I’ll start this by saying that I’m not hating on Halo 4’s campaign. I don’t think its the best story in a video game by a longshot, but its decent enough that its still kind of enjoyable after a few playthroughs. With that said, the so called allies in this game, my god are they bad.
I’ve played Halo 1-4, Reach and ODST and beaten them all on Legendary solo and co-op except for h2. I know Halo has never been known for the quality of its AI, especially when it comes to friendly units. I’ve played CE extensively and I am well aware that those marines were a laugh and a half.
What I find messed up though is that even marines in CE were superior in almost every way to Halo 4 Marines. h2, h3 and Reach Marines, as bad as they are, look like Navy SEALs compared to these clowns. Now with that out of the way, I’ll explain why.
Friendly Pathfinding is Trash - Again, Halo marines were never great at this, but for some reason h4 takes it to a whole new level. I have never seen so many lost allies in a Halo game. The 5th mission, Reclaimer, is particularly horrible. As anyone who has played this level knows, you make multiple stops during which you (and your idiot marines) have to get out of your mammoth, kill some enemies and complete an objective. The problem is that once an objective is complete, marines NEVER get back on the mammoth like they’re supposed to. They either end up just standing in place while the mammoth leaves them or they drive one of your warthogs into the acid river or over a cliff. What is particularly inexcusable about this is that even CE was able to make marines get on board Pelicans when they needed to, but over 10 years later h4 can’t make your marines get on the mammoth at the correct time. Even when Lasky specifically says, “Anyone not on board is getting left behind” the marines will just stand there. The problems extend to other levels as well, as I’ve seen plenty of friendly AI units running into walls on Infinity, Composer and during Spartan Ops. Even getting allies to get in warthogs can be quite difficult at times.
Friendly Driving is a Disaster - Once again, Halo allies have always sucked at driving, but in this game it is just not possible to survive on the gun while a friendly AI drives. In h3 and Reach I could at least get kills if an AI ally drove, but in this game I pretty much always die within 10 seconds, because the driver will send us straight into the middle of a huge group of enemies and vehicles. In the h3 level “The Ark”, when you reach the 3 waves of enemies before getting to the scarab, allowing AI friendlies to drive can actually lead to success. They are not great, but you can at least get kills and they make an effort to avoid sending you to your death. H4 drivers just don’t seem to give a -Yoink-, and if you tried that in h4 you wouldn’t get past the first couple of ghosts. I’ve seriously had a h4 marine drive me over a cliff before…and the enemies weren’t anywhere near said cliff. Sometimes, a marine or Spartan IV will even get into a hog or mongoose with no gunner or passenger and drive straight into a group of enemy tanks, fuel rods and ghosts, resulting in a quick and frustratingly hilarious death (an easy place to see this is on the level Infinity, right after you get the Scorpion).
Unbelievable Amount of Body Shooting - This one pisses me off. I get the feeling that 343 thought having your AI teammates shoot every dead body would be incredibly amusing and hilarious, but instead it just ends up being frustrating and coming across as a childish, immature decision on the part of the developers. EVERY SINGLE TIME an enemy dies in this game and an ally is nearby, whether they killed the enemy or not, they just have to dump clips of ammo into the body. The AI could care less if you’re in the way. There’s been multiple times that I’ve eliminated large groups of enemies and been one-shot, and died because my teammate was trying to shoot a nearby body. Marines are also not exempt from this. I’ve seen marines shoot each other trying to shoot dead enemies, and if an ally has something like a rocket launcher or a fuel rod they will happily kill their fellow soldiers just to get a few extra shots in on that dead body. This body shooting behavior can become a real issue on Infinity and Reclaimer during the vehicle sections, as your marine and spartan companions will ignore large groups of living enemies in order to put a few more rounds into a dead body. While I was going through Reclaimer today, I had a marine on my warthogs chain gun kill a grunt and then turn his fire on a ghost that was shooting us, only to turn back around and continue shooting at the dead grunt. In previous halos, marines would shoot dead bodies very rarely, but only after the engagement had ended and there were no nearby enemies, and not for nearly the amount of time h4 marines do it. In a real life situation, the amount of ammo this behavior would cause the UNSC would be obscene. They really need to ensure this changes in h5.
Allies just suck - Mostly, this isn’t much different from the previous games. Halo allies have always been bad. The one major difference I noticed was that, unlike previous Halo titles, giving allies power weapons doesn’t seem to make them noticeably better. In h3, a marine with a rocket launcher or fuel rod was deadly. While an h4 marine with a RL is better than one equipped with an AR, the difference really isn’t all that great, especially not like it was in previous games. The good that comes from giving an ally a power weapon is usually offset by the body shooting problem anyway. Also, I have noticed that friendly AI can only engage enemies at very short ranges. Ghosts, wraith gunners, and even grunts can shoot a warthog with a marine gunner well before your ally will fire back. I’m not expecting marines to be great, but its been over 10 years since CE and virtually no progress on them has been made, and in fact marines are getting worse in some ways. That is just inexcusable.
Bros to the Close - This isn’t exactly a point of why allies suck in this game, but I have no idea why 343 would give us such a maliciously cruel achievement. For those who don’t know, it requires you to get through the level Infinity without a single preventable marine death, and it is seriously one of the hardest things I’ve done in Halo. Not only did they give us this achievement with the worst marines in the series, but for CE Anniversary there was another achievement involving keeping the marines alive with the second worst marines in the series. Some sadistic 343 employee must really enjoy making these.
This is really long lol but I wanted to explain why this actually gets to me and not just criticize the game without any supporting evidence. I’m not expecting future Halo games to have “good” allies that will carry you through the campaign, but I’m really hoping h5 at least gives us back marines that perform as well as they did in Reach and before. It would also be great if we could give allies some simple orders, such as wait here, take point, guard this area, etc, but for the love of Halo don’t make h5 allies anything like h4’s marines/spartans.