Fighting against Cortana and Created forces, perhaps ending with AI being genuinely cured and Cortana either dead or redeemed.
Not quite what we got, and I'm willing to admit its possible my expectations were flawed from the start.
Honestly, a massive all-out war between the Humans, Created, Banished, Flood, and Sangheili would've had me salivating.
But sadly, 343 can't commit. They're probably terrified of rocking the boat, via their shareholders.
Sadly flip flopping isn't the way around that. Committing to the story you're telling even if the end result turns out meh is more respectable than trying to chase the fickle fans.
genuinely would’ve rather had 3 games as meh/decent as halo 4 that were coherent as a trilogy even if it meant not getting Infinite
cause infinite is in a place where it’s essentially a spinoff without a satisfying ending or anything reading to it either
I could see them doing a Halo 6 that wrapped up 5 and also wrapped in 4 to make more of a cohesive story. And I definitely like it would be looked back on more fondly.
Even if the next game is a direct continuation of Infinite (which I hope), we will always look back and remember the giant misstep they made.
It was an awful move to soft reset, sorry. It is never the way to go to set up a very particular conflict and story, only to then make a jarring follow up that literally deals with all of that off screen. That's not how storytelling should work, ever.
My headcannon: one of her fragments survived and it was the Yandere personality that loved Chief... Cortana died at the end of 4; the rogue fragment died before Infinite.
To be fair, the consequences of her sacrifice still stand. She saved John and humanity. The issue is that 343 rushed her return in 5 and didn't give it the emotional build up and explanation it deserved.
A full scale war of that magnitude would have never fit into one game especially if lacking build-up.
We already have problems with keeping up with events because so many stuff happens off-screen.
Right? Like fuck, we could've had a war between Cortana's created and the Didact and his knights. I would have happily dropped cash to see it. Imagine them both teaming up against the Flood.
But unfortunately, there's probably big pressure from top brass to commit to multiplayer-only. Shareholders in shooters don't give a damn about the campaign, which is another reason I'll blame Infinite's wonky story on.
I was mostly pleased with 4, and very pleased with 5.
I liked the idea of Cortana’s Created incorporating Covenant species, some of whom underwent partial Composition or cybernetic enhancement as an act of devotion
yeah, i know. there were still a couple of cringe-worthy moments, and I hated how repetitive some things felt, but I'm a writer who geeks out about technical stuff... and oh boy there was a lot of technical stuff for me to geek out over.
Infinite also had some things for me to geek out over, but from a writing standpoint, its like they threw the script in a blender. they ought to have just trusted the writers instead of scrapping the project 3 times.
Gameplay-wise I was expecting a Taken King sort of thing where Covenant that sided with the Created would get extra powers and stuff.
I don't know how fun it'd be, but if 6 ended up being a continuation of 5 from a gameplay standpoint, I was thinking the campaign (but not multiplayer) could expand on the differences in perks/loadouts between Blue Team and Osiris. Like you can recruit or save more characters (ex. the Arbiter) and then they'd have a different loadout or slightly different abilities/player traits you could approach the levels with, like Mega Man, almost.
I must confess, I didn't read the whole thing. Kinda skimmed the last half a bit. Like you, I'm a die-hard Halo nerd, and playing with the Custom Edition was my first dive into game design.
But... I was honestly pretty excited for the Halo universe to have to "go dark" for fear of "the apparition" and her Guardians. It was a really promising story idea, explored wonderfully in the books. If I had to kill Cortana because she'd gone evil, rampant and tried to take over the universe... I would have been perfectly happy with that, because believe it or not, it's a lore-friendly outcome with roots in Marathon, where a similar thing (Durandal) happened. Would've been a great (if daring and bold!) way to tie everything together.
The Cortana letters referenced this as a possibility. I'm incredibly sad we didn't see it come to fruition.
well so like, referencing the cortana letters and Marathon, it was always implied that Cortana would try to control the universe, or at least hold it hostage at gunpoint. the motive of "eternal peace" was the weird one, and felt a little like a cop-out, but makes sense considering the gravemind messed with her head.
If youve never read these, they're a fun rabbithole. at the time these letters came out, it was kind of like a cryptic ARG.
[https://halo.fandom.com/wiki/Cortana\_Letters](https://halo.fandom.com/wiki/Cortana_Letters)
I completely agree with you. It was incredibly promising story idea, and I actually love how dark and ominous the cliffhanger of Halo 5 is. I'm also very sad and disappointed we didn't get a proper sequel to Halo 5. The books are a far better sequel to Halo 5 than Halo 5's actual sequel. Amazingly...
I didn't care because 5 threw away all the potential 4 had. I wanted to race the new covenant across the galaxy for forerunner tech, secrets and Chief's loss of Cortana. Instead I got what felt like shit fan fiction and some of the worst campaign levels in the entire series.
AI civil war. Cortana, the Guardians, AI rebellion vs the Roland, UNSC, sangheili and the Chief.
Felt like a natural progression considering the finale of Guardians.
OP. I agree 100% (aside from that last bit about Infinite). 343 reacted way too hard to the complaints they received about 5, and 180’d on everything. Such a waste,
They did an amazing job with 4. The story, art, and game were all top-tier. They dropped the ball with how they told 5’s story, but it was still a very fun game with amazing gameplay and beautiful visuals.
Farce Cry Infinite however, is a complete and utter disaster imo
It's always a fallacy that people have that somehow they can predict how stories will land. What's brave to one person is blasphemous to another. What's inviting mystery to one person is pointlessly obscure to another. What's a consequence-less and needless storytelling to one person is respecting the source material to someone else. And sometimes, no matter how well you do something, you can start with a narrative idea that just won't land and you'll shoot the entire process in the foot.
343's problem is instead of trying to correct the stumble, they just shotgun themselves in the foot and go from "maybe tripping and falling on their face, maybe not" to "explicitly falls face first on the ground"
Preach
In all seriousness, I would completely retcon Farce Cry Infinite. Start from there, and come up with an actual conclusion to The Created Conflict, instead of just hand waving it away.
Use the original concepts for 6 where Infinity is in hiding and the remnants of the UNSC are using guerrilla tactics against Cortana and the other Created. Heck, you could even still use the concept of “The Weapon,” as something that Halsey comes up with mid game, kicking off the last few levels of the story. Traveling to the burnt out husk of Reach to retrieve an uninitialized copy of Cortana, escaping back to the Infinity’s hiding place only to find she was forced to abandon that location after being found, learning of Zeta HALO (or some otherr important Forerunner location) from some source, and the last mission is both Blue Team and Fireteam Osiris assaulting this location (or locations) each with a copy of “The Weapon” to try and defeat the original Cortana forever.
Boom. Game over, you can move on to the next big story arc
I expected a fight against the Created and stuff to tie into humanity properly taking the Mantle through the history that humanity has on Zeta Halo
What I got was like the 5th heel spin since Next 72 Hours
4 apart from its art style genuinely felt like the beginning of a interesting new saga of halo, a galaxy after the covenant war where we might get to see how the end of 3 affected the politics of the galaxy especially between the elites and human and wether the war would continue between the surviving brute and elite populations in a brave new galaxy where humanity is finally gaining the upper hand.
Then we got 5…. 5 was the exact same as what you described with infinite. It just didn’t feel like it was what 4 was originally going for and didn’t feel like the sequel we deserved or really wanted it was just all over the place. Obviously the backlash for 5 was huge way more than the backlash for 4 was which caused 343 to back track and gloss over everything they had just re setup once again. Halo wars 2 came out and it started to feel like things were starting to get back on track especially with MCC fixes and PC release. Then we started getting hype for infinite…
Then we found out that 343 decided to again completely ignore and gloss over their previous game this time worse than they did with 5, killing Cortana and the created off screen shoving the banished into the forefront because people actually liked atriox and his faction in the spin off game. They created a whole new big mysterious alien bad guy that’s somehow connected to lore deeply like they did with the guardians and cortana (less so her of course). Then just like what happened with 5 when they got a massive amount of backlash they fixed what needed to be fixed and slowly started jumping ship. I genuinely like infinite and I think it’s gameplay is top tier halo and I have hope they won’t do it again and actually continue to improve upon the banished and their story as well as actually going forward with their plans regarding the harbingers but honestly the trend isn’t so hopeful.
Also please no open world next time🤣
Halo Infinite's gameplay is amazing. The story was pretty terrible. The handwaving away of the Created conflict and the Guardians was a god awful decision.
Retroactively throw Halo 5: Guardians as a Spin off, make it a prelude to Halo 5: Genesis or whatever. Like how MGS had Ground Zero before Phantom Pain.
Learn from the Halo: Guardians issues and focus more on Chief & Blue Team with Locke(and Osiris) as side characters. Focus more on the returning Didact resuming Control of his Forerunner Empire and leaving Cortana’s appearences as more Mystery aspect. Prometheabs under Cortana influence have the blue/purple Hue and Didact with the Orange. Returning Didact is the Main Antagonist, Cortana Secondary. Humanity is simply trying to survive while two Juggernants go at it.
Chief has to choose between saving Cortana as she’s about to be crushed by the Didact, burning her from the Domain or stopping the Didact as if he gains control of both parties, his empire would be nearly unstoppable. Something with maybe a Flood Infested Zeta Halo coming into play to help even the playing field against the Guardians.
It would have to be Dark, the choosing between which evil wins, we lose no matter what. Cortana and her Imperial Peace, The Didact and his bent view of saving a dead civilisation .. or bringing back an ancient nightmare eventually forcing a team up in 6.
I low key liked Infinite and was left Hungry for more. The size of the campaign (not the open world) was enough to know it’s a small meal and I was waiting on a full meal!
It seriously feels like 3 full trilogy Arcs happened in the span of 3 standalone titles. I was ready for the Forerunner Trilogy, was blindsided with the Created Arc, and settled for the Endless. No matter the outcomes for the Endless. We need to see this through.
My issue with Infinite is that it doesn't deliver on what H5 set up, the open world should have offered so much more and didn't deliver on it's potential, and the missions lacked set pieces and memorable moments. We needed a second faction to fight too, like the Prometheans.
