Honestly, that character was the only thing I didn’t like about the campaign. I understand what his role was to the story, such that I was initially invested in his struggle. But by the end of the game I found him quite annoying. He was sorta like that player at the dnd table who refuses to take the DMs plot threads.
Opposing thoughts? I’m open to being convinced that I’m wrong and didn’t give him a fair shake or something.
Something like that is always going to be subjective, so I can’t say you’re “right”, but I feel the same. They set up the character quite well at the start imo. It was more serious until he found Chief. At that point, he got very animated/excited, but that was okay because he thought he was finally saved. As soon as you start getting through the game and interacting with him more, they kept that high energy with him and ultimately pushed him into being a very annoying character.
I do also understand that he wasn’t supposed to be a soldier. He was a civilian who volunteered to help out on the Infinity, so we can’t expect him to be trained/composed all of the time. Still, when he’s interacting with the Master Chief (THE icon of humanity, a legend), he should be a bit more dialed back. Can you imagine meeting the most legendary warrior humanity has ever known, and throwing hissy fits around him or arguing with him for wanting to save the galaxy?
in short, I agree.
Esparza is a civilian contractor who was looking to provide for his family. After the attack on the Infinity, he was left adrift in space in his Pelican for months. He spends the remainder of the story as a fish out of water, a regular man risking his life to aid a super-soldier in his heroics. During all this, humanity is thought to be an endangered species.
His complaining is a natural response to a war machine insisting they rush to their potential deaths.
I had a similar sentiment in my post, point being, I somewhat agree with you. That said, not everyone would act the same way. He MUST be more brave than the average person is. He volunteered to work on the most famous and important warship the UNSC has ever had. To think he was unaware that he may be exposed to aggressive attacks is… highly unlikely.
That’s not to say he wouldn’t panic (which I do understand), it’s the manner in which they made him panic. I personally find him very irritating. Maybe if he wasn’t complaining so much, or, maybe if he was a character that complained but in a funny way it’d be easier to tolerate. But as it stands, he just sounds whiney. At the end of the day how realistic it is isn’t really the point, it’s just whether or not you like the character. 343 could have literally made that character whoever they want. They could have chosen so many good personalities but they landed on this one. They could have done a much better job showing an average person exposed to all of this in a less frustrating way to listen to.
I liked him, I enjoyed the tone of infinites campaign the feeling that there is no hope left, humanity has lost and you’re brought into this epic battle where you stand against the Banished.
I hope in time with updates and more content we can have more of that feeling, more missions etc
I liked Fernando Esparza Echo-216.
Master Chief was the voice of Idealism
Catherine The Weapon was the voice of Naive Optimism
Meanwhile Echo-216 was the voice of Pessimism.
These three separate perspectives bounce off of one another pretty well as characters. And by the end, Chief’s Realism rubs off onto The Weapon while The Pilot learns some Optimism.
There’s another way to look that. Maybe he thought he’d be safe on the biggest, baddest starship the UNSC had because he viewed it as unstoppable. It certainly seemed that way in H4.
But I think he was unaware of the possibility that he’d be the last surviving human of the most famous and important warship the UNSC ever had. And subsequently stranded in space for 6 months. Considering what I experienced on legendary, I wouldn’t want to fight those space apes without power armor either.
Also, we don’t know how old the pilot is. He has a fairly young daughter, so I wouldn’t put him past his early 30s. My point is that he likely grew up during the Human-Covenant War, hearing about or even experiencing the near annihilation of humanity as a kid.
Considering that one of the first things we ever learn about the pilot is that he was considering killing himself, I vehemently believe it would have been very poor taste to make a joke of his disposition and general state of mind.
Since this is a 10 year plan, we may get more DLC that fleshes him out. I think he may truly grow into a badass marine by the end of this, but it’s gonna take some time.
I remember having this love/hate thing with him. I thought he was funny, and I thought he jived with the weapon pretty well, so then there was a pretty solid trio interacting a lot of the time. There were times I thought he was complaining a little too much though.
I think life out on colonies was pretty rough in Lot of places though wasn’t it? Like, I could totally see someone who was just trying to get their family away from being labor on a gang world end up on the Infinity and being upset about it the whole time.
Like the part where he fly and talk
He’s the delivery man from the underworld. STOP DROPPING VEHICLES ON MY MARINES, DANG IT!
Anyway, I actually enjoyed his character, because he was like the anchor to reality. He knew his limits and I could understand his fears.
