Thoughts on the Campaign?

Games Halo Infinite
162

The story itself was a lot shorter than I would have liked… The open world, bosses and annoyingly repetitive “this door needs power cores to open!” definitely served as a lot of padding to try and hide this. Also left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth finding out that whole top right section of the map is actually a soft kill barrier…

Overall the story was okay… honestly didn’t feel like all that much happened? Did also feel a bit dropped into the deep end like we’d come in late to the movies and missed the first 30 minutes of it and then had to find audio logs around the map to fill in the gaps. It’s better than 4 and 5 but honestly those aren’t too hard to top, the originals still have infinite beat sadly imo.

The open world environment was nice but a lot of the time I found myself flying past it all in air vehicles or with my grappling hook as travelling via ground vehicles was painful since the enviroment artist decided that if its not a road then it needs 100 jagged rocks on it, can’t even count how many times I flipped over just trying to get from point a to b…

Bullet sponge bosses and power core hunting definitely we’re my two biggest gripes… there’s certainly a lot of padding in this one compared to other halo’s… really loved the mission which was flying to 3 opposing corners of the map to collect enough “data”. Marine AI also have taken a massive dip and really seem to enjoy standing in the vehicle drop zone and becoming human pancakes every time I call something in.

Overall it was alright, nothing mind blowing but hey at least its better than 4 & 5’s stories. Probably could have gone without the didact character clone and focused more on cortana, atriox and the weapon but oh well.

It’s sad we couldn’t have had our first playthroughs be coop as that would have been a blast.

2 Likes
163

Completely agree. I’m almost done with the game, and the levels and the open world feel like two different games to me. I found myself engaged, interested, and excited going through the structured levels, but I was bored of the open world in a few hours. I started just spawning wasps and killing everything from the air.

3 Likes
164

I have a lot of mixed feelings, but overall it seems like the game was pulled together from the brink of disaster, lol. There is SO MUCH that could have gone wrong but it all holds together, and you can definitely feel that extra year of dev time and recruitment of Joe Staten.

The open world is fun but it’s definitely a subpar experience for an open world game. It’s like a simplified FarCry 3, which is itself a simplified experience. If the map were bigger, or if they had multiple maps with different biomes (think Gears 5) it would have been better. It is still nice to basically roam around a giant Forge World filled with enemies though, even if there aren’t many sections where it feels like you can really let loose and floor it in the Warthog.

I had the most fun playing through the non-open world missions. But even those were subpar for Halo. It’s like they took the wrong inspiration from Halo CE (ultra minimalist level design with lots of copy-pasted rooms). The set-piece semi-linear levels of traditional Halo with grand vistas and indoor-outdoor flow are gone.

Basically, the Halo parts were subpar for Halo and the open world parts for subpar for the open world genre. It’s a flawless mix of the two, but it sacrifices a lot from both to create this.

4 Likes
165

Gameplay is great! Level design is solid for the most part. A few levels are pretty bad, but that’s the case with any halo game. The boss fights are surprisingly good, I expected them to just be bullet sponges, but most of them are actually tactical. The story wasn’t terrible, but I was somewhat disappointed with the story, particularly the ending. But overall I really enjoyed the campaign.

166

Note: I have not finished the campaign YET (though I’m working on it). I’ll come back when I’m at the halfway point and at the end

I will be looking at the campaign in a couple categories:
Gameplay
Sound design
Characters
Story
Game design

Gameplay:
Halo is as fun as ever, having a lot more fun than I was with 4/5, but to be honest, I’m on the 4th mission because I’m trying to complete the open world 100% to get the achievement and the audio logs. Everything plays well, overall, the gameplay is fun.

Sound Design:
1st of all, I love the music. Not as good as Marty’s work, but still good. The actual sound of the game? Very crisp and clean, feeling like halo, but with some modern twists in there. I have no complaints about the sound, except the that the combat dialogue can be cringey at times. Overall, great job, 343i team.

Characters:
This will be the first section where I have some complaints to take note of. Halo: CE did a great job of having characters that didn’t know too much or too little for who they were. The pilot is whiny. The Weapon knows too little for being plugged into the ring for six months. Locke might be dead. The infinity is likely gone. Overall, the characters aren’t good so far.

Story
I’m probably going to blur most of this stuff out, so don’t be surprised when I do. 1st of all, that opener was great! it introduced some intriguing backstory of the pilot, had some fantastic explosions, and I like it (Don’t judge me) also don’t click this if you haven’t played the 3rd mission but… Atriox being dead explains why the banished are wiping out humanity like this. Overall, not sure how I feel about it yet.

Game Design
One word: repetitive. Where are the deserts and snowscapes of the first halo? Why do we need copy/pasted hallways again? What does that add to the game? They took inspiration from CE, but CE had 10 MONTHS of development. Infinite had 6 YEARS of dev time. They could have done more, but they did less. The level design isn’t stellar, but it gets the job done.

That about wraps it up for my critique of Halo Infinite up to the 3rd mission. See you at the halfway point!

167

Oh boy. Wait until you finish the campaign. Let me know your thoughts after you finish it!

168

I kinda wish the campaign had made it clear the banished were out for revenge due to atriox.

As is it feels like they’re just doing more of the same to me

169

They weren’t out for revenge due to Atriox. They attacked humanity as they were the ones who created the Cortana AI which destroyed the Banished home world. They had already gotten revenge as humanity was defeated. There main goal was to secure the ring

170

I’m having a blast with it. The game-play is enjoyable and the story feels like I’m back on halo CE trying to get figure out what’s going on.

The open world does not really bother me and I’m not feeling with repetitiveness people are talking about. The bounty hunt missions remind me of playing mercenary: playground of destruction.