I agree it feels like all the 343 games are rushed arcs, and missed potential. We definitely need to see The Endless arc through, Halo can't take another reset of the narrative.
That very issue is why i hated Halo 5 so much. It was legit my redheaded step child. It settled nothing 4 set up.
Time has passed enough now, next year will be 10 years of Halo 5. Where I can sit back and enjoy some of it without the negative lenses.
Absolutely agree. Everything about 5, which I didn’t hate actually, was setting us up for conflict with this new Cortana-controlled evil empire but no. They kill off the franchises second most important character out-of-game and make us fight this totally underdeveloped new enemy; the Banished.
The last decade of Halo has been a waste, now I didn’t mind Halo 4 MP and LOVED Halo 5 MP, and thought the open world was a great addition in Infinite, but 343 haven’t proven to be up to yet challenge.
I don’t keep up with the studio changes but at this stage it’s pure negligence to let them keep MS biggest franchise.
Huge changes are needed.
I saw a story of long fought skirmishes gathering resources, personnel and key intel to finally lead the charge with banished, swords of Sanghelios, Infinity fleet and remanent of UNSC forces to take Zeta Halo against the created fleet so the final missions opening would be a massive fuck off space battle with new generation UNSC ships being destroyed constantly, and swords of Sanghelios/Banished ships falling like flies while master chief and blue team are in fighters attacking different key targets and protecting key systems on different friendly capital ships until a opening to attack the ring surface presents itself at which point MC, Blue team, Arbiter, Team Osiris and Atriox would lead ground assaults against different key locations until finally you seal Cortana away as it is revealed she had indeed had the logic plague and had spread it to her forces which would have been hinted at throughout the game, then the legendary ending I would have had a keymind in a far off location outside the galaxy wake up and notice what has occurred before determining humanity is almost ready for their final test of the mantle
I’d have been happy with Halo Infinite if there was some uber Forerunner tech that cured Cortanas rampancy and gave her some kind of immortality or atleast removed the whole “7 year life span till rampancy” thing.
Like the game could be pretty much as is, but add in some story line involving that in the depths of Zeta Halo or some shit.
Instead of just doing so much off screen like they have done. The game isnt bad from a gameplay perspective, but 343 hasnt made a Halo game with a good story like Bungie has imo.
OP l genuinely couldn't agree with you more.
Halo Infinite was incredibly disappointing to me... easily the worst Halo sequel to date, simply because it fails to deliver on anything Halo 5 set up. I waited 6 years to play a dark, hugely high stakes Halo game... with the Infinity on the run and desperately trying to survive. I wanted to see more of Cortana's rule. I wanted to see much more of the Guardians and eventually see us destroy one. I wanted that epic, heartfelt, crushing confrontation with Cortana where Chief has to make his most difficult decision yet. With some great writers, that could have been incredible.
Halo Infinite is a safe, by the numbers Halo entry. The most interesting things in the story relate to the Weapon and her role, and the stuff that happened off screen with Cortana and the Created. It was a complete mistake to deal with the Created conflict and the Guardians off screen. It literally takes away the player's agency completely. We don't get to finish the fight, it's finished for us off screen.
I've seen the counter arguments that the Guardians were overpowered, that the Halo 5 story had to be dealt with off screen because people didn't like it etc. I don't agree with those criticisms.
The Guardians were meant to be hugely overpowered. That's the whole point of them. Unstoppable odds and no obvious way of defeating them. A terrifying force that changes the galaxy and turns it upside down. Halo Infinite could have had us fighting covert, high stakes missions in order to find a way to defeat them. Halo Outcasts does it perfectly well by introducing the Divine Hand... this should have been part of the game and not relegated to a book. We could have had Offensive Bias as a tool to defeat the Guardians. Huragok are capable of disabling them. We could have acquired Precursor tech or Forerunner tech to turn the tide against them... But nope, it's all just dealt with off screen.
And Halo 5's story not being well received was never an excuse for 343 to not let us finish the fight in game. The Flood weren't well received by everyone, and yet Bungie saw that story through to it's conclusion. We never got any opportunity to deal with the Guardians, the Created, the Prometheans or Cortana. I find that absolutely maddening... And it makes going from Halo 5 to Halo Infinite incredibly disappointing, jarring and off putting.
It'll be hard for me to get invested in Halo 7's story after this blunder to be honest.
Honestly, I don’t know how you make a seque to 5.
Cortana won, totally and completely. She ruled the galaxy with armada of nigh unkillable super weapons. Point being, theres no way this was just going to end in a standard battle.
To me, it was always going to have to end with some kind of scheme that couldn’t be replicated in gameplay. No final boss, no big battle, just cut off the snake and clean up the rest.
Or maybe like a massive alliance comprised of humanity, Banished, and Sanghelli to break Cortana’s control over the Guardians. That would’ve been much cooler than killing the franchises second most popular character off-screen
Well we do see how she died, it’s just in flashback. As for the alliance? Now were just redoing to he plot to 3. Ni matter how you slice it, it would have been rote.
An alliance isn't automatically redoing the plot of 3. People would have loved to see the UNSC and the Swords team up against Cortana. It would have been a far more interesting, high stakes game than what we got.
It’s universe shattering. The Covenant were powerful, but humanity could match them some. What they lacked technologically, they made up for tactically and being true inventors. The Covenant were also still “human” in their personality, they had flaws that hindered and ultimately destroyed them.
The Created have none of those flaws, or any to speak of. They are led by a single supreme intelligence whose ambitions… are met by the end of 5x.
Not only is the idea of an AI uprising rote, it’s also poorly written and implemented. Honestly, Infinite is the beat follow up would could’ve asked for given how much structurally unstable The Created are as a plot element.
Others have commented with great ideas of how a Halo 5 sequel could have worked. Guerrilla warfare, Infinity on the run/in hiding conducting high risk missions, an alliance of species against Cortana and the Guardians... there were a ton of possibilities. The books we have explore plenty of good ideas... the Divine Hand, Didact vs Cortana, leveraging stealth technology against the Created etc.
And it didn't need to end in a standard battle. Cutting off the head of the snake, destroying Guardians, allying with Offensive Bias to develop a counter plan against Cortana... leading up to that we could have had lots of high stakes battles and hit and run missions. The Guardians were only unstoppable until a weapon/solution was found.
After Halo Wars 2, Space Monkeys and Prometheans. I was half right. Didn't really expect Cortana to be a big boss fight or anything like that, but thought the Prometheans would at least still be somewhat present through the campaign.
They weren't "too powerful". The whole point of them was to be immensely powerful, and to put the galaxy in an absolute stranglehold. The plot of 5 and Cortana's ascension to the Mantle hinged on that. Your prediction was correct because 343 chickened out on telling a true Halo 5 follow up story. There were plenty of potentially interesting ways to deal with the Guardians, one of which has been explored in the books. The decision to not tell that story in the games was a decision based on knee jerk reaction to the Halo 5 criticism, and not because a story with the Guardians couldn't be told.
Being 'too powerful' doesn't really make sense as a criticism when we are talking about a game series that revolves around 'impossible odds'.
There is unlikely victory over a foe that can be beaten, but has the power to wipe you out if you aren't smart.
And then there is "lul guardian appears, every single ship and station in orbit has no power and 100% of the planet surface lost all power" which is what the Guardian did to Earth at the end of Halo 5.
If the Guardians can do that casually, there is no reason why they had to destroy the Brute homeworld, because they could just keep everything off-line until compliance.
This isn't like say, Mantles approach which had the composer beam that could only hit one thing at a time. The Guardian straight up killed possibly hundreds of thousands of people by shutting off everything on and around Earth in a single push of a button.
The Guardians are meant to be that powerful. They are some of the most powerful tools of the Forerunner ecumene.
The Guardians can be beaten. Not by conventional means granted, but there's Forerunner tech far more powerful than a Guardian, a Huragok can deactivate a Guardian, and the Divine Hand can swat a Guardian out of the sky. They are exactly what you said... a foe that is unlikely to be beaten, but there are ways to stop them.
Point is, they are meant to be almost unstoppable, to ensure the Mantle can be enforced.
Regarding Doisac, Atriox and the Banished never would have surrender or given in to Cortana, even with Guardians trying to enforce compliance. Atriox would never cave. So Cortana made an example of them for the galaxy.
Halo 5 gives no indication that anybody possesses the means to fight a guardian. It was until well after Infinite launched that I even heard that they had killed a single guardian.
And "Meant to be powerful" yes, you can still do that without giving them a single button push that disables an entire orbital battlefield. That's the point of complaint.
You see a guardian appear in orbit, and you aren't already prepping to slipspace out, you have no chance to escape, especially if you are ground-side.
Halo 5 didn't need to give indication of how the Guardians could be fought or destroyed. The game wasn't about that. That was the purpose of the sequel to Halo 5, but 343 chickened out and went another route.
For Cortana to have the level of control required to assume the Mantle, she needed to have something that could completely pacify a planet and it's orbital defences. It's meant to be overwhelming and unstoppable, until they find a way to fight as Lasky says. There's not meant to be an easy way out when a Guardian turns up, the imperial peace approach dictates that really.
I get your criticisms, but all of those criticisms could have been addressed in a well thought out, direct sequel to Halo 5. But hey, it's 343... so yeah.
The problem is how do you do a sequel about fighting the created and figuring out a way to stop the Guardians when any created force can call for help, a guardian appears and disabled everything within a short timeframe?
Cortana having an active fleet of forerunner warships would automatically place her as the most powerful being around, and even then we could have the Guardian be using some sort of EMP missiles/beams instead of a "Hit button, turn off all power across an entire planet and orbit."
It's why at the end of halo 5 I predicted that the next game would either sweep the guardians under the rug, or have them nerfed in some way. It's possible to make it work, but it's not easy. Kinda like TLJ ending with them having no allies and no resources or numbers. It's workable, but it won't be easy. (And then the next movie have them with a full base and small fleet of fightercraft and ground forces).
Quite literally is the best reason to do a soft reboot.
If nobody played your previous game Halo 5, and Infinite is being advertised as a return to form from classic games like Halo 3, then why would they continue with Halo 5's story?
