ThoseDeafMutes said: Halo 1's back story is that there is a species of easily killable popcorn aliens and the hyperadvanced precursor race's only viable solution to that problem was to build an array of giant superweapons that would extinguish all life in the galaxy. Halo 1's story recycles many tried and true SciFi cliches, ranging from superficial homages like The Tough But Funny Black Sergeant On Dropship From Aliens to riffs on concepts done a billion times before like the ancient precursor civilization, the hunt for the precursor artefacts and the race against bad guys to stop the ancient doomsday device. Religious aliens in hierarchical caste system? Done before. Plucky humans fighting against overwhelming alien odds? Humans still doing everything even when hyper advanced automation and AI exists? That's the bread and butter of military SciFi.



There's a gulf as vast as the pacific ocean between a story idea and the execution of that idea, and the process of navigating that gulf is where quality storytelling is found. AI doing AI rebellion stuff is the foundation for several great works of fiction, and that wasn't really the problem with Halo 5's narrative. Click to expand...

Bungie didn't pretend like they were pioneers in storytelling. It was far from original, but they didn't bite more than they could chew, and more importantly, it had charm! The story in CE was mainly there to serve the excellent gameplay which they were at the forefront of (on consoles, at least).343 behaves as if Halo's story is on par with A Space Odyssey, and disregards the "boyish charm" that made Halo's story work in the first place, pretending that it's the deepest thing ever.They refused to call a spade a spade, and tried to brute force their way into making MC's and Cortana's love relationship deep and believable. Master Chief struggling with his humanity. It might all be true, but 343 didn't make sense of the changes. They just implemented them with little explanation to the sudden changes, killing off the little identity Halo's story had in the process.I get the impression that 343i are pretty high on themselves and are their own biggest fans.My two cents, anyways, one may of course disagree. I dislike 343 (unoriginal, I know) for not only their work, but their attitude.H5's core gameplay is pretty good though, I'll give them that.