First off, Jul 'Mdama went out pretty quick, I mean seriously, for such an important figure in the Covenant, and for him to die in a cutscene at the end of mission 1, I find it a bit weak. If you never played Spartan Ops, which is completely understandable since it was crap, you may not understand why Halsey only has 1 arm now, or who 'Mdama is. That's something I personally really liked, but I can understand why others wouldn't like it, this game is not nice to people new to the series, and I don't just mean games, I mean web series', comics, books, if you don't have a decent grasp on the Halo universe, you'll be pretty lost. Now I was cool with this, but if you only play the games, I understand why you'd have no idea what an Unggoy is. In that though there is a bit of an issue I have, which is while trivial Halo knowledge is a bit whatever, more important stuff like the fate of the Didact are not mentioned, which isn't exactly great since he was Halo 4's main villain, how he actually died is shown in the Halo Escalation comic, but if you didn't read Escalation you wouldn't know that. Something I really don't get in Halo 5 is something I didn't mention in my game review, which is Cortana, after dying at the end of Halo 4, is somehow still alive in Halo 5. The reason they give is she was uploaded to the domain, which I'm guessing is some kind of Forerunner internet, but not only did it save her, it somehow magically cured her rampancy and made her immortal, I feel like that really takes away the punch from her death in Halo 4, because I loved that scene, and now it meant nothing, and it does seem like 343 just hit the undo button after killing off a very popular character. On the flip side, what I like was the parallel they draw with her and Halsey in this game, that they're both justifying evil acts for the greater good, for Halsey it was creating the Spartans, and for Cortana it's assuming the Mantle of responsibility, I really like that they did this. The Mantle, from what I know, is on paper a great system where the holder of the Mantle is in charge of keeping the galaxy safe and at peace, but in reality it's a tyranny, stunting the technological and cultural development of subordinate planets or races. And that is what Cortana and the Warden plan to do in Halo 5, maintain peace in the galaxy through oppression and control, a goal that will be achieved with the Guardians, the enforcers of the Mantle, used to keep lower races in line. I'm not entirely sure Cortana is corrupted, since she's effectively a clone of Halsey, and thinks that what she's doing is right, even when it's clearly not right. On that note, I don't know what to make of Cortana being the game's villain, I've been able to justify it in my head by remembering what Aaron Eckhart said in The Dark Knight, "you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain," but it still seems odd to me that Cortana, of all Halo characters, is now a bad guy, come on, it's Cortana. I just, while writing this, had a thought, in Halo 4 she told Chief that he'd be paired with another AI after she dies, the words she used, "it won't be me," what if that was also an address to the player, a hint that if she did return she wouldn't be the same Cortana, holy shit that was right, now there's a thought.
Halo 5 had some great marketing, but it was wasted, since the marketing really poorly represents the game itself. We were told that Halo 5 would be the epic hunt for Master Chief, "the greatest hunt in gaming history," but the hunt is a really small part of the game, it's Chief goes AWOL, Locke is sent to get him, holy shit Cortana's alive, lets deal with her, the hunt is actually a really small part of the game, I'm not really fussed by this, but this game's marketing was complete bull, you know those great trailers with the Chief statue and 2 perspectives, that was really cool, and it wasn't in the game at all. Like I said in my game review, neither playable character are vilified, but with Cortana's true plan being kept quiet until pretty much the end of the game, it's cool that you don't really know for sure where Chief's loyalty lies, does he know that she's dangerous, or will he take her side. I do however think it's a bit sad that we never see what I was expecting, which was Osiris and Blue team joining forces in battle, in fact for the last mission of the game Chief is locked inside a cryptum, a giant ball that's also kind of like a prison cell. now for some less important spoilers, in Halo 5 you visit some pretty sweet locations, including lots and lots and lots of forerunner structures, but you also visit a glassed UNSC colony, which is pretty eerie when you think about it, but for some reason that mission really reminded me of Borderlands. and you visit Sanghelios, I was so excited to finally visit Sanghelios in a Halo game, and I adored finally getting to walk around and see for myself one of the coolest and most interesting planets in the Halo universe. While on Sanghelios you see some stunning ancient ruins, admire the rocky desert landscape, and of course, take part in the battle of Sunaion, which is one of my favourite missions in the game. I really loved the battle of Sunaion, it was just a fun mission, and when you consider the context, it being the last great Covenant stronghold on Sanghelios, it feels like a very important mission, but there's something about it I'll get onto later that I didn't quite like. But then there's Genesis, which in addition to being a beautiful planet, is one that isn't really explained, from what I gathered it's a bridge between the domain and the physical world, I'm guessing it's also some kind of control centre for the Guardians, since it's where Cortana takes them all, but really I don't know much about Genesis, which is a shame, because it's a really cool planet.
But now for what I really don't like, this game's bullshit cliff hanger ending. The problem with it is how it leaves so many very important story threads hanging, with no resolution. First off the smaller ones. The war on Sanghelios, we never learn if the attack on Sunaion was a success, I can assume it was, but the game never gives a clear end to the battle, only that the Arbiter survived. So is the war still going on or is Sanghelios free from the Covenant now, the game never says. Like I said, we don't really learn what Genesis is, we don't learn how Chief and Locke deal with one another after kind of defeating Cortans. But what I really hate about the ending is that in the end, Cortana leaves Genesis with her Guardians and starts attacking human planets, we don't know what happens next because the game doesn't tell us what happens next. She attacks the Infinity with a Guardian and the Infinity jumps into slip space and runs away, with nothing else explained, Infinity is now on the run. Chief, Locke, Arbiter and Halsey are all reunited on Sanghelios, but we see literally nothing other than a Pelican landing and everyone getting back together and Halsey getting all teary eyed. The game's ending isn't an ending, there is no resolution with any of it's major story threads. I've never been bothered by Halo 2's ending because I've always had Halo 3 to dive right into, but this is shit, because when's Halo 6 coming out, 2017, 2018, that's 2 or 3 years where we get no resolution on this game's ending. I hate cliff hanger endings as a principal, I can cope with them on TV shows, but with movies and games they're just fucking infuriating. There's this thing called hype 343, and what you must realise is hype isn't permanent, this ending will piss people off, and with 2 or 3 more years before the next Halo game people just forget about this game's story, you show off Halo 6 and people are already burned out, hype burns out a lot faster now, which is the fault of society, but that's another rant for another time, doesn't change the fact that people like me who crave Halo for it's single player will be annoyed and casual players will just say fuck it and burn out on the multiplayer or migrate to Blops or Battlefront when they release. As someone who loves Halo 5, Halo 5's ending pisses me off, real good, and I know 343 can do better.
So those are my more in depth thoughts on Halo 5, it's cool story, interesting character choices, fun locations, and terrible god awful ending, like I say, I love this game, I like it's story, it's characters, and I think it's huge fun to play, but now hopefully you have a better understanding of my stance on the game, I hope I haven't bored you.
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