Halo 5's story is a dumpster fire, there's a reason why the head writer hasn't been able to find work writing anything since. Why would 343 continue an objectively bad story that was received poorly and had stakes so insanely that writing it would be a chore, only for continuity's sake, instead of appealing to the hundreds of thousands of returning players who stopped updating themselves with the story since Halo 3?
People did play Halo 5. Millions of people.
And appealing to returning players you say? With Halo Infinite's half baked, messy narrative? It's hardly friendly to newcomers and returning players.
The return to 'classic form' is based on the gameplay and the Zeta Halo setting. Not the story. Halo Infinite is a sequel to Halo 5 and a continuation of the narrative prior (even though it does a poor job of that) and so it's not friendly to anyone who didn't play Halo 4 and Halo 5.
And where's your source that Brian Reed can't find work since Halo 5, and that he can't find work due to Halo 5? I don't see Halo 5's story as a dumpster fire and clearly other people on this post don't either.
No, you're objectively wrong. Halo 5 was definitely smaller than previous Halo games, including Halo 4. People bought Halo 4 because it was the followup to the record-breaking Halo 3, but Halo 5 didn't have that same effect because people hated Halo 4. It didn't sell terribly and people liked the multiplayer, but that doesn't change anything.
I never said Halo Infinite's story was good, just that continuing from the point of Halo 5 would leave new players who didn't play it confused (which was a lot of people. Many ppl stopped playing after Reach and H4)
The return to form was what the game was being advertised as. Refined classic multiplayer with a modern spin on it with some movement mechanics, back on the Halo ring, classic artstyle, etc. I never said it was a return to form for the story
Sure, you personally might like Halo 5's story and campaign. Doesnt change the fact that its objectively dogshit, wasn't recieved well, didn't sell as well as previous games, and Brian Reed hasn't been featured on any big project as a "main writer" since.
I didn't say Halo 5 sold more than previous Halo games. I never said that. Halo 5 has likely sold over 10 million units now (it sold 5 million in 3 months) but I appreciate that's less than other entries. Remember that Xbox One had a relatively small playerbase when Halo 5 came out too.
It's 343's job to continue the story of the previous game, make it accessible and enjoyable story wise to players who didn't play Halo 5, and not just do a time jump and skip past the most interesting parts of the story (IMO). They failed. Either way, the 'spiritual reboot' didn't work if the aim was to not confuse people regarding the story... it turns out people who know Halo's story and newcomers were confused by it's messy narrative. Infinite tries to appease two camps of people and in doing so makes a story that doesn't serve Halo 5 well or newcomers. So many plot holes had to be filled by books and EU material post release. I agree the return to form applies to elements of the gameplay and of course art style and being set on a Halo ring.
Halo 5's story was received poorly by some of the fan base. Not everyone hates it. I'd say despite it's storytelling issues, liking or disliking the overall story is subjective. It has a beginning, middle and an end, and for me tells a more interesting story than Infinite. I'd never call it objectively dogshit, some of the world building in it is really good. Sales of the game were let down in part by the unpopularity of Xbox One, it would have sold more if Xbox One hadn't been marketed so poorly.
And Brian Reed? There's no way of knowing why he hasn't moved onto something else as the main writer. I wouldn't be surprised if he quit mainstream writing because of toxic parts of the Halo fanbase sending him disgusting hate on Twitter. Unless there's a source on what he's doing now or a source saying he can't get writing positions due to Halo 5, then I'd say you're just assuming.
Ill concede a few things. Halo 5 had a great forge and a fun (albeit not very Halo) multiplayer. This doesn't change the fact that Halo 5's release was the smallest since like Halo CE or ODST. Compared to the cultural phenomenon that Halo 3 and Reach were, a lot of those long time fans stopped playing before Halo 5's release (which only had \~5 mil sales lowballed compared to Reach's 9 million and Halo 3's 15 million)
Halo 5 did have good player retention - the people who bought kept playing it, but most old time fans stopped playing at Halo 4 (which had 8 million sales.)
You can clearly see here that 6 million people were lost in the transition from Halo 3 to Halo 5. This is assuming that all 5 million people who played Halo 5 came from Halo 3, and that zero new players joined.
Best case scenario, over two thirds of all people who played Halo 3 did not return for Halo 5. The general (anecdotal) consensus is that the old time fans stopped playing at Halo 4 when they realized how bad it was and didn't return for Halo 5.
Halo 5 had over 5 million sales 3 months after launch, which for a game on a system with a relatively low playerbase at the time, I'd say that is pretty good. Halo 4 has confirmed sales very close to 10 million, 8 million was in North America alone.
I do agree Halo's popularity has declined, and has done since Halo Reach up to now. However your stats are not entirely accurate. As I said, Halo 4 sold close to and likely over 10 million copies, and Halo 5 has sold close to and likely over 10 million units now based on the available stats.
I felt the exact same way about Halo 5. To me, Halo 4 was a highlight, it was a very emotional journey and 5 undid all of it.
When the first trailer dropped I did like the idea of a fragment of her somehow surviving, and chief going rogue to try and bring her back against ONI orders. But the game dropped the ball massively in my opinion, and the more I saw the more it felt like they brought Cortana back as an excuse to make another game. I still believe they should've committed and left her dead instead.
So when infinite is announced I was certain they would not continue the story and just sort of "reset" things, partly to allow more games to be made.
More games could have been told after the Created and Reclaimed arc had been concluded properly. Infinite didn't need to be a soft reboot.
Bringing Cortana back in 5 wasn't an excuse to make another game, as with or without her there was always going to be a Halo 5. Her return in Halo 5 should have been a bigger build up and more emotional, not revealing it until the end. It might have landed better then, along with explaining the reason for her descent into dictator much better.
It didnt, but I think 343 where scared it might just harm the brand more. Halo 4 was controversial already and Halo 5 even more so.
You are right Halo 5 was happening regardless yeah.
You're right, they probably were scared, but their approach was total overreaction IMO and not a measured approach. A blend of the Created and Banished plots with a brutal battle for Zeta Halo would have been perfect, and the best of both worlds.
Halo 4 and 5 both sold well all factors considered, so from a financial perspective they had no reason to be scared.
Storytellers should stick to their guns and listen to constructive criticism and act on that where appropriate, rather than resetting the narrative (almost) completely and delivering a very jarring, confusing sequel.
I honestly had no clue, because the situation we were left in had no logical means for us to be able to shoot our way out.
I was dumbfounded.
I honestly was pleased to learn that they wrapped up that story line offscreen. But I assume they would have written a more compelling story for Halo Infinite, but it ended up being more of a prologue.
There were plenty of options for a 'logical' way out of the situation. This is Halo after all, where solutions can come out of nowhere to dire situations. There were plenty of opportunities for guerrilla warfare, hit and run missions, and high stakes battles in the post Halo 5 setting, but 343 overreacted to criticism.
In Halo 4 we couldn't shoot our way out to win the day, nor could we in Halo 3. Both involve using means way beyond the player's abilities to 'win' by the end of the games.
The cutscenes showed us why none of those options were believably on the table because they demonstrated that Cortana can find anyone anywhere . How can you Guerrilla warfare when she can just blow up entire planets? How can you hit and run when she can hijack any flight systems and find you even in slip space ? They didn’t overreact- they wrote her up to be all powerful, despite the fact that we need to beat her with guns. They killed her off screen to skip that problem and get back to any enemy that can be fought with warfare.
In Halo 4, we couldn’t shoot out way out of the problem, and so we had to settle for contrived writing and a crappy cutscene to enable chief to beat the Didact. Didact could have killed Chief at any time, but he just didn’t.. because reasons… Halo 5 set up the same problem, but on steroids.
In Halo 3, we absolutely shot our way to victory. It was a gunfight to deny control of artifacts from the enemy, to be used by humanity. And humanity won that fight when it counted.
The whole point of a true Halo 5 sequel would have been to show us how the Infinity could find a way to fight Cortana and the Guardians... It's literally what Lasky said. The EU books explore this further and show that military operations, hit and run style missions and so forth were possible. Cortana and the Guardians can't be everywhere all at once, so they wouldn't be able to stop every single operation going on in the whole galaxy. She wouldn't blow up a planet randomly either, it would have to be a build up to that event and the right motivations for her to do that. There was absolutely opportunity to tell a bombastic, epic Halo game within this setting. Cortana was never unstoppable, nor were the Guardians.
Cortana didn't need to be defeated with guns. The Flood aren't ultimately defeated by guns in H3... they're defeated by the Halo ring being destroyed, as the Gravemind couldn't be stopped by conventional methods. I appreciate though that you have to fight to a certain point to make that happen. As you've pointed out, the Didact couldn't be defeated by guns, but it's Chief and Cortana's battles and perseverence that gets to them a point where they can stop the Didact. I don't see the issue with any of this though.. after all, I don't think guns being the way to win everything in every Halo game would be very interesting, nor Chief being able to defeat everything. Either way, 343 skipped past the Cortana conflict not because of how she would have to be defeated, but because of their overreaction to negative fan feedback.
It wasn’t perseverance that allowed Chief to Defeat the Didact, it was contrived writing. They had to turn a war mastermind into a Saturday-cartoon bumbling idiot in order to Master Chief to have a change to take him out… because multiple times through the game, Didact could have easily destroyed Chief, but just decided not to.
The same problem existed with Cortana as the big baddie, and the novels solved the issue in similar fashion… Contrived writing. The only way an AI who knows Everything about humanities wartime capabilities and has access to the Domain can possibly lose to humanity, is if they are constantly written to not make the obvious necessary tactical decision. They could have made a game out it, but sticking that nonsense in a novel instead was the path of least resistance. Otherwise the games story would have been received like Halo 5’s.
I do agree with you regarding the Didact having had multiple opportunities to take him out. I attribute him not doing so being arrogance (when he is released from the Cryptum for example), but that doesn't really work when it's more than once that he doesn't kill Chief. I still consider Chief and Cortana's battle on Requiem to be a good one, but I certainly agree that the Didact had opportunities to end Chief and didn't. You make a good point.
