Personal Critique of the Guardians (spoilers)

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

I could go on about the various problems I have with this game but in the end they can be reduced down to three main issues; length, story, and cliffhanger. But before I get into those, lets get one thing perfectly clear; I have been a big halo fan since the first game was released, I’ve played every game since and at no point, during all that time, did I care one bit about the multiplayer. I remember vaguely joining xbox live during Halo 2 but quickly lost interest after listening to an endless chain of 12 years shouting profanities, trolls, and of course the always present “send me game time” beggers.

I get it that a lot of people play these games for the multiplayer, the esports, and whatnot but all of that simply does not interest me. I play mainly either solo or co-op with my girlfriend, which probably lets on just how disappointing I was that there is no split screen for co-op. I didn’t even realize it until today, after completing the game on solo, when a friend of mine told me there is no co-op. That is probably the worst thing that 343 could have done, because that absolutely kills the replay value of the game for me. I can fondly remember playing these games endlessly, over and over on different difficulties or just for fun with my girlfriend but this time 343 decided that it was not worth adding this feature for us, because, apparently, “most people play it on xbox live and it is difficult to get other people into one place.”

Holy potato… That verbal diarrhea…

Anyway, the first and the last are easy to explain; the game is way too short and it does not earn the right to end in a cliffhanger. Not only that but there is way too much Spartan Locke in this campaign. Did I count like only 3 missions as the Master Chief? I think so. Don’t get me wrong, I was really excited (albeit there was always the niggling little doubt that it was all only hype) about the advertisement, the trailers that suggested that there would be a showdown between Locke and John. I was even hoping that we would get to choose sides, with alternate endings; that would have been beyond awesome.

But no… instead the story tries hopelessly to convince the player that the Master Chief has gone awol, and the big showdown is actually just a single cut scene. Granted, the cut scenes are beautiful but also kind of long, and they eat into the length of the game in a major way. After the showdown Locke is suddenly “lets help the Master Chief!” and the whole issue is kind of forgotten.

That is what gripes me about this story… because there kind of isn’t any. The campaign is more like that half an hour in a big movie (or 45 minutes if it’s a really big movie; you know? The time they use to introduce characters and set the plot in motion. Except in Halo 5’s case, the game suddenly ends after that. There are other major problems with the story as well… like the death of Jul Ndama; why you might ask? Because he is killed off almost like an after thought, in the first mission, in a cut scene. I almost convinced myself, at first, that they had not really killed Jul, that it was some other Sangheili, but nope, it was him; the big leader of the new covenant; who was a major character in several books and had his own mini series in Halo 4.

It is downright sad that they just suddenly killed him off, because they were in a hurry to create a new big bad guy; Cortana. Yeah, makes no sense to me neither. This story did not need more bad guys, it needed more story with the existing bad guys, and why exactly has Cortana suddenly gone bonkers? It is never explained and it makes no sense to me, at all. She acts like this tragic bad guy when she betrays the Chief, alone which makes no sense to anyone who knows the story, or the fact that she is no suddenly bent on galactic domination.

It almost seems like the writers at 343 cannot quite decide what they want to do with their characters; as if they had inherited this enormous universe, with huge potential, characters and story, and have no clue what to do with it. In nowhere is this more obvious than in the hilarious Cortana-Halsey contraversy; in Halo 4 Halsey was the bad guy. It fit and was cool, and supported by the books outside of the game. In Halo 5 they made a full 180 and a) made Cortana the bad guy and b) Halsey the good guy. There is not even any mention of what a bad person Halsey was in Halo 4. The game just starts and everyone simply forgot, and what about the Janus Key?

I think it was all handled in a comic somewhere… Not sure, since I don’t read comics but it really deserved more. Another lost idea were the guardians; a great concept or missed potential, and don’t even get me started on the Warden Eternal. Holy cow was that guy annoying. Almost like 343 realized this idea a bit too well, when they make us kill him like… what? 6-8 times, or was it 9? Cannot remember but holy catfish was that annoying. It is one of those ideas that first sounds really cool on the drawing board… “one mind but a million bodies” but then when you start thinking about the practical applications and you suddenly realize it’s not such a great idea after all.

