What would you like to see in Halo 6?

[Ranger Intel]

Most would agree that Halo 5 is a success. It has had better feedback than Halo 4 did, and 343 improved on everything. It's not often you hear a complaint about Halo 5, and when you do it's nothing major. With all that, there's always room for improvement.

 

For me, there are two features I want:

 

- A UNSC Aircraft

We've had the Hornet in Halo 3 and the Falcon in Halo: Reach, but since then we've had no UNSC aircraft for use in-game. Now they've introduced the Phaeton, which is great, but there's only Forerunner and Covenant aircraft available to us. The Hornet and Falcon are most likely decommissioned, they're out of date. A new UNSC Aircraft is needed, we all know it.

 

- Firefight

We need more PvE combat, and it's definitely Firefight. Spartan Ops served as a replacement in Halo 4, but most thought Classic Firefight was irreplaceable. Surviving endless waves of Covenant with limited lives was great back in ODST. If 343 bring this back, I'm sure many will be pleased.

 

 

Now, what would you like to see in Halo 6? Do you agree/disagree with my thoughts? Is there anything you'd like 343 Industries to remove in Halo 6? Share your thoughts below.

 

Thanks for reading.

Edited December 28, 2015 by UNSC Spartan II

[Guts]

I definitely disagree with Firefight. As I've said countless times, it is an endless and tedious grind until you run out of lives or run out of time.

 

Now if a PvE mode is being added, it will have to have the following:

1. An End: It must end after a certain number of stages, regardless of who is alive, time or anything.

 

2. Stages: Unlike rounds, 15 stages of enemies attack and the next stage will happen only when all enemies are dead. Each will have a deadline of 3:00 minutes. Mission fails if not completed.

 

3. Variety: Elites and Heretics are the same thing. That is why in this mode, it progresses with Grunts, Jackals and so on. All previous enemies will reappear only in the last round.

 

Oh, and it must be an optional DLC.

 

There also adding UNSC air vehicles into Halo 5.

[Axilus Prime]

Three fireteams with the option to play as any of the four members whether solo or co-op. These teams would be Osiris, Blue Team, and a Sangheili team composed of the Arbiter, Mahkee, Rtas, and one other Elite.

[Twinreaper]

Not sure where you jave been since launch, but H5 is ANYTHING but a success and is riddled with issues and bugs that ARE major.

 

Anyway, the following is a short list that I believe needs to be contained within H6 to win back the fanbase and provide more replay value and stability...

 

1- Splitscreen and LAN support

 

2- Do away with "leet" testers and actually listen to the intelligent veterans of the franchise.

 

3- Remove Forge maps as a "multiplayer map" collection. On that note, forge created variants and or Forge itself is boring and shows lack of map creativity on the developers behalf.

 

4- Return to Halo CE - Halo 3 multiplayer gameplay.

 

5- Completely re-write the engine from scratch starting with CE Blam! version code source like they did with Halo 3 to improve stability and cleanup the myriad of tag dependencies that are not helpful nor efficient in post processing and memory management.

 

6- Bring back Firefight!!! It's easily hands down the most MISSED gamemode.

 

7- Reduce the amount of flair and general custimization options and create a new improved and less gimmicky way of extending replay value.

 

8- On the same lines of replay.....make the AI more intelligent and comparable to the AI handling and difficulty seen most noticable in Halo 2.

 

9- Fire the team in charge of storyboarding!!!

 

10- Actually make any firther Halo games, actually deserving of the Halo name.

[RedStarRocket91]

Most would agree that Halo 5 is a success. It has had better feedback than Halo 4 did, and 343 improved on everything. It's not often you hear a complaint about Halo 5, and when you do it's nothing major.

 

Well, have to disagree with this pretty much straight away. Halo 5 has had some very harsh criticisms so far, many of which are deserved, and a lot of which are fairly serious. But in the interest of keeping this on topic, I'll try to stick to talking about Halo 6.

 

The main thing for me is that 343i really need to start showing that they actually care. While I freely admit my expectations of developers have been warped by playing so much Warframe over the past year, 343i seem to have an absolutely terrible corporate culture - we get very little information about what's going on inside 343i, and what we do get is almost never specific, instead just being vague, doublespeak hype. It's the kind of empty political rhetoric that's supposed to sound good without actually saying anything, and I'm really tired of it. This is particularly prominent with criticisms of the game, especially when those criticisms are about major issues, and for this 343i's community managers need to step up their game. It took nearly two months for Bravo to even confirm that 343i is aware of the issues which are preventing many players from actually being able to connect to the servers - and which are therefore rendering the game literally unplayable for many people. We've had reports of this since launch day, and that's when it should have first been acknowledged. It was even worse during the Master Chief Collection debacle - 343i basically refused to say anything for months, leaving us completely in the dark, and the various community managers basically disappeared altogether.

 

Now I can understand that dealing with the volume of abuse that was directed at 343i during those months is disheartening, and makes you not want to do your job - and if you don't want to do your job, you have the right to quit, a decision I respect. What's not acceptable is to have community managers who refuse to engage with the community. We're talking about the X1's flagship game, from its flagship studio, and yet when it turned out to be completely crippled, the only response we got to our requests for information was silence. This is not okay. And what's worse is that, after disappearing for months on end, when the MCC was finally playable, the community side of 343i came back and tried to act as though nothing had happened.

 

The Waypoint forums are notorious, whether deservedly or not, for poor moderation and no responses to issues players are suffering, Twitter is usually the same, and even on /r/Halo there are very rarely any meaningful responses or information from 343i. And even when we do hear from them - it's only ever to heap praise upon themselves, give evasive or noncommital answers to player questions or suggestions, and generally avoid tackling anything head-on. So, for starters - let's have that fixed in Halo 6. 343i's community managers need to start actually earning their pay - they need to start actually engaging with the playerbase, acknowledging problems quickly, keeping us updated on what's happening in the studio, and pushing other departments for answers - all while dealing with anything they get from the community, be it questions, concerns, suggestions, whatever. It's not enough to write up a bulletin once a week hyping the latest round of matchmaking adjustments, and occasionally dropping a sentence on Neogaf or /r/Halo or whatever. A more open, honest, and transparent studio would go a very long way to rebuilding some of the bridges that have been burned over the past few years.

 

And next, to single out the development side of the studio - we need to get an indication that they're actually making some effort, too. It's all very well to be promised the biggest map pool in Halo history, but when a third of the launch maps are gametype specific, and about half of the remaining maps are essentially slightly reworked versions of other maps, Forge variants, or remakes of older maps (or combinations of all three), that claim starts to ring a bit hollow. It's even worse that the first DLC map is another bloody remix of an existing map - and no, being free doesn't excuse this, because it's supposed to be funded by the profit they're making from the real-money gambling system that is the REQ pool (and more about that in a minute). I'm sorry if this isn't as profitable as they'd hoped, but frankly, that's their problem, not ours, and I'd far rather pay for maps than get dull and uninspired modifications of existing ones. It doesn't really add variety, and it's clearly only built so that they can fulfil their promise of regular 'new' non-forge maps, rather than because they feel it would genuinely add something new to the game. This is cheap, lazy, and not at all appropriate for a full-priced game.

 

This same uninspired laziness also infects the campaign. I'm not going to comment on the writing and plot, as that's a thread in and of itself, but instead going to criticise the gameplay, which increasingly feels uninspired and repetitive. Almost all of the game's content just feels like filler - you could easily take out about 75% of the game's fights and the game would actually be paced better. It doesn't help that the new Proimetheans are terrible bullet sponges, spawn in extremely large numbers, have a lot of incredibly cheap gimmicks, and are almost always fought in respawning waves. After a few missions, fighting them feels more like a chore than actually engaging, and 343i need to take a hard look at not just the enemies themselves, but their level design. The whole campaign felt less like an actual campaign than it did a second season of Spartan Ops in many ways, and as someone who criticised Spartan Ops for its repetitive design, my opinion hasn't changed. The Covenant are still reasonably fun to fight - but the Prometheans are just dull and tiresome, which is far worse than merely being difficult.