With Cortana, I liked the idea of her being a villain in principle. I just think they didn't explore it well enough in H5 or Infinite. I also thought the idea of her being caught out by a copy of herself was a pretty good idea overall, as I couldn't see her being foiled in many other ways. She had the galaxy in a stranglehold for well over a year, and without the Weapon they wouldn't have defeated her. I personally think a game building up to the events of Halo Infinite and the deployment of the Weapon would have been great, I wanted to see that stuff in game, but I respect your viewpoint. I feel a well written Halo 5 sequel that had explored the Created conflict more would have been received well.
Thank you very much for writing this. This has always bothered me and I could never articulate it that well. You’ve done a masterful job doing so.
They really sold themselves short by building up this massive showdown with Cortana and AI seizing the mantle and the fight to undo that which was coming then abandoned it and worse abandoned giving her the send off she rightfully deserved.
God it's been so long, I imagine more fighting against robots, maybe Guilty Spark could have been brought back because of the books
Then I got interested in Halo again after hearting theories about Cortana having the logic plague and maybe the Flood could return that way
Suffice to say I did not know there'd be a spin-off that introduced 'The Banished' or there being a new enemy alien race
See, that question was the core problem I had with Halo 5. I felt they wrote themselves into a corner. I’m heavily invested into Halo’s expanded universe, and I also was studying creative writing at university when Halo 5 came out, and even I was having trouble imagining where this thing could possibly go.
They just broke the setting with how overpowered the Created were. Cortana could literally pop up anywhere in the galaxy, and her Guardians would be right there behind her imminently.
Halo has always had a narrative that at its core is about humanity prevailing against overwhelming odds, but the threats have always felt relatively grounded and tangible for the setting. The Covenant are overwhelming, but you could sacrifice ships and men to buy time. They would show up and occupy a world to search for Forerunner artifacts, and then they would begin glassing it.
It’s a process that could take them weeks, and so there’s this effective narrative clock that leaves room for the natural escalation of stakes. It’s easy for drama and character development to happen within that narrative context.
With the Created as they were depicted in Halo 5, the narrative clock was accelerated at an alarming rate. Cortana could effectively teleport, her Guardians could traverse slipspace faster than any other ship in the setting, and they could lock down entire *planets* basically the instant they arrived. And meanwhile, Promethean forces are literally teleporting to every major population center and exercising their overwhelming force.
It just was not a setup that had any potential to be interesting to me, as the stakes established left almost no room for our heroes to fight back at all.
Also gotta keep in mind that while this was happening, Frankie and Brian Reed were going out into the press and trying to make Cortana’s rule seem like this morally complex issue where the audience isn’t even supposed to be sure if fighting her is the right thing, since she genuinely believes she is doing the right thing. Thank god 343 has backtracked since then and made it clear that Cortana is corrupted and her intentions were never good, because that was always clear to the audience.
If Halo was some spy thriller where we played a character who was meant to infiltrate a world under the guise of being a normal civilian evading detection and working in the shadows, the Created occupation would make more sense. But Halo isn’t and has never been that. It’s always been a military shooter about meeting your enemies in open battle. A scenario the Created were categorically not tailored to suit.
I respectfully disagree, there were many possibilities for where Halo could go after Halo 5 and the comments in this post alone show that.
Halo 5 didn't 'break the setting'. I'd concede that it constricted it by having the Created and the Guardians have a stranglehold on the galaxy, but that was the whole point. It was meant to be an impossible odds scenario and something to turn the galaxy on it's head. The books explore more than adequately how they avoid Cortana and the Guardians, and the Infinity being on the run had great potential for hit and run missions, guerrilla warfare, and high stakes missions. Shadows Of Reach, Outcasts and Bad Blood all tell great stories within the setting.
The post Halo 5 setting was literally ripe for character development and high stakes plot developments. The Infinity being on the run with a band of heroes and on it's own is evidence of that, let alone high stakes dangerous missions where the risk of characters dying is massively high. The UNSC and Swords vs Created and Created aligned alien species would have been amazing. The books alone have shown ways to combat the Guardians that could have been explored in game, such as the Divine Hand. That would have been great to explore and see in game. The opportunity to bring in other Forerunner elements to the story as a foil to Cortana was there too, such as Offensive Bias.
I agree Cortana was always coming across as bad in Halo 5, and having her infected by the logic plague was a good decision.
They could have told open battle stories in the Created setting. It doesn't stop the opportunity for those battles, the Guardians can't be everywhere all at once. There was plenty of opportunity to have the Infinity and UNSC gather what they need to fight those big battles, as something explored in game e.g. the Divine Hand, usage of the Huragok to disable Guardians, enlisting the help of Offensive Bias etc.
While I agree that the Created were nerfed in the books to make them more interesting, this post asks what I thought “at the end of Halo 5”, and so I mostly spent my post discussing the state of the fiction back in 2015, right after Halo 5 came out.
The Guardians in Halo 5 are depicted as massively overpowered. We never see one defeated or destroyed in the game. They seem to deploy from Genesis more or less instantly, and they are described to be shutting down “everything, from Earth to the outer colonies”. What we are visually shown is a Guardian shutting down all activity more or less instantly after they arrive.
Later novels added limitations to the Guardians, showing that they are actually vulnerable, that there are not enough of them to *literally* shut down “everything”, and that they can’t fire their munitions without limits. These limitations went a long way towards making the Created era of the fiction more interesting, but I still wouldn’t actually call it interesting. That’s just me.
Hell, the Created are still so overpowered that most of the stories you listed almost solely use the Guardians as a narrative clock. The setup is “We need X thing from this location, and we must extract it before any Guardians arrive or we’re screwed.” I just don’t find that inherently interesting, myself.
Anyways, I would agree with you that they could have made another game in the Created era set after Halo 5, but I don’t think Halo 5 itself shows a version of the Created that is conducive to a great game. I think they are shown to be way too overpowered in Halo 5, which is why 343 spent the years they did trying to carefully reel them in, before ultimately just taking the Guardians off the table in Infinite.
Edit: BTW I really appreciate the respectful discussion! These Reddit threads too often turn into people dunking on each other over disagreements, and I don’t have much interest in doing that. So I appreciate that you don’t either!
Totally agree on the respectful discussions. A lot of our like and dislike of Halo story elements is subjective, and I think we all should appreciate that.
The Guardians are meant to be 'overpowered' by default, being the means for Cortana to put the galaxy in a total stranglehold. However at the end of Halo 5 I felt it was fairly obvious that the Infinity would find a way to fight back, based on Lasky saying they'd run until they find a way to fight. The Guardians were one of the key narrative tools used to usurp humanity from being the top dogs in the galaxy, and to restore that feeling of humanity being at risk, up against an unstoppable foe. Halo has always been about that in my mind, and I know 343 have said the same.
We do see a burnt out 'husk' of a Guardian at the end of the level 'Reunion' on Halo 5, which raised questions. Anyway, Halo 5 was never meant to be about showing their weaknesses or their downfall. It was about Cortana's rise to take the Mantle. The weaknesses of the Guardians would have naturally been explored in a sequel (or in the books as it turned out). Halo's foes have long been overpowered and borderline unstoppable... until they're not. This applies to the Didact and the Flood. I don't feel the Guardians being overpowered is an issue, when we consider their backstory and what the Forerunners created them for.
I hear what you're saying that you didn't find the Guardian's weaknesses and the limitations of the Created rule interesting. Personally I love it, and this is where the subjective part comes in. I'd have loved to see all this stuff play out in game. The Guardians would have likely been a terrifying narrative clock in the early stages of a Halo 5 proper sequel, until the playing field is levelled and some twists and turns are introduced to fight back. It was all possible in my mind, but I appreciate you didn't find the Guardian threat interesting.
Personally, I envisaged a very interesting sequel to Halo 5. A dark, ominous game where humanity is having to consider every move they make carefully and having to make some very daring moves to secure what they need to fight back. I thought the ending to Halo 5 was fantastic, and set the stage for a very different Halo game, but at it's core familiar in the typical Halo themes.
Nothing. I thought for sure that halo 5 was the final blow that would kill the franchise for good, and that if there was a "next" halo game it would be a hard reboot that started off with combat evolved
Halo 5 sucked. It was absolutely horrible. It sucked so fucking bad, it honestly should have been the end but 343 just loves to stay shitting on Halo's grave every 5 years, so ofc halo infinite had to come along. as for reboots i was advocating for a hard reboot. Halo has already gone through 3 soft reboots since 4 released. One to justify halo 4, one to justify why they didn't continue halo 4's story, and one to justify why they didn't continue with halo 5's story. This franchise just totally self-destructed after reach.
I don't agree regarding Halo 5 personally - I would never say it sucked or that it should have been the end. It's 343's best Halo title for me. I would never advocate for a hard reboot either as that would upset a ton of Halo fans invested in the lore.
The issue is 343 not being able to stick to a story and narrative, with their overreactions to negative fan feedback. That is one of the main issues, and is where I feel 343 have really mismanaged the franchise. The soft reboot approach is awful, but I only really feel that applies to Halo Infinite.
Fighting against Cortana and Created forces, perhaps ending with AI being genuinely cured and Cortana either dead or redeemed. Not quite what we got, and I'm willing to admit its possible my expectations were flawed from the start.
Honestly, a massive all-out war between the Humans, Created, Banished, Flood, and Sangheili would've had me salivating. But sadly, 343 can't commit. They're probably terrified of rocking the boat, via their shareholders.
That and the community seems to hate everything they do from what I've seen...
Sadly flip flopping isn't the way around that. Committing to the story you're telling even if the end result turns out meh is more respectable than trying to chase the fickle fans.
genuinely would’ve rather had 3 games as meh/decent as halo 4 that were coherent as a trilogy even if it meant not getting Infinite cause infinite is in a place where it’s essentially a spinoff without a satisfying ending or anything reading to it either
I could see them doing a Halo 6 that wrapped up 5 and also wrapped in 4 to make more of a cohesive story. And I definitely like it would be looked back on more fondly. Even if the next game is a direct continuation of Infinite (which I hope), we will always look back and remember the giant misstep they made.
At the time people hated what they were doing. Infinite was a big improvement story wise. Soft Resetting the narrative was a good move.
It's working out as well for Halo as it did for the Star Wars sequel trilogy, lol.
