I decided that I wanted to make this thread in order to provide constructive criticism into 343’s writing style and techniques, praising the positives of their work, along with what they need to work on. The word “constructive” in “constructive criticism”. I don’t want to see extremely negative, hostile comments on 343 or their work, or anything about the behind the scenes development, Microsoft or anything of the sort, nor should anyone call out anyone specifically (most of you know what exactly am I referring to). And note that this doesn’t just apply to Halo 5, but all their work thus far.
To the mods, I request the thread be closed if anything gets out of hand (say any of the stuff that I mentioned above does happen).
I’ll start us off.
I think that 343’s strongest area is their attention to detail, especially in regards to the lore and story. This is quite evident when looking into Canon Fodder, the Mission Logs in Halo 5, Halo 4 and the Anniversary Additions of the remastered Halo games. I love seeing the effects of a glassed planet and how that has effected the people living there. I loved hearing the alien names for the Covenant races. It fleshes them out a lot more and this kind of thing makes the universe feel real, a living, breathing space. Even in One of the Sprint Videos a writer points out how the size of the Composer is not to scale. This is the attention to detail that I have and will continue to praise 343 for, and hope they continue this trend in the future.
On the other hand, their weakest area is, for the most part, the larger scale story. This can be seen in both Halo 5: Guardians and Halo: Hunters in the Dark, and Halo 4 to a certain extent. With Halo 4, while the Chief and Cortana subplot was the strongest part of the game, it’s arguable that the weakest part was its villain and overarching plot (I personally did enjoy it, but I know many others that didn’t). With Hunters in the Dark, its main plot was to stop the activation of the Halo Array in 2555. Not only was this unnecessary but also took away much from the more interesting parts of the novel, and the villain was rather one dimensional (the novel would have worked better as a Sangheili/Human Exploration Team Exploring the Ark when they slowly come to realise something is watching them, while also have a few people (ONI) being aware of the UNSC Rubicon and attempting find out what happened to it. This would have been a far better story than what we got). With Halo 5, to put it simply (people have said a lot about it, so let’s not dwell too much on it), it undermines several established themes of Halo 4 and the expanded fiction in order to shift to plot into something that has (arguably) had no build up to it (unless you look at Halo: Legends - Origins, and even the new…). I’m also… Bitter about Jul’s demise, but I won’t get into that.
One thing I see as a double edge sword here is 343’s inter-connectivity with the fiction, how every piece of fiction has several connections to previous fiction and hence the overall lore. While this is something I as a fan of the novels, canon fodder and other pieces of fiction, I do see this as an issue for those new to the fiction. One notable example of this is the Ur-Didact in Halo 4, where we are shown this character which contradicts his prior depiction in the Halo 3 terminals and nothing in-game properly explained the reason behind his motivations. The Forerunner Saga reconciled this, but that’s the problem: one had to rely on external fiction to explain the Didact’s motivations. I think 343 should attempt to compromise this, to find a middle ground between the lore fans and newcomers. I think both a previously on Halo prologue, or a long introductory prologue should be present, along with an in-game codex similarly with Mass Effect. Bonus points for narration. I think the Universe entries here on waypoint could serve as a good foundation for this. And please have this in-game. stares at a certain other game
Well, that’s it for me for now. What constructive criticism/advice would you give to 343.
