How is Halo Infinite's campaign the series' worst?

Games Halo Infinite
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Not the worst at all, and not sure there is a worst as all mainline games are quite good. It’s however the one which is most different from the previous formula, due to its open world elements.

To me the open world was both good and bad. I loved exploring the map and getting a real feel for Zeta Halo. And I also loved having wee skirmishes with foes all around this world, taking down outposts and having the freedom to experiment with different weapons and vehicles. On the other hand it really broke up the narrative, I felt like all the big plot points were at the linear sections in the beginning and ends of the game. And as someone who loves exploring to death it felt weird not hearing the characters much for big portions of the game; so I think any future game using open world would need to try and reconcile this.

In terms of storyline, I don’t think it was as good as the Halo 1-3 war setting, but it had potential to go to interesting places if it ever gets developed further. Time traveling Endless could work well if the concept could somehow be implemented into gameplay (e.g. Marathon Infinity), but they didn’t really do much in this game. The Banished were also more interesting than [insert generic covenant fodder remnant of the week] that were being fought beforehand.

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After playing ODST on Legendary yesterday for the first time in a while, I can confidently say Halo shouldn’t have an open world. ODST is my favorite Halo game, and going through New Mombasa Streets for the 50th time is really more of a chore despite the atmosphere.

Replayability massively suffers when you’re playing a walking simulator with maybe 10 enemies in between objectives. The world is segmented into different arenas (This is a very good thing in Halo), but the actual encounters are small and sparse. It may make sense from a narrative point of view, but as for gameplay, it feels more like something a modder would put together over the course of 6 months in their free time. Infinite is like this but with few semblances of well thought out arena design.

It’s not a popular opinion because the open world fad hasn’t quite burned out yet, but quality and very replayable map design is critical in Halo. The game falls flat without it, which is why Infinite simply won’t be as replayable as the past games as time goes on. It’s a “one and you’re done” experience, and the fact the game shipped without the ability to select a mission or co-op shows 343 thought the same. It was designed as a throwaway experience.

Many people will not like this post for now, but they’ll come to understand it as time passes.

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The issue with open-world shooters is that the ending outcome is typically the same.

The point of an open-world experience is typically to ensure that the game world feels explorative and alive, to showcase the capabilities of an engine, or to hav eit so that no two playthroughs are the same.
In the Elder Scrolls for example, you can go explore one region in one playthrough and go through certain faction quests based on what kind of playthrough you are doing. Wizard’s College playthrough? What about Thieves Guild or Arena Championship?
Replayability by having no two save files be the same is the definitive factor.

But then you have open worlds like Ubisoft’s open world games, wherein the point of the open world is to have too much to do that you cannot fully 100% the game by the time the next one releases, ensuring that the majority of players are at most 60% done with the game by the time the new release comes out.
Mostly because there is no multiple endings, outside of a single choice in the game that will alter the outcome in the case of Far Cry.

But with your typical shooter, what does open world bring?
Halo Infinite’s missions or ending doesn’t change if you don’t do side missions.
Halo 3 ODST’s limited open world is done to showcase how alone you truly are in a city that should be bustling but is vacant and dead. Thankfully it is not the entire city and instead is just a series of small districts.

I can honestly think of only one open world shooter that I can fully enjoy, and that is because it is a LIMITED open world where as you progress the game opens up a little bit more of the region as you complete main missions -
— METRO EXODUS —
The open-worldness only affects 3 of the 11 default chapters, with your choices in each of these open world chapters determining the outcome of the game.
And even the 3rd open world mission wasn’t even that open world as it was a linear progression through a region that provided just open approach to small pockets of areas to allow you to do side objectives and exploring without going too far off of the path.

The point I am trying to make is that open world is somewhat good, but only if the world is not too large and if there are multiple outcomes that can occur as a consequence of your actions; allowing you to replay the game again and again to see what possible endings you can reach based on your choices.
Once you play through Halo Infinite once, you don’t even need to do it again.
With ODST at least, by collecting all of Sadie’s Story you unlock a new interaction and an alternate cutscene to show that your character understands something from a different perspective; so perhaps two playthroughs are required.

Honestly? I wish Halo Infinite was open world BUT far more condensed.
Either that or give us WAY more side-operation objectives and some alternate endings to the main game based on if you did those side operations or not.
By playing through Halo Infinite and ignoring all the marines and side-missions, the ending is not changed. With all other open world games, it has an impact and makes the world feel more alive and worth the exploration.
The only consequences to our actions we see is access to better weapons and more FOBs under our control, with more Marines sitting at the FOB.