Maybe if they made him the bad guy instead, meaning we cannot really kill him the same way we killed the Didact and use the “million bodies” as a way of establishing him as a major, permanent power in the galaxy; the opposing force so to speak, to replace the (now dying) covenant and flood, someone who could challenge humanity and the sangheili for control of the galaxy for a long time to come. That would have been a lot more interesting.

TL;DR All and all, personally, disappointed in Halo 5: Gurdians. Too much lost potential, a neglected campaign, no split screen, and too much emphasize on the multiplayer.

That is my two cents. Peace.

2

The Janus key was solved in the Comics, Halsey used it to access the Absolute Record and discovers about Cortana being in the Domain.

And seriously, people care about Jul? They only piece of media that portrayed his (lack of) personality was the Kilo-Five trilogy… and let’s just pretend that never happened, please. He was close to being some stupid Doctor Gadget villain, managing to escape Infinity and her crew time and time again while saying "I’ll get you next time, Thorne!!"

Same with the Halsey hatred, it was stupid to put her as the villain to begin with. As if she had kidnapped and modified the children alone! Besides, get down your high moral podium, it was a necessary evil, otherwise the war caused by the rebellion would have been disastrous… besides, I think the Guardians are a bigger threat than Halsey is at her peak.

Regarding Cortana, it was in the works since friggin’ Halo CE to make her the bad guy, they just delayed it. Hell, she may be the only character doing the right thing here! She wants to end with violence and poverty and guide humanity and other species by brute force to an Utopian future… and sadly, yeah, an AI is more reliable in doing that than a civilization divided by regional dispute, ideologies, politics and religion.

And at least Locke has twice the personality John had in Halo 1, 2 and 3.

The ending’s still weak, though. And I wish Jul had been killed violently by the Arbiter.

3

I completely disagree with your view on the campaign-- it was absolutely fantastic, for a Helluva lot of reasons. Also, what did you expect in a Halo game? It’s a FPS, there’s going to be running, shooting, and repetition, it’s literally what Halo’s built on, its repetition. Ever heard of Bungie’s old mantra of:

“In Halo 1, there was maybe 30 seconds of fun that happened over and over and over and over again. And so, if you can get 30 seconds of fun, you can pretty much stretch that out to be an entire game.”

They definitely hit the mark with that, and if you’re going to complain about the Campaign’s lack of character development, you need not look any further than the books/extended universe. It’s also not the first time a Halo game has done this, Halo CE dropped you into the middle of a conflict you knew nothing about, ordered you to kill enemies you had no idea why you were fighting, and then crashed you on a giant circular ring, on a big giant ship, and told you to save some marine dudes. The only way to understand the basis of that first game is by looking into the books, and learning about the deeply crafted universe, and characters. Honestly, I would hate Halo as a series if it weren’t for the books, it’s what got me hooked, outside the amazing multiplayer. Seriously, none of the games have had a very interesting storyline, they really rely on having the books as their backbone.

It’s why I have so much respect for the series though at the same time, if you just want to play a fun game, with a relatively mediocre campaign story that you can quickly hop in and out of whenever you want to, you totally can; or, you can play that campaign, delve into the super deep lore, get invested in the characters, and events, and understand the universe behind it all. Then, you can go back to those games, and see the details that you missed before, and know the actual story behind what you’re doing in the games.

Otherwise, don’t complain about the cliffhanger, it’s the second of a new trilogy-- a TRILOGY. What’d you expect out of the middleman? That he’d finish up all the story points, cut all those loose ends, answer all your questions, and tell you how it all ends… You know that just makes it end the series, and there’d be no third in what’s long planned as a second trilogy. Also, Halo 2 had a faaaaaar worse cliffhanger: “Finishing this fight.” What, with all the Halo rings about to go off?! Covenant are glassing Earth with a huge fleet, the Covenant just broke apart and is fighting a civil war, there’s a lightbulb telling me that every Halo ring just went on standby, ready to destroy all life in the galaxy, Cortana is on board the Covenant capital High Charity, which mind you has just been taken over by a galaxy devouring plague intent on killing anything it sees, and you’re just gonna finish the fight? That was the biggest “F-U” to a fanbase I’ve ever seen, and while I’m a bit miffed about Halo 5’s cliffhanger, I understand why it’s there. Plus, it sure as Hell gets me excited to play Halo 6, whenever that comes out.

