Halo 4 story discussion

Games Other Halo
1

From what I’ve read i might be the only one with this opinion but i didnt like halo 4 campaign all too much. I hated the multiplayer but thats not what this threads about. I just wanted to see if im wrong and more people have my opinion and if not why? I’m not trying to have a halo x is better than halo 4 argument, im just asking for greater understanding

While i did enjoy a more chatty chief, the personal story of cortana and generally the amazing cutscenes i felt the overarching story was both silly and poorly implemented. I shall explain may reasons firstly with story then implemntation

First of all i hated the whole humanity were once a space faring species before being devolved. I found that it didnt flow well and it muddles with the rest of the story. I personally never really understood the didacts motivations? why did he hate humanity? I know its because we had a war with them but they were running from the flood and he even respected the lord of admirals if i understood the terminal correctly. SO why does he believe that humanity is the greatest threat even after seeing the flood and respecting the lord of admirals? Also why did humanity never warn the forerunners about the flood and instead just killed them?

Next why is humanity the rightful holders of the mantle? if the forerunners devovled them how can they see them in this way? and why devovled them at all?

Where the hell is the Liberian? and what the hell did she do to chief and humanity? i felt the whole genetic acceleration thing was, in lack of a better word, silly. The same goes for the hardlight shielding stuff at the end. just feels like an cop out

Now implementation. I feel like if you haven’t read the books you’re going to have such a hard time understanding the story. Why was crucial story elements left to terminals? terminals should be used to giver better understanding to characters or to expand on story elements not tell vital pieces of information.

I felt like huge details that were left to the player to search online even pieces that we’re in terminals. Where is the Liberian, why did she alter humans, what is the mantle, why didnt it work, how does it work (not asking a proper scientific answer but some sort of understanding like mass effect does), how do crawlers fight the flood.

All in all i think halo 4 was a rush job in all areas and i felt that alot of the story had too many holes in it or didnt explain it well enough to an average gamer, hell i didnt understand some of it and read alot about the universe. One thing that was great about halo was that in some aspects it was a grounded sci fi story. there were no magical powers like the didact has, no forerunner afterlife like the libriean seemed to be in, no magical hardlight shielding that protected you from a nuke that was right next to you

2

Halo’s pretty much my all time favorite sci-fi story, which is why I feel like 4 is my favorite campaign in the series. Main reason is that they’ve FINALLY started incorporating the books into the games (though as you argue somewhat poorly), and if you’ve read said books the games become 20 times better, even up to Halo CE.

-Nerd cap on-

At the point of the terminals the Didact didn’t really “hate” humanity, he felt we were aggressive and felt some bitterness on account of us killing all 11(?) of his children in the war, and was at worst a racist -Yoink- to our devolved people. Basically in Silentium, he was captured by a Gravemind and told things like every other species is out to get the Forerunners and that us Humans are going to replace him whether he likes it or not, and then releases him. He witnesses the last of his kind wiped out in their attempts to save the species that killed his children and denied him the cure to the Flood (which never existed, the Flood just left us alone).

We were devolved because we were seen as belligerent and spread like a weed that choked out other life (which we do). The reason we were chosen as “Reclaimers” is because we’re the next species to be tested by the Flood. Some felt regret for devolving us and misunderstanding or motivations, so the Librarian left clues to help us prepare for the next Flood assault. The “afterlife” that it seems the Librarian is in are simply AI copies she left as clues, I think she’s still alive somewhere though.

The Mantle’s pretty much their religion, it’s the idea that whoever holds this position has a duty to protect life, and the creatures that created Forerunners and Humans (and pretty much everything else in the Milky Way) deemed them unfit to hold it.

The Domain can pretty much be summed up as super advanced wi-fi, destroyed when the Halos were fired.

Lastly the “magical powers” I just kind of accepted since Guilty Spark could do the same thing, and they were a race capable of building gravity-manipulating structures as big around as our orbit around the sun.

