As a child of the late 90's and early 2000's, Halo: CE struck me with its groundbreaking technology and story as my childhood was ending and served to really get me into gaming and arguably resulted in my love for science fiction and realism. As the years went by, Halo evolved and grew better. With Halo 2 came another batch of great memories and gameplay that would serve as a gaming benchmark for the entire developer industry, it kept the story that was Halo extremely fresh and really served to shake up my conception of what Halo was. It went from being a story about Humanity on the brink of extinction with a few heroes struggling against overwhelming odds to being a story about intrigue and characters with distinct and extremely memorable personalities. These were, to me, the golden days of the Halo Universe.
More time passed before Halo 3 would come along, but this game, to me, didn't give me the satisfaction that Halo:CE and Halo 2 had. I was then, about 15, and had come to expect Halo to be a game that would never grow old or boring, but something about Halo 3 just didn't sit right with me. Its single player was decent, not a bad story, had some new aspects and had a fairly good conclusion... but it took me a few days to figure out what was wrong. The game wasn't great... it was just ok. Meh. Decent. Average. This wasn't the Halo I remembered, this was a story that was supposed to be epic but it just felt totally meh to me. Humanity felt like a self-imposed underdog, I never saw any defeats or costly battles that had plagued the Halo Universe like I was expecting to. I just felt overpowered, the story felt unnatural, just like it was originally supposed to be epic by picking up Halo 2's end and tying up the story of the MC with a satisfying final battle. Instead I got a graphics heavy, meh story game that transferred that supposed last epic fight to some random part of the galaxy at the bequest of a giant friggen portal that randomly pops up the middle of East Africa. Then, Johnson and M. Keyes, characters I'd come to really like, just randomly throw their lives away, giving another whiff of a forced story plot that didn't sit right with me. But I overlooked my disagreements with Halo 3, its multiplayer was great and made up for my feelings about the story as I got sucked into Oddball games and Gravity Hammer fights over bombs like they were heroine. I looked forward for a game to redeem Halo 3's meh story.
I'm not going to stay much about ODST other than I didn't care much for it, story-wise it was good, gameplay felt stupid, decent multiplayer. It was another Average game, again, meh.
Halo Wars, no... just not going to say much about it. I had high hopes, and they were not satisfied. Nothing about this game struck me as good, a majority of it felt bland or downright below average in quality. Nothing else can describe it other than disappointing.
Halo 4 came around with groundbreaking graphics and cinematics that made me double take over whether they were live action or actually animated. Story-wise, I'll give it props for originality and pacing... atleast at the start of it. As the game went on, I enjoyed the scenery and the new enemies and guns and what not. But this... this... love story between Cortana and the MC just gave me this recurring thought of "Oh my god, why should I care?". Sure, the story of the MC and Cortana is closely intertwined and they're really hard to not imagine together. But come on, she's a friggen AI, when I first saw Cortana in Halo: CE the relationship between the MC and her felt natural as in the same way it is natural to carry high value goods in reinforced containers... so I didn't think anything of her at first other than a temporary side character the MC is forced to deal with. Now she somehow came to represent his humanity? How does that story plot device even fit into the character of the MC, short answer, it doesn't! Since when was the MC treated as a human, in his story set out in the books, he's already friggen lost any since of humanity after the UNSC transformed him into a piece of military hardware. For Christ's sake, he's been trained since he was like, what, 7 or so, to be a killing machine without feelings. The closest thing he had to a mother is Halsey.
Halo 4 furthermore made me fell like MC was being dragged through a story in the same way a dead animal is dragged from a redneck's truck. It didn't feel natural it felt in many ways forced... as if the story writers were trying to pander to people who cant get a story unless the protagonist has someone he/she gets a stiffie for. Why? Why was this stupidly melodramatic lovestory in there; furthermore when was Halo ever about exploring the emotional status of a killing machine? Never! Absolutely friggen never. I DO NOT CARE IN THE LEAST. What's even more ridiculous is the fact that by trying to portray the MC's emotional status, they attempted to explore the emotional status of a blank slate that would make John Locke crap himself...
Ok, now that's out of the way, Halo 4 had a decent story when it wasn't trying to make the MC pull a butthurt/romantic personality out of his bottom. But the Forerunner crap got old fast, sure they're interesting side characters and I love how they serve as a mysterious relics of a forgotten age. But trying to revive them into this living force that is an actual threat to humanity felt unnaturally lame. It felt like someone was scrapping the plot device barrel for whatever scraps remained for new enemy types. At most they should be a few working machines waiting for their masters' return, not massive armies stuffed away in convenient places of the galaxy for us to stumble upon like a kid stepping on a sleeping cat... they're dead and should stay that way. For Christ's sake, if you need to make new enemies, you have the Flood and an infinite vacuum of space and time to tinker with. In fact, I feel like the Flood is an under utilized enemy in the Halo Universe (which I know is grounded in good reason). But let's save this conversation for Halo 5, I'm done talking about the meh that was Halo 4.
Now we're in the present... and Halo 5 is around the corner. Does it look promising to me so far? Not really... from what I can see from the trailers I've seen, the developers still feel it necessary to drag the MC through yet another story which again to me feels absurd and forced. I really wish, oh how I wish 343 would just let the MC sit back and take a friggen break. The guy's how old now? Like almost 40, may mid-30's? HE'S OLD. Let him die peacefully instead of piledriving him into another story he doesn't need to be in! We have a fully fledged, new generation of Spartans to play with and we're stuck with the MC getting forced to some dumb story in which he apparently goes rogue to save an already dead Cortana?! I might be wrong and tell me if I am, but that story makes absolutely no damn sense. I mean come on guys... really? REALLY?!
From what I understand about Halo 5's story, it doesn't correlate at all with the previous Halo precedents. Why would a blank slate, emotionless, completely indoctrinated since the age of 7 killing machine go rogue to save a piece of hardware/software? Why would he even give a damn... sure, they've been partners for a long time in the MC's story, but why would he give up the life he'd known, trained for, and become accustomed to (as in, being a part of the UNSC) for years just so he can have an AI that he basically had a stiffie for because of a forced romance. It's just down right dumb... honestly, I'm sorry, but I've been a hardcore Halo fan for years and this might be the first time I refuse to buy one of the games. I'm not going to pay $60 USD to get what would really only be good in a multiplayer aspect (because it doesn't matter how dumb a story is to MP games, if you could make a MP game about monkey's throwing turds it'd probably be enjoyable), If I wanted another COD or BF game I'd buy one... this is not what Halo is or should be. I'd give my ideas for a new game but I'm honestly tired of typing. I'll probably type up what I want to see in a Halo game in another post but that'd take up a lot of space and time.
