Why Escharum wasn’t a good Character

Games Halo Infinite
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22

I do agree that he was underutilized in terms of plot agency. He just sat around being red in the EVIL COMPUTER ROOM.

As for why Master Chief sympathizes with him. It seems to me that right from the beginning, 343 intended Escharum to be Master Chief’s narrative foil.

Master Chief has understood Escharum’s motives implicitly since before Escharum was even conceptualized. They are really not very different from his own. Their similarities are explored in the narrative, if you look at what they say. The idea is that they’ve led similar lives, except that Chief is less brutish. More humane, if you will.

Right from the first level, Escharum notes that he respects Chief for the fear he inspires in his enemies. When Chief walks into the House of Reckoning, Fernando tries to warn him that it’s a trap, but Escharum says something along the lines of, “he knows it’s a trap.” They’re both soldiers. They both live a soldier’s life. They both understand a soldier’s mindset.
I’m pretty sure at one point Fernando even asks Chief why he keeps fighting, and Chief says “It’s all I know.” That sounds a lot like a Brute to me.

This is just my interpretation, but if you look at it a certain way, both of them are pretty terrible people. They’ve both ended so many lives. Surely that’s a reality they need to confront eventually. Did they really do the right thing? Should they die proud? In the end, Escharum’s answer was “yes.” And when the time eventually comes, I think Chief’s answer will be the same.

Still not a great character though. He had the potential to be great, but they fumbled him

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23

The trouble was he wasn’t in the least bit intimidating. Atriox was absolutely brilliant and that first cutscene of him one of the best things I’ve seen in a Halo game. The Didact too was also one of the best characters so quite why we ended up with what we had in Infinite is baffling to me. Escharum was a joke of a character

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24

Escharum was basically a Far Cry villain coming to make camp in Halo. Nothing more nothing less.

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25

The story was Chief salvaging whatever’s left of the UNSC to fight as well as come to terms with Cortanas death and trusting the Weapon. Not understand and feel bad for the enemy.

26

I disagree. With all subtle implications and undertones taken into account, Escharum was already finished with his work and wanted to go out with a bang.

27

Never liked him. He is just another boring “deep voice” villain who is mainly there to harass and taunt Chief. And worst of all, Chief’s line when Escharum dies is just so cringy it hurts!

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28

The entire banished act like a WWE villain. It was genuinely awful and missed the tone of Halo completely.

Gameplay was horribly repetitive as well.

Between the story game play and characterization of the banished this was easily the second worst halo campaign.

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29

Your interpretation is definitely correct. However it doesn’t make it good. the writing is extremely lame.

343 can’t write dialog or a narrative that isn’t cringey.

30

I assume you watched The Act Man’s video on Why Halo Infinite is so AWESOME… and Mediocre?!

31

dude hes amazing the guy is just that amazing

32

wrong he does the opposite the instead encourges chief to keep going hes old and dying and wants a final challenge adn facing chief to him is that final challenge

33

I like… half agree with you??

On the one hand, I don’t really think the writing is cringe. Halo 5 was cringe. That game made no sense and everybody was out of character. But then, cringe isn’t really an objective measure, is it? When we call something cringe, it really says more about us than it does about the thing we’re discussing. I think Infinite had a cringey MOMENT or two, but so has almost every other Halo game. Hey, let’s go through em real quick. That might be fun.

CE: Cortana’s constant weird British slang delivered in an American accent. It never catches on.

Halo 2: “Tell that to the Covenant” is such a lame way to introduce Master Chief lmao. Also, to this day I have no idea if the Regret boss fight is supposed to be as funny as it is, but it actually wouldn’t surprise me if the answer is “yes,” so that gets a pass.

Halo 3: TO WAR

ODST: I don’t remember any exact lines, but some of them definitely made me groan. ALSO, hot take alert, but one of the most enthralling stories in the entire series is gated behind optional audio logs that most people will miss, meanwhile the regular plot is mediocre and it can’t decide if it wants to be a depressing, atmospheric mystery noir set in a dangerous city in the pouring rain, or if it wants to be The Buddy-Cop Comedy Hour, starring Cartoon Man Buck and His Four Cartoon Goons.