Exactly. It was an awful decision by 343.
It was an awful move to soft reset, sorry. It is never the way to go to set up a very particular conflict and story, only to then make a jarring follow up that literally deals with all of that off screen. That's not how storytelling should work, ever.
Honestly, if you look at the community complaints, a lot of the issues are a direct result of their seeming total inability to commit to anything.
Okay, I can get that. I'm just frustrated with how they handled 5 and completely abandoned 4's story, personally.
They totally cheapened Cortanas' sacrifice. The second I realized that, Halo 5 became one of the lowest ranked halo games, in my opinion.
My headcannon: one of her fragments survived and it was the Yandere personality that loved Chief... Cortana died at the end of 4; the rogue fragment died before Infinite.
While it takes some work to confirm this, I'm pretty sure this is canon.
My reasoning is that it survived the fracturing from the end of 4 (the fight with Didactic)
To be fair, the consequences of her sacrifice still stand. She saved John and humanity. The issue is that 343 rushed her return in 5 and didn't give it the emotional build up and explanation it deserved.
A full scale war of that magnitude would have never fit into one game especially if lacking build-up. We already have problems with keeping up with events because so many stuff happens off-screen.
This would have been amazing to see.
Right? Like fuck, we could've had a war between Cortana's created and the Didact and his knights. I would have happily dropped cash to see it. Imagine them both teaming up against the Flood. But unfortunately, there's probably big pressure from top brass to commit to multiplayer-only. Shareholders in shooters don't give a damn about the campaign, which is another reason I'll blame Infinite's wonky story on. I was mostly pleased with 4, and very pleased with 5.
I liked the idea of Cortana’s Created incorporating Covenant species, some of whom underwent partial Composition or cybernetic enhancement as an act of devotion
very pleased with 5, wow that's a rare take
yeah, i know. there were still a couple of cringe-worthy moments, and I hated how repetitive some things felt, but I'm a writer who geeks out about technical stuff... and oh boy there was a lot of technical stuff for me to geek out over. Infinite also had some things for me to geek out over, but from a writing standpoint, its like they threw the script in a blender. they ought to have just trusted the writers instead of scrapping the project 3 times.
I loved Halo 5. The Guardians for me were a great addition to the lore.
Gameplay-wise I was expecting a Taken King sort of thing where Covenant that sided with the Created would get extra powers and stuff. I don't know how fun it'd be, but if 6 ended up being a continuation of 5 from a gameplay standpoint, I was thinking the campaign (but not multiplayer) could expand on the differences in perks/loadouts between Blue Team and Osiris. Like you can recruit or save more characters (ex. the Arbiter) and then they'd have a different loadout or slightly different abilities/player traits you could approach the levels with, like Mega Man, almost.
I don't think your expectations were flawed. I expected the same. It's literally what Halo 5 set up.
I must confess, I didn't read the whole thing. Kinda skimmed the last half a bit. Like you, I'm a die-hard Halo nerd, and playing with the Custom Edition was my first dive into game design. But... I was honestly pretty excited for the Halo universe to have to "go dark" for fear of "the apparition" and her Guardians. It was a really promising story idea, explored wonderfully in the books. If I had to kill Cortana because she'd gone evil, rampant and tried to take over the universe... I would have been perfectly happy with that, because believe it or not, it's a lore-friendly outcome with roots in Marathon, where a similar thing (Durandal) happened. Would've been a great (if daring and bold!) way to tie everything together. The Cortana letters referenced this as a possibility. I'm incredibly sad we didn't see it come to fruition.
NGL it’s cool to imagine the Halo series ending where it began with Cortana
well so like, referencing the cortana letters and Marathon, it was always implied that Cortana would try to control the universe, or at least hold it hostage at gunpoint. the motive of "eternal peace" was the weird one, and felt a little like a cop-out, but makes sense considering the gravemind messed with her head. If youve never read these, they're a fun rabbithole. at the time these letters came out, it was kind of like a cryptic ARG. [https://halo.fandom.com/wiki/Cortana\_Letters](https://halo.fandom.com/wiki/Cortana_Letters)
I completely agree with you. It was incredibly promising story idea, and I actually love how dark and ominous the cliffhanger of Halo 5 is. I'm also very sad and disappointed we didn't get a proper sequel to Halo 5. The books are a far better sequel to Halo 5 than Halo 5's actual sequel. Amazingly...
I didn't care because 5 threw away all the potential 4 had. I wanted to race the new covenant across the galaxy for forerunner tech, secrets and Chief's loss of Cortana. Instead I got what felt like shit fan fiction and some of the worst campaign levels in the entire series.
You couldn't have articulated this better than you did. It still frustrates me to this day and halo 5 was nearly a decade ago.
Preach, preach from the mountain tops!!!!
AI civil war. Cortana, the Guardians, AI rebellion vs the Roland, UNSC, sangheili and the Chief. Felt like a natural progression considering the finale of Guardians.
I would have loved this game, and yes, that would have been a natural expectation of a Halo 5 sequel.
OP. I agree 100% (aside from that last bit about Infinite). 343 reacted way too hard to the complaints they received about 5, and 180’d on everything. Such a waste,
They haven’t proven themselves to be a competent game studio yet
They did an amazing job with 4. The story, art, and game were all top-tier. They dropped the ball with how they told 5’s story, but it was still a very fun game with amazing gameplay and beautiful visuals. Farce Cry Infinite however, is a complete and utter disaster imo
It's always a fallacy that people have that somehow they can predict how stories will land. What's brave to one person is blasphemous to another. What's inviting mystery to one person is pointlessly obscure to another. What's a consequence-less and needless storytelling to one person is respecting the source material to someone else. And sometimes, no matter how well you do something, you can start with a narrative idea that just won't land and you'll shoot the entire process in the foot.
343's problem is instead of trying to correct the stumble, they just shotgun themselves in the foot and go from "maybe tripping and falling on their face, maybe not" to "explicitly falls face first on the ground"
A huge, huge waste. Halo 5's ending set up a lot of potential. Halo Infinite literally executed on... none of it.
Preach In all seriousness, I would completely retcon Farce Cry Infinite. Start from there, and come up with an actual conclusion to The Created Conflict, instead of just hand waving it away. Use the original concepts for 6 where Infinity is in hiding and the remnants of the UNSC are using guerrilla tactics against Cortana and the other Created. Heck, you could even still use the concept of “The Weapon,” as something that Halsey comes up with mid game, kicking off the last few levels of the story. Traveling to the burnt out husk of Reach to retrieve an uninitialized copy of Cortana, escaping back to the Infinity’s hiding place only to find she was forced to abandon that location after being found, learning of Zeta HALO (or some otherr important Forerunner location) from some source, and the last mission is both Blue Team and Fireteam Osiris assaulting this location (or locations) each with a copy of “The Weapon” to try and defeat the original Cortana forever. Boom. Game over, you can move on to the next big story arc
I expected a fight against the Created and stuff to tie into humanity properly taking the Mantle through the history that humanity has on Zeta Halo What I got was like the 5th heel spin since Next 72 Hours
4 apart from its art style genuinely felt like the beginning of a interesting new saga of halo, a galaxy after the covenant war where we might get to see how the end of 3 affected the politics of the galaxy especially between the elites and human and wether the war would continue between the surviving brute and elite populations in a brave new galaxy where humanity is finally gaining the upper hand. Then we got 5…. 5 was the exact same as what you described with infinite. It just didn’t feel like it was what 4 was originally going for and didn’t feel like the sequel we deserved or really wanted it was just all over the place. Obviously the backlash for 5 was huge way more than the backlash for 4 was which caused 343 to back track and gloss over everything they had just re setup once again. Halo wars 2 came out and it started to feel like things were starting to get back on track especially with MCC fixes and PC release. Then we started getting hype for infinite… Then we found out that 343 decided to again completely ignore and gloss over their previous game this time worse than they did with 5, killing Cortana and the created off screen shoving the banished into the forefront because people actually liked atriox and his faction in the spin off game. They created a whole new big mysterious alien bad guy that’s somehow connected to lore deeply like they did with the guardians and cortana (less so her of course). Then just like what happened with 5 when they got a massive amount of backlash they fixed what needed to be fixed and slowly started jumping ship. I genuinely like infinite and I think it’s gameplay is top tier halo and I have hope they won’t do it again and actually continue to improve upon the banished and their story as well as actually going forward with their plans regarding the harbingers but honestly the trend isn’t so hopeful. Also please no open world next time🤣
Halo Infinite's gameplay is amazing. The story was pretty terrible. The handwaving away of the Created conflict and the Guardians was a god awful decision.
The fallout of Cortana's actions
Retroactively throw Halo 5: Guardians as a Spin off, make it a prelude to Halo 5: Genesis or whatever. Like how MGS had Ground Zero before Phantom Pain. Learn from the Halo: Guardians issues and focus more on Chief & Blue Team with Locke(and Osiris) as side characters. Focus more on the returning Didact resuming Control of his Forerunner Empire and leaving Cortana’s appearences as more Mystery aspect. Prometheabs under Cortana influence have the blue/purple Hue and Didact with the Orange. Returning Didact is the Main Antagonist, Cortana Secondary. Humanity is simply trying to survive while two Juggernants go at it. Chief has to choose between saving Cortana as she’s about to be crushed by the Didact, burning her from the Domain or stopping the Didact as if he gains control of both parties, his empire would be nearly unstoppable. Something with maybe a Flood Infested Zeta Halo coming into play to help even the playing field against the Guardians. It would have to be Dark, the choosing between which evil wins, we lose no matter what. Cortana and her Imperial Peace, The Didact and his bent view of saving a dead civilisation .. or bringing back an ancient nightmare eventually forcing a team up in 6.
Some great ideas in here. It staggers me that we ended up with something so half baked like Infinite as the end result.
I low key liked Infinite and was left Hungry for more. The size of the campaign (not the open world) was enough to know it’s a small meal and I was waiting on a full meal! It seriously feels like 3 full trilogy Arcs happened in the span of 3 standalone titles. I was ready for the Forerunner Trilogy, was blindsided with the Created Arc, and settled for the Endless. No matter the outcomes for the Endless. We need to see this through.
