So why did Halo 5's story go sideways?

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

So does anyone know why? All I heard was apparently Microsoft was the reason because they wanted Cortana in the next Halo. I mean not that I know much about the whole “business with games” but doesn’t 343 create the story?

Also not to mention but am I the only one that feels like they skipped a huge chunk of time as well? Unless they are planning to make a Halo Reach story V2 ( In other words what happened before Halo 5: Guardians) called Halo: Blue Team or something I can’t really wrap my head around it tbh.

I’m a little out of the loop here.

2

I think this might help. It’s a little theory video I cooked up based of the information we got that Msoft meddled with the 343’s development of Halo 5!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myDhIU9mC7U

3

Halo 4’s story continued in Spartan Ops (set 6 months after end of Halo 4).

Then some absolute idiot thought it would be a great idea to keep the story going in a comic “Escalations”. I never read it but kept up here on Waypoint.

And to top it all, after chasing Jul M’Dama all through Spartan Ops, waiting eagerly to fight him in Halo 5 do we shoot him with our trusty Magnum, our Battle Rifle or melee him to death NO. HE GETS KILLED BY THE MOST FEARED WEAPON IN GAMING HISTORY, YES YOU GUESSED IT “THE CUT SCENE”.

I have a few threads/replies kicking about the forums about how Halo 5 is just wrong. Locke and Osiris off rescuing Halsey from Jul M’Dama whilst Chief and Blue Team are looking for Argent Moon. During Mission 1 listen to the dialog it’s really surprising that when Chief finds out Jul is dead and Halsey rescued he does not even mention or ask about her when he tells Lasky he is going after Cortana.

Now forward toward the end of the game. Chief gets pulled to Genesis (which is in a totally unknown location) by Cortana and Osiris hitch a ride on a Guardian. They flew back to meet Palmer, Arbiter and Halsey in a Pelican. Now where that Pelican came from is anyones guess but my moneys on it appeared from nowhere in a “CUT SCENE” but that cut scene ended up in the 343 bucket alongside the real Halo 5 campaign.

Personally I hope Halo 5 was a dream and we can get back to the story we were all expecting. Mind you I’ll be glad to see Warden Eternal killed by a Cut Scene :slight_smile:

Hope that helps explain and gives a chuckle.

4

I think they tried to keep the existing script intact given the feedback about the story from H4. They then went about trying to get their slat clean by getting rid of Jul and Diadect and inserted Cortana into that role given that we like returning characters. That and 343 wants to make a villian who is morally ambiguous but they cant.
And since it again failed im not sure if 343 has figured out that they need to scrap their story and start over.

I knew they were going to screw the story over when i saw the first 20 min of nightfall.

*Introduce alien no one outside of 343 knew about and treating it as though we should have know all along.
*An elite enters a mall with a bomb and not a soul notices, nor the gun battle that followed, but only when the bomb goes off.

I’ve no faith in H6’s story.

5

They lost Schlerf to ME, and were stuck with Reed?

6

It’s speculated that Microsoft had something to do with it. I personally think they did, but two other things:

  1. Not enough development time
    and
  2. Brian Reed

Seriously, whose idea was it to hire Brian Reed of all people to write a Halo game???

7

<mark>This post has been edited by a moderator. Please refrain from making non-constructive posts.</mark>
*Original post. Click at your own discretion.

Because 343 is TRAAASSSSHHHH.

8

> 2533274852968937;3:
> Halo 4’s story continued in Spartan Ops (set 6 months after end of Halo 4).
>
> Then some absolute idiot thought it would be a great idea to keep the story going in a comic “Escalations”. I never read it but kept up here on Waypoint.
>
> And to top it all, after chasing Jul M’Dama all through Spartan Ops, waiting eagerly to fight him in Halo 5 do we shoot him with our trusty Magnum, our Battle Rifle or melee him to death NO. HE GETS KILLED BY THE MOST FEARED WEAPON IN GAMING HISTORY, YES YOU GUESSED IT “THE CUT SCENE”.

