I’m not horribly bashing it in any way I just figured I can maybe get my opinion across and see whether or not others share the same with myself. I don’t post in forums often and when I do it’s never this long, I’d appreciate it if you guys/gals can read this fully if you’re into the topic since I spent some time on it, but if not there is a tldr version at the bottom which includes zero spoilers, but be warned the long version has MAJOR SPOILERS!!<<< Lets begin. Remember only my opinion.
Don’t get me wrong the set pieces, the action, the beginning of the last level, and gameplay is all awesome but the way the story unfolds just isn’t. Everything takes a back seat to Chief and Cortana’s relationship and her impending decent into rampancy, which is done well and isn’t totally a bad thing but literally nothing else is elaborated on. The character of the Didact is wasted, the story of requiem is wasted and The Covenant is wasted.
The Didact could have been made the best villain in the halo franchise but he’s only on screen for about five minutes in the whole game and the rest he’s just riding around in his ball. Besides barely seeing him we seldom ever hear him talk we just hear the unsc (mainly cortana) just keep on telling his motives like they magically know the intent of his every twitch, it grants him zero character development, not to mention his death and the whole way you defeat him in the last level had to be the most disappointing thing in the whole game.
The covenant is another problem, they’re just emptily there. We never see their leader, or ever hear an elite or a grunt speak. In previous games, even during gameplay, you can hear them say things pertaining to the objective like “Don’t let them bla bla bla so and so” “Protect this whatever from these vile humans” and so on. Stuff like that just adds more weight and understanding to the mission and motives, and we never any of that in this game, The Covenant seemingly lost their personality. The relationship of the alliance between the prometheans and the storm covenant we also never grow. Didact just appears and then all of a sudden the covenant go from fighting him to being his pawns, theirs just no personality between either of them, and yes I know they were a separate fraction from the treaty (that covenant is non existent too, why couldn’t the unsc call the arbiter or half jaw’s forces to come help?) but even that isn’t elaborated on, it would have been better to introduce a storm covie leader, have him meet the didact and actually see an alliance form, the covie leader would take backseat then and act as the didacts inferior foil character. While this is happening we know the didact can care less about the covies and is just using them to make acquiring the “composer” easier.
Speaking about the composer, they wouldn’t have to leave requiem to retrieve it either, the game became a mess in the last three levels (climax) they jumped from requiem (which we were just getting warmed up to), to a random -Yoink- halo instillation space base, and then to earth. IMO the composer should have been hidden on requiem and since the didact was an -blam!- when the forerunners were alive (hence his imprisonment, not even the forerunners liked him, he was a crazy general headcase, but the game makes it seem like every forerunner shared his motives which isn’t true) the didact wouldn’t be able to activate the composer with his prometheans or his own hands, that will make him have a better reason with joining with the covenant since he needs an other species to activate it since he cannot himself (kind of like how only human hands could fire Delta Halo in Halo 2), then there becomes a point to having the covenant. All while the unsc -Yoink!- captain that yells at chief the whole game could have got a personality comparison between the didact and himself, since they were both crazy -Yoink!- leaders.
