know the intricacies of how to write a story step by step, but MAN, the Halo 5 story arc (If you can even call it an arc) is bad. It feels like a big -Yoink- Acid Trip and I have no idea what’s going on. You randomly kill a Jul Edemame out of the blue, head over to Meridian to do lord knows what, then Sanghelios to help Arbiter out? Then you go to a weird green Genesis world to push some buttons? It seems like they just had a nice stack of scripts after Hunt The Truth (which was amazing i have to say cus I love Key haha) and just had this Brian Reed guy come into the office where the holy grail of scripts was held and started to have a seizure in the room. As he’s going down he’s knocking papers all over the place and coffee mugs are getting slapped around to the point where all the coffee is splashing everywhere and he’s screaming. As he’s attempting to get a grip on something and he’s coming down from his first attack, he grips a pen and suddenly has his second seizure. This time scribbling on paper and somehow I imagine something had possessed him to start writing a script. I believe it was even written in Latin in the original script and 343i heads had to translate it into something mildly viable. When I say mildly…well you get it. I’m rambling now, but I assume this is also the style in which Comic Book writers write. Hey, I have an idea, If this story is even something you can clean up, I heard Joseph Staten (writer of Halo 2 and 3 for the yungins) was rehirede by Microsoft, Can we get him back pretty please? That man has a very colorful mind, and when it’s colorful it draws something coherent and beautiful. Not a seizure episode that introduces and trashes characters that were never explained to begin with. Sheesh I’m not supposed to have a headache trying to get the story in order in my head. I found myself going "wait…I think i get…no thats not right…WAIT…noooo nvm. Also, idk how Cortana being a villain will be cleaned up, cus it seems like yall have really digged yourselves into a hole with that one. Cringy cringe. H5 is like Inception except they never explained why they were jumping in and out of bad dreams. Thank you for your time.

Joseph out.

you forgot to drop the mic… (does it for him)

As much as I agree with your opinion and dislike the story/writing in Halo 5, it is against the forum rules to call out a person, especially to bash them like this. There are more constructive ways to discuss the terrible downfalls of Halo 5’s story and the arguable lack of talent of its lead writer.

You had me at Jul Edamame.

But honestly, people shifting the entire blame on Brian Reed are in denial thinking that simply firing him will fix the storytelling next time. Whoever wrote this story, it had to pass by numerous 343i and Microsoft studio heads before ever being approved. 343i knew what game they were launching and what the story looked like, and it’s on them not just Brian Reed (which to be fair is an easy scapegoat).