Just completed the campaign (spoilers)

Games Halo Infinite
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In the months leading up to release, I told my wife that I would be MIA for a few days from December 8 because I would be smashing the Halo Infinite campaign non-stop upon release. I’ve been a HUGE Halo fan since CE, and couldn’t wait to continue the story from Halo 5 (even though the pre-release trailers showed that we’d be fast-forwarding through the war :roll_eyes: ).

It took me almost a month to finish the campaign.

The delay wasn’t caused by difficulty (it was wayyy too easy, even playing on Legendary).

It was apathy.

This campaign was a bore, the story was cringeworthy and uninspired, and the open world was just tedious and empty.

STORY

343, I don’t know what the lead writers were going through in their personal life when writing this, but it translated to a really cringeworthy mess. Although it should have been neither, this game can’t seem to decide if it’s a break-up game or a ‘daddy’ game.

Halo 5 left off with a rampancy-free Cortana standing boldly in front of the guardians and challenging the universe. You should have stuck with that instead of attempting a redemption/reconciliation narrative driven entirely by nauseating flashbacks. Honestly, it was a little pathetic.

Halo 4 also left off with us wondering whether John 117 was more machine than man after all his trials. Halo Infinite has his face so wet from emotion that he risks slipping on his own tears every time he tries to sprint.

The whiplash in the character arcs is so violent that they don’t even feel like the same characters.

As for the ‘daddy’ angle, The Weapon was uncomfortable. Cortana is modelled from Halsey’s brain - so is the Weapon. So, she should be a hyper-intelligent and ruthless tactician. What 343 delivered is a clueless child transitioning into an angsty teen. This childishness, when combined with the doe-eyed smile, ‘cutesy’ face, and rocking on heels, made for a truly uncomfortable character. When the Chief started the deletion protocol, I was half-hoping The Weapon would be deleted.

GAMEPLAY

What. A. Disappointment.

Sure, the game is beautiful to look at, but what a hollow experience.

Considering that I 100%'d every Assassin’s Creed game from 1 through Syndicate (including every collectible in every game), it would take a lot for me to say that an open-world game is ‘empty’.

Zeto Halo is empty.

There are huge, sprawling areas where there is absolutely nothing but nature. No NPCs, no firefights between the banished and remaining UNSC, no UNSC escapees in hiding - nothing. IMO, the game is ‘open world’ (i) to justify the inclusion of the gimmicky and game-breaking grappleshot; and (ii) to distract from just how short and empty the campaign is.

The equipment is OP and made the boss fights boring grinds (to say nothing of the core gameplay). When combined with the open world and stupid enemies, just about any encounter could be resolved by running behind (substantial) terrain cover and reappearing from another angle.

Also, who designed these missions!? Just about every mission was walking flashbacks or a series of ‘expose and destroy’.

Expose fuel silos.

Expose AA gun reactor.

Expose shield generators.

So uninspired.

And finally, where is the story? I get it, you’re abandoning the Cortana arc in favor of the one-trick Banished. But after 6 years, where was the story progression? Considering how much good stuff occurred ‘off screen’, why couldn’t we actually meet and fight the endless during this campaign a la The Didact in Halo 4?

FINAL POINT

343i, I’ve defended and given you the benefit of the doubt for longer than Bungie even owned the Halo franchise.

Bottom line: You don’t deserve to run Halo. Judging by the state of Halo Infinite at launch (despite a year-long delay) and your failure to patch due to the ‘holidays’, it’s pretty clear you don’t care about the franchise. You barely know how to publish and host a functioning game, let alone how to continue the legacy of a genre- and generation defining title.

With the exception of the threats and doxxing, you deserve every syllable of the negative feedback being spat at you.

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Other than the weapon who I have slightly different issues with, this is generally how I feel too.

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I am curious, I noticed quite a few people saying about this being a Dad game and setting the Weapon up as a daughter figure to Chief. Even IGN I think said something along those lines. Why do you think that?

They are playing the ditsy and innocent aspect up and Jen Taylor does change her voice slightly but fundamentally “you’re her if we never met”.

My impression the whole way through was that I was haunted by this monument to my failure. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: Like, if you’ve ever been at a funeral and you see a relative who looks like them and you have that flash of; oh no they’re really gone. It’s not heart warming at all. Like the Weapon is trying to be nice and it’s like “why?” :sob:

I was sold on it as a Chief story where he’s dealing with losing Cortana. But, it is fridging Cortana offscreen and it’s not the game I wanted.

But yeah, same personality, same face, same quirks and gestures. Implying she’ll take the name at the end. They want to replace Cortana and I think they really do want to have that whole love story thing carry on with this new version. The whole perfectly perfect and all that.

