Halo 3 has always been the weakest game in the series from a plot standpoint for me, and I suppose it's not too surprising as it was basically the final two missions that woulda' been Halo 2, stretched out into a full game. In addition, it's just got some really weird pacing issues within the cutscenes from a filmmaking standpoint. Miranda's death just made he feel stupid to me instead of desperate, and then of course there's the great "oh shit here's the Gravemind, but the Chief and Arbiter are fighting side-by-side—oh, he leaves? And we just trudge back the way we came. Oh. Ok."
It's basically a game you forgive for literally not advancing the plot at all for its first half of the game because it's really fun.
Halo 4's story I think undercut itself because the final cutscene & mechanicals felt rushed (the fact that we get a slow fade to white after the QTE certainly doesn't make it feel like Cortana saved us from a bomb blowing up in our face, for instance—in retrospect fans spent a lot of wasted time spinning their wheels about the last cutscene when it was really about a failure of 343 conveying info instead of some deliberate mystery) and also because of 343's really atrocious record of visual consistency. How much more powerful would that last cutscene be if the Chief is discarding the armor we've seen him in for nearly a decade, and then he shows up with the 343 MkVI in Halo 5?
The issue with the Assembly for me has always been it's a sort of plot twist that has some disturbing implications for the entire universe in that it robs pretty much everyone of their agency. "No, actually a bunch of AIs have been pulling the strings."
I'm actually happy if they either A) pretend the Assembly was just the product of a crazy dude on Reach, and/or B) the Assembly got nuked when Reach fell, and before they could ever persist in slipspace as seemed their ultimate goal. After all, if they did survive, why did they not reveal themselves to humanity as they promised?
Cortana's AI rebellion feels much more organic in terms of how it presents itself as an overt, understandable force, and they could still use some similar thematic elements with it.
Mostly I'm really hopeful the status quo shakeup can lead to diversity in alien makeup, like Wahrer was saying. Why can't we get a Jackal faction like described in the books, and just make the various combat roles all Jackals (and see some of the classic bird designs too?) Wouldn't it be cool to get elite Grunt soldiers with energy shields? Now that it seems 343 has really offered the end of the Covenant, I'm really hoping they don't renege on the possibilities they've offered just because everyone's afraid of departing too much from Bungie's game design tenets with enemies.
It's basically a game you forgive for literally not advancing the plot at all for its first half of the game because it's really fun.
Halo 4's story I think undercut itself because the final cutscene & mechanicals felt rushed (the fact that we get a slow fade to white after the QTE certainly doesn't make it feel like Cortana saved us from a bomb blowing up in our face, for instance—in retrospect fans spent a lot of wasted time spinning their wheels about the last cutscene when it was really about a failure of 343 conveying info instead of some deliberate mystery) and also because of 343's really atrocious record of visual consistency. How much more powerful would that last cutscene be if the Chief is discarding the armor we've seen him in for nearly a decade, and then he shows up with the 343 MkVI in Halo 5?
The issue with the Assembly for me has always been it's a sort of plot twist that has some disturbing implications for the entire universe in that it robs pretty much everyone of their agency. "No, actually a bunch of AIs have been pulling the strings."
I'm actually happy if they either A) pretend the Assembly was just the product of a crazy dude on Reach, and/or B) the Assembly got nuked when Reach fell, and before they could ever persist in slipspace as seemed their ultimate goal. After all, if they did survive, why did they not reveal themselves to humanity as they promised?
Cortana's AI rebellion feels much more organic in terms of how it presents itself as an overt, understandable force, and they could still use some similar thematic elements with it.
Mostly I'm really hopeful the status quo shakeup can lead to diversity in alien makeup, like Wahrer was saying. Why can't we get a Jackal faction like described in the books, and just make the various combat roles all Jackals (and see some of the classic bird designs too?) Wouldn't it be cool to get elite Grunt soldiers with energy shields? Now that it seems 343 has really offered the end of the Covenant, I'm really hoping they don't renege on the possibilities they've offered just because everyone's afraid of departing too much from Bungie's game design tenets with enemies.
