In my opinion:
1 - Halo Reach (even though i contribute Reach MP to the downfall of Halo)
2 - Halo 2
3 - Halo 3
4 - Halo ODST
5 - Halo Infinite
6 - Halo
7 - Halo 4
8 - Halo 5
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Halo 5s campaign is better than Infinites in almost every way other than the amount of time you play as the Chief. Infinite campaign is the shell of a campaign at best.
Edit: Infinites bosses are better
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its ok part 2 will completely ignore part 1 and part 3 will completely ignore the entirety of the halo series. it’s what 343 is best at.
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Previous titles did not simply make you a 1 man army. You most the time felt like you were part of an war effort and the marines and ODST were part of that story being in cutscenes and set up missions. In Halo Infinite the existence of any friendly AI is really never mentioned. Brohammer acts like he is the last “normal” person and there are hundreds of marines who he never mentions or interacts with.
Zeta Halo is an alien world built by aliens, but the natural environment, color pallet, and vegetations looks identical to Earth. Halo CE first ring mission looked like an alien world, Halo Infinite does not.
The whole story premise as well is very similar to Destiny 2.
-The hero is defeated by an invading army, whos attack cripples humanity.
- A normal person saves the hero and shows the hero the importance of normal humans
- The villain’s are seeking a power that humanity wants/has, in destiny its the traveler and in Halo its the ring.
-After defeating lower rank bad guys, the hero faces the main villains and wins.
-However at the end it is hinted that a new force of enemies have been put on notice and will probably be a threat later on. In destiny 2 it shows the darkness and in Halo it reveals what is assumed is the endless.
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Normally I would agree with you, but it seems that Microsoft is finally bringing the hammer down on keeping problems to a minimum when it comes to game design choices and story choices, having learned from the failings of Halo 4 and Halo 5. However that hasn’t stopped the game from having human error in the design of the coding and servers.
Bonus point - Joseph Staten is spearheading the writing boards.
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That’s a little unfair on Destiny 2:
- You decisively defeat the Red Legion
- Ghaul is killed
- The City retaken
- The Traveller freed
- The Guardians powers restored
Yes in the big scheme it’s not as massive a deal as the return of the darkness. But, it does provide a satisfying resolution to that conflict and does provide a conclusion.
With Halo Infinite, you kill Decimus 2.0 and he tells you point blank that this changes nothing. The Banished are still on the ring. They still want to activate it. He’s not the leader of the Banished who is Atriox and set to return.
Plus they didn’t introduce the Darkness in Destiny 2 until the very end. Whereas, introducing the Endless as a giant tease that never gets resolved and you feel like you’ve been told the prologue. Like if Halo 4 cut with you first encountering the Prometheans.
They are taking some creative risks:
- Killing Cortana off again
- Bringing NotCortana in
- Using the Banished after abysmal Halo Wars 2 sales and their own cancellation of the series
- Bringing in a brand new faction with the Endless
- Shifting the game to open world
- Cutting storylines is something they have took flak for before in Halo 4 and Spartan Ops; this being a lot more substantial.
The campaign feels like 1 mission dragged out for 8 hours.
The open world is boring and barren with no distinct landmarks or biomes.
The “individual missions” all take place in the exact same environment.
There is not one set piece moment that wows you in the entire thing.
There is not one likable character. Chief is supposed to be a shell and he still is, he just talks now. The likes of Johnson, Keyes, Miranda, Arbiter, Lasky, Roland, Buck, Blue Team; hell, Palmer are just completely missing from the game. The Pilot is not engaging or likeable and Anime Cortana is a cheap ripoff of the real thing.
I will say that exploring the map can be fun if I am in the right mood for it, but when compared to proper Open World games, the map is small and empty.
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Would also like to point out that you are fighting the Red Legion in Destiny and the Banished are represented by the color red as well.
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the fact I can’t play it offline on my xbox thanks to DRM authentication means it’s automatically the worst campaign. I can happily play any of the other campaigns at any point offline and for no reason you can’t in Infinite. We simply don’t know if we’ll be able to play this game down the line because of this
She should’ve stayed dead after Halo 4. If they were going to bring her back, they could’ve made it a fragment from her rampancy stuck in the A.I. Chip that John still kept around. Much better than her becoming the antagonist and being fully restored.
