Halo Infinite

Yeah, I loved the story, maybe my favorite story yet in Halo.

My only real complaint about the campaign is that from a level design perspective it was obviously pretty rushed. Almost all the interior rooms of the campaign look the same. There's very little visual variety, just a bunch of purple hallways and rooms.

Par the course for Halo really, but it didn't bother me very much this time because the combat was so much fun I didn't notice it too much. But environmental fatigue did set it. Also didn't like how the "point of no return" happened pretty early in the story and there wasn't really a warning. I also wish the open world areas had more variety too, would have loved a snow area or a swamp area and what have you.

All small complaints though. And I expect upcoming expansions will help with that a great deal. Enjoyed the game a lot.

I agree....though some of the later levels have a fair amount of detail in the textures and etc...

I because I got less annoyed about the same environments than I would in the past...probably because I wasn't playing in large blocks of time.

Sound design is incredible though.....headshots, gravity hammers, melee all sound fantastic.

I didn't get very annoyed either, I think it's because while the environments are samey, the actual combat is excellent and consistently really fun, so the environments were an easy thing to overlook.

Yeah, all the sound effects were spot on. Also really liked the music. Some of the new songs were great.

Beat the campaign, it was fine. I liked the gameplay. But the story was absolute ass. Almost as bad as 5. Cortana was beat offscreen? lmao wut? She's apparently terrorized the entire galaxy, destroyed the UNSC, and some Covenant splinter faction beats her... Huh? And once again, all of this shit happens offscreen! The conflict the previous game set up was dealt with entirely offscreen. Then they just replace her with some new shitty knock off?! **** that. Absolute garbage story telling. Embarrassingly bad. ​

The actual plot of the game wasn't much better. Aside from the Cortana stuff it felt like filler. Felt like nothing of import happened.

Infinite's story is basically the Rise of Skywalker of Halo's in that it's in the rough position of having to apologize for pissing everyone off with 5. That means basically throwing out and/or soft-retconning everything that happened in 5. So no evil!Cortana, no dead USNC. The Weapon is just a soft-retcon of Cortana dying, etc.

The plot is deliberately filler so that the story can start with a blank slate. 343 is basically considering 4-6 a wash and is going to start over from scratch with lesson's (hopefully) learned for the next trilogy. You hate to see it. But that's capitalism.

I also really like the gameplay in Infinite though too.

Reading your guys' issues with the story, all fair points, but none of those issues really bothered me personally. Maybe it's because I never really took Halo's story very seriously and never really thought it was anything above mediocre, but I was happy they largely sidestepped most of the nonsense in Halo 5, as it would have been very difficult, if not impossible, to follow that up in a way that was fulfilling or interesting. Dealing with Cortana's dollar store reapers would have just been ridiculous, and frankly having her become the big villain is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen in fiction, so to have all that bullshit resolve off screen was totally fine by me as it's less I have to think or hear about it.

Plus the fact is most people did not like fighting the new forerunner enemies in Halo 4/5. I think that was one of the things I was most happy about in Halo Infinite, that we only fought against the covenant races. One of the things the series has always struggled with is having the non covenant races be fun to fight. The flood were shitty and boring in the original trilogy, and the forerunners were in the 343 games. So for infinite to finally embrace only fighting the enemeis that are actually fun to fight against was a great move and I think largely explains why we were basically fighting against the covenant 2.0. From a story perspective it may not be very interesting, but from a gameplay perspective it was the right move, I think.

But back to the story, I thought it handled the cortana stuff as well as possible considering how bad Halo 5's story was in that regard. Though I'm not totally keen on them essentially replacing her with a new, sweeter cortana, I did enjoy the progression of the relationship between the weapon and chief, and I really liked how the game continued the idea from Halo 4 of showing chief as being more human, and a bit broken on an emotional level, with a lot of emotional scars that he tries to hide. Makes him a much more compelling character.

That might be it...I'm not super keen on the entire Halo series story either....something something about some lost race of beings...something something some crazy death rings.....

I have probably read all the lore/story a fair number of times and I still forget what happens.

I also feel the same way regarding most of the previous games as well.

Yeah, Halo has always been very run of the mill military sci fi stuff. Nothing terribly unique or special about it. The only reaosn it got attention was because it was one of the few FPS games to put any kind of emphasis on story telling.

Glad I dont care much for NU Halo lore or I would be pissed at the lack of spoiler tags here. Still waiting till co-op and other basic shit features are added before I consider trying this game.

Originally posted by BackFire
Yeah, Halo has always been very run of the mill military sci fi stuff. Nothing terribly unique or special about it. The only reaosn it got attention was because it was one of the few FPS games to put any kind of emphasis on story telling.

Is that true? Maybe on console but PC shooters were doing story stuff for awhile (Dues Ex, No One Lives Forever and etc).

I always took Halo as being important because of the new mechanics (only getting 2-3 weapons, instant throw grenades and the most important, regen health)

Coming from a person who played games like Half-Life, Deus Ex, AvP2, I never understood the draw the original Halo games had....

Originally posted by Smasandian
Is that true? Maybe on console but PC shooters were doing story stuff for awhile (Dues Ex, No One Lives Forever and etc).

I always took Halo as being important because of the new mechanics (only getting 2-3 weapons, instant throw grenades and the most important, regen health)

Coming from a person who played games like Half-Life, Deus Ex, AvP2, I never understood the draw the original Halo games had....

Well yeah. With Halo there's pretty much always going to be a qualifier, unsaid or said, that all the things it innovated are in regards to console shooters mostly, outside of the things like limited weapon carry and health regen and so on.

Like compared to something like Half Life, the story is amateur hour. But the fact that they put any effort at all into story and world building was fairly novel at that point in time I think.

