Well that’s the thing. They could have used Halo Wars 2 to cover the Created War in some kind of DLC. Stuff like destroying Doisac, Cortana ruling the Galaxy and then lead up to Zeta Halo.
Even the books do very little to fill in this gap and really they’re about other things.
Instead they created this six year gap which they did almost nothing to address or transition the story. Continuing to say it was a sequel to Halo 5 up until the games release.
What’s even stranger is I recall one of the early campaign reviews where they were invited to the studio and 343 were quite proudly saying how there’s no Prometheans in the game. To which the reviewers nodded their heads and agreed on killing your darlings and course correction. Problem is I think even they assumed there would obviously be a replacement faction and 343 weren’t boasting about cutting content. Not, we might get a second faction in a paid DLC of yet to be defined scale and quality.
Brain Reed was a Co-Narrative Director of Halo Wars 2. Given that The Banished are a competent faction that are likeable and well fleshed out without much of a ret-con, I credit it to the actual writer of the game :
Kevin Grace.
The Banished don’t make sense as a faction and definitely haven’t been fleshed out:
Brutes are a primitive species who shouldn’t have any advanced technology. Much less have complex strategies. On their own they shouldn’t be a threat to the UNSC or Elites; much less both. They’re barely sentient animals and having one give a big speech is absurd.
Why would any species agree to serve a Brute dominated organisation? They have committed genocide on Humanity and the Elites. That should make them enemies of everybody.
No Brute Chieftain should be able to beat three Spartans. Much less have a small token force from six cruisers be able to take on the Infinity’s entire compliment of Spartan IV.
Why didn’t the UNSC Nuke them into the Stone Age if they were raiding human colonies and massacring them for years? JFC. That’s a declaration of war and they clearly have no intention of surrender or relenting in open Imperialism. This is First Order levels of hand waving. The UNSC would have flattened Doisac from orbit if they had been doing that. Why would they not have reacted to military build up from an openly hostile power that exists outside the diplomatic system and whose goals are conquest; when they’re already committing genocide on you?
It’s a cookie cutter Warrior society like the Klingons and Krogan without any of the nuance. There’s also shades of the Nihil from the High Republic in terms of how it’s organised and Atrioxs role in it.
It’s ridiculous to tell me how badass this faction is when I proceed to mow thousands of them down. Yet they act oblivious to this. The Chief just needs ammunition and time; eventually he’ll kill all the Banished on that ring.
We are four years into their introduction and they haven’t explained the motivation for the Banished attack on humanity and why they want a Halo ring beyond vague hyperbole. It’s like Destiny factions where they didn’t bother doing anything lore wise until a few DLC in. Orcs in red armour to splat who want power. Okay.
Yeah I know. I ordered the Encyclopedia and Iam really worried they’ll be like the First Order. The UNSC had no idea thousands of ships were being built in secret while they actively raided their colonies for years….there’s intelligence blunders and then there’s stupidity.
I bring Mass Effect up a lot. But they’re kind of like the Migrant Fleet now with the Quarians. Losing their homeworld to machines. Like there’s definitely echoes of the Terminator theme in some of the Banished soundtrack. But if they were amoral ten foot Orcs as opposed to space elves with weak immune systems. Hyper militarist nomads.
Plus, far, far less sympathetic than the Quarians. Let call the AIs bluff that she’ll destroy my world. That or Atriox didn’t actually care about Doisac being destroyed and his pride was more important. You’re not free if you aren’t aloud to butcher and murder innocent people in your will to power.
You’re right. The Banished should just have been a space pirate faction operating on the margins. A threat to our heroes in the specific conflict. Not the big bad that’s trying to conquer or destroy the Galaxy. Somehow the Covenant returned…
Given Escharum’s pedestaling of Atriox, in a sense yeh the covenant have returned.
Odd comparison, but im pretty sure this was done before with Spyro of all things, Pirates working alongside an ancient evil hellbent on returning, end of the game they’ve succeeded, that game was one of the Legend of Spyro games, the second one, “The Eternal Night”
Oh god Spyro had a better handling on this kind of enemy faction in that time period it was trying to be an epic.