The execution of this open world experience is just all wrong.

207

That’s mostly the point I was trying to make. “open” doesn’t need to mean “massive and desolate”. There are too many Ubisoft copycats in the video game industry. I think it’s mainly because that style of game is easy to design, relatively speaking. The map and core gameplay should be completely synchronized. It turns out Halo’s strength lies in arena combat because that’s what the core gameplay was designed around.

There’s a reason Infinite’s multiplayer maps are still arena based and not massive like in Battlefield. 343 made the campaign in a way that could feed off of the current open world trend. It really shows that 343 was still very much following trends in the development of Infinite (As if the whole live service thing wasn’t enough proof of this), and it’s clear why Microsoft cleaned house recently.

If anyone is wondering what would I do to evolve Halo: Branching paths, but not in every level. It would only be used sparingly, and where the topography/geography and narrative would allow it. I would also make more open levels/sections of levels, but still linear, like the Spire section in Halo Reach’s “Tip of the Spear” mission, or the middle section of “Winter Contingency” where you drive around in a small open section of the level. Mostly linear to keep it in line with past titles, but with more of the above elements to give you more breathing room at times, and more options when playing the game later on.

Due to Reach being OG Bungie’s last Halo game, I honestly believe that was more of the direction they wanted Halo to go in, at least from a map design point of view. Definitely linear overall to stay true to the gameplay people expect in Halo, but with a bit more breathing room, and it still retains clear structure so the player doesn’t get lost or end up wandering aimlessly too much. Narratively, it guides the player through objectives faster than a massive open world, which helps give a sense of urgency to the game. “We need to warn everyone that the Covenant is on Reach, and we need to do it ASAP.” The level design enforces that thought.

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Fun fact.
The original story of Halo 5 was going to feature branching paths in its narrative, with key choices in certain missions leading to a few separate endings (still likely 343 chasing trends as Black-Ops 2 featured this and 343 has identified CoD as one of their rival brands)

It is unfortunate that when the creative leads of Halo 5 played musical chairs that they scrapped this idea and re-write the story of Halo 5 to be Halo 5 Guardians but THEN decided to let the marketing team still work off of the original story script; hence why we have the trailers and Hunt The Truth featuring NOTHING of what happened in the final game.

I personally would have loved to see Halo 5 be a proper dual narrative game where the choices you make in key missions would alter the final outcome of the game, with one ending being declared canon and the others declared as otherwise. It would have definitely made the campaign much more replayable.

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you are compleet wrong with it.
halo infinite campaign mode has become the worst campaign mode in the serie’s what there have done now with scraping the expensions for it.

the open world setting was a good thing since you have a lot of freedom to do and what for weapons you wane use to defeat some enemy’s with it or way’s that a good point from it.
on points like that agree with you.

but what has it make the worse is the things there have done compleet wrong with it.
there not have use the open world setting to its max at all.
the story line is now stuck on the worst cliffhanger there is and the halo serie’s has at all.
same with the things you can do after you compleet all the missions is almost notting.
same with the enemy’s there never respawn back to it fullst and zeta halo become’s a desert if you compleet all the things there are to do.

there is a long list there never have done at all with the campaign mode what there can have done with it.

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I always find it interesting how “false advertising” is a huge criticism of Halo 5: Guardians, yet no one seems to remember or care that Halo 2 did the exact same thing.

Keep in mind they’re different kinds of open worlds. One is a first person shooter and one is a full fledged role playing game. While both feature open worlds, they’re vastly different kinds of games with completely different objectives and pacing.

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but what all the open world setting game’s have are the same thing.
it needs to have a lot of contant to do so that there not get bored fast with it.

and thats what there not have done in halo infinite.

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Really? I’m not sure we disagree on most of it actually

Totally agree about the expansions, I thought they were going to extend the game with DLC until they finished this arc, and I am currently bummed out that it isn’t. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t have fun playing though the campaign over a year ago (during more optimistic times). If anything, this is worse because I wanted much, much more

Regarding the open world, maybe….
I had recently finished Assassins Creed Odyssey, which went on for too long in my opinion (though I’m an idiot who feels the need complete everything to the point of boredum), so a more condensed world felt better. But I feel unlike other open world games they didn’t really integrate the story sections and open world together; it was almost like you had to go to mission sections away from the main map for the story of the game to move forward (e.g., beginning, conservatory, and end sections).
Cliff-hanger, yup, but again I didn’t have a problem with it until we found out it either is never going to get resolved, or we have to wait years to find out.