Man IMO I hate how some games decide that they should throw some of their story of a game onto a website where a minority of people would even bother reading it. Not to mention just looking at the comics now that is big enough to make a campaign of a game right there (don’t know how many pages there are per comic but I can guess its around the 20 to 40 mark).

At the very least, they should of introduced these new characters somehow, at least Buck was a familiar face, Tanaka and Vale? Who in the world are they? As for Blue team sure I knew about them at least however that doesn’t give them the excuse that they dont get introduced either.

I find it even more hilarious that Halo Reach did a better job at introducing the Team’s characters then Halo 5 did, almost the same thing between the two games, EXCEPT the fact that Reach was in the past, before Halo 1…and seeing that they are…well…MIA, I don’t think we really need to know about the background of Noble Team anyway. But since Halo 5 is PRESENT, that is poor character development.

Basically I’m saying that it’s not really necessary to give background accomplishments to characters that were in the past, that’s in the game of the past of the start of the first game.
Meanwhile characters that are in the game that you get to control and to play with through each mission AND they are still alive, I think its fair that they need to have background info on things they did IN THE GAME. Hell a campaign DLC for Vale and Tanaka would honestly make my day, maybe everyone’s day.

As for Jul M’Dama, again, all we know is that he messed around Prometheans, we got half of that key, Halsey got the other half, THEN THEY VANISHED, MAGIC! Seriously I don’t know what the hell they were thinking. IMO I thought Halo 4 story was well done…well maybe not all well done. Only thing I can think of I didn’t like was the mysterious Prism grenade that he found on the bridge, which somehow killed him (which btw is probably the worst grenade I have ever come across in any Halo game). Even Cortana’s “death” wasn’t even that bad, to be completely honest I knew she was going to come back into Halo somehow anyway. It’s a key character, why would they just off her in the first game they make?

Long story short obviously something messed up during the story writing process of this game. If it’s because of the death of Cortana I just want to say that people need to grow up if that’s the problem. She was going to come back a game or two anyway, again, why would they kill a main character within the first game they make, and no “cause they are dumb” is not a answer. Also make Halo: Escalations a game, pretty sure that will solve the whole time gap between 4 and 5 and everything will be k.

9

I don’t know, but my heart hurts when I think about it.

10

> 2535461820491902;6:
> It’s speculated that Microsoft had something to do with it. I personally think they did, but two other things:
>
> 1) Not enough development time
> and
> 2) Brian Reed
>
> Seriously, whose idea was it to hire Brian Reed of all people to write a Halo game???

He was probably their last and only option for a lead writer. They probably needed more time to get the writers but the higher ups obviously didn’t want a delay so they had to go with the worst option for lead writer and ‘try’ to make it work.

11

The popular opinion is that Microsoft had a heavy hand in deciding the story. Certain youtubers have made this claim and people believe it without question.

Personally, I’m not so easy to convince. There is no evidence to say that Microsoft had anything to do with it. Not only that, but who at Microsoft would even be able to influence something as dynamic as a story? Who would say “yeah, ignore all that extended universe crap and just go with this. I work for a big corporation and therefore people think I’m evil blah blah blah.”

My guess? Well, I think it’s obvious that the plot changed drastically too far in development. They decided to make this change and didn’t have enough time to adequately cover up the mess.

I assume they changed their intent from a compelling albeit confusing plot about the mantle, the didact, chief questioning orders and not being quite the same since the death of his companion.

They wanted Cortana being the adversary to be much more shocking and emotional than it was. They wanted word of mouth to be a powerful tool here. “Cortana is the villain? Whaaaaaaat??? She was the most kick -Yoink- sidekick of all time!” Indeed, she is famous in the gaming world for being the snappy, confident companion of the stoic and brave Master Chief. We had spent nearly 15 years with her and now she’s evil? It was supposed to be a powerful and ripping moment for the chief.