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I was so confused at the deletion scene. I think I got bored listening and then only realised when it got regurgitated back to me when the weapon was telling Echo straight after it happened.

I thought I would have completed the game by now too… but I’m in the same boat. Really can’t be bothered to finish it off.

Just entering the house after getting the Sheila home achievement.

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I mostly agree. I wish the story would have been fleshed out in a more fulfilling way or just different entirely. One problem with the 343 Halo’s, every single game has had different writers which can likely be to blame for the dramatic difference in story in each game.

If you look back at the Bungie games, Joseph Staten was a writer and played a big role in all of the Halos 1-Reach. Now that he is back, I hope his role will be as a writer as well to his other duties. He’s proven to provide compelling stories that follow a timeline with clarity in the Halo universe in comparison.

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I certainly found the banished outposts, distress call and FOBs a bit tedious which was a shame.

I think it was because I was trying to clear them all early on instead of cracking on with the campaign missions though.

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Part of the reason it feels like a ‘daddy’ game is because The Weapon behaves so childishly. We witness her learn things like sarcasm and that things that are unknown may be threats.

Because of her naivety, the Chief naturally comes off as paternalistic. However, it’s going to get really uncomfortable if this is supposed to transition to the ‘love affair’ between the OG Cortana and the Chief. [shudders]

If I recall correctly, Master Chief received Cortana shortly after her development on Reach. Modeled after Halsey’s brain, she was smart as hell right out of the gate.

If the Weapon is a clone if Cortana (if she’d never met Chief), she should still be smart and ruthless - like Halsey. However, she acts like a 6 year old until the deletion scene, and then she acts like an angsty teen - all of which adds to the ‘daddy’ dynamic.

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The missions on Halo CE are incredibly repetitive (especially when we consider that some missions are just some of the repetitive maps in reverse!).

However, they can be challenging, so it doesn’t matter. There was just never a point during the entire Infinite campaign that I felt challenged.

When even the bosses felt like easy beats, the FOBs and HVTs become transparent filler content.

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Maybe she’s meant to become more like Cortana as the DLC chapters go on?

You’re preaching to the choir on it being a bad idea to carry on the love story with the clone…who technically killed Cortana. :thinking:

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A Narrative and saddly, Book Lore explanation for the weapon is that she is a lesser version of Cortana designed to be disposable, which is why she acts so childish, it echo’s Halo’s history with Mendicant Bias, a forerunner ai that was akin to cortana during its time and Offensive Bias, a lesser version of itself designed to capture and contain Mendicant Bias, who was afflicted by the Flood.

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That makes me hate the story less, but it’s frustrating that this wasn’t really explained in-game (even through lore-based collectibles).

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thats a problem with Infinite, Zeta Halo’s context is derived entirely from The Forerunner saga/trilogy of books that served as the didactics origin for halo 4 alongside its terminals.

along with a few more recent stories too., the game says Zeta is different but it never alludes to said differences., The Endless however are completely new…which concerns me greatly.

back onto the topic of the weapon, I HOPE she is not called Cortana, she is finally dead, let the name of the dead rest and call her Joy/Joyeuse, because A) She is clearly rather chipper, its sweet & B) Joyeuse or Joy as a name can act as a reference to the whole “Sword of Roland” story, much like Cortana herself, Durandel being the other, in the story there were 3 swords of great strength made supposedly from the same metal/craftsmanship.

it would be perfect for The Weapon since like Cortana, she is made from the same “essence.” that being Halsey.

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I personally like how the weapons the new cortana and takes her name. Bout time she’s back.

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Well written OP. I know many folks hated Halo 4/5 but I would’ve preferred 343 go full tilt/all in on the evil Cortana story than do this half--Yoink!--everything-happens-off-screen–banished/boring space apes - BS. And if they really wanted to keep Jen Taylor, nothing wrong with a cliched good Cortana buried deep within the bad one where chief saves the day/ back to status quo (especially compared to the current crapaign).

But that new status quo of 343 is lazy development and grabbing as much cash as possible so oh well I guess.

Here’s to hoping the Paramount series gives us the Halo stories this fanbase deserves.

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There’s so many ways we could have fought evil cortana and saved good Cortana.

E.g. Evil Cortana uses the cylixes to revive a forerunner body, and inserts her consciousness. However, she leaves behind anything she considers a “weakness” including OG Cortana’s humanity.

Early part of the game is spent searching for a signal (much like Infinite’s start), but what we find is what ‘evil cortana’ left behind.

Leftover Cortana and The Chief then work together to:

  1. Stop evil Cortana
  2. Defeat the Banished
  3. Learn to trust each other again.

Roll credits.

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Could’ve worked ngl.

