If you were in charge of 343 Industries, how would you repair the damage in Halo 5: Guardians especially the story and characters?
There really isn’t a way to fix H5 within the bounds of H5. The game happened and it’s over. We now have to live with what H5 gave us. With that in mind, I’ve got a couple ideas going forward, but none are perfect. However, since H5 was far from perfect, that’s all I really have to go on:
- Cortana was infected with the Logic Plague during H3. Throughout H4 she was slowly being corrupted in more noticeable ways by the Gravemind, who has been alive and waiting for his time to strike. Now, with Cortana subjugating and weakening the defenses of the entire galaxy, the Gravemind is poised to take over in Infinite - Cortana attempted to sacrifice herself in H4 to take down the Didact, which worked partially. However, he managed to survive his composition by multiple composers in the Escalations comic book. He is still alive throughout H5 and is the one using Cortana as a facade to torment and defeat the Chief, who is his only adversary in millennia to actually come close to defeating him. - Cortana fragmented into dozens of pieces, one of which accessed the Domain and took over. The remaining good fragments of Cortana must be collected and put back together in the hopes that they would be capable of “reabsorbing” the errant fragment. This would spell the ultimate death of Cortana, but the good part of her accepts this as a necessary fate. - Cortana is just plain evil now, and there’s nothing more we can do besides take her out. This is the simplest explanation, and the one I hope we don’t get, because it’s rather lazy. Bad guys in movies used to be flat characters that were entirely evil. Bad guys now are far more complex and dynamic, which makes the stories they affect far more interesting. So I really hope we get a more interesting villain than “Evil Cortana is evil because Evil Cortana is evil”.
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I’ve glanced over some of the past criticisms relating to Halo 5 and I can understand the grievances held against the game for the direction it took things. Coming off of what seemed like the definitive culmination of the Chief’s and Cortana’s partnership where they had grown to trust and care for each other so passionately, to go from the latter throwing herself in the fire in a last act of selfless devotion to this humanly detached megalomaniac with delusions of being the new eternal overseer of the galaxy does seem like a complete 180 degree turn.
The concept of a turncoat Cortana has been in existence since the early days of CE’s development. She also wasn’t a strictly regulatory intelligence who always went through proper channels and played by the rules – case in point is her defacement of Ackerson’s personal character and forged transfer papers instead of attempting to report the attempted murder of Master Chief in the obstacle course to proper military authorities. All of that is a far cry compared to the overnight turn from dependable ally to delusional Utopian extremist, though.
I prefer the idea of Cortana’s rampant fragments having been the aspect of her psychology that entered the Domain and achieved whatever it is she did. 343 could build upon that foundation and try to paint her as a desperately ambitious yet mad animal needing to be put down when its time had already come and gone.
Take Cortana and the Created out of the picture then what do you have left? I feel that’s a question which needs to be addressed. Obviously the Flood continue to pervasively linger in the background waiting to spread across the galaxy once again. In the grand scheme of things they pose the most existential threat to everything. You could have the Banished or whatever other Covenant splinter factions that still remain fill the void of having standard Covenant enemies to fight but they shouldn’t just be target practice placeholders for you to shoot at. Somehow they should be meaningfully involved in the narrative.
Instead of thinking of it in terms of “fixing” it, it’s better for them to consider ways they can take the story that would be compelling, make sense, and build on previous events while taking it in exciting new directions. “Fixing” the story would ultimately be to try to appease the complainers of Halo 5, but that wouldn’t necessarily be what’s best for the story itself. Look at Rise of Skywalker. It largely ignored TLJ and tried to “fix” the story, but ultimately it was unsatisfying to fans who liked TLJ and fans who didn’t like TLJ. If 343 made Infinite with a similar intent to course correct the narrative after H5, I anticipate the end result would be similar to how Star Wars Ep IX was received.
Halo 5 isn’t a mistake that needs correcting. It’s a lull in the Halo narrative, but it doesn’t need to be erased or forgotten for Halo to get on a narrative upswing.
Simple (and I wouldn’t retcon everything)
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Cortana is dead. The created Cortana we saw is a fake, a creation by the didact to try to convince every AI, the UNSC, and the swords of sanghelios (by turning the prometheans against the covenant remnant at the beginning) to join them. It was a lie, and at least for some it worked.
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That way we can continue where we were at the end of Halo 4, without getting rid 5. Everything we did with Cortana would be meaningful again.
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The characters from blue team and osiris aren’t inherently bad, they just didn’t get the development they should. This would be the time.
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Most of the technology we saw was extremely limited, this is to further help the return of classic art style in Infinite.
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The storm covenant should have benefited the banished in some way, otherwise their existence as the successors of the covenant would be completely pointless.
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Something very minor, but mention somewhere that Sunaion was reconstructed with the help of the UNSC, therefore explaining why it looks so human.
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Bring back the whole idea of the composer and chief’s personality that we started seeing in Halo 4.