Instead we all kind of sat there like “…Really? This is the best they could come up with?”

I mean we go from powerful moments in Halo such as the debut of the flood, the great schism, saving Cortana, the return of the didact… and now we have, well, a rampant AI who says she can solve hunger and create a galaxy wide dystopia. It wasn’t a powerful moment. It was hardly emotional. It just plain sucked.

I never played much gears of War in my life. But take doms death for example. That scene was powerful. You could feel the loss Marcus felt. Then later in the Gears 3 when his dad died, you could look at him and see a man who had lost everything that had gotten him through the war. A broken war hero. Everyone around him celebrating but he had nothing left. That kind of character development was completely absent in Halo 5. They had the opportunity to do that with the original chief going Rogue thing but they clearly wanted nothing to do with that (aside from market it to us because it was far more compelling than what we got).

Long story short, they had a goal in mind… a deep emotional impact and it just fell flat on its face. That’s my theory.

12

Great write up Viper.
I do however take exception to °it fell flat on its face° because it never got off the ground to fall HEHE, Asisaid write up some valid points.

I actually think -Yoink!- forced 343 to move to Redmond after 5’ release to stop then causing any more damage and hopfully help them with the techy stuff

13

Brian Reed did not single handlely create the disaster that is H5’s story.

It takes atleast full group of uninterested writers to do that much damage to a story.

14

I’ve read too many threads, and watched too many youtube videos on this matter. At the end of the day I came to this conclusion for myself… Was Halo 5 what I was expecting or what I felt I was promised? The answer is no, but it is the story that we have received. At first I was grossly disappointed by the change in direction of the narrative. I had liked Halo 4 and the character development, which I felt Halo 5 failed to develop and deliver on. However, slowly, the campaign has grown on me, as I have played it multiple times for various reasons. It’s not as bad as many make it out to be, but I certainly expect more from Halo 6. I can only hope that 343i took note of how H5 was received and plan accordingly for H6. Here’s Hoping though.

15

> 2533274961306591;14:
> I’ve read too many threads, and watched too many youtube videos on this matter. At the end of the day I came to this conclusion for myself… Was Halo 5 what I was expecting or what I felt I was promised? The answer is no, but it is the story that we have received. At first I was grossly disappointed by the change in direction of the narrative. I had liked Halo 4 and the character development, which I felt Halo 5 failed to develop and deliver on. However, slowly, the campaign has grown on me, as I have played it multiple times for various reasons. It’s not as bad as many make it out to be, but I certainly expect more from Halo 6. I can only hope that 343i took note of how H5 was received and plan accordingly for H6. Here’s Hoping though.

Oh don’t get me wrong I have played through a few times (spent lots of times Easter Egg hunting) and although I have noticed how disjointed the story is as a continuation from 4 and Spartan OPs I have also noticed lots of things that are quite clever and had a good few pointed out to me. Only a few nights ago after spending hours in Mission 15 again I paid close attention to the dialog and scene and for the first time noticed that when Halsey sees John and smiles her smile turns quite sinister and her eyes are hiding something just as the camera is pulling. It’s very subtle but just gave me hope that maybe Guardians was very strange but setting up something BIG as John, Halsey, Cortana (maybe Mendicant Bias via Domain via Cortana) all chasing The Mantle.

It’s also a bit disappointing hearing lots of moaning “What was Hunt The Truth all about?” “WE never saw Chief go rouge” “Thought Locke and Chief were going to battle”. Well all of these things did happen just not in the massive way everyone thought it would. The bullet trailer with the words on it for example had the last word “Traitor” and everyone thought Chief but given what we know this will have been Cortana or Halsey or all three of them maybe.

The competition they ran using your mobile was great fun and from what I can tell almost every part of that completion plays a part in the game. The circuit board we built with Halsey’s help was the device used the stop Chief that ended up on Locke. A section with photos and images had the Argent Moon I’m sure. When you open those areas on Genesis the switches turn like the moving dials puzzle. I don’t remember too well but they do pop up.