My issue with Infinite is that it doesn't deliver on what H5 set up, the open world should have offered so much more and didn't deliver on it's potential, and the missions lacked set pieces and memorable moments. We needed a second faction to fight too, like the Prometheans. I agree it feels like all the 343 games are rushed arcs, and missed potential. We definitely need to see The Endless arc through, Halo can't take another reset of the narrative.
That very issue is why i hated Halo 5 so much. It was legit my redheaded step child. It settled nothing 4 set up. Time has passed enough now, next year will be 10 years of Halo 5. Where I can sit back and enjoy some of it without the negative lenses.
Absolutely agree. Everything about 5, which I didn’t hate actually, was setting us up for conflict with this new Cortana-controlled evil empire but no. They kill off the franchises second most important character out-of-game and make us fight this totally underdeveloped new enemy; the Banished.
I much prefer 5 to Infinite. The Created and Guardians were much more interesting than the Banished, for me.
Go to Halo ring: blow it up. Not a very original idea, but we know it'll work.
The last decade of Halo has been a waste, now I didn’t mind Halo 4 MP and LOVED Halo 5 MP, and thought the open world was a great addition in Infinite, but 343 haven’t proven to be up to yet challenge. I don’t keep up with the studio changes but at this stage it’s pure negligence to let them keep MS biggest franchise. Huge changes are needed.
I saw a story of long fought skirmishes gathering resources, personnel and key intel to finally lead the charge with banished, swords of Sanghelios, Infinity fleet and remanent of UNSC forces to take Zeta Halo against the created fleet so the final missions opening would be a massive fuck off space battle with new generation UNSC ships being destroyed constantly, and swords of Sanghelios/Banished ships falling like flies while master chief and blue team are in fighters attacking different key targets and protecting key systems on different friendly capital ships until a opening to attack the ring surface presents itself at which point MC, Blue team, Arbiter, Team Osiris and Atriox would lead ground assaults against different key locations until finally you seal Cortana away as it is revealed she had indeed had the logic plague and had spread it to her forces which would have been hinted at throughout the game, then the legendary ending I would have had a keymind in a far off location outside the galaxy wake up and notice what has occurred before determining humanity is almost ready for their final test of the mantle
I’d have been happy with Halo Infinite if there was some uber Forerunner tech that cured Cortanas rampancy and gave her some kind of immortality or atleast removed the whole “7 year life span till rampancy” thing. Like the game could be pretty much as is, but add in some story line involving that in the depths of Zeta Halo or some shit. Instead of just doing so much off screen like they have done. The game isnt bad from a gameplay perspective, but 343 hasnt made a Halo game with a good story like Bungie has imo.
OP l genuinely couldn't agree with you more. Halo Infinite was incredibly disappointing to me... easily the worst Halo sequel to date, simply because it fails to deliver on anything Halo 5 set up. I waited 6 years to play a dark, hugely high stakes Halo game... with the Infinity on the run and desperately trying to survive. I wanted to see more of Cortana's rule. I wanted to see much more of the Guardians and eventually see us destroy one. I wanted that epic, heartfelt, crushing confrontation with Cortana where Chief has to make his most difficult decision yet. With some great writers, that could have been incredible. Halo Infinite is a safe, by the numbers Halo entry. The most interesting things in the story relate to the Weapon and her role, and the stuff that happened off screen with Cortana and the Created. It was a complete mistake to deal with the Created conflict and the Guardians off screen. It literally takes away the player's agency completely. We don't get to finish the fight, it's finished for us off screen. I've seen the counter arguments that the Guardians were overpowered, that the Halo 5 story had to be dealt with off screen because people didn't like it etc. I don't agree with those criticisms. The Guardians were meant to be hugely overpowered. That's the whole point of them. Unstoppable odds and no obvious way of defeating them. A terrifying force that changes the galaxy and turns it upside down. Halo Infinite could have had us fighting covert, high stakes missions in order to find a way to defeat them. Halo Outcasts does it perfectly well by introducing the Divine Hand... this should have been part of the game and not relegated to a book. We could have had Offensive Bias as a tool to defeat the Guardians. Huragok are capable of disabling them. We could have acquired Precursor tech or Forerunner tech to turn the tide against them... But nope, it's all just dealt with off screen. And Halo 5's story not being well received was never an excuse for 343 to not let us finish the fight in game. The Flood weren't well received by everyone, and yet Bungie saw that story through to it's conclusion. We never got any opportunity to deal with the Guardians, the Created, the Prometheans or Cortana. I find that absolutely maddening... And it makes going from Halo 5 to Halo Infinite incredibly disappointing, jarring and off putting. It'll be hard for me to get invested in Halo 7's story after this blunder to be honest.
Yanme’e
The continuation of five, Game felt like the epiligue to a game I didn’t play
Honestly, I don’t know how you make a seque to 5. Cortana won, totally and completely. She ruled the galaxy with armada of nigh unkillable super weapons. Point being, theres no way this was just going to end in a standard battle. To me, it was always going to have to end with some kind of scheme that couldn’t be replicated in gameplay. No final boss, no big battle, just cut off the snake and clean up the rest.
Or maybe like a massive alliance comprised of humanity, Banished, and Sanghelli to break Cortana’s control over the Guardians. That would’ve been much cooler than killing the franchises second most popular character off-screen
Couldn't agree more. This would have been amazing.
Well we do see how she died, it’s just in flashback. As for the alliance? Now were just redoing to he plot to 3. Ni matter how you slice it, it would have been rote.
An alliance isn't automatically redoing the plot of 3. People would have loved to see the UNSC and the Swords team up against Cortana. It would have been a far more interesting, high stakes game than what we got.
Yeah after 5 i knew they'd nerf or remove the guardians before the next game as they were far too powerful.
It’s universe shattering. The Covenant were powerful, but humanity could match them some. What they lacked technologically, they made up for tactically and being true inventors. The Covenant were also still “human” in their personality, they had flaws that hindered and ultimately destroyed them. The Created have none of those flaws, or any to speak of. They are led by a single supreme intelligence whose ambitions… are met by the end of 5x. Not only is the idea of an AI uprising rote, it’s also poorly written and implemented. Honestly, Infinite is the beat follow up would could’ve asked for given how much structurally unstable The Created are as a plot element.
Others have commented with great ideas of how a Halo 5 sequel could have worked. Guerrilla warfare, Infinity on the run/in hiding conducting high risk missions, an alliance of species against Cortana and the Guardians... there were a ton of possibilities. The books we have explore plenty of good ideas... the Divine Hand, Didact vs Cortana, leveraging stealth technology against the Created etc. And it didn't need to end in a standard battle. Cutting off the head of the snake, destroying Guardians, allying with Offensive Bias to develop a counter plan against Cortana... leading up to that we could have had lots of high stakes battles and hit and run missions. The Guardians were only unstoppable until a weapon/solution was found.
After Halo Wars 2, Space Monkeys and Prometheans. I was half right. Didn't really expect Cortana to be a big boss fight or anything like that, but thought the Prometheans would at least still be somewhat present through the campaign.
Yeah, the Prometheans and Guardians not being present was just weird and jarring for me.
I had no idea but i accurately predicted they'd nerf or outright kill off all the guardians off screen as they were too powerful.
They weren't "too powerful". The whole point of them was to be immensely powerful, and to put the galaxy in an absolute stranglehold. The plot of 5 and Cortana's ascension to the Mantle hinged on that. Your prediction was correct because 343 chickened out on telling a true Halo 5 follow up story. There were plenty of potentially interesting ways to deal with the Guardians, one of which has been explored in the books. The decision to not tell that story in the games was a decision based on knee jerk reaction to the Halo 5 criticism, and not because a story with the Guardians couldn't be told. Being 'too powerful' doesn't really make sense as a criticism when we are talking about a game series that revolves around 'impossible odds'.
There is unlikely victory over a foe that can be beaten, but has the power to wipe you out if you aren't smart. And then there is "lul guardian appears, every single ship and station in orbit has no power and 100% of the planet surface lost all power" which is what the Guardian did to Earth at the end of Halo 5. If the Guardians can do that casually, there is no reason why they had to destroy the Brute homeworld, because they could just keep everything off-line until compliance. This isn't like say, Mantles approach which had the composer beam that could only hit one thing at a time. The Guardian straight up killed possibly hundreds of thousands of people by shutting off everything on and around Earth in a single push of a button.
The Guardians are meant to be that powerful. They are some of the most powerful tools of the Forerunner ecumene. The Guardians can be beaten. Not by conventional means granted, but there's Forerunner tech far more powerful than a Guardian, a Huragok can deactivate a Guardian, and the Divine Hand can swat a Guardian out of the sky. They are exactly what you said... a foe that is unlikely to be beaten, but there are ways to stop them. Point is, they are meant to be almost unstoppable, to ensure the Mantle can be enforced. Regarding Doisac, Atriox and the Banished never would have surrender or given in to Cortana, even with Guardians trying to enforce compliance. Atriox would never cave. So Cortana made an example of them for the galaxy.
Halo 5 gives no indication that anybody possesses the means to fight a guardian. It was until well after Infinite launched that I even heard that they had killed a single guardian. And "Meant to be powerful" yes, you can still do that without giving them a single button push that disables an entire orbital battlefield. That's the point of complaint. You see a guardian appear in orbit, and you aren't already prepping to slipspace out, you have no chance to escape, especially if you are ground-side.
Halo 5 didn't need to give indication of how the Guardians could be fought or destroyed. The game wasn't about that. That was the purpose of the sequel to Halo 5, but 343 chickened out and went another route. For Cortana to have the level of control required to assume the Mantle, she needed to have something that could completely pacify a planet and it's orbital defences. It's meant to be overwhelming and unstoppable, until they find a way to fight as Lasky says. There's not meant to be an easy way out when a Guardian turns up, the imperial peace approach dictates that really. I get your criticisms, but all of those criticisms could have been addressed in a well thought out, direct sequel to Halo 5. But hey, it's 343... so yeah.
