For the past 3 and a 1/2 I’ve seen lots and lots of criticism and overall negativity thrown Halo 5’s way. I haven’t really talked about my thoughts on the game much outside of my personal friend group and was wondering what other people’s thoughts on everything the game had to offer was. This post is gonna be a tad long but I want to say everything that I want to about the game to so nothing is unclear.
Campaign
I really enjoyed it for the most part and thought that the level design was some of the series’ best. Although I wish that less time was spent on Meridian but that might just be me. Obviously I would’ve loved to play as Chief more than we got to but I understand that they wanted to establish new characters. However, I think that they did a pretty poor job in trying to make us like Locke, Tanaka, and less so Vale. We know that Locke is from Oni and tried to kill Arbiter but besides that little bit of backstory (and nightfall too I guess) that’s all we new about him. It would have worked had he contained any sort of personality but he just feels like a mostly emotionless husk. Tanaka is also pretty bland in my opinion and it seemed like 343 cared the least about her out of the four in Osiris. She has a small character moment in the story but I don’t feel like any one really cared about it. The only other time she gets to shine is when she talks about her upbringing on what I believe is an outer colony planet. Vale is easily is the most fleshed out new character in Osiris but could’ve used a bit more personality as well besides “speaks Sangheli”. Although I think that she was heavily benefitted by getting to be on Sangehelios. I also don’t really feel the need to talk about Buck much since he was great in this game. He was an already established fan favorite character who came back and did what he does best. As a side note, I like how they explored the thought of how he feels and moves with being much older than the rest of his team. As for Blue Team I feel like they have similar issues but amplified. To get it out of the way, Master Chief was great for the short time he was in this game. You could see the emotion on his helmet if that makes sense. The rest of Blue Team feel very one dimensional in this game. I haven’t read any of the books and I know that they are fleshed out so much there but for people who only play the games and nothing else have no reason to care who Kelly, Fred, and Linda are. It especially doesn’t help that they get next to no screen time to show their personalities. There are a few moments where you can see that they know each other very well but these moments only happen a hand full of times throughout the campaign. I think 343 bit off a bit more than they could chew in introducing 6 new main characters to the games and have them all have enough screen time and fleshed out personalities. The plot was alright in my opinion, I’m not as negative as lots of others are but I do agree that it’s pretty weak. I think Halo 5’s Campaign would’ve been looked at slightly better had the marketing for the game been very misleading. I understand a little why the marketing was the way it was, since they didn’t want people to know that Cortana was in the game. Halo games usually feel a lot more ‘epic’ and what not but this kind of felt like a wild goose chase and then it was over. I think that the ending however was pretty good all things considered. I know that people don’t want to buy Cortana as a villain but I think that if done right (or if it’s not her at all) can lead to very good character moments especially between her and chief. I’m very excited to see where infinite goes with this and hope that it doesn’t drop it entirely. I don’t know where in here to mention this but why did they have to sum up Spartan Ops in one mission? I feel liked they could’ve handled that in a much better way than they did. I think that the campaign would’ve benefitted from some kind of codex or terminals instead of the data pads that we got. The squad mechanics are pretty cool so that you never feel like you’re playing alone but they can be pretty dumb most of the time which is unfortunate but imo it can make for some pretty funny moments. The difficulty felt fair, not too easy or hard. Comparing it to all of the other Halos on Legendary I’d say that it’s somewhere in the middle.
REQ System
Customization in Halo is what made me fall in love with the series, so obviously I was somewhat bothered when I learned that everything was unlocked through random chance. It doesn’t bother me as it does most but I still wish you could have earned at least armor through either levelling up or achievements or something. My idea for a better REQ system would’ve been that you could either buy the stuff you want individually or buy packs where the outcome is random but you’ll get a better deal. Also maybe you have to start off only buying Common stuff and as you level up you will unlock the ability to buy Uncommon, then Rare stuff and so on. It’s not perfect and it’d have been better if they took the REQ system out entirely but I don’t have a huge problem with it. I also wasn’t bothered much by the limited armor customization (Helmet, Body, Visor). Again while I would’ve liked more like what Reach or 4 gave us it didn’t really bother me. Now this is a very niche thing to complain about but why did the game not have a proper Teal or Navy Blue? There were some dark blues but they were too vibrant, and the closest thing to Teal was Aqua but didn’t feel dark enough. I know that not a lot of people even care about that but it just irks me a bit. I also noticed how 343 made a bunch of new not very appealing armor sets to pad out the REQ system. While I welcome new armor sets I don’t like how half -Yoinked!- some seem. I don’t know how many unique sets are in 5 but I feel like in Infinite they should take around half of the better looking sets maybe more or less and add new ones that take inspiration from the not so great ones in 5 but refine them and make them feel more likeable.
I ran out of characters so I will reply to this with the other part of my thoughts.