 

Next, I need to criticise the art team, who having crafted quite a few really good looking levels and vistas in the campaign, went back to the same old incredibly generic, dull and unimaginative UNSC visual style for pretty much every multiplayer map. It's not necessarily a bad style in and of itself - but it's the only style that seems to be used (with the exceptions of Truth and Regret which are themselves remakes of older maps anyway), and for a series which has traditionally had such diverse arenas as Halo, this is a huge letdown.

 

And finally - the REQ system. I could write a whole article criticising it (and indeed, have!) and still have room to do another, but I'll keep this short and just state that it needs to go. It's a disgusting system of exploitative, money-grubbing, anti-consumer, balance-destroying real-money gambling and it has absolutely no place in any videogame, let alone Halo.

 

I think that just about covers the short version...

[BATMAN]

 

1- Splitscreen and LAN support

 

4- Return to Halo CE - Halo 3 multiplayer gameplay.

 

5- Completely re-write the engine from scratch starting with CE Blam! version code source like they did with Halo 3 to improve stability and cleanup the myriad of tag dependencies that are not helpful nor efficient in post processing and memory management.

 

Ily Twin

[SII Adam S017]

1. Frigate combat is needed! It's the Xbox one for godsake, if a ps2 can run space battles with two big ships and plenty of smaller ships then so should the Xbox one. A frigate would bring something new to the table.

2. By now we should be seeing large scale combat like 100 vs 100. Not a puny 12 v 12.

[Azaxx]

The campaign to be well told in both the story and how the gameplay explains the game itself in a long and extended campaign. Halo 2 and ODST did well on this, having some of the best campaigns in the series. When you think about it, Halo 2 was the first campaign to allow you to switch characters to explain different sides of the story. In doing so, it gave both main characters a lengthy amount of time to give a depth of character to both. Granted Chief at the time had jack all to his character, but his role in his fight against the Covenant and later the Flood was explored in a 'final stand' sense. The Arbiter on the other hand was given backstory before the gameplay even started and showed a large change in character as the campaign progressed.

ODST was similar in the sense that the characters were given their own short stories, with Rookie searching in a dark, desolate and quiet metropolis. The detective style of gameplay obviously isn't everyone's favourite way to play a game, but it's undeniable that way it was presented allowed the pretty poor story in ODST to seem so much better just by playing in such an unusual style.

 

Halo 5 Guardians failed in the style that Halo 2 conquered, the story is left up for debate for who likes it. However it's excusable on how short it was, the story given was presented in such a lazy way with missions that if removed from the game would've left very little difference to the campaign. The first two missions in particular, if those were removed it would've had absolutely no impact on the game at all. Dr Halsey has no impact on the story in any regard other than confirming what Lasky already knew, Chief is chasing after Cortana. Argent Moon also has zero impact on the story, that Covenant fleet had no backstory in any official material 343i has stamped nor was given any mention thereafter in the game. Blue Team could've easily had a mission that had any relevance to the story other than "I'm defying your order, AWOL now".

Additionally the entire story arc on Sanghelios was completely pointless, the only reason you played on that game was because it was fanservice from 343i just to get you on a Guardian after spending missions doing crap all. Kraken fight? What's the point of it, you're given no information to what it is doing on the planet nor what relevance it has with a Covenant assault force. That entire arc could've been scrapped for story that was related entirely to the Guardians, which is the title of the game, not Halo 5 Sanghelios, which albeit sounds pretty fun.

 

Arbiter spin-off game when?

 

 

Moving on from the actual missions that are 'related' to the main story, the gameplay was atrocious. When you meet and fight the Warden for the first, maybe even the second time, there is a sense of "wow, now this is a boss that seems cool for Halo". Actually having a mechanic on how to kill him is rather different to how we've fought previously in Halo and ties in well with the new mechanics for Prometheans. Then you meet him for the third time, then the fourth, oh boy here we go, then the fifth, then the sixth. What on Earth was 343i thinking? Answer, they weren't. The pathetic excuse of "He has a single mind but a million bodies" was such a lazy way to excuse the fact that 343i could not think of varied combat environments without having to resort to the wave after wave of Promethean forces. When thinking back on it, the only fun missions in H5G were the ones that didn't even have Prometheans, because the combat was actually different and fun due to the way the Covenant work. I thought Halo 4 was boring in how the Prometheans were handled in a rinse and repeat environment, but at least it had one fun mission being in the Broadsword. H5G's was just laziness and uninspired environments that seemed to be copy pasted everywhere in terms of gameplay design.

 

Then you have the characters, Blue Team was completely and utterly wasted. One of the favourite set of characters in the extended universe put into the game, for what? To stand there for a few missions with zero impact on both the story and Chief's character? They had no character development and explained nothing about them while out of combat. For me the only purpose that they served was for getting Linda's Sniper Rifle. Speaking of teams, Osiris was a disgrace. You play through 12 missions with them for you to only get a backstory on each character in the final mission from Cortana going through the Service Records. I'm sorry, but that is not how you explain backstory on any main character regardless of their importance to the story. When you introduce a character, you introduce, the character. They were empty shells (other than Buck) for 93.3% of the game, then to have their Service Records just read to them as a last ditch effort to explain who they were. It's like 343i completely forgot that they didn't explain who anyone was and had to find a crappy way to give any ray of light on a character by that point. Hell, even the corrupting AI on a colony world had more backstory and character than 6 of the 8 main characters did for the entire game. Buck and Chief were the only characters that had anything known about them from playing the games from Halo. Buck had been in 2 previous games and Chief obviously being in every main title. Everyone else, whelp you're not getting any backstory about them from playing games alone.

 

I could go into depth about how poor the basic functions of multiplayer are, or the 'reward' system works, or even how you literally need XBL gold to play solo Custom games. Such poor decisions by 343i have negatively impacted the most fundamental qualities of Halo in such a heavy degree that if you compare H5G to any other Halo game, they feel nothing alike. That being said the actual gameplay for H5G feels similar to the original 3, but that's it. The maps are poor, the lighting isn't good and the hit detection is not on par with what Halo should be by now. These issues are incredibly easily fixed though, just look at the original trilogy maps and see what made them great. Look at Halo 3 and see how well lit everything is. If you're going to decrease aim assist, actually ensure that you're rewarded when you do hit shots then.

 

These issues are so much easier to fix compared to the issues of the campaign listed above. The only way I can see 343i fixing the campaign is by replacing staff that worked on it. They failed two main series titles in a row, they showed what their best is and it's clearly subpar for what Halo should be expected of by now. Halo's campaign should be grand in scale and indepth with story, and Halo 4 failed on the scale and H5G failed in the story, if things remain the same, Halo 6 will fail in both.

[Twinreaper]

Dang! Both RSR and Azzy became TL;DR masterz! I'm such a proud Pappa lol

 

Could NOT agree more with everything they listed and it is all too painfully obvious that 343 tried to emulate the campaign success of Halo 2 and the modern fps of well known games and failed.

 

As for the corporate culture aspecr, I knew they were trash ever since Kiki posted more pics of alcohol romps at the office, rather than discuss seriois developer happenings over Twitter. From my standpoint there seems to be quite an ego and overconfidence problem with the team. To the extent in which the double speak and vague press leads an intelligent person to conclude that the team leads actually have no idea how to properly nurture a team or effectively lead it in a positive way.

 

I don't know if it's the 'I love Halo and worked for Bungie" aspect that they mostly have, or it's specifically the team leads. One thing is for sure, the developers need to be reevaluated and there needs to be a management change. No time like now to do some house cleaning.

 

I can honestly say that if Halo 6 doesn't live up to expectations, that Halo will become the IP of the past and it will fade away into obscurity.

[Ranger Intel]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. Nice to see your thoughts on Halo 5 and how the next FPS can be improved from it.

 

 

Not sure where you jave been since launch, but H5 is ANYTHING but a success and is riddled with issues and bugs that ARE major.