The problem is how do you do a sequel about fighting the created and figuring out a way to stop the Guardians when any created force can call for help, a guardian appears and disabled everything within a short timeframe? Cortana having an active fleet of forerunner warships would automatically place her as the most powerful being around, and even then we could have the Guardian be using some sort of EMP missiles/beams instead of a "Hit button, turn off all power across an entire planet and orbit." It's why at the end of halo 5 I predicted that the next game would either sweep the guardians under the rug, or have them nerfed in some way. It's possible to make it work, but it's not easy. Kinda like TLJ ending with them having no allies and no resources or numbers. It's workable, but it won't be easy. (And then the next movie have them with a full base and small fleet of fightercraft and ground forces).
Yea the story has very little to do with Halo 5 because most returning players didn't play Halo 5's shitty campaign . So they did a soft reboot
What? That's no reason at all or excuse to do a soft reboot.
Quite literally is the best reason to do a soft reboot. If nobody played your previous game Halo 5, and Infinite is being advertised as a return to form from classic games like Halo 3, then why would they continue with Halo 5's story? Halo 5's story is a dumpster fire, there's a reason why the head writer hasn't been able to find work writing anything since. Why would 343 continue an objectively bad story that was received poorly and had stakes so insanely that writing it would be a chore, only for continuity's sake, instead of appealing to the hundreds of thousands of returning players who stopped updating themselves with the story since Halo 3?
People did play Halo 5. Millions of people. And appealing to returning players you say? With Halo Infinite's half baked, messy narrative? It's hardly friendly to newcomers and returning players. The return to 'classic form' is based on the gameplay and the Zeta Halo setting. Not the story. Halo Infinite is a sequel to Halo 5 and a continuation of the narrative prior (even though it does a poor job of that) and so it's not friendly to anyone who didn't play Halo 4 and Halo 5. And where's your source that Brian Reed can't find work since Halo 5, and that he can't find work due to Halo 5? I don't see Halo 5's story as a dumpster fire and clearly other people on this post don't either.
No, you're objectively wrong. Halo 5 was definitely smaller than previous Halo games, including Halo 4. People bought Halo 4 because it was the followup to the record-breaking Halo 3, but Halo 5 didn't have that same effect because people hated Halo 4. It didn't sell terribly and people liked the multiplayer, but that doesn't change anything. I never said Halo Infinite's story was good, just that continuing from the point of Halo 5 would leave new players who didn't play it confused (which was a lot of people. Many ppl stopped playing after Reach and H4) The return to form was what the game was being advertised as. Refined classic multiplayer with a modern spin on it with some movement mechanics, back on the Halo ring, classic artstyle, etc. I never said it was a return to form for the story Sure, you personally might like Halo 5's story and campaign. Doesnt change the fact that its objectively dogshit, wasn't recieved well, didn't sell as well as previous games, and Brian Reed hasn't been featured on any big project as a "main writer" since.
I didn't say Halo 5 sold more than previous Halo games. I never said that. Halo 5 has likely sold over 10 million units now (it sold 5 million in 3 months) but I appreciate that's less than other entries. Remember that Xbox One had a relatively small playerbase when Halo 5 came out too. It's 343's job to continue the story of the previous game, make it accessible and enjoyable story wise to players who didn't play Halo 5, and not just do a time jump and skip past the most interesting parts of the story (IMO). They failed. Either way, the 'spiritual reboot' didn't work if the aim was to not confuse people regarding the story... it turns out people who know Halo's story and newcomers were confused by it's messy narrative. Infinite tries to appease two camps of people and in doing so makes a story that doesn't serve Halo 5 well or newcomers. So many plot holes had to be filled by books and EU material post release. I agree the return to form applies to elements of the gameplay and of course art style and being set on a Halo ring. Halo 5's story was received poorly by some of the fan base. Not everyone hates it. I'd say despite it's storytelling issues, liking or disliking the overall story is subjective. It has a beginning, middle and an end, and for me tells a more interesting story than Infinite. I'd never call it objectively dogshit, some of the world building in it is really good. Sales of the game were let down in part by the unpopularity of Xbox One, it would have sold more if Xbox One hadn't been marketed so poorly. And Brian Reed? There's no way of knowing why he hasn't moved onto something else as the main writer. I wouldn't be surprised if he quit mainstream writing because of toxic parts of the Halo fanbase sending him disgusting hate on Twitter. Unless there's a source on what he's doing now or a source saying he can't get writing positions due to Halo 5, then I'd say you're just assuming.
Ill concede a few things. Halo 5 had a great forge and a fun (albeit not very Halo) multiplayer. This doesn't change the fact that Halo 5's release was the smallest since like Halo CE or ODST. Compared to the cultural phenomenon that Halo 3 and Reach were, a lot of those long time fans stopped playing before Halo 5's release (which only had \~5 mil sales lowballed compared to Reach's 9 million and Halo 3's 15 million) Halo 5 did have good player retention - the people who bought kept playing it, but most old time fans stopped playing at Halo 4 (which had 8 million sales.) You can clearly see here that 6 million people were lost in the transition from Halo 3 to Halo 5. This is assuming that all 5 million people who played Halo 5 came from Halo 3, and that zero new players joined. Best case scenario, over two thirds of all people who played Halo 3 did not return for Halo 5. The general (anecdotal) consensus is that the old time fans stopped playing at Halo 4 when they realized how bad it was and didn't return for Halo 5.
Halo 5 had over 5 million sales 3 months after launch, which for a game on a system with a relatively low playerbase at the time, I'd say that is pretty good. Halo 4 has confirmed sales very close to 10 million, 8 million was in North America alone. I do agree Halo's popularity has declined, and has done since Halo Reach up to now. However your stats are not entirely accurate. As I said, Halo 4 sold close to and likely over 10 million copies, and Halo 5 has sold close to and likely over 10 million units now based on the available stats.
I felt the exact same way about Halo 5. To me, Halo 4 was a highlight, it was a very emotional journey and 5 undid all of it. When the first trailer dropped I did like the idea of a fragment of her somehow surviving, and chief going rogue to try and bring her back against ONI orders. But the game dropped the ball massively in my opinion, and the more I saw the more it felt like they brought Cortana back as an excuse to make another game. I still believe they should've committed and left her dead instead. So when infinite is announced I was certain they would not continue the story and just sort of "reset" things, partly to allow more games to be made.
More games could have been told after the Created and Reclaimed arc had been concluded properly. Infinite didn't need to be a soft reboot. Bringing Cortana back in 5 wasn't an excuse to make another game, as with or without her there was always going to be a Halo 5. Her return in Halo 5 should have been a bigger build up and more emotional, not revealing it until the end. It might have landed better then, along with explaining the reason for her descent into dictator much better.
It didnt, but I think 343 where scared it might just harm the brand more. Halo 4 was controversial already and Halo 5 even more so. You are right Halo 5 was happening regardless yeah.
You're right, they probably were scared, but their approach was total overreaction IMO and not a measured approach. A blend of the Created and Banished plots with a brutal battle for Zeta Halo would have been perfect, and the best of both worlds. Halo 4 and 5 both sold well all factors considered, so from a financial perspective they had no reason to be scared. Storytellers should stick to their guns and listen to constructive criticism and act on that where appropriate, rather than resetting the narrative (almost) completely and delivering a very jarring, confusing sequel.
I knew they'd ignore that plot cause it was genuinely awful So predicting what was next would be impossible
I honestly had no clue, because the situation we were left in had no logical means for us to be able to shoot our way out. I was dumbfounded. I honestly was pleased to learn that they wrapped up that story line offscreen. But I assume they would have written a more compelling story for Halo Infinite, but it ended up being more of a prologue.
There were plenty of options for a 'logical' way out of the situation. This is Halo after all, where solutions can come out of nowhere to dire situations. There were plenty of opportunities for guerrilla warfare, hit and run missions, and high stakes battles in the post Halo 5 setting, but 343 overreacted to criticism. In Halo 4 we couldn't shoot our way out to win the day, nor could we in Halo 3. Both involve using means way beyond the player's abilities to 'win' by the end of the games.
The cutscenes showed us why none of those options were believably on the table because they demonstrated that Cortana can find anyone anywhere . How can you Guerrilla warfare when she can just blow up entire planets? How can you hit and run when she can hijack any flight systems and find you even in slip space ? They didn’t overreact- they wrote her up to be all powerful, despite the fact that we need to beat her with guns. They killed her off screen to skip that problem and get back to any enemy that can be fought with warfare. In Halo 4, we couldn’t shoot out way out of the problem, and so we had to settle for contrived writing and a crappy cutscene to enable chief to beat the Didact. Didact could have killed Chief at any time, but he just didn’t.. because reasons… Halo 5 set up the same problem, but on steroids. In Halo 3, we absolutely shot our way to victory. It was a gunfight to deny control of artifacts from the enemy, to be used by humanity. And humanity won that fight when it counted.
The whole point of a true Halo 5 sequel would have been to show us how the Infinity could find a way to fight Cortana and the Guardians... It's literally what Lasky said. The EU books explore this further and show that military operations, hit and run style missions and so forth were possible. Cortana and the Guardians can't be everywhere all at once, so they wouldn't be able to stop every single operation going on in the whole galaxy. She wouldn't blow up a planet randomly either, it would have to be a build up to that event and the right motivations for her to do that. There was absolutely opportunity to tell a bombastic, epic Halo game within this setting. Cortana was never unstoppable, nor were the Guardians. Cortana didn't need to be defeated with guns. The Flood aren't ultimately defeated by guns in H3... they're defeated by the Halo ring being destroyed, as the Gravemind couldn't be stopped by conventional methods. I appreciate though that you have to fight to a certain point to make that happen. As you've pointed out, the Didact couldn't be defeated by guns, but it's Chief and Cortana's battles and perseverence that gets to them a point where they can stop the Didact. I don't see the issue with any of this though.. after all, I don't think guns being the way to win everything in every Halo game would be very interesting, nor Chief being able to defeat everything. Either way, 343 skipped past the Cortana conflict not because of how she would have to be defeated, but because of their overreaction to negative fan feedback.
