I don't think I could summarize it better my self.

The whole thing about always beating the odds and being behind is pretty much true about any action story. I mean, if you characters can just effortlessly mow down enemies, then how are you supposed to feel tension? How are you supposed to feel triumph when they win?

I knew we were in trouble when we leaped out of a plane and had an avengers style opening, where everybody just instantly kicks ass. Blue Team blows away the opposition in their opening like it's nothing. The most fearsome Covenant leader is wrecked in a cutscene easy peasy.

When you make your characters unstoppable badasses, you actually undo a lot of what makes action compelling.

What if instead of Osiris, you got a team of rookies? It's already better!

I just don't agree completely. I can definitely understand the things being said about the story, even if I don't necessarily agree with all of it.

Halo 4, Halo 5, and all of 343i's extended universe fiction seems to be trying to build a more "grounded" version of Halo. Is Del Rio and an idiot? Yeah, probably, but at the end of the day, he's the captain of the ship, he gets to make the call. He's not the bad guy because he opposes the Chief. The Chief's job is to do whatever the hell he says. That's how the military works. I think 343i is trying to present things in a more realistic manner than the Chief just going off and doing things because his AI told him to. Whether they succeed or fail, or if that's a good or bad thing, is definitely up for debate, and I still haven't completely figured out how I feel about it. In some ways, I think it's smart, and I don't think they've leaned into that aspect hard enough.

In Bungie's original trilogy, the Master Chief saved the galaxy from the both the Flood and complete annihilation from the Halos. How do you top that? 343i has certainly tried, but the general consensus seems to be that they've failed (even though I happen to think Halo 5 sets up a potentially really great Halo 6). I think they would have been smarter to lean into much smaller, personal, more grounded stories, like ODST and Reach presented. The galaxy had already been saved. Instead of manufacturing a new galaxy-wide threat, why not focus on post-war clean up? They could have drawn that out for multiple games in interesting ways. The story of Spartan Ops could have certainly been really interesting and fun, had it been the main focus of Halo 4 and expanded upon. The Master Chief could have stayed asleep, and we could have followed another Spartan team through that story for Halo 4, and continued it in Halo 5.

That being said, the article says,

But, hey, the gameplay’s fun, right?

I wish.

The difficulty tuning is off. In Halo 4, Normal felt too easy and Heroic felt just… wrong. It was easy if I played it like a pop and stop shooter, but Halo’s all about strafing and dodging and throwing grenades and melee. It’s a game about movement, about dancing through the combat space. With Halo 4, your armor has the durability of wet toilet paper. It’s easy to die, and worse still, the enemies are massive bullet sponges.

The same is true of Halo 5 on Heroic. I once unloaded half a clip from a BR, a shotgun round or two, and a punch into a Forerunner Soldier’s face. For my trouble, I was downed instantly from a single punch by the Soldier. I’ve shot enemies 3 and 4 times with a sniper rifle before killing them, used an entire BR clip on an enemy with no perceptible effect. Once, I told three spartans to target an elite, then dashed back to get some ammo. When I returned, they hadn’t even brought the elite’s shield down. The much-touted squad system is useless.

The gameplay is the most important part, and I disagree with basically all of that. It's been a while since I've played Halo 4, but I don't remember anything like that, and I enjoyed the gameplay.

But Halo 5 is one of the best Halo games ever in terms of how fun it is to be playing, and how good it feels. As far as the Heroic tuning, I felt like it was honestly a bit too easy. I breezed through it, other than the double and triple Warden battles. And I didn't play it as a "pop and stop" shooter (again, other than those damn Warden fights). I was running and gunning and playing Halo like I've played every Halo. So I'm not sure what he's talking about. I also found the other Spartans to be pretty good about taking out designated enemies without me having to worry about it.

I don't know. It was a good article; it just doesn't ring true for me.

If you consider the games non canon, or part of a splinter universe, it becomes easier to swallow the story, and see that actually they're very good once you throw out all your old Halo knowledge.

I consider 343's Halo a different series. It's not my Halo I loved since 2001, but you can learn to love it again if your continuity stops after ODST.

I'm posting this because I feel this is the best reasoning I have yet to see when it comes to how 343 has handled Halo. I'm posting this here because this place is where alot of the old guard HBOers (even myself - though I was more a lurker at the time) are now.

It might not be saying much, but It's the best post I have ever seen out of Kotaku. I feel It is well written, and worth a read.

So without further adue.

I don't think I could summarize it better my self.

Let's just get gameplay out of the way. I really like Halo 5 gameplay. It reminds me a lot of the best Halos--the battlespaces are huge (bigger than ever), and there are so many ways to skin a cat. I often feel like I'm figuring out a puzzle, like I have in older Halos. Weapons don't despawn as regularly as they did in H4. The sounddesgin beats Halo 4's like a drum, and the soundtrack is better, and better aligned with events.

Agree with this writer's thesis in regard to being the hero of the story. I think 343i has stumbled often in its efforts the make Halo less space opera and more hard scifi, sometimes adding dollops of ambiguity willy-nilly, because that's what makes it a complex, adult story, right? I don't think it's as bad as he makes it out to be, though. He's exactly right about the Didact, but the Chief/Cortana angle of Halo 4 was extremely compelling. He's exactly right about Locke in Halo 5, but the humanity shown by other fireteam members often during gameplay makes the game (and the story to a lesser degree) live. I enjoy playing Halo 5, even as Locke. And it's because so much of my interest in the story is personal, unlike a big chunk of Halo 4. I agree with him about Halsey in Halo 4 and Spartan Ops, but I see in Halo 5 the beginnings of a course correction.

Regarding the "massive character shift" of Cortana, I'm not so sure. In a way, I feel like Halo 5 is getting back to truly old school Halo. Perhaps I was steeped in the rampancy-centered storylines of Marathon, but I never completely trusted her after her eyes turned red way back in the Control Room, and the after-credits ending of Halo 2 always seemed a little too conspiratorial to me.

Finally, I kind of like this peace-through-fascism theme that's cropping up. Reminds me of good 60s and 70s sci fi.

I'm posting this because I feel this is the best reasoning I have yet to see when it comes to how 343 has handled Halo. I'm posting this here because this place is where alot of the old guard HBOers (even myself - though I was more a lurker at the time) are now.

It might not be saying much, but It's the best post I have ever seen out of Kotaku. I feel It is well written, and worth a read.

So without further adue.

I don't think I could summarize it better my self.

In terms of the story development, I think Bungie's Halo and 343's Halo have very different strengths. I think Bungie's Halo games were some of the best examples of "story that serves the gameplay experience". I may be in the minority here, but I never thought the story of Halo 1-3 was particularly good in its own right. But it did a fantastic job of providing context: I always knew where I was, why I was there, what my goals were and why I was trying to achieve them. The story provided motivation in a way many other videogame stories fail to do. But when it comes to the basics like the quality of the dialog, character development, and that kind of thing, I don't think the story of Halo 1-3 was very good at all.

When it comes to 343's Halo games, I think they do a wonderful job with the little moments. The dialog is much better for the most part, and they've clearly invested way more time and money into facial capture and animations to portray more believable and emotional characters. Halo 5 has many of my favorite moments of character interaction in the franchise. Where 343's Halo games fall apart IMO is in the "big picture" stuff. The overall plotlines are a complete mess, and where the player "fits in" to everything is often impossible to decipher. The stories don't serve the gameplay experience anymore, which I believe is the real reason why so many Halo fans feel some sort of friction with the last few Halo games.