Having listened to Hunt the Truth audio series on Tmblr at least I knew what The Guardians were and it was obvious Halsey was sending the signals, but I just don’t agree with ending story arc’s in a comic then introducing a load of characters into the game as your team (I never ever saw one post on waypoint asking for “always on” 4 player co-op) as Chief is a Lone Wolf Halo and that’s what we loved about him. We were him and we had our trusty sidekick AI, just the two of us. Now we have 3 team mates and Trusty AI has turned into Emperor MIng.

SIDE NOTE: It’s absolutely NOT ACCEPTABLE to say your will appear in a future Halo title and have the winners send in a pic and have a cartoon version of them appear briefly in “The Fall of Reach” animated story that only people buying expensive versions were given access too.But I don’t think enough people know about this and it’s really poor considering what the winners actually contribute to the community.SIDE NOTE AND RANT END

16

> 2533274852968937;15:
> > 2533274961306591;14:
> > I’ve read too many threads, and watched too many youtube videos on this matter. At the end of the day I came to this conclusion for myself… Was Halo 5 what I was expecting or what I felt I was promised? The answer is no, but it is the story that we have received. At first I was grossly disappointed by the change in direction of the narrative. I had liked Halo 4 and the character development, which I felt Halo 5 failed to develop and deliver on. However, slowly, the campaign has grown on me, as I have played it multiple times for various reasons. It’s not as bad as many make it out to be, but I certainly expect more from Halo 6. I can only hope that 343i took note of how H5 was received and plan accordingly for H6. Here’s Hoping though.
>
>
> Oh don’t get me wrong I have played through a few times (spent lots of times Easter Egg hunting) and although I have noticed how disjointed the story is as a continuation from 4 and Spartan OPs I have also noticed lots of things that are quite clever and had a good few pointed out to me. Only a few nights ago after spending hours in Mission 15 again I paid close attention to the dialog and scene and for the first time noticed that when Halsey sees John and smiles her smile turns quite sinister and her eyes are hiding something just as the camera is pulling. It’s very subtle but just gave me hope that maybe Guardians was very strange but setting up something BIG as John, Halsey, Cortana (maybe Mendicant Bias via Domain via Cortana) all chasing The Mantle.
>
> It’s also a bit disappointing hearing lots of moaning “What was Hunt The Truth all about?” “WE never saw Chief go rouge” “Thought Locke and Chief were going to battle”. Well all of these things did happen just not in the massive way everyone thought it would. The bullet trailer with the words on it for example had the last word “Traitor” and everyone thought Chief but given what we know this will have been Cortana or Halsey or all three of them maybe.
> The competition they ran using your mobile was great fun and from what I can tell almost every part of that completion plays a part in the game. The circuit board we built with Halsey’s help was the device used the stop Chief that ended up on Locke. A section with photos and images had the Argent Moon I’m sure. When you open those areas on Genesis the switches turn like the moving dials puzzle. I don’t remember too well but they do pop up.
>
> Having listened to Hunt the Truth audio series on Tmblr at least I knew what The Guardians were and it was obvious Halsey was sending the signals, but I just don’t agree with ending story arc’s in a comic then introducing a load of characters into the game as your team (I never ever saw one post on waypoint asking for “always on” 4 player co-op) as Chief is a Lone Wolf Halo and that’s what we loved about him. We were him and we had our trusty sidekick AI, just the two of us. Now we have 3 team mates and Trusty AI has turned into Emperor MIng.
>
> SIDE NOTE: It’s absolutely NOT ACCEPTABLE to say your will appear in a future Halo title and have the winners send in a pic and have a cartoon version of them appear briefly in “The Fall of Reach” animated story that only people buying expensive versions were given access too.But I don’t think enough people know about this and it’s really poor considering what the winners actually contribute to the community.SIDE NOTE AND RANT END

