Please don't let [REDACTED] be lead writer

Games Halo 5: Guardians
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Edited by Moderator - Please do not call out individuals.

*Original post, click at your own discretion.

343i, I am sure that [REDACTED] is a great guy, and I mean nothing personal against him. However, based on the work he has displayed to us this far in the Halo franchize, he is not a very good writer for Halo.

Halo has differentiated it’self as an FPS from most other FPS games (such as Battlefield or CoD) because of it’s fantastic campaigns, and compelling stories.

Now CoD seems to be trying to step up it’s effort in it’s story department, if Halo wishes to compete it needs to be able to tell the best story that it can possibly tell.

Halo 1-3 had fantastic stories both engaging, with compelling heroes and villains (the covenant were not a two demensional villain, as we were able to play as the arbiter we could relate to the covenant and their motives).

Halo 4 had a good story (not written by [REDACTED], it was written by Chris Schlerf). It touched on all the elements of a good story. It had a good plot (the plot was engaging the lore was expanded), good characters (chief and cortana were developed even more), good emotion (the scenes with chief and cortana were very emotional), and a good moral (there was a deep lesson to be learned from the story, it delved into the concept of Man vs Machine, and what it means to be a human). Halo 4 had a fantastic story and in my personal opinion surpassed the stories of the previous Halo games. However the story in Halo 4’s campaign was written by Chris Schlerf, and he has left 343i unfortunately. Halo 5 will not have a writer who has proven himself worthy with the Halo series ([REDACTED]) instead it will have a writer who has proven himself to be unworthy several times ([REDACTED]).

One of [REDACTED]'s errors was Spartan Ops. The characters in the story were very generic, boring, and undeveloped. Team Majestic’s cast was not very well executed. Halo ODST’s ODST team, and Halo Reach’s Nobel Team even had better characters. The overall plot was mediocre as well. Spartan Ops was also completely devoid of emotion as well as possessing a moral. Chris Schlerf’s Halo 4 campaign was supperior in every way to [REDACTED]'s spartan ops.

Another one of [REDACTED]'s errors is Halo Escalation. The comic series started off by being written by Chris Schlerf, and was quite good. After issue 6 or so, Schlerf stopped writing the mini series and left 343i. When [REDACTED] took over the quality dropped significantly. I could make a new forum about why [REDACTED]'s writing in Halo escalation is bad. But Toa Freak’s video explains it well enough: Click here to see the video.

Chris schlerf is a good writer for Halo, [REDACTED] is a not so good writer for Halo. Chris is gone, and we are stuck with [REDACTED], we need someone else.

343i, please hear my plea, a brand new writer would give Halo 5 a better chance to have a good story than using [REDACTED] (who has already proven himself to be a not so good writer for Halo two times now). Please do not let [REDACTED] continue his role as lead writer in Halo. Once again, I am sure he is a great man, and maybe even a decent comic book writer (seeing as it was his previous position), but he is not a good Halo writer, and he is not good for the franchise.

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Halo 4 Story had one major flaw;

You needed to read the books to understand everything.

343 took a risk by linking Halo 4’s story with untouched parts of the Halo lore. And I think, For the most part, It’s paid off. It shows how passionate they are about this Story.

Brian Reed is a good writer. He can create fantastic dialogue and scenes. But I think with Halo 5 he needs to tell the story in the actual game, So we can understand whats going on without the aid of external research.

Changing a lead writer after the first installment isn’t a good idea. The foundations have been laid. Brian knows where the story will go. And we should let he take us there.

Halo 4 was his first Halo game. He had a LOT to live up to. It’s understandable as to why he made mistakes.

Also; Halo 5 launches next year. 343 will NOT be changing the lead writer. And that is a fact.

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>

They said that Halo 5 won’t have that issue that Halo 4 did with needing to do your homework before you play the game (i.e. read a bunch of books).

They said they were trying something new with Halo 4 to bring in aspects of the expanded universe, but it got confusing for a lot of people so Halo 5 will be a self-contained story and will only build off of a knowledge of the previous games, which is one reason they’re doing the Master Chief Collection.

I’m sure there will be things in the game relating to the expanded universe that will require a greater understanding but they themselves won’t be a key part of the plot (like Halo 3’s terminals).

Anyway, I’m inclined to agree with OP; Halo 4’s campaign is brilliant, while I found myself doing more eye-rolling at Spartan Ops than I have since ODST. The Spartan Ops story itself is good, but the execution of it, character development, and dialog is what I find lacking, at least in comparison.

That said, I’m not worried about Halo 5. They have too much riding on this game to allow any lazy sophomoric writing. I’m sure [REDACTED] will do his best.

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i actually don’t want Halo to compete with CoD, i’d rather wish it keeps itself unique.
but that’s just me.
like already said, that far development, i don’t think it would be wise to change the writer,
since it could lead to inconsistencies.

and the thing about needing the books to understand the story, was in my opinion
an actually smart move.
before H4 i’d just read now and then a book, but H4 made really interested in the books and some of them were actually pretty good.
so, i wouldn’t mind if they’d keep it that way. i just think it would be nice,
if they told it to the audience, that background knowledge of some books is needed,
to understand it completely. but either way, i can adapt.

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Edited by Moderator - Please do not call out individuals.

*Original post, click at your own discretion.

> Brian Reed is a good writer. He can create fantastic dialogue and scenes.

> Halo 4 was his first Halo game. He had a LOT to live up to. It’s understandable as to why he made mistakes.

It’s important that you understand, Halo 4’s campaign was written by Chirs Schlerf, and NOT [REDACTED]. [REDACTED] wrote Spartan Ops, wich had not so good characters.

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So far I like Escalations issue 7 the most, it really showed of the more human side of the Spartan IVs and was less Action packed and more about how such a war affected people even in the after events (the majority of them are always about civilians freaking out during the covenant’s attacks).