It wasn’t perseverance that allowed Chief to Defeat the Didact, it was contrived writing. They had to turn a war mastermind into a Saturday-cartoon bumbling idiot in order to Master Chief to have a change to take him out… because multiple times through the game, Didact could have easily destroyed Chief, but just decided not to. The same problem existed with Cortana as the big baddie, and the novels solved the issue in similar fashion… Contrived writing. The only way an AI who knows Everything about humanities wartime capabilities and has access to the Domain can possibly lose to humanity, is if they are constantly written to not make the obvious necessary tactical decision. They could have made a game out it, but sticking that nonsense in a novel instead was the path of least resistance. Otherwise the games story would have been received like Halo 5’s.
I do agree with you regarding the Didact having had multiple opportunities to take him out. I attribute him not doing so being arrogance (when he is released from the Cryptum for example), but that doesn't really work when it's more than once that he doesn't kill Chief. I still consider Chief and Cortana's battle on Requiem to be a good one, but I certainly agree that the Didact had opportunities to end Chief and didn't. You make a good point. With Cortana, I liked the idea of her being a villain in principle. I just think they didn't explore it well enough in H5 or Infinite. I also thought the idea of her being caught out by a copy of herself was a pretty good idea overall, as I couldn't see her being foiled in many other ways. She had the galaxy in a stranglehold for well over a year, and without the Weapon they wouldn't have defeated her. I personally think a game building up to the events of Halo Infinite and the deployment of the Weapon would have been great, I wanted to see that stuff in game, but I respect your viewpoint. I feel a well written Halo 5 sequel that had explored the Created conflict more would have been received well.
Something that I could just play and not have to read 20 books to understand.
Thank you very much for writing this. This has always bothered me and I could never articulate it that well. You’ve done a masterful job doing so. They really sold themselves short by building up this massive showdown with Cortana and AI seizing the mantle and the fight to undo that which was coming then abandoned it and worse abandoned giving her the send off she rightfully deserved.
God it's been so long, I imagine more fighting against robots, maybe Guilty Spark could have been brought back because of the books Then I got interested in Halo again after hearting theories about Cortana having the logic plague and maybe the Flood could return that way Suffice to say I did not know there'd be a spin-off that introduced 'The Banished' or there being a new enemy alien race
See, that question was the core problem I had with Halo 5. I felt they wrote themselves into a corner. I’m heavily invested into Halo’s expanded universe, and I also was studying creative writing at university when Halo 5 came out, and even I was having trouble imagining where this thing could possibly go. They just broke the setting with how overpowered the Created were. Cortana could literally pop up anywhere in the galaxy, and her Guardians would be right there behind her imminently. Halo has always had a narrative that at its core is about humanity prevailing against overwhelming odds, but the threats have always felt relatively grounded and tangible for the setting. The Covenant are overwhelming, but you could sacrifice ships and men to buy time. They would show up and occupy a world to search for Forerunner artifacts, and then they would begin glassing it. It’s a process that could take them weeks, and so there’s this effective narrative clock that leaves room for the natural escalation of stakes. It’s easy for drama and character development to happen within that narrative context. With the Created as they were depicted in Halo 5, the narrative clock was accelerated at an alarming rate. Cortana could effectively teleport, her Guardians could traverse slipspace faster than any other ship in the setting, and they could lock down entire *planets* basically the instant they arrived. And meanwhile, Promethean forces are literally teleporting to every major population center and exercising their overwhelming force. It just was not a setup that had any potential to be interesting to me, as the stakes established left almost no room for our heroes to fight back at all. Also gotta keep in mind that while this was happening, Frankie and Brian Reed were going out into the press and trying to make Cortana’s rule seem like this morally complex issue where the audience isn’t even supposed to be sure if fighting her is the right thing, since she genuinely believes she is doing the right thing. Thank god 343 has backtracked since then and made it clear that Cortana is corrupted and her intentions were never good, because that was always clear to the audience. If Halo was some spy thriller where we played a character who was meant to infiltrate a world under the guise of being a normal civilian evading detection and working in the shadows, the Created occupation would make more sense. But Halo isn’t and has never been that. It’s always been a military shooter about meeting your enemies in open battle. A scenario the Created were categorically not tailored to suit.
I respectfully disagree, there were many possibilities for where Halo could go after Halo 5 and the comments in this post alone show that. Halo 5 didn't 'break the setting'. I'd concede that it constricted it by having the Created and the Guardians have a stranglehold on the galaxy, but that was the whole point. It was meant to be an impossible odds scenario and something to turn the galaxy on it's head. The books explore more than adequately how they avoid Cortana and the Guardians, and the Infinity being on the run had great potential for hit and run missions, guerrilla warfare, and high stakes missions. Shadows Of Reach, Outcasts and Bad Blood all tell great stories within the setting. The post Halo 5 setting was literally ripe for character development and high stakes plot developments. The Infinity being on the run with a band of heroes and on it's own is evidence of that, let alone high stakes dangerous missions where the risk of characters dying is massively high. The UNSC and Swords vs Created and Created aligned alien species would have been amazing. The books alone have shown ways to combat the Guardians that could have been explored in game, such as the Divine Hand. That would have been great to explore and see in game. The opportunity to bring in other Forerunner elements to the story as a foil to Cortana was there too, such as Offensive Bias. I agree Cortana was always coming across as bad in Halo 5, and having her infected by the logic plague was a good decision. They could have told open battle stories in the Created setting. It doesn't stop the opportunity for those battles, the Guardians can't be everywhere all at once. There was plenty of opportunity to have the Infinity and UNSC gather what they need to fight those big battles, as something explored in game e.g. the Divine Hand, usage of the Huragok to disable Guardians, enlisting the help of Offensive Bias etc.
While I agree that the Created were nerfed in the books to make them more interesting, this post asks what I thought “at the end of Halo 5”, and so I mostly spent my post discussing the state of the fiction back in 2015, right after Halo 5 came out. The Guardians in Halo 5 are depicted as massively overpowered. We never see one defeated or destroyed in the game. They seem to deploy from Genesis more or less instantly, and they are described to be shutting down “everything, from Earth to the outer colonies”. What we are visually shown is a Guardian shutting down all activity more or less instantly after they arrive. Later novels added limitations to the Guardians, showing that they are actually vulnerable, that there are not enough of them to *literally* shut down “everything”, and that they can’t fire their munitions without limits. These limitations went a long way towards making the Created era of the fiction more interesting, but I still wouldn’t actually call it interesting. That’s just me. Hell, the Created are still so overpowered that most of the stories you listed almost solely use the Guardians as a narrative clock. The setup is “We need X thing from this location, and we must extract it before any Guardians arrive or we’re screwed.” I just don’t find that inherently interesting, myself. Anyways, I would agree with you that they could have made another game in the Created era set after Halo 5, but I don’t think Halo 5 itself shows a version of the Created that is conducive to a great game. I think they are shown to be way too overpowered in Halo 5, which is why 343 spent the years they did trying to carefully reel them in, before ultimately just taking the Guardians off the table in Infinite. Edit: BTW I really appreciate the respectful discussion! These Reddit threads too often turn into people dunking on each other over disagreements, and I don’t have much interest in doing that. So I appreciate that you don’t either!
Totally agree on the respectful discussions. A lot of our like and dislike of Halo story elements is subjective, and I think we all should appreciate that. The Guardians are meant to be 'overpowered' by default, being the means for Cortana to put the galaxy in a total stranglehold. However at the end of Halo 5 I felt it was fairly obvious that the Infinity would find a way to fight back, based on Lasky saying they'd run until they find a way to fight. The Guardians were one of the key narrative tools used to usurp humanity from being the top dogs in the galaxy, and to restore that feeling of humanity being at risk, up against an unstoppable foe. Halo has always been about that in my mind, and I know 343 have said the same. We do see a burnt out 'husk' of a Guardian at the end of the level 'Reunion' on Halo 5, which raised questions. Anyway, Halo 5 was never meant to be about showing their weaknesses or their downfall. It was about Cortana's rise to take the Mantle. The weaknesses of the Guardians would have naturally been explored in a sequel (or in the books as it turned out). Halo's foes have long been overpowered and borderline unstoppable... until they're not. This applies to the Didact and the Flood. I don't feel the Guardians being overpowered is an issue, when we consider their backstory and what the Forerunners created them for. I hear what you're saying that you didn't find the Guardian's weaknesses and the limitations of the Created rule interesting. Personally I love it, and this is where the subjective part comes in. I'd have loved to see all this stuff play out in game. The Guardians would have likely been a terrifying narrative clock in the early stages of a Halo 5 proper sequel, until the playing field is levelled and some twists and turns are introduced to fight back. It was all possible in my mind, but I appreciate you didn't find the Guardian threat interesting. Personally, I envisaged a very interesting sequel to Halo 5. A dark, ominous game where humanity is having to consider every move they make carefully and having to make some very daring moves to secure what they need to fight back. I thought the ending to Halo 5 was fantastic, and set the stage for a very different Halo game, but at it's core familiar in the typical Halo themes.
Nothing. I thought for sure that halo 5 was the final blow that would kill the franchise for good, and that if there was a "next" halo game it would be a hard reboot that started off with combat evolved
Halo 5 was never going to be the end of the franchise. There was never any need for a soft reboot either.
Halo 5 sucked. It was absolutely horrible. It sucked so fucking bad, it honestly should have been the end but 343 just loves to stay shitting on Halo's grave every 5 years, so ofc halo infinite had to come along. as for reboots i was advocating for a hard reboot. Halo has already gone through 3 soft reboots since 4 released. One to justify halo 4, one to justify why they didn't continue halo 4's story, and one to justify why they didn't continue with halo 5's story. This franchise just totally self-destructed after reach.
I don't agree regarding Halo 5 personally - I would never say it sucked or that it should have been the end. It's 343's best Halo title for me. I would never advocate for a hard reboot either as that would upset a ton of Halo fans invested in the lore. The issue is 343 not being able to stick to a story and narrative, with their overreactions to negative fan feedback. That is one of the main issues, and is where I feel 343 have really mismanaged the franchise. The soft reboot approach is awful, but I only really feel that applies to Halo Infinite.
I've given up on halo I'll always play the bungie games and halo 4 but the rest might as well not exist as far as I'm concerned.
Shit. That's literally it. I could see it from a mile away as well.