I can see the similarity with the Quarians, though on a much more ruthless scale since their homeward is obliterated, “The Banished, those who’s worlds were sent whirling into the void as dust, sent on the path of extinction.” and all that.
Well, the First Order analogy is because the New Republic should have been vastly more powerful and had no real reason not to intervene to prevent the rise of the First Order. Although, to be fair to Star Wars, they weren’t openly attacking their planets with full regalia and massacring their people; you know, genocide. Plus there was actually a formal peace treaty with the Imperial Remnant whilst the Brutes never signed anything and continued fighting under different banner. Yeah it’s worse than the sequels. You’d to have heavily lean into humanity being distracted by the Elites to explain this and partially retcon how strong humanity was post Halo 3. Also the New Republic consciously wanted to disarm and adopt pacifism; the UNSC does not. To put it mildly.
I mean, by the looks of it Cortana killed far more Brutes and Banished than humans. They should be in a much worse state. “Iam sure she’s telling them nicely why they should leave us alone.”
Another analogy they might be making with the Quarians would be how the rest of the Galaxy hates the Quarians because they unleashed the Geth on the Galaxy. So, perhaps this is how humanity is viewed? Hard to tell how significant that is mind because it’s revealed very late in the game so it’s not mentioned by most NPC and characters. Esharum very briefly talks about this at the end but I don’t know how central that is. I’d like if they did. But if they do I’d like to see that viewpoint challenged by the heroes. For one, you’d all be dead if it weren’t for that AI.
I personally enjoyed the campaign, it definitely has it’s flaws but I don’t think it’s as bad as some people make it out to be. Any issues I did have with it I found either were plot holes/inconsistencies because of Halo 5, lack of biomes was a bit of a big one, and it can get a bit repetitive. Other than that I thought it was a blast. I do feel that this campaign was to tie up loose ends with Halo 5, and everything else we get after this is going to be where we really start to see more of the content I think some people were expecting with the campaign.
Shanghelios would’ve been fertile ground to explore this sentiment of humanity being at fault for the Created Uprising, their ties with the forerunners, ONI’s interferences, the Elites would have a lot of reasons to ostracise humans. same with other races ironically.
Yeah I mean, the only problem with them taking the moral high ground on this issue is that well…
You guys almost killed everybody in the Galaxy with a Halo ring. Several times.
You butchered 2/3 of humanity and glassed hundreds of worlds. With only one species offering a partial apology and truce.
Maybe if you weren’t carrying on number 2 after being told to stop the AI wouldn’t have been too much trouble for you.
Either way they’ve done a lot worse things to endanger the Galaxy and have vastly more blood on their hands. So I am hoping if Atriox does go there that we get some push back on that.
Blind generational faith caused by the lies of manipulative fiends.
aka The Prophets, The Covenant had a lot of species under their thumb due to the illusion and lies of the great journey, don’t forget that.
I will admit, its hard understanding the world state of halo nowadays, not enough info and in some cases too many things going on with what seems to be no solid direction.
Well the Banished/Brutes definitely don’t have that excuse. So they are really are just monsters. The only lie they’ve bought is their invincibility.
I take the view that, if I was a person in that situation and had a self righteous alien warlord talking about how he’s the victim of humanities creation. That would be a hugely offensive thing to say given what they’ve done and are actively doing. The game tones the Banished down as there’s concept art of humans in cages and heaps of bones beside them. Like the Pilot or the some of the Marine dialogue. That hatred is a natural thing that you would expect and shouldn’t be tempered if the other side shows no indications of reconciliation.
It would be like if a human and a jackal went to a bar and got into that argument. What sort of insults would fly each way.
Yeah they haven’t really told us the core motivations and beliefs of the Banished so it’s hard to judge.
I don’t think they care about offence, even if it has a merit of truth, do remember that Post Halo 3 the elites were having to tolerate ONI, who were a constant aggravator when it came to the two species.
I get what you mean about the banished however, the only beliefs of the banished seem to be a case of “Bonds, wanting to live your own way” etc from what I can gleam, naturally with 343 halo, answers have to be found elsewhere. in a book they even have a human potentially join the banished, so.