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It’s funny how I had the opposite reaction. The grapple hook and open world brought fresh new life into the Halo formula. Honestly the combat encounters and freedom of approach never felt better. And the open world wasn’t too intrusive to the core gameplay. There wasn’t Dialogue Trees and Map side objectives were kept relatively minimal. Felt like an Arkham City approach rather than a Red Dead Redemption. Going back to the Classic Halos right after you can see how limited they feel in terms of enemy engagement. (Though Halo 2 has an impressive level of Diverse environments Infinite can only dream of having).

Other than the Endless being very underdeveloped and the Harbinger having no presence in the story (also I believe the Harbinger is an Endless) I thought the story worked pretty well.

Chief being a bit more emotionally available felt like a natural extension from the end of Halo 4. The guy is dealing with a lot of guilt. But he doesn’t break character the way you suggest. There’s still plenty of long silences and moments where he doesn’t respond. He just now has a few moments where he opens up a bit.

I also liked Infinite because it tries things Halo hasn’t tackled before. Despite ostensibly being a safe low key CE remake - it tries to tell a much more intimate character driven narrative than a plot heavy one, it tries an open worldish formula to its game and combat design, the grapple hook creates a free form sense of exploration, its slow steady 1 shot cutscenes which is a departure from the Halo formula, and it tells two stories at once in a way Halo has never attempted - the main plot of stopping Esherum and Harbinger and the Mystery of who killed Cortana and what happened over the last 6 months.

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I agree with a few points you make but a lot of it is really over the top. You actually provided no constructive criticism to any points of the game not have any credit where credit is due.

I disregarded your post because it just sounds like an angry rant. Have you played on legendary? The equipment is not OP and when used correctly provides great tactical advantage especially on legendary. I disliked playing the Bosses over and over again but they certainly weren’t easy. (They are on heroic but legendary is a huge jump in terms of difficulty).

Ya there was a lack on NPCs as you say but it’s also on Xbox one game. There is definately room for improvement in that regard but it’s certainly not as bad as you say it is.

As for gameplay, this halo has the best gun variants, gun play and smoothness of any halo game to date. I personally thought the story was best to get rid of the atrocity of halo 5. If I compare Star wars the rise of Skywalker vs halo infinite to be to redeem their franchise, id say halo infinite does a better job. Halo infinite had a bad foundation for story but they have a good thing going on now that will let us forget the bad story halo 5 was. Halo 4 spat on all mystery of forerunners as well but halo infinite brings it back.

I think many people miss the point that halo infinite in terms of story is supposed to be closer to halo CE. More will be fleshed out later.

Yes there are certainly many areas that need improvement. The game isn’t perfect but I certainly wouldn’t call it a bore fest in my opinion as you mention…to each their own

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Problem with that analogy, despite its commonality between the two franchises is that one cut threads entirely, while the other left things open.

Halo 5’s narrative issues stem from the fact that its not a natural continuation from Halo 4, due to the time jump and sudden narrative skips to give us yet another OOH BIG BAD SURPRISE, while TLJ is a direct continuation that cares not for what came before and as a result, leaves nothing for its sequel to effectively use to continue its story, TLJ is a dead end, Halo 5 while not a natural continuation of Halo 4, does have a few threads open for its sequel to work with, despite how dire things were in universe and for the players in general (Halo 5 was a mess narratively, not denying that at all, just saying 5 at least had threads to follow that they didn’t need to cut, while TLJ was a narrative dead end.)

It wasn’t a good idea to leave so many threads from 5 to the side, would’ve been better and more interesting to address them head on with the new focus in turn, which they kinda did via the “piecing together what happened during the large gap” but still leaves too many things open for future dlc and introducing yet another BIG BAD SURPRISE.

The Didact worked as that cause of his foundation being a familiar one, Cortana’s falters due to timing and how out of nowhere it feels along with 5’s pacing being so abysmal, The Harbinger echoes both previous antagonists to a T in the matching speech patterns & “You are not the future” rhetoric, with the Harbinger I worry that one will be too far to accept lorewise due to how “sudden and new they are” as far as escalation goes.

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Isn’t Infinite’s story so far a meta commentary on the new Halo Games (and fan reactions) in general?

They split apart the good old Chief & Cortana Team in Halo 4 and 5. Chief aka 343 now regrets this, while Cortana is also saying “I see it now, we were always meant to be together”.

“The Weapon” is the soft-reboot of the Halo Franchise. The loudest fans always were shouting for the good old days and this is what they now got: Basically a copy of the past, just a little different.

Perhaps Chief’s attempts to delete The Weapon (aka Halo Infinite) also reflects how 343 was close to resetting the whole game concept during development.