A lot of people tend to forget this guy spent 6 months adrift in space by himself, knowing all his comrades were gone. The only thing that kept his sanity and his motivations was his family’s hologram. I wouldn’t know how to react if I was in that situation.
I really enjoyed his character.
I was a little worried heading in as the last couple of trailers seemed to paint him as annoying and whiney.
But this ended up being only part of his journey. With context he was so much better than I expected.
And yes, he played off the Chief in a different way than the weapon.
I would be very happy to see him in further installments.
To play Infinite and say that the Pilot (Esparza or whatever his name was) was the only thing you disliked tells me you basically did not actually play it for more than a few minutes.
Before I go on my tangent let me ask you something, what is the purpose/point of a character?
Infinite is absolutely hard carried by 3 characters (MC, Pilot, Weapon) and the reason they work together is that they all have their unique perspectives and differences. MC is meant to be the stereotypical badass super soldier with little emotion that’s been through hell and back a million times, Esparza on the other hand is meant to be the more “human” element of the story, he’s a coward, and he does not care for combat at all, The Weapon is meant as a weird spin on Cortana and it sorta plays on MC’s past experiences and has sort of a whimsical element to her character that was never present before in my opinion.
If you do not like any of those 3 characters then obviously Infinite is not going to be your cup of tea, without them the story has no foundation to build upon and it falls flat. I am not saying that you should like this or that character, what I will say is that they are integral to the story and you cannot take out any of them and expect it to work.
We learned more about him than we did with :
Atriox
Cortana
The Weapon / Cortana 2.3
The Banished
The Infinity
Chief
The Harbinger
Basically every plot point with Infinite.
Who’s ever idea it was to include him into the story and not anyone from Blue Team or Osiris should be fired ASAP.
The entire story should’ve been centered around blue team since we didn’t get much of them in halo 5. I literally don’t care about any new characters. I only care about the ones who didn’t get enough love
There are some really great points made here. I can definitely respect the dynamic interplay of the Pilot against the Chief and Weapon. I still feel the writers probably played the pessimist chord one too many times for my liking, but that may reflect more on me than the writing team.
That comes around in the DLC story or book when Blue Team finishes whatever side-mission they were doing and finally gets to Zeta Halo.
I am sure people said they really liked the Pilot few years back. 
I didn’t really have an issue with the Pilot. For the type
of story they want to tell he works and it was good to get the Everyman perspective on what’s going on. It lends a sense of what’s at stake and let’s you be the hero by saving him. If it was just Chief and NotCortana then you might get too detached from the destruction and pain the Banished caused. He is the main vehicle that their villainous behaviour is communicated to the player and I appreciated that being partially addressed.
The bigger issue is going forwards. If they want to keep these three saving the Galaxy I am not sure how well that’s going to work. People would expect the stakes to increase. But then does the Pilot make sense as a character there.
For example, a Flood campaign. How does the Pilot not die in that situation? It will be a little difficult to keep him in the story.
Spoilers ahead.
I did not like the Pilot. From the beginning of the game I knew I was going to be saving him like a damsel in distress. It was just too predictable. He’s not even a good pilot, he ran away when the going got tough and got stranded in space. No wonder the UNSC was crushed in 4 minutes with scaredy cat humans like him. The UNSC has been fighting aliens for years by now, those humans who are out in an active space war should already be prepared to possibly die. To think that you’re going to war, especially in space, and coming home with no marks is even more fairytale, kid stuff.
But somehow one inept pilot, with a malfunctioning Pelican, out maneuvered and outlasted an entire battalion of Banished, who by the way just CRUSHED the supposedly most advanced military in the Milky Way. He also survived the same torture device that killed Spartans. Then after casting doubts on the successes of Master Chief, who is basically humanity’s Jesus Christ in human form, at the end he instantly realizes everything is going to be just fine and is all happy and smiling to continue fighting even though he was just crying for the last several hours about how he has no point being there… His writing is so basic, I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually they write him to become as focused as Master Chief and at that moment, he will be killed in-game and of course we’ll be expected to act like it was our best friend that just died or something.
The only reason the Pilot is still around is because he has as much luck as John.
Generally my thoughts as well. Though I didn’t mind him too much, he was just woefully predictable.
Terrible character. Paid lots of money for a new VA in a popular. I was really hoping they’d kill of the pilot and give chief a push. some real losses since halo 3.