 

Well, have to disagree with this pretty much straight away. Halo 5 has had some very harsh criticisms so far, many of which are deserved, and a lot of which are fairly serious.

 

I honestly haven't seen that much negative criticism. Besides the lack of split-screen being the biggest problem, I don't see why many think the game is not a success. It's a definite improvement from Halo 4 (which wasn't that bad IMO). Could you please list the key points in which Halo 5 'failed'?

[Azaxx]

 

I honestly haven't seen that much negative criticism. Besides the lack of split-screen being the biggest problem, I don't see why many think the game is not a success. It's a definite improvement from Halo 4 (which wasn't that bad IMO). Could you please list the key points in which Halo 5 'failed'?

 

 

• Seriously a 4 hour campaign that wasn't well made.
• Awful character development.
• Hunt the Truth advertisements having nothing to do with the actual story.
• Lack of memorable characters.
• Lack of memorable multiplayer maps at launch.
• Bad Forge maps used in DLC map packs.
• Lack of varied gametypes in Matchmaking.
• Fundamental spawn faults.
• Horrid textures in every portion of the game.
• Game built upon the idea of 60fps and no Splitscreen or LAN.
• Forge coming out over a month after launch.
• Forge not having a tutorial despite it being completely different to the prior iterations of Forge.
• The game literally requires XBL Gold to play.
• Horrible 'reward' system.
• Also it's the worst selling main title Halo game in the franchise, evidently a failure. It hasn't even sold half of what Halo 4 did.

Those are the main points, but I could go on with other minor issues.

[Ranger Intel]

 

• Seriously a 4 hour campaign that wasn't well made.
• Awful character development.
• Hunt the Truth advertisements having nothing to do with the actual story.
• Lack of memorable characters.
• Lack of memorable multiplayer maps at launch.
• Bad Forge maps used in DLC map packs.
• Lack of varied gametypes in Matchmaking.
• Fundamental spawn faults.
• Horrid textures in every portion of the game.
• Game built upon the idea of 60fps and no Splitscreen or LAN.
• Forge coming out over a month after launch.
• Forge not having a tutorial despite it being completely different to the prior iterations of Forge.
• The game literally requires XBL Gold to play.
• Horrible 'reward' system.
• Also it's the worst selling main title Halo game in the franchise, evidently a failure. It hasn't even sold half of what Halo 4 did.

Those are the main points, but I could go on with other minor issues.

 

 

Thanks that's perfect.

 

- On Legendary the Campaign drags on to more than 4 hours, never tried LASO before though.

- Blue Team don't have a strong personality, so their 'development' was just fine in my eyes. You're right about Osiris though. If they're going to play a key role in the story, they're going to need more background and better character dev.

- Hunt the Truth was definitely more of a side story, I don't think they intended to have it directly in the campaign. I do agree that some factors should have been brought in though, such as the whole Sapien Sunrise situation.

- Agreed. They could have put more memorable characters in. It's great to see the Arbiter, but what happened to other key figures such as Admiral Hood?

- I've got a feeling they'll bring back a classic map in a future DLC update.

- I'm personally not interested in forging myself, and haven't looked into the maps, so I'll take your word on this one.

- I'm fine with the game types, but they're not as varied as previous Halo games so that's a definite flaw.

- I've also had issues with the spawning at times, and I don't like it. Mainly occurs in Arena.

- I didn't see that big of an issue with textures, but their faults could have most likely been avoided if 343 invested more time in developing them.

- The fact there's no split-screen is a massive issue for most people, and one of Halo 5's biggest failures. It personally doesn't bother me that much, but it's an issue that should have been dealt with before launch.

- Forge coming out later is most likely due to Microsoft's deadline.

- From what I've seen of Forge, all I can say is that it looks more complex. Something that would definitely need a tutorial, nice thinking.

- For most people that's not an issue, but it matters to some. Aren't Forge and Campaign accessible without Gold?

- Before launch I thought the REQ system was going to really bother me, but now I don't have any major issues with it. Not to say it's flawless, a much better system could have been produced. I still think Halo 3 does the best job of rewarding players for completing challenges (achievements most of the time). These challenges were mostly done in Campaign as well, so Gold wasn't required.

- The low sales are most likely due to the impression people had after Halo 4. Many disliked it, but seeing that Halo 5 has improved from it, I think sales just need time to begin getting closer to Halo 4's sales. Halo 4 was more hyped, everyone wanted to know what happened after Chief was lost on the Dawn, this is unlike Halo 5's hype. Many dropped out after Halo 4, that's mainly why the sales have been no where near as high as before. People were disappointed with H4, and lost faith in 343 Industries. This is more of an effect, not really a cause, but it's great to compare the sales. Statistics mean everything to the producers.

 

These are great points.

 

 

 

It seems some of you are disappointed with the quality of the campaign. What is it exactly that makes you believe the campaign is a failure?

[RedStarRocket91]

It seems some of you are disappointed with the quality of the campaign. What is it exactly that makes you believe the campaign is a failure?

 

Okay guys, this is it, I'm going in. If you're triggered by walls of text, stop reading now because you're not going to like this. Content has been spoiler-tagged for the sake of length - cheers for the idea, Spartan!

 

 

Characters

 

Chief is barely in it. The one returning character from previous games who's had any degree of character development or exploration, and he gets three missions. This isn't helped by the fact that Blue Team's interactions with him are terrible - at the start of their first mission things are promising, with the Chief getting lost in thought as he strokes the part of his helmet where Cortana used to be, and Fred quietly voicing some concerns to Linda and Kelly about him in the back. I'd hoped that what was going to happen was that Blue Team were going to be used as a way of examining the Chief's mental state - that there'd be something about him trying to fall back onto them as friends in his grief, with them unsure about how to support him after being apart for so long and having gone through something so traumatic. Perhaps even little things like someone cracking a joke that the other two would laugh at, but Chief wouldn't really get, showing how estranged he'd become - and perhaps leading onto more character evolution where he slowly starts to deal with his grief and embrace his family again, or where it just consumes him and he starts pushing everyone away completely, believing that there just isn't a place for him in the world anymore.

 

This would have set up a much more interesting confrontation with Cortana. If he hadn't dealt with her death, and instead felt like there was no going back for him, as though there was no way he could find purpose in a society in which everyone he knew is either dead or has moved on from him - in which he's been replaced by his military, and in which he's a soldier in a war which has just wound down and he's likely to be sent off to start killing the very humans who he's spent the last over thirty years risking his life trying to defend - then the confrontation with Cortana becomes so much more compelling. He's being offered a chance to reunite with the love of his life, the one person who has literally been inside his head, and who is offering him both value as an individual and a new purpose, all while promising to make his sacrifices worthwhile by trying to prevent more human blood from being shed in petty politics and internal strife. That makes for some absolutely heartbreaking drama, whichever way he decides - either he accepts her offer, severing the last of his ties to humanity and his old life in pursuit of actually getting some feeling of fulfilment and independence for the first time since he was kidnapped as a child, or he refuses and in doing so puts his principles and loyalty to a coldly indifferent military-industrial complex which treats him as nothing more than a tool ahead of any chance he has of actually finding peace and happiness.

 

See, this would have worked so much better than what we got, and would have tied in nicely with the whole 'Hunt The Truth' thing, and done right, could have made for a genuinely emotional moment in which the true nature of the Chief's character is revealed and we see the facade slip, just for a few moments. But nope, instead after that initial promise we just get dull, flat characters with no evolution or development, showing a constant professionally stoic attitude about everything that happens and in which party banter is restricted to little more than mission details or brief questions about what they're shooting next, in which Cortana becomes a flat one-dimensional villain, and there's no real sense of conflict or difficulty about the decision Chief eventually makes.

 

And so, having covered one character, on to Osiris!