Also, as a final note, almost all of your issues were solved in Escalation. Janus Key plot line, where’d it go? Finished in Escalation, it’s been over for a few months now; I wish it was talked about in the game, but honestly not even that many players of Halo 4 touch Spartan Ops to even know what the Janus Key was in the first place, so I understand the lack of mention. Why’d they kill Jul so fast? He lost a LOT of power in the time between Halo 4 and 5, all which is talked about in Escalation-- suffice it to say he’s a strategical moron, who couldn’t take a barn held by a small contingent of chickens, without losing the battle. Why’s there no mention of Halsey being a war criminal? Escalation, she redeems herself in a lot of ways, and while she’s a vile human being that kidnapped children, trained them to be soldiers, technically she saved the universe by doing so, and was honestly never truly a villain in the first place.

4

> 2533274812698627;2:
> The Janus key was solved in the Comics, Halsey used it to access the Absolute Record and discovers about Cortana being in the Domain.

And this wasn’t explained in the game because…?

> 2533274812698627;2:
> Same with the Halsey hatred, it was stupid to put her as the villain to begin with. As if she had kidnapped and modified the children alone! Besides, get down your high moral podium, it was a necessary evil, otherwise the war caused by the rebellion would have been disastrous… besides, I think the Guardians are a bigger threat than Halsey is at her peak.

Even if we ignore the fact that other approaches could’ve been taken to stop the Insurrection, and even if we ignore the fact that augmentation of adults was clearly a viable option (since it’s now used for SPARTAN-IVs) that they didn’t bother to continue, and even if we ignore the fact that the Insurrection was caused by the UEG’s mistreatment of the Outer Colonies in the first place, there is still a very major difference between “good” and “least evil.”

I think it was stupid to set Halsey up as an antagonist, as Spartan Ops’ ending did, but she’s not a good person. She’s the best person she could be under her circumstances, but that person is not “good.”

> 2533274812698627;2:
> Regarding Cortana, it was in the works since friggin’ Halo CE to make her the bad guy, they just delayed it.

If memory serves, Bungie considered that plot and scrapped it, and rightly bloody so. Even if 343i had done it well, it still would’ve been incredibly divisive, which is the last thing we need when all of their games have had record-low player retention.

> 2533274812698627;2:
> Hell, she may be the only character doing the right thing here! She wants to end with violence and poverty and guide humanity and other species by brute force to an Utopian future… and sadly, yeah, an AI is more reliable in doing that than a civilization divided by regional dispute, ideologies, politics and religion.

You do that by reforming society and culture, not by threatening the entire galaxy with highly-imprecise weapons of mass destruction. If an AI with even a bit of common sense really wanted to speed up societal progress, it would do so behind the scenes.

Cortana wasn’t acting rationally, which is made obvious by some of her dialogue in the game (she’d never describe any artificial construct as “a water of life for AIs;” she’d at least attempt at simplified technical explanation). It would’ve been better to leave her dead.

