I realize this isn’t a popular idea. But I think narratively speaking we would have been in a better place, if Bungie had killed off Chief at the end of 3. Granted, this may have been someone else’s call…But, personally it was not a good one.
343 had a chance to do it at the end of 4 but couldn’t let go of their golden goose, which ultimately hurt them in 5.
If you moved to a new Spartan or Team of Spartans, you open up an entirely new lense from which to view the universe (case in point, Reach…which, I also understand may not be a popular viewpoint, but I liked Reach). You wouldn’t have to worry about alternate timelines, you just tell the story from the point of someone else.
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They wouldn’t even have needed to kill him off in 4. They could have just left him drifting in space, an eternal mystery of when or where he’d end up (beyond the vague legendary teaser). Let the player have fun with their imagination. 3 is a perfectly good ending to his character arc, and tryping to cram an end into 4 would not have gone over well.
It probably would have helped the introduction of the Spartan-IV’s as well.
But its never going to happen now after the reaction to halo 5.
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Hot take: If Halo 4 would have been about Sarah Palmer and the Infinity looking for Master Chief, the introduction of her and the Spartan-IV could have been so much less controversial.
The gameplay could be split like in Halo 2: At first you play as Palmer who can still be a trash talking spartan during combat (just give her better lines, that would be a really nice contrast to Chiefs gameplay), then you play as Master Chief who has to deal with the didact later on. Make the didact the main villain over the trilogy and let the effects of Palmers and Chiefs actions influence each others mission.
If this Halo 4 is the beginning of the new trilogy, in Halo 5 you can still introduce Blue Team who support Palmers mission to find Chief and find out what the hell is happening. A cool introduction of Blue Team could be a badass Quentin Tarantino “Kill Bill” Style. At the end of Halo 5 they find Chief.
In Halo 6 they defeat the didact and 343i can decide wether they want to move on with Chief or go with Palmer and the Spartan IV.
If this structure would have been the foundation of the reclaimer trilogy, the stories wouldnt be such a mess. and the Spartan IV could become worthy successors to the Spartan II. But I think 343i werent confident enough to make a Halo 4 with less than 100% Chief…
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All I’m gonna say is… as much as master chief is THE face of halo, I think the campaign wouldve been just as good if say Jerome or Locke was the main character in infinite. I dont get the hate for Locke. I think his character is interesting. I wouldn’t mind having a whole halo campaign based on him as long as the story is well written enough.
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That’s a good point about leaving him out in space. They would still have had to resolve the mystery at some point, do you let him live on in some sort of supporting role or does he become the focus once found?
Killing him is just a “unmessy” way to tie up his narrative.
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Shame people didn’t like ODST, I feel like there’s a lot of cool stories that could be told through playing a more ordinary kind of badass. Would be cool to play as a marine fighting to retake Harvest, or an insurrectionist trying to survive and escape a Covenant invasion. Instead, every game needs to be about Chief, and thanks to the halfhearted attempt to make Locke a protagonist in H5 it’s even less likely they will ever do another main series game like Reach where we don’t play as Chief.
One of my biggest issues with the 343i games is that it feels like Chief is the center of the universe. In the Bungie games, he was the most awesome soldier humanity had, and he took on the most important and impossible missions, but there was always this sense that there was other important stuff going on. The world in CE felt larger than it does in Infinite, partially because of varied environments, but also because Keyes is present and he does things of his own volition in the story, rather than just wait around for Chief to do everything.
You were an important part of a larger conflict, not the one and only person who can fight back.
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I didn’t like ODST because it took the “team” idea and basically neutered it by having you run around the city on your own for much of the game. For me it would have been a better experience if you got to fight as a team throughout, maybe losing folks throughout similar to Reach’s set up.
That being said, I never understood the sentiment behind, “I’d rather play as a regular joe than a super soldier.”
There are loads of games like that (Brother’s in Arms, early CoD, etc).
Never understood the hate for Locke either. He was an amazing character
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he had a whole campaign its called halo 5 where chief and blue team were there for a cameo
how about he should have retired to start training new spartans at the end of H4
Why even kill off the Master Chief? It would be incredibly easy to retire him. I think that killing him off would be a short-sighted move. There are so few established characters who have direct experiences with everything that the series has revolved around.
One thing that I appreciated about the pre-Disney StarWars extended universe canon was that the main characters mostly stopped being the main characters. The stories weren’t about them personally anymore. Halo is in a perfect position to do this. A character doesn’t need to be killed in order for their story to have a conclusion.
He was a basic b marine who followed orders to the letter never wavering from the mission. Kinda an overplayed stereotype In a world where people are constantly disobeying orders for the betterment of humanity this errand boy is off hunting down the chief to bring him back like a good soldier. Does that about sum it up properly for you? For why people would hate him that is.