Quite honestly, I wasn’t really disappointed by the fact that they advertise a false version of the story, but rather the fact that the one we got was so atrocious. The utter shallowness of the fight scenes, the unbelievable stupidity of the covenant and the poor dialogue. They even butchered the master chief’s character, making him seem like a complete robot with absolutely no charisma or good dialogue that runs completely contrary to the character we knew in the first 4 games. And frankly, I couldn’t care less about osiris and blue team at this point, EU be -Yoink!-. They should’ve explored Master Chief’s transition to a person who attempts fill in the void cortana’s death created and become a true soldier, not just a machine while portraying locke as the opposite to actually make Halo 5’s campaign what it should have been
A clash of character and ideologies

17

> 2535452250728209;16:
> > 2533274852968937;15:
> > > 2533274961306591;14:
> > > Quite honestly, I wasn’t really disappointed by the fact that they advertise a false version of the story, but rather the fact that the one we got was so atrocious. The utter shallowness of the fight scenes, the unbelievable stupidity of the covenant and the poor dialogue. They even butchered the master chief’s character, making him seem like a complete robot with absolutely no charisma or good dialogue that runs completely contrary to the character we knew in the first 4 games. And frankly, I couldn’t care less about osiris and blue team at this point, EU be -Yoink!-. They should’ve explored Master Chief’s transition to a person who attempts fill in the void cortana’s death created and become a true soldier, not just a machine while portraying locke as the

Yip that as well :slight_smile:

18

> 2533274973685362;1:
> So does anyone know why? All I heard was apparently Microsoft was the reason because they wanted Cortana in the next Halo. I mean not that I know much about the whole “business with games” but doesn’t 343 create the story?
>
> Also not to mention but am I the only one that feels like they skipped a huge chunk of time as well? Unless they are planning to make a Halo Reach story V2 ( In other words what happened before Halo 5: Guardians) called Halo: Blue Team or something I can’t really wrap my head around it tbh.
>
> I’m a little out of the loop here.

I’m just going to leave this here…

19

Osiris was so dull it wasn’t even funny - granted, we all knew Buck as a character from playing ODST and Reach, but that’s not the point - Locke, Vale, and Tanaka could have been ODSTs and the story would be no different, but at least we would have seen the contrast between SPARTANs and ODSTs. I feel it would have made the game more fun to switch between the Halo 4 and Halo 3: ODST play styles every one or two missions, or maybe the thruster-pack -Yoink- could be explained as a prototype exo-skeleton designed to potentially bring an average Marine up to at least SPARTAN-III capability levels on the battlefield. The lack of ODSTs or Marines in Halo 5 makes it feel, to me at least, less like a Military Sci-Fi and more akin to a Space Opera.
Lastly, bringing Cortana back like they did completely. And. Utterly. CHEAPENED the emotional impact of Halo 4’s ending! What? Was she in a coma all this time or something?

20

> 2535418861264389;19:
> Osiris was so dull it wasn’t even funny - granted, we all knew Buck as a character from playing ODST and Reach, but that’s not the point - Locke, Vale, and Tanaka could have been ODSTs and the story would be no different, but at least we would have seen the contrast between SPARTANs and ODSTs. I feel it would have made the game more fun to switch between the Halo 4 and Halo 3: ODST play styles every one or two missions, or maybe the thruster-pack -Yoink- could be explained as a prototype exo-skeleton designed to potentially bring an average Marine up to at least SPARTAN-III capability levels on the battlefield. The lack of ODSTs or Marines in Halo 5 makes it feel, to me at least, less like a Military Sci-Fi and more akin to a Space Opera.
> Lastly, bringing Cortana back like they did completely. And. Utterly. CHEAPENED the emotional impact of Halo 4’s ending! What? Was she in a coma all this time or something?

Please don’t revive a 7 month dead thread. Check the date of the last post before you post.