 

Osiris do a little bit better than Blue Team in terms of how they're developed. Having Nathan Fillion and Laura Bailey is a big plus, as they're both fantastic voice actors with a ton of charisma, and being allowed to actually inject a little emotion and variance into their lines definitely helps add a bit of character. But again, they suffer from the same issue as Blue Team, in that there's no real sense of inner conflict about what they're doing - Buck briefly mentions he's worried about what they're seen to be doing, and then drops it after one conversation, while Locke, Tanaka, and Vale never voice a single concern about it. They're just told 'go and capture Chief', and so they set out to do it. That's it.

 

In terms of party banter - it's better than Blue Team, but still lacking. Buck aside, none of them really seem to have any actual personality - they're slightly more light-hearted and upbeat than Blue Team, and they crack a few jokes here and there, but again there's nothing to really differentiate them from one another - barring a few of Locke's orders, and bits where Vale speaks or translates Sangheili, you could swap all the dialogue around between the characters and probably wouldn't notice the difference. And worse, we don't even find out who they actually are until the very end of the game - Buck gets a pass as he's in ODST, but unless you've paid attention to the expanded universe stuff, they barely get any backstory at all. Vale gets a little bit in order to explain how she learned Sangheili, but that's about it. Don't get me wrong, they're not bad, per sais, they're pretty average for most shooters. But they're just really hollow and disappointing after how well-developed and interesting the Chief and Cortana were in Halo 4, and to come on from characterisation that strong to protagonists as underdeveloped and generic as Osiris are is a real let-down.

 

We were also promised before the game came out that there'd be subtle differences between Blue and Osiris in their missions, to show how different the different Spartan generations are. But that doesn't really come through at all - I can understand that they don't want to alter the gameplay between the two teams too much, as that would probably be more frustrating than fun, but most of the time they don't really feel any different. There's not really a sense of Blue Team being more of a 'classic' Halo experience or anything - even things like using slightly older weapons, having more traditional levels, talking less in combat, would have contributed to a sense of a generation gap, but it's just not present. One thing that I'd have loved to have seen would be if Osiris had actually had a few generic lines in combat - think Spartan voices in Reach's Firefight or whatever, just something to make them seem a bit more audacious and flamboyant compared to the cold, more serious Spartan-IIs. But other than the Artemis and their scripted lines in cutscenes - they're not really any different. It's wasted potential, more than anything.

 

Going on to the supporting cast - again, they're a real let-down. Lasky got a fair bit of screentime in Halo 4, and Roland and Palmer got a bit more in Spartan Ops. There's also Halsey (and we'll come onto her more later), forming an incredibly diverse range of opinions with which we could get some fresh and unique perspectives on the Halo universe: Lasky is the regular UNSC, who may well be a little intimidated by the Spartans who seem to be taking over everything these days or feel like they're the best hope humanity has for lasting peace, Palmer is the Spartan-IV, who might want to live up to or even outdo the older Spartan-IIs or just feels that they're ultimately obsolete and overrated, Halsey who could either be slowly cracking and showing genuine concern and affection for Blue Team as she realises that they're essentially her children or still hoping that they're going to be the next step in evolution as she was suggesting in Halo 4, and Roland of course giving some much-needed perspective on what it's like to be an AI in this new order, as well as getting the chance to actually develop as a character, having to make a genuinely difficult decision between Cortana's offer and his loyalty to the UNSC in what could parallel Chief's own decision since both of them are regarded as expendable assets - but again, nothing comes of it. They have a few conversations for plot exposition and advancement, and that's really all there is to it.

 

And what's worse is that this is even set up at the end of Halo 4 - the conflict between being alive and being a machine, which Halo 5 then blurs with Cortana and the domain. What does it mean to be alive - and to die? Is there life after death, and what is the price? If you were designed, can you ever actually grow beyond your purpose - and is it right to find acceptance outside of the society you grew up in? Can you ever go back to how things were, or are you just deluding yourself by trying? What if you want to go back a world which has moved on without you? These are all incredibly profound questions which could give so much depth and development to characters as they're forced to confront the nature of their lives, but it's all swept under the damn rug. Chief goes straight back to being a stoic UNSC loyalist, Roland is loyal to his crew just because, Locke and the Chief ultimately reconcile having only ever had a misunderstanding to begin with, and Cortana is just a tyrant now. Utterly, utterly wasted potential.

 

And that, of course, brings us on to section two:

 

Stuff from Halo 4

 

What the hell happened here? There were so many plot threads in Halo 4 which could have led to big story developments or character progression, but were just swept under the rug and forgotten, or wasted completely. To take the first example - Halsey gives a speech about how the Spartans are the next step of human evolution. Indeed, there's even a brief moment where Cortana freaks out and points out to the Chief that the UNSC just replaced him with the Spartan-IVs - a new generation of Spartans, not his peers but his descendants. The Librarian herself shows up to tell Chief about how everything that has happened was orchestrated specifically to bring him about, so that humanity could attain the mantle, so the idea of humanity evolving to their next step is very much set up for use in Halo 5... and it's not mentioned once.

 

There's other stuff, too. In Spartan Ops, we discover that the Prometheans are being formed from recent victims of the Composer, even on Requiem - there's a lot that could have been done with this. Cortana comes back, after all - is there no way we could use the Domain to help all those Prometheans too? Is killing them, in a very real sense, murdering civilians because each one destroyed is one less person who can't be saved? Bungie loved their religious symbolism - this is setting up a whole concept of John as the literal Messiah, returning to save humanity from robotic purgatory, or the Spartans becoming actual Demons and thus giving some credit back to the Covenant, as well as highlighting the divide between Spartans who just enjoy killing enemies versus civilians who want nothing more than to see their loved ones again. This, too, goes nowhere. Prometheans are just the stuff we shoot. No philosophy, no discussion.

 

And it gets worse, too. Between the Librarian and the Didact, we're getting the most in-depth look at Forerunner society to date outside of the expanded universe - we're seeing that divide between the martial authority and conservatism of the Didact, who wants to maintain the status quo because he believes it's the healthiest thing for the galaxy, and the naturalism and revolutionism of the Librarian, who feels the best thing for the galaxy is to allow it to continue developing and changing rather than stagnating. That's another conflict which is set up in Halo 5 - Chief isn't just having to choose between love and duty, he's also facing essentially the same choice as the AIs, of a conservative peace across the galaxy in which he, as a Spartan-II, remains relevant, and one in which he accepts that he is in fact redundant and obsolete, and that he's going to be replaced and have nothing left in his life. For goodness' sake, the terminals in Halo 4 showed conversations between the Librarian and the Didact which set this up perfectly, The Librarian even eventually shoots the Didact and sticks him in a Cryptum until he wakes up to help lead the better universe that she's created in thousands of years' time. This is such an obvious parallel between John and Cortana that I can't believe it isn't explicitly lampshaded in Halo 5 - and yet, it's completely ignored.

 

What about the Janus Key? That was the climax of Spartan Ops, a device of huge significance and which formed the entire basis of the cliffhanger Halo 4's story ended on. When Halsey came back (and was immediately forgiven and forgave as though nothing had ever happened), that key could be reformed... and yet, this was also just completely ignored. Another potential plot thread completely discarded.

 

In fact, Halo 5 essentially just undoes the whole plot of Halo 4. Nothing that happened actually matters in the slightest other than Cortana 'dying'. You could have opened Halo 5 with Chief having a nightmare about how Cortana vanished before he was rescued from the Forward unto Dawn and he couldn't do anything to help her, and Halo 5's plot wouldn't really be affected in the slightest. Retroactively, the strongest story of the entire Halo series to date, with all the character development it entailed, has been rendered completely moot. There's no follow-up on anything that happened except Cortana's death, and that's just completely wasted potential.

 

And speaking of wastes of time...

 

The Plot

 

The plot has no character agency at all. Nothing you do matters in the slightest - if Chief, Locke et al had simply decided to take the day off and curl up in bed with a cup of coffee and some future Netflix, it wouldn't have made any difference to what actually happened.

