What about Halo Infinite, makes it better than Halo 5?

Games Halo Infinite
21

It still blows my mind how many people overrate MIDfinite to death (and I mean every element of this game) because of nostalgia.

And yes, H5 did have MTXs, but fortunately you were NEVER required to buy them to unlock every power and loadout weapon, vehicle, armor, helmet, etc. obtainable by normal means. I could start up H5 on a fresh new account and get everything within weeks by just nonstop grinding Firefight and Arena.

Now, onto each point:

Halo 5’s gameplay still brings me a level of satisfaction I can’t find in any other Halo game to date. The movement is fast, fluid, and challenging. Infinite does NOT have any of that!

The art style is quite a polarizing topic for many, but I will just go ahead and say this: the same people who love to push around the big lie that H4/H5’s art styles “don’t look like Halo” are the same ones who think that those stupid OUT-OF-CHARACTER cosmetics like the cat ears, floating halos, cyber mohawks, visor overlays (which aren’t even aligned properly!), etc. are A-OK in Halo. That claim is not just stupid, it’s destroying the franchise’s visual identity! Plus, Infinite’s art style looks and feels insanely outdated for a 2021 game. It would have worked in 2007 or 2010, but those years are best left behind now, which this “fanbase” refuses to leave behind.

Halo 5’s music may not have been my favorite (Worldquake is so overused too), but it still has a good number of solid hits. Infinite doesn’t even have any, and the only music tracks it has that have some resemblance to Halo music are there for the sake of nostalgia.

Halo 5’s weapon sandbox is easily the best one in the series. The weapon variety, plus the nice balancing to the point where EVERY weapon is useful, just makes it so pleasing. Infinite doesn’t even come close to that!

I’ve always been a big fan of Halo 5’s sound design. In that case, I prefer the shield down and recharge sound effects in 5 more than the other games because at least it’s not the same shield down beeping sound used since 2001! Additionally, H5’s weapons also sound powerful and pleasing to listen to.

Sure, Halo 5 may have less customization options than many of the other games, but at least it doesn’t block customization behind paywalls and cores! I will stick to the GEN2 Centurion armor for life because that armor is actually so pleasing to look at, unlike Infinite’s pathetic fakes pretending to be Spartans while wearing cat ears, samurai armor, etc.!

And now, the campaign. I agree with everything you said about Infinite’s campaign - it is incomplete, so boring, uninspired, bland, repetitive, and overreliant on a villain from a Halo spin-off. There’s no variety of biomes, missions, characters, etc. in Infinite. NONE! Plus, the story doesn’t even complete the H5 storyline either! It’s one thing to fix H5’s storytelling mistakes, but when you go as far as OVERCORRECTING from H5, changing the art style, music, gameplay, and story JUST TO PLEASE THE WHINY FANBASE, then you have made a terrible game! I am so glad I did NOT pay $60 for this terrible “campaign” that the fanbase vehemently praises for NO reason. I paid $20 for an actually good game that most of the fanbase still vehemently hates for NO reason (which would be Halo 5, of course), and I am not regretting it.

Long story short, I failed to find anything that Infinite does better than Halo 5. No one should forget that Infinite launched with way less content and features than previous games, Halo 5 included.

2 Likes
22

Well spoken sir. 100% true on everything you said. Halo 5 did have its issues at launch but they were fixed rather quickly. Infinite, on the other hand? It still has a LOT of the same issues at launch. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were listed under a “WON’T FIX AND BY DESIGN” header!

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23

Yep, that seems to be more of the issues here, and why players are dropping off.

I played a little bit after a long while a couple of days ago and that was all I needed to do to realize not much has improved since launch.

24

It is bizarre to me too, Oh boy, co-op is coming, has anyone not seen the YouTube videos of the beta, and how bugged co-op is, do people actually think they are fixing all those bugs in co-op, but then why not in the rest of the game? Are they just going to add it as another bugged part of the game? That seems to be the way now, and then promise to fix it at some point later down the road.

25

OP

What it does better

  • Character dialogue is better

  • The open world map is very enjoyable

-Music is better

  • Cortana is a lot better done in Halo Infinite than 5.

