I’ve stated my opinion on Halo 5’s campaign story across various forum posts, but never a comprehensive one where I outline my thoughts on the whole thing. So, here it goes.
Starting with the Halsey introduction cutscene, the story seemed to be heading towards a direction that it never went. I could not know that at the time, but when Halsey mentions ONI in relation to Spartan Locke and how they’ll kill both her and Locke, I had assumed the disparate elements of the ONI plot points from Hunt the Truth and several expanded universe media sources would come together in this game. ONI was responsible for the creation of the Spartan-IIs, and Master Chief. ONI was once the employer of Jameson Locke. ONI was partly responsible for the unstable situation on Sanghelios and helped fund some of the Arbiter’s enemies. ONI undertook a massive misinformation campaign that took care of detractors like Benjamin Giraud and Petra Janecek and possibly covered their butts for Chief maybe going rogue. But yet these elements, and ONI as an entity, are largely absent from Halo 5, so immediately the build up about ONI for the last three years has been largely for nothing. That should have been a bad sign yet I could not know it at the time and so the introductory cutscene with Halsey ended up being relatively pointless.
Moving towards Mission 1: Osiris, again there is a disconnect with Halo 5 and the rest of the Halo fiction. The main plot point here is simple enough, colonies are being decimated by something Forerunner in origin. Yet Osiris is tasked to retrieve Dr. Halsey from the hands of Jul 'Mdama. This is a bit of a problem since Halo 4’s Spartan Ops ended with Halsey and Jul having one-half of the Janus Key, a Forerunner artifact that has the location of all Forerunner technology in the galaxy, and the UNSC with the other and a location known as the Absolute Record looming in the background as a next place of significance in the Halo story. None of that is references or relevant to Halo 5 and its continuation in Halo: Escalation amounted to little more than a reversion to the status quo for the UNSC and Jul ‘Mdama. Moving past that, I actually didn’t mind the showy nature of Osiris departing from the Pelican and fighting through the warring Covenant and Promethean factions. They are normal humans who have received the next best thing to super-powers, yet they don’t act like kids or anything. They use their abilities to make it past a dangerous fray with style and I don’t think the scene was made too easy for Osiris. I have to give 343 credit for remembering to give the Covenant energy shields this time around rather than making the Covenant one hit kills like in Spartan Ops’ cutscene. For the most part, I had very few problems with the way the story was told in this mission, but they could have done better to explain why the Prometheans suddenly turned on Jul. I can assume the Warden Eternal or Cortana assumed control, but this is probably where the Janus Key or Absolute Record could have been tied in. Cortana could have taken control of both and tipped off Halsey to her presence and thus give Halsey a reason to contact the UNSC about her. Further, I was dismayed to see Jul 'Mdama so flippantly killed off. That character was given so much build up over the years and was a breath of fresh air to the typical Covenant religious zealots of old given he was effectively a Forerunner “atheist” using false religious fervor to restart the Covenant in order to protect his species from meddling humans…of which ONI just happened to end up being for him. His death was just to make Osiris look good and it saddens me to think another religious nut, Sali 'Nyon, from Escalation will end up the face of the Covenant after him. The first mission really underlines a major problem with Halo 5 being disconnected from the wider story and thus sacrificing better narratives for ultimately a weaker one that comes out of nowhere.
With Mission 2: Blue Team, my hopes got a bit brighter. I enjoyed the brief talk between Fred and Kelly about Chief’s mental status and I’m happy Fred, my favorite Spartan, seemed to be a voice of reason, but sadly that is really the only time he is. Still, their action sequence was amazing and a good contrast with the flash of Osiris’. They come in hot and are able to clear enemies from an area without firing a single shot at them. Badass. The fact this mission took place on an ONI research ship that the Intel suggests was working on a deadly pathogen that affected humans still made me think ONI might have a bigger role than they did, but alas it was more misdirection. The mission itself reminded me a lot of Pillar of Autumn and Forward Unto Dawn from Halo: CE and Halo 4. Towards the end we see Chief getting a vision of Cortana and this remains one of the odder moments of the game since it isn’t clear how he gets that mission. There is precedent with the Halo 3 Cortana Moments, but those were minor hallucinations and at least the audio was the Gravemind hacking Chief’s systems from what I have read. Perhaps Chief was able to access the Domain itself, but I don’t see how a konk on the head would allow him to access it when the books explained now humans had ever done so. It is essentially just a contextless scene that reveals Cortana is back and undermines all the production talk from 343 before the game released about Halo 5 dealing with Chief moving past Cortana’s death. I do like the nod to Kelly’s impulsiveness by making her the first to board the prowler first, but other than that Blue Team seems all to willing to just follow along with Chief’s choice. I guess it speaks to how close a bond Blue Team has with Chief, but something just seems off to me. To quote Chief, “I don’t like it.”
The confrontation between Halsey, Plamer, Lasky and Roland afterwards had interesting undertones. Roland had been responsible for creating a fake trial along with the ONI AI Black-Box to put a rampant AI named Iona into stasis after she petitioned for a trial to prevent her rampancy. It weighed on him and definitely affected his outlook and explains why he seemed to hostile to Halsey for throwing Cortana under the bus, at least it seemed like she was doing that. Still, out of all the Halo media released prior to Halo 5 it is odd how Frank O’Connor’s short story is essentially the only one that mattered. Moving on, the dialogue between Locke and Buck I think helped to show how much of a strategist Locke really is. His choice to go with an armor restraint shows that he knows that he and Osiris can’t beat Blue Team in a straight-up fight, so he goes for a different approach. I also don’t think Locke’s willingness to see Chief as another target is an insult towards Chief because as his later statement implying Chief inspired him to be a Spartan shows he respects him. Locke was one of the bright spots of Halo 5 to me and shows that Lead Writer Brian Reed can write good characters when he isn’t shooting for either generic villains (of whom we will see later) or making characters who hate Halsey.
To Be Continued
). I am still pissed how terrible the campaign was. I haven’t even played through it a second time, not even for Legendary completion. There’s just no desire to, no real fun section in the campaign, and the soundtrack was very forgettable. I’ll be scrutinizing Halo 6’s campaign advertising much more from now on because this one’s was so misleading and misdirected that I feel the marketing should write the story instead since they showed better execution than the writer.