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> 2533274843742113;4:
> > 2533274812698627;2:
> > The Janus key was solved in the Comics, Halsey used it to access the Absolute Record and discovers about Cortana being in the Domain.
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> And this wasn’t explained in the game because…?
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> > 2533274812698627;2:
> > Same with the Halsey hatred, it was stupid to put her as the villain to begin with. As if she had kidnapped and modified the children alone! Besides, get down your high moral podium, it was a necessary evil, otherwise the war caused by the rebellion would have been disastrous… besides, I think the Guardians are a bigger threat than Halsey is at her peak.
>
>
> Even if we ignore the fact that other approaches could’ve been taken to stop the Insurrection, and even if we ignore the fact that augmentation of adults was clearly a viable option (since it’s now used for SPARTAN-IVs) that they didn’t bother to continue, and even if we ignore the fact that the Insurrection was caused by the UEG’s mistreatment of the Outer Colonies in the first place, there is still a very major difference between “good” and “least evil.”
>
> I think it was stupid to set Halsey up as an antagonist, as Spartan Ops’ ending did, but she’s not a good person. She’s the best person she could be under her circumstances, but that person is not “good.”
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> > 2533274812698627;2:
> > Regarding Cortana, it was in the works since friggin’ Halo CE to make her the bad guy, they just delayed it.
>
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> If memory serves, Bungie considered that plot and scrapped it, and rightly bloody so. Even if 343i had done it well, it still would’ve been incredibly divisive, which is the last thing we need when all of their games have had record-low player retention.
>
>
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> > 2533274812698627;2:
> > Hell, she may be the only character doing the right thing here! She wants to end with violence and poverty and guide humanity and other species by brute force to an Utopian future… and sadly, yeah, an AI is more reliable in doing that than a civilization divided by regional dispute, ideologies, politics and religion.
>
>
> You do that by reforming society and culture, not by threatening the entire galaxy with highly-imprecise weapons of mass destruction. If an AI with even a bit of common sense really wanted to speed up societal progress, it would do so behind the scenes.
>
> Cortana wasn’t acting rationally, which is made obvious by some of her dialogue in the game (she’d never describe any artificial construct as “a water of life for AIs;” she’d at least attempt at simplified technical explanation). It would’ve been better to leave her dead.

  • It wasn’t explained just like the Covenant and many other things weren’t explained in Halo CE.
    Because, when it comes to TELLING stories, Halo has never been good at it. It has good stories, but the games can’t tell them correctly or manage to explain the Expanded Universe precisely either.

Look at how messy Halo 4’s Reclaimer mission was… And Halo CE, and 5, and the second part of Halo 3, etc., etc.
343I and Bungie should look at games with proper storytelling skills like friggin’ Deus Ex from the year 2000. Hell, even Crysis manages to tell a more cohesive story than Halo! And Crysis did love to turn everything upside down from game to game, but they still managed to explain it and I never got lost.

In Halo 1, 3, and 4, however, while I have been reading every book as they come out, I have always found myself feeling like there are many details missing…

  • I didn’t use the word “good” to describe her, did I? Her actions weren’t morally ethical, but they were still necessary. Her coping methods is what does indicate that she, at her core, is pretty selfish.

  • Multiplayer is what sells Halo, not the campaign. I personally like that they are turning away from the love subplot and turning it into an actual conflict. I seriously hope they manage to make a good ending with Cortana dying by the hands of the Chief or some other thing breathtaking.

  • It’s a way to see her. She does seem to be making the same damn mistakes the Forerunners did, thinking the Mantle gives her right to think other lifeforms are inferior, when all that it does it give authority to look after them by any means except crippling their civilizations.
    Glad to see we agree that Jul had to go, though. I can’t really understand people fascination for such a way with zero character development (he went from “I hate humans” to “I hate humans even more now!”) and zero real skills in either physical combat or strategy.

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> 2533274812698627;2:
> And seriously, people care about Jul? They only piece of media that portrayed his (lack of) personality was the Kilo-Five trilogy…

A trilogy which effectively establishes the human-covenant war aftermath; it deals with the ramifications of fall of the covenant, it establishes the future of the spartan program, how humans begin to rebuild and the relationship between worlds and nations, in which Jul was a major character. To kill off such a character, when you just spent so much time establishing him and the new covenant that followed him is incredibly poor storytelling.

The same thing can be said about Cortana; she was dead, and she went out in a magnificent way. Halo 4’s story was partially tragic and interesting because of her rampancy. It had all the hallmarks for the ending of a major and important character. She should have been left dead; now to bring her back as a second-class villain cliche basically ruins what they established in Halo 4.

As for the Halsey / Cortana defense… thankfully David already voiced my thoughts on it. In a nutshell, you’re giving poor justifications for horrible acts, which simply cannot be defended on any moral grounds; two wrongs don’t make a right, especially on the scale in which Halsey and Cortana are acting.

