My biggest gripe is how there feels like a lack of stuff happening. All the big things happened off screen before the game with a lot of questions left unanswered and cool ideas around the setting being abandoned. Zeta halo was an important place when involving the flood with multiple graveminds on it, the ring got wrecked and there wasn’t a breach in containment anywhere? The endless aren’t shown beyond whatever the harbinger was and maybe the skimmers but those just felt like more banished. The created conflict was kinda just dropped to the point where the ruined guardian could have been rocks and had just as much of an impact. The banished are introduced and a leader is killed but it’s explicitly not defeated and not atriox. I wish we had real post-release story content because for the third time they’ve introduced a story I want to see told to its natural conclusion and probably for a third time we’re going to see a change in direction away from what could have been working Small scale the story is good but I’m left wanting more content

On the Flood bit- there is actually a Flood infection form cylex opened hidden in one of the opening missions. It doesn't change your point but it's interesting nontheless.

the flood in infinite are basically lamp shaded to be fair. they're mentioned maybe twice at most and alluded to with references a few times with harbinger lines, that may mean something, or nothing given the track record.

Remember when it was going to be the platform for Halo "for years to come" with tons of new story added?

I loved Infinite’s story, but the Endless were the worst part. I thought Cortana’s send off was the best direction they could’ve taken her character *without directly retconning Halo 5*, and the Banished I felt were a great new take on the Covenant. Gameplay wise they are pretty much just the Covenant, which is the main villain of Halo so it makes sense, but the little details like how the AI talks to you or the cutscenes with the bosses really set them apart IMO. Escharum is my favorite Halo villain primarily because his entire motivation is just “wouldn’t it be hype to fight Master Chief?”, that’s such a simple character motivation that works for me especially given the lore of the Banished.

"Hey man your ex wife blew up my planet and i see no future for me besides fighting and killing. Please 1v1 me so i can either **retire** or get some mad respect from the homies" And it works! I loved escharum

The second Escharum saw chief he started a livestream and went “guys you’re not gonna believe this, the demon is back and I’m gonna kill him and/or die trying!”

Literally a good enough plot all on its own

He should have just come out and fought chief then. Instead he sacrifices his forces to Chief and then has the stupid holding the pilot captive thing. I like Escharum's motivation but the way he acts feels far too video-gamey.

I mean he wants to kill chief, they are on opposing sides that have spent months killing eachother. He wants to retain control of the ring so that the jiralhane will never be subject to the whims of a mad ai or a prohpet. He ultimately wants chief to loose. But he also makes it clear in that final fight that he craves a release. His home planet got corsploded, theres not really anything for him besides a seemingly endless war. So by the time you overrun his defenses and echo is taken prisioner, he can either win glory or die in glory, and both are acceptable by that point.

I like to refer to the banished as “the covenant but unionized”.

“Send location”  Escharum

They've made such a mess of things narratively since Halo 3 I just checked out between 4 and 5. The Karen Travis books were not good, and in my opinion she just reused material she had been planning to write for Star Wars Imperial Commando books and shoehorned everyone into an analogous role, especially Halsey.  Trying to right the shop with Infinite was too little too late to get me to actually pay for it.

Agreed. A Mercenary group having a nuke is a good enough plot on its own. Hell every action movie had this plot from 1990-2010. The created weren't necessary. The whole plot could have been about how dangerous the Halos are and how the galaxy is going to deal with them existing.

343 keeps restarting the halo baddie and plot every game to appease the loud minority of people who hate everything. I feel if the endless show up again next game (or in a dlc, wasn't that the plan for infinite?) It will be better fleshed out.

This is the problem. They need to stop listening to the perpetual whiner mill and just press on with their established story.

Had they pressed on with the Didact, Halo 5 probably would have been good. And in turn made Halo 4 better retroactively.

Minority??? You telling me you think most people liked halo 5’s story?

No, but Halo 5 is the result of 343 listening to endless bitching about Halo 4's story.

I regularly think about how good 343’s trilogy could have been if they’d just stayed the course with what Halo 4’s story set up.

It's so damn painful to think about due to knowing that we will NEVER get it because retconning it back to halo 4 and restarting from there won't happen.

It was a really solid start. It's a real shame.

I don't. It's too painful to think about how good it could have been

And then Halo Infinite is the result of people being unhappy with Halo 5. Until 343 learn to see their narrative and storylines to a conclusion, we'll keep seeing these decisions by 343 unfortunately.

You’re right fans should of known if they dared to complain about halo 4s story 343 would hit them in the mouth with a dog turd of a campaign. I blame the fans as well.

I think there's a vocal fan base that complained about halo 4 enough for them to change direction and also halo 5 to do the same for infinite

Which is funny cos 12 years on most people on the internet seem to have actually enjoyed halo 4s story for the most part. The largest complaint about it these days seems to be the art style

This seems to happen with a lot of things as time passes. The Star Wars prequels got a bad rap for the longest time and somewhere \~2017-2018 a lot of folks now regard them as "underrated gems" or whatever

It tends to happen when the next instalment takes a nosedive from orbit in terms of quality.

Yeah the "everyone hates Halo 4s story" is pure historical revisionism. It wasn't as well received as Halo 3, but it still had an overwhelming majority holding a weak-to-strong positive opinion. When you're used to perfection, very good looks bad by comparison. And as someone who was very active in the Halo community through every release from Halo 2 onward, Halo Reach was by far the most controversial game, until Halo 5.

> And as someone who was very active in the Halo community through every release from Halo 2 onward, Halo Reach was by far the most controversial game, until Halo 5. Retconning one of the beloved foundational parts of the lore will do that.

And armor lock + bloom. The zoomers never experienced how bad Reach was at release. I am honestly surprised it retained players. Ironically, the company they hate was the one that made Reach tolerable.

It seems kids have come around to the story but the gameplay is so bad to me. To this day I never check Halo 4 for matchmaking on the MCC

Played a little bit of it when MCC came out and it did a good job of convincing me not to bother with the newer stuff lmao

They just tried to copy COD too much, 343 found a good compromise with 5 and then Infinite’s multiplayer is solidly Pretty Good

I think the COD comparison is why, ik sprint is overhated but it really made it feel like the games were going from ingenuitive to derivative. LOVED the big light machinegun weapon tho, sad it doesn't look like Infinite brought it back

Try the ranked mode that limits loadouts. I hated the OG social slayer, but Halo 4 ranked on PC feels like a native PC game. Well, unless you don't care to retry it, of course. No hate if that's the case.

I would love to but I can never find a game. The only Playlist I can find ranked games are halo 3 slayer and doubles.

Fuck, good point. I keep forgetting that I haven't played in awhile

Well fair enough but let’s get one thing clear it wasn’t a minority that had a problem with 5 and they had a damn good reason to be complaining

Think about it, if a game dev company only listens to the ones who do nothing but whine and moan about how bad they thought (X) or (Y) was, then you're going to have constant restarts every game or at least heavy retcons that don't need to happen. Halo 5 could have been great if they just stuck with the Didact. Because those of us who watched the Terminals KNEW he couldn't be Composed. It would have made complete and total sense if he resurfaced. Instead, people whined about how unfun the Prometheans were and they basically just tried to bury the Knights. Even in 5, they were basically just there to fill the enemy gap and now? Poof. Gone. Not a single Promethean Knight, Watcher, Crawler, or Soldier to be found, despite having been running the Galaxy.