Did it become a desert? I remember lots of random enemies respawning in the wild, but the bases didn’t. There should have been a mechanism to revert bases to original status I feel.

Also, it’s all very subjective. Halo 1 to 3 I only played as Co-Op at a friend’s places, so a lot of the fun was with who I was with. Had some great moments together like in Halo 1 when we were driving the warthog though the exploding Pillar at Autumn and actually stopping mid-way though the carnage to change places after a back seater driver argument! :rofl:
Or finding ways to Meele each other in the back at the worst possible time :smiley:
And I loved playing as the Arbiter in Halo 3 fighting back to back with my mate playing Master Chief. :heart:

Halo 4 played a while after release on an old X-box 360, and had a lot of fun with it but wasn’t expecting much so perhaps that is why I was less disappointed than others here

Was looking really forward to Halo 5, but turned out to not have split screen co-op, and wasn’t available on the PC, so my experience of the campaign was restricted to YouTube videos! I also didn’t dig the heel face turn Cortana storyline as much. In that sense Halo Infinite was… Infinitely better than my experience of Halo 5.

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it was random respawning always and it was also little respawn you get.
and its always the same type off enemy’s some elite’s,brute’s and grunts.
no bezerkers or brute chieftens or captians or hunters.

if you look when you do the story missions on the tower or the Excavation Site and look after you compleet the campaign story how worse the respawens are you can see its worse on the 2 same place’s.
its the same with the bunkers before you destroy then and after you destory then and there respawn is also little then before you compleet it.
same with the HVT locations also has the worst respawens and less then before.

i have play the halo 5 campaign missions also and compleet then on legendary difficulty also.
it was a good campaign it has since you play on 2 side’s again with 2 diffrend spartan teams.
and on legendary difficulty you need to think good how to play if right since there deal more damage then normal and hit faster back to you.
since you have to deal with also 5 warden enternals at the same time was more the hard part and need to use the power weapons good and save then.
same for the spots you need to defence you self since its a close space and a lot off enemy’s come in wave to you.
it was much better then halo infintie campaign mode.

there was less other things to do each time.
i have replay the halo infinite campaign like 6 time’s and each time i have defeat some boss a diffrend way then i have done the other time.
take bassus i have use the scorpion tank not the gun but the real tank to defeat him.
chak lok i have defeat in a lot off diffrend way’s like with a warthog or ghost.
same with escharum i have found a other way to blast him away fast.
that was only for the short therms to do.
for the long therm there was compleet notting to do at all since there was notting to do at all for the long therm.
and i took 5 months after the launch to get bored with it so fast i got bored with the campaign mode.

it was the same with the new location on zeta halo we have see in the last cutscene that it was becoming more a desert loctaion what now is not going to happing at all.
same with the new enemy’s the endless is something we also not get anymore.

is the campaign mode from halo infinite the worst in the serie’s then its a compleet YES.
there was a chance it got back then to become the best campaign mode from the halo serie’s but there have destroy it compleet now and its been mark more as the worst in the serie’s.

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Again, that depends on the scope. What I expect from a role playing game is vastly different than what I expect from a first person shooter.

A design flaw far too many open world games fall into, which includes Bethesda Game Studio’s games, is having too much filler content to pad things out to make it seem like there’s more. Thankfully this was not the case with Halo Infinite.

Halo Infinite is very much open world “lite.” It had specific open world objectives you could do (i.e. High Value targets, most of the FOBS, Banished facilities, etc.), all of which were completely optional and more focused instead of branching quest lines, which is exactly what I’d expect from a first person shooter.

Look at Halo 3: ODST. While not exactly considered “open world,” it was an open hub allowing you to explore and pursue the main story in whatever order you wanted for much of the game. What we got in Halo Infinite was grander, more involved, and had far more content, so it did evolve a franchise concept further than what we had before.

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People hate it for the simple reason that you needed to read a plethora of novels, comics and a web-series just to have a basic understanding of what the hell’s going on.

I’d also point to Actman and his videos, they go into great detail of everything wrong.

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you know halo 3 ODST open world is full with mini story missions its not a compleet story it self.
its not telling a compleet story it self more like we know from the other halo game’s what is telling a story from mission 1 t/m 8 or in most case’s 14.
halo 3 ODST is the same as zelda breath of the wild has that each titan there tells its own champion story.
halo infinite campaign missions are telling a story from start to incomplete finish.

sadly not.
the bunkers you need to destroy for the valor points or you cant get some off the weapons at all.
HVT’s to get the weapons variant’s.
and FOBS for fast travel.

still it can have a lot off other things for its open world setting.

