Finished the campaign on heroic. and I have to say that I enjoyed the campaign a lot. The amount of care and clearly thought out story on how to tie the two previous stories together without swerving into a new alternate universe is greatly appreciated. The subtle and some obvious lines used as throwbacks to H4 and 5 were done well. My only main gripe/concern involves the introduction of the Banished to a core Halo game. For those who never played Halo Wars 2… there is no explanation of who Atriox is and what the story of the Banished are let alone how they suddenly became this overwhelming force in the intro. There is a large gap that I hope will be filled in. That being said the Banished are the best thing added into the Halo Universe in my opinion but, I couldn’t help the notice the vast difference between the Banished vehicle designs from Halo Wars 2 where they were introduced vs Infinites version. To be clear I do like both versions but I would have liked to seen more consistency in their designs or at least see an evolution from the original. Seeing an up armored brute version of a wraith from HW2 for instance vs the re colored evolution of the traditional Covenant design.
The Gameplay of the campaign is spot on. The freedom of movement to climb any mountain as you see fit to the added abilities. Abilities that even when upgraded don’t distract from the core fun gameplay that the world has come to love from the Halo Series. The AI is good enough to cause you to change weapons and tactics occasionally (Heroic) but don’t seem to offer a evolving play style, squad dynamics as example if that makes sense.
I enjoyed playing and rescuing marines and establishing FOBs and overall this idea and implementation was well done and lays a ground work to build upon. That being said the FOBs weapon containers seem a little archaic in design. You essentially craft a weapon which is fine, but no quick way to resupply. Would also like to see in the future a bit of a design make over when you retake a FOB and have it under UNSC control. Also they all are a default platform essentially with no purpose/character or story behind their location. Would like to see them more modeled for their location and lore purpose. IE on a hillside as a overlook dug in, or a central FOB as a supply route to others and built as a defensible position rather than just a platform.
Vehicles in the campaign are overall good and enjoyable. I found myself not using a variety of vehicles due to their underwhelming performance and or just plain mobility limitations. The Scorpion tank is no longer an off road vehicle and cant climb anything. Not to mention its controls on PC are… sub optimal… many times I find myself wanting to strafe ( vehicle moving 1 direction w turret facing other). 98% of the time this is Impossible as the tank has a mind of its own moving opposite of the control input. The traditional warthog is too weak at least for now. Maybe once Co op is here and you don’t have to rely on marines I will feel different. The Razorback was the unsung hero of my campaign experience. Load that tanky SOB up with marines (especially once upgraded with rockets and snipers) and just run circles around banished camps and FOBs and they make quick work of the Banished. Loved that. The Wasp was the biggest let down I had by far in my entire campaign experience. Its just so… lack luster in every way. Its weak and will get shot down with ease. Its main gun is meh and for firing two rockets at a target you often times think to yourself that perhaps its weaker than the cannon. So many times I would take the Wasp out and have it zapped and fall from the sky and get blasted that you end up playing it from such a far distance that you lose any sense of enjoyment when you finally clear a camp or if you sweat it out for 5 min to take out a HVT. The Wasp is a weird side devolution of a Halo aircraft, it appears to be a side variation of a Hornet but loses the ability of carrying any marines while also having reduced firepower and made of paper. I really hope that in a future DLC we can work on a new Aircraft that can be worked into the story of perhaps finding it in the Infinities crash site. Or give me the Falcon/Hornet back. At least then I can take some marines/Co op player with me.
The whole open world concept was done well. At no point did I feel like I’m just doing side quests to waste time and distract from the story. Instead I enjoyed the side missions. Finding the audio logs that add to the main story of what happened while still being able to freely continue on to the main mission. If we get anymore side missions in the future I would like to see them continue to be a part of the overall story and not a side story. I think this formula works and should remain in the future.
To wrap it up, I loved it and cant wait for more. Thanks 343 this is indeed your best Halo yet!
Nice thoughts! Halo Infinite became my second favorite campaign. I am in LOVE with the House of Reckoning. It was so well done in my opinion. I also agree with you views on the opening. It can be confusing for someone who is new to the story and hasn’t played Halo Wars 2 (if you haven’t you should play it its fun) or read the books (you also should).
I could go wild and spill my thoughts on the campaign, but I really don’t want to type so much, so I’ll keep it simplistic. Let’s start off with the non-canon stuff, the gameplay and environment was just top-tier. Really well and crafted experience, only issue on the environment side was just a lack of biome variety, but that’s at most a nitpick.
Now for the canon, wow. It was brilliant and breathed a new perspective into the canon. These Endless being left uncatalogued and potentially being immune to the effects of the Halo array (which would explain why they are still alive on the Ring), it just interesting to think about. Next, this Chief story arc is great and I’m glad they didn’t drop the Chief actually being more emotional, but at the same time it wasn’t overdone, and on top of that, he still had his heroic moments. Now lastly the Weapon’s story arc was really well crafted, the way her character grew over time, understanding more as time goes by was really well executed.