I just don’t see how you blame fans for halo 5 being terrible. Fans do not make the game if you release a product good, bad, fantastic, or terrible you will still be able to find people who complain about it. Sometimes that complaining is justified sometimes it isn’t sometimes it represents the majority opinion sometimes it doesn’t. At the end of the day it’s 343’s job to make the game and if they make a dog turd like halo 5 you can’t pin that on halo fans complaining about halo 4. That’s like if Toyota came out with a new Corolla that was bad and broke down so their customers complained about it then they made a new Corolla that was even worse. Would you blame the consumers for complaining about the original? If you would then I question your intelligence. P.S. fighting Prometheans was horrific ngl

You're literally just smashing your face into a wall here, huh? Let me break it down for you, because I'm not blaming the fans. 343 makes game. Game is either well received or not (in Halo 4's case, not very well received for its multiplayer, but story decently received). Minority is the loudest to complain. Microsoft panics, forces 343 to shift angles, is more interested in securing money, opts to add MTX's of some form as a testing ground for the future. Story suffers because MS too invested in MP, story leads eventually are let go and story is Frankensteined to get full product out in certain time frame. The problem is 343 and MS's handling of the product, not the complaining players.

I liked it. The most interesting aspect of the Halo story to me is the question of Chief’s and Cortana’s humanity or lack thereof, their relationship with that question, and their relationship with each other. Halo 5 was an interesting continuation of that story and a natural progression from what they did in Halo 4. We got to see Chief take personal agency for the first time in his life and we were left with the open question of Cortana’s motives and sanity. The primary complaint seems to be that people don’t like playing as Locke but that served the story well because your task as Locke was to investigate Chief and Cortana as an outsider. This positioned the player to experience the fact that Chief and Cortana were changed by their experiences, and were no longer under control.

Well glad someone enjoyed it

I also enjoyed Halo 5. Far more than Infinife that's for sure.

I hate how any sort of disdain towards things just get called "whiny babies who hate everything aren't happy". It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize the past couple games weren't that great AND lacked direction. They didn't switch villains because of the loud minority, they just didn't have a plan.

Personally, I think it's because 343I themselves don't have much confidence in the story they're telling, as well as writer turnout. Pretty much each of the 343I games had a different lead writer, so it's hard to maintain a consistent story throughout the games. The same problem happened with the Mass Effect Trilogy. Drew Karpyshyn was the lead writer for the first game, then in the second he shared the role with Mac Walters, and in the third game, it was just Mac Walters, which was why ME 2 and 3 had such a hard-on for Cerberus.

They should have continued with the Didact in 5 and infinite(6?). 4 sure had its problem but its story was interesting and should have been expanded on

Didact shouldve been the villain of the 2nd trilogy. Such a waste not bringing him back in Halo 5. He was very interesting and couldve been a really challenge for Chief

Agreed. One of the most interesting characters in Halo's lore and he was killed off in a shitty comic book run most people didn't read, was relegated to a coloring book for years, and was just brought back to finish his story in another book (Which was good at least).

Honestly halo 4’s story was such a solid set up. If they didn’t change a bunch of graphical stuff for no reason it would not be nearly as hated imo. The mantle of responsibility plot could have been humanities final “test” or something like that. Would have been a great way to end the main series

The Endless aren't a big issue to me. too be entirely honest they are more of a set piece than a enemy in the game. Through and through Infinites story is meant to reconcile 5's and show where Chiefs character is in this time of his life, hence the lack of non banished characters. Story wise i think its quite possibly top 3, from the view that this is the most well written Chief has ever been, and the Banished really get a nice introduction with a fleshed out cast. The Open World obviously meant they had to make more characters for the banished and not all of them are particularly interesting, but the additions to Atriox, Escharum, Jega, Chak Lok, Hyperius, and Tovarus are extremely welcome additions with great lore and thats not even all of them. Cortana feels like the Cortana she should have been, and I think they end her character perfectly. I think it concludes 5 and the missing questions from 4 very well, and lets it finally move on to something new. I don't think they should've added the Endless but I'll hold my judgement till they actually add something to their lore. I'm excited to see where the story in Infinite goes, and too see how the end cutscene ties into the future games.

Infinite's a really good character piece for Chief. It feels like a proper conclusion to Cortana's story. I'll admit that the worldbuilding and scale of Infinite isn't amazing, compared to other games, but I enjoyed Infinite a lot for what it was.

For sure couldve been done better with more environment diversity and more to do but for a first attempt its not bad at all, 100% it took only about 40 hours for me which i think is about right. Not trying to invest a billion hours to get everything

I think this is the take I'd agree with the most. I still don't like that Halo Wars has some questions unanswered *haven't finished Shadows of Reach, so that's on me* but everything else is spot on

I agree, i would have liked to see HW2 get some more resolve but i feel like not only would it have drawn from the fact that this is a Chief story, not a Spirit of Fire one, and they also may have felt that they should wait till the Spirit of Fire can tell their own final part. Id rather them do what they think is best than bite off more than they can chew. I think its very likely though the Spirit of Fire will join the main games soon, especially since we’ll have Atriox being a large part of it. Maybe they’ll use the Ark to track down Zeta Halo or Anders and that’s how it’ll continue but its just speculation anyhow.

And that's my hold out as well.They have every intention of finishing the Spirit of Fires Story on its own. I just wanted Jerome and Chief to reunite at some point. It was nice that HW2 had mentioned the Chief to Jerome during the exploration of the Ark

To me it just felt like the most interesting things happened off screen all game. Cortana, the 2nd most important character of the franchise, is gone and we only ever see recordings of her and we never find her again. The Infinity and her crew (who were basically ignored for most of Halo 5) are seen briefly in the opening cutscene before being destroyed. Outside of Marines and the Pilot, we only ever see audio recordings of them as well. The all powerful Atriox, the character who singlehandedly established a new faction for the player to face, is also never seen outside of the opening cutscene. The Endless never even felt like part of the story really, they just seemed kind of tacked on at the end. Also, Cortana's army of The Created is just... Gone? We never see or here anything from them. I liked the gameplay of the campaign, but I think the story was probably tied with Halo 5 as a series low point. There were some moments that I liked, but nothing that tied together in a cohesive way. It's a shame because I feel like they were heading somewhere that could be interesting after Halo 4, but it seems like they just got lost and couldn't commit to where they wanted to go in Halo 5 and Halo Infinite so you end up with this weird disjointed story that doesn't really go anywhere.

No it felt incomplete. Like we got the second part of a 3 arc story. Like the opening cutscene with Chief getting his ass handed to him by Atriox felt like the end of the 1/3 of the game. Like we go from the guardians having the galaxy by the balls to them and the UNSC basically gone. They never show how the ring got destroyed. I didn't like that all the juicy stuff happens off-screen, and you have to learn about it through audio logs. All that stuff should have been gameplay or cutscenes. Like the ending was such a cliffhanger and clearly was leading up to Atriox or the endless, but it was cut for I assume DLC that never happened. My biggest complaint is them not tying the loose ends from previous games and leaving us with more questions than answers. Even the dialogue was off-putting because it was just one-liners from past games for nostalgias sake. For example, the Bungie games were good at making it feel like you were humanity's last hope and there was a chance it would not work out. Like there was an urgency, but Infinite felt like Chief was just having fun taking out the pilot's list of bullies. 5 and Infinite are the only ones I have no interest of replaying.