Well that was def thrown out the window with 343 bungie probably would have done them proper if they would have stayed. But my intro to blue team wasnt halo 5 but instead the fall of reach the irritating part is they’re all dead at the end of that book along with most of the spartan 2 and 3s well 1 is for sure dead 1 is floating through space and 1 has a plasma wound in cryo. But that one is specifically on the pillar of autumn when it blows up one the first dang halo ring. The redaction of what a lot considered cannon was a big blow on that team. However it was nice to see them alive as well considering those are John’s specific team mates from training and they work excellent together.
As for your other topics theres a lot they could have done with their trilogy that just didnt work at all. The full acceptance is that they failed badly multiple times.
And for the main meat of this thread. While killing off chief was an option and was what I first thought they did upon completing halo 3 I wasnt too happy with it now I kinda wish theyd just retire him not even kill him but retire him. Maybe have him training the next generation of Spartans so that we may do our first person POV with our own spartans like what was done with reach. I think that put a lot more people into reach. Personally loved every bit of that game aside from some of its difficulties and the way some maps were set up. Otherwise game felt like it ran great wayyyyyyyy better than this trainwreck we got despite it actually feeling like halo again and not cod infinite is just bad and probably shouldn’t have gone this way probably should have stuck with the reclaimer story instead of power mad cortana
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It’s probably because he felt so basic in the field of “I’m an ONI Spook that does research on HPT’s and I never fail my missions or ask questions”. In Nightfall (love it or hate it), at least he had some personality. In Halo 5 he was kind of a literal tool if I’m being honest.
The Master Chief and the Legendary Blue Team goes AWOL and he doesn’t even question why? Knowing full well they are literal killing machines raised and trained to never disobey orders and to protect the innocent at all costs? I mean yeah, much of the Spartan 2 project is very much top secret, but I doubt that Osman would rally up Locke of all people and not tell him a thing about what to expect and what went wrong. We’re talking about Serin Osman, the same person who shamelessly told her team in the Kilo-Five series just about everything she knew regarding the Spartan 2 project.
So I guess it’s really about the fact that he just fell in line to go hunt down the legendary hero that everyone admired and looked up to if they were inner colony and highly respected in the outer colony. I think that’s what irked people. Like if the story was that no one knew what the Chief was doing and we were slotted to be Osiris most of the game to figure out what was happening and then catch up with what BT’s been doing this entire time later on? I think it might have been received better, Locke might have been received better too.
But that’s just my 2 cents.
As for this whole ‘killing off MC’ business, I don’t think the call is to kill off the Master Chief because everyone thinks his story is done. If I were to compare it to anything, that’d be like killing off Sonic the Hedgehog and making Sally the new face of Sonic or just straight up ending Sonic (which I doubt would happen).
It’s all in the way a story is told and a lot of people just aren’t on board with this new direction. As someone who actually liked Halo 4 at least and Infinite’s campaign wasn’t that bad either, I honestly am not afraid to say that I understand where the die hard (and maybe even new) fans are coming from. I just don’t agree with the way a lot of them voice how they feel about it.
Not even killed off. Just left him in cryo to never be found again. Afterall, he finished the fight.
It’s why even though a lot of people really disliked H5’s campaign. I loved the direction it took of providing a new character.
I disagree with OP.
Halo 4 should’ve been led by Bungie Devs that actually respected Halo’s narrative instead of Frank O’Connor, who then made a terrible decision of stepping down and replacing Brian Reed as the Narrative Director; which led into Halo 5.
Nah that was still based on chief
If Locke was hated because he was “boring” in halo 5, then chief deserves even more hate. He risked the lives of other spartans because he was head over heals for cortana. Locke had way more badass moments than chief in halo 5.
It’s the idea that you go down fighting. I’m pretty sure I’ve said this elsewhere, but you avoid the Halo 5 situation entirely, by having Chief killed in some epic fight in either H3 or H4. Because, we eventually see this come to fruition, “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
Really because I felt 5 was extremely lackluster and didnt know what it wanted to be. I would never say Locke had a bunch of badass moments. If you feel that way then you either came in late or never watched a good action movie.
I’ll put it this way. out of the team I remember locke because I was stuck playing as him but I remember buck more as that mf is a living legend. But guess what hes not a stick in the mud like locke. Hes got personality a smart mouth and more field experience than anyone on that team. Yet were stuck with a mf that lost to a brute. Buck never lost to a brute. After that line in infinite locke has no respect left. Like oh you’re one of the best how come you cant 1 man army huh.
In terms of character development hes has next to none. Chief is a legacy he was grandfathered in past the hate. But when you attack like that saying chief is way less badass is just ignorance. If you cant take why people actually dont like him then dont comment. And definitely dont reply with heavy negativity. Chief has had 4 games before this mf was ever introduced to say locke had more badass moments is baseless
didn’t they tell you? Spartans don’t die, they go MIA