 

Even a bad plot can be saved by some good underlying themes or questions, or even just strong characters facing personal dilemmas. But, as we've established, Halo 5 doesn't really have any of those, so it's forced to rely on its core plot... which is just nonsense. Cortana is back, but now she's evil, and wants to take over the galaxy. Chief opposes her because it would make for a pretty short game if he just joined her as soon as he found out and because Warden Eternal insists on trying to kill him for... reasons, and Cortana is basically shown as being callous and arrogant throughout the entire game, because apparently that's what happens when you become immortal. Also, Locke wants to hunt down the Chief, because we have to pad the game time out somehow and don't want to make the plot deeper or more compelling.

 

Now, it's very possible to get basic plots like this to work well - Halo 4's plot wasn't exactly complicated, but it was executed with plenty of drama, strong characters and in a tasteful and appropriate way. But since Halo 5 is so devoid of that characterisation, it just feels lazy and uninspired. We get a short speech from Cortana about how she's going to make the world a better place, and how she got extra perspective when her rampancy was cured, but that's really it. There's a short back-and-forth between her and John when they discuss how Cortana will be essentially using the Guardians to intimidate systems into submission and enforcing her dictatorship on everyone, but that's it. Another incredibly compelling questions just wasted - and frankly, maybe Cortana does have a point. In a galaxy completely wracked with war, under the threat of the Flood, in which the survival of most of the sentient species is again under threat, and with constant political infighting to the point where there's a very real chance John is going to be sent to kill the people he's supposed to be defending, perhaps a benevolent dictatorship which removes all military power is the best option for everyone's quality of life. I'm sure the Prometheans, backed by Forerunner tech, could de-glass planets far more efficiently than the colonists on Meridian, for example: and ONI would have a far harder time spreading plagues meant to disintegrate people to planets whose species it didn't like. As usual, this is a question which is just completely wasted, in favour of an incredibly short and shallow anti-imperialist message (and a particularly ironic one from a man who is loyal to a heavily militarised state).

 

What's worse is that we don't even really get the chance to see for ourselves how Cortana's vision compares. We saw how hard life was for the colonists on Meridian - backbreaking labour, constant threat of attack, paranoia about super-soldiers suddenly showing up with undeclared intentions, poor quality-of-life and exploitation by indifferent corporate industry. But we don't see what the alternative under Cortana would actually be like - it would have been nice even if we'd just had a short interlude-style mission on Genesis. There's no reason why a few colonists couldn't have somehow gotten there - survived being dragged by a Guardian, bad luck in slipspace, tricked into boarding a transport actually run by Cortana or a rogue AI, captured and teleported by the Prometheans, whatever. It would have been a great opportunity to actually show how different Cortana's proposed future would be from how conditions actually are, for better or worse, and given some real context to the Chief's decision. But again, it's a potential story avenue and much-needed context which is completely overlooked, and thus deprives Cortana of some potential sympathy for her motives. Granted, this would probably have affected the Chief's decision toward the end - but since the way it's done is extremely shallow and dull anyway, that's not really a big problem.

 

And, speaking of big problems, we come to our next section...

 

The Warden Eternal

 

For goodness' sake. I don't even know where to begin with this guy. He's a villain with no backstory, no explanation, and no real motive. He exists for one purpose only - to be a boss fight. That's his one purpose in the game... and he does a terrible job of it. Fighting the Warden isn't fun - he's incredibly tanky, very agile, and has a multitude of instant-kill attacks, most of which are poorly telegraphed, and often backed up by large numbers of enemies, some of which infinitely respawn. In single-player he's a nightmare to kill as he always focuses on the human player, his sword/charge attacks are nearly impossible to dodge, you can't attack him from the from, and if you try and run away from him he'll just instakill you with a ranged attack anyway. With four players? Sure, fun. With one? Not in the least.

 

And you have to fight him something like six times.

 

Warden is just plain frustrating. He's there purely because the devs wanted to have a boss fight, but in a strong Halo tradition, couldn't be bothered to actually make an interesting one, so they just went with the most generic thing imaginable - a big guy with a weak spot who can soak up a lot of fire and has instant kill attacks, and they don't even really bother giving him a place in the plot. He's just sort of there, as a reason for there to be enemies. His stated motive (of protecting Cortana) is ridiculous and the worst kind of possessive misogynist trash, and surprisingly the game doesn't even address how problematic that is, which is a particular shame as Halo 5 is otherwise generally pretty good on gender matters. If you were to rip the Warden out, there would be a lot less shooting, but not really anything different plot-wise.

 

I think that's about it for now. I might come back and do another post some time about what I dislike about the game mechanically, but since this is already running close to 3,500 words, I think it's probably for the best that I cut this 'short', in what is possibly the least appropriate use of that word ever.

 

 

Anyway, hope this helps explain some of my problems with the campaign as a story!

[Ranger Intel]

 

Okay guys, this is it, I'm going in. If you're triggered by walls of text, stop reading now because you're not going to like this.

 

Characters

 

Chief is barely in it. The one returning character from previous games who's had any degree of character development or exploration, and he gets three missions. This isn't helped by the fact that Blue Team's interactions with him are terrible - at the start of their first mission things are promising, with the Chief getting lost in thought as he strokes the part of his helmet where Cortana used to be, and Fred quietly voicing some concerns to Linda and Kelly about him in the back. I'd hoped that what was going to happen was that Blue Team were going to be used as a way of examining the Chief's mental state - that there'd be something about him trying to fall back onto them as friends in his grief, with them unsure about how to support him after being apart for so long and having gone through something so traumatic. Perhaps even little things like someone cracking a joke that the other two would laugh at, but Chief wouldn't really get, showing how estranged he'd become - and perhaps leading onto more character evolution where he slowly starts to deal with his grief and embrace his family again, or where it just consumes him and he starts pushing everyone away completely, believing that there just isn't a place for him in the world anymore.

 

This would have set up a much more interesting confrontation with Cortana. If he hadn't dealt with her death, and instead felt like there was no going back for him, as though there was no way he could find purpose in a society in which everyone he knew is either dead or has moved on from him - in which he's been replaced by his military, and in which he's a soldier in a war which has just wound down and he's likely to be sent off to start killing the very humans who he's spent the last over thirty years risking his life trying to defend - then the confrontation with Cortana becomes so much more compelling. He's being offered a chance to reunite with the love of his life, the one person who has literally been inside his head, and who is offering him both value as an individual and a new purpose, all while promising to make his sacrifices worthwhile by trying to prevent more human blood from being shed in petty politics and internal strife. That makes for some absolutely heartbreaking drama, whichever way he decides - either he accepts her offer, severing the last of his ties to humanity and his old life in pursuit of actually getting some feeling of fulfilment and independence for the first time since he was kidnapped as a child, or he refuses and in doing so puts his principles and loyalty to a coldly indifferent military-industrial complex which treats him as nothing more than a tool ahead of any chance he has of actually finding peace and happiness.

 

See, this would have worked so much better than what we got, and would have tied in nicely with the whole 'Hunt The Truth' thing, and done right, could have made for a genuinely emotional moment in which the true nature of the Chief's character is revealed and we see the facade slip, just for a few moments. But nope, instead after that initial promise we just get dull, flat characters with no evolution or development, showing a constant professionally stoic attitude about everything that happens and in which party banter is restricted to little more than mission details or brief questions about what they're shooting next, in which Cortana becomes a flat one-dimensional villain, and there's no real sense of conflict or difficulty about the decision Chief eventually makes.

 

And so, having covered one character, on to Osiris!

 

Osiris do a little bit better than Blue Team in terms of how they're developed. Having Nathan Fillion and Laura Bailey is a big plus, as they're both fantastic voice actors with a ton of charisma, and being allowed to actually inject a little emotion and variance into their lines definitely helps add a bit of character. But again, they suffer from the same issue as Blue Team, in that there's no real sense of inner conflict about what they're doing - Buck briefly mentions he's worried about what they're seen to be doing, and then drops it after one conversation, while Locke, Tanaka, and Vale never voice a single concern about it. They're just told 'go and capture Chief', and so they set out to do it. That's it.