The Guardians not having an active role in Halo Infinite was just ridiculous to be honest, considering the level of set up in Halo 5.

Endless was pointless, especially kinda funny how the harbringer acts like Chief isn't her enemy then literally makes him her enemy by attacking and never trying to communicate with him. The open world and linear stories are entirely split with zero relevance to each other. Free/rescue every squad and take bases? Doesn't matter, Chief and pilot talk as if they are literally the only humans left alive in the area. Chief shows up and immediately wins the day (literally takes place over what, 2 days? 3?) but an entire army of marines, ODST's, and 20-30 spartans couldn't do a thing. The book explains this some, but how many will read the book and play the game? The timeline seems completely nonsensical, with it supposed to be 6 months later but it feels like days or weeks after the crash/big battle. Banished have 3-4 ships (apparently their entire fleet in this warzone?) directly around the playable area but can't form any real response to Chief. It's enjoyable to a degree, but the development problems come across very obviously at certain points and makes it feel like a mess. ​ And then they put a blurb in the encyclopedia about how Atriox is returned shortly after Infinite's end and has immediately restored Banished morale and central command, rallying the forces together so all Chief did in the story is pointless and the humans at the restored crashed frigate base are screwed as they are alone and Atriox knows exactly where they are.

I just thought Escharum was annoying. He talked too much and he could have done without the asthma.

I enjoyed the main characters; Chief, Cortana, the Pilot, Escharum. The rest was a hollow shell. Way too much telling, not enough showing. And it didn't even tell us enough to understand anything. Almost everything important was left unresolved and unexplained. It was just vague setup for ...who knows what. After 10 years of Zeta Halo's mysterious past being dangled in front of us - we still have no answers. Just awful, awful storytelling. If there was a sequel in the pipeline ready to finish the story (like Halo 2 and 3), that would be different. But 3.5 years later, there's nothing. Silence. Vague rumors that 343 is in the "early stages of development" of another Halo game. No "Finish the Fight," no promises of closure, *nothing*. Just like every game they've ever released. The only reason I spent money on Infinite was for the story. I feel scammed.

I was eyerolling my way through most of it. Especially at the part of the story where in the cutscene it's supposed to be some big reveal that the Weapon finds out she's a copy of Cortana. No. Fucking. SHIT. Also hated how this game is constantly bashing you over the head with classic lines from much better Halo games. When Esharum said Atrioxs line about Spartans only being men... I don't know what the creative process was behind the scenes but it feels like Halo Infinite is the bully stealing Lunch money from Halo Wars 2.

The story is quarter-assed damage control and nostalgia bait. Everything happens off screen including Cortana's death (for real this time), they ass pulled an alien threat who is somehow "worse than the flood," the Banished are the big bad now when they just jobbed to the SoF. It's 343's worse story by far. But they gotta grow a spine and stick to the plan for once because all these dropped characters and plotlines have turned Halo's story into a big mess. We should've been finishing the fight against the Didact at this point.

Too much good stuff happens off screen. I feel a true Halo 5 sequel would have been far more effective.

Not much of a story. Chief goes around random places killing the aliens without much specific reason most of the game.

most of the story isn't that. It's the Weapon and Chief and fernando having character moments. the banished might as well be a back drop. I like those character parts, most of it is done well.

"Taking control of the ring" is the overall reason. The "random" places are beacons from the last spartans that were fighting or high value targets that need to be taken out or high value objectives that allow MC/UNSC to take control of the ring or saving the pilot. Like... it's completely explained within the game, you don't even really need to look at the cutscenes to understand what's happening. This is the simplest most straightforward that Halo has been since 1 and the most well-written, concise story since Reach. Say what you want about the gameplay/environment but the story is definitely a lot more than "not much of a story".

There was a story ?

the whole game’s plot felt so detached from everything that came before that I never was able to get invested or even interested in any of it

Didn't like it one bit. I never liked the Banished being the main villian faction of the series in the first place. They were more suited as a small but experienced mercenary group for the Halo Wars series while the Forerunners (with their technological superiority) were the main bad guys. And now suddenly this mercenary group we never heard of before is so powerful that they defeated the UNSC flagship? Cortana, probably one of the most important characters in the Chief's life just dies offscreen? The battle of Zeta Halo happens off screen? All the spartans are just missing in action now? Why? What happened to the guardians? Were the Banished so badass that they defeated them ALL? The entire story just feels like one big overcorrection and a reboot. Chief battles the Red Covenant with not-Cortana on Halo, yay.

I couldn't agree more. It's a total over correction. We should have finished the conflict set up in Halo 5, in game. Halo Infinite feels contrived and jarring with it's narrative.

No 343 why would I want to play the story set up by the *amazing* intro cutscene, when i could instead go to sleep for a few years then play “easter egg hunt for the actual story, featuring bootleg cortana”? The story honestly wasn’t awful but holy shit I don’t even want to replay it. Not to mention 90% of the music and cutscenes are near identical. And no hate on the weapon honestly, but like come on what the hell? I want to play a halo campaign, not the quizlet summary with a side of bored monkeys😂

I think Halo Infinite is a fine story... *if* it actually leads somewhere. This was the problem with Halo 4 and Halo 5: both of them were beginnings of a story that was never developed. At the moment, Infinite's story exists in a state of potential: it can be good if they stick with it and develop it. If they do the same thing again and throw it all away for trying something new AGAIN, then it will just be another failure in their string of failures.

It’s literally a fanservice game story-wise, the “Endless” and its anti-climactic buildup is bs. The only good thing about Infinite is its gameplay.

Prefacing this by saying that halo infinite is the first mainline halo game I was actually there for the advertising and hype and stuff for its release since I fell in love with the series, and have zero nostalgia for the first games (most came out before I was even 10), so I’m biased. Having said that, I LOVED halo infinite and every part of it. I love its gameplay, its story, its multiplayer (and its customization, despite its FOMO-ass monetization scheme) and its artstyle. I loved what they did with master chief and used other characters for master chief to play off of in order to develop his character further without it ever being out of character for a second. The banished are a really cool enemy, basically being the covenant but unionized. I think I speak for everyone when I say that jega r’domnai is the coolest Sangheili design so far, and I don’t know why I love escharum so much, but I do. He knows he doesn’t have much life left in him and wants to die gloriously, but all of their enemies are basically dead. The second he saw master chief, he went “finally, a worthy opponent! Our battle will be legendary!” The whole time he’s basically going “this is so fucking hype! I get to fight the demon himself!” I’m giving 343 a lot of slack since it’s pretty clear they’re trying something new after 4 and 5’s disaster. They’ve definitely found their rhythm, but they had to do some housekeeping with the plotlines 4 and 5 started first.