Halo: Reach: Carter is the blandest, most potato character I’ve ever seen in the entirety of fiction, and Emile is edgy to the point that he’s accidentally genuinely unlikable. Emile’s voice direction was also really bad. Halo: Reach really wants you to care about some of the character deaths, but it doesn’t always earn them first. Kat’s death was shocking initially, which may have been effective on its own, but then the scene lingers on for WAY too long with the sad music. Dude, I get it. I’m not sad about it. She barely did anything. You can stop playing the piano at me. Halsey’s corny monologue at the end doesn’t really do it for me, either.

Halo 4: The Didact is probably better in the books, but in the first half of Halo 4 he comes off like a Sonic OC. When you first meet him, he’s way too powerful and Master Chief can’t even do anything or fight back. But then, a few missions later, he’s just the dumbest, weakest moron on the planet. We get 15 seconds of Cortana bondage and then it’s like, “Ok, all done. Press LT to instantly beat the main antagonist with a single grenade.”

Halo 5: LOL

For Infinite, the characters are consistent, the dialogue made me laugh a few times, and I really like some of the audio logs. They even pulled off some pretty clean emotional scenes, which was nice to see.

I think what 343 HAS shown us, beyond any doubt, is that they’re really really bad at following through with their own story ideas. They come up with a nice, juicy concept, tell us JUST ENOUGH so that we’re like, “Hey that’s kinda neat, I wonder where you’re gonna go with this,” and then abandon it forever. I’m just sayin, y’know, they better not start selling lemonade, or there’s gonna be lots of unsqueezed lemons in the trash.

2 Likes
34

Both him and the Harbinger are really underdeveloped.

Escharum does seem contradictory, for a guy who wants a glorious battle with you he seems to want to throw a lot of his own people into the meatgrinder first. Using the pilot as a literal shield was also really cowardly.

He feels like a boss from one of those ‘halo killers’ during the early 2000’s you’d rent for a weekend and take back to the store.

Chief’s line at the end makes sense given what his character was supposed to be, not what it ended up being.

Arguably the harbinger’s even worse cause she just says vague stuff then dies. Also apparently her mission succeeded somehow.

35

Jega is dead.

Jega vanishes at the end of the fight - there is no body. He is almost certainly returning in some form.

36

There’s nothing wrong with the idea of an antagonistic foil for Chief on paper. They just botched the execution. The gameplay is about as varied as ever, to be honest, but the samey environments make it feel way worse.

To be honest, the Halo games never really took themselves that seriously, except for CE and Reach. And even then, CE had some jokes here and there. Seems like they were going for a Halo 3 vibe with Infinite. I think they almost succeeded. The dialogue feels about right. The art design is getting there. The gameplay is a natural-feeling evolution of 3’s. Their trajectory is beginning to improve.

To really capture that Halo 3 tone, 343 needs to make things bigger and more grandiose. We need a sense of scope for this large-scale territory war.

Then we need an actual plot where things actually happen.

Maybe once we get the full campaign, in 5, 10, whatever years, we’ll come back to this forum and talk about how much we loved the plot. Only time will tell :slight_smile:

37

I mean if he does, it better be in a wheelchair. I absolutely ragdolled that Elite around the room with the scorpion cannon.

38

The boss fight itself was pretty fun, but the character was massively mishandled. Just seeing his hologram over and over and not his actual character doing anything made him boring and genuinely annoying

39

Escherum the banished and All the bosses in infinite are Saturday morning cartoon levels of villains. They are trash. Also why do the brutes look so ape like? They literally do not look like the same species comparing their heads to halo 2 and 3. The Redesign in reach wasn’t good and neither is infinites.

343’s writing and additions to the general lore are worse than anything bungie produced.

The banished were interesting in Halo wars 2 and terrible in every way in infinite.

I’d prefer to just scrap everything of the post H3 timeline and start over. None of it is a worthy successor to the original trilogy story or bungies side stories in ODST and reach.

There is nothing redeemable except for Atriox.

40

I disagree with just about everything you say here. All of bungies games took themselves serious. They just have quippy dialog to ad numerous levity to the games. The tone of the trilogy is mostly the same and consistent. ODST is lighter for sure in a grim setting and reach was completely grim.

Infinite is possible the worst in campaign level design in halo’s history and only slightly better than halo 5 in story.

Also in general the post H3 storyline is total trash when taking halo 4, 5 and infinite together.

It all deserves to be erased.

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41

I guess personally I just don’t understand why Escharum was included at all. Atriox was a great enemy, and was already established in the canon. He could have been the final boss battle without him necessarily dying at the end. This was the issue with all of the Banished bosses, they didn’t even have the level of character exposition that far cry villains do.