( Spoilers Ahead )
Having Cortana completely destroy The Brute Homeworld is ludicrous. If none other for the fact that if it had been Damaged instead ( planetary crust cracked, causing volcanos/earthquake destructon around Brute cities etc ) would have been PERFECT for interesting Biomes in Future campaign missions
First of all, this implies the Guardians are as powerful as the death star from Star Wars. The Guardians being as big as they are would have to have a ridiculous source of power to destroy the mass of a planet, so it doesn’t really seem feasible. I could understand a massive ship the size of the [ Mantle’s Approach ] being able to take a chunk out of the planet but the Guardians aren’t even THAT big. What are they getting the energy requirements to destroy a planet from, antimatter ???
Second, she wouldn’t even need to Completely destroy the planet to get her point across. She could have cracked the surface, taken a chunk out of it or sent a big Meteor and that would have been MUCH more believable, AND allows us players to play future missions on a damaged or planet-crust-cracked Brute Homeworld.
It feels out of character for her to just completely “Nuke” the Entire Planet. She didn’t even stop the Banished fleet by Destroying their Homeworld and Atriox got to her anyway, so she didn’t even “Succeed” in taking out the Banished Leader, despite her “overwhelming power”, and then get locked down by an easily avoidable trap on Zeta Halo despite her experience as an AI and access to the domain.
I feel like the more broad story elements, feel too basic and “Edgy” instead of having More nuance to them like the books do. Cortana’s Dialogue in Infinite was VERY well done, but the choices for the broader story were not.
Anddd:
*** Atriox: Supposedly dead ( but now not )
*** Cortana: ( most likely destroyed )
*** INFINITY: ( Presumed destroyed, with at least large loss of life of 1500 crew )
*** Monitor of the Installation: Killed within 30 MINUTES of being introduced despite the fact that the Brutes/Harbinger had access to her for days before chief arrived
*** Harbinger: dead
*** Submonitors: Toast
*** Escharum: Toast
*** All Spartans from the Game: Dead
*** Known surviving Guardian on the ring: Decimated
343i pretty much killed off every main villain or character that was in the game besides Chief and the weapon ( not counting the pilot ). This feels like Hand Waving story telling instead of actually having more EXCITING AND plausible outcomes for Scenarios such as. We could have AT LEAST come across a Fireteam of surviving Spartans, given that plentiful Marines survived…
Some alternatives to character deaths could be:
A Monitor of the Installation is heavily damaged but not destroyed and Chief and the weapon need to find a facility with the help of a submonitor to reach a repair facility
B. Something like having Cortana locked in a Stasis and captured by Atriox, and controlled by him using a Forerunner AI control relic, and used to Improve their war-machine ( The Banished using the UNSC’s own AI against them, so that Chief ends up going up against the Banished controlled Cortana etc or something other than just XYZ character got killed off right away ((( before the story ))) and maybe with help from Mendicant Bias or a rescued Zeta Monitor they are able to subdue, rescue and cure Cortana or at least put her in a Stasis so she can’t cause problems.
343 needs to allow the storylines for SOME characters to actually develop instead of just killing off the characters they introduce in the SAME GAME ( or same hour ) all the time. They could have had us fight Cortana, get captured, escape lock her down, use Forerunner tech to cure her rampancy and that would have felt SATISFYING. having Cortana “Nuke” Australia, "Nuke " Doisiac and then “Nuke” the Ring is just No-effort storytelling.
Note the Contrast with Halo CE:
** 343 Guilty Spark: presumed dead but survives
** Flood/proto-Gravemind destroyed on Ring but returns
** Johnson Survives ( In Cannon )
** Arbiter as Fleet Leader survives
** Ironically main pilot dies whereas Infinite’s survives
And they developed those characters throughout the games.
And the “Harbinger” ( boring overused sci Fi name term already used by Mass Effect ??? ) gets introduced like she is gonna be some “Big Bad” and gets defeated without the player even really knowing much about them in the first place.
Like come on. They can do better, esp given how interesting the books are.