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did you really have to? i never read anything before playing 5, just played 4 and felt like i understood everything going on.

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And yet the best open world games are the ones that offer replayability without it getting stale.

Look at Far Cry 3.
You play that game more than a couple times and it gets rather dull.
Then look at Skyrim.
I have played that game a dozen playthroughs and I am STILL FINDING new things to keep it interesting!

Open-World is treated as a selling point for it being massive and absolute freedom. But if that open-world freedom doesn’t change from one playthrough to the next; what is the point?

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i do think 5 did it worse though, they had hunt the truth audio book and all the chief vs locke stuff making us believe it was going to be just that. honestly i don’t know how they we’re going to make a story about about chief turning against the unsc or whatever while a major forerunner threat is literally right infront of them?

i was a little young to be playing halo 2 at the time so i dont know the deal with its misleading ads, wasn’t just a tag line like “earth will never be the same” and people thought it would have more earth levels? that doesn’t sound as bad as what 5 did.

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You means Sadie’s Story? That was cool, though it’s simply collecting audio logs. The concept is in Halo Infinite, though they’re more traditional audio logs.

That’s still optional. You’re simply choosing to have the option of loading yourself out how you want instead of scavenging from the battlefield.

No objection here, mind you. It would be very cool to see more.

Again, different style of games and different expectations. Far Cry 3 and Halo Infinite are not role playing games. The scope of their open worlds are vastly different than The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, etc. They’re completely different genres of games.

Another way to look at it is Far Cry 3 and Halo Infinite are first person shooters with open world elements.

Keep in mind, we are talking over a decade between games. Social Media, heck even YouTube wasn’t a thing when Halo 2 was launching.

For Halo 2, the whole game was marketed as the war for Earth on Earth. It started with the announcement trailer showcasing graphical technology very similar to what ID Tech 4 was capable of, but something the Blam Engine on Xbox was not.

We then had the E3 gameplay demo of a completely fictitious Earth level that wasn’t actually possible in-game; the Xbox simply was not capable of doing this demo.

Halo 2’s marketing was actually worse (than _Halo 5: Guardian’s) because Bungie sold the game on actual gameplay footage that was a sham. Story-wise, you only spent 2 levels from the whole game on Earth. Just 2.

In the behind-the-scenes DVD that came with the Collector’s Edition, Bungie realized how bad they had fowled up (and the DVD itself shows them slacking off a whole lot), and that they had to restart, re-do, and rebuild the game from scratch.

Development of Halo 2 started after the first game launched, and near all of it was tossed away and Bungie built the current game in less than a year. This is why the game had visual issues, significant texture pop-in, and the “cliffhanger” ending that it was so heavily criticized for.

Halo 2 making it’s launch date was a miracle, and that it was still a great game another miracle, but the cost was technical issues and the last few levels of the game were cut. These levels were expanded upon and served as the first (roughly) 4 levels of Halo 3.

So because of how poorly Bungie developed Halo 2, the narrative of Halo 3 also suffered for it. That’s a huge fowl up affecting multiple games.

Note in-spite of the above, Halo 2 is still my fav Campaign in the franchise.

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no i mean the story’s you play as the other ODST members from one time.
like buck or dutch.
since there are not link to each other at all.
if you start with dutch story then it has compleet notting to do with buck story.
its only the last 2 missions when you play as the rooky that make’s more like a story line.

thats only for first 5 missions you can do random in any other.
the 6th one is only be able to do after you compleet the first 5 missions.
and after you compleet the 6th mission you are stuck in a small area where the 7th and 8th mission is going to play of.
that means for the first 5 missions you can do then in any orther more.
and after that you are force to do then in the same way like it has been always that mission 6 if you compleet it unlocks the 7th one and the 7th unlocks the 8th.

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Ah, you mean the flashbacks themselves.

So here you’re exploring the hub and then launching into a classic-styled level. In Halo Infinite, you explore the open world and pursue the main missions into more classic styled levels. There are indeed similarities. You’re simply doing it all from John’s perspective.

Yes, I’m aware. That’s still much of the game.

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What saved halo 2 is that while yes it went against advertising, it instead explored a whole other, possibly more engaging angle than just a big brawl on earth.

H5 just feels like a watered down sad version of what was advertised.

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