-Nerd cap off-

So pretty much liked it for the writing, cutscenes, and the long overdue inclusion of stuff from the books.

3

Thanks that’s really cleared some stuff up. I wanted to get your opinion on halo 4 being the first in the trilogy. Do you think this game has been geared to be a very stand alone title (minus spartan ops story of course). Once I got to the end of the game I felt that it wrapped everything quite nicely or was that to force people into playing spartan ops and purchase the next part of the story though season 2?

4

Well I think they’ve stated that they aren’t releasing another season for Halo 4 (so Season 2 would be in Halo 5). I feel like it’s the Halo CE of the new trilogy in that for nearly the entire campaign you’re cut off from the events of the rest of civilization, and instead of focusing on big picture stuff like how the Arbiter’s holding up and what happened to the rest of the Covenant they lock you into this “small” place so you can establish the major bad guys and factions of the new trilogy.

I was actually really surprised back when I found out there was going to be a Halo 2 also, since every character except the Chief/Cortana died and the whole structure the game was named after was obliterated…

5

Oh yeah, and this isn’t really related to Halo 4 but I thought it was super interesting…

So that race that engineered most of the life in the Milky Way that I mentioned? (Precursors) The Forerunners drove them out of the galaxy hundreds of thousands of years before the whole Flood invasion/Halo creation stuff when they learned they were deemed unfit to be the dominant species, and for the longest time it seemed to me like the Flood was a bio weapon created in response by the Precursors. But in the newest novel you learn that the Flood ARE the Precursors. Or they became them. After the Precursors were driven away, they just sat in silence for thousands of years, planning. They began a change into what we know as the Flood, making sure that their rebellious creations will never have the pleasure of free will ever again, and that once consumed all life will suffer forever for what the Forerunners did. So the Flood is pretty much the closest we could get to fighting a god.

6

It sucked. I’ve made so many threads, had so many discussions and spent so much time going back and re-evaluating the story and it just doesn’t do it for me. There is only ONE thing in the story they pulled off properly, Chief and Cortana.

As for the rest of Halo 4’s story …

7

I actually disagree with you on your assumption that it is a bad thing that one must read the books in order to understand the story as well as your statement about the terminals. I feel that having the over-arcing story tucked away increases immersion as you only know as much as the Chief knows as he is unaware of the earlier Human-Forunner conflicts etc. I understand where you are coming from but, I feel that having the Cortana arc accessible to those who do not read the books nor find the terminals was enough on 343’s part.As a reader of the Halo novels long before I ever touched the game I may be a bit biased however, I feel that this was a great step on 343’s part in connecting the universe.

8

Absolutely loved it.

The music was spot on, the Didact was awesome (and a forerunner), the pelican and broadsword levels were insane and the ending was a perfect set up for the rest of the trilogy. The high point for me was the development of Master Chief. It always annoyed me how in the books Master Chief was given humanity yet whenever I hopped onto the games I was playing as a robotic badass. It just wasn’t fun.

Like many people I love the incorporation of the expanded universe into the game, it’s perfect. This is the first game in the series, just gonna repeat Mr Beaglesworth here, so the environment should be limited. Halo CE was all about Instalation 04, you didn’t know anything about humanity or earth. Halo 2 expanded that universe phenomenally. When your time was up on Halo, it was destroyed in much the same way Requiem has met it’s end. People need to actually look into these hints that 343 are implementing.

I did however have gripes: The missions eventually turned into ‘press this and then press this, now defeat x amount of enemies’ which I feel the Broadsword and Pelican levels cleared up. The game also seemed a bit inhospitable to players not reading the books, I agree with it but I think they should’ve been warned. I don’t like how the UNSC, or more specifically ONI, is now portrayed as abusive in it’s power and how Spartan IVs act like children.

For me these are all minor problems though. I expect Halo 5 will blow me away, 343 have shown they have humongous talent at creating Halo stories.