The explanation is a single line of dialogue from Fred that’s along the lines of “I haven’t seen him so worked up since boot camp!”
This easily missable line of dialogue at best establishes that Fred and the rest know Chief, but not how they know Chief or where the rest of the Spartans were during Halo 1-3. Halo 1-3’s game manuals make it explicitly clear (as well as at least one of the “back of boxes”) that Master Chief was the last Spartan II. So, are these guys Spartan 4s, or are they just Spartans created out of the ether who have always existed but never actually played a noticeable role in the prior Halo games?
A single line of dialogue for characters that the main character supposedly knows and the rest of us are left scratching our heads as to who these characters are, does not make their inclusion any less non-sensical to someone who hasn’t been reading the books. There is no actual explanation within the game as to who these characters are, where these characters have been and why they’re fighting alongside Chief within the game.
[Important Explanation of the Issues](https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkxb-WUnBcyuSA0CgJoVIpybEq9EkwCwNZS)
So halo 2 bringing in the covenant/arbiter never happened? Or Miranda Keyes? Lord hood. None of those guys came from books?
See the problem with a lot of people is that you lack the patience for creators to tell a story. Blue team and fireteam Osiris was going to be more fleshed out in infinite, but got scrapped because once again… people like you are not willing to allow people to create their own path on telling a halo story. Halo is not just master chief. Halo is a universe that 343i did a remarkable job in expanding; but because of the individuals that couldn’t support it, made them re do their vision to please an entitled audience. Halo 5 had so much potential to serve as the “halo 2” of this generation.
Err, how about the several lines of dialogue between the Osiris members during the fight back up the elevator on Meridian about how Blue Team was raised together and is basically family to each other?
Anyway, I disagree about 343 being unable to write a good Halo story. I think Halo 5 fell flat on its face (especially with how the campaign had basically nothing to do with the excellent marketing campaign 343 had put out prior to the game’s release), but Halo 4 when it came out in 2012 became one of my top 3 favorite campaigns of the series. I thought it was an excellent story and did a solid job of setting up what this universe looks like 3 years after the end of the Covenant and humanity no longer fighting for survival. After all the backlash 343 received, I think Infinite did a solid job of trying to go back to the “humanity fighting for survival” feel and trying to recover from the fumble of 5’s story with Infinite. Certainly not one of the stand out stories of the games, but I’d put it solidly in the middle of the series. It’s no ODST or 4, but it’s a million times better than 5 or Reach.
And the game never pretends you just know those characters. Instead it takes a little, but just enough time, to introduce them within the first “mission” so that you aren’t approaching it blindly. In contrast to this, Halo 5’s Blue Team mission starts with Chief just talking to the rest of Blue Team and basically prodding the player to ask if they remember Blue Team now from the expanded universe.
So I, and the rest of the internet that had issues with Blue Team’s inclusion including major review outlet IGN just lack patience? It’s not possible that the story is just badly told by people who want the emotional pay off without doing the work that is required to get properly invested? 343’s storytelling is to Bungie’s storytelling, what DC’s movie efforts are to Marvel’s. DC rushed for to have Justice League out there without actually taking the time and effort to establish half the characters who appeared in that film, and it’s the same issue with 5.
They can flesh them out within the same game and work on creating new and interesting story hooks for the next game. Halo 2’s story of the Arbiter tells a relatively contained story of a warrior betrayed by his leaders and taken advantage of, before fighting back and stopping their plot. Halo 5 could have similarly fleshed out Osiris and Blue Team within that game, but instead relied on supplemental material to flesh out those characters - a tactic that obviously didn’t work because the reaction was extremely negative and ultimately the story got scrapped entirely.
And I never wanted Chief to come back for future Halo games. Halo 3 did not need a numbered sequel in the form of Halo 4. I wanted someone new, someone fresh to lead the franchise. Another Noble Six. Instead 343 went for the marketability of Chief.