Now with that being said, a few questions still linger for me, but that isn’t a bad thing, first is, what happened to the Infinity? Where is her crew that survived (besides the Marines we save)? Are there other Spartan-IVs still out there with other groups of survivors? What is the Reverie which has been mentioned a few times? Why does the Infinity not appear to have all her crew aboard at the time it was attacked? And lastly, what was that legendary cutscene? Like some light does need to be shed on that eventually, and while I do have theories about it, they are just theories at the end of the day.
Took me a good 30 hours to get around to it after failed server updates (so it just says preorder screen when you try to play on games pass) and eventually finding the buried menu point and installing but yeah I love it so far
Lots of insane color palettes and visuals I’m not used to in halo and the progression is a nice touch
You really don’t need to have played Halo Wars 2 to get what the Banished are. Simply because we learn absolutely nothing about them beyond their initial origin and that they’re on the Ark. We don’t know why they’re attacking the UNSC, we don’t know why they want the ring, we don’t know how he got there and the scale of the organisation. Halo Infinite gives a much more complete answer to those questions even if you don’t get the cinematic showing him turning on the Covenant.
Plus the characterisation is totally different. In Halo Wars 2 Atriox is just a warlord. But in Infinite he’s a God to the Banished. They have this cultish devotion to his vision and legacy. Plus he comes across as full on crazy at times in his quest for the Endless.
i have also compleet the halo campaign on normal first to see where my pain points are going to be when i go play the new save file on legendary.
and the mistake’s i have done on normal setting are a good lesson for me what i not need to do when i go for legendary soon.
its a good campaign and better then other halo titels and more freedom.
the good thing i like and 343i has done good is to make sure the friendly AI’s cant drive any type off vehicle’s in halo any more.
the players that have play halo reach campaign know how worse the friendly AI’s can drive and let you get killt by bad driving.
there is 1 problem i always get at the outpost’s when i let a vehicle come.
there is always 1 stupid marine that stay’s on the wrong place and gets killt by it when it drops.
i hope 343 is fixing that since its not fun any more to see there getting splat by a vehicle that drops from the air.
Very disappointed. 6 year gap between games and we get….
Killed Cortana off screen absolute fail and lazy, no flood, no blue team, no Halsey, no arbiter, no halo characters other than chief…no cinematic cutscenes only audio logs and holograms.
Open world development took focus away from the plot and it’s a very empty world at that.
Very repetitive missions and boss fights, and the end was super rushed and crammed together.
Heroic difficulty took me 8 hours or so. Too short.
Entire story was about 6 month past events that were not in any previous game.
Constantly felt I missed a book/game somewhere.
Did I mention Cortana died off screen? Appalling.
No big battles, every fight was an arena fight. Where were the epic banshee, scorpion, scarab vehicle warfare battles like from 1-3? Wow huge miss.
Why didn’t we get to fight and lose to atriox at the beginning? Fail.
Cortana sacrificed herself again as in halo 4, repetitive ending and even worse, this time chief has zero time to react. Rushed exit.
Overall, I’m amazed people enjoyed it. Mechanics are solid, open world is a cool idea, except when it distracts you from what’s important. The story. Maybe multiplayer is so good people are blinded by what this campaign was….lame and sad. Absolutely sad.
Killed Cortana off screen absolute fail and lazy, no flood, no blue team, no Halsey, no arbiter, no halo characters other than chief…no cinematic cutscenes only audio logs and holograms.
I do agree with some of these points. Cortana killed “off screen” wasn’t very consequential to me because it did explain how she died and what her legacy was, and I enjoyed piecing that together. However I would have liked to see at least one UNSC character pop up in the game other than just audio logs. I’m fairly certain it speaks to game development hell and rewrites with how many cutscenes were holograms, which makes sense.
Open world development took focus away from the plot and it’s a very empty world at that.
Disagree. Thought it added to world building and the world was more full than I expected.
Very repetitive missions and boss fights, and the end was super rushed and crammed together.
Enjoyed mission design with the straightforward missions. Too many boss fights though.
Heroic difficulty took me 8 hours or so. Too short.
Did you skip stuff or use the scorp gun? I 99%'d the game and it took me 40ish hours on Legendary
5/6. Entire story was about 6 month past events that were not in any previous game.
Constantly felt I missed a book/game somewhere.
I mean, that was the point of the game? To piece back what happened in the previous six months. If you didn’t get the audio logs or pay attention, you definitely missed part of the game, which is this game.
No big battles, every fight was an arena fight. Where were the epic banshee, scorpion, scarab vehicle warfare battles like from 1-3? Wow huge miss.
Did we play the same game? Did you play The Road mission, take the scorpion out, fill a razorback full of marines and give them augmented skewers and raid a base? Did you call in a Wasp, get it doomed while fighting Banshees, and then highjack a banshee and take it to a Banished base?
I loved it. Just to make that clear at the outset. Even some of the stuff below here had some very good and interesting elements.
But, it’s hard not to feel some disappointment.
It does feel like a committee decision to kill off Cortana and prematurely cut off the Created story after only just introducing them. They could have done a Halo Wars 2 and simply changed the narrative focus. For such an important character to die off screen in a series of flashbacks might add to the sense of the Chief having failed before he’s even begun. But, if you were curious about what was going to follow on from Halo 5 and where they might go with OP Cortana; it’s not good. I know people have said they did good by it, but frankly they are the same people who wanted to retcon Halo 5 so I don’t buy that.