  • I like all the emblems and stuff you can put on your gun

  • Some guns like the Cindershot are quite cool

  • Escharum is a better villain than the Warden Eternal

  • I did like the dynamic between Chief and the Weapon until the end. He’s literally being haunted by this reminder of his greatest failure. But then they ruin that by making this part of their retcon and resetting the status quo. Plus I don’t like the idea of her just replacing Cortana; I think that’s runs counter to what the Halo 4 line was actually going for.

  • It has better feels. It did get an emotional reaction. Despite this mostly coming from being brutally stabbed in the back by 343. :smile:

What it does bad

  • Deciding Killing Cortana offscreen was a better story than having the Chief save her.

  • Retconning the Created war, a colossal cliffhanger and not bothering to explain how we got this situation we find ourselves in. You had six years to discreetly do this via novels and Halo Wars 2; something they continue to refuse to do.

  • Not even treating the repercussions of that downfall seriously. For example why are the Spartans okay using personal AI after they all went traitor? That is lazy.

  • Only one enemy faction. If you’re going to cut the Prometheans at least replace it with something new or actually fully flesh out the Banished. You’re fighting the same handful of enemy types and it is repetitive.

  • Banished are a trash, cookie cutter, Mary sue faction that 343 have rammed into the narrative like a crowbar. Why am I supposed to take a random Brute Warlord seriously when you kill Brutes like canon fodder and have defied the Gravemind? They can only write factions by putting other things down. They are objectively the weakest faction Chief has ever faced, not the Greatest by a long way.

  • Halo 5 has an ending and the stakes go beyond just rescuing the Pilot. They big up Cortana activating these Guardians and that HAD some big consequences. The Endless don’t even show up for the entire game and don’t do anything. This “more dangerous than the flood faction”. :roll_eyes:

  • Why have unsolved mysteries in a self contained game that won’t have a sequel until 2025? In which Joe may totally change the direction of the story?

  • Excessive retconning such as removing weapons that have been around for a decade like the Light Rifle.

  • Tiny pool of weapons. Most of which are unusable.

  • Must I say it. A year into Halo 5 and it had released almost all of its many many updates. They can’t even get Co-Op working in this time. You don’t need to elaborate further. It’s that bad.

26

I’m pretty sure they’re Dumb AI, and I dont think its been mentioned the majority of dumb AI rebelled. If anything they likely needed Dumb AI to help with operations against the created.

27

-Gameplay is closer to the classic Halo formula (Although still far from perfect)
-Art style is leagues ahead of Halo 5 and is far more reminiscent of what fans recognize as Halo
-The armor customization, despite being heavily monetized and unnecessarily restrictive, is still a much improved step up from 5.

Overall Halo 5 is definitely the better of the two in it’s current state but as far as core design goes Halo Infinite is much closer to the Halo formula than Halo 5 ever was.

2 Likes
28

It’s mentioned in one of Halseys audiologs that most Smart AI joined Cortana. Plus it’s strongly implied anyway from Halo 5.

I don’t think most people know that distinction with Dumb AI and would characters in the world restrain their prejudice on that?. Your typical person will see AI and humans working together in all instances. You can then personalise the Created conflict as just something to do with Cortana and conveniently prevent even the slightest repercussion

Most characters should be like:. “I don’t trust these toasters after they stopped me going outside after 9 o Clock”. You’re going to view your talking toaster differently after a bunch of them took the galaxy over.

To me it’s just more of the retcon. They don’t want to discuss it but they don’t want to cut AI entirely out of the Halo Lore so everybody has collective amnesia about the last year. Which is bad writing and world building.

Edit -

As an aside. If all you thought killing the Geth was genocide in Mass Effect, you better be thinking the UNSC killing all their Smart AI is bad.

29

5 is better in every regard.

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30

The halo formula for the past 20 years has been guns, grenades and melee and infinite fails at all 3. Limited guns and grenades and a broken melee system. Can’t say the same about 5.

31

Halo fans won and yet majority aren’t even playing the game? Yeah… makes sense.

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32

Explain why the campaign isn’t good story telling wise.

33

I’m more so talking about the pacing than anything else. Enhanced movement mechanics in my opinion have no place in Halo and break the formula. Hell I don’t even like the movement mechanics in Infinite (Sprint, slide, clamber) because it puts less emphasis on utilizing the sandbox to get around like vehicles and equipment.