So that’s why they decided to dredge up Chief from his nap?
The audience should be entitled. The game’s industry is the only industry on the planet where “entitlement” is a dirty word. If you go to a fast food place, and you complain your food is cold, you get another hamburger for free. They don’t stick their fingers or a thermometer in it and say “Hmm… This doesn’t hit the baseline for ‘cold,’ you can still eat this”
Meanwhile, individuals like yourself go to bat for major corporations and call people who are justifiably dissatisfied with a product “entitled” because heaven forbid people make their complaints heard in the game’s industry.
You mean the single line of dialogue in the sixth mission of the game that still doesn’t explain the other major parts of the issue with Blue Team’s inclusion, like where Blue Team has been all this time and why they’re suddenly fighting alongside Chief. The video I linked above goes into detail on it, but the general gist is that they needed to satisfy a co-op requirement and instead of providing meaningful or logical reasons for Blue Team’s inclusion in the game (this also applies to Buck).
Obviously this is your personal opinion on the matter and not something that’s… Fully up for debate, but I disagree with this statement. The issue is that 343 has this view of Spartans as super heroes. The UNSC are barely involved in 4, and seem to be on equal footing with the Covenant Remnant. What’s funny is that the UNSC also appear to mostly be on the back foot against the Covenant and the Prometheans, and eventually retreats instead of actually fighting further - so much for “No longer fighting for survival”…
My other issue with Halo 4 is that it focuses so hard on the story between Chief and Cortana it forgets to develop the rest of the universe and relies on a super long cutscene slapped into the middle of the game to do the story exposition that the rest of the game forgot about, regarding the main villain. It’s a case of 343 wanting an emotionally deep story without doing any of the work required to make people care about these characters. You’re supposed to care because it’s Master Chief and Cortana, but they don’t develop a reason to care otherwise. It’s all kind of one-note and flat. I was pretty young when Halo 4 came out, and even I could tell that the story I played through just wasn’t very good, least of all compared to Halo 3, Reach or ODST (the only other Halo games I had seriously played at the time)
I absolutely loved the first three Halo campaigns, especially their OST.
Then, Halo 4’s was the first campaign that made me feel bored. Really bored. I just got bored from shooting damn sentinels and promethean machines. They were not nearly as enjoyable as the Covenant alien. And the maps/levels had lost some of their appeal to me. At that point in time I hadn’t even realized that the game was made by a different company! I was like “wth has happened!?”.
Then, Halo 5, most of us seem to agree that it was a disaster for various reasons. And looks like to me that it was a higher priority to introduce Spartans with a diversity of gender and race, instead of having as their priority to make a fun game. I mean, both objectives can co-exist, but I can see where the main focus was on. It’s not as if the first trilogy had any diversity issues that had to be fixed, and a story should be allowed to have a prominent main protagonist (the Master Chief) rather than a band. Once again, a boring campaign. I’ve recently read the Wikipedia page of 343i’s CEO and specifically the “Diversity efforts” section, and realized a big part of wth is going wrong with these games (the rest of the problem lies with Microsoft having its own lame priorities).
Then Halo 6. I don’t even want to waste words for it. I’ll just say that I got really bored of the same trees, rocks and grass.
@LouisFF l maintain that despite it being an obvious bumble 5 has a more coherent and beteer written story than halo 3.
Halo3 + ODST
Is my favourite game of all time.
But its the worst story in the halo fps games.
@OKMB2056 not only spartans.
It goes deeper.
343i see the universe as revolving around super heros.
Chief, cortana, atriox, urdidact, halsey.
All of them are gods who defy the laws of the wprld and usually do so offscreen to make matter worse.
Rather than being players in a massive universe simply doing their best to survive they are preordained demigods. As a result the universe shrinks, becomes a shrivelled world of magic blood lines and known quantities.
Not a vast realm of possiblity and deep mystery.
Even when beong mysterious they must explain it not let a mystery form itself.
The warden and endless for example.