Simply to say, the campaign is one of, if not the best Halo campaign ever made for Halo. This is basically my critisisms and feedback of my own toward the campaign, giving ideas along the way for possible plot threads or predictions for future parts of the story and on the technical side too. Lets start with story:
Story/Missions
To start off with, I loved every bit of it, the audio files have to be some of my favorite aspects though when it comes to more underlying storytelling of what is implied, and I hope with the already trademarked DLC name I saw pop up recently of “Halo: The Endless” it’ll continue that. Solely due to the factor of this game’s campaign potential I feel there should be a focus on stuff like that, atleast until Multiplayer is in an optimal state.
Meanwhile the missions themselves, they are amazing, some of the best level design in Halo in my opinion, legitimately some of the most fun I had in gameplay terms due to how this is set up, my only gripe was the coils getting caught on some piece of geometry and exploding on me, thats really it. Besides level design, as I said before, the storytelling is out of the park with these cutscenes and Cortana moments not breaking the pacing unlike in some other games (Halo 3 for Cortana moments and Halo 4 for the cutscenes sometimes being intrusive.). Then moving into the mission boss fights, I loved all of them with the arena style, with the boss fights feeling like something out of Doom it was really fun with only the Tavarus and Hyperius fight being a little tedious I presume due to the open space. The best boss fights though were The Harbinger and Jega 'Rdomnai's, The Harbinger had the very fun aspect to it, with the only drag being that super cheiftan, beyond him, The Harbinger as a design, character, and overall fight was something I really loved about infinite and I am very excited to see more of The Endless.
Meanwhile for characters its time to talk about my favorite aspects; so lets speak of the enemies first. Escharum first and foremost is a character who to me was most similar to Kurt 051 to me, just someone hoping to do the right thing, I still like the parallel to Chief but an ounce of reference would have also been really cool to see similar to the reference to Samuel. Beyond Escharum The Harbinger had good motives and although the endless are set as a villainous faction, I feel atleast a subfaction of them would be able to be told the truth as from what the Harbinger lets on, she does not know why the war with the precursors was fought, nor of the Flood's origins, I love The Harbinger but this is a Storyline with so much potential and i would rather not see the easiest road of all villains taken especially with the complexities of Escharum that was shown. On the other hand though, Jega 'Rdomnai, we saw little of him and I can see him being a villainous character in a complex yet iredeemable way, He could be the sort of inverse of Thel 'Vadam, being someone already of a high position and descended before he was betrayed by the Covenant after his final failure, just to be fixed up by some members of the Banished and now has a thirst for vengance against all who oppose him, doing things that can't be justified even just because his own rage.
Before moving onto characters who are protagonist and neutral, I'll talk a little more about Jega 'Rdomnai, basically given he already is something that most Sangheili are not, I feel he could have survived the fight with chief, just needing another possible replacement, maybe part of his chest and an eye maybe. Either way due to how little we saw him, and how brief his fight can be, I believe we could see him return, and I hope we do.
meanwhile for characters of neutral or ally standing, starting with Echo 216, I must protect him at all costs. Fernando Esparza is easily one of if not the best character in Halo at this point when it comes to looking at the games exclusively, he has the sympathetic nature that many of characters (In their game appearance) lacked besides probably Lasky. The Weapon meanwhile is another character who i feel is lovely and I am excited to see where her story goes, but funnily enough a couple of my IRL friends think I look like her which is kind of validating as a Transgirl. Moving on the Monitors, I love how Offensive Bias is on Zeta Halo and given that he would likely be able to since he has the authority and is on Zeta Halo, I believe he may be able to revive my favorite monitor, 117649 Despondant Pyre. I mean Adajuant Resolution did say that he could be activated if Despondent Pyre is needed elsewhere, so we can have the wheatley equivalent of a Forerunner monitor and the seemingly curious and kindly Despondent Pyre if Offensive Bias were to rebuild her. The final character to discuss in this part is Despondent Pyre herself, most of what we see of her is the archelogical finds and the Forerunner records and easily she is my favorite Forerunner-related character we seen more than a mere glimpse of, her data logues reveal she didn’t get unstable as time went on unless its an unstable thirst for curiousity, so unlike Guilty Spark, Penitent Tangent, Tragic Solitude, and Ebulient Prisim, we could see a monitor on our side and possibly be used as a sort of reflection of the audience due to her aspect of being more stable and besides that solely from her audio logs I found her to be lovely to hear the rambles of.
