Halo 5 may have a refined multiplayer experience but it lacks one of the core fundamentals of a Halo game and that is a compelling campaign. Honestly Halo 5’s poor story execution disgust me. There are so many problems with it. Bad characters, ridiculous plot elements, bad pacing, and horrible story telling are just some of the issues. I’m not going to continue beating a dead horse because as we all know the campaign is mess. What I’m wondering is, how does 343 fix the story for Halo 6? Will Halo Wars 2 attempt to bridge the gap between the two games? I hope so. Will they attempt to just roll with what they got? Or will they make some radical changes to the story in order for it to be an actual comprehensive tale in the Halo universe? What do you guys think? Is Halo 5’s story really that bad that it needs a serious retcon?
The only way they can make an effective Halo 6 is if they make it nostalgic, progressive, and emotional at the same time. For example, the smaller half of the story could revolve around Osiris trying to save Infinity after it crash lands on that Halo ring we saw in the legendary ending of Halo 5. This way it mirrors the story of the original while also maintaining originality with a new character. Meanwhile the larger half of the story focuses on an emotional piece between Chief and Cortana, where 343i hopefully gives us some aspect of reasoning behind her motives. And in turn Chief and his Blue Team, along with the Swords of Sanghelios, can search for a way to combat Cortana, perhaps by finding Mendicant Bias or Bastion. This way the game returns to its roots while also evolving the story of the Chief in a fresh way.
Well clearly it’s going to be humanity vs the created and who ever aligns themselves with the created.
I just hope Halo 6 goes back to single player experience and no more stupid computer friendly AI “teammates”.
For 6 they did to make it chief only and make Locke die at the start
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> I just hope Halo 6 goes back to single player experience and no more stupid computer friendly AI “teammates”.
I don’t think 343i will get rid of the team aspect, especially since they said they felt great “internal success” with their ensemble cast
Where it left off the Guardians and the Halo ring being activated.
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> > 2533274816788253;4:
> > I just hope Halo 6 goes back to single player experience and no more stupid computer friendly AI “teammates”.
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> I don’t think 343i will get rid of the team aspect, especially since they said they felt great “internal success” with their ensemble cast
Yeah well the said mcc worked great with their internal test as well and we all saw what happened there. Computer friendly AI just sucks.
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> I just hope Halo 6 goes back to single player experience and no more stupid computer friendly AI “teammates”.
I normally don’t agree with you, but I do with this. Halo worked better as a single player experience than it did as a faux cooperative one. If we wanted to play Halo cooperatively, we would get actual people to join our parties and play with us, or play Firefight/Spartan Ops. Frankly, the Co-op mechanics in Halo 5’s Co-op campaign work well… for co-op, but not for singleplayer. The less we have to drag around some useless, braindead AI squad mates, the better.
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> Where it left off the Guardians and the Halo ring being activated.
Exactly. Halo needs to go back to its Roots. The new ring that was activated? Well, Chief needs to go to the ring’s vicinity, crash land, fight the Prometheans, unleash the Flood, and destroy the ring before Cortana/Monitor activates it. The Plot twist? Chief teams up with the monitor to stop Cortana…hopefully take out some phase pulse generators along the way!
Good points so far:
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The campaign’s story was weaker than other Halos (though I disagree when people say it was bad or “sucked,” it was just weaker). Actually, weaker isn’t the right word, simpler is. In Halo, we’ve been spoiled with very intricate plots and great stories. Guardians’ story wasn’t very complex, it was run-n-gun straightforward. - It would be great to take Halo back to its roots of fighting the flood - A return to a single player experienceConsidering those points:
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The campaign introduced new characters and a new experience that shouldn’t be abandoned (I enjoyed the team experience and am a fan of Locke and Vale in particular). - I think it’s inevitable that the Flood will return, quite possibly in its most vicious form yet, setting up potentially a 3-way (Flood vs Sentients vs Created), 4-way (Flood vs Humanity vs Covenant vs Created), or even 5-way* (Flood vs Humanity vs Covenant vs Created vs Forerunner) conflict in the next game. (*Assuming Forerunner constructs loyal to their creators resist the Created faction, as did Exuberant Witness.) - A campaign that is part team and part solo would be great. Some missions would feature Locke or Chief undertaking solo missions, while others would be played with their respective Spartan teams. 343 would have to get creative to make this work and still keep the cooperative play thing going. But personally, I would be willing to sacrifice that for a balanced mix.
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> The only way they can make an effective Halo 6 is if they make it nostalgic, progressive, and emotional at the same time. For example, the smaller half of the story could revolve around Osiris trying to save Infinity after it crash lands on that Halo ring we saw in the legendary ending of Halo 5. This way it mirrors the story of the original while also maintaining originality with a new character. Meanwhile the larger half of the story focuses on an emotional piece between Chief and Cortana, where 343i hopefully gives us some aspect of reasoning behind her motives. And in turn Chief and his Blue Team, along with the Swords of Sanghelios, can search for a way to combat Cortana, perhaps by finding Mendicant Bias or Bastion. This way the game returns to its roots while also evolving the story of the Chief in a fresh way.
