This was easily my favorite Halo campaign. I loved the feel of it and I thought the story was really great. I don’t think everything needs to be resolved on screen. Besides, with how much the community tore into Halo 5, I get the feeling they wouldn’t want any guardians or Cortana in this game. I think 343 made the best move they could story wise and I loved it.
I think this is a subjective topic some (like me) like infinite’s campagin some dont theres no concert stance on this
It may be the best 343 campaign. That doesn’t mean it’s the best decision to handwave pretty significant plot points. Take Halo Wars 2. You got the self contained story about the Banished and the Flood. They did that without retconning Halo 5, they simply changed the narrative focus and weren’t talking state of the galaxy stuff. Since Zeta Halo has disappeared according to the multiplayer intro there was quite literally no reason they could not have adopted a similar story telling structure. These aren’t mutually exclusive. You can do a story involving the Banished and the Endless without hitting the reset button on the UNSC and Created. In fact, spending so long with Cortana in Infinite actually meant you got less of the Banished and Endless.
Plus, you’re going to have a lot of world building issues:
-
Every factions fleet got either destroyed reduced to Battlestar Galactica numbers. How do the factions neatly get all of their ships back?
-
It renders pointless any future reveal of the Logic Plague if the UNSC has already, easily, defeated and destroyed all of their AI. You would get whiplash if they dealt with one AI rebellion only to make a big deal out of this.
-
If you revert back to Halo 4 status quo for the UNSC and the Swords then why haven’t they just killed all the Banished? If the Banished were not worth mentioning pre Created and Cortana already killed most of them then they aren’t a real threat.
-
If they don’t have all their ships back. Then what stops the Banished rocking up and glassing Earth and Sanghelios. Why bother with an elaborate plan to fire a Halo array or free the Endless when you can win a conventional war and already have planet killing ships.
-
Why wouldn’t the UNSC ban all artificial intelligence?
-
Who are these Created the Banished keep blaming humanity for?
-
Why would removing Cortana from the Domain kill every Guardian, Warden, Promethean and Created?
-
If the Domain was destroyed…how?
5 Likes
I’ve beat it, I’ve actually beat every halo game. And yeah easily in the top 3.
And of course “ratings disagree with my opinion on something so it must all be paid reviews!” Logic in full force. Plenty of people love the game. It’s far from the worst and most people consider it to easily be the best in over a decade
1 Like
I think you’ve done a really good job there of summarising some of the biggest issues with dropping stories/not resolving them properly.
2 Likes
Plenty of people love it but plenty of people don’t. Given the mainline Halo titles that have come out in the last decade saying it’s the strongest there isn’t the greatest compliment. Regardless of how highly any of us rank the game compared to others there were so many missed opportunities.
Whether you enjoyed the story from 4 and 5 the fact that 343 basically dropped the story rather than bringing it to a satisfying end is a pity.
The fact that the game was set on Zeta Halo yet didn’t take advantage of any of the unique history and lore already established for Zeta Halo was a missed opportunity, it could have literally been any of the rings.
The game introduced a number of antagonists who could have been really cool but wasted them either with poor writing or lack of screen time.
5 Likes
I’d be willing to stick up for this as an excellently delivered product despite a few quibbles. The fact 343 have made it a requirement however to be online with the campaign despite it absolutely not needing to be means I’ll very much -Yoink!- on this product when in discussions like this and on youtube. It’s not respecting fans by demanding they play this clearly offline game online to validate their purchase
Glad to see it get some flak for what looks like justifiable reasons to the fans
1 Like
This was never really “the reclaimer saga”. More like “the girlfriend trilogy”.
It’s good to see it all over and done. Maybe now we can get good stories again in the future.
The campagin is horrible tho. Nothing about the new campagin is even remotely entertaining.
1 Like
I liked the combat. The last time I enjoyed fighting the Covenant this much was Reach’s campaign. It was a relief to not have the prometheans here.
Idk man. It’ll never compare to the Halo 2 legendary run
1 Like
The Halo Infinite campaign was a dreary slog, they fixed few if any of the issues from Halo 5 while adding nothing but a barren lifeless open world and introducing new issues.
I was bored of the overworld tasks before even starting the next proper mission after reaching the open world. Halo 5’s campaign and narrative were flawed, but at least it had actual setpieces, vehicles were not nearly as terrible and if nothing else it was mercifully short.
And as far as narrative is concerned I don’t think Infinite’s is anything to write home about. Everything interesting narratively happened in flashbacks that could have made for a better game by on its own but nope we needed discount Far Cry instead. We have no satisfying resolutions to anything beyond sweeping everything from Halo 4 and 5 under the rug.
