The Halo 4 story and why it disappoints

Games Other Halo
1

I suppose the one word that describes my reaction towards Halo 4’s story is…disappointing. To hear that 343i would be joining together the expanded Halo canon hand in hand with the story of the games was something the once filled me with great joy. Seeing some of the characters such as the Didact and Thomas Lasky begin their characterization in the books and the idea of seeing them expand further in the games was tantalizing. But yet once the game began, I knew my anticipation was misplaced. However, I won’t just leave it at that, I will explain just want my problems were through three topics, Structure, Characters and Canonical Accuracy.

Structure: So What?

As far as I can tell, Halo 4 lacks adequate story structure. This chart shows where my problems lie perfectly. The game is clear on what is happening throughout the game, we know where things are happening, we know when they are happening, but we aren’t told why any of this is happening. Halo 4 fails to answer the fundamental question of: So what?

For example in Dawn, we know we are drifting in the back half of the Forward Unto Dawn since the events of Halo 3 in the year 2557. Yet when the ship is attacked by Covenant forces, we aren’t told why. Cortana’s response about things changing in 4 years may be okay at the basic level, but there is a reason for their presence. Spartan Ops revealed that they believed one of their gods is on Requiem, so why was it that this tidbit of information was kept out of the main game’s story? What is the relevance of having the Covenant again if they are essentially there for show?

Moving on with another example, this time when Chief unleashes the Didact, we find that the Didact’s motivations weren’t really clear. We are given tidbits about the Human-Forerunner War in the main game and Terminals, yet it fails to really explain why the Didact is evil. At best he appears to just be a Forerunner supremacist, but even then that has no real explanation as to why.

The whole campaign was littered with “So what?” moments honestly. Why exactly did Chief float towards Requiem? Why was the Composer hidden on/near a Halo? What exactly did the Librarian do to Chief to “accelerate his evolution”? How did Master Chief really survive that nuke? 343i were good at presenting a lot of interesting story elements, but did not wrap them up adequately and at the end of the game I fidn myself wondering just what exactly the point was.

The Didact is defeated, the Composer is destroyed and Chief is evolved, but is there a point? I suppose Spartan Ops may help with this, but it doesn’t seem any impact was made, the Covenant are still running around and the Prometheans are still running around on Requiem. So what?

Characters: Who are they?

At first I liked some of the newer characters introduced in Halo 4, like Thomas Lasky. But as I evaluated them further, I realized how most of them really serve only one purpose: to make Master Chief stand out. On their own they are well-rounded characters, but I fell that they are that way to make Chief look deeper than he truly is.

An example of this is Captain Del Rio. Everybody seems to have reached the consensus that he is a overly hostile figure, yet I don’t see why that needed to be the case except for the fact it make’s Chief’s insubordination look justified. Del Rio finds himself and his ship and crew pulled into a mysterious planet, attacked by Covenant and Forerunner monstrosities, finds a Spartan who vanished 5 years ago and he now has a malfunctioning AI that can prove to be dangerous. How exactly is someone supposed to act when being exposed to so much in so short a time? And in the end he follows protocol in removing Cortana, but Chief refuses to give Del Rio the chip, so he orders Lasky to keep Chief onboard. Lasky disobeys and lets Chief off and Del Rio finds his career ruined, all because Chief had to look moral.

Lasky is really no better. He was a charming character from Forward Unto Dawn and Halo 4, but I couldn’t shake the notion he was just a “fanboy” for Chief to make Chief look good. At the end when Lasky tells Chief he doesn’t begin to know what Chief is going through over losing Cortana, I lost it. He knows exactly what Chief is going through, his brother died in the war, his lover Silva DIED IN HIS ARMS, and he lost most of his squad from Corbulo. I guess the goal was to make Chief’s loss more emotional, but Lasky seriously lost points for it.

The Didact was another character that seemed to only increase Chief’s heroics. My issues with him as an antagonist can be seen here. In summation, he was just a generic bad guy with flimsy, vague motives that require the Chosen One to defeat.