Going on to more minor aspects. The FOBs, HVTs, and Bases are fun to do, I hope we get more within the DLC or spinoff campaign in the future because i found these to be a good break between missions alongside exploration. Speaking of which, the exploration is heavanly especially with how few kill barriars there are basically non existant, its a lovely time traveling the ring, I just wish there was just a little bit of new terrain for the post campaign part, possibly enough to link the last level to the mainlands we have to possibly get one last HVT and FOB, but it is fine without this. Going on to other aspects, my multiplayer post does still reign true, although it works better in campaign, I do wish there was another weapon or two but in campaign it works a lot more smoothly with the sandbox as you have unique weapons to aid in the range of the playthrough you can have. Beyond that simply to say the Grunts and Marines had me laughing so much from some of the stuff they'd say, I love the AI dialogue.
Technical ideas
This section will be the shortest as everything works swimmingly but I just wanted to give an idea about the way armor lockers work. Basically my idea is the factor that the main campaign has set items to unlock is a good thing but from it being only coatings and charms it is a little annoying just to the extent to where you wish you could find like atleast one armor piece given the name of “Armor Lockers”. Basically my idea is to randomize the lockers in what you can get with the total of 3 times the amount of lockers you have in the game, and a programmed dice roll can happen when you open the lockers to get one of these items with items not being repeated by either replacing their slot with a different piece of customization or just store credits to make up for it. Speaking of which given the giant sandwhich easter egg, I think something as hidden as that could be had by like a false wall or something to be like a hidden cache of possibly in game items like weapons or have it be a special item that can be unlocked that’d grant you 2000 store credits or maybe 1000, either way adding more opritunity for the store to be used without feeling scammed.
Oh yeah and also let Marines drive again so they can be seen in vehicles throughout Zeta Halo, it’d make sense, especially postgame
Plot ideas and overall possible predictions
This section is just for fun with my ramblings and hopes for what can be had with the campaign going forward with Halo: The Endless and possibly future DLCs.
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A contigent of the Swords of Sanghelios arrives at Zeta Halo, possibly lead by Rtas, and with it conflict stirs in the Banished, causing on occassion some Sangheili being spared during the battles with them becoming Allies, we could even have a Base mission where we help start an uprising. This idea would be further down the road in the storyline of Infinite if it were to happen.
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Yapyap returns… that is all
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Return of the Prometheans, I know they aren’t very liked but I believe they can fit if they were reworked, and limited back to the ones we only see in Halo 4 possibly with a few new units of similar idea. I say this because thematically they are messed up when you look at the Knights, Crawlers, and all those that use the essence of living beings, it shows the true colors of the Forerunners. Personally I feel each chasis type is a different species, The Promethean Knights being from humans, Crawlers are possibly companions of humans like canines or felines, while the watchers are something. Personally the watcher feels redundant when you have sentinels and similarly to the rework of the monitors I would change the watchers to just not exist while the bodies of the Prometheans do and have their composed essense uploaded into the chasis. the weapons could be reworked too, with their arsenal being all of the Forerunner weapons there as the Scattergun has been replaced by the heatwave and Cindershot while the Sentinel beam would make sense, then having the Suppressor and Lightrifle would be good additions to the sandbox as already they were different from their counterparts in Halo 4. The Light Rifle could stay triblast with a presicion shot when scoped or possibly mode changed while the suppressor would be stil the wider range yet faster fire style it has in comparison to the assualt rifle. Beyond what is there, I could see a sort of physics gun be used as a sort of anti-Endless item, similar to the Gravity Gun from Half-life as is already this game feels like a source game, and overall I feel this could redeem the Prometheans if they were to bring them back.
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ODSTs are found in a new part of the ring that Chief is exploring and we can have story missions to splice Chief retaking the ring, simply the return of Marines.
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A spin off game or DLC based off of Zeta Halo, possibly Blue Team or Buck. Buck specifically I have an idea for with him possibly being on the Infinity instead of with Locke and while on Zeta Halo he finds and helps a downed ONI Prowler and is able to escape Zeta Halo on a Banished vessel and the reason why i say ONI Prowler is because possibly Dare would return with it.
I had more ideas but I spent entirely too long on this post due to other factors in the real world that I shall not get into.