i think they should end it as quickly and vapidly as they killed Jul Mdama in the first 20 minutes of halo 5 and move on the a more Banished focused game for infinite.
does anyone care about this story arch and think it deserves better?
I care about this story arch, that was a big mistake in 5 by killing jul that fast.
I think we all have our preferred way for Infinite’s story to go, and 343i certainly have many ways they could go. Meanwhile, 343i have said that Halo Wars 2 would tie into Infinite in some way, so you might yet get part of your wish for the Banished to be involved.
Personally, I think the Created Story is just one part of the larger Reclaimer Saga, because 343i seem to have set up and developed three main suspects for who would ultimately turn out to be behind the Halo 5 plot: the Covenant factions (now including Atriox), the Didact or ONI. By the end of Mission 1 in Halo 5, we can “eliminate Jul Mdama”, which mainly leaves the Didact or ONI, or else one of Jul Mdama’s enemies within the ex-Covenant (Atriox?).
More widely, after how much time and effort 343i spent in developing Jul Mdama as a character, there are few plots in Halo 5 that would make it a trivial matter to kill him off the way they did in Mission 1 - so players need to think of what those bigger plots for Halo 5 are, which will be linked to what the larger Reclaimer Saga story arc is as it was being set up in Halo 4.
Suggested Reclaimer Story Arc (Main Story, Chief’s Story Arc, Cortana’s Story Arc):
Halo 4: The Mantle Revealed. Chief is meant to become the Reclaimer (Librarian’s Plan). Cortana goes “MIA, presumed dead”.
Halo 5: The Mantle Stolen. Chief is tricked into releasing Mantle control to a hidden enemy via an AI claiming to be “Cortana” (whether it’s Cortana being remotely controlled along with the other AI’s or an imposter, in both cases it implies there’s a hidden enemy).
Halo 6: The Mantle Reclaimed. Chief must now fight to regain the Mantle, so become The Reclaimer. I also predict the real Cortana will return, instantly exposing the imposter in Halo 5, and together Chief and Cortana expose the hidden enemy in Halo 5 (most probably as ONI or the Didact)…
In that sense, the death of “The Didact’s Hand” (Jul Mdama) paved the way for “The New Didact’s Hand” who claims to speak for the Didact (“Cortana”). And since “Jul Mdama is many things, but he’s no Prophet (i.e. unlike Halo 3’s Truth)”,we’re still waiting for “The New Truth” to unify and lead the Covenant. Now Halo 4 made it appear the Didact would take this role, replacing Truth as the head of the Covenant and ruling via Jul Mdama (“The Didact’s Hand”). But now both are out of the way, this “Cortana” is intended to replace both the Didact as well as Truth/Jul Mdama, so that “Cortana” becomes both “The New Didact’s Hand” and “The New Truth” and “The New Head of the Covenant”. That way, the new War being set up in Halo 4 will still go ahead, just with the Didact and Jul Mdama replaced by “Cortana” and the hidden enemy that controls her. But if that hidden enemy is ONI, then ONI now run both the Covenant and the Mantle, and Master Chief has turned more than “rogue”, because in one of 343i’s beloveddouble-meanings, Chief is the former ONI Spartan-II “machine” that was “Created” by ONI but is now rising up against his ONI “Creators” and their sinister Guardians Plan. So, in Halo 5, the brewing ONI versus UNSC Civil War finally begins…
Hence the similarities between Halo 2 and Halo 5:
Halo 2: we play as the “enemy” Arbiter (who will become Chief’s friend), sent by the Covenant to hunt down the Heretic Leader that refuses to believe the lies of the Covenant.
Halo 5: we play as the “enemy” Locke (who will become Chief’s friend), sent by ONI to hunt down the Heretic Leader Master Chief that refuses to believe the lies that “Cortana is behind the Guardians”…
Atriox and the Banished could tie in with that story in Infinite in more ways than one…
Ending the established story line so quickly would make zero sense. First of all the entire galaxy is under Cortana’s control, kinda hard to kill off that story line in the first mission. And second if I remember correctly the Banshied are still on the Ark. It just doesnt make sense to end Cortana’s story that quickly.
The created could just transcend at the cost of the rest of the repairing neutral physics tech (such as the domain.) it’ll be a way to write out the created.
Realistically, they’ll probably just replace the story points of the flood from h3. Come in mid game. End the game blowing something big up and presumably crippling them.
Or if we want to go crazy, humanity joins the created to use their massive technological and resource advantage to rebuild strength and then strike against their new masters.
I’m definitely not a fan of the created story arc, but I’m also not a fan of how 343 randomly decides to write off characters who were built up to be a big deal.
I would much rather the game reveal in the 2nd or 3rd mission that Cortana is under the control of the flood, didact, or whomever they decide. That gives plenty of time for chief to “rescue” her and then possibly have them confront the true enemy in the last level. I would even be ok if Infinite ended with Chief finding a cure for Cortana and as they are finally reunited, flood ships slipspace into the atmosphere and the screen goes black. Whatever 343 decides to do, I just hope it’s done with good storytelling
I wasn’t happy with them killing off Jul so fast, or neither was I with how the Didact situation was handled.