 

In terms of party banter - it's better than Blue Team, but still lacking. Buck aside, none of them really seem to have any actual personality - they're slightly more light-hearted and upbeat than Blue Team, and they crack a few jokes here and there, but again there's nothing to really differentiate them from one another - barring a few of Locke's orders, and bits where Vale speaks or translates Sangheili, you could swap all the dialogue around between the characters and probably wouldn't notice the difference. And worse, we don't even find out who they actually are until the very end of the game - Buck gets a pass as he's in ODST, but unless you've paid attention to the expanded universe stuff, they barely get any backstory at all. Vale gets a little bit in order to explain how she learned Sangheili, but that's about it. Don't get me wrong, they're not bad, per sais, they're pretty average for most shooters. But they're just really hollow and disappointing after how well-developed and interesting the Chief and Cortana were in Halo 4, and to come on from characterisation that strong to protagonists as underdeveloped and generic as Osiris are is a real let-down.

 

We were also promised before the game came out that there'd be subtle differences between Blue and Osiris in their missions, to show how different the different Spartan generations are. But that doesn't really come through at all - I can understand that they don't want to alter the gameplay between the two teams too much, as that would probably be more frustrating than fun, but most of the time they don't really feel any different. There's not really a sense of Blue Team being more of a 'classic' Halo experience or anything - even things like using slightly older weapons, having more traditional levels, talking less in combat, would have contributed to a sense of a generation gap, but it's just not present. One thing that I'd have loved to have seen would be if Osiris had actually had a few generic lines in combat - think Spartan voices in Reach's Firefight or whatever, just something to make them seem a bit more audacious and flamboyant compared to the cold, more serious Spartan-IIs. But other than the Artemis and their scripted lines in cutscenes - they're not really any different. It's wasted potential, more than anything.

 

Going on to the supporting cast - again, they're a real let-down. Lasky got a fair bit of screentime in Halo 4, and Roland and Palmer got a bit more in Spartan Ops. There's also Halsey (and we'll come onto her more later), forming an incredibly diverse range of opinions with which we could get some fresh and unique perspectives on the Halo universe: Lasky is the regular UNSC, who may well be a little intimidated by the Spartans who seem to be taking over everything these days or feel like they're the best hope humanity has for lasting peace, Palmer is the Spartan-IV, who might want to live up to or even outdo the older Spartan-IIs or just feels that they're ultimately obsolete and overrated, Halsey who could either be slowly cracking and showing genuine concern and affection for Blue Team as she realises that they're essentially her children or still hoping that they're going to be the next step in evolution as she was suggesting in Halo 4, and Roland of course giving some much-needed perspective on what it's like to be an AI in this new order, as well as getting the chance to actually develop as a character, having to make a genuinely difficult decision between Cortana's offer and his loyalty to the UNSC in what could parallel Chief's own decision since both of them are regarded as expendable assets - but again, nothing comes of it. They have a few conversations for plot exposition and advancement, and that's really all there is to it.

 

And what's worse is that this is even set up at the end of Halo 4 - the conflict between being alive and being a machine, which Halo 5 then blurs with Cortana and the domain. What does it mean to be alive - and to die? Is there life after death, and what is the price? If you were designed, can you ever actually grow beyond your purpose - and is it right to find acceptance outside of the society you grew up in? Can you ever go back to how things were, or are you just deluding yourself by trying? What if you want to go back a world which has moved on without you? These are all incredibly profound questions which could give so much depth and development to characters as they're forced to confront the nature of their lives, but it's all swept under the damn rug. Chief goes straight back to being a stoic UNSC loyalist, Roland is loyal to his crew just because, Locke and the Chief ultimately reconcile having only ever had a misunderstanding to begin with, and Cortana is just a tyrant now. Utterly, utterly wasted potential.

 

And that, of course, brings us on to section two:

 

Stuff from Halo 4

 

What the hell happened here? There were so many plot threads in Halo 4 which could have led to big story developments or character progression, but were just swept under the rug and forgotten, or wasted completely. To take the first example - Halsey gives a speech about how the Spartans are the next step of human evolution. Indeed, there's even a brief moment where Cortana freaks out and points out to the Chief that the UNSC just replaced him with the Spartan-IVs - a new generation of Spartans, not his peers but his descendants. The Librarian herself shows up to tell Chief about how everything that has happened was orchestrated specifically to bring him about, so that humanity could attain the mantle, so the idea of humanity evolving to their next step is very much set up for use in Halo 5... and it's not mentioned once.

 

There's other stuff, too. In Spartan Ops, we discover that the Prometheans are being formed from recent victims of the Composer, even on Requiem - there's a lot that could have been done with this. Cortana comes back, after all - is there no way we could use the Domain to help all those Prometheans too? Is killing them, in a very real sense, murdering civilians because each one destroyed is one less person who can't be saved? Bungie loved their religious symbolism - this is setting up a whole concept of John as the literal Messiah, returning to save humanity from robotic purgatory, or the Spartans becoming actual Demons and thus giving some credit back to the Covenant, as well as highlighting the divide between Spartans who just enjoy killing enemies versus civilians who want nothing more than to see their loved ones again. This, too, goes nowhere. Prometheans are just the stuff we shoot. No philosophy, no discussion.

 

And it gets worse, too. Between the Librarian and the Didact, we're getting the most in-depth look at Forerunner society to date outside of the expanded universe - we're seeing that divide between the martial authority and conservatism of the Didact, who wants to maintain the status quo because he believes it's the healthiest thing for the galaxy, and the naturalism and revolutionism of the Librarian, who feels the best thing for the galaxy is to allow it to continue developing and changing rather than stagnating. That's another conflict which is set up in Halo 5 - Chief isn't just having to choose between love and duty, he's also facing essentially the same choice as the AIs, of a conservative peace across the galaxy in which he, as a Spartan-II, remains relevant, and one in which he accepts that he is in fact redundant and obsolete, and that he's going to be replaced and have nothing left in his life. For goodness' sake, the terminals in Halo 4 showed conversations between the Librarian and the Didact which set this up perfectly, The Librarian even eventually shoots the Didact and sticks him in a Cryptum until he wakes up to help lead the better universe that she's created in thousands of years' time. This is such an obvious parallel between John and Cortana that I can't believe it isn't explicitly lampshaded in Halo 5 - and yet, it's completely ignored.

 

What about the Janus Key? That was the climax of Spartan Ops, a device of huge significance and which formed the entire basis of the cliffhanger Halo 4's story ended on. When Halsey came back (and was immediately forgiven and forgave as though nothing had ever happened), that key could be reformed... and yet, this was also just completely ignored. Another potential plot thread completely discarded.

 

In fact, Halo 5 essentially just undoes the whole plot of Halo 4. Nothing that happened actually matters in the slightest other than Cortana 'dying'. You could have opened Halo 5 with Chief having a nightmare about how Cortana vanished before he was rescued from the Forward unto Dawn and he couldn't do anything to help her, and Halo 5's plot wouldn't really be affected in the slightest. Retroactively, the strongest story of the entire Halo series to date, with all the character development it entailed, has been rendered completely moot. There's no follow-up on anything that happened except Cortana's death, and that's just completely wasted potential.

 

And speaking of wastes of time...

 

The Plot

 

The plot has no character agency at all. Nothing you do matters in the slightest - if Chief, Locke et al had simply decided to take the day off and curl up in bed with a cup of coffee and some future Netflix, it wouldn't have made any difference to what actually happened.

 

Even a bad plot can be saved by some good underlying themes or questions, or even just strong characters facing personal dilemmas. But, as we've established, Halo 5 doesn't really have any of those, so it's forced to rely on its core plot... which is just nonsense. Cortana is back, but now she's evil, and wants to take over the galaxy. Chief opposes her because it would make for a pretty short game if he just joined her as soon as he found out and because Warden Eternal insists on trying to kill him for... reasons, and Cortana is basically shown as being callous and arrogant throughout the entire game, because apparently that's what happens when you become immortal. Also, Locke wants to hunt down the Chief, because we have to pad the game time out somehow and don't want to make the plot deeper or more compelling.