Canonical Accuracy

While nothing in the main story outright breaks canon, I find a lot of finer details that took me out of any immersion I could’ve had. The Prologue was a big offender by showing the Spartan-IIs in modified Mk.VI MJOLNIR armor. First, Mk.VI did not exist in the canon until 2552 and no group of S-IIs had it. Second, the fact it is the modified Cortana armor is another break as she wouldn’t have existed yet. Three, if it was meant to be a retcon, it would’ve undid YEARS of lore regarding MJOLNIR and looked like a halfbaked explanation since unmodified Mk.VI is in the now canonical multiplayer.

The terminals put the Forerunner Saga’s canon and timeline in question and is summarized here. Perhaps it may not seem like much to the casual observer, but I just can’t see why 343i would let these details become problems. Halo: Silentium, due out in March, may explain some of the inconsistencies, but why should I have to wait until March for Halo 4’s terminals and story to make sense?

Closing

So in conclusion, this is really a summation as to why I finished Halo 4’s story disappointed. Perhaps some feel the same way, perhaps dome disagree. If you have any comments one way or the other, let me know.

Thank you for reading.

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Read the books, watch the terminals, and play Spartan Ops and you’ll be fine. Could they have put a little more explanation of some things in the Campaign?, sure. But I personally don’t want them rehashing everything the expanded universe explains otherwise what’s the point of it. Also I’m sure they will explain some things and reveil others in the up coming books and Halo 5.

3

Great post, DecepticonCobra. You make very valid points about why the Halo 4 story disappointed you and that most people should be able to agree with.

I personally agree with all the points you have listed in your post. There are certainly A LOT of flaws with Halo 4. However, I am able to ignore and look past that and still love and appreciate the story of Halo 4. I think it is epic, and very emotional. It’s action-packed. However, the biggest thing I kind of didn’t like about it is that now Halo has gone in a completely new direction. Halo is no longer the arena-based, Sci-Fi Halo Bungie gave us. Halo is now a class-based, blockbuster Sci-Fi Fantasy that takes the Halo franchise and mashes it with ideas from other franchises. This can be both good and bad, depending on how you look at it.

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Nice write up. I too didn’t get really what I wanted story wise. They didn’t really flesh out why the Covenant was attacking. I was really excited to see this new adventure for Chief and crew but it just didn’t live up to the hype.

Lasky was a bit wooden to me as a character. Palmer, don’t get me started on her. The rest of the stereotypical jock Marines are another sore point.

The previous games were set up where you didn’t have to read the books to understand what is going on. They were just added flavor and complements to the games narrative. But apparently you do have to read them to know what is going on now.

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I agree with everything

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Some excellent points there.

One thing that bothered me about the storyline was it explained nothing else that was happening. Where is Arbiter and whats he doing? Or as you brought up, why are we at war with the Covenant again?

No, I shouldn’t have to read the Thursday War to understand the lack of storytelling in a game that should have explained everything. Its just bad writing.

7

I have to agree.
I still don’t know why the Didact fights us. It also seemed so awkward and somewhat cheap to me that he had to attack the earth at the end. It felt so rushed as if they compulsively had to make him look super threatening in the end. I mean they made a whole game (ODST) and a not-so-small parts of Halo 2 and H3 about the covenant’s attack on the earth and now we should feel the same threat again in just a couple of minutes?
As I said above I don’t know his motives (besides bohoo I’m ancient, evil and angry!) while I found the motives of the covenant kinda original (religious alien zealots).

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I absolutely agree with this, Halo 4 cut a lot of corners in the campaign that the end result is so avarage, so diluted that it has no importance. While I think 343i are better character writters, Bungie are still masters at creative an immersive overarching plot and narrative.

