Halo 5 Story Discussion [SPOILER WARNING]

[Metkil5685]

Let's try to keep the spoilers contained in here. Feel free to discuss the story of Halo 5 and Hunt the Truth in here. Please note, spoiler rules are still in affect in this thread.

Simple reminder from Myth in FC Update 9.8.


Another Reminder about Spoilers

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[silversleek]

now, I have to say, I loathe the friendly AI in this game. I've started a solo legendary playthrough, and they are a massive pain in my ass. There are mechanics in some parts that are clearly designed with 4 player co-op in mind that just don't work with AI, they can't think far enough ahead. For example, the endfight of mission 5? literally just stood beside me, which as you know if you've done that fight, isn't helpful. squad commands are a nice theory, but are implemented so badly, what i wouldn't do for an "attack move" command. You basically have to babysit them so hardcore if you want them to not immediately die, and then you probably die because you have to focus more on keeping the idiots alive instead of fighting the enemies.

so far, my experience with this legendary campaign: 3/10 solo, estimated 9/10 with coop partners.

the high difficulty-once again clearly meant for a team of 4, is kind of turning me off of the story. plus i don't really like locke or tanakas characters, so there's that. (and i'm not usually one to complain about difficulty, but spoilers for one encounter on mission two, there's a room with like 8 fuel rod grunts, 2 hunters, and about a dozen elites all at once. basically everything one shots you. That's screaming artificial difficulty.)

i'll check in again once i beat the campaign, but right now, it feels like i'm playing "spartan ops season 2- co-op edition", not halo 5. From what i've seen of the story though, it seems pretty good. I feel like the level design didn't do it justice though. i'm about 6 missions in and there's already been tons of exciting twists! I'm calling it now though that the ending of the game is just going to be a set up for halo 6,not an ending in it's own right.

[Maxdoggy]

I am excited that I can safely use the Internet again. Campaign complete (on Normal).

That cliffhanger though...

[Lol its James]

Same max, normal is great!



I honestly at the end thought that the core at the end was going to kill Locke. I thought he was going to sacrifice himself for Chief and Blue Team. That would of been an awesome way to go because everyone hated him going into the game, but it would change. Still I liked his bravery at the last point of no return, risking his life for Chief

GG Locke( you will always be my favorite)

[Maxdoggy]

I'm disappointed that they didn't bring in Locke's motivations for hunting down the Chief.

Locke's family was murdered while the Chief was on his planet. He blames Chief for bringing his family to ruin as he didn't save them. He sees Chief as a sort of false prophet (like in the live action trailers). We got none of that in the game. Halo 5 was still good, but it missed a few things IMO.

[Nicholas Sapien]

Same max, normal is great!



I honestly at the end thought that the core at the end was going to kill Locke. I thought he was going to sacrifice himself for Chief and Blue Team. That would of been an awesome way to go because everyone hated him going into the game, but it would change. Still I liked his bravery at the last point of no return, risking his life for Chief

GG Locke( you will always be my favorite)



I wish he would have

[Legendary Nova]

Same max, normal is great!



I honestly at the end thought that the core at the end was going to kill Locke. I thought he was going to sacrifice himself for Chief and Blue Team. That would of been an awesome way to go because everyone hated him going into the game, but it would change. Still I liked his bravery at the last point of no return, risking his life for Chief

GG Locke( you will always be my favorite)



Fun Fact: When playing co-op, the first one to get to the core will be the sacrifice.

In other news, OMG THAT DAMN CLIFFHANGER AT THE END NONONONONONONONO IT CAN'T END LIKE THIS I CAN'T WAIT PLEASE DON'T END IT HERE WHY WHY WHY!!!!!!!!!

[PhoenixPrime]

We have to use spoiler tags in topic labeled "Spoiler Warning?"


One of the biggest complaints I heard about the campaign going in was the infrequency of Blue Team missions. Honestly, the way they did the story and missions, it really didn't feel like I was missing out on Blue Team stuff while playing Osiris. I liked the story, and really loved the enemy AI in the game. I enjoyed how they ramped up the enemy units and added mini-boss units. I particularly enjoyed the changes to Prometheans. They were interesting to fight in H4, but were repetitive. They are anything but super repetitive in H5. (Anyone else love the fact that watchers don't just hide behind shit all the time now?)


I went into the game having a general dislike of Osiris (Except for Buck), but I very much enjoyed their story and interaction from Sangheilios onward. I think I preferred them to Blue Team (From a solo standpoint). I think Tanaka is overall the weakest and least developed character in the game.


Notable and favorite characters in the game.

