Another thread about a long-time Halo fan venting, leave or read, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Also, campaign spoilers.
When I was a kid, I used to play The Silent Cartographer demo on my dad’s old PC, and had a blast playing it over and over again. Then with Halo’s 2, 3, and Reach, I found enjoyment in replaying the levels over and over again. Amazing moments like these stand out in my mind as I think back on Bungie’s work: sneaking through the swamp in 343 as my dread grew and grew; driving my jeep down the dilapidated husk of the Pillar of Autumn; rolling over the bridge with my scorpion on Earth; flying my banshee towards the control room on Delta Halo; barreling into a crowd of grunts with my chopper; every Scarab fight ever; fighting alongside the flood towards Truth; driving my revanent towards a wraith on Reach; and having my first (and seemingly last) space battle in low atmosphere. And these are still moments I enjoy playing to this day, and not just the view from my nostalgia glasses.
Halo 4 and Halo 5 have a few good moments, but nothing stands out in my mind. What does come to mind when I think of 343’s campaigns are the words ‘boring’, ‘narrow’, ‘straight-forward’, and ‘pressing buttons over and over again’. They’re technically amazing campaigns - Halo 5 has some of the best game-play mechanics of the series, but I didn’t love my playthrough. I didn’t. I wanted to, I wanted so badly to love this game. I didn’t enjoy being funneled from room to room, or navigating my vehicle through narrow canyons. I don’t know what it is, but something is off about the campaign. That’s an ambiguous complaint, sure, but I have it nevertheless.
What I think it comes down to is the story. Halo CE had a simple, interesting story with great characters like Keyes, Sgt Johnson, and Guilty Spark. Halo 2’s campaign wasn’t the best (what a cliffhanger…), but the story was still fairly interesting and the characters great, I understood the reason the Arbiter changed; whereas Cortana’s sudden change feels fairly unwarranted. Halo 3 was, for lack of a better word, epic. I understood the motivations of the antagonists and the urgency of the protagonists. It was convoluted, but it was also interesting and complex if you gave it a second look.
Halo 5’s story is rushed. Cortana is the villain? It’s not warranted. It’s not earned. The Warden is interesting, but only to a certain point, though he ends up being fairly superfluous. The story, as many others have pointed out, feels like the beginning of a story, and not a full arc. It doesn’t wrap up anything. It should wrap up some aspects, while leave us wanting more, not leave us feeling entirely unsatisfied. The fight with Locke and Chief was really cool. Halsey is basically to Chief, what M is to James Bond - and that’s a good thing. Nathan Fillion is always welcome. Still, these good aspects can’t save the story from being convoluted, artificial and uninteresting. Roland freaking out on everyone was just bad writing and came out of the blue. Miss Guilty Spark is a serviceable ‘exposition giver’, and I enjoyed her remarks, but she doesn’t really bring anything substantial to the story.
When this campaign rolled to a close, I wasn’t excited for the next installment. Cortana is now going to lead an uprising of AI? It should be interesting, but I couldn’t muster the slightest bit of care. The legendary ending wasn’t Legend-wait for it-dary. It was laughable, pun-intended. I don’t care about these characters. How could I? We dont know anything about them. Only the Chief, and he was relegated to a side dish at his own restaurant. There’s no character building. That moment at the end of Halo 4 with the Chief and Lasky was amazing, same with many other cut-scenes in Halo 4. Little of that story-telling spark was found in the 5th installment.
There was no hunt for the Chief, there was simply playing catch-up, while the coolest moments were left to the cut-scenes. Chief and Locke become “friends”, even, though they weren’t enemies to begin with? It’s unclear their relationship. A lot of the story is relayed through dialogue in the middle of fighting, do the writers not understand ‘show, don’t tell’? I want to see the Guardians as a dangerous weapon, not simply be told about it. I want to see Cortana manipulate the characters and us, not be told outright she’s bad. I want to see ambiguity in the protagonists, but instead Locke plays the role of a boring soldier, just following orders. There’s potential here for a great story, but the execution was botched.
Also, what’s up with this: 15 CAMPAIGN MISSIONS. That’s simply stretching it. There’s 12 campaign missions. Three missions, consisting of five minutes each of dialogue do not count as missions. That’s misleading. That’s a little bait and switch, right there. Anyways, the campaign was never going to be lengthy, this has been a promise of each Halo and all of them have remained relatively the same length. You can cut a pie into a thousand pieces, but at the end of the day, it’s still the same amount of pie.