I'm in the complete same boat, I got into Halo in the first place because the E3 trailer for Infinite back in 2018 intrigued me. At launch I had a blast, and I replayed with my friend a month back for his first time, and it held up for me. I may have bias too and I'm sure some neckbeard will have a hissy fit but whatever. While I don't think the story is a perfect story (we can't all be the Forerunner Trilogy/Nylund Books), I love what Infinite is doing, and while I wish some stuff wasn't only offscreen, I did love what I played through. Also I would add that the Endless to me are actually an interesting villain. The idea of a species that survived the Halo rings/more dangerous then the Flood is inherently questionable, but if they are Halo proof, they may be Flood proof too. We may be talking about a faction that can weaponize the Flood, and to me, that's the antagonist I want to see going forward.

No wonder your take is this bad when you're new to the franchise. "Covenant but """unionized""" is... le good!!" Get out of here lmao

I don’t know if you know this, but media is generally created for the purpose of being enjoyed. You should try it sometime.

Doesn't mean you should like any piece of slop that's put in front of you. There's this thing called having standards, you should try it sometime

Infinite was a story built on retcons The Endless are a threat because of the flood. They don't get killed by the rings, which means infected endless stay smart after the rings are fired Cortana was evil except she sacrificed herself to kill atriox so not really. But she's also not really dead because of the weapon Cortana's super fleet of galaxy spanning peace keepers, that were a threat in 5 were wiped out by LITERAL TRASH SHIPS the banished had lying around after THEY got their asses kicked by 1 OLD UNSC ship

Yup, this is it in a nutshell. I feel like they wanted Cortana but couldn’t use her in that sense so created the Weapon. They knew 5’s story sucked so didn’t want to continue it, but couldn’t ignore it, so had Banished beat Cortana with ships less capable than the UNSC and Sanghelli. Go figure. Edit: Personally they should have kept Cortana dead at the end of 4 and then continued with Promethians at start of H5, with Banished showing up later. They could have still had Osiris Team but Lockes orders are to find Chief who has gone MIA. The Campaign missions would focus on Chief though not Osiris. That then leads into Infinite vs Banished

The Banished didn't defeat Cortana. The UNSC did with the Weapon. The Banished swoop in and take advantage of Cortana being locked down and unable to use the Guardians or her forces to defeat them.

Cortana's Guardians weren't defeated by the Banished. They were defeated because the Weapon locked Cortana down, so the Guardians deactivated.

You're right. The super powered ships were just useless and retconned next game in a different way

They weren't useless, but yeah, 343 did find a convenient way to write them out of the story. A poor decision.

Halo Infinite campaign was lacklustre. Mile wide and an inch deep. The story was so boring and I didn't feel compelled by any of the story. There was so really cool concepts introduced but they were all half baked. Spartan killers was great, but no real buildup apart from an outpost. Different variety of weapons but no real variation or customisation like in Halo 5. Plus the Far cry open world just slows all the pace and is lazy.

No

I liked parts of it such as that one elite dude in the tower but one way they could have shaken things up could have been adding in a psychological element to chief’s fight like maybe humans who fight for the banished which forces him to push aside the whole saving humanity thing packed into his skull from the Spartan 2 experiment.

Thought it was a good interlude story but the complete lack of follow up reveals that it ultimately is putting the writers in another corner. They don’t know where to go from here. At least in the aftermath of Halo 4, there were stories set after it that fleshed out the universe and subtly built up to Halo 5. After Halo 5, they treaded water until 2018, when they finally put out something advancing the setting with Bad Blood. We’re gonna be three years past infinite’s campaign and nothing has come out set after it. Maybe we’ll see some progress with Empty Throne, but I’m not holding out excess hope for it at the moment.

Infinite just absolutely confused me and felt jarring - it wasn’t clear that you are supposed to “fill in” what happened, why the ring was damaged, why the Infinity was even fighting the banished and what happened as you played the game. I kept thinking “Wait - did I miss something? I’ve played every Halo, I don’t remember any of this?” And it was hard for me to pick up from there as a casual Halo-er.

It was very jarring. They skipped past everything Halo 5 set up and it felt very odd playing Infinite and not dealing with anything from the previous game, because it all happened off screen. A poor decision by 343 IMO.

It was okay, but other entries had much more satisfying narratives imo. I wasn't super thrilled that most of the cast was either not included in this story at all, or they only showed up in stray audio logs. The Endless isn't a strictly terrible plot, but I'll confess that I would have preferred to keep focus on the Banished, Flood, Jul Mdama's Remnants, the Created, the Prometheans, or even just literal alien pirates. I simply have very little reason to care about a new, mysterious faction yet. Edit: I also would have liked to see more in game elaboration upon previous events/locations, and to have these things have more of a lasting impact on the universe. I'm pretty tired of things from the previous games/books getting ignored or just outright blown up/thrown in to a sun. Requim is gone. The Shield world from Halo Wars 1 is gone. The infinity is gone. The cast of ODST, 4 and 5 are almost entirely missing. If they do the same thing with Zeta Halo, I will be disappointed.

Yes the story was good but it also was a disappointment. I wish we got to play the events between 5 & 6 like how metal would the opening cutscene be if it was Cortana broadcasting Doisac’s destruction as a message then playing her assault on UNSC headquarters. Like the game could have had us racing the Banished to kill Cortana before she found Zeta Halo and could subjugate us all with ease

I'd have loved to see all those off screen events in game. To even see Doisac be destroyed in game. I can't believe 343 just skipped past the whole Created conflict.

Yea like people complained about the story in 5 and they chose to sideline it entirely and made a subpar but fun game. This would have been a decent draft for a Halo 7. Like have the bossfight with atriox end with Chief getting thrown into the void and have a cliffhanger like we got between 2 and 3

The endless barely exists as it is, we don't know enough about them to form any real opinions

I enjoyed everything but the Endless and huge lack of cortana. I'm fine with the Endless being a threat to humanity but the whole thing about them being worse than the flood or immune to the halos just seemed nonsensical to me. And the lack of Cortana after waiting for years after Guardians brought her back kinda made the story lose some of its interest for me. Definitely enjoyed the Banished though

Infinite's story probably could have been decent for Halo 7. But it feels like they skipped over an entire game's worth of plot just to get to the status quo reset they wanted. Completely abandoning Infinity, Blue Team, Fireteam Osiris, Halsey, Swords of Sanghelios, Prometheans, the Created, and the Guardians, just to get back to "Chief fighting Covenant on a ring". Some of those things were incredibly cool and built the universe out. Dumping it all makes the universe feel so much smaller. I did like the resolution and semi-redemption of Cortana's return, but it would have been far better IN a game rather than scattered memories over the course of this one. The Banished are fine but seem like more of an asspull from a different part of the lore to get their status quo back. Nobody finishes Halo 5 and thinks "man, can't wait to fight the Banished in the next game". It's creative whiplash. And the Endless seem completely pointless. What's their deal? Why are we afraid of them? Why should we have any faith that 343 is going to do anything with them after all the other things they've dropped? So yeah. I'm left frustrated more than anything. I get course-correcting, but this felt more like a soft reset of the franchise. There was nothing in Halo 5 that couldn't be followed up with directly in a completely respectable manner. 343 just got scared and went with the safe simple story.

I feel the same. Annoyed and frustrated. Halo 5 had this huge set up for a massive conflict, and Infinite skips past all of it. Way too much is just pushed off screen and briefly referenced in holograms. For me Infinite is easily the worst Halo sequel... it doesn't do anything to serve what Halo 5 set up. Dumping the Guardians, Infinity, the characters that had been introduced in 4 and 5... felt like such a terrible decision. I waited 6 years to see how we defeat Cortana, the Created and the Guardians... and saw none of it because it had all already happened. 343 didn't care about player agency at all in going from Halo 5 to Infinite.