Locke: Was surprised by this, but his behavior towards the chief at the end of the game ("You don't have to do this alone.") very much changed how I felt about him.
Vale: Holy shit she's fucking awesome. Her no-bullshit attitude towards Cortana when Cortana tried to psych her out at the end of the game. I also loved her insight into Elite culture.
031 - Exuberant Witness: Fuck yeah. Easily my favorite character of the series right now. Her in-game dialogue while you fight tons of shit is priceless. I especially enjoyed the commentary from Buck about her.
Buck: I originally thought of Buck's presence in the game as a fan-service deal. Get an old face in the game and people might buy it. But Buck's presence in the game is quite solid. His constant commentary provides a humorous personality to some otherwise dry moments. Also loved Cortana's comment that he's old. I love the fact that Cortana (and the developers) went into the fact that, you know, Buck's seen some serious shit. They mentioned his fight at Reach, his fierce loyalty to his allies (comment on massacred Swords members), his decision not to lead a squad, etc.



Character who absolutely needed more development: The fucking Warden Eternal. Who the fuck is he? Why the fuck does he even listen to Cortana? I think we needed another mission with him not trying to kill Blue Team, explaining some of the background of Genesis and his existence and purpose.

[silversleek]

We have to use spoiler tags in topic labeled "Spoiler Warning?"


maybe some people want to talk about, say, mission 7, but don't want to see spoilers from mission 13.

[Graycochea]

Everybody dies at the end. Locke blows up saving Blue Team, which doesn't matter because Cortana vaporizes them and the rest of Osiris. She then goes to Earth and shoots down the Infinity using her Guardians. Infinity crashes into San Francisco, killing everyone aboard and incinerating the West Coast. Nuclear winter ensues killing Earth. Cortana then activates the remaining Halo's killing all organic life, living forever with her Promethean minions and A.I. pals, sans Roland. The Flood come back, can't find any intelligent organic life and Cortana is awarded the Mantle by the Precursors. GG everybody. Cortana won Halo. Massively positive K/D. It's like, a bazillion to one kill/death ratio.

[silversleek]

We have to use spoiler tags in topic labeled "Spoiler Warning?"


One of the biggest complaints I heard about the campaign going in was the infrequency of Blue Team missions. Honestly, the way they did the story and missions, it really didn't feel like I was missing out on Blue Team stuff while playing Osiris. I liked the story, and really loved the enemy AI in the game. I enjoyed how they ramped up the enemy units and added mini-boss units. I particularly enjoyed the changes to Prometheans. They were interesting to fight in H4, but were repetitive. They are anything but super repetitive in H5. (Anyone else love the fact that watchers don't just hide behind shit all the time now?)


I went into the game having a general dislike of Osiris (Except for Buck), but I very much enjoyed their story and interaction from Sangheilios onward. I think I preferred them to Blue Team (From a solo standpoint). I think Tanaka is overall the weakest and least developed character in the game.


Notable and favorite characters in the game.

Locke: Was surprised by this, but his behavior towards the chief at the end of the game ("You don't have to do this alone.") very much changed how I felt about him.
Vale: Holy shit she's fucking awesome. Her no-bullshit attitude towards Cortana when Cortana tried to psych her out at the end of the game. I also loved her insight into Elite culture.
031 - Exuberant Witness: Fuck yeah. Easily my favorite character of the series right now. Her in-game dialogue while you fight tons of shit is priceless. I especially enjoyed the commentary from Buck about her.
Buck: I originally thought of Buck's presence in the game as a fan-service deal. Get an old face in the game and people might buy it. But Buck's presence in the game is quite solid. His constant commentary provides a humorous personality to some otherwise dry moments. Also loved Cortana's comment that he's old. I love the fact that Cortana (and the developers) went into the fact that, you know, Buck's seen some serious shit. They mentioned his fight at Reach, his fierce loyalty to his allies (comment on massacred Swords members), his decision not to lead a squad, etc.



Character who absolutely needed more development: The fucking Warden Eternal. Who the fuck is he? Why the fuck does he even listen to Cortana? I think we needed another mission with him not trying to kill Blue Team, explaining some of the background of Genesis and his existence and purpose.




I'll agree with a lot of stuff here, I really liked both the promethean revamp and the mini-boss additions. Though, they were brutal on solo legendary because the friendly AI is really, really bad. (almost like all the AI is turning against you? hrmmm....)

i'd say i'm half and half on osiris. I love buck and vale, but i found locke and tanaka lacking. I do appreciate his character development towards the end, but for most of the game, he was just so dull. 031 was definitely my favourite though. Too bad we didn't see her much. Unlike you though, i really liked the warden eternal. He seems like a very fitting character for the whole "trying to take over the universe" thing. I'm not really 100% on why he saw fit to use cortana as a pawn though, maybe the galaxy's AI would understand one of their own better?