I would instead guess is that the main issues related to the transition between Halo 5 and Halo Infinite is the shortcomings from Halo 5 and that these shortcomings are relatively difficult to correct. There doesn’t exist anything to work from other than the ring in the Legendary ending and the mess of stort in Halo 5.
Halo Infinite would probably have been much better if it was designed as a sequel to Halo 4. This is partially due to Halo 4 having a much clearer story with an ending that could much more easily be build upon like Cortana’s faith and if Chief’s future.
Well the Elites have essentially become a normal state with diplomatic relations and an informal alliance with the UNSC. That hugely changes the situation and makes what ONI did extremely questionable.
It’s more the idea that, you have this belief from the villains, but it’s inherently flawed and hypocritical. So characters should point that out in the game. As opposed to trying to make the Brutes out as the victims of humanities reckless use of technology.
I mean, the Brutes are massacring innocent people whenever they do these raids. That’s kind of genocide. Doesn’t really matter how you splice it or if you have a few human mercenaries/collaborators. There’s no just cause here.
Come think of it they are a lot like the Nihil from Star Wars the High Republic.
It was pretty clear what would happen post Halo 5. You have a Battlestar Galactica Situation with the heroes having to figure out how to fight Cortana. Meanwhile we see her slowly takeover and shape the Galaxy; with all the associated destruction. With the threat being how rapidly she’s doing all of this. Planet hopping like that gives you more chances to see how the Galaxy changes as a result of all this. The drama being about Chief/Cortana being at odds with eachother and being put in what seems a no win situation. But then you have the Elsa moment where the good in her wins out. Logic Plague. Chief saves her. Etc etc
What we get is a cliff notes version of the above but leaving out any significant world building info. Indeed what we are told raises more questions such as the destruction of Doisac and the Fate of Earth.
What I like -
Game gives a ODST vibe, in that during the gameplay everything has already happened. Making me wonder what happened to Infinity, where the rest of the spartans are, and so on.
At first I didnt like the Endless being worse than flood, but listening to theories from Red Nomster and Installation 00 it really sparks interest. The forerunner having humans as reclaimers was all a lie. The halo rings kill life by reverse time locking them making billions of years pass in an instant, the Endless were not affected by halo because they do not age. They are biologically immortal beings. So when the forerunners genocide the Precursors because they werent worthy of the Mantle, they spread the lie that humanity were to be the chosen ones and that the forerunners were ultimately sorry for what they did, so when humanity evolved again they could reclaim all of their tech.
But what really happened was the Endless were supposed to take the Mantle. Cortana mentions that when she accessed the domain it cured her of rampancy, and could basically make AIs immortal, so they could take the mantle. So the Endless being the true reclaimers because they are biologically immortal makes sense. The forerunners making this big lie was because they wanted to be in control of everything. Forerunners adding their genetics to humans (one such instance in Halo 4 when the Librarian gave Chief immunity to the composer) means that even when the forerunners go extinct, their genes will still be in humans and thus still have some control over the galaxy when Humans take the mantle. The Endless would be one such species that forerunners cannot control. The precursors got revenge on forerunners not only by using the flood to kill everyone, but the forerunners idea of the mantle was to protect all life, no violence. So the flood coming in and killing everyone, which made the forerunners ultimately destroy all life in the galaxy, was insult to injury because the forerunners failed to enforce their flawed understanding of the mantle. The endless were the real reclaimers.
What I dont like -
The game almost had no direction in terms of gameplay story telling. The game is basically the Banished forgot to kill someone and he comes back and murders every banished leader. It would be better if the entire banished leadership didnt suicide to the master chief in the first story mode considering halo infinite is gonna be on for 10 years. It makes me wonder who is master chief gonna fight in the first DLC? Atriox maybe, or perhaps more Endless.
Way too much emphasis on fusion coil throwing and grappling. No matter what I see regarding the campaign, it heavily involves grapple and fusion coil spam.
Like above replies mention, no biomes.
Massive amount of cut content that would have at the very least doubled the positive impression on the game.