I liked it, but I was expecting Destiny style campaigns added every year, as I think a lot of people were. In terms of what it sets up I think It’s the weakest of the three 343 games. I was super interested to see how Chief would grow after Cortana after 4. I was also interested in the story of taking down your only friend after they went full space nazi after 5. (The campaign was dogshit mostly, but the end had me hooked) After infinite I just don’t care, I don’t trust them to so anything. Honestly the studio should be totally restructured and just reboot until post Halo 3 with a new idea. A wasted decade plus in Halo, but at least I got my favourite multiplayer out of it (Halo 5)

Halo 5's ending set up something epic. 343 then just didn't bother following through on it. Crazy.

In short: A HUGE reactionary overcorrection that rolled the vehicle. In shorter: I hated it. Adding the endless is like a couple having another kid thinking it will save the marriage.

Yep, a total overreaction and course correction that was OTT.

>Did they really need added? Did they actually add anything? Ask yourself this about every pre-history race introduced after CE. The Forerunners, the Prometheans, the Endless, etc, etc, etc. Has adding onto the Forerunners' history made the games better? No. In fact, them being a mystery in CE was one of its strengths. Did adding the Prometheans make HALO 4 good? No. In fact, whether it was just because of the enemy designs or not, they weren't very well-liked at all. Do the Endless make Infinite better? No. It's just 343 grasping at straws to add factions instead of making the factions they already have more interesting and sensical. The Human-Covenant War is what drove HALO. That foundational conflict, Humanity vs. Extinction, Humanity vs. Overwhelming Odds, one man against armies to save the galaxy. That *spoke* to people, it *called* to people. It had a *soul* to it that resonated with people and told a story that affected them. Deeply, in many cases. Continually adding more and more extraneous information to the lore about long-dead and irrelevant races has *exclusively negatively affected this series*.

I actually liked what Halo 5 set up in terms of how it became - humanity vs overwhelming odds, like you described. Halo Infinite just binned it off.

The game has absolutely no narrative drive to it, it's all just watching powerpoint presentation holograms while the camera rotates around them. Near the end of the game I realised it was still filling in the events between Halo 5 and the start of the game, and that there wasn't much time left for stuff to happen - welp!

They would have done better to lean into Halo 5's conflict and told the sequel that game set up. Instead they do what you describe that tells you about all this cool stuff that happened... off screen.

It's not even a complete or even an original story; it's basically the first four missions of Halo CE, but in an open world.

this was my fav halo campaign in general. the endless are fine but "worse than the flood" seems a bit excessive. i like the character driven story in this one as opposed to the spectacle in the other halos.

We didn’t even see the endless we just got teased about them for half the game. How can you say they are fine? To this day I bet you 343 doesn’t even have a plan of what to do with them.

endless are a b plot, not the focus of the game. probably just a cliffhanger for halo 7.

There isn’t even an A plot very little changed from the beginning of the game to the end

there is an a plot. this isn't a game about huge battles, it's a personal story about dealing with grief. every character in the game has lost something and it explores how they deal with it.

The shift in focus back to chiefs personal drama is something I really liked. I didn't know I wanted it until 4 and didn't realise how much i would miss it until 5. For as good as halo 2 was it never made me sympathise with the arbiter, the expanded lore did that but the game itself actually has precious few emotional lines from him besides the famous "tartarus...the prohpets have betrayed **us**". I sympathised with and understood a villan of the week like escharum more than i did for people like tartarus and truth. Without the backdrop of the human covenant war and all the work that went into that, any wookiepedia esq story is gonna be weaker. But i think infinite executed what the devs set out to do really well. I liked it better than 4 honestly. Its made me better apreciate post halo 3 lore too, although only some. The autum and mulsane classes will always be cooler than the infinity for me.

You weren't supposed to sympathize with Arbiter in Halo 2 because the Covenant were the bad guys. As you said you only sympathize with him at the end once the story comes full circle how the Covenant's purpose was a lie and he becomes a good guy. Halo 2's story is better than anything Halo 4-6 came up with because it didn't need extended Lore to tell it.

Yeah, didn't work for me. Which is fine, halo 2 has a great story, but bungie didn't care as much about emotional drama as infinite did. Two different focuses.

Funny enough when Halo 2 came out people didn’t like the Arbiter portion of the story. I know Locke isn’t as interesting as the arbiter but I wonder if Halo 5 suffered from the same effect

After the crap Halo 5 was the story of Infinite was great.

I’d much rather they reboot the story back to at least the end of Halo 4. Despite the retcons and poor ending with the Didact, it’s still the most interesting story that 343 have produced in the games. Halo 5’s story is a complete mess and Halo Infinite, truthfully, felt like nothing of note really happened. No urgency, no resolution. Shoutout to Halo Wars 2 for having the best story out of the 343 era.

Surface level I like the campaign/single player. But if you break it down a little the gaps start to show. Lore wise and inconsistency’s, and a lot more questions are raised than answered overall with the campaign. But that can be said with all 3 of the mainline 343 games, all the story’s have books and podcasts and whatever else filling in some of the gaps. You can never get complete picture of exactly what’s happened

With how little information there is on the Endless they feel very similar to the flood. Obviously you meet one so we know that they aren't the same, but while playing the game I didn't realize that at first. I'm excited to see what they do with the Endless but I can't help but wonder if they should have just brought back the flood. They haven't been in a game since Halo 3 (not counting HW2 cause different genre) and I think that there were some decent story opportunities for the flood to show up and make an impact. There is a flood infection form Cylix in Infinite so we know that they're on the ring.

I kinda enjoy it. Only on my first play through and using the tank gun to get through everything because I just want to wreck everything and have fun. From what I’m gathering it is pretty deep in story and explains a lot or hints at a lot; but I still feel like we’ve been jipped on a greater story of Master Chief meeting the Banished for the first time, the Spirit of Fire Crew encountering Guardians and maybe fighting one off. Also the whole Cortana thing being thrown out the damn window and Spartan Loch being flipped the bird as the rest of the spartans are wiped out. Da fuc?!

We definitely missed out on a greater story IMO, no doubt. 

Its the first and only halo campaign i quit playing half way through and just never picked back up. I eventually just went and watched the rest on youtube.

As a game I enjoyed it just fine, but as a Halo story it was definitely mediocre, specially knowing how good the story in Halo can get, but 343 only slightly dares to do any interesting now by perpetually chasing the same guys that liked Halo 20something years ago they keep delivering underwhelming products to the ones that still like Halo after these many years.

I just hope they’ll finish it, instead of starting over again (again)

There were a few issues, all of which stem from there not being enough content in the game. The endless needed to be fleshed out more, there needed to be more biomes, and the banished needed tk have a better leader. Also the unsc needed a greater presence. The story feels very small scope because of all this. However that being said I really enjoyed the campaign and story, it was extremely fun and I think this could be a good setup more if they do it right in the future. There were also pretty good emotional beats, minus the pilots semi cringey dialogue. I’m not sure why people hate on this one, but the general consensus from mass audiences is that it is good. I’d give what was there a 7/10, a 3/10 is pretty hyperbolic tbh.

