Ever since day one, I’ve wanted to know exactly how large the writing team was for Halo 5. Reed was the Lead Narrative, which means there were obviously some amount of people below him, all coming together to write… what, exactly?
This isn’t about the comparison between the marketing and the end result, this is just about looking at the end result itself, and how it fails in every conceivable way, on it’s own awful merits, even without comparing it to what the marketing advertised.
There will be spoilers here, all of which will be marked with the appropriate container.
Let’s start by looking at the phrase itself. The “EPIC” Continuation of the Reclaimer Saga. “Epic”. Without considering how empty and meaningless this word is now, it’s not even at all representative of the events in Halo 5 to begin with. Are they world-changing? Yes. But are they epic? Not really, no. The events that change the world in Halo 5, aren’t so much epic, as much as they are understated. It’s like throwing those popper thingies (can’t remember the name) on the ground, listening to them pop, and then going to your friend’s the next day and saying how you set off M80’s that shook the windows. World changing, and epic, do not mean the same thing. If Halo 5’s campaign were to be “epic”, then you would have to liken it to something along the lines of God of War. God of War is a constant high point of action and world destroying events, so there’s the world-changing part, but what makes it epic is simply the scale of the action, who it is you’re fighting, how powerful they are, what their motivations are, what your motivations are. Kratos wants revenge for the murder of his family, and for Zeus’ betrayal of him, and he goes on a quest to kill the Greek gods themselves, each in a spectacular fashion.
Halo 5 can basically stand on it’s own apart from Halo 4, since the campaign in Halo 4 has no relevance to that in 5. Here’s those spoilers.
Locke wants to rescue Halsey because she has info on… what? This is never explained. Halsey is with Jul because… why? Again, not explained.
Blue Team is going to Argent Moon because they’re ordered to, nothing special there. Chief sees a vision of Cortana because… why? And none of Blue Team questions his sanity after he tells them?
Locke goes after Chief because he’s ordered to, again, weak motivation, considering how weak the scene for Chief’s “desertion” of the UNSC was, there’s no tension for the start of this “hunt”. You shoot some generic sci-fi aliens, bang bang, talk to some people, then you go into a mine, walk into a Guardian cave, fight the Warden because…? You’re not told who the Warden is, why he’s defending Cortana and Blue Team, he’s essentially just a big robot for you to shoot at to pad the campaign length.
They escape, you escape, mission end.
Back to Blue Team, they’re on a planet called Genesis, because apparently Cortana called them there? You kill some Covenant because if you didn’t, then the characters would be spouting boring exposition otherwise. You fight the Warden again, even though he’s supposed to be in service to Cortana? His motives are muddy again, and you’re not sure who he is, so again, he just turns into a big robot for you to kill to pad length.
You get to talk to Cortana after shooting more stuff, she explains some retcon crap about how she found the Domain and it cured her rampancy. (In Bear’s Forerunner trilogy, the Domain is revealed to be the Precursor artifacts themselves, or rather, the particles that they consist of, like the star roads, but these are all destroyed through the firing of the Halo rings, therefore the Domain was destroyed. So exactly how is the Domain still here, much less active?)
She wants to pull a Didact and enforce the Mantle, straight up lies about it not being like how the Didact wanted to do it, because that’s exactly how she plans to do in the end anyway. John no like this, this make John confused and wary, John kill more thing, cue some exposition.
Locke have to help Arbiter (who, mind you, feels like he’s in this game just for fanservice), Locke help Arbiter, Halsey needs some new type of Forerunner Builder bot, you go on le epic fetch quest full of shooty shooty bang bang, exposition dump, then you assault the Guardian, board it, cue epic jumping down the side of it (the only cool part of the campaign mind you), land on Genesis. You find the only lovable character in the whole game, in fact, the whole Reclaimer saga to date (Exuberant Witness <3), she says funny stuff, you blow stuff up in your tank, meet Chief, he get teleport.
Warden no likey how close Chief is teleport to Cortana, Warden mad because, again… WHY? You fight a bunch more of generic robots, then you get to the most insulting, waste of time, garb- I mean, the most EPIC boss fight EVAR… fighting 3 Wardens! AT THE SAME TIME! He dies and then you get put into a Cryptum as you mull over the fact that Cortana somehow gained a few pounds and now has the body of a man.
Locke shoot spinning glowy thingies, Cryptum flies away, you go into some arena thingy, kill more stuff, go down an elevator (with no smooth jazz playing in the background to boot), and then experience what is more or less a copy and paste of the ending of Halo 4, you crawl on the ground and punch something and then an explosion happens. Generic Female AI #1 helps you up, you pull off your helmet for some absurd reason, and tell Chief what he should already know.
Lasky yells some stuff, and Halsey makes a quip to the Chief, cut to black.
See what I mean? There’s weak or no motivation for the protagonists, the villains have weak or muddy motives, the journey itself is essentially shoot stuff, here’s some exposition dumps, now fight the same big robot dude again that you’ve fought 4 times already. It’s not “epic”. It’s just a constant low point that fizzles out in the end.