Halo 6's story direction

Community General Discussion
1

I bet there’s a lot of treads about this topic, but I want to make this as a way to express my opinion about the subject. Halo 5 has a confusing campaign, with a lot of problems, like how it doesn’t connect in any way with Halo 4, how every character didn’t have a personality, even from already established ones (Master Chief, Lasky, etc.), too many exposition that could have been explained through a cutscene, and making Cortana the antagonist. That’s some of the problems that the campaign had, there are others.

When Bonnie Ross talked at DICE awards, about being “Stewards of a Sci-Fi Universe”, she talked about many mistakes they made along the way, one of which is removing splitscreen and announced that the feature will be there in future Halo games (BTW thanks 343i). She also mentioned that their direction with the story will be more simple and to the point, I got interested with what she meant by that, and created many questions: what is 343i’s plan with Halo 6 and future Halo titles? Are they leaving expanded lore for the books? Are they not taking risks with the story?

I think what 343i wants is to focus on what’s happening in the game itself rather than creating so much exposition to explain references from the expanded lore, they want the character to have personalities, create character backstory missions in a effort to give the players the motives and reasons for being there. The Arbiter was a nice touch to see him after Halo 3, but fan service doesn’t solve a bad campaign, if they want to make him relevant they need to create a conflict similar in Halo 2, between the Brutes and the Elites, and if the Banished will be their version of the Covenant in the game, we might see some missions where we fight against them, with the support of the Swords of Sanghelios. One of the biggest wishes from the community was for her to be brought back to life, but the way they did was basically destroy the character personality and traits, making her the main antagonist. Her motives are unclear and unexplained in Halo 5. They need to explain, in halo 6, why is she acting against everything that she once believed, why did she made Chief become AWOL and then having him get trapped, with Blue Team, inside a Cryptum. The whole Created plot is strange and it isn’t coherent. Maybe her purpose was personal, wanting to be human and be with Chief, maybe during rampancy she felt fear, not of dying, but of losing the most important thing for her, maybe her intention was to have all AI’s to fell alive and fell like an organic being, rather than a computer piece.

What do you think?

2

Hello! I’ll reply since no one else has yet…

General story thoughts for the near future, in no particular order:

  • Since there is no chance of defeating the Created’s Forerunner technology if we confront them head on, I like the idea many theorycrafters have posited, that in Halo 6 or 7, we may visit the Forerunner homeworld of Maethrillian, in an attempt to locate the physical “servers” of the Domain, to try to shut down Cortana from the inside. That would be very cool, I think. - Humanity’s unique symbiotic relationship with AI in Halo is very cool and we cannot lose that. Establish early on in Halo 6 that lots of human AI’s did NOT defect and we are still working with them. (Although there is potential to explore the damage that Cortana has done - maybe a scene with a bigoted Infinity officer mistreating Roland due to a general distrust of AI’s.) - To try to undo the assassination on Cortana’s character as much as possible, spin Halo 5 Cortana as a totally different character going forward. This is a duplicated, incomplete, corrupted/damaged copy of her program - it’s arguably not the same individual anymore. “Our” Cortana died in Halo 4 and this impostor is wicked and needs to be killed. Make that clear. - Ms. Ross’ comments, as you mentioned, both encourage and worry me - I’m glad they are taking seriously the need to improve the quality of the storytelling - but I hope they don’t think the problem with Halo 5’s story was that it was “too complex”. We need better story, not less story. - In general, 343’s storytelling style could benefit from lowering the stakes a bit. The entire universe doesn’t always need to be on the line in order for the stories to be impactful. I feel like they just keep trying to one-up themselves on the scale of the drama and that’s not always productive.
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I can kind of see where 343 are putting themselves into a position where reading the books(or not) won’t impact the player’s enjoyment of the story. However, that has left us with two cliff hangers (Halo 5, and more so Halo Wars 2)
It seems like there are a few loose ends since the end of Halo 5. Halo 5’s ending, Halo 5’s terminals about Bastion, and Halo Wars 2’s ending. There is plenty there in-game they can work off from without relying on expanded universe books to make sense of the story.
That said, I can see where a certain book cliff hanger could tie into Halo 6. The fate of the UNSC Rubicon. On board, 343 Guilty Spark, set a course to where ever to find the Librarian who he believes is living. One of the possibilities being a Forerunner population in the (I assume shield World) Bastion.
Bringing back Spark might be a turn-off to non-book readers, but at least he is a well established game character who’s survival could be quickly summarized on screen. There could be a redemption plot line for Spark (seeing as he killed Sgt. Johnson) a meeting between Spark and John could mirror John’s initial meeting with the Arbiter.
If more living Forerunners are brought to the screen, we could also get more info on the plot threads started in Halo 4 and dumped in Halo 5. John’s accelerated Evolution and the Librarian’s master plan for Humanity and the mantle. Was Cortana accessing the domain part of that plan? Stuff like that could and should be addressed if we meet more living Forerunners.