 

Now, it's very possible to get basic plots like this to work well - Halo 4's plot wasn't exactly complicated, but it was executed with plenty of drama, strong characters and in a tasteful and appropriate way. But since Halo 5 is so devoid of that characterisation, it just feels lazy and uninspired. We get a short speech from Cortana about how she's going to make the world a better place, and how she got extra perspective when her rampancy was cured, but that's really it. There's a short back-and-forth between her and John when they discuss how Cortana will be essentially using the Guardians to intimidate systems into submission and enforcing her dictatorship on everyone, but that's it. Another incredibly compelling questions just wasted - and frankly, maybe Cortana does have a point. In a galaxy completely wracked with war, under the threat of the Flood, in which the survival of most of the sentient species is again under threat, and with constant political infighting to the point where there's a very real chance John is going to be sent to kill the people he's supposed to be defending, perhaps a benevolent dictatorship which removes all military power is the best option for everyone's quality of life. I'm sure the Prometheans, backed by Forerunner tech, could de-glass planets far more efficiently than the colonists on Meridian, for example: and ONI would have a far harder time spreading plagues meant to disintegrate people to planets whose species it didn't like. As usual, this is a question which is just completely wasted, in favour of an incredibly short and shallow anti-imperialist message (and a particularly ironic one from a man who is loyal to a heavily militarised state).

 

What's worse is that we don't even really get the chance to see for ourselves how Cortana's vision compares. We saw how hard life was for the colonists on Meridian - backbreaking labour, constant threat of attack, paranoia about super-soldiers suddenly showing up with undeclared intentions, poor quality-of-life and exploitation by indifferent corporate industry. But we don't see what the alternative under Cortana would actually be like - it would have been nice even if we'd just had a short interlude-style mission on Genesis. There's no reason why a few colonists couldn't have somehow gotten there - survived being dragged by a Guardian, bad luck in slipspace, tricked into boarding a transport actually run by Cortana or a rogue AI, captured and teleported by the Prometheans, whatever. It would have been a great opportunity to actually show how different Cortana's proposed future would be from how conditions actually are, for better or worse, and given some real context to the Chief's decision. But again, it's a potential story avenue and much-needed context which is completely overlooked, and thus deprives Cortana of some potential sympathy for her motives. Granted, this would probably have affected the Chief's decision toward the end - but since the way it's done is extremely shallow and dull anyway, that's not really a big problem.

 

And, speaking of big problems, we come to our next section...

 

The Warden Eternal

 

For goodness' sake. I don't even know where to begin with this guy. He's a villain with no backstory, no explanation, and no real motive. He exists for one purpose only - to be a boss fight. That's his one purpose in the game... and he does a terrible job of it. Fighting the Warden isn't fun - he's incredibly tanky, very agile, and has a multitude of instant-kill attacks, most of which are poorly telegraphed, and often backed up by large numbers of enemies, some of which infinitely respawn. In single-player he's a nightmare to kill as he always focuses on the human player, his sword/charge attacks are nearly impossible to dodge, you can't attack him from the from, and if you try and run away from him he'll just instakill you with a ranged attack anyway. With four players? Sure, fun. With one? Not in the least.

 

And you have to fight him something like six times.

 

Warden is just plain frustrating. He's there purely because the devs wanted to have a boss fight, but in a strong Halo tradition, couldn't be bothered to actually make an interesting one, so they just went with the most generic thing imaginable - a big guy with a weak spot who can soak up a lot of fire and has instant kill attacks, and they don't even really bother giving him a place in the plot. He's just sort of there, as a reason for there to be enemies. His stated motive (of protecting Cortana) is ridiculous and the worst kind of possessive misogynist trash, and surprisingly the game doesn't even address how problematic that is, which is a particular shame as Halo 5 is otherwise generally pretty good on gender matters. If you were to rip the Warden out, there would be a lot less shooting, but not really anything different plot-wise.

 

I think that's about it for now. I might come back and do another post some time about what I dislike about the game mechanically, but since this is already running close to 3,500 words, I think it's probably for the best that I cut this 'short', in what is possibly the least appropriate use of that word ever.

 

Anyway, hope this helps explain some of my problems with the campaign as a story!

 

 

This pretty much summed up why Halo 5 is more of a 'Halo 4.5' and not a full game (in terms of Campaign). I'm personally happy with it, but it could have been so much more detailed. It only touches on most characters in a failed attempt of trying to cover everything. It needed to be longer, and more in-depth. And Red, as much as I appreciate the response, I only needed a brief answer...not a thesis.

 

Edit: Placed quote in spoiler.

Edited December 29, 2015 by UNSC Spartan II

[Dark_Avenger]

I just find the fact that 343 Industries stated that halo 5 will be one of the longest of the campaigns, I'm sorry but that seemed as fast as halo 3. Also halo is a game about the rings with the main characters John 117 and Cortana, in halo 2 the arbiter and chief had fair amount of missions, where in halo 5 there are what like 2-3 blue team missions? That right there Is a joke, the new Spartan program does not need to be that involved, it should go blue team, and maybe swords of sangelios. The newer Spartans need to stay out of the main characters area, its alright to have them as support like Marines, or as side maim characters like sgt Johnson, but they are playable and in the game most of the time in halo 5. That right there proved to me that halo is no longer halo, and its now a money game.

[rrhuntington]

Thread Turned More like "What I WOULDN'T Like to see in Halo 6" eh?

 

I'll give you one thing that'll make it all better, and look... I've said it before and I'll say it again. It's been rehashed on my keyboard from the day it was confirmed not to be in Halo 5. (Big Mistake too). The one thing Halo 6 needs to Rock the World, and Fix EVERY SINGLE problem the last few games have had, can be defined in one Line of Dialogue, and that line of dialogue is...

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koTgVubXSX8The Flood bby

 

 

 

Now hear me out. If you look since after Halo 3, the Halo franchise has kind of gone downhill. However you feel about Reach, most people think of the First 3 as a God send trilogy of games. The Flood have been gone just as long as that Trilogy ended. They are the Common Denominator since 2007. They have not made an appearance in a FPS Halo, in what is now going to be ten+ years. And in those years, Halo ain't been the same. So basically what I am trying to say is: Has NOT having the Flood in Halo been working? Plz 343. Just add the Flood. All will be right with the World again, I promise you.

 

 

I'll probably make a serious post about what I want later.

 

Also I guess this'll be the thread I go when I want to Depress myself.

[Wam]

A campaign that isn't half-donkey'ed. Heck, it's so stale.

[I_Make_Big_Boom]

It looks like most of everything that was needed to be said has been said in this thread, so I'm just going to say this:

 

I don't think Halo 6 should be made for a while: if at all. They need to get their asses on fixing the trainwrecks sitting in front of them before moving onto the 3rd disappointment in New-Age Halo (actually, it's more than 3).

 

But if 343 is resolute on moving onto the next title, I would suggest they work on Halo 5: (Insert Subtitle Here). A continuation of Halo 5's story and/or a massive expansion for MP. Similar to Halo 3: ODST. All packaged into a single "game". Use any of the suggestions made here for the "Expansion", and once you have a solid foundation THEN begin production of Halo 6.

 

 

[Caboose The Ace]

A campaign that isn't poorly paced and written by idiots with misleading advertising and wasted characters/events.
 
I'm not getting an Xb1 so all I care about is the story and Halo 4 did a brilliant job story and character wise and so I expected similar quality in Halo 5 only to be proven wrong. Halo 5 make Bungie look like masterful storytellers. I mean, at least they could make a story that was cohesive and made sense.

[Ranger Intel]

Thread Turned More like "What I WOULDN'T Like to see in Halo 6" eh?