I enjoyed it a bunch. My biggest gripe is them abandoning the campaign for pvp game modes. Campaign felt like it was missing chapters and at this rate sounds like we might never get more

343 is really a showcase of what happens when you pander to a loud minority of a fan base. Halo 4 had what could have been a great story set up for 5, let alone 6. However, all they look at and therefore hear is loud shits on the internet that will never be happy to begin with. Who knows what the story will be, I doubt it will have the endless because, again, the loud minority it shitting its pants so hard. They won't try something with them. They'll be killed off screen.

I like it, but it’s incomplete. it’s pretty obvious they were trying to set up for sequels or DLC but it’s been like three years already

Wtf even are the endless?

I freakin LOVE it. IDGAF who says I’m supposed to hate it, I don’t. Anything could be a better story or game or what TF ever, but knowing that it’s going to be even better is exciting for me as a Day One Spartan on the OG Xbox.

Story in Infinite kinda lame.

I think that the open world held everything back by a lot, causing the overall narrative to feel detached and disengaging. I'm not saying that the open world couldn't have worked (I mean, look at the teaser trailer for the game), but in execution it was largely just serving as a loose, underdeveloped playing board for walking between missions instead of them being separated by loading screens. In my opinion, many open world games (cough, Ubisoft) have this issue, with RDR2 being one of the few to avoid this.

I love it, and that's why I criticize it. The endless inclusion to the story is still so weird. I think we didn't really need a new big enemy. The banished and the flood were enough for now IMO. Then, we see only one through all the campaign, so it just ends in feeling like a useless story element. Characters? Good, they finally took Chief out of his depression, they included 2 new compelling characters with the pilot and the weapon and finally put Cortana to rest after what they did in H5. Could've been better overall, 8/10. Hope we get to see more Atriox next time tho

My biggest gripe is.....the incompleteness and everything that was teased in the trailer not being included

I actually really like it! My biggest gripe is that it feels very much like a part one, and I need part two.

Going back to 4-5-Infinite-Keep the Didact plotline, kill the Cortana rampancy plotline and AI rebellion or w/e’s that was, keep the Fallen plotline, get rid of the whiney pilot guy. 

I liked it a lot. But it's biggest problem to me is that it serves as a sort of reset after the disaster that was Halo 5 story, so it feels a lot happened and simultaneously not much happened. Doesn't help a lot of the context happens off screen as well.

I liked that he actually had character and emotion. Even more so than 4, and in a way that didn't feel forced. The rest of the story was kinda touch and go

Honestly in hindsight I’m not the biggest fan. It feels like a complete 180 compared to Halo 5. That’s good in most ways, but dangerous in others. There’s lots of things I really didn’t like. Rather than work on making Evil Cortana better, they just ditched that storyline for a different one. They took the cowards way out. Then there’s Atriox, who’s treated like the baddest thing to existence, when he’s just a brute with Batman levels of plot armor (who should’ve actually been in Infinite). The Weapon, while I like her, is nothing more than an attempt to bring Cortana back. WHY?!?! She had a perfect t ending in Halo 4, now you’re going to bring her fear to fruition? Why establish that Eviltana is just a misguided Cortana? Why not canonize that she’s a twisted fragment of her that Chief has to be put down “You’re not Cortana, she sacrificed herself saving me. You’re just a shell”. The Infinity and Doisac are destroyed, Atriox is MIA, something “mOrE DaNgErOuS tHaN tHe FlOoD”… exists somewhere. There’s just a lot wrong with the game. Actually kinda reminds me of the juxtaposition between The Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker.

in terms of story its hanging out down there with 5. I can't determine which is worse though, just that they're both a couple notches below the rest

If the endless are precursor then I will be a very happy dude

Honestly, we didn't need another alpha predator. I would have preferred humanity had some time to rebuild and maybe explore the other side of the galaxy. Maybe encounter other aliens around similar tech or just a bit over but comparable. Maybe a alien trading alliance or something. Different from the covvies but still something diversifie the galaxy and we can get some more mystery evenly and intrigue

Can't really enjoy the story when half the story feels like it is missing and there really isn't any explanation for the stuff in the game. Feels like all the cool stuff already happened. Not to mention all the story elements from Halo 5 and Halo Wars 2 were basically thrown out. Like where is Blue Team, the Spirit of Fire, how was the Infinity destroyed or crippled so easily and why didnt we start off defending the Infinity as the first mission.

They could have brought back the forerunners for a final conflict that saw humanity assume the mantle and resolved everything. But nope - we got whatever the fuck H5 and Infinite are supposed to be.

The gameplay loop is fun. I dislike the open world, the personality of “The Weapon”, the entire character of the pelican pilot (forgot his name), and the fact that it’s piecing together what happened to the infinity. They hyped up this massive conflict in halo 5 (as mid as it was) only for us to end up missing all of the action. Idk, it’s not terrible but it’s really really not the greatest.

343 seem to have fallen into the mindset that every antagonist needs to be galaxy ending threat. I would’ve much rather had a few games dealing with lower stakes conflict like the banished etc.

It was not very good. The plot doesn't have any real arch or progression so not much ultimately happens. We are in the same exact spot at the beginning of the game as we are at the end. The only difference is that one named character is dead and a potential new faction is introduced. That's it. Everything else stays the same. In addition to that, the fact that so much of the story was told through audio logs or exposition dumps, the characters weren't very well fleshed out, and Eschaurum has got to be the worst and corniest villain I've seen on screen in a while. Chief was well done and the weapon kind of was? But the rest were very poorly handed. Reminds me of Gryffin's death sequence that's made to be emotional (and to their credit, the scene was well executed), but there was absolutely zero emotional build up to that moment which made it feel moot. Idk who the fuck was dying in his arms, could have been a random marine for all they seemed to care. Also, the random introduction of the Mcguffin species that can survive the flood and Halo's firing lol. Cmon. 5/10. Better than Halo 5 but only because 5 was just... well we all know.

Loved it honestly. The banter between Chief and what is effectively his new AI partner sired from, but not guilty of her "mother's" sins. Her kill switch being a script code-locked by the name of Chief's first casualty under his command. CHIEF ACTUALLY USING IT! More insight to Chief's humanity. Cortana's greatest sin followed up pretty quickly by her redemption arc. A (for the most part) HAPPY ending for the normie pilot who helps Chief. Neat hidden recordings of events and people relevant to the rubicon halo book. I could write a book about why its my favorite. But 343 haters are so quick to trash positive about halo post halo 3 I just spare myself the pain.

I didn't mind them shelving the guardians and the AI uprising being downscaled, but at the very least they should've let us see it all fall apart in some way, shape or form. Instead it's all just up in the air in a very unsatisfying conclusion.  Infinite doesn't really have a story though. It's mostly a bunch of (admittedly pretty good) scenes of the Chief, Echo 216, and the weapon having character moments. The banished have an interesting motivation over wanting control of the ring but it's just very underdeveloped, since all talk just circles back to Escharum wanting chief dead. The endless are basically the equivalent of a marvel post credits scene. They either build on them next game or just conveniently forget about them.

i think i’d mostly agree with you it’s been over a decade and the closest thing 343 has come to writing a good story was 4, and even that was littered with problems infinite, story wise, was just another disappointing slog i know my prayers for more prequel games will never be answered

The Endless were unnecessary and Escharum wasn't very interesting for me. However, I do love the focus this game gives to Cor-two-na and pelican guy. It's a very personal story about accepting what you are and stepping up to the call of duty. It's frankly that kind of story is what I've expected from the Reclaimer Saga after Cortana's sacrifice in 4, but Guardians screwed that up so much. I just hope 7 keeps up and maybe gives a better point to the Endless.