I am not a 100 percent on the Weapon. When Cortana says they’re going to pair you with another model AI, I read that quote as, nobody could replace her because they have a unique bond formed over shared adversity. But you’re instead told that the OG Cortana failed and was broken whilst this new clean version is perfect? Why would the Weapon be less likely to fall to the Logic Plague if she doesn’t have a bond with the Chief? Surely without that bond to anchor her she would be more and not less susceptible to the Graveminds influence. It actually undercuts their bond because that’s what distinguishes the two AI. I am just not fully convinced she could replace the character.
The Banished can’t carry a game on their own. It is problematic only having a single faction. It’s a massive improvement over Halo Wars 2 but there is an expectation to have more than one faction.
They keep the stakes quite low. The Banished are never in a position to fire the ring and the Endless threat doesn’t materialise.
The games not actually that mysterious if you consider that they don’t make any major reveals about the Endless. You are told Cortana is dead and this is the case. You know that the Weapon is a Cortana clone and this is the case. The only major reveal is that Cortana saw the Chief broken and this made her snap out of it so that she had a good death. But that’s fairly easy to infer from the initial cutscene when you see the intact ring before the Chief is beaten up. It certainly didn’t have any OMG twists or reveals.
I would have liked more ambient or recurring quests/activities so that I can mess around in the open world once I ve unlocked all the gear. Currently I feel like I would like to do more apart from replay the game on Legendary.
Nice to see you at least agreed with my 9/10 points. Regarding your responses, yes they’re just opinions, but don’t dispute some facts I laid out.
You state, “did we play the same game”. No. I played Minecraft and am writing on this forum……have you never played halo 1-3? I’d recommend going back and playing those and see if that ONE mission you mention really compares… fun fact it doesn’t. And the open world shenanigans aren’t comparable either, fun maybe, but their not story driven. You can’t compare that unless you’ve never played 1-3 and lack knowledge of previous huge battle missions.
5/6. The point of a game is to complete the story OF THE EXISTING GAME. LOL I mean how can you possibly defend a game who’s point or story is in audio logs? That should be extra or more in dept stuff, not the main thing. Again how do you not understand that? And again Halo 1-3 had terminals and they only gave extra information, not the entire story. You say, that’s the point of this game? That speaks volumes to it then.
Let’s compare red dead redemption 2 or far cry or assassins creed or any other open world….still think this one is full of stuff? No. You just cannot blindly believe that when again……there’s comparisons.
No, I skipped nothing. Propaganda towers, campaign cosmetics, spartan cores, and mini world bosses don’t constitute the story. It’s fill ins. And again lol VERY LITTLE AT THAT.
We will disagree I assume on a lot. No need to continue this. But anyone who’s been a halo fan from the start. Must see that, Halo 4 was the last decent campaign. But at least halo 5 had a traditional campaign, bad story, but traditional. This one just lacked soo much. Maybe future DLCs can save it, but we’d need 2-3 of them within 2 years to even matter.
I do agree with no missions in Infinite reflecting the scale of say, Delta Halo or The Covenant. But, it being open world, I think the aim was for there to NOT be those large scale missions, simply because the majority 2/3 of the game were the free roam.
I don’t play Ubisoft games as a rule anymore, and I hate comparing games to RDR or BOTW because they are simply masterpieces. The closest comparison in my experience is Bioshock, where the audio tapes really add to the game, and are, IMO necessary for the game experience. If you haven’t collected the tapes and listened to them, you haven’t actually played the game.
Like you said, we’ll probably just end up disagreeing, which is perfectly fine. But as someone who has been a Halo fan from the start, I think this is a fantastic and extremely welcome entry into the franchise. I would simply argue that by choosing to skip the audio logs you are missing out on the story, just as you would have in say ODST or games like Bioshock.
i hope really that 343 is doing something with the marine’s in the campaign mode since there are always in your way more that you kill then by there stupid mistake’s like dive on the ground when you span a vehicle in the outpost’s.
and when you turn back with your vehicle there also dive to the ground and you splat then more.
I liked the campaign a lot but my biggest issue is that they kill cortana off screen. I felt like I missed something and didn’t believe that’s what actually happened when they said it. I thought I understood it wrong because there’s no way she’s just dead after the setup that was 4 and 5. Then to just say it in passing without being part of it at all was just not good. I liked this game a lot as halo 7. I just wish we got halo 6
I know, I was convinced that this was full KoToR and Cortana had amnesia or something. Like they tell you she’s dead and I am like “And……” through most of the campaign. The shock was that she was dead and this was a goodbye.
Plus there’s the dramatic reveal that she’s a copy of Cortana. Which, we know. Yes it’s a shock for her, I got that. But even if you haven’t played Halo 4 or 5 they explicitly talk about another Cortana model being a thing when you meet her.
this “mission” took me like five minutes on heroic it was a total joke to call it a mission, i just hopped in the rocket hog and took off, got to the first gate grappled over it and hijacked a ghost to the 2nd gate grappled again till i got the house of reckoning