Forgive Me Im about to put a huge wall of text.I wrote this a couple of days ago

> Okay lets get the good out the way so people wont say Im biased, I like Halo 4’s character focus, I dont think we’ve actually had characters expanded like this since the Prophet of Truth and the Arbitor in Halo 2 and I think 343i did a good job on that .But what I wanna talk about isnt the character themselves its about the story and how gameplay elements add to that story.
>
> Bofore we go on Im gonna ask you a couple questions and I want you to answer them as honestly as possible.
>
> Who were the forerunners?
> What were they?
> What was their society like?
> How have the covenent evolved?
> How have the humans evolved?
> And most importantly ,How has Halo 4’s level design and gameplay shown me this?
>
> I know this is gonna sound a bit unfair but for me the most disappointing thing is that I cant answer any of these questions without pointing to cutscenes or books.That in a nutshell is the main reason why Halo 4 's campaign disappointed me because apart from the cutscenes there was literally nothing else that further the story.
>
> Architecture and Level Design
> Im gonna go off tangent and talk about archeology. Do you know what I find intersting about this, this or even this?
> Its because there is purpose and culture in the design. These civilisations didnt just design their building on the basis that they were pretty to look at , they designed them in such a manner that gave them meaning and relavence to how they lived.
>
> Halo 4 while beautiful is at its core "tastelss"for me . There isnt really any level which stood out to me as particularly imaginative or story driven which is a shame. Requiem was once a planet that was inhabited by an ancient civilisation which prided itself as being protectors of all life, it should carry with it the marks ancient society full of both adults, children, criminals,love and hate (In this case an Authoritarian government with Heiraches) but instead I find it hard to believe the forerunners had anything to do with that planet. It feels more like an assortment of maps than anything else.
>
> 343i the trick to bringing your world to life isnt in the graphics, its in the detail. Whether it be statues,ruins,cathedrals or even non-interactable AI’s if you put enough datail in your game world it will come alive.
>
> Gameplay and How it helps the story
> You ever get the impression that Halo’s combat has stagnated in respect to its story. No dont overreact, I’ll explain.
>
> I mean here you have Far cry 3 a game which has improved its gameplay by adding elements such as hunting mechanics which further immerse you in the story . Another example is how dead space 2 and 3 have now fully evolved their zero G mechanic .Non of these games needed these additional mechanics and yet their presence still adds more to their respective stories and games.
>
> This is pretty much why Im perplexed by Halo 4 and Halo as a franchise. Halo is a game in space were you encounter new aliens and technology. If thats the case then why :
>
> [/li]1. Why has 343i never really considerd taking advantage of the setting and make a zero G level which requires you to jet pack?
> 1. Why is that 6 games onwards were still clinging to the old “shoot, cutscene, shoot, vehicle, shoot” formula?
> 1. Why is it that nobody thinks expanding the AA’s in campaign to become more powerfull and perhaps more relevent to the story is a good idea?
> 1. why is it that all the new alien weapons still feel human?
>
> Halo 4 has the potential to give us something genuiinly new and exciting without having to resort to QTE’S and cutscenes.
>
> (Oh and just for the record I actually liked the little climbing mechanic that was in dawn and hope its expanded upon for Halo 5.)
>
> Halo has the chance to evolve here into something different 343i dont waste it.
>
> Anyway I think I’ve said all I wanted to at the moment.Im pretty sure a lot of people dont agree with my viewpoints but you know what Im cool with it. I like both Halo and I respect 343i and while I dont like most of Halo 4 and have been harsh towards them it doesnt mean that I wouldnt like to see them improve.
>
> Thanks for reading
[/quote]

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I don’t get the “Structure” section. Everything was clearly explained. If a player is wondering why the Covenant are on Requiem, all questions should be answered as soon as we saw a Forerunner. Heck, the simple fact that it was an entire Forerunner planet should be enough, knowing them.

The Didact was explained fine as well. We know he’s a bit of a racist when he puts down the Elites as “beasts” and “primitives”, we learn he hates humans because they attacked Forerunners, we learn that he made them into Prometheans to fight the Flood, and we learn that he considers us a threat to the galaxy. This justifies his aggressiveness. Why was he evil? Um… because he was? I don’t get what exactly you wanted to happen. At least they have an explanation in the Terminals for people who want to look deeper; we STILL haven’t been told exactly why the Covenant was evil and fighting humanity in the games, besides “their gods told them to”, which is incredibly unsatisfying and vague.

Evertyhing else you bring up is obvious with a little thought (probably why some people would be confused). How did chief survive, for instance? You’ve been injecting Cortana in the nuke-proof-shield systems and she’d just shown the ability to manipulate the ship’s hardlight systems. It’s actually a bit obvious.