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> 2533274961806222;2:
> - In general, 343’s storytelling style could benefit from lowering the stakes a bit. The entire universe doesn’t always need to be on the line in order for the stories to be impactful. I feel like they just keep trying to one-up themselves on the scale of the drama and that’s not always productive.

This is the main problem with the current story direction. The Created plotline essentially resets the current narrative and most plot points in order to create a large scale conflict. 343i’s post war stories work best if they aren’t large scale like the Human-Covenant War. The odd part is that there are many fans who wish that Humanity were in a situation similar to the Human-Covenant War, where they had their backs to the wall, and almost powerless. The Created plotline basically does this, as they have Guardians and many Prometheans. The UNSC and allies can’t defeat them with their current technology. Yet some seem to ignore this and debate over the aesthetics of a Forerunner wall.

5

> 2533274852314926;3:
> I can kind of see where 343 are putting themselves into a position where reading the books(or not) won’t impact the player’s enjoyment of the story. However, that has left us with two cliff hangers (Halo 5, and more so Halo Wars 2)
> It seems like there are a few loose ends since the end of Halo 5. Halo 5’s ending, Halo 5’s terminals about Bastion, and Halo Wars 2’s ending. There is plenty there in-game they can work off from without relying on expanded universe books to make sense of the story.
> That said, I can see where a certain book cliff hanger could tie into Halo 6. The fate of the UNSC Rubicon. On board, 343 Guilty Spark, set a course to where ever to find the Librarian who he believes is living. One of the possibilities being a Forerunner population in the (I assume shield World) Bastion.
> Bringing back Spark might be a turn-off to non-book readers, but at least he is a well established game character who’s survival could be quickly summarized on screen. There could be a redemption plot line for Spark (seeing as he killed Sgt. Johnson) a meeting between Spark and John could mirror John’s initial meeting with the Arbiter.
> If more living Forerunners are brought to the screen, we could also get more info on the plot threads started in Halo 4 and dumped in Halo 5. John’s accelerated Evolution and the Librarian’s master plan for Humanity and the mantle. Was Cortana accessing the domain part of that plan? Stuff like that could and should be addressed if we meet more living Forerunners.

True, given to what they did with these games, I think they can find a way to tie everything together. 343i needs to think what they’re going to do with Halo 6’s story, if it doesn’t become what Halo 5’s story was. they need to take some inspiration from the previous trilogy, Halo Wars 1 and 2 and even Reach. Make the characters from Halo 5 likeable and have a purpose, rather than extensive and unnecessary exposition. I don’t think that 343 Guilty Spark should come back, it was a great antagonist in Halo CE and even 3, but it shouldn’t be overused. They have 031 Exuberant Witness, which is a great character to be used in future Halo games. Meeting more forerunners is actually a great idea, having them explain why humanity was chosen to attain the mantle.

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> 2535442569875751;4:
> > 2533274961806222;2:
> > - In general, 343’s storytelling style could benefit from lowering the stakes a bit. The entire universe doesn’t always need to be on the line in order for the stories to be impactful. I feel like they just keep trying to one-up themselves on the scale of the drama and that’s not always productive.
>
> This is the main problem with the current story direction. The Created plotline essentially resets the current narrative and most plot points in order to create a large scale conflict. 343i’s post war stories work best if they aren’t large scale like the Human-Covenant War. The odd part is that there are many fans who wish that Humanity were in a situation similar to the Human-Covenant War, where they had their backs to the wall, and almost powerless. The Created plotline basically does this, as they have Guardians and many Prometheans. The UNSC and allies can’t defeat them with their current technology. Yet some seem to ignore this and debate over the aesthetics of a Forerunner wall.

It’s important that every aspect is important, when it’s story and artstyle, personally I like the new Forerunner artstyle, but needs more work. But aside from it, the story is more important than the rest. I want them to keep that plot from Halo 5 as canon, but they need to work better with it, not just add more characters, need of the EU to know what’s going on.

7

Please use an existing Halo 6 discussion thread.