Because he wasn’t just some random elite, (here’s a quick summary of what I can recall), in the books he became captured by ONI and held for quite some time on the shield world of Onyx, with his family thinking him likely dead. Eventually he had escaped by a portal after tricking an engineer to help him, then he ended up on the Elite colony world of Hesduros and this is where the new covenant pretty much got formed. He lead a force back to Onyx via the original portal and got in a fight with Humanity over control of the shield world. He dislikes humanity because ONI was responsible for the death of his wife back on Sanhelios, amongst the civil war that ONI was helping out both sides. Then I didn’t even mention here at all what occurred after the events of Halo 4’s spartan ops, with the conflict between the UNSC and Jul’s Covenant over the Janus key.
Then why did a comic have to conclude the Didact’s fate when Halo 4 couldn’t? At least he got ‘contained’ rather than killed, so maybe we can see him again. In any case, I wouldn’t like to see such done again with the created.
I want it to end in Infinite but not quickly and as meaningless as Jul, at least do the best they can.
end in infinite, yes. end quickly or in any way similar jul? jesus christ no. the worst possible thing you could do for any storyis to just quickly write off or throw aside anything that has had a major impact on the story.just look how halo 5 turned out, it’s widely agreed that halo 5’s campaign, or at least story, was by far the worst in the serious. and a big reason to that is because they basically just said screw what ever else was going on, we wanna do something new. the ending to this arch needs to be well thought out and not treated as an after thought. anything else might kill off what ever hope people have left for mainline halo games.
and if it does end in this game, and if it ends in a good way with a good story, I think it should set up what’ll happen in the next game. like cortana dealt so much damage to the galaxy that the banished easily rose to power because everyone else was still scrambling to rebuild.
As long as the game doesn’t start with a major character biting the bullet in mission 1 and then doesn’t end with the final boss being a quick time event, a cliffhanger or even ‘it was all a dream’, I would be satisfied.
Oh and I hope extended lore shouldn’t be required to fully understand what’s going on.
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> I’m definitely not a fan of the created story arc, but I’m also not a fan of how 343 randomly decides to write off characters who were built up to be a big deal.
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> I would much rather the game reveal in the 2nd or 3rd mission that Cortana is under the control of the flood, didact, or whomever they decide. That gives plenty of time for chief to “rescue” her and then possibly have them confront the true enemy in the last level. I would even be ok if Infinite ended with Chief finding a cure for Cortana and as they are finally reunited, flood ships slipspace into the atmosphere and the screen goes black. Whatever 343 decides to do, I just hope it’s done with good storytelling
Having to save Cortana…again? Hard pass.
I definitely sympathize with a lot of the opinions in here where, on the one hand, 343 needs to actually pick a plot line and stick with it, something they’ve had a ton of trouble doing.
On the other hand, I freaking hate the Created so much that I almost feel half ok with them pulling a “Jul move” on Cortana 5 minutes into Infinite’s campaign…
Regardless of what I think they should or should not do, what I think they will do, is softly reboot the Created in such a way that they won’t completely ignore them and the plotline of Halo 5, but move away from the most objectionable and disliked elements of them. I wouldn’t be surprised if Infinite begins and the antagonist faction we’re fighting is the same faction Cortana founded, but maybe they don’t even call themselves “Created” anymore. Maybe we don’t see the AI’s or Prometheans much. Maybe we only see the ex-Covenant races that allied with Cortana. So basically, the Created will become the New Covenant, in essence. I kinda think that’s what 343’s been trying to set up since they took over anyway.
I know speculating on all of this is pointless, but it is a little fun to imagine how 343 can organically and satisfyingly solve the things people didn’t like about Halo 5’s story.
I think they can pretty easily synthesize the Flood’s return in Halo Wars 2, the “death” of the Didact (the end of Halo 4 for casual fans or the frankly bizarre Escalation storyline for lore nerds, either one gets us where we need to be), and how out of character Cortana was during most of Halo 5.
So the Flood’s return on the main stage means that there is potential for Gravemind (or “a” Gravemind with the previous one’s memory) to emerge from the shadows. He’s somehow absorbed the knowledge of the Didact after his death/composure and has used that knowledge combined with his prior experiences with Cortana to reconstruct her, or rather a twisted version of her. He was impressed with her abilities in Halo 3 and decided she’d be the perfect new Mendicant Bias; a created to fall into his plans to destroy the creators. Zeta Halo, known for its history with the Flood and the Primordial in particular, is somehow the key to stopping all of these machinations. That’s why Chief and a small team have been sent there.
So our enemies in Halo Infinite will be Sentinals/Covenant Remnants (please give them a new designation other than the Covenant)/Promethians controlled by Copy Cortana and later, TWIST MIRRORING THE FIRST GAME, the Flood.
Hell, maybe we’ll get really crazy and the Spirit of Fire and the Banished call a momentary truce due to the threat posed by New Gravemind/Cortana, show up on Zeta Halo late in the game to save Chief in his hour of need or something. Since Zeta Halo is the oldest of the current array, maybe it has a special connection to the Ark, the ability to generate a portal similar to the one at Voi on Earth. For people who didn’t play Halo Wars 2, to keep it simple, these are just UNSC/“good guy” Covenant reinforcements, but people who have played instantly recognize who they are and how cool it is that they’re here.
At the end of Halo Wars 2, Installation 09 gets captured by a Guardian with Anders on board. Maybe the finale to Infinite could be super over the top and have a literal dual of the Halo’s, oldest vs. newest. You and your allies controlling Zeta, Cortana/Gravemind controlling 09.