343 did a good job gameplay wise…they made a lot of awesome improvements and they have improved multiplayer with warzone…however, the campaign seemed to be a bit of a disappointment for me. The characters, if you do not know the lore, seem to just be thrust in your face without having any meaningful attachment to them at all…people don’t seem to be freaking out as much or questioning why chief was missing and the bulk of the campaign took away from the Master chief as you played as Spartan Lock a significant amount more…
I would have enjoyed a little more of a balance. The guardians themselves in the game don’t seem to really play a major role and there is no really clear explanation to what they do or what they are capable of other than being able to police an entire galaxy or system. Also, we never hear Cortana talk to the Chief or Blue team about her plan or what it entails and when Osiris meets up with Blue team Lock says she is dangerous and the Chief just Responds with an “I know.” One can figure out themselves she plans to instill peace in the galaxy by force via the guardians, however, we never really hear it from Cortana’s plans from her perspective…The story is just lacking in so many ways and I think it is mostly due to the sheer vagueness and ambiguity of everything about the story.
Overall it was a very good game, 343 just needs to make the campaign a little better and more meaningful.