Master Chief is considered missing in action or even dead; that is at least what both the UNSC forces and the Covenant have believed for the past five years. Sadly fans have been left wondering if Master Chief’s apparent fate was in fact the truth, and had quickly given up hope of ever battling with the super soldier again. There has certainly been no shortage of Halo games in recent years, but sadly none of them have featured the Spartan space warrior that the franchise was built upon. I’d personally given up on playing as Master Chief again and in fact given up hope that there would ever be another great Halo game ever again. Thankfully though, Bungie have hung up their developer gloves (for the Halo series at least) and have passed it onto the amazing 343 Studios who have managed to make a Halo fans dwindling love for the series become reinvigorated as they step up to the mark in a serious way and attempt to bring the Halo series back to its former glory. The question is though, did they succeed?
In Halo 4, 5, and Infinite, Master Chief became a more nuanced, human character.
In spite of the Halo series’ struggles, 343 deserves praise for adding nuance and characterisation to the ever-beating heart of Halo - The Master Chief. Playing through Infinite, it's abundantly clear that the events of the current and previous trilogies have irrevocably changed the iconic hero. He’s no longer the ‘blank slate’ that was previously presented by Bungie. He’s a fatigued, damaged and fallible protagonist, and one who is meandering through currents of grief, while reveling in his newfound agency. Giving the Chief a compelling and meaningful voice was no small feat, and 343 should be proud of that victory.
This article completely misses part of the appeal of the original iteration of character in the original game trilogy. It was the Chief and Cortana vs an entire alien collective. The blank slate Bungie displayed in their games was genius, he was an mysterious hero a wide audience could identify with because he wasn't as clearly defined as most characters.
The books added a lot of lore and backstory but most Halo players just want a fun game with exposition that doesn't get in the way of gameplay, it's why the Cortana level in Halo 3 was derided.
Not every character has to be a damaged soyboy, a soldier has to suck it up and do his duty.
The 343i Master Chief has is based on the books. However, in Halo 4-Infinite, the Master Chief overtime become. gradually becomes more willing to show some emotion.
It’s a law of nature that eventually, every long-running game franchise will have a particular entry that gets dinged for straying too far from what made it so fun in the first place. Your Super Mario Sunshine, your Dragon Age II, Assassin’s Creed III, and so on. Whether or not that opinion changes more favorably over time, the initial specter of negativity will forever hover it. Microsoft’s Halo is no exception, except that negative specter hasn’t hovered over one particular game, but one whole studio.
Halo 4 released 10 years ago today, and its disappointing reception was just an omen of things to come with 343 Industries at the helm.
Halo 4 and infinite have a 87 on metacritic and five a 84🤣. 343i need contents and everything else will play it self out.
Halo 4-6 are like the Star Wars sequel trilogy
They all just seem like a brand new games with small connections to the last one but no solid arc connecting them, you’re just told stuff that happened off screen in between the games and nothing makes sense
It’s like they didn’t plan a new trilogy out
I'm getting a good gaming laptop soon and i'm finally going to play through the Halo franchise again plus Infinite but i never played Halo 4 before .. can anyone tell me how's the campaign in comparison to the games before it and compared to Halo 5 ?
Best Halo in a while with only a few missteps ie Spartan ops sometimes demonstrates better use of the new Promethean encounters at times. 343 though have done very well with their first effort
Good use of Thunder skull in making Elites awesome
Yeah I think with the power afforded by next gen we should see more in the way of expanded sandbox ie grander scale with more of the sandbox being in play at once at certain parts. Perhaps even crossing over to Halo Wars territory to a point in this regard
I hope in Halo 5 for the next xbox, I hope they bring back the flood and make them a beast to be reckoned with. I hope Master Chief is on Earth or a colony and we see the flood outbreak happen, infecting all the humans and whatnot. It'd be cool to have 3 missions like this.
Am I the only one that didn't like the Prometheans? If felt like the knights were the only real new enemy. With the crawlers flying things being easy but not really fun to kill like the Grunts or Jackals. Liked the game overall though
Watchers are especially fun to fight and crawlers a force to reckoned with if you forget they are there- and you do sometimes in the thick of it. My only quibble is they are often more fun to face in Spartan Ops- it's like 343 held back the encounters while in campaign regards to Prometheans and in fact the combination of both enemy at a time while in campaign
Spartan ops at times is thrilling in actual action terms with Knights etc compared to fairly slow less hectic sections you get in campaign with them- a very big reason in fact why Halo1 flood worked better than what they became in the sequels