Its like if CE ended at 343 Guilty Spark without really explaining what the Flood was or what made them so dangerous.
The whole direction of the franchise feels like 343 is throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, the Banished being the poster child for this given they were obviously meant to be a side game exclusive faction the way they were isolated after being unable to deal with one outdated UNSC ship(with Atriox present) but the fan reaction was good so they were thrown into the mainline story and everything else was shoved out the way to make room for them.
Any potential to make the Banished actually interesting as a faction has been thrown away to keep them as the main antagonists. At this point they are little more than space orcs.
I honestly have no idea what people see in this game.
10 Likes
That’s sad that people honestly believe Spiderman simulator in space where you push buttons is the best halo…
2 Likes
lol you can’t be serious? This post is a troll right?
I’m going to have to agree with this. This game was getting raves simply because it’s marginally better than most of the good to average games of the year. CoD is worse than last years version, and Battlefield is a complete disaster.
I was expecting a lot more than this, that’s for sure. The big , epic new Halo beast to showcase all the glory of series X!.
Absolutely nothing wowed me about this experience at all. Bungie did Halo, and it probably should have stopped there. The mp is fun I guess but still:…/
6 Likes
No I don’t think so, but yours obviously is
Halo probably should have stopped after Halo 3. I know a lot of people loved Reach, but I thought it was a disaster. The campaign had some fun gameplay, but the story was awful; they had good source material in The Fall of Reach that they chose to ignore in favor of creating flat, uninteresting, one dimensional characters fighting a not so threatening enemy. And Reach’s multiplayer was pretty divisive with all the fundamental changes Bungie made.
Halo 4 and 5 had campaigns that went nowhere in terms of narrative, with 343 diverting wildly from the original trilogy’s multiplayer design. Other than the Cortana girlfriend story arcs, nothing that happens in either of those games is even intelligible without reading outside extended universe material. Halo 1-3 told a coherent story within the games, and then players who wanted to could learn more via EU material. That got reversed for Halo 4 and 5.
So I like that with Halo Infinite they at least went back to having its narrative be contained within the game itself, and I like that they simplified the multiplayer gameplay back in the direction of the original games.
I think there are a lot of people wanting a Halo game that feels like both a gameplay and narrative successor to Halo 3, and we haven’t really gotten that yet. Infinite is as close as we’ve had to that mark, which is what drives its positive reception.
2 Likes
Yeah I don’t understand how the Spirit of Fire, an unescorted carrier, with no shields, stood any chance against an Covenant Assault Carrier. It should have basically been able to one shot it like we see all the UNSC ships in Halo 2.
But the Infinity, which we’ve seen has an escort fleet built into it and can take on sizeable Covenant fleets and shoot a hole in a Forerunner Battleship gets taken down by them ramming it.
Okay, how does Atriox know that they are on this top secret mission and how could he learn this and the omnipotent AI not learn about it?
How is he able to slip space directly either side of the Infinity so that they don’t spot his Dreadnoughts when they’re on the look out for Guardians. Yes they are not expecting to be attacked by the Banished but they are expecting to be attacked by Guardians. They are on high alert and ready for a fight.
Why is the Infinity moving incredibly slowly? It can move a lot faster than that.
Also, they decide to board the Infinity. It has hundreds of Spartans on a board. A single Spartan can kill hundreds of Covenant soldiers. It is a terrible idea to board the Infinity with mostly Grunts and Jackals. In Spartan Ops you kill a disgusting amount of Covenant who try this trick. The Banished completely failed to deal with Red Team. How can three Spartans mince them but a few hundred they can take out in a few minutes?
How does ramming the Infinity work? It’s got shields and armour. Those ships aren’t particularly big relative to it.
How are they able to miraculously time this so that Cortana is locked down by the Weapon before the Guardian could destroy the Banished fleet? It’s far too convenient that everything worked for them so that they never had to fight a Guardian or take a shot from the Infinity’s MAC gun.
If the Infinity really was that vulnerable to being boarded, why doesn’t it have its escorts deployed?
Also, how were the Banished able to set AA defences up on Zeta Halo to shoot down the UNSC ships? Wouldn’t the Guardian have killed them?
4 Likes
Gotta fix that title. “Not worth $60…to you.”
The campaign was amazing.
2 Likes
The story is subjective, some seem to love some seem to hate it, but its lack of features are not.
1 Like