Great post! I agree that Halo 6 needs to be nostalgic, progressive, and emotional. I like the idea of a smaller story and a larger story playing out together. We had that in Halo 5, but it was the opposite with Locke and Fireteam Osiris taking center state. I actually became a big fan of Osiris, just because they were new playable characters, and honestly, Halo needed some fresh faces. But now that they’ve been established, it would be fitting to bring resolution to Chief’s story with him taking center stage. I hope 343 can find the right balance that allows them to stay on course with the development of new characters (Osiris) and a new protagonist (Locke), while listening to, but not caving into fans that didn’t like it. To make the campaign “emotional”, it definitely should feature more Master Chief, Blue Team, and Dr. Halsey. In a 15 mission game (which would be great), a good ratio would be Master Chief/Blue teams with 10 missions, Spartan Locke/Fireteam Osiris with 5.
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> > Where it left off the Guardians and the Halo ring being activated.
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> Exactly. Halo needs to go back to its Roots. The new ring that was activated? Well, Chief needs to go to the ring’s vicinity, crash land, fight the Prometheans, unleash the Flood, and destroy the ring before Cortana/Monitor activates it. The Plot twist? Chief teams up with the monitor to stop Cortana…hopefully take out some phase pulse generators along the way!
I am not sure if it was activated but I did notice on the legendary ending it was there and cortanas humming was also there. It would be pretty awesome if. The entire covenant was there along with the flood and promethians fighting amongst and against each other.
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> > 2533274903775647;2:
> > The only way they can make an effective Halo 6 is if they make it nostalgic, progressive, and emotional at the same time. For example, the smaller half of the story could revolve around Osiris trying to save Infinity after it crash lands on that Halo ring we saw in the legendary ending of Halo 5. This way it mirrors the story of the original while also maintaining originality with a new character. Meanwhile the larger half of the story focuses on an emotional piece between Chief and Cortana, where 343i hopefully gives us some aspect of reasoning behind her motives. And in turn Chief and his Blue Team, along with the Swords of Sanghelios, can search for a way to combat Cortana, perhaps by finding Mendicant Bias or Bastion. This way the game returns to its roots while also evolving the story of the Chief in a fresh way.
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> **Great post!**I agree that Halo 6 needs to be nostalgic, progressive, and emotional. I like the idea of a smaller story and a larger story playing out together. We had that in Halo 5, but it was the opposite with Locke and Fireteam Osiris taking center state. I actually became a big fan of Osiris, just because they were new playable characters, and honestly, Halo needed some fresh faces. But now that they’ve been established, it would be fitting to bring resolution to Chief’s story with him taking center stage. I hope 343 can find the right balance that allows them to stay on course with the development of new characters (Osiris) and a new protagonist (Locke), while listening to, but not caving into fans that didn’t like it. To make the campaign “emotional”, it definitely should feature more Master Chief, Blue Team, and Dr. Halsey. In a 15 mission game (which would be great), a good ratio would be Master Chief/Blue teams with 10 missions, Spartan Locke/Fireteam Osiris with 5.
Thank you! A 10 to 5 ratio would seem like a perfect balance. I also enjoyed the fresh faces of Osiris, but agree they should take the backlight next time around so that we can resolve Chief’s story in a respectful manner before Osiris completely takes over. And with 10 missions to Blue Team, it would be emotional yet still allow plenty of time for new developments. And with 5 Osiris missions on the Halo ring, they’ll still be actively part of the story in a nostalgic way while at the same time allowing the majority of the game to focus on something new.
Remember that Halo: CE’s story was pretty much non-existent. That didn’t stop it it from being ridiculously enjoyable. I would rather have a Halo game lack a story but still have an excellent campaign with great level design than have a Halo game with a ridiculously bad story with great level design, because in the end the latter completely ruins the whole experience while it isn’t really apparent in the former.
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> Remember that Halo: CE’s story was pretty much non-existent. That didn’t stop it it from being ridiculously enjoyable. I would rather have a Halo game lack a story but still have an excellent campaign with great level design than have a Halo game with a ridiculously bad story with great level design, because in the end the latter completely ruins the whole experience while it isn’t really apparent in the former.
It had a story but is was very basic at best but it also got people interested because it had character, charm and didn’t take itself to seriously. 343 has none of that.None of the characters they have introduced are very memorable or interesting, they also butchered Halo’s artistic identity and made every look like every other sci-fi game/movie out there. Also lets not forget what also made halo unique was its music. It s very distinct sound and feel, Halo 4 had like maybe a few good track sbut non of them screamed Halo. Halo 5’s sound track is probably closer to the older games but they don;t exactly scream Halo or interesting. Like the sound track The Trials, while it sounds distinctly like a pumped version of the Halo theme it is a very lackluster and uninteresting track. All it is is that same main beat repeated over and over again, no imagination no variation nothing. It would be like taking the main part of the star wars theme and repeating it for 6 minutes.
Locke should still be a player character but he shouldn’t have the majority of the story. He also needs actual development and he NEEDS a story arc like the arbiter needs. He shouldn’t be killed in the first level because that’s lazy writing and causes more damage just like what they did to Jul, a character who had development and a character arc but was killed off like a insignificant elite.
The created plot line has to advance but they need to be nearly defeated by the end of halo 6. We need to go back and focus and the forerunners and the didact. And finally Cortana has to die and stay dead before she destroys any credibilty halo has. Her very existence in halo 5 makes the series a joke. If they give her a redemption ending and she lives then I give up on halo because that is horrible writing that I don’t think Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich would approve.