[Locked] Was Halo 5's Campaign Actually Good?

Campaign was good overall but not for a halo game.

-Story is a disjointed mess

-Locke(nuff said)

-Campaign levels are too linear compared to halo 1-3's open levels

-cliche "Al's taking over the world" trope. I wish more Sci Fi franchises that have AI would have the balls to NOT go that route.

-They are being too heavy handed with the whole "chief finding his humanity", & "dark & brooding" thing. Cortana should have stayed dead, let chief have his moment in H4 where we are hurting along with the chief and then MOVE ON. Going forward, those moments where we and the chief get reminded of cortana should be sprinkled in for effect rather than milking it.

-Blue team is criminally under developed. We finally get a game with blue team and they get almost no explanation for new players much less actual development, and the vast majority of the game is spent playing as a team of mostly new characters. What were they thinking?

It was good if you read the books leading up to it to fully understand the character development. Because in game there was none.

It is pretty much the exact opposite of Reach. Where Reach was a good campaign if you didn't read the books.

N3gativeOn3 wrote:

I hate the fact that the story would be at the exact same point without the Halo 5 campaign.

Spoiler:

Show

If Blue Team was not released from the orb, then at the very least the story would have somewhat progressed. But not even that, we are left right where we started, except the whole gang is together.

Cortana would have attacked Earth either way, nothing happened to the Warden even though we killed him countless times, and no one died. Honestly, I would have preferred a depressed Chief and a dead Cortana.

We wouldn't have retrieved Halsey, Arbiter would have been killed in the rebellion war. We wouldn't have gone to Genesis and retrieved builder tech.

Exuberant Witness is bae.

DopplerEffect93 wrote:

The Omeggos wrote:

-snip-

Halo 3's campaign is my favorite by a mile. Everything screams epic in it from taking on a scarab in a tank, to fighting a scarab in a mongoose, to fighting 2 scarabs at once in a hornet, to Forward Unto Dawn dropping down and bringing more tanks to slaughter everyone.

If the scarab was actually hard to kill, I'd agree with you. But it wasnt. And with the tank on the ark it was only that much easier. And although fighting two at the same time sounds tough, the hornet is the most op vehicle known to man so taking them down was more of a fast chore than a fight. And overall, the levels themselves were short and somewhat more linear than CE or 2 (Something that was fixed with Reach) the Flood got majorly nerfed with how they'd crumble from a single punch, the pure forms were more annoying than challenging or fun. We stayed on earth to 'finish the fight' for only a few levels before bungie pulled a halo 2 and sent us into across the galaxy and there was no real moment that felt like the diorama or any sense of urgancy that the covies were dominating earth. (If the story involved us going country to country hunting down the prophet for a few more levels before the jump, that would've been so much nicer) And where was Gravemind? It's just so lame how we never really got to fight him and Bungie's excuse was that the cortana level was made out of gravemind (despite it's now known there was a planned boss battle with gravemind)
Even the final warthog run felt odd because you're driving on exploding cardboard the whole time. It felt like a quick memory crashgrab at what made Halo CE's warthog run so amazing.

And after the release of Gears of war and Crysis 1, hell even CoD4, graphically Halo 3 just didnt look that amazing even for it's time. The lighting was baked and uninteresting, the character model details were low res (ESPECIALLY Lord Hood) and everything was made up of low poly counts making everything look so flat. And when compared to the Halo 3 reveal trailer (which was real-time. Bungie confirmed they had a showcase for it) the overall quality took a noticeable drop. Though the overall artstyle is appreciated. Hopefully if Halo 3A becomes a thing, we'll get something that feels more up to date. (I say H3A because I refuse to accept the MCC version in it's broken twisted mess)

And if Halo 2's cliffhanger wasnt enough. BAM! Legendary ending with the dark planet (to be continued 5 years later with Halo 4) So much for finishing the fight...

But once again. I didnt down-right hate Halo 3's story, especially not when compared to 5, I just felt it was one the weaker stories in general. Nothing will ever beat the moments of stepping on Halo for the first time or nuking a covie ship with their own bomb.

UKilledYapflip wrote:

As numerous others have said - did not care for the story arc at all. Let's basically just ignore everything that was built up in the previous game, half dozen novels, comic book series, all the advertising, etc. and start over with an overdone-to-death sci fi trope that ruins the legacy of one of the franchise's top 2 or 3 most popular characters, then we'll insult everyone's intelligence who criticizes it and insist it was planned all along.

BUT, I will admit, the GAMEPLAY was actually pretty good. I enjoyed that part. Looking forward to my Legendary run whenever I get around to it. Felt pretty balanced on Normal.

I got to say, Halo 4, Spartan Ops, the Kilo Five Trilogy and the Forerunner Trilogy, with the return of the Forerunners, the death of Cortana, humanity messing with Covenant and Forerunner technology, a new human insurrection, the Arbiter's fight for a human/Sangheili alliance and the new Covenant that grew out of it, Jul'Madama's rise to power, the Didact, the next generation of Spartans, the Janus Key (surely the Covenant's equivalent of the bible), 343 Guilty Spark's rebirth, the possibility that the Librarian may still be alive AND Chief at his most conflicted and vulnerable made me hyped for how 343 would continue this new age of Halo. Suffice to say, Halo 5's abandoning of almost all of that left me cold.

Not only that, I thought Nightfall was MASSIVELY disappointing after how surprisingly decent Forward Untill Dawn was.

Personally, I liked the campaign, the mission maps and layout, I could easily follow the story, I preferred the forerunners in this game to 4, I loved the weapons and sounds, I love the Spartans abilities (they seem just right), so I thought it was a good campaign in that respect.

But it could have been so much more, to me, the reason why this campaign is not as good as it could be is the length, its far too short. It would have been a lot better if there was several more missions at the start, where you play as chief going through a location on his search for Cortana, and then you play a mission of Locke going to that place tracking him down, so its like Locke is actually hunting Chief, same thing with when we first met the arbiter, it would have been great, just for a mission to play as him again getting to that location (ending with hearing Lockes team fire) to then play the mission as Locke

Peoples Jabroni wrote:

AssassinXI878D wrote:

Cough false and misleading advertising cough COUGH

Try to forget the advertising (I know this will be hard for alot of people, but we've gotta get over it) and just take it at face value and you'll like it more, I promise.

no, you need an understanding of subtlety and nuance

Darn double post.

The story certainly had flaws, but it still had some great moments (especially on Sanghelios) and the overal gameplay was terrific.

I enjoyed it, but I am rubbish at following story lines, I just play. I didn't like Halo 2 with the swapping characters, but this was better as the swap was less obvious.