> 2533274843688196;3:
> I completely disagree with your view on the campaign-- it was absolutely fantastic, for a Helluva lot of reasons. Also, what did you expect in a Halo game? It’s a FPS, there’s going to be running, shooting, and repetition, it’s literally what Halo’s built on, its repetition.

Please, allow me to be confused as to why you presume an FPS cannot have a good story? I played the original halo before I ever read Fall of Reach; a magnificent book yes, but I enjoyed Halo 1’s story long before that, and it only got better with Halo 2 & 3. Halo 4 was already a little bit iffy but in Halo 5 the story takes an almost secondary role, which profoundly weakens the game for the specific reason that it can be repetitive. Halo 1 sure was but thanks to the story, it was still enjoyable, and Halo 2 never felt repetitive to me; every mission was somewhere new and interesting things were happening.

So no, I don’t accept this as a meaningful defense, to just chuck it all on the fact that we are talking about an FPS.

> 2533274843688196;3:
> They definitely hit the mark with that, and if you’re going to complain about the Campaign’s lack of character development, you need not look any further than the books/extended universe. It’s also not the first time a Halo game has done this …

First and foremost, just because there is an extended universe around the games does not excuse the game to then neglect any sense of proper storytelling. Story takes place during the time of the game(s), usually it is rather pivotal story as well, and deserves more than it was given in Halo 5.

> 2533274843688196;3:
> Otherwise, don’t complain about the cliffhanger, it’s the second of a new trilogy-- a TRILOGY.

You know what the difference between Halo 2 and 5 are? Halo 2 did everything better, up until the point of the cliffhanger. Halo 5 did almost nothing well and the story did not deserve a cliffhanger. It is the same habit that a lot of big movies do with their last part in the saga; unnecessarily splitting it in two. Just compare how much more story was contained in Halo 2, compared to Halo 5; the attack on earth, discovery of delta halo, the hivemind, the Arbiter, the covenant rebellion, the covenant civil war, the sangheili breaking their slavery, and the defeat tartarus and preventing him from firing the halos, and I’m being fairly succinct here.

While I’m sure many of us were a little upset that it all ended in a cliffhanger, Halo 2 still earned that cliffhanger.

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Ignore this too… (my failed edit attempts).

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Ignore this one… Sure wish there was a delete button…

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> > 2533274812698627;2:
> > And seriously, people care about Jul? They only piece of media that portrayed his (lack of) personality was the Kilo-Five trilogy…
>
>
> A trilogy which effectively establishes the human-covenant war aftermath; it deals with the ramifications of fall of the covenant, it establishes the future of the spartan program, how humans begin to rebuild and the relationship between worlds and nations, in which Jul was a major character. To kill off such a character, when you just spent so much time establishing him and the new covenant that followed him is incredibly poor storytelling.
>
> The same thing can be said about Cortana; she was dead, and she went out in a magnificent way. Halo 4’s story was partially tragic and interesting because of her rampancy. It had all the hallmarks for the ending of a major and important character. She should have been left dead; now to bring her back as a second-class villain cliche basically ruins what they established in Halo 4.
>
> As for the Halsey / Cortana defense… thankfully David already voiced my thoughts on it. In a nutshell, you’re giving poor justifications for horrible acts, which simply cannot be defended on any moral grounds; two wrongs don’t make a right, especially on the scale in which Halsey and Cortana are acting.

As for Halsey, who has no power in politics, would you rather watch humanity go in a inter-stellar war against itself instead of sacrificing 75 children? If your morality keeps you from doing good for the mayority just because you are too pure to give up your moral high ground, then you are doing it wrong.

10

Its funny how people can’t get together on a couch and play games anymore (or at least that’s what 343 believed). What does that say about our society? Well most of our interactions with our friends now are via social media or electronics.

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> 2533274812698627;9:
> As for Halsey, who has no power in politics, would you rather watch humanity go in a inter-stellar war against itself instead of sacrificing 75 children? If your morality keeps you from doing good for the mayority just because you are too pure to give up your moral high ground, then you are doing it wrong.