Overall, I don’t see how some relatively minor points are unnaccetpable when the whole series has been littered with them. Why was the covenant fighting humanity? How did the Pillar of Autumn just “stumble upon” a Halo? Where did the Heretics in Halo 2 come from? Why were they on that station? What on earth was Cortana saying in those little moments in Halo 3? Why did Spark call Chief a Forerunner? Where did the Flood come from? Among many others.

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You set yourself up for major disappointment the moment you wrote your own Halo 4 story. In other words, you would have been disappointed with anything 343i would have written since it isn’t what you wrote.

Other than that, this thread is nitpicking, at best. Like the post above me says, Halo 4 has no more minor story holes and problems than past Halo games, perhaps less.

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Didact:
Unleashed from cryptum, unbound. He finds a human there, remember that warrior-keeps mustn’t be violated. He has been betrayed by his wife because of the humans. He sees the humans are not yet all up up there. He seizes the chance to retain forerunner supremacy over the mantle. So he acts.

Why did was John any to requiem? Mendicant bias.

Why no zero g on level dawn?
There was going to be but if I remember correctly the testers didn’t find it fun or fitting or something.

Halo is a puzzle universe now. Things get explained here, details are there. The story telling isn’t over yet. There are still five episodes left for season 1.

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I was quite satisfied with the story of halo 4

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> I don’t get the “Structure” section. Everything was clearly explained. If a player is wondering why the Covenant are on Requiem, all questions should be answered as soon as we saw a Forerunner. Heck, the simple fact that it was an entire Forerunner planet should be enough, knowing them.

The question of how they knew where Requiem is comes to mind. In the Prolouge Terminal we see that Jul says it was where the Forerunners said it would be, but who did he stumble on this? I know from Thursday War how, but the game does not say.

> The Didact was explained fine as well. We know he’s a bit of a racist when he puts down the Elites as “beasts” and “primitives”, we learn he hates humans because they attacked Forerunners, we learn that he made them into Prometheans to fight the Flood, and we learn that he considers us a threat to the galaxy. This justifies his aggressiveness.

Does it justify his aggressiveness when his character in the books and game differ? In the books he understood why humans did what they did and even felt pangs of regret for Composing the likes of the Lord of Admirals. He even seemed to agree with his wife that the time of the Forerunners drew near.

I do not buy his newfound hatred as it seems to stem from nowhere.

> Why was he evil? Um… because he was? I don’t get what exactly you wanted to happen. At least they have an explanation in the Terminals for people who want to look deeper;

Was it explained? In the beginning he was confident in trying to bring humans back into place, but not to the genocidal extremes the main campaign has it. Even his visit with the Lord of Admirals fails to explain why he suddenly becomes bitter. I know he felt grief over losing his children, but that is not reflected in the game either. My link about the Didact covers my points better.

> we STILL haven’t been told exactly why the Covenant was evil and fighting humanity in the games, besides “their gods told them to”, which is incredibly unsatisfying and vague.

The Prophets were megalomaniacal rulers trying to hold onto their power and humans threatened that with their heresy. The books go into greater detail, but seeing Truth for the insane tyrant that he is isn’t hard. The Didact comes out of the gate and is aggressive for unspecified reasons. I get he thinks humans are dangerous, but why? He knows why humans acted aggressively in the past, they were fleeing the Flood desperately.

> Evertyhing else you bring up is obvious with a little thought (probably why some people would be confused). How did chief survive, for instance? You’ve been injecting Cortana in the nuke-proof-shield systems and she’d just shown the ability to manipulate the ship’s hardlight systems. It’s actually a bit obvious.

Yes, but Chief hit the nuke and it went off, so that would take Cortana to act extremely fast. Not impossible for an AI I’ll admit, but it could’ve been done a lot better, perhaps he could’ve thrown the nuke and run through a portal? Would’ve been concrete.

> Overall, I don’t see how some relatively minor points are unnaccetpable when the whole series has been littered with them. Why was the covenant fighting humanity? How did the Pillar of Autumn just “stumble upon” a Halo? Where did the Heretics in Halo 2 come from? Why were they on that station? What on earth was Cortana saying in those little moments in Halo 3? Why did Spark call Chief a Forerunner? Where did the Flood come from? Among many others.