One thing i have to say, I found the campaign really, really bad until around missions nine or so. There just didn't seem to be enough happening. We spent like 4 missions on that first planet, and then four on sanghelios. We know that they aren't averse to longer missions, from mission 10 onwards, and yet we have such short missions to start with? I mean, don't get me wrong, we accomplish a LOT. We kill Jul and rescue halsey mission 1, mission 2 was vital to understanding everything, mission ~8 we save the arbiter... but there's my problem, i can't really think of anything noteworthy between that. It's mostly just intel missions, oh, this is what's happening, oh, this is WHY it's happening, oh, this is our enemy. but it doesn't feel like we're really doing anything while learning all that. we have no real overaching goal, no enemy that needs defeating. (other than "the guardians" which don't even really make an appearance in person until the end of mission 5. and random prometheans whose presence is iffy and unexplained from an in-game point. cortana is known to be alive from mission 1, and is 'dangerous' but we don't know anything on that until mission 6.)

but despite my lack of interest over the first roughly two thirds of the game, the last third was quite enjoyable, and brought back more of the "epic adventure" i've come to expect from halo. I have hopes that they'll keep that level in halo 6.

that said, one third of a campaign does not make a good story, and as such, i'll only really be rating the campaign a 7/10. without that third it would probably drop down to a 5 or even a 4 as being mediocre. I hope halo 6 is better.

[Sir Nihlus]

Although I never had the pleasure to actually play the game (which will persist for a while) due to my circumstances, so I can't comment on the gameplay side of things. Having watched the cutscenes up until the Legendary Ending, I can't help but feel mixed about the whole thing. Despite the fact that the marketing campaign 'HunttheTruth' was largely intended to be some sort of ONI propaganda, I was hoping that we would see a more amplified version of the rivalry between Chief and Locke.

I don't know, the one fist-fight that they had on Meridian didn't quite do it for me really. I was hoping for more opportunities where the two would screw each other up in their pursuit for Cortana. Like Locke gets a victory at one point, then Chief scores a victory at another sort of thing. But with this, it just kinda feels like the badass ex-ONI agent Locke was like "Stand Down, Chief!" at the beginning, then went all mushy "We can't do this without you, babe!" at the end, haha. All-in-all though, I did think it was quite brave for 343 to place Cortana as the antagonist, although it does adhere to the well known cliché/trope of 'machines/AI are responsible for the death of Humanity'.

So after my observations, my final review for this game is...

Dat Cliffhanger Tho/ 10

[Nicholas Sapien]

I hate it

[NecroNocte]

I think Brian Reed needs to stop writing Halo games, first and foremost.

Halo 4 was an alienation for people who didn't read the books, and Halo 5's story wasn't all that good.

People have already touched on it above, but the Warden Eternal wasn't explained at all. Which sucked because he was an interesting character.

Also I wish they explained exactly what the Domain was, and how the hell it survived the firing of the Halo Array! That was a huge thing in the Forerunner Saga... The Iso-Didact fired the rings, and they thought that the Domain was going with the rest of the Precursor constructs. They explain it in game as the space internet, but it was so much more than that. The Domain is a living fucking organism!

The only thing that was good, after reading things and thinking on them, is the relationship with Cortana and Chief now.

Cortana has always been knee deep in shit, and Chief was always there for her. He came back to get her off High Charity, he didn't allow the UNSC to take and kill her, etc. Yet, the one time. The one fucking time! Chief asks the same in return, and she says, "Goodbye, John."

Now besides that, it seems like towards the end of the game. Before everything was explained, that Chief knew Cortana was gonna do something shady. I wanna know how he knew, and why he doesn't explain it.

Also I wish more Chief and Blue Team interaction occured. Hell I wish they just took the why Nylund wrote them, and superimposed it into this game. I just got done rereading the Ghosts of Onyx, and the first few chapters of the book is Blue Team together. Playing Halo 5 with something to compare it to fresh in my mind, I can tell you that their dynamic is gone. Reed went with telling the dynamic with one liners instead of showing it.

[NervyDestroyer]

What the fuck that ending is so goddamn "Halo 2." All that was left was for someone to say "Finishing the fight..." I hate this kind of sequel just fucking god-fucking damn bullshit!!!!!!!

/rant

[Metkil5685]

What the fuck that ending is so goddamn "Halo 2." All that was left was for someone to say "Finishing the fight..." I hate this kind of sequel just fucking god-fucking damn bullshit!!!!!!!

/rant



The final objective of the last mission is label 'Finish the Fight'.

[Maxdoggy]

What the fuck that ending is so goddamn "Halo 2." All that was left was for someone to say "Finishing the fight..." I hate this kind of sequel just fucking god-fucking damn bullshit!!!!!!!

/rant


To be fair, it's more of a "until we find a way to fight" versus an exact copy of MC's final line in H2. But yeah, what Metkil said.

[Graycochea]

The final objective of the last mission is label 'Finish the Fight'.


343 is basically trolling us at this point.