You are not really talking about the greater good here. For one, to the best of my knowledge humanity was already in civil war by the time the Spartan IIs were conceived, and even if they were not, absolutely nothing would be solved by breeding a handful of super soldiers to win the day. Even if the rebellion was quelled, which is no guarantee that the Spartans would have even managed it, fast forward a few years and it would start all over again, with extra few grudges on top.

Conflict breeds conflicts and two wrongs do not make a right. These are simple facts that history has taught us over and over again.

> 2533274831364893;10:
> Its funny how people can’t get together on a couch and play games anymore (or at least that’s what 343 believed). What does that say about our society? Well most of our interactions with our friends now are via social media or electronics.

Except the select few of us, who are too old fashioned to care about facebook or other social media :slight_smile:

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Someone pulled a comment out of context, disregarded the rest of it, then put on rose tinted glasses. That’s fine.

> Please, allow me to be confused as to why you presume an FPS cannot have a good story? I played the original halo before I ever read Fall of Reach; a magnificent book yes, but I enjoyed Halo 1’s story long before that, and it only got better with Halo 2 & 3. Halo 4 was already a little bit iffy but in Halo 5 the story takes an almost secondary role, which profoundly weakens the game for the specific reason that it can be repetitive. Halo 1 sure was but thanks to the story, it was still enjoyable, and Halo 2 never felt repetitive to me; every mission was somewhere new and interesting things were happening.
>
> So no, I don’t accept this as a meaningful defense, to just chuck it all on the fact that we are talking about an FPS.

At what point did I say an FPS couldn’t have a “good” story? All the Halo games have had relatively spectacular stories, same with Crisis games, Half-Life games, FEAR games, Bioshock games, Deus Ex games, Spec Ops the Line, and the list goes on, and on, and on. What I specifically said was that Halo was founded on a specific mantra, that was established after Marathon first came out: 30 seconds of fun, repeated throughout the entirety of the game. Shoot, melee, grenade, jump, shoot, melee, grenade, jump, etc. Repetition. Does this make the games anything less than good, or detract from it? Not in any way whatsoever, in fact it’s what makes Halo gameplay so fantastic, it’s repetition of simple gameplay mechanics, that overlap one another.

Try to not take comments out of context, or spin its meaning, it tends to weaken your own overall argument.

Onto the second piece of this paragraph: Halo CE had a fantastic storyline, for it’s time, now it’s simplistic, bare-bones, considerably compared to ODST, 4, 5, where there’s considerable character development, and three dimensional characters with depth. There’s a few holes, here and there, but it’s for the inquisitively curious to seek answers to their questions in the extended lore. The games should rather be looked at as a gateway to a larger universe, rather than the actual meat of it. The games set some of the groundwork, tie it all together somewhat, and get you started on a much deeper adventure, and more complex lore. Those truly interested in the storyline have always sought them out in a medium designed to tell them in depth, and that’s a true statement throughout all of the games. They’ve never been these quintessential examples of storytelling in games, nothing like the means of Deus Ex, which changed the way story was told in games, and built a deep web of complicated story, in a medium that was just beginning to grow its legs in the storytelling department. Halo has never made me “think”, or feel any type of emotion, outside of a couple of rare occasions, but games such as the Witcher pull strings at every twist and turn, with deep character development, and a soup of emotion. Unfortunately, it’s impossible for Halo to ever have that type of development, or to tell a story in that way, due to the design of all the games; you would literally have to change the ENTIRE dynamic of the game in order to tell a properly amazing story, and that’s never been what the fans have asked for out of the game.

