I thought that it was a pretty awesome game and a very solid middle chapter of what was supposed to be a trilogy, I presume. But I guess now we'll never gonna see a proper resolution to this storyline because Halo fans be like: "waaah, why Cortana is the bad guy?", "waaah, why can't I play as Mister Chef for the twelfth consecutive game in a row?", "waaah, I can't be happy about anything!"
Reading some random comments around the net feels like listening to those die hard Star Wars dorks who always bitch about literally everything that's not the original trilogy or the expanded universe.
Like, for example, take
this extremely long-winded response to a question that I found while Googling why do people dislike Halo 5 so much. It's basically some turbo-fan contraditcting herself by first criticizing the game for expecting the audience to have prior knowledge about some obscure lore that's apparently only described in the books but then, a few sentences later, criticizes the game for not adhering to some obscure piece of lore that one can only know about if they read the books. Or she's criticizing 343 for giving Master Chief more character because he is supposed to be a silent protagonist, but then almost immediately kinda praising the fact that he has more complex relationships with other charters in the story? Seriously, if that's like a typical example of a die hard Halo fan, then I suspect that these people may be kinda stupid. Not to mention that there's barely anything of substance in this criticism about the writing, performances, set pieces, gameplay - all of which I thought were pretty excellent. And no, I really did not require some arcane knowledge about Halo lore. I'm a pretty casual fan of the series, having played all of the mainline games and having some cursory knowledge about the background lore. It's really not that complex, it's just fun space opera stuff that doesn't even challenge your intellect too much, and it's mostly about the action and drama. I like the fact that they tried to take the series in a surprising new direction with this new trilogy, and I even found this new storyline to be more engaging thanks to higher emotional stakes provided by established characters that you know and care about, being thrown into this new morally ambiguous and complex situation. But beyond that, it's just a series of games with a pulpy plot about a soldier guy shooting aliens. It's not 2001: A Space Odyssey for Chrissakes.
Anyway, good job Halo fans. Now we'll never gonna see the conclusion to this trilogy because the studio got cold feet after the backlash it got from the fanbase. Instead of that, we got Halo Infinite. A game in which I could barely follow the story. And I just assumed it was perhaps due to the fact that I didn't play Halo 5 prior to playing Infinite, but turns out that no. That wasn't the case at all. They just attempted to push a reset button by largely ignoring the events of Halo 5 and starting Infinite
in media res, while providing little to no context about how we even got there. And the result is a game with a wonderful combat loop that's fun to play as long as you roam the open world, but as soon as you have to deal with the story missions, it becomes a dull, impenetrable slog.
I hope you're happy.
and once again a long-winded opinion about a game containing nothing but story conversation and completely ignoring gameplay, gamedesign, Leveldesign, enemy design, gunplay, pacing, art direction...
I'm not surprised yet still disappointed every time it happens.
Halo 5 is mainly disliked DUE TO THE GAMEPLAY.
I have no idea where you got your weird rant about the story from, but I can tell you as a long time Halo fan, the story and characters was such an unimportant component as to why I think Halo 5 is not a good Halo game that I personally wouldn't even once bring it up in a discussion about the game.
let's get into why Halo 5 is a mediocre game in general and a bad Halo title.
it's not all bad but the bad outweighs the good.
first of all, the enemy behaviour.
no single enemy shows off better what is wrong with how enemies are designed and how the combat was designed than the Hunters.
Hunters have always been the tank class that forces you to strategize your approach around the fact that they are nearly indestructible from the front and have a huge energy cannon that will eliminate you instantly.
you have to thin out the other enemies while dodging them and their bullets, and in the end you use their slow movement speed against them and kill them from behind.
so what went wrong in Halo 5 then? well the developers didn't really put much care into designing their behaviour according to their gameplay purpose.
in older games their attack animations give the player enough time to react and to outplay them.
not so in Halo 5. in Halo 5 whoever was responsible for the animations and the AI behaviour just didn't give a shit. because in 5 their melee attack has basically no wind up time and instantly fucks you up as soon as you get close to them. making outmanoeuvring them tedious and unfair unless you play coop. but as soon as there are 2 on the field even in coop it's fucking tedious to fight them.
the Hunters are a good example of this due to their very simple design purpose, but these kind of annoyances are common in many enemies and other design choices.
attack patterns are often unfair and/or annoying to counter.
the whole game just doesn't feel very well designed.
next is the "enhanced mobility" which not only misses what Halo is about but also kills the pacing of gunfights in the Multiplayer and ruins map design.
the bad starts right off the bat with a ridiculously narrow FOV in a game that demands fast and hectic manoeuvring from the player, which is a direct clash of design. the game wants to be super vertical and fast, but the slow max aim speed and low FOV make this feel stilted and cumbersome.
further more, the original design philosophies around Halo's combat and gameplay was centered around augmenting your character with objects and weapons found on the battlefield, while Halo 5 basically makes your movement the most important "weapon".
and last but not least the Map Design.
maps needed to be elongated because now everyone is sprinting, climbing and thrusting across the maps.
this results in often long stretches of hallways and barely any cover.
this in return results in players running away from gunfights more than ever before.
because you can't shoot while sprinting the player that chases you can not stop you from running away from the battley and because there are long stretches of nothingness in order to elongate the maps, players usually are on one or the other side of these long corridors in order to have cover.
so you are often far away from the enemy, if you want to get closer the enemy just runs away and you can't do anything about it, and because the maps are now way more stretched out the pacing of matches is slowed down significantly in general.
next, the game launched without half the modes people expect from Halo. no Infection, no Forge, no Big Team Battle etc.
this was a big deal, especially because Halo 4 already was disappointing in many ways in how it handled certain modes, and people rightfully expected them to fix all the issues in Halo 5, only to be meat with yet another delay and unfinished release.
and because I don't want to write a whole novel my last point about it,
the extreme focus on eSports instead of the social aspects.
all social features of Halo have been stripped away ever since Bungie left.
you can't stay in the same lobbie if you want, no real pre game lobby, no fun whacky modes on launch, no file share etc.
game modes were hyper focused on esports. I mean we got Breakout as the new shiny mode, a mode that was entirely played on perfectly symmetrical maps that are set inside a simulated environment and are made up of simple building blocks.
and the only more casual mode was Warzone, a mode based entirely around random unlocks that were obtainable by buying REQ Packs with real or in-game money.
as I said I could make a way more detailed and long post, but I'm cutting it short here for the sake of my sanity and the potential readers.
TLDR: who the fuck cares about the story? it was the game's design, monetisation and content that was the issue.
and the fact that people exclusively talk about the story when talking about why they like or dislike a game is sad.
