Halo 5's campaign... Underwhelming?

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

Warning: Possible spoilers
Halo 4’s campaign was good, I like it. Overall, the campaign was pretty epic and intense. It wasn’t a complete homerun, it had it’s flaws, but all in all I thought it was a great journey. In fact, I felt it to be much more natural than Halo 5. In Halo 3, we’re left floating in space with Cortana. After years later, we find our selves sucked into an alien planet, battling for survival, all while trying to escape the planet and find Halsey to keep Cortana from complete rampancy. All of that made since, and if I had to write the story for Halo 4’s campaign, I’m sure it would have followed those same lines.

Now we reach Halo 5. Based off of the initial E3 trailer for Halo 5, with Chief in the desert clinching onto Cortana’s chip, I felt again that belief that 343 was on the right track for Halo 5’s campaign. Months go by and we hear about Locke and Hunt the Truth. Interesting, right? You think Chief has gone completely rogue from the UNSC in order to save Cortana, and this Spartan named Locke is assigned to hunt him down and “put him straight” per say. All of which again sets you up for this intriguing and epic campaign.

However, what we got was a shell. Basically what could be described as this stretched out Spartan Ops mission. Take for example the initial cutscene for 10th mission of the campaign, Enemy Lines: Halo 5 Guardians Mission 10 ENEMY LINES No Commentary - YouTube
Weak cutscenes, confusing dialogue sometimes, and multiple plot holes. Another thing which I did not care for were the random “missions” in the story where all we had to do is walk around and talk to two or three people, board a Pelican and that was that. Who’s idea was to include these basically pointless dialogue “missions”?

I’m going to stop there, even though I could continue cough Cortana cough but I’ll spare you my continuous rant. Basically, I thought 343 did well with Halo 4, especially since it was there first Halo game into the series. It had it’s flaws, but it was a good story overall and it felt like a natural sequel to Halo 3. Halo 5 for me is a step back. It’s not consistent, random, and almost feels halfhearted to me. I should probably equip me flame suit, but those are my thoughts. If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I’ll be glad to hear your opinions. Maybe you can change mine?

2

The campaign was disappointing. I didn’t care for team Osiris or what they got up too, I wanted to know what blue team was up to!! 13 missions as Locke and 3 missions as chief. Wtf?!?!?!?

3

I enjoyed it, but I seemed to be in the minority, I think like Halo 2 they were setting up the next game since it is the middle game of a trilogy, though I think this game did a much better job campaign wise in doing so than H2.

4

I partially agree with you.

I got to admit, I like the Halo 5 campaign, but it really feels like just a placeholder or filler to a greater story. Especially the legendary ending makes me feel like 343i is going in the right direction, but gave us something in between before the real story.
But Halo 5 had some great moments, if you ignore the “grinding your way through”- feeling. But just not enough.
I’ll continue in a spoiler about the legendary ending:

I like the legendary ending. Showing us a halo ring makes me feel it is something great coming. And I like the idea of the “revolution of AI’s”. It gives me hope that we will get back to the roots. Floods inc maybe? But I really don’t like that it seems like cortana could become the next big thread to all living things…
I hope it will turn out something like cortana meant to do the right thing, but opened a path for someone who wants to take revenge or something else and wants to activate the halo rings.
Maybe 343 Guilty Spark copied something of his personality / code into cortanas and cured or used her madness to do what he wanted to: activate the rings.
Also, I was a little disappointed how “the hunt” turned out to be nothing but advertisement… I was hoping that Locke and Chief had an epic showdown and I wanted the Chief to step out of it as the winner, with a bad taste because he had to kill someone who is actually a good guy who had to follow commands.
In the game it was like something completly unimportant and Locke dropped his orders just like meh, okay.
If you think about it, Locke and team osiris distributed nothing really to the story…

What I think really went wrong is, that 343i changed too much in the style of halo.