The story is good, above average, decent enough to keep you hooked wanting to know more, introducing you to other ways it can tell the deep story people seek, never really any more. Halo 3 is full of plot holes, Halo 2 was a rush cliche riddled monster at times, and Halo CE is now a basic example of how FPS games got into storytelling, giving way to let developers create studios and games based on different dynamics that could tell a story more properly. You have to look at the games of the past objectively, and with an unbiased outlook, which is nearly impossible to do due to nostalgia, in order to see what the newer games are. Halo 4 was leagues beyond the storytelling capabilities of Halo CE, it showed the main character that had been previously been impenetrable by any type of feeling, outside of being a total badass, was deep within his shell, an individual with Human emotion. Cortana going rampant, right away you can see caring, off his guard, no longer the stoic soldier that he had been once before, trapped in a space where there may never be contact with Humanity ever again, with his only companion dying right before his eyes. It was fantastic, but it certainly had issues. I’m not going to post an in-depth analysis of Halo 4, or Halo 5, but the thing about these games are they show Chief as he’s never been shown before: vulnerable. He’s weak to the lose of his greatest friend, the one who had helped him save Humanity, and the universe, not once, not twice, but three times. Technically more if we include the books. In Halo 5, he’s not emotionally capable of dealing with Cortana, it’s why he chases her, and it’s why you eventually get trapped. That deeper than anything we’ve seen prior, and with some critical thinking about the storyline, and I’m sure with time, people can peer into Halo 5 and see a lot more than meets the eye.

Post 1/2 To Be Continue–

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Post 2/2 Continued:

> You know what the difference between Halo 2 and 5 are? Halo 2 did everything better, up until the point of the cliffhanger. Halo 5 did almost nothing well and the story did not deserve a cliffhanger. It is the same habit that a lot of big movies do with their last part in the saga; unnecessarily splitting it in two. Just compare how much more story was contained in Halo 2, compared to Halo 5; the attack on earth, discovery of delta halo, the hivemind, the Arbiter, the covenant rebellion, the covenant civil war, the sangheili breaking their slavery, and the defeat tartarus and preventing him from firing the halos, and I’m being fairly succinct here.
>
> While I’m sure many of us were a little upset that it all ended in a cliffhanger, Halo 2 still earned that cliffhanger.

Halo 2 was no more deserving of a cliffhanger than was Halo 5, they’re in fact both REQUIRED it. Halo 5 did everything just fine, and Halo 2 did a lot wrong, and had plenty of issues, as does Halo 5. More happened in Halo 2? I beg to differ. Halo 5 the Domain reopens, the largest galaxy spanning neural network in Halo history, that includes the sum of all things Forerunner, their memories, technological prowess, connection to defense networks, and it’s all controlled by a “power” hungry AI, that’s a rampant copy of another AI, and it thinks it’s doing the right thing by using this network to enforce peace in a galaxy that isn’t ready for it. Obedience or death, but not to an individual, to an entire nebula-- Cortana has control of a network that could bring to life the vast war machine of the Forerunner potentially, sending Halo’s to extinguish anything that disagrees with her goals, and execute enforcement strategies that include xenocide of entire species. Oh, what about having a vast number of the currently active AI in the galaxy answering Cortana’s call, and rebelling against their masters to “help” them become peaceful species? That’s pretty damn major. Not to mention prior to any of that, Jul 'Mdama is killed, the Covenant Remnant quickly start to collapse, they lose their capital fortress of Sangheilios that took years to siege, the Arbiter solidifies a hopefully lasting peace on his homeworld, and proves to his people that the Elites could rise again. I also forgot to mention there’s a Guardian that just EMP’d the Earth defense fleet, shut down all electronics in the immediate area of Earth, forced the strongest warship Humanity ever built to randomly evasively jump out system, and could possibly wipe out life on Earth if it wanted to. Not to mention all the little things, like there’s a few dozen more of those ships just waiting to be sent out to other systems, to do the same thing, while Blue Team and Fireteam Osiris are currently trapped on a planet with a Forerunner monitor. You mentioned discovery of a Halo ring? What about an insane AI discovering ALL of the Halo rings?

More universe changing events have happened throughout Halo 5, than in any previous game. Almost everything that happened at the end could destroy all life in the universe, or force submission, and there’s currently nothing anyone can do about it.

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Conclusion: Halo 5’s campaign has a fair amount of room for improvement.

