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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.

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.

Now, I'm not saying that I don't enjoy elements of the story and characters in the Halo series (or Splinter Cell, or countless other games). But I enjoy them in a very superficial "in the moment" way. I didn't care about the story in ODST at all, but the characters had fun personalities and some great interactions together to make the ride enjoyable and a little more emotionally grounded. For many games, I think that is enough.

I hate even typing this, but you're spot on about Halo 4. I think I did a great job of ripping its horrible and contrived story into pieces, but at least there was some sort of emotional connection or something that it was attempting to be about and lead us to. Granted, Halo 5 pretty much undoes and throws away a ton of what happened in Halo 4 anyway, so I guess that makes it an even more worthless story. Doom. Granted, you and I have touched on how Halo 3's imapct and story is a huge disappointment based on how it chucks so much of Halo 2. Just another interesting connection regarding 343/Bungie and their storytelling/writing problems, I suppose.

As for your writing, character motivations, or actually displaying things to the viewer, I hit on that in H4 when they decided that hard light could save someone whose hand was literally on a nuke without ever once establishing that hard light was even a concept within the game universe. If they can't get a plot device mechanic right, they're definitely not going to get characterization right.

I have a bunch of coworkers who, no matter how hard I try to convince them that 343 is the devil incarnate and the root of all evil on this planet, still play and enjoy Halo and bought Halo 4 and MCC and 5 and so on and so forth. And not one of them has enjoyed this campaign. Like at all. These people are not the hardcore. They are not on forums or part of Halo communities. They even dared to like Halo 4 (the nerve of some people). But they cannot stand Halo 5's story, and they've actually verbalized a lot of what you've said. The most succinct statement was that it should have been three missions long, taken maybe an hour, and still not much would have happened. They enjoy multiplayer, though, so I guess that's cool.

As for Bungie's storytelling, I think we've both covered that one enough for Destiny. No real hope until year 2, though Taken King is a great step in the right direction of actually establishing some sort of story, even if it's practically still not there.

I'm also wondering if part of the problem with Halo, Destiny, and gaming in general is due to the bullshit of guaranteed sequels. It's Halo. It's Destiny. You know they're going to sell, and even if they sell less than previous versions, there are enough people who are going to buy them regardless of what happens to allow Microsoft and Activision to laugh all the way to the bank, right? Part of me wonders if, between all of the care that is allegedly being publicly shown about story, they really don't care beyond just keeping people playing so that they can laugh all the way to the bank. I find this article quite lovely when thinking about the arrogance of the concept of sequels.

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Do-Ask-George-Miller-About-Next-Mad-Max-Sequel-Yet-71453.html

Miller was constantly being probed about a follow-up. And after being asked such a question by Empire, George Miller explained just why he is ready to even consider one.

"Being asked that questions feels to me like being a woman who’s just given birth to a really big baby. And then someone asks you, ‘When are you having your next baby?’ We only finished 12 days ago. I’m just not recovered enough to get into it."

Yet there's 343, announcing before Halo 5 is even gold that they've started working on Halo 6. There's Bungie, signing ten year deals filled with sequels and comets and whatever, but the first year+ of their game can't even manage a story to warrant sequels. It's unfortunate that video game companies, publishers, and even the movie industries don't consider or view things like George Miller does in many aspects. In a relevant but off-topic point, Activision actually had the balls to claim that Call of Duty is bigger than Marvel, and then they said they're going to start making Call of Duty movies. Someone should be fired for smoking crack on the job.

But to wrap this up, another problem you didn't address is that these stories don't seem to know who they're being made for. Is Bungie still making the games it wants to play? Or are they making the games to try to get people addicted and constantly coming back, story be damned (and thus making story less relevant or irrelevant)? Is 343? There's been that argument in the past that 343 wants to appeal to everyone and thus ends up appealing to practically no one. Halo 5 dropped down to a Teen rating, I assume to try to appeal to a larger crowd and get more sales due to past failures and a potential awareness of a weak showing in its current iteration. Destiny, unlike Bungie's Halo, also went the Teen route (though it is a brand new franchise entirely and never appeared to be geared toward a Mature audience on any level)(Note: I'm very aware of what bumped Halo from T to M back in the day).

Take Fallout as a good example. It knows its audience and is going to sell sell sell. Those who don't like the genre or the style won't buy it. And Bethesda doesn't care. Well, maybe they care a bit about bringing in new customers and new fans, but from what I've been hearing and reading, most of the negatives online are about how Fallout 4 is too much like older Fallout games. That's a bad thing? In what universe? Regardless, they're not changing up the game or trying to be like everyone else to make it work. They're doing their thing, and though it's not perfect, there's definitely some great story and gameplay action going on.

But we could go on about movies that do exactly what 343 and Bungie are doing vs. movies like Mad Max or games like Fallout that know who their audience is and are more than happy to make the best damn thing possible in as many ways as possible for that audience. If story's not one of your actual main priorities, no matter how much your PR people pretend it is, it's going to show. And it has in Halo 5 and Destiny (at least for now, Destiny 2 TBD).

The Bungie Trilogy is about the Flood. The Human-Covenant war and Covenant Civil war are filler. There's an arc. In Halo 1, we learn about this long-dead, mysterious race and the flood. In halo 2, we realize that the Flood problem is much bigger than we had thought, and that there are more Halos. In Halo 3, with our backs against the wall, and Human extinction looming on the horizon, we are able to trick the gravemind into following us to the Ark and wipe them out.

What is the 343 trilogy doing? In Halo 4, we find out that the MC has a forerunner imprint that saves him from the composer. The didact wakes up (and if you haven't read the books, then you have no idea who he is). In fact, if you've only played the Halo games, then you would be lead to assume that Humans ARE Foreunner. Yet, here is a Forerunner that does not look human, tromping around trying to destroy humanity.

Halo 5 does not build on the Forerunners or the didact at all. What about the Chief's imprint? Does ONI even know about it or the Librarian? I had fun playing it, but it doesn't make sense. Like was stated before, everyone is out of character: Halsey, Cortana, Lasky. Roland is for Cortana at first, but then nothing happens with him later in the game.

Also, if these Guardians are so damned powerful that they can keep an entire system in check, why in the hell didn't the Forerunners build thousands of them to combat the Flood?