What's Halo 5 about? (Gaming)

by narcogen , Andover, Massachusetts, Thursday, November 12, 2015, 00:49 (3299 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

http://carnage.bungie.org/haloforum/halo.forum.pl?read=1210294

Pertinent, because I feel like Bungie has the same problem with their storytelling in Destiny: it's not really about anything.

Read your post over at HBO. Lots of great points there.

Here's another angle, though: Maybe videogame stories don't need to be about anything.

Before you call me crazy, I think videogame stories can be about something. When I play a game that has a great story, I truly appreciate it. But for me, 99% of videogame stories are nothing more than window dressing. It's a series of events and scenarios to justify the gameplay mechanics being thrown at the player. Splinter Cell Blacklist is one of my favorite games of all time. It has a story, but I can't tell you a damn thing about it. And that's fine. In this case, the story has a very clear and specific purpose: to give the player a reason to visit all these cool locations and do badass super-spy stuff. And that's all it needed to be.

You've hit on it exactly. It's there to provide character motivation-- a reason to do the thing your doing.

It's a question, then, about how good a reason you need. If a voice in your head telling you to do it is enough excuse, then most games have you set. If you want to know who the voice is and why they want to tell you to do that and whether or not it makes sense in the grand scheme of things, then there are a lot of games that fall down on that count.

For me, I think Halo 5 sort of wanted to be about what Mass Effect was about, only was not nearly as good at being about that.

I know there are many here who will disagree with me on this, but I've always felt the same way about Halo. I've never felt connected to the narrative or characters in any meaningful way. To me it is a bunch of sci-fi gibberish to give us a reason to go all over the galaxy fighting aliens and driving cool vehicles. To me, Halo 2 is the only game in the series that actually does a decent job of building a real character arch that holds any weight.

I'm not sure I'd say only, but I think it does a better job at most, and by bringing back the Arbiter in Halo 5 without really bothering to give him an arc felt like cynical fanservice.