343 characters in their games have been nothing sort of amazing in my book. Let’s start with the Infinite. We get a very brief glimpse of the pilot on Discover hope and immediately we felt for him. That teaser showed a little bit of his family background, what he was fighting for, what he was missing dearly and if John didn’t appear in his radar at the right moment he could have pulled the trigger with that one bullet he was saving it for! Nameless, yet quite iconic already.
Escharum - Let’s fast forward a bit and we meet our advisory at the end of the gameplay reveal on June. Old, battle worn yet wise and mature. Apart from that phenomenal monologue and hair raising soundtrack (Set you heart on fire), his respect for chief even though he knows he is the enemy was quite admirable. Covenant just called him DEMON but this man knows who is talking to, knows the caliber of his enemy and dare I say Might!, Calls him out but does so with respect, such maturity. And all of this from just a small snippet from a cutscene. Just perfect!
Weapon - And on E3 we met her! wow…A new AI (in Halo world that is a big thing!) not a easy character to master. Yet something was so naive and childish about her. The tone change and delivery of the dialogue by Jen Taylor was second to none. Again a brief meeting and already intrigued beyond belief. Not a single moment I thought “oh well a Cortana rip off”. Now that is a victory.
I can keep going on and on, just a few more highlights such as Lasky - amazing character, need more of him. John and Cortana from Halo 4 - Speechless Chef’s kiss
But not all good, we do have quite a few duds such as - Palmer, Osiris (had potential), Del Rio (quite a straightforward villain - no grey shade).
Liberian and Didact - well they need a whole new thread to discuss, but to make it short I loved them, but need for screen time!
343’s only real sin in Halo 4 and 5 was trying to introduce the “wider lore” into the story of those games. Which was a mistake IMO.
I don’t think there was ever an issue with most of the characters or the cut scenes they were involved in. In fact, both Halo 4 and 5 had incredible cut scene quality.
Absolutely agreed. The last trailer got me really curious to see where this game goes Storywise. I love the Halo Campaigns and this looks to be an especially amazing one. I get the feeling that the relationship with the new AI and Master Chief will be like a father daughter thing, which could work very well. 117 showing her the ropes and all
Agree. The scenes between Master Chief and Cortana in Halo 4 were quite well done. But outside of that, the game struggled to make it clear what was happening and why, unless you were already a Halo lore master.
Halo have some good fun with its characters and plot, like how Johnsons survived in Halo CE.
The Halo 2 ending has also been so weirdly put together. Joseph Staten tried to explain what they’ve done in an Halo 2 nostalgia stream. It was basically some last minute changes to accomodate having to cut the whole last part of the game that would have took place on earth. In the ending we’ve got, I think it involves the closure of a door and then you actually play a flashback or something like that. It’s almost impossible to get what they were trying to do.
So I think, in retrospect, the Bungie Halo games didn’t really have great stories overall, it’s just how they showed you these story bits that were so well put.
343i have really good characters, but they don’t seem to know what to do with them most of the time. That’s until Infinite. They really upped their game with these trailers.
Halo 5 left a bad taste in my mouth. Like i literally had no idea what was going on, the fight choreography was horrible imo and it had way too much filler story for a campaign of its length. I’m glad halo infinite is ditching whatever they had planned for halo 6 to round out the trilogy and going for a more classic halo experience from armour design to main character.
Honestly I think 343 is killing it on the lore/story/OST front so far. Might just be marketing smoke and mirrors - I hope not, I don’t expect so - but if the whole game is on the level of Discover Hope and the sequence they showed this year? Just wow. Gonna be the best Halo campaign in a very long time.