The story setting feels a little cookie cutter (kinda like how star-wars episode 7 feels only better). Its understandable considering the disaster that halo 5’s story was. I honestly wish they would have had some audio logs of characters like blue team, but that’s just a personal peeve.

Overall I really loved the direction and hope they bring back some of the characters we saw earlier like Lasky, blue team (no squad mechanics), Palmer, and maybe Osiris. But not all at once.

1 Like
171

Phenomenal.

Can’t wait until Part 2 of Master Chief’s campaign in Infinite to be released. I wonder if the Crashed Guardian that can bee seen to the south off the playable map is going to be a plot-point somewhere down the line?

1 Like
172

Theres a crashed guardian!?? Bruh I gotta check that out when I get home.

Do you think they’ll release minor dlc similar in vein to HW2, or more larger in scale, more so compared to Destiny?

173

The Crashed Guardian is part of the vista and can be seen to the south.

I am hoping that we do get mini-DLC campaigns further down the line, so that Master Chief can focus on the main plot while we see other plot-threads be solved in person rather than off screen all the time. For example -

  • Spartan Laurette Agryna would be nice to play as, since at the close of Halo Infinite’s Academy we see her venture off to search for the UNSC Infinity and join the effort. So we could get a mini-Campaign where we play as her and search for Captain Lasky, Spartan Commander Sarah Palmer, test the loyalties of the A.I. Roland, and get a few of the Strident-Class Frigates that the UNSC Infinity had stocked up possibly restored so that we can have some air superiority and return news to the UNSC proper. Also, it would be a great way to unlock her Armor Core for mulitplayer use and unlock cosmetics for it in the Campaign.

  • The UNSC Spirit of Fire could make an appearance some-time down the line; having found a way off of The Ark and replaced their lost slip-space drive. It could be a story about Spartan Jerome trying to find Professor Anders and learning of the fact that Cortana intercepted her while en route to Reach with Installation 04-C. It would also be a great way to introduce the Mark IV as an Armor Core.

  • With the destruction of the UNSC Infinity, I think it would be likely that all available Spartans would be deployed to compensate for the heavy losses. This would mean that Jun-A266 could be restored as a field agent rather than a recruitment officer. Thus, we might have a campaign where we have Noble Team restored to working order. The members being Jun-A266, Rosenda-A344, a Spartan-II or a Spartan-III and the player character being a Spartan-IV as the “new blood” to Noble. It could also be a nice way to introduce an SPI themed Armor Core to the multiplayer, given that Jun-A266 was a Headhunter and the mini-campaign could be focused on eliminating targets and HVTs.

  • A possible mini-campaign to consider would be a three-perspective one where Blue Team finally makes their way to Installation 07 and begins their search for Master Chief and fighting against The Banished on their own terms, with each of the three Acts of this mini-campaign centered around Fred, Kelly, and Linda. It would also be a neat way to introduce the Mark VI Gen-3 as an Armor Core for multiplayer, given that on the cover of Halo : Shadows of Reach we see Blue Team in their own variants of the armor itself.

  • And as some wishful thinking, it would be cool to have another ODST focused campaign centered around Alpha-Nine. Playing as Edward Buck once more, we could work to regroup with our fellow ODST Spartans on scattered parts of the ring as a callback to Halo 3 ODST’s plot elements and coordinate an effective force of Marines while discovering and sabotaging a Banished plot. Perhaps centered around getting the Crashed Guardian online and operational? It would also be a great way to introduce an ODST themed Armor Core for multiplayer and Firefight for multiplayer.

Just some thoughts.

2 Likes
174

Love these ideas. After waiting for so long for Infinite, I’m sad it’s “over”.

175

Don’t say it’s over, the journey has just started

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176

Part 1 is over.
Master Chief’s Campaign in Halo Infinite is planned to continue. They set up for some big stuff to come out in a Campaign expansion sometime down the line.

177

lets hope because so far this game is a wet fart

178

Honestly this was one of the worst campaigns to date. The way they act like Halo 5 and Halo Wars 2 were minor inconveniences. Don’t get me wrong Halo 5 wasn’t the best but you ended that game on a colossal cliffhanger and well turns out it wasn’t that big a threat. With Halo Wars 2 I am more frustrated that they act like it didn’t happen. The Banished first outing was in HW2 with that game ending with you still going head to head against Atriox and I though with Infinite I would finally get my chance at revenge. Nope and once again the devs forgetting that Red Team exist. You know that Spartan team that are in completely outdated armour and outdated tech yet proceeded to win a war against the Banished. Unlike the Chief who got curb stomped into next millennia.

The open world is just a time padding system. The actual campaign without the open world stuff can be done in a few hours. It’s a something a lot of dev’s are doing nowadays so they can half -Yoink!- their campaign.

TL:DR Campaign meh.

3 Likes
179

I honestly think if they had cut the open world and put the resultant development time into making the missions and the story better(instead of the copy-paste stuff we got), Halo infinite campaign would’ve been a lot better than what we ended up getting. Cause at the end of the day, if you want a halo campaign you’re not getting a really memorable one(aside from a few moments here and there) and if you want the open world then you get basically something that’s in a sorta mid development unfinished state similar to Fallout 76(on release).

2 Likes
180

I loved the campaign , loved the boss fights. Beat the game on Legendary.

181

I think the campaign is painfully mediocre so far. I’ve been going for a lot of side objectives and without divulging to many details about where I am in the game, I’m tracking down beam tower emitters, and I find so much of the open world to be perplexing. I think the game would be vastly better as a traditional linear campaign.

On the bright side the main missions of the game feel great for the most part. The music is top notch, the story and writing are intriguing and as always, the combat feels tight.

1 Like