I’ve been reflecting on what’s wrong with Halo 5: Guardians and ultimately I came to two primary conclusions.
1 - The story was rushed, unfinished, and unpolished having the Guardians story in Halo 6 would have given everyone involved the time required to flesh out the story. Instead of random vague unexplained story.
And 2 - Halo: Escalation filled a lot of the gaps that left non-expanded universe readers TOTALLY CONFUSED. And on top of that, it could have easily been turned into a game! Instead of rushing to kill of Jul in Guardians’ first mission after building him up so much in Spartan Ops, and killing the Didact off-screen, and forcing most players to wonder who Blue Team is and where they came from, what happened to Thorne and Majestic; We could have all of this stuff play over an entire game. Halo 5: Escalation.
We could have still had the split campaign, playing as Majestic sometimes and Blue Team at others (Preferably without the “squad” setup, so the Chief’s first couple of missions before reuniting with Blue Team they aren’t showing up before they would in the story or he’ll).
We would have gone an entire main-game without Cortana returning, which would make it FAR less predictable than it wound up being in Guardians.
We would have gotten to visit a Halo Ring, seen the glossed over human insurrection alliance with Jul’s that saw a resurgence during the time between Halo 4 and 5.
There is a whole game’s worth of lore and loose ends that could have been tied up for players that don’t read extended universe content. Halo 5’s story might have been bad, but it was far worse for more casual players who spent the whole game wondering just what the heck was going on. And as I mentione before the Guardians story would have had a ton more time to be fleshed out and made more cognitive and gone through more thorough proofreading and editing, as it would have had an extra couple of years to develop.
Other than that? I take no issue with the multiplayer (just needs more playlists, and more community forge support!), and the gameplay feels like a proper evolution of classic Halo arena play.
Also, the Locke introduction webseries really should have been an Osiris introduction webseries. Showing how the team assembled and possibly their first mission together. Noone knows or cares who Vale or Tanaka are because they just appeared out of nowhere.