YouTube video

Infinite appearing to be on the decline lately.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2022/02/06/halo-infinite-has-fallen-outside-xboxs-top-5-outside-steams-top-100/?sh=21b6d43d3bea

Being a F2P, perhaps everything should've been pooled into one big mode like Warzone that was introduced in Halo 5 but on a grander scale here. Would've made a decent distraction and let 343 collect themselves before attempting more modes that are either delayed or out but hella buggy.

Meh, I think it's just the sign of the times. This type of multiplayer experience is not nearly as popular as it used to be. I think it's more of the credit that Halo Infinite MP is this popular considering the other games being mentioned.

Battle Royale games.
Roblox is its own separate beast.
GTAV is GTAV.

It would be more worrisome if a Halo-like game was ahead....

That or many are just put off with the lack of features and communication. Big Team Battle still disconnecting people, challenges have ruined ranked, cheaters still infesting the servers with no option to turn crossplay off despite many constantly demanding one. It's bad. But that's ok! There's a literal halo you can put on your spartan in the store! Woo!

GAAS is inherently shit and the business model pissed a lot of people off. Furthermore, the game had anemic content and features at launch and a ton of bugs. It's just your average dogshit AAA title launch.

I wonder if they'll stick with the idea that the game will be their 10 year plan for Halo, or if they'll abandon it since apparently players aren't sticking with it like they thought.

"The Endless are worse than the Flood."

YouTube video

Now that I've done basically everything there is to do in the campaign, and after a couple years or so of waiting till a rainy season to get around to it while also lowering my expectations...

With my finalized thoughts, I will say I really enjoyed the semi open world aspect and how much there was to do in it all, even with the amount of collectibles. The gameplay with the grapple I'll also admit lived up to the hype, along with the upgrade system enhancing the experience from getting all those spartan cores.

The story however is one of the worst, yeah. It was a basic by the numbers soft reboot type story that I just couldn't get that invested in.

For everything that can be said about Halo 5, I pretty much liked its campaign far as the worldbuilding and other characters introduced, particularly Locke. It's a fair criticism though to say Locke and his team took away too much screen time from Chief in Halo 5, and on that I would agree, but I guess I sorta forgot the amount of hate that he and Halo 5 ended up getting. I liked Locke though, just as how I liked Arbiter who took some screen time away from Chief in Halo 2, but I guess more people rocked with Arbiter because he's an alien.

But I digress. Bottom line, I was looking forward to what Halo 5 was setting up, critical as I was on it in other areas. I didn't get that, so got what was basically a sequel to nothing. In other words, a light reboot with Chief, a new Cortana AI, and a generic human sidekick who doesn't fight; I didn't sign up for that. Again though, the gameplay structure still makes the Infinite campaign more or less worth experiencing. Is another case where 343 excels in some areas, but fails hard in other areas.

I wish this was a case of "Aw man, the story was so good, I wish I had started the game sooner", and I would've been honest on that front if it was the case, but it's not unfortunately. It's not a hated game for me so much as it is a polarized one but even with that, I'd rather just move on from the series if I'm not gonna love the new entries all around anymore like I used to. Same kind of reasoning I moved on from Gears of War and such earlier on, and I might be at that point with Halo now.

So unless the next Halo takes a risk in trying something different like a spinoff-ish game similar to ODST or Reach, think that might be it for me if it's just gonna be more of the same. Donezo, checked out, that's all she wrote. Halo had its run, and I stuck with the series longer than most of the old guard fans, but gotta move on at some point when you're not feeling it anymore.

Originally posted by Ridley_Prime
Now that I've done basically everything there is to do in the campaign, and after a couple years or so of waiting till a rainy season to get around to it while also lowering my expectations...

With my finalized thoughts, I will say I really enjoyed the semi open world aspect and how much there was to do in it all, even with the amount of collectibles. The gameplay with the grapple I'll also admit lived up to the hype, along with the upgrade system enhancing the experience from getting all those spartan cores.

The story however is one of the worst, yeah. It was a basic by the numbers soft reboot type story that I just couldn't get that invested in.

For everything that can be said about Halo 5, I pretty much liked its campaign far as the worldbuilding and other characters introduced, particularly Locke. It's a fair criticism though to say Locke and his team took away too much screen time from Chief in Halo 5, and on that I would agree, but I guess I sorta forgot the amount of hate that he and Halo 5 ended up getting. I liked Locke though, just as how I liked Arbiter who took some screen time away from Chief in Halo 2, but I guess more people rocked with Arbiter because he's an alien.

But I digress. Bottom line, I was looking forward to what Halo 5 was setting up, critical as I was on it in other areas. I didn't get that, so got what was basically a sequel to nothing. In other words, a light reboot with Chief, a new Cortana AI, and a generic human sidekick who doesn't fight; I didn't sign up for that. Again though, the gameplay structure still makes the Infinite campaign more or less worth experiencing. Is another case where 343 excels in some areas, but fails hard in other areas.

I wish this was a case of "Aw man, the story was so good, I wish I had started the game sooner", and I would've been honest on that front if it was the case, but it's not unfortunately. It's not a hated game for me so much as it is a polarized one but even with that, I'd rather just move on from the series if I'm not gonna love the new entries all around anymore like I used to. Same kind of reasoning I moved on from Gears of War and such earlier on, and I might be at that point with Halo now.

So unless the next Halo takes a risk in trying something different like a spinoff-ish game similar to ODST or Reach, think that might be it for me if it's just gonna be more of the same. Donezo, checked out, that's all she wrote. Halo had its run, and I stuck with the series longer than most of the old guard fans, but gotta move on at some point when you're not feeling it anymore.

They were also not really enemies, we weren't thrust upon like we were with Locke, this new guy trying to take on and full Chief's shoes.