Title says it all. I’d like to hear what you liked and disliked about the campaign. Personally, I don’t see why everyone lost their marbles over the fact that it ended with questions. Halo 2 ended on a cliffhanger, Halo 3 ended on a cliffhanger, Empire Strikes Back ended with something akin to a cliffhanger. I’m not seeing what everyone disliked. This was the beginning of a new story with it being the greatest hunt in gaming history. Most people assumed it was because of Chief so I guess the ads threw people off? But anyway I wanna hear what you guys have to say.
Honestly, I think people dont know what a set up game is.
The way I see it, they made this campaign as perfect as they could.
Locke:
He was needed to experience Chief’s story outside of Genesis, Aka to see the destruction the Guardians were causing, and how the Forerunners were affecting colonies, He wasn’t overly charming or charismatic, but he wasnt bad either. He was a decent protagonist, equal to Chief in the first game.
Story:
Great, great story set up. A few plot holes that Im sure will get fixed in the next game. But now we have a compelling villain, perfect counterpoint to our main hero. We have all 3 major protagonists together at the end of the game. We have a large group of Spartans now. And a galactic level scale war, similar to the Covenant.
Marketing:
Marketing did what is was supposed to do. I would have loved to see a bit more animosity between Chief and Locke, but the marketing wasnt overly wrong. I just think they could’ve conveyed the story in a better way. Its a simple fix, really. You just needed everyone to believe that Chief was the one unlocking these Guardians to free or save Cortana. Him being on Genesis unlocking them means he is unaware of civilian casualties, but everyone else is still worried that he no longer cares for collateral damage. They only flaw I see there is how to write the Chief has someone who will blindly follow orders without a thought of collateral damage.
There was no cliffhanger. Chapter 1 ended and there is no page to turn to. Ask yourself what did you do in the game? There was no substantial plot while discussing the overall multi-game arc. Give me a reason to play this game, not the next 12. This is not a TV show, where we get the next chapter in a week. Also, we play core Halo games to play as the Chief, we had him for 3 levels, WTF. 343 made another Halo 2, learn from the past idiots.
Story was hard to follow for a lot of people and campaign had poor pacing. There is also the issue that nothing actually happened during the course of the campaign.
I’ll give a few reasons:
The campaign doesn’t do a great job of actually explaining what is happening at any given moment. Most narrative is given through radio chatter and if you don’t have subtitles on you can miss key points.
Several missions involve walking forward and pressing ‘X’ to initiate a cut scene. Bam! Achievement Unlocked.
The Warden’s motivations seem redundant. He gets in your way just to slow you down. Cortana is his boss but he seems to be trying to prevent you from reaching her, presumably because he fears you will persuade her not to go ahead with the plan (although this is not clear). Chief does eventually reach Cortana but he isn’t able to convince her to cancel her plans so Chief making that journey is completely redundant. There is never any suggestion that Cortana will waver from her new purpose.
Cortana’s personality change is not even in character. She has never had these ideas about introducing a galactic peace in the past so why is it so important to her now?
There is no reason for Locke to be in the game, aside from releasing Master Chief from the Cryptum (which could have been handled differently if they didn’t want to have Locke).
Chief and Blue team are only playable in 3/15 missions.
The concept of Locke as a ‘detective’ tracking down a traitorous Master Chief is not realised. Instead, Locke just follows a bunch of leads and tags along for the ride while not completely understanding what is happening. he has no agency in the story. Nor does Master Chief.
Master Chief just dismisses any inquiries from his team. They ask questions and he shuts them down with “let’s keep moving”. This prevents us from understanding what he is thinking.
The game does not gradually increase the stakes in combat. Once you have been introduced to the different Forerunner enemy types, almost all combat scenarios wind up the same: fight some crawlers and forerunner soldiers then some Knights will turn up. Sometimes a warden will show up after that. Rinse repeat.
Conclusion: If they had placed more emphasis on Chief inadvertently causing a lot of damage through his actions, the story would have been more interesting. Locke following him to each location could have been a really interesting point: while Chief blindly presses forward in pursuit of Cortana, he is inadvertently activating a bunch of things which will bring about an apocalypse. The fact that he didn’t actually activate anything or change Cortana’s plan in any way, or cause any of the devastation through his actions is the real problem.
I thought other than the team based play that the campaign was fantastic. It took a turn that I never expected for sure.
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> The concept of Locke as a ‘detective’ tracking down a traitorous Master Chief is not realised. Instead, Locke just follows a bunch of leads and tags along for the ride while not completely understanding what is happening. he has no agency in the story. Nor does Master Chief.
This is what disappoints me the most. We were led to believe that Halo 5 would be a murky story about a shady branch of the government ordering the chief’s execution due to treason while we explore his motivations and reasoning in what was meant to be a personal story about him (343’s words, not mine). Instead, we got a game of grab–Yoink- playing as a who’s who of poorly developed characters featuring 3 token missions as the people we actually care about, the sole purpose of which was to learn that the real plot was the cliche as old as computers themselves: humans are unfit to rule due to their violent nature and short lifespans, therefore the computers/AI/synthetics/created/fill in the blank has the responsibility to take charge.