Also I am not factoring in desync at all.

34

This is the exact same movement style as Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Apex Legends. Halo Infinite is basically the middle-ground between Apex Legends’ Equipment and CoD/Battlefield’s Sprint, Slide and Clamber. Your “advanced movement” shenanigans died back in 2016, and have been dead since Call of Duty triumphantly declared “Boots on the Ground” with COD: WWII

I too, like the feel and touch of plastic. The silky, smooth allure of plastic is just my favorite sensation in the world. And Power Ranges is my favorite childhood TV show too.

Halo 5 is to Halo Infinite, what Starcraft Cartooned is to Starcraft Remastered.

A. This is bait.
B. I guess those memes of people in the bathroom signing the Halo theme song from Halo CE just… Don’t exist, huh?
C. There’s a difference between evolution and radical change. Evolution is what we saw from Dark Souls 1 through to Elden Ring, where the games are extremely similar, but they provide a different experience to the player such that it justifies a purchase of the new “thing.” Halo was like this too, for a time, until Reach spun-off, and then Halo 4 decided to just be Call of Duty.

More =/ Better. Halo 5’s sandbox is aggressively bloated, to the point a number of weapons serve very little, if any, functional purpose.

I will now go on a minor rant about the issues I have with the different gameplay styles that were introduced into Halo during 343’s tenure.

We now have fans of specific games. Some people really like movement shooters, and got invested into Halo 5. Now they’re disappointed that Halo Infinite isn’t like that (even though most modern franchises moved away from crazy movement). Some people really like Halo 4. Now they’re disappointed that Halo isn’t enough like Call of Duty with loadouts and perks. Some people really like Halo Reach. Now they’re disappointed that the games aren’t enough like Reach and go back to Reach for the good old days.

Remember when Halo was consistent? When each Halo game was consistent with itself, making minute changes so that it could be a better overall experience in all facets? Sure, people liked Halo 2 over Halo 3 in some cases, but the vast majority moved from title to title and enjoyed the MP of each. We’ve now entered what is basically a tribalism phase, where there are different tribes of Halo fans. Halo 4 Tribe, Halo 5 Tribe, Halo Infinite Tribe, Halo Classic Tribe, etcetera. Each Tribe has a different view of what Halo should be.

This is the problem with 343 genre hopping Halo to try and appeal to non-Halo fans. There’s no clear, cohesive image of what Halo should be, and it causes the Tribes to become restless and bite at each other, and Halo lacks the creative vision to create a meaningful sequel. Infinite has failed for a variety of reasons, but one of the chief ones is that it’s trying to be all things, to all people by trying to be everything. Infinite should have just picked a Tribe, and then stuck with it, instead of disappointing all of them.

You mean it was aggressively overpowered and the only way to possibly beat it was to be outside of it’s absurdly long range?

The rest of your post, I either have no comment on or I just don’t care to engage. It’s clear to me that you like Halo 5 - and that’s fine. You can go play Halo 5 on the Xbox One to your heart’s content. But there’s a reason that advanced movement systems got left behind in the antiquated days of 2015. If I could remove Sprint, Clamber and Slide from Infinite, I would in a heartbeat.

And the game would be better for it.

5 Likes
35

I appreciate you. I don’t have the energy for clowns anymore.

36

While Halo infinite is a bad game, I would say it’s at least a Halo game.
Halo 5 is technically better, but outside of the 1 or two weirdos online, nobody considers to be a Halo game

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37

Explain what makes a game a halo game? The halo formula has always been guns, melee, and grenades. Where in halo 5 does it not achieve any of those.

38

You banned mentioning the reasons because, and I quote,

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39

Nobody complains about Infinite’ s gameplay. Not really. Almost everybodies complaints are secondary things affecting the game. Desync, SBMM, content, ect.

Most halo fans praise the gameplay. It’s everything else that is the problem. Which is what makes it so frustrating.

4 Likes
40

The game is still playable. And once again… why is the population so low for a game that people say it’s great? Using the excuse that there isn’t any content is not a good one. There is content. The problem is that the content that has been presented is not good.