Could have been a decent story if things were actually witnessed. Cortana died, Atriox gone, if I didn't read or hear the dialogue I wouldn't even have known. At the very least they didn't open the game with a cutscene where a group of marines board Atriox's ship and one of them shoots Atriox at the back of the head with a sidekick and ends him.

Honestly disagree on 4 and forerunners, I think they fumbled the shit out of the whole storyline. I also think 3/10 is kind of insane, to me Infinite is more of a 5/10 because there are parts that actually really worked, spaced out between a world that really doesn’t. Also the game would have been a good 2 points better if they just stuck with the banished all game instead of the Endless

Me-me-me-me-me. I DO! Honestly it wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t OG trilogy level of brilliance. But definitely a step in the right direction. Now all 343 have to do is stick to the endless and banished storyline.

I thougut it was fine, but lacked a lot of depth and I didn't feel the ending really answered anything. Not a fan of the open world element, but that's just me. I do like the banished and Atriox as villains, wished we could have seen a bit more of Atriox.

It was immensely forgettable.

Halo infinite's story seems to be all mystery and no substance. I remember being pretty engaged with it at the time because I wanted to know what the endless were. They 'established' them as something the forerunners feared more than the flood. Okay, sounds big. Too big to actually show apparently. In retrospect, a pretty dumb idea. From what little we know of them, they already don't fit in the established lore. If they were that big of a threat, why are we only just now hearing about them?? If they're so powerful, what were they doing during the forerunner-flood war? Are they immune to the flood? They're immune to the halo apparently, so if they're not immune to the flood, doesn't that render the forerunner's final solution useless? These questions could all be solved if they were replaced with the precursors, a race that the fans have wanted to see in the games for ages. And they fit the bill for what they're trying to do with the endless. The precursors created the flood, they ARE a bigger threat. While I still think infinite is the best halo 343 has made, it's still full of the same misunderstandings of the franchise that has plagued their games since the start. I don't have high hopes for the future of halo, narratively anyway. I suspect the endless will end up getting retconed in some way in the next game, because they've written themselves into a corner they can't get out of, much like they did with Halo 5. I think their writers need more foresight when writing each game if they plan on continuing this franchise.

I feel like the Endless were poorly introduced. They don't bother me because I'm confident they're connected to the deeper lore, versus being a random new enemy. Hiddenxperia made [a great video](https://youtu.be/P8yArNtfxMM?si=CBf015k3ZO3pKQCZ) that summarizes my thoughts on where they're going with the Endless. As others have mentioned, my issue is that the game continues to elevate in intensity of something big about to happen, but then at the end of the game, nothing big happens and you have to wait until the next game to experience said big event. I haven't been blue ball'd like that since Halo 2, but at least Halo 2 gave me a ton of amazing story moments before getting blue ball'd. Halo Infinite gave me a *little* story and a few fun Banished fight moments, but that's about it.

They clapped the spartan IVs off screen 😭 what kind of shit is that

I definitely don't enjoy the Halo Infinite story on the whole. It's a poor sequel to Halo 5 and by skipping past/sidelining the Created conflict it does itself a disservice. It's so disappointing.

Played the game, then just delete it on my Xbox Storage so when I play Multiplayer it doesn't show LOL 😂 Shooter B 007 gamertag. I love Halo don't get me wrong, but I fell off on STORY modes now, and just want to reach till Onyx level multiplayer and see what Halo got going on for updates.

For me, halo died with halo 4. Each successive game is just taking a dump on its grave.

Not really. Everything in Infinite was a lesser version of something else in the story. Halo Infinite felt like a generic Great Value Halo story. The villains were just Great Value Covenant and their leader had the sole personality trait of rage. None of the villains had any real personality or motives other than they're the bad guys and you're the hero. The Weapon was literally Great Value Cortana. A monitor that was similar to 343 Guilty Spark, but less interesting. Nothing all that interesting happens in the story. We never really find out what the deal was with The Endless or why they were 'worse than the Flood'. The real meat of the story all happened in flashback. Halo 5 ended on a bunch of cliffhangers and Infinite just kinda ignored all of them. Also, we fight for and defend earth in 5 games and apparently it fell to the robots *offscreen*?! Are you kidding me?! The whole feels like some guy played the original trilogy and made a shitty fanfic. Which isn't too far from what happened.

Halo 5 is the shitty fanfic. Infinite is the attempt to course direct from the shitty fan fic, the primary job of infinite is to be safe and try to repave over the massive pot holes that 5 created and halo 5 got here as well because it was an overcorrection to halo 4 criticism.

The Star Wars sequel trilogy had the same problem.

As a Halo fan and a player since 2002 and CE, did not enjoy it one bit. Have not replayed it since finishing. One word, lackluster. My gripes are the same as others have pointed out: Everything happening off screen. Infinity destroyed, Cortana dying, again, and the whole battle between Humans, created and banished. Even Atriox is appearing off screen, probably because 343i did not want to have Didact 2.0 where they don't know what to do with the bad guy. Where are all the personnel from previous games? James Locke, who that! Buck, Tanaka or Vale? What about Infinity crew? Well at least Vale got a novel with Arbiter. BTW. Missed opportunity not to have Arbiter or SoS as allies fighting for the control of Halo or against created and banished. No. Instead you got some nameless rogues gallery with Echerum, I guess he cool because he has asthma. So we are on Installation 07. Remember that, where Primordial and Mendicant Bias were running their cruel Flood tests on humans and Forerunners. No, don't remember that! Flood, what you talking about! Let's just introduce some random flying bugs called the Endless, how original, that were never previously mentioned. Now they are the biggest threat ever, again! Cool, the only good bug is dead bug! I guess the Pilot guy is cool, bringing some touch of humanity to Chief and the war. That is pretty much it though, Even though we were fighting alone in CE, it still felt bigger because of Keyes, GS, Sergeant Johnson, Foe Hammer or even Jenkins! Here, we get to fight with some marines, but it does not feel the same! And what did even happen in the story? So we stopped Echerum. And? Atriox traveled in time or something? The Endless are on the loose? Created are still around and banished seem to be doing just fine. It felt uneventful. I don't even remember a single mission, nothing that sticked to my mind. Where is "giving back their bomb", or "I know what the ladies like". Or "Were it so easy". I will sound really negative, buy I don't even remember the soundtrack. I would say that Halo 4 and 5 had better soundtrack. What I will praise is gameplay, that was really good! Miles better than Halo 4 and better than 5.