Not only that but this guy has some misplaced anger, the Spartan 2’s are literal killing machine, they are less about catching up and more about focusing and finishing their objective, aside from that Chief is not really the guy that grabs a coffee and has a chit chat.

Aside from that after Halo 4 the Didact felt somewhat weak, I take in condsideration that (spoilers ahead):

Black Team was killed by the Didact, considering he could throw Chief around like a mere doll and he probably learned from his mistakes to underestimate the spartans, this also makes the Didact appear as a much more powerful adversary.

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> >
>
> So far I like Escalations issue 7 the most, it really showed of the more human side of the Spartan IVs and was less Action packed and more about how such a war affected people even in the after events (the majority of them are always about civilians freaking out during the covenant’s attacks).
>
> Not only that but this guy has some misplaced anger, the Spartan 2’s are literal killing machine, they are less about catching up and more about focusing and finishing their objective, aside from that Chief is not really the guy that grabs a coffee and has a chit chat.
>
> Aside from that after Halo 4 the Didact felt somewhat weak, I take in condsideration that (spoilers ahead):
> Black Team was killed by the Didact, considering he could throw Chief around like a mere doll and he probably learned from his mistakes to underestimate the spartans, this also makes the Didact appear as a much more powerful adversary.

I think Chris Schlerf wrote issue 7, I’m not sure, you might need to do some research. But I could be wrong.

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> I think Chris Schlerf wrote issue 7, I’m not sure, you might need to do some research. But I could be wrong.

It took me a 10 second Google search….

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Edited by Moderator - Please do not post inappropriate comments or call out individuals.

*Original post, click at your own discretion.

Employment and unemployment can’t be directly effected by the community. Otherwise, we’d have [REDACTED] back and [REDACTED] would be digging through people’s trash looking for lunch.

I think [REDACTED]would be publicly lynched, too, when I think about it some more.

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Not that I disagree, but calling out folks directly isn’t going to end well.

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Edited by Moderator - Please do not call out individuals.

*Original post, click at your own discretion.

>

When you put it like that, I feel kinda guilty. I don’t want the poor guy to be forced to live on the street. I just feel that [REDACTED] is a not very good, kinda badish, writer for the Halo series and something should be done to change this.

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Edited by Moderator - Please do not call out individuals.

*Original post, click at your own discretion.

> >
>
> .

Okay, he’d be on the streets for a short while until he got another job. Either way, I agree; I’d rather have Schlerf back. Or even Traviss. Even if Kilo-5 was a canonical disaster, at least it was interesting to read.

> Not that I disagree, but calling out folks directly isn’t going to end well.

Technically, it’s against the rules to call out a specific user or Gamertag. I doubt [REDACTED] visits the forums, and he’s a staff member anyway, not… well, one of us.

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> You needed to read the books to understand everything.

I don’t agree with this.
Sure it introduced the Didact’s character, and explained why he did what he did, and yes that was quite crucial to the story. But to understand everything? The Halo 4 terminals did a fantastic job at explaining the Didact’s story, well part of it, but it still gave us some good information that enabled people to get an idea as to why the Didact wanted to eradicate humanity.

But the books really were great, there’s no denying that. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I haven’t read any of the books, but I was able to follow the story.

I would much prefer to have the Halo 4 writer back. It was the best. :frowning:

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Just a heads up, people have been put in hot water over naming specific writers in the past.

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> They said that Halo 5 won’t have that issue that Halo 4 did with needing to do your homework before you play the game (i.e. read a bunch of books).
>
> They said they were trying something new with Halo 4 to bring in aspects of the expanded universe, but it got confusing for a lot of people so Halo 5 will be a self-contained story and will only build off of a knowledge of the previous games, which is one reason they’re doing the Master Chief Collection.
>
> I’m sure there will be things in the game relating to the expanded universe that will require a greater understanding but they themselves won’t be a key part of the plot (like Halo 3’s terminals).

clears throat

Because there’s absolutely nothing going on in Halo Escalations that will be essential to understanding Halo 5: Guardians’ plot.

No return of the Didact, no reunion with Blue Team, no furthering of the Master Chief’s story, no activation index in the Didact’s possession…

Yep, H5G will be a perfectly self-contained story with no need to read outside media to understand it.

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i should be the lead writer!

master chief nukes the whole galaxy! the end

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> Yep, H5G will be a perfectly self-contained story with no need to read outside media to understand it.

It’s likely that they’ll explain all of the necessary info in a prologue or character dialogue, which, of course, means that the media in which that info was first revealed in would be unnecessary.

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> > Yep, H5G will be a perfectly self-contained story with no need to read outside media to understand it.
>
> It’s likely that they’ll explain all of the necessary info in a prologue or character dialogue, which, of course, means that the media in which that info was first revealed in would be unnecessary.

Honestly I hope they do this. The books/comics expand the universe so well. So many storylines that would be left out if they just went off the games. We should tie the books and games together, but have a prologue explaining where the universe is at this point. Otherwise it becomes confusing for the average player.

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> > Yep, H5G will be a perfectly self-contained story with no need to read outside media to understand it.
>
> It’s likely that they’ll explain all of the necessary info in a prologue or character dialogue, which, of course, means that the media in which that info was first revealed in would be unnecessary.

Well you have the long complicated version in the books and in the prologue the shortened version.

In the books it explains how the Didact survives (where he ended up, how he got out of there, how disgruntled he was that the coffee maker he bought on earth had the wrong type of outlet and that the nearest convenient store for converters is over 50 light year away) while the prologue it can just say he still lives(lol Jk, not dead).

The Halo 4 prologue never told in detail like the books how John was like a child, how he interacted with blue team, etc etc etc.