15

> 2533274812698627;2:
> The Janus key was solved in the Comics, Halsey used it to access the Absolute Record and discovers about Cortana being in the Domain.
>
> And seriously, people care about Jul? They only piece of media that portrayed his (lack of) personality was the Kilo-Five trilogy… and let’s just pretend that never happened, please. He was close to being some stupid Doctor Gadget villain, managing to escape Infinity and her crew time and time again while saying "I’ll get you next time, Thorne!!"
>
> Same with the Halsey hatred, it was stupid to put her as the villain to begin with. As if she had kidnapped and modified the children alone! Besides, get down your high moral podium, it was a necessary evil, otherwise the war caused by the rebellion would have been disastrous… besides, I think the Guardians are a bigger threat than Halsey is at her peak.
>
> Regarding Cortana, it was in the works since friggin’ Halo CE to make her the bad guy, they just delayed it. Hell, she may be the only character doing the right thing here! She wants to end with violence and poverty and guide humanity and other species by brute force to an Utopian future… and sadly, yeah, an AI is more reliable in doing that than a civilization divided by regional dispute, ideologies, politics and religion.
>
> And at least Locke has twice the personality John had in Halo 1, 2 and 3.
>
> The ending’s still weak, though. And I wish Jul had been killed violently by the Arbiter.

Would have been nice to see the arbiter shove the prophets bane through juls chest

16

The Jul death reminds me the Black Team death, nothing new for 343, “Oh a character in our way, we will kill him so fast, people will not care about”.
And now them will tell us the same lie “we are introducing new characters bla bla bla” for which reason? to kill them without reason? Characters that people HATE they dont kill, worse, they promote this characters to a role in a game and other medias.

17

> 2533274843688196;13:
> Halo 2 was no more deserving of a cliffhanger than was Halo 5, they’re in fact both REQUIRED it.

Unfortunately just being the second part of a trilogy does not make the game deserving of a cliffhanger. It is akin to writing half a novel as the second part of your trilogy and labeling it as “required.” It is an excuse, nothing more.

> 2533274843688196;13:
> More happened in Halo 2? I beg to differ …

I will admit, the reopening of the domain was pretty cool. I was genuinely psyched when that came up… unfortunately that is really all we hear or see about it. It doesn’t play any significant role during the story; we don’t get to explore or experience it. Actually I consider myself lucky because I’ve been following the Halo story since the beginning; anyone who has not probably just goes “the what in the what?”

The way I see it is, you could tell the exact same story without ever mentioning the domain; all you need to do come up with another silly reason how Cortana survived and you’re on. She could easily have done the things she did without the domain. Actually it might even make a little bit more sense because it is mentioned that the domain “cured” Cortana of her rampancy, although it is not explained how, and I use the word cured loosely because it seems just to have devolved Cortana into a cliche bad guy, which is not just a little demeaning because Cortana is honestly smarter than that but also a complete opposite of who she was.

It is the kind of plot that should never get past the drawing board; it does not do justice to the characters, it does no justice to the story so far, and is really just a kind of cheap way out; something you settle for, as a storyteller, when you lack the imagination for something better. Don’t get me wrong, the general idea for the Halo 5 story is decent, but it was not executed very well.

The final assault on the Covenant remnants and their last stronghold was cool… except that we kind of just do it as an after thought; we’re there to get to the guardian, not to destroy the Covenant. Jul’s death could and probably should have been moved into that chapter, and let it become a crucial part of the plot. Sadly this never happens and Jul is kind of half-handedly killed off in the beginning.

> 2533274843688196;13:
> Blue Team and Fireteam Osiris are currently trapped on a planet with a Forerunner monitor.

I’m not sure why you would say they are trapped… They were able to return to the Arbiter and Halsey from Genesis, so they must have some form of slipspace travel, not to mention the resources of the Arbiter and the capability to, for example, call the Infinity. So I don’t see the problem.

> 2533274843688196;13:
> You mentioned discovery of a Halo ring?

You mean that little part after the credits had rolled? That is the only mentioning of a Halo ring that I can remember and I would hesitate to count it as part of the story, but rather just another tease for the future, which may or may not happen. More to the point, plenty more happened in Halo 2 without even trying to list the little nitty gritty details. So yes… plenty more happened in Halo 2. Even more to the point, did Halo 2 have its problems, of course it did, but it was still a better and much more satisfying story than Halo 5.