I would be okay with the bait and switch if it was at least done well. There’s nothing inherently wrong with revisiting an old idea if it’s approached in a new way; the Helios ending to Deus Ex is in a similar vein, but the way the idea is introduced and subtly reinforced throughout the game, not to mention the admission of needing a human element to guide its hand, made it interesting. Halo 5 has nothing to shake up the idea and plays it straight.
I thought it was great. Why most didn’t like it seems to be because of the following reasons, didn’t play as master chief enough, didn’t understand what went on, all the advertising didn’t really match the story all that much, wasn’t long enough, or what they wanted to happen didn’t h happen.
- Bad plot that is too strayed from almost everything from H4 - Unexplained Plotholes everywhere (won’t include for spoilers sake) - Terrible AI Teammates that are incapable of following simple orders//especially when it comes to common sense like, don’t revive me if there is an enemy dancing on my limp body. - Uninteresting characters - 1/3 of the game is played by Chief, 2/3 by Locke, a Spartan that has no business being a spartan. - 3 individual missions that were not even missions. - Chief’s Spartans did not live up to their canonical appearances in the extended universe. At no point did they do anything relevant to the story. - Honestly,who is the main bad guy here when all is done and over? (leaving spoilers out) - Bad cliffhanger is bad.
I didn’t necessarily dislike campaign but if I were a brand new halo fan I’d not understand a thing in the game lol. Its not friendly to the newer audience meaning a lot of the lore leading in halo 5 is in books, podcasts, comics,ect if you want to fully comprehend halo 5. The thing that bothers me personally with halo 5 is the hype of Locke vs chief…
They got into a slap fest but after that Locke helps chief out in finding cortana which ruins the hype of Locke vs chief. It could be argued the “hunt the truth” was simply to find out about cortana but still I think it was just done in a poor manner. Then there’s how they introduced both fire teams. What do we know of Osiris? What do we learn? Not much. Then there’s the legendary blue team which only got three missions. I was sad I didn’t get to see Linda (my favorite spartan in the halo lore) very much or Kelly. In short I think they over hyped it just like destiny was overhyped to be the “next greatest game ever” but ultimately reached short if its goal.
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> I didn’t necessarily dislike campaign but if I were a brand new halo fan I’d not understand a thing in the game lol. Its not friendly to the newer audience meaning a lot of the lore leading in halo 5 is in books, podcasts, comics,ect if you want to fully comprehend halo 5. The thing that bothers me personally with halo 5 is the hype of Locke vs chief…
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> They got into a slap fest but after that Locke helps chief out in finding cortana which ruins the hype of Locke vs chief. It could be argued the “hunt the truth” was simply to find out about cortana but still I think it was just done in a poor manner. Then there’s how they introduced both fire teams. What do we know of Osiris? What do we learn? Not much. Then there’s the legendary blue team which only got three missions. I was sad I didn’t get to see Linda (my favorite spartan in the halo lore) very much or Kelly. In short I think they over hyped it just like destiny was overhyped to be the “next greatest game ever” but ultimately reached short if its goal.
343 never built it up to be the greatest game ever. That was the community.
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> > 2533274923562209;11:
> > I didn’t necessarily dislike campaign but if I were a brand new halo fan I’d not understand a thing in the game lol. Its not friendly to the newer audience meaning a lot of the lore leading in halo 5 is in books, podcasts, comics,ect if you want to fully comprehend halo 5. The thing that bothers me personally with halo 5 is the hype of Locke vs chief…
> >
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> > They got into a slap fest but after that Locke helps chief out in finding cortana which ruins the hype of Locke vs chief. It could be argued the “hunt the truth” was simply to find out about cortana but still I think it was just done in a poor manner. Then there’s how they introduced both fire teams. What do we know of Osiris? What do we learn? Not much. Then there’s the legendary blue team which only got three missions. I was sad I didn’t get to see Linda (my favorite spartan in the halo lore) very much or Kelly. In short I think they over hyped it just like destiny was overhyped to be the “next greatest game ever” but ultimately reached short if its goal.
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> 343 never built it up to be the greatest game ever. That was the community.
I know… My point was it was hyped up (and 343 did help with all the advertisements on hunt the truth) more than it really should’ve been. If I were a developer why lead people on when I’m not even going to completely stick to what I advertised? Many people saw a Locke vs chief type of ending bevause of the ads and hype, but it never happened.
