You say that 343i's Halo is perfectly good if you treat it as its own thing. I say this doesn't work because they aren't telling worthwhile stories (Hello, Escalation!) and the spokesmen for 343i keep insisting that it's not a reboot or a reimagining.

Me either, Kermit. Red eyes, not being clear with us. Choosing to stay behind on high charity. Talking to the grave mind and not giving us any info. She's finally playing her part.

That's not the Cortana I knew.

The Cortana I knew was loyal and courageous. The Cortana you're talking about is a mustache-twirling villain. How does it benefit her evil plan to send the Chief to face the Flood with no intel, and then intervene when 343 Guilty Spark is about fire the Halos? Why would she lock herself in the same space station as an eldritch abomination with a penchant for iambic meter and mindraping AIs?

That's the sort of hidden agenda villain you get when David Lindeloff or Chris Carter are writing the script.

Have you seen that post on HBO regarding the Cortana letters?

Yes. One document written early in the first game's development and subsequently abandoned does not overwrite the characterization established in three games and two books.

So, I chose to ignore my issues with the larger universe. I still think Halo 4 is nearly incomprehensible, but Halo 5's totally fine. As fan fiction. I know some people can't ignore that stuff, but I also think a lot of them don't want to try.

I just urge people to try that.

Me either, Kermit. Red eyes, not being clear with us. Choosing to stay behind on high charity. Talking to the grave mind and not giving us any info. She's finally playing her part. Have you seen that post on HBO regarding the Cortana letters?

Frankly I think after Halo 2 and Halo 3 it was just too late to pick up that plot thread, which seemingly remained in Halo 1 even though it was never followed-up on. Halo 4 and 5 almost absolutely depend on the player either not really caring why things happen, or reading the novels to understand why things are happening.

To the extent that I even care what's going on in that story anymore, I'm still not quite buying the transitions they are trying to make for Cortana, Halsey and Master Chief. Halsey as mad scientist and Spartans as broken, tragic victims are supported by the novels and deep background, but definitely NOT supported by Halo 1-3-- not in the least.

The "absolute power corrupts absolutely" angle they're pursuing for Cortana works a tiny bit better, but I'm still not buying it. Halo 3, for me, undercuts it completely. I think they're bending over backwards to make her look like a threat, but the only thing in the trilogy that supports it is that one moment were she got a bit sarcastic and insulted the Master Chief for a couple minutes. That's really not much to go on.

Given the danger of the Covenant either activating Halo rings unnecessarily, or humanity failing to activate them when necessary, or the two groups waging a war across the galaxy either with or amongst each other, Cortana policing the beat with a bunch of Guardians seems like not such a bad idea. What's making it look bad in H5 is the collateral damage, but that was seemingly done for no reason... there seems to be no reason other than a show of force why Cortana is collecting Guardians in the manner she's doing so, and Taylor's performance at the moment that is supposed to sell the "crazy Cortana" to us-- when she takes umbrage at the Master Chief's reasonable question about civilian casualties-- just did not work for me. I know they didn't want her to go full moustache-twirling at that moment, and I can respect that, but it's so underplayed it almost feels like what they're going to do is blame the warden for it all. So when he is finally actually defeated, Cortana will un-crazy herself, but she'll have survived rampancy, and they'll return the Haloverse to status quo: Master Chief and Cortana ready to go on more adventures. Which was just what Halo 3 was designed to put a stop to.

Master Chief and Cortana started out very different, like StarWars A New Hope, Bungie had a long list of rewrites and edits before they got to the final look and feel of the product, but they had a very specific look and feel. Go back and look at the ODST trailer, or the Halo 3 trailer and diorama. Look at the old Macworld footage of the early Mac version of the game.

Humanity was doomed. The enemy is a relentless conglomeration of religious fanatics hunting us to extinction. No matter how awesome our space marines are, they can't stand against it, yet they do, and do so with honor and integrity. That attitude colors all the fiction and in game character moments.

All of that is gone now. Halo 4 saw the last of it with the Chief/Cortana interactions. If you desaturated this game and added some extensive profanity it would be tough to tell the difference between it and Gears of War. Halo 5's marketing is all about the Chief as a rogue, a traitor, or Locke as an uncaring bureaucrat like the Agent from the Firefly movie. Which makes even less sense because the Spartan II from Locke's little intro movie does everything we expect from the Spartans of Halos 1-4. Look at the point where they have to choose who stays behind on the ring fragment, and draw beads. The Spartan II rigs the game, not for glory, but because he knew the other two had something to live for.

343I knew what the theme was, but for better or worse they are changing it. It could just be different writers, it could be an editorial direction. I mean, there is the whole "Humanity is now the top dogs" speech when they intro the Infinity. But all of that ignores all that came before, and for me that is a tough pill to swallow. I could be ok with it, perhaps, but it's just all handled so ineptly, so inelegantly, I can't stand it.

The captain is a jerk, why? The plot demands it! The Didact is a jerk, why? The plot demands it! Everyone hates Halsey now, why? The plot demands it! I'm half surprised you didn't defeat the Warden by reversing the shield polarity. It's too convenient, too lazy, to just make things so instead of coming up with good reasons why. This bugs me the most. If this wasn't a Halo brand it would be "generic sci fi shooter 2015". We have all the checkboxes. MP, gear and appearance customization, xp system, 4 player coop, etc.

I still have to give them credit though that the scenery is beautiful.

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.

The game was pretty but the Didact was a different character than the complex, conflicted military general I expected. And his motive, destroying Himanity to stop the already defeated Flood, made zero sense. Cortana's death kinda happened off screen... during a cutscene... right after 343i made me nuke the Chief (which for that short instant before I hit RB felt significant and gutsy)... and they decided Halsey should be seen as evil... and they went from Spartans being individuals who always did the right thing and had the best technology and armor that only they could use and could singlehandedly save the world to Spartans being random unruly former ODSTs with a new generation of armor that magically solved all the problems and in true Incredibles fashion made everyone special, thus making no one special.

I think someone on HBO put it best.
343i: "We love Halo. Just not the Halo you love."

As a result, I did not buy the last Forerunner book, did not buy any of the other newer books, and still have not bought Halo 5.

Buy Last Light. Speaking as a Halo fan who can't stand 343i's direction, Last Light does everything right.

And it's heartbreaking to not be playing a new Halo game. It feels wrong to be waiting for a price drop. And I don't know if my first and favorite video game franchise will ever appeal to me again. :(

=(

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 don't want to love it. Without the Halo brand, it's a shallow sort of science fiction that draws from the worst parts of anime and comic books. The ancillary stories are mediocre with the exception of Last Light, which easily reads as an entry to the Bungie-era canon.

The problem isn't just that 343i isn't making a good continuation of Halo, it's that their stories are awful on their own merits.