Bad Writing

[Fraggy Muffin]

i rest my case.

[Sierra1117]

How about some ignorant non-book readers?

[Beta55]

Snobby book readers? How about people who just like to read or aren't afraid of books that have words bigger then "We" and big pictures? You guys are trolling. Didact bad guy, stop bad guy, save cortana. Not a complicated story unless your IQ is your level. I'll be completely honest, I'd rather be a snob then an ass like you. At the very least I'd be smarter then you.

Most Halo players don't read the Halo books. Reading Halo's expanded universe shouldn't be a prerequisite for understanding Halo 4's story.

 

It takes a petty person to stoop to ad hominem attacks over something so trivial.

[Fraggy Muffin]

Most Halo players don't read the Halo books. Reading Halo's expanded universe shouldn't be a prerequisite for understanding Halo 4's story.

 

It takes a petty person to stoop to ad hominem attacks over something so trivial.

 

haha see what i mean

[Vaulting♥Frog]

Well considering this is my first post dont yell at me too much. I have just a few things to say on this topic, then I will leave it alone.

 

1: I understand the OP's issue with the games writing as that is a personal issue. Nothing anybody says or does can change that.

 

2: The terminals within the game itself shead light upon the Human-Forerunner war. You just need to look at Waypoint to view them. That gives a huge amount of perspective on the events of the game.

 

Also, from my viewpoint the story explains itself fairly well on a play through. It gives you a slight cliffhanger when the Librarian mucks around with John but that will end up being fleshed out in future games. Promethean existance was given an explaination that was decent. Sure it has holes in it if you dont watch the terminals but it is still there and makes sense. The Didact shows his "views" of the mantle through out the game and the terminals give even more life to those views. His bitterness at humanity is understandable even without the terminals. How would you react being imprisoned for 50,000 years while knowing your entire species is wiped out.

 

3: I think it jumped around a bit simply because we dont see the time spent traveling from point A to point B. That jumps the story around just a bit but honestly its not that bad to me. Your not missing out on much in my viewpoint.

 

4: As for all the new characters, I am not supprised people are having issues with them. In Halo: CE we had little interaction with other named characters (Cortana, Keyes, Johnson[kind of], Foe Hammer and 343 Guilty Spark) for the entirety of the game. Cortana and 343 are the only exceptions on that list. None of the other characters were really heavily developed at that point. And considering its the begining of a series I am not too supprised at that. I equate Lasky to Keyes and whats-her-face (the Spartan Commander) to Johnson at this point until their charaters define themselves further. Lasky got development in Forward Onto Dawn but that was history. Who knows what he will be in future games.

[WonderWombat]

haha see what i mean

Funny, coming from the person who stated "snobby book readers".

[SatanicBagels]

I'm going to go ahead and agree with the OP on this one. There were way to many obvious forced lines and cheesy remarks. Such as that one from Lasky in the Epilouge when he says "Some people think soliders aren't humans... I mean we're just people" (sorry if that wasn't exactly correct). To me it was a line that was obviously forced into the script to try and add more emotion.

 

Then the writers tried to explain a lot of things through dialog that seemed out of flow and forced into the script to explain something. Such as when Cortana is explaining her Rampancy. That should have been done another way somehow, but instead they stopped in the middle of a battle to talk about it. That's not what any logical person in their situation would do.

 

Then the villain wasn't developed nearly as much as he could and should have been. The terminals provided a little more background as to what kind of person he was and is but that shouldn't be required material to understand the story. They could have developed his character as a villain quite a bit more which in turn would have lead to a more climatic ending.

 

Hopefully Spartan Ops can make some major breakthroughs in the story though. It will be interesting to see how they can bridge the gap between Halo 4 and Halo 5 and the effect that has on Halo 5's storytelling. If they do it right we should be able to hop into Halo 5 fully immersed from the get go with tons of background knowledge.

[Charlemagne]

As I already mentioned, I've only played the games (and I imagine that's true for the majority of Halo players). Reading the books shouldn't be a prerequisite to fully understand what's going on in Halo 4. I don't care for the books talking about an ancient human civilization, not one bit. It somehow feels contradictory to what went on between 1-3, as if we were just lied to.

 

Reading the books is not a prerequisite from the game. You understand that there was a war between humans and forerunners, and that the forerunner is now your enemy. that is all you need to know for the game. Clearly, you understood that there was a human-forerunenr war, so I don't see the problem. The books merely act as backstory for the interested party. they are certainly not necessary to understand the game, and really have nothing to do with it. although some of the characters from the game appear in the books, these stories have almost no relevance to halo 4.

 

The Halo universe has always been a mysterious place. We have never truly understood introduced concepts until later games. Why is it so bad that the human-forerunner war is mysterious to you? Mystery is what drives this franchise.

[Caboose The Ace]

the chief and cortana scenes were very emotinal and had good writing i cared about cortana and felt sad for here as she began to get worse

[Dr. Halsey]

I understand how it may be confusing for one who hasn't read the books which is understandable for fan whose mother language isn't English. Those who speak english and call itself halo fans surely read the novels?I mean everyone reads at least sometimes books no?

 

Those who have not read books can understand story if they put their minds into it. Surely there is some mysteries but are we so lazy that we need every fact and explanation easily? What fun is that?

 

I don't like I have to watch terminals from Halo Waypoint. Those videos should have been more part of the game.

 

As for storytelling the story was more unified than in previous halo games imo. There wasn't sudden jumps from one place to another though I think the story happened too much in cutscenes and not in the gameplay.

 

the chief and cortana scenes were very emotinal and had good writing i cared about cortana and felt sad for here as she began to get worse

Yeah I loved how they did this.

[JC15]

I didn't read the books I knew about the war

[Twisted Oracle]

I dont know if this was mentioned but watch all of the Halo 4 terminals, they will explain the Human-Forerunner war as well as the flood and how the didact came to be trapped in a giant ball

[Scott Mcmullan]

So after reading this, I've come to the conclusion OP is the type of person to just blast through the campaign without actually focusing on the story. If you had actually "Played" Halo 3, you would've found the terminals which go into a fair amount of depth concerning the Librarian, Didact and activation of the Rings.

Also, the terminals in Halo 4 (which are easy to find) go into just as much detail about the Didact, why he hates humans, why there is Promethans etc.

I have a bunch of friends that don't read the books, and they understand the story fine. This leads me to assume that: You, OP, lack the patience or even capacity to understand the story. You do NOT have to read the books to understand it, everything you need to know is there for you to understand in the game. Just because YOU don't understand the story, doesn't mean it's poorly written. That's equivalent to someone who doesn't like Opera, saying an Operatic performance was bad and poorly written. There's a difference between bad writing, and someone who just doesn't allow themselves to understand it.