Well, I’ll be honest. It’s my opinion as to what’s wrong.
Let me start with a bit of background. I have been playing since Halo 3. Yes, I admit I wasn’t here when it first started with Combat Evolved. I wish I had, but I didn’t. And it’s too late to fix that. But I had fun playing Halo 3 multiplayer. I liked Halo 3: ODST firefight. I liked Halo Wars, even if I lost most of the time. I really liked Halo: Reach. And to this day I love Halo 4. But Halo 5: Guardians? No. I lose almost all of the time. While that may seem childish, I don’t have time to practice since my marriage ended and I’m a single dad of a five year old. But still, I didn’t really need to practice much for Reach and 4. But 5, unless you’re a pro you’ll drastically fail every match. I’m always dragging my teammates down. And even when I’m winning on a very rare occasion, I still don’t feel a sense of fulfillment. It doesn’t feel like the Halo I know. It’s like the shields are pointless and don’t protect you much. No magnetism whatsoever, which has been around since Halo: CE (I did happen to get a copy of it and play with some friends and noticed this). And it’s all competitive. No co-operation types. No Spartan Ops. No Firefight. The fact that they’re bringing it back makes me somewhat excited. Yes, I admit, I miss loadouts from 4. Why? While I admit, equal starts are fun and map control is fun too, I personally always like to be surprised and expect the unexpected. I like seeing people’s unique skills come out and their choices for fighting. Plus I did get a bit cranky in Halo 3 when I got killed 4 times running to find a Plasma Pistol to stop a-holes in Banshees and Warthogs.
And this is just for multiplayer. The story mode I love the most. There has never been a campaign from Halo that I didn’t absolutely fall in love with. Except for Halo 5: Guardians. I mean, Spartan Ops had better story than this game.
Promethean Soldiers. Where did they come from? Why are they here and when did they show up? Humanity had never seen a Promethean ANYTHING until UNSC INFINITY made contact with Requiem. Yet now the Soldiers are just there and everyone in the Halo Universe is like “oh yeah, we know about them, we’ve fought them since forever”. I don’t like new things brought into the canon and not only have they provided no explanation but they just act like it’s always been there (like the alien they interrogated in Halo: Nightfall). Also, Warden Eternal. Cool boss character. But who the hell is he? I’ve read every book and graphic novel. Still no explanation on who he is. Nor any explanation on Cortana’s complete 180 of a personality! I mean, 343 sells EU material, but does nothing to cover this? Also, Blue Team 3 missions and Osiris 12? Plus none of them get ANY character development. They’re all basically super-strength mannequins. No life in them. And mainly because people didn’t like the cocky attitude of Spartan-IVs from before. Yes, they were being a bunch of -Yoinks!-, just with augmentations. But think about it. They were normal military before they were augmented. And even today, a lot of soldiers are -Yoinks!-. No, I’m not dissing our heroes. I’m just saying a lot of them act all high and mighty and believe we should worship them and are not being patriotic, they’re doing it to get attention. Now we have Spartan-IVs that are boring and one-dimensional instead. And while I’m glad the former Arbiter Thel 'Vadam has returned, his presence is very short lived. It’s almost a cameo, if not already.
In short, this is my summary of why Halo 5 isn’t great. 343 Industries didn’t do what they really wanted. They did what they thought we wanted. So if anything this feels less like an installment in the series and more like fan service.
Again, this is my opinion based on my observations. What I have said may offend others and I apologize. But this is how I see things.
-Ryan