And I’ll agree with you on those points, however I still left unsatisfied with Halo 4.

14

> Why no zero g on level dawn?
> There was going to be but if I remember correctly the testers didn’t find it fun or fitting or something.

The Microsoft inhouse Playtesters also certified Complex as good map so lets not assume the playtesters know whats best shall we :slight_smile:

15

> Didact:
> Unleashed from cryptum, unbound. He finds a human there, remember that warrior-keeps mustn’t be violated.

So why didn’t he try to wipe out humanity the first time he was unleashed from a Cryptum by Bornsteller on Earth? Why did he not wipe out Chakas and Riser?

> He has been betrayed by his wife because of the humans. He sees the humans are not yet all up up there. He seizes the chance to retain forerunner supremacy over the mantle. So he acts.

Despite the fact his own people did not agree with him as evident by the epilogue.

> Why did was John any to requiem? Mendicant bias.

So why did Bias send him there? I’ve known that Bias had a role in this, but what was the point and why not make a mention of this in-game?

> Why no zero g on level dawn?
> There was going to be but if I remember correctly the testers didn’t find it fun or fitting or something.

Not a huge concern, but would’ve been fun on retrospect.

> Halo is a puzzle universe now. Things get explained here, details are there. The story telling isn’t over yet. There are still five episodes left for season 1.

I don’t see that as a good enough excuse to not explain things in your game. Referencing expanded universe content is fine and so is bringing it in, but previous Halo games did not require having to hunt down a number of facts and details to to piece together the narrative.

16

I must say I largely agree with the OP, though chief’s armor thing becomes even more confusing when his battle damage is apparenlty unable to be fixed, yet she can completely change the shape of the parts that took the damage.

Heck, why even change the mark-6’s look when he’s just gonna get new armor in the next game.

Another good question is, how does infinity and chief show up at requiem at almost the same time? How did cortana not notice the giant forerunner planet? Dawn somehow have coms but not a single camera?

I think Dawn was just non-zero-g because it would have made the first level confusing to the new players, especially to them take it away for the rest of the game.

17

When I read your title, I was going to come in here and disagree with you. But after reading your post, I can’t agree more.

I still disagree with the title–I was not disappointed at all. In fact, the campaign exceeded my expectations. But I do have some complaints against it that were all mentioned in the OP. Cannonical things, many just boiling down to change for the sake of change, which 343 specifically said they wouldn’t do.

At the end of the day, however, the campaign was great and I think these complaints shouldn’t be complaints, but rather suggestions (perhaps forceful ones) for the next game.

18

One word for me to sum up the game campaign is Cliché.

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To me it felt like Chief just stumbled upon a wild Composer. She gives him unknown power to be protected from Didact.

That was a great point you made about Lasky being extra sensitive to Chief, but has he forgotten about his own loses?

Didact was just a villain with little to know in depth story shown within the Campaign. He dies just as quickly as he appeared and left Master chief lol. I mean even multiple villain in halo 2 had more background than Didact. He didn’t last long enough to even tell his story lol. It was typical a villain emerges and gets right to business in eradicating something…(shoot Prometheans to get closer to the big boss lol). End of story.

Agree on why Mendicant was never brought up in game. Forerunner background should have exploded in this game. We got snips of it in he other game, but a watered down version in Halo 4. More can be pointed out, like Palmer just being there to say “egghead,” but I’ll just leave it at that. campaign didn’t expand on the knowledge of the books like we thought, or just in general.

Oh did I mention the music audio sucked the majority of the time, didn’t last long or fully used; sometimes it was just blatantly drowned or generic…

20

Another thing I forgot to mention, the real lack of foreshadowing for the Precursors. The Forerunner Saga says they are coming back and even the Librarian in Halo 4 makes a pitiful mention by telling Chief she is preparing them for something before being interrupted by the Didact. But that was it. Why couldn’t this be molded in with the Didact’s motivations? He noted humanity had not yet conquered the other races, why not build on that?

I think it would work better than “Humans are a danger to the galaxy” right after he just turned millions of people into kill droids.