Felicia writes "This Friday, Super Mario Odyssey, Assassin’s Creed Origins, and Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus will be hitting online and retail stores across the country resulting in one of the biggest release days for video games this year. With all this fuss over the 27th flitting about, I began to wonder whether or not this day has a history of greatness attached to it."
Halo 5: Guardians lead concept artist Darren Bacon explains that the game's marketing was completely seperate to the game's development.
The marketing wasn't the issue, it just felt 343 were so bothered about getting Halo away from being known as a Bungie franchise that they tried to introduce so many changes to counter this.
It felt like they were trying to replace Chief as a character thus the big push on Agent Locke (he even got his own mini series). Chief was even in less missions in comparison.
Introduced squads which forced single player gamers to be paired up with 3 AI players over drop in / drop out co-op.
Cortana was butchered, ruining that relationship between Chief and Cortana we all liked. Would have been fine if the twist was the Didact was secretly controlling her or something but nothing. Did she come back in Infinite? Nope. Killed off screen in a sudden 180 to her villainous turn and replaced by a copy since they knew they screwed up.
Expected you to have read all the novels and the like to understand who Blue Team were and their relationship to Chief, had no build up to the characters and it felt like they expected you to like them without it being earned.
Everything they did felt like change for the sake of change, to mark it was a 343 game not a Bungie one and it's hilarious as they tried to f*** around with the multiplayer in Halo 4 to make it their own before reverting things in Guardians.
I didnt mind the switching off between John and Locke... it reminded me of Halo 2 and having the Arbiter levels to trade off to.
The story was okay for me. They had to do something different as the first three games were done and there needed to be new story going in a new direction. I get the die hard fans may not have liked it, but playing it for what it is... its perfectly fine. Its a continuation of halo 4, which itself was a nice original take on the formula.
Now bring on the disagrees.
It reminded me of Halo 2 and I honestly dislike the switching in 2 and 5. The devs should of just had cuts scenes for the Arbiter and for Locke.
Booting the ur-Didact from the games was one of the greatest narrative mistakes they made (after bringing back a logic-plagued Cortana, of course). Even if you had to read the Forerunner novels to understand his history, he was one of the most complex characters in the series, and he should have remained as an enduring part of the universe.
I'm happy that he at least got a send-off in Halo: Epitaph, but it shouldn't have gotten to that point.
No issues it's just wasn't good story at least my friend it wasn't well written.
Yeah it says a lot about the management of 343 at the time that they could have a marketing campaign be so disconnected in tone and story from the game it's supposed to be about.
I'd imagine it would be frustrating for the developers that the marketing beats seemed far cooler than what you were stuck making. Maybe it would've been better if 343 just continued the story from their previous game but nooo they couldn't be bothered to do that even once
You are off your damn rocker if you think Infinite's story is worse than 5's. Just by cleaning up 5's worse elements off-screen makes it a default improvement.
Campaign wise Halo infinite was better due to setting. (Open world, different approaches, setting and mission tasks)
story wise Halo 5 was better. Infinite was literally all over the place. It's like they scrapped the OG story and tried to piece some sht together. They unalived important ppl off screen!!! (Spoiler free) Ruining the main plot of Halo 5 and infinite like wth!!! That alone made the "story" worse than 5. They have to reboot the series now or pull some story where these characters are still alive. (I believe the end reveals 1 is.)
@Beans i disagree with that last statement doing it off screen when that was the main plot and a huge deal is the wrong move. We legit should've got a boss battle that did that. It seem so unsatisfying and anticlimactic. We were suppose to get an IRobot/terminator type of ending and instead we get some off screen sht 😒 We couldve had Halo 4 level emotion, instead it was done as filler
@Coolbeans and @phillydonjawn
Infinites story was so disjointed due to the level design. It wasn't and in my opinion still not replay able. It felt worse then the ending to Starfield.
I'm saying this as a person who's still going through playing the MCC to finish out playlists, and has Ten's of Thousands of hours in Halo since CE.
The literal ending to Starfield or the closing missions? Because some of those missions were actually pretty great in my opinion. Especially Entangled.
Halo 5 had a worse story I felt than Infinite but I agree on its lack of replayability. The single PNW biome is tiring and everything not green and foresty outside is metallic and reflective inside.
Multiplayer is solid but lags behind 5 too I feel. At least it still does get some new content even as they're openly abandoning Infinite's tech for UE.
With League of Legends Season 2 making its way to Ionia, one mage champion may be the next redesign after being teased in recent content.
A review of the excellent, action-packed League of Legends novella Garen: First Shield.
I hope the next Halo is crafted far more carefully story-wise, includes local co-op and really pushes the capabilities of the Xbox One X.