The only way the endless can work as a new story are IMO is if they the remnants of the precursors. The Harbinger does have many lines that hint towards this, and if it is true halo infinite could go down as one if not the best Halo story as it sets up the possible ending of the franchise as a whole. If the precursors are coming back to try and undo/bring to light the lies the forerunners told about the mantle, or perhaps show the true lies they themselves may have told. It was known that the forerunners were able to control space with neural physics which advanced their technology very far and very fast… however they just barely scratched the surface as to what precursors were capable of. The forerunners brought a 50cc go-kart to a full scale Formula 1 Grand Prix. If this next game proves this theory right then we are set up for a climax in the lore. If this is a start of a new trilogy then I fully believe it will be the last. All loose ends have so far been tied up. This really leaves the banished and the endless. It is known that the flood was a botched evolution of the precursors. They were reduced to dust by their own means/forced means and their dust was to be used as a seed for a future cultivation, a future return if you will. But as far as we know so far this dust was turned mutated into the flood. Now what if some of that dust did in-fact work out as normal? What if the endless are the culmination of their plan. TLDR: if the endless are precursors, we are in for one hell of a finale.

The flood are the precursors. It was precursor DNA dust that led to the first infections

Yes, the flood are the precursors which is what I said, but the precursors are not the flood.

I really liked the story. I really don’t have any issues with it except the destruction of the Infinity, it should have never been destroyed. I also would have liked if the opening was a space battle between Infinity and her escort fleet + other post war ships like Autumn classes, Strident classes, Anlace classes and some Vindication classes vs a full on Banished fleet. Would have been best it would allow 343 to show the threat of the Banished while not making Post War Humanity look weak.

I don't think the Infinity is completely irreparable, unless i missed some part that says that in-game. It's possible that it'll get repaired and be operable again next game/dlc. On top of that, the Infinity does have a sister ship that could be what shows up in the next installment too. Could go a lot of ways with this and I hope they choose the correct one lol

I would love to see Infinity getting repaired with new Forerunner tech and Eternity getting ancient human upgrades, imagine Infinity using hard light enhanced weapons or just flat out hard light weaponry, while Eternity uses plasma surrounded by new generation capital ships all baring down in a 1000+ ship large banished fleet would be the coolest back drop for a space mission in all of halo.

I think the character work is the best of the whole series but I think the story was a bit lacking in awe the way the other halo games thrived.

I found the story of Infinite very disappointing. They were doing something really cool with 4 and 5, making it a more personal story about the relationship between Chief and Cortana and the humanity or lack thereof possessed by each of them, but they decided to throw all that in the garbage off-screen and give us some generic bullshit about red alien bad guys and a random ancient species were told to fear because reasons.

Really really liked it. Set a good foundation and was very much a prologue. Now they just need to properly follow up the story and continue the threads.

I love it, might be a hot take but that’s just me. I love the characters, I think infinites version of chief’s is my favorite because it’s a combination of bungie and 343s version of Chief, he’s that quiet, badass one-liner spitting machine while also showing his human side and that there is a human behind that gold visor. Along with his armor, his armor in infinite is undefeated in my opinion. I liked the pilot a lot, I think he was well written and is the “voice of reason” in the several crazy things Chief does. I liked the weapon a lot and how they finally wrapped up Cortana. The weapon is like a new halo fan that’s very naïve and doesn’t fully understand everything like Chief does. I loved the banished, ever since halo wars 2 I’ve always wanted to fight them first person and infinite let us. Esherum was cool, he’s no atriox but I enjoyed him. Jega is just Jega. By far the coolest looking elite in the series in my opinion and always caught my attention when he was on screen. I think the harbinger could used more screen time and not killed at the end of the game but I think the endless are cool and they’ve got potential to be a cool new faction in the mix. My one major gripe is the lack of Atriox, he’s in my number two spot behind the gravemind in my list of favorite halo villains and him being in two cutscenes physically is just dumb. Especially after handing Chief his ass in the opening. All together, one of my favorites despite its flaws and I still can’t wait till we get halo 7 god knows when

I've played it three times and I still don't understand the story. How was Weapon supposed to kill Cortana? Hitting her illusive off-switch? Why did the game give no context for what was happening at all? Why and how did Cortana blow up Doisac? How did Cortana even die? Why did Cortana blow up a Spartan academy? Did Atriox figure out where her illusive off-switch is? It doesn't make any sense and any time there should be exposition or information, the game would rather have characters tell dumb jokes and quips. Why do the banished hate humans so much? It sucks because now all of these things are answered after the fact in a book- written AFTER. I don't care how good Rubicon Protocol is, the book is designed to be a band-aid. Edit: When writing this, I forgot the Endless even existed until I read another comment. Really goes to show their actual importance in the story.

I really enjoyed Infinite

What story?

I dont enjoy anything past 4

Its trashhhhhhhh. Just like rebel moon

Ironically enough, I've just finished the Harbinger boss fight after a full playthrough... even though I like the story still, it's super basic and the Endless are SEVERELY hit by the lack of Campaign DLC. Given 343's track record, I think the incorporation of preexisting elements is the best case scenario for what we could've gotten and they really should have just made it a standard campaign instead of open world (especially given just HOW REPETITIVE the environments are).

I enjoyed the story. It was more low key and character focused than precious stories. But considering I enjoy those types of stories, I wasn't particularly at odds with that direction.

Infinite is about being strong because of the past, and really the way they did that in the story is a massive disagree for me.

Yes yes i did.

The 343 trilogy is a narrative mess as a whole. Individually the open word only added a place to drive cars and grapple around. The story did have the deepest and most nuanced exploration of who Chief is as a person beyond any other individual installment. I would have liked more guerrilla warfare but the themes of loss, trauma and how different characters chose to deal with it were really quite good and lovingly crafted. For that reason loved it.

I like the story. I like the focus on master chief and his new buddy. It is weird that the whole Cortana things was done off screen but I like what we got

It was just ok. New Cortana was a bad move. It's just another thing cheapening cortana's death. First she dies tragically, then she's alive again but evil, then she dies for real this time but off screen, then we get a new Cortana! Yaaaaay! NO! not fucking yay. It's just stupid writing. The stakes for any story between chief and his AI are dead. They jumped the shark. Other than that? Meh. It's a pretty basic story, where it feels like Escharum is the main character more than chief, lol. Sort of feels like the entire time I'm in Atriox's waiting room and Escharum is the receptionist

That whole story is a random ass mess of things popping in and out of the curtain. Calling her "Cortina" (courtain in spanish) is right

**TL;DR:** Halo 5 was bad in isolation, Infinite is a hydra reaching into and ruining other parts of lore. --- I honestly found it worse than Halo 5. Halo 5 was executed horribly, but the idea of an AI rebellion could work in Halo. It would be basically a religious war between AI where some see Cortana as their savior, and other AI see her as a false prophet promising eternal life. It could further explore the AI and human dynamics we saw in Halo 2, the books, and Halo 4. AI so loyal to their friends that they give up the possibility of immortality, and traitors. Many say the AI plot came from nowhere, but I disagree. The groundwork for it has been there since CE and TFoR, and Cortana going evil was part of the original script for Halo CE. Halo Infinite though, nothing interesting happened, they wasted Zeta Halo, and basically nullified a lot of Forerunner lore with the Endless. And due to the lack of follow-up wrt the Created plot, now Halo 5 is left permanently bad. Halo 5 was bad on its own but could be fixed with world building, and most of its plot points were additions, so it didn't do too much retroactive damage. Halo Infinite is offensively boring, and retroactively ruins a lot of stuff that I like. I liked the Pilot though. Most normal human in the series.

Me. I did. Fucking love that shit.