 

I'll give you one thing that'll make it all better, and look... I've said it before and I'll say it again. It's been rehashed on my keyboard from the day it was confirmed not to be in Halo 5. (Big Mistake too). The one thing Halo 6 needs to Rock the World, and Fix EVERY SINGLE problem the last few games have had, can be defined in one Line of Dialogue, and that line of dialogue is...

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koTgVubXSX8The Flood bby

 

 

 

Now hear me out. If you look since after Halo 3, the Halo franchise has kind of gone downhill. However you feel about Reach, most people think of the First 3 as a God send trilogy of games. The Flood have been gone just as long as that Trilogy ended. They are the Common Denominator since 2007. They have not made an appearance in a FPS Halo, in what is now going to be ten+ years. And in those years, Halo ain't been the same. So basically what I am trying to say is: Has NOT having the Flood in Halo been working? Plz 343. Just add the Flood. All will be right with the World again, I promise you.

 

 

I'll probably make a serious post about what I want later.

 

Also I guess this'll be the thread I go when I want to Depress myself.

 

If there's no reason for the flood to come back, they shouldn't return. We don't want 343 bending the story just to have the flood back in action. They have been seen in Escalation (so I've heard), so chances are they will be back. And by the way, OP mentioned 'Is there anything you'd like 343 Industries to remove in Halo 6?'.

 

It looks like most of everything that was needed to be said has been said in this thread, so I'm just going to say this:

 

I don't think Halo 6 should be made for a while: if at all. They need to get their asses on fixing the trainwrecks sitting in front of them before moving onto the 3rd disappointment in New-Age Halo (actually, it's more than 3).

 

But if 343 is resolute on moving onto the next title, I would suggest they work on Halo 5: (Insert Subtitle Here). A continuation of Halo 5's story and/or a massive expansion for MP. Similar to Halo 3: ODST. All packaged into a single "game". Use any of the suggestions made here for the "Expansion", and once you have a solid foundation THEN begin production of Halo 6.

 

Halo 6 is inevitable, it will happen. They've began developing it before Halo 5 launched, and I predict it'll be released 2018. I see what you mean and you're right, but Microsoft put 343 under deadlines unfortunately. They'll be working real hard to get Halo 6 in good condition before it drops, I'm confident about that. Halo 5 improved quite a bit, Halo 6 will improve massively.

[rrhuntington]

Post Halo 4 Launch memories rushing back, plz stop. The Dark times, don't need'em.

Anyway I would like on a Basic Halo Homer scale:
-Playable Elites

-Covenant Species that are missing (Brutes,Drones) To Return.

-All gametypes at launch (Why do I even have to ask for this?)
-And then I guess everything posted above.
-ALSO FLOOD. *It will make the game better I promise*

[Fishy]

We can say this with short paragraphs lines that can explain my point without much detail as RSR.

 

1th off, no more PvE modes. Because Firefight is terrible, it was only good back in ODST and that's where it should stay. As well as Spartan Ops, which were basically those one side missions that tell the story line. I'd rather stick with Warzone as the PvE, but improved to the point where it's not frustrating as it is now. And without 343 saying "That's how it was intended" bs, no it wasn't.

 

2nd, 343 doesn't even act as if they know how people play video games. They must think everyone in the world is stupid, and are going to play the way the game is intended. In Warzone, "Oh, they're gonna capture their first armory, then fight over the middle point." Wrong, people from one team are usually at both the armories AND the middle point. And for the team that's losing 800-56, they think a miracle is gonna happen so they throw in Spartan Palmer's stupid voice: "It ain't over yet, we can still destroy the enemy core!" and I suppose that's when all the mediocre players on the losing team, will just slaughter the enemy team and take their bases then walk in and destroy the core.

  Let's not get started on Arena... CTF isn't CTF anymore since people play it like it's Slayer, but with unlimited kills. Just to help people's KDA, thank god there's a timer now on CTF. Otherwise it was ragequitting time. And then there's Strongholds... Dear god, what is it? It's a nightmare. It's territories, but with a MAX and MIN of 3 Strongholds. And owning a territory doesn't get you points, which it should at least give you 1 point per Stronghold or even a longer delay on points if you only have 1 stronghold.... Plus the SPAWN FLIPPING is so damn bad in this game mode, if you even get in view of the enemy stronghold, they're already flipped on spawns to the other-side of the map.

 

3rd, Bugs, Bugs, Bugs galore! If I had 20,000 spiders in my home. I could probably be able to feed them easily with all the bugs in Halo 5. Plus the fact 343 loads more Bugs into the game after every single update.

 

4th, Spawns... This is all I'm going to say on this topic.

 

5th, No server browser on a dedicated servers? Seriously? I mean, it's not needed much since most people would select the closest server ping to them, but it does help if that particular server is down or overloaded or just something is crappy with the server you're playing on, to be able to switch to another server and see if it's a server problem or a problem on my/your end.

 

6th, This is probably the main problem that would occur in Halo 6... And that's 343... I don't care what people are saying, I think they're a terrible company at this point. I honestly am finding other games from this year to be more fun and developed than what Halo 5 is... Hell, I'm enjoying Black Ops 3 over this. As well as Rainbow Six Siege's campaign, it's so much better... And it doesn't even have a campaign! 

 

All I'm saying for now, there's more... But that's for Halo Wars 2, when it completely destroys what Halo Wars was.

[rrhuntington]

If there's no reason for the flood to come back, they shouldn't return. We don't want 343 bending the story just to have the flood back in action. They have been seen in Escalation (so I've heard), so chances are they will be back.

 

I understand why they weren't in Halo 5 and it makes sense that they weren't. It probably would have felt a little too early, and there was still more that needed to be explained and gotten out of the way. When I speak about the Flood coming back I always do so firstly because they were always my favorite enemy to fight. With not many people enjoying the Soldiers and the Prometheans as a whole, Enemy variety needs to increase.

 

That's why I also would like, at the very least, Drones to Return. They had a unique style to them (Flying, Swarming) that added another element to gameplay. 

But that's for Halo Wars 2, when it completely destroys what Halo Wars was.

 

There's probably a handful of people who would prefer that they did do that.

[Ranger Intel]

I understand why they weren't in Halo 5 and it makes sense that they weren't. It probably would have felt a little too early, and there was still more that needed to be explained and gotten out of the way. When I speak about the Flood coming back I always do so firstly because they were always my favorite enemy to fight. With not many people enjoying the Soldiers and the Prometheans as a whole, Enemy variety needs to increase.

 

That's why I also would like, at the very least, Drones to Return. They had a unique style to them (Flying, Swarming) that added another element to gameplay. 

 

There's probably a handful of people who would prefer that they did do that.

 

I see your point. Bringing back these different species will make it feel more like Halo. No matter what though, there must be a legitimate reason for a species to return. Halo 5 has more variety than Halo 4 did, that's for sure. Maybe next game we'll see many of them come back. Cortana certainly hints at it when she calls out for all of them in the last mission of Halo 5.

[Guts]

 

Post Halo 4 Launch memories rushing back, plz stop. The Dark times, don't need'em.

 

Anyway I would like on a Basic Halo Homer scale:

-Playable Elites

-Covenant Species that are missing (Brutes,Drones) To Return.

-All gametypes at launch (Why do I even have to ask for this?)

-And then I guess everything posted above.

-ALSO FLOOD. *It will make the game better I promise*

Playable Elites? Why? What benefit is that? They have never been anything interesting because THEY HAVE NEXT TO NONE IN CUSTOMISATION.

 

You do realise what has happened to Drones and Brutes, don't you? Brutes are used for slave labour and therefore have no chance of anything and Drones have given up fighting altogether because they don't need to. So all-in-all, they aren't doing anything.

 

I can understand the all gametypes at launch bit but really, there's no call for anger or disappointed over it.

 

Your last point though, the Flood. The Flood were interesting in CE as they were a mysterious enemy who killed all. In Halo 2, it was a shock to see them show up. BUT, Halo 3 came along. The Flood just ended up being a nuisance then. I don't mind if they show up again but it really isn't an "improvement".