[1/4/24]
I can't believe this was the first game I beat this year. I also can't believe I actually replayed this game.
Holy shit, what the fuck happened here? The story tries to do the Halo 2 thing of dual protagonists, except one of those two, Fireteam Osiris, is full of people nobody gives a shit about and also Buck from Halo 3: ODST. The other is Blue Team, comprising of Master Chief and three other Spartans nobody who exclusively sticks with the games would recognize. They focus on the Promethean aspect, something that was introduced one game ago, way too much. The "Covenant", a splinter faction of the original, has their leader killed off at the beginning with little fanfare. The game feels like it gets cut off at the end of the second act. Also, Cortana's alive because she got sent to a planet called Genesis where she effectively became immortal. The story's just very forgettable, and that's like the worst sin you can commit. What gives?
How I see it, it's the push to turn Halo into a multimedia franchise and its very apparent effects on the main games. This game is preceded by Halo: Nightfall, a miniseries that's also Locke's (the leader of Fireteam Osiris) origin story. It's just for one character. I can let that slide. The game's followed by a novel focusing on Chief's return to the UNSC and it's probably followed with a book for every member of both teams if I know this series well enough. Halo 4 tells a relatively self-contained story. Halo Infinite has a start, focuses on Discovering Hope and is deliberately left open at the end (which is when the campaign DLC would have taken place... it still hurts). And I already said that Halo 5 feels like it gets cut off. Halo 2 Anniversary used to have a cutscene where Arbiter would tell the story of that game to Locke as well. If only the vision they had for this game at the time was the actual story. It had something going about Chief and Locke butting heads but instead we just got a group chasing after Chief when we weren't playing as him. And when we did confront him? Probably the worst fistfight I've ever seen. Man, the whole marketing campaign could be a paragraph in itself.
I hate this. Why does it need to be connected to everything? Why can't the games themselves contain the main story instead of merely a snippet? Why do I need to boot up another game to see a cutscene for something that didn't even happen? What even is the point of expanding the universe other than trying to make more money? I assure you almost nobody gives a shit about the ODST crew's antics as Alpha-Nine. And I'm confident absolutely nobody gives a fuck about Guilty Spark actually surviving getting nuked by a Spartan Laser. Or the history of the Forerunners and why they needed to activate the Halo rings the first time. Or ancient humanity which is like the worst thing I've seen come out of this franchise that isn't in this game or this game itself.
I don't say shit like "This isn't (X)" when it comes to anything that deviates from the norm (not 100% Halo 3) like a particular subsect of Halo fans but the artstyle, narrative continuing to go down the Promethean lane, giving the bird to Halo 4 and that one guy who based the dynamic between Chief and Cortana off of his own struggles with losing his mother to dementia during development, and sidelining Chief make this game far more insulting to a fan. I can't imagine the slap in the face this must have been to longtime fans if many of them interpreted Halo 4 as one.
Also the multiplayer has lootboxes. Super Fiesta gives this game another point because it's the best version of it in the series solely due to the weapon variants.
Not cool, 343.
I can't believe this was the first game I beat this year. I also can't believe I actually replayed this game.
Holy shit, what the fuck happened here? The story tries to do the Halo 2 thing of dual protagonists, except one of those two, Fireteam Osiris, is full of people nobody gives a shit about and also Buck from Halo 3: ODST. The other is Blue Team, comprising of Master Chief and three other Spartans nobody who exclusively sticks with the games would recognize. They focus on the Promethean aspect, something that was introduced one game ago, way too much. The "Covenant", a splinter faction of the original, has their leader killed off at the beginning with little fanfare. The game feels like it gets cut off at the end of the second act. Also, Cortana's alive because she got sent to a planet called Genesis where she effectively became immortal. The story's just very forgettable, and that's like the worst sin you can commit. What gives?
How I see it, it's the push to turn Halo into a multimedia franchise and its very apparent effects on the main games. This game is preceded by Halo: Nightfall, a miniseries that's also Locke's (the leader of Fireteam Osiris) origin story. It's just for one character. I can let that slide. The game's followed by a novel focusing on Chief's return to the UNSC and it's probably followed with a book for every member of both teams if I know this series well enough. Halo 4 tells a relatively self-contained story. Halo Infinite has a start, focuses on Discovering Hope and is deliberately left open at the end (which is when the campaign DLC would have taken place... it still hurts). And I already said that Halo 5 feels like it gets cut off. Halo 2 Anniversary used to have a cutscene where Arbiter would tell the story of that game to Locke as well. If only the vision they had for this game at the time was the actual story. It had something going about Chief and Locke butting heads but instead we just got a group chasing after Chief when we weren't playing as him. And when we did confront him? Probably the worst fistfight I've ever seen. Man, the whole marketing campaign could be a paragraph in itself.
I hate this. Why does it need to be connected to everything? Why can't the games themselves contain the main story instead of merely a snippet? Why do I need to boot up another game to see a cutscene for something that didn't even happen? What even is the point of expanding the universe other than trying to make more money? I assure you almost nobody gives a shit about the ODST crew's antics as Alpha-Nine. And I'm confident absolutely nobody gives a fuck about Guilty Spark actually surviving getting nuked by a Spartan Laser. Or the history of the Forerunners and why they needed to activate the Halo rings the first time. Or ancient humanity which is like the worst thing I've seen come out of this franchise that isn't in this game or this game itself.
I don't say shit like "This isn't (X)" when it comes to anything that deviates from the norm (not 100% Halo 3) like a particular subsect of Halo fans but the artstyle, narrative continuing to go down the Promethean lane, giving the bird to Halo 4 and that one guy who based the dynamic between Chief and Cortana off of his own struggles with losing his mother to dementia during development, and sidelining Chief make this game far more insulting to a fan. I can't imagine the slap in the face this must have been to longtime fans if many of them interpreted Halo 4 as one.
Also the multiplayer has lootboxes. Super Fiesta gives this game another point because it's the best version of it in the series solely due to the weapon variants.
Not cool, 343.