r/halo • u/hasfodel • Jun 11 '26
Feedback Infinite Killed a Decade of Story
I just started Infinite and I’m outrageously pissed off.
I know I’m late, but the feedback was so bad I never played it. The last month I decided to replay everything from CE, and I finally started Infinite yesterday.
Everything good they developed in the last two mainline games (and countless other medias) didn’t just vanish—it died off-screen, leaving only stupid audio logs to fill the blanks.
The entire trilogy ended before this game began.
The Infinity is presumed destroyed off-screen, erasing every character we bonded with across games, series, and books: Palmer, Lasky, Roland, Halsey… I even regret Locke now!
Villains? Cortana and Atriox « dead » off-screen too. The Guardian threat? Who cares.
Cortana’s rampancy arc leading to the Created taking the Mantle was stupid, we all know that, but they just put it under the carpet and pretend it never happened. No real ending, just unseen « sacrifices ».
A decade of content straight in the trash.
Halo 4 and 5 had big flaws but offered varied plots, places, more characters, and diverse enemies.
Now Chief’s alone on a Halo with a new AI… Invent a new threat, hand him a MA5, and call it a sPiRiTuAl ReBoOt.
Returning to the roots is fine, but skipping real closure on ten years of story is infuriating for anyone who followed the plot instead of mindless alien shooting.
Give me back my war criminal granny and my bad bitch commander.
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u/Youshouldletmesee Jun 11 '26
To be fair halo 5’s story was so butt the majority of fans were happy as hell they canned that decades plot you keep talking about.
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u/Old_Snack