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> > 2533274889350043;12:
> > > 2533274923562209;11:
> > > I didn’t necessarily dislike campaign but if I were a brand new halo fan I’d not understand a thing in the game lol. Its not friendly to the newer audience meaning a lot of the lore leading in halo 5 is in books, podcasts, comics,ect if you want to fully comprehend halo 5. The thing that bothers me personally with halo 5 is the hype of Locke vs chief…
> > >
> > >
> > > They got into a slap fest but after that Locke helps chief out in finding cortana which ruins the hype of Locke vs chief. It could be argued the “hunt the truth” was simply to find out about cortana but still I think it was just done in a poor manner. Then there’s how they introduced both fire teams. What do we know of Osiris? What do we learn? Not much. Then there’s the legendary blue team which only got three missions. I was sad I didn’t get to see Linda (my favorite spartan in the halo lore) very much or Kelly. In short I think they over hyped it just like destiny was overhyped to be the “next greatest game ever” but ultimately reached short if its goal.
> >
> >
> > 343 never built it up to be the greatest game ever. That was the community.
>
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> I know… My point was it was hyped up (and 343 did help with all the advertisements on hunt the truth) more than it really should’ve been. If I were a developer why lead people on when I’m not even going to completely stick to what I advertised? Many people saw a Locke vs chief type of ending bevause of the ads and hype, but it never happened.
Didn’t they state back during the trailers that Locke and Chief had no animosity towards one another?
It doesn’t make sense that cortana would even think about doing all this, as she has been with chief for awhile and would never lock chief in a sphere, nor harm anyone at that.
Some great points what made the story mode “uninteresting” to me which in the past was what kept me drawn to the franchise and eagerly awaiting the next release.
I never felt engaged or drawn into the story line or game play. I kept waiting for that “aha” moment which never came and then the game basically suddenly ends.
aside from the story points which are highly subjective, I would say there was nothing hugely memorable about the campaign mission wise, Halo CE silent cartographer, truth and reconciliation the library these are missions I haven’t played for years but I remember them, taking down the prophet of regret, doing the first drop pod insertion with AI ODST’s, securing a landing zone for forward unto dawn and rolling along in a tank blasting everything in sight including covenant drop ships, taking down non pre-scripted scarabs, the escape from installation 00, travelling around Reach, the one by one sacrifice of Noble team, the flight of the pillar of Autumn. All evocative points from past Halo campaigns, I honestly don’t remember anything from 4 except a gondola ride and sadly I feel 5’s campaign is equally uninspiring, perhaps with the exception of stealing the prowler.
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> aside from the story points which are highly subjective, I would say there was nothing hugely memorable about the campaign mission wise, Halo CE silent cartographer, truth and reconciliation the library these are missions I haven’t played for years but I remember them, taking down the prophet of regret, doing the first drop pod insertion with AI ODST’s, securing a landing zone for forward unto dawn and rolling along in a tank blasting everything in sight including covenant drop ships, taking down non pre-scripted scarabs, the escape from installation 00, travelling around Reach, the one by one sacrifice of Noble team, the flight of the pillar of Autumn. All evocative points from past Halo campaigns, I honestly don’t remember anything from 4 except a gondola ride and sadly I feel 5’s campaign is equally uninspiring, perhaps with the exception of stealing the prowler.
Seriously? You don’t remember the dramatic intro to 4, seeing Requiem for the first time after you crash, taking back the infinity in a Mantis, or piloting a pelican and shooting down phantoms? Were you on drugs the whole time playing 4?
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> It doesn’t make sense that cortana would even think about doing all this, as she has been with chief for awhile and would never lock chief in a sphere, nor harm anyone at that.
She locked Chief in the sphere to protect him from her plan to cleanse the galaxy. Much like the Librarian locking away Didact before she activated the Halo rings. John was her last tie to humanity.
The main gripe with the campaign is that people don’t understand it. Majority of people don’t connect the dots from the extended universe. To that extent, people shouldn’t have to. It’s too much to ask for from the narrow minded audience that makes up the majority of the FPS demographic. People expect a bad guy to be inherently bad, to be clear that “this is the villain and this is why I need to kill him.” As Frankie put it, it’s saddening to see that so many people can’t grasp the nuance of it all.
Personally, I loved the campaign, but one of my friends who I played coop with was just puzzled by it.
i like the story. i dont like what happened. losing cortana this way hurts in a way i cant explain and the thought of her as the enemy both breaks my heart and terrify me to no end. i hit the idea of the chief stepping back from the lead role. but none of it seems wrong. i mean it all feels wrong but it still feels halo. i dont like locke but hes not a bad character he lacks a bit of that stoic silent compassion that chief had and their trying to force it on him. but this all feels real power can change you suddenly cortana in the end is Halsey and they have a bad habit of forcing the will on to others and expressing themselves in awkward ways so i can believe she would do this she got caught up in herself and john wasent there to pull her back. i dont want to lose her i want john to bring her home and to find a less violent way to unify the galaxy but there’s no way to know how this plays out till the very end. 343 isnt perfect but their keeping this story going when it should of already ended so i have to believe they will get better because i want to ride this story out like starwars or final fantasy .