I honestly think halo 4 had a better story than halo 5, partly because it didn’t rely on unknown lore to push the narrative forward, as well as it did not contain entire missions that were unnecessary in pushing the plot forward (im looking at you arbiter missions).
First lets talk about lore and why it can be problematic in-game when a company expects you to just know stuff that has happened outside of the game… It makes the game boring, keeps players in the dark in terms of why certain things are happening, and can turn something from great to just alright.
Lets look at how blue team was handled for instance. In my opinion, blue team feels just tacked onto the master chief missions. Why? Because they were never properly introduced into the game. They only real note of who they are was seen when Locke says they grew up together during a a mission, so pretty much some of the most important characters in the franchise didn’t even get a cut scene detailing who they actually were and their relationship to the chief. Had this relationship been more expanded upon then i there could have been moments to compare their relationship with chief to chiefs relationship with cortana. Instead we just get 3 spartans.
This brings me to my second point, the games story focuses too much on things that do nothing for the overall plot. That is how i feel about the arbiter missions. my problem was that since the only real purpose for those 5/15 missions = 1/3 of the game was to really just get fire team osiris to genisys or where ever blue team was, then why did it take 1/3 of the game to do so. So much actual story could’ve been told in place of those missions.
So there are my problems with halo 5:
1.) unexplained aspects of the game (i.e characters) due to external lore
2.) around 1/3 filler missions
In terms of halo 4’s story i just feel that each mission had an actual relation to what was actually going on in the overall story. whereas 5 is just all over the place for no reason. Hopefully 343 learns their lesson and make a story more similar to that of 4 in terms of how story gets told, but more importantly i hope they stop relying on external lore to tell their story as well. People will read/watch lore videos when they want to, and they will play video games when they want to. Because of that you in a way have to treat that content as if nobody knows any lore because that is mainly the case. Only the more hardcore fans actually take time to know the lore. For instance a lot of people didnt know that blue team fought the didact. WHY WAS THIS NOT their intro. They could have the introduced blue team on the infinity for like some quick re-gear or something (because they were already doing tons of missions non-stop), went on a mission to kill the didact, gotten called back in to the infinity to take a break just to hear chief persist that they keep doing missions, and then the blue team mission should have begun (probably after one of the osiris missions).
Who knew we’d have Zeitgeist Quebecers commenting on waypoint… So you guys being anti capitalism what is your take on Req Packs?
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> Who knew we’d have Zeitgeist Quebecers commenting on waypoint… So you guys being anti capitalism what is your take on Req Packs?
This makes zero sense.
Halo 4 story is in fact better than 5
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> > 2535414299834534;2:
> > Who knew we’d have Zeitgeist Quebecers commenting on waypoint… So you guys being anti capitalism what is your take on Req Packs?
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> This makes zero sense.
Enter the Canada.
Halo 4 is a good story which the community didn’t like because the previous games set the bar really high. I feel like too much was expected of 343i so they made halo 5 to try and ‘erase’ halo 4’s story. In the end, they created an even worse story.
I don’t even need to read. Halo 4’s story is 1000000000000 times better than Halo 5’s. In Halo 5 there is no emotion, there are no isnight of the characters, the player has no meaning to care about anything, lot of things are not explained, there is a lot of bad dialogue, lots of characters are there as “fan service” and not improve the story and the whole fact that Cortana is alive and evil ruins Halo 4. Halo 5’s story is an absolute failure. Check this thread.
Halo 5’s story was complete garbage and gave no feeling at all.
In Halo 3 you save the entire galaxy and smash the alien alliance bent on human genocide that you’ve been battling against the past games. The plot across the trilogy was unique. The enemies, the blindly loyal Tartarus, the manipulative prophet of truth, the ancient gravemind, were all diverse and very well done . Despite Halo 3’s specific plot failings such as irrational behavior by characters and psychotic truth there’s a sense of importance and grandness to what you’re trying to do because you’ve been approaching this moment for a long time.
In Halo 4, the plot is essentially a condensed repeat of the trilogy (bad guy is going to use doomsday weapon and is going to use it to destroy earth).
The overall arc is not unique. We just saved every sentient being in the galaxy in Halo 3. Doing the same thing except with humanity will not be as impactful or meaningful. Combine this with the fact that the Didact is a generic villain who we know next to nothing about in terms of character aside from the fact that he has no morals and wants to make humans robots and the fact that the main arc doesn’t continue past the game means we have a poor narrative. The sub arc with Cortana and Chief was much better however, only criticisms are that chief’s apparent character development doesn’t really affect the plot with the didact and that the game did little to make me care about Cortana(subjective)
Halo 5 however, takes the worst parts of the original trilogy and combines them with the failings of Halo 4, creating an incoherent mess of a plot.
Halo 4 story was way better. Maybe even Spartan Ops was better.