It helps line up with the idea that when Cortana dies, John would be paired with another Cortana model if Dr. Halsey allowed it.
Halo Wars 2 sold brilliantly and was well received by the fandom. What failed was the projected profits from Blitz Packs, considering that Blitz was a cash-grab of a mode anyway.
At least they are getting some proper buildup unlike the Promethans and The Didact. We actually got to fight The Harbinger in a fight instead of just a quicktime event like the last two games.
That was actually something that has been an idea since Halo 3’s development, with more open worldness exploration. However the development of the story turned away from that in Halo 3 and caused a lot of cut chapters and levels.
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That assumes she was meant to stay dead at the end of Halo 4. Bringing back a new variant of Cortana just invalidates that by another method. In Halo 4 when they use that line you assume it will be a very different character.
So he gets Cortana back without any consequences and without having done anything to earn that as the hero? That’s not a good thing and it means you either miss out on certain bits of drama or they’re going to try and do them with NotCortana which makes no sense.
For example, the bit where she finds about Doisac and says she has to be deleted. That, even down to some of the dialogue “your mission was to destroy me”, pretty much plays out as if she was Cortana and had done those things but had snapped out of it. But she hasn’t. Because it’s not the same person. So she has nothing to apologise for and you have no reason to be suspicious or blame her. That’s a false conflict. It’s trying to do a redemption arc for Cortana through another character.
Plus they’re trying to sell that the Chief can win by proxy since he can make things work with NotCortana even if he did fail and lose Cortana. That’s bad for the same reason Wanda bringing Vision back is. You deal with loss by moving on, not trying to recapture what you’ve lost.
My concern is the writers want to have their cake and eat it. They do want the big redemptive arc where the good in the character wins out and where Chief loves Cortana so much he forgives her for what she did. BUT, they don’t want him to be protecting an AI who killed billions of people and betrayed everybody. So, give him a completely innocent version of the same character. You can’t have it both ways.
Plus I wanted to see more of Cortana ruling the Galaxy and being crazy OP. You miss out and you’re never going to get that story back. I kill Atriox and beat them on Zeta; theyll still come back. Even if Mendicant comes back that’s still a very different kind of threat since it’s not a Rogue Servitor but Skynet. I don’t think going Battlestar Galactica with the Infinity was a bad idea and they’ve left the world building a bit of a mess by retconning Halo 5.
If it sold well they would be doing Halo Wars 3. Pretty sure they said they had no intention of making another. Plus they cancelled some of their plans for the game narratively and stuff like introducing a third faction.
It’s not proper buildup. We aren’t talking appearing a few missions in or in the last third of the game; this is the DLC we may be getting 2-3 years after launch. It’s a bungled introduction which they are going to work very hard to turn people around on. The First impression is that it’s all talk and there’s no way you’re more dangerous than the Flood. What interest there is basically centres on them being a stepping stone to the Flood coming back rather than interest in the Endless themselves.
If you cut an entire faction in the Prometheans I kind of implicitly expect you would replace them with something? A bit like Halo Wars 2 where they didn’t add the Promethean faction so did the Flood spin off and didn’t feel the Flood should be a full faction to compensate.
Just as an aside, they’ve also retconned the Cliffhanger to Halo Wars 2.
I do think Reach is excellent. My favourite is 2, for the campaign. The only thing that let 2 down is the shields. I am a Halo fangirl in general. 
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How so?
Installation 04-C was intercepted by a Guardian in 2559. Professor Ellen Anders is stuck there to this day.
Just like most loose threads of the franchise, we will likely have a book in which she manages to find civilization again.
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The implications of that ending is that Cortana gets control of another Halo ring, Anders life is in danger and Cortana becomes aware of the Ark. Halo Infinite drops that entirely since Cortana/Created are killed offscreen. It’s a cliffhanger that no longer serves any purpose in the narrative. Certainly not the one it’s meant to have. Which makes Halo Wars 2 a big waste of time since it doesn’t push the narrative forward or have any consequences.
There’s concept art showing that the Warden Eternal and Prometheans were meant to invade the Ark. That’s a natural progression of the story set in Halo Wars 2 and that cliffhanger. Instead they went with the Flood in a random side story that did nothing to advance the plot and has no consequences.
Probably because internally they’d decided to go with retconning Halo 5 by that point and used that as an excuse to not put a third faction into Halo Wars.
I mean it was dumb that the Banished beat the Flood. That should have ended with them being very dead, very quickly and I’d hate if they tried to pull that nonsense in Infinite. Atriox is not smarter than the Gravemind. His warriors would and should be a convenient source of food. This is a small group of semi-sentient primitives from an endangered species. I think the Floods dealt with tougher meat.
Granted yes, that was the plan. Brian Reed’s plan.
When he left the studio, the devs were correct to get rid of his plans since all they did was make fans excessively angry.
Was it? I thought they were doing evil Cortana since before Halo 4 came out. Hell I thought it since Halo 2 epilogue cutscene. 
You remove the man, you remove the problem.
Evil Cortana works fine in Infinite with the Flashbacks because she’s given vastly better dialogue and set in context.
So the Banished/Atriox were his idea and you’re happy with them?
Not every fan. A few click bait moaners on YouTube do not speak for the Halo community. If you were even casually interested in where the story was going the retcon was a backhanded thing to do. There has been flak shot at Halo Infinite over this, particularly from YouTubers outside those who focus on Halo content.
I don’t buy that people hate “generic AI stories” but think Offensive Bias, Sentinels and Adjutant Resolution are amazing additions.
Plus it’s not a particularly creative or innovative thing to do. There were plenty of “how I would redesign the Prometheans” and “Cortana has Logic Plague” YouTube videos. Going with the most reactionary and knee jerk thing they could do short of a total reboot where Chief wakes up post Halo 3. That’s not good.
If you’re doing a live service game, I can’t have any faith in your story if you keep chopping and changing things. Especially if you are making this a mystery box story. I have to believe the box is worth opening.
Destiny has four factions. Are you telling me Halo only has space for one and so you have to cut all the others?
Halo infinite, halo reach are two the worst campagins not because they aren’t good byitself but it didn’t follow the story.
Halo reach wasn’t the Halo reach story from the book.
Halo infinite didn’t continue Halo 5 like it was supposed to with the reclaimer saga.
The moment the story goes anywhere but the main plot is not a good campagin in my eyes
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I quite enjoyed the campaign. It was a little light in terms of variety but to me, it felt like season one of a multi-season show. The focus was more around building the new story arc, introducing characters, mid tier baddies to defeat while we learn about our true enemy that will appear over the next few seasons and build to the climatic ending and ultimate fight.
I keep reading that MC is out of character because he is emotional. People change and grow. Even super soldiers. He’s been through a lot of stuff. Hate me for saying this but his best friend (Yes, Cortana was his best friend) went off the deep end and destroyed his trust. Now he finds himself working with what is basically her clone. It’s a lot to process. Every step filled with trust issues, doubt, and memories. Personally, this character growth is long overdue.
As with any good story, the world starts out small and expands as the story progresses. Yes, there are previous Halo stories and yes, those worlds are already expanded but this is a new story, with new friends and a new path. It is, in a small way, a continuation of MCs story but in a larger way, an entirely new adventure.
If you are looking at this as the next chapter of an old story, I can see how people are disappointed. If you are looking at this as the first chapter of a new MC story, it is a great season one. Here’s to hoping they do well building off this opener campaign and grow the characters and world into an epic story over the next 10-year life cycle of the game.
Might be due to how disconnected it feels as a continuation between 5 & Infinite on a certain level
while yes Halo 5 as far as stories go feels like the “part of a story not started by Halo 4”, it did have a thread to follow up on, that they really didn’t need to cutaway from, a shame that they did in the way that was done.
its weird how much this game’s narrative setup reminds of Metal Gear Solid V’s The Phantom Pain
In a sense, Infinite is Halo’s Phantom Pain but without the game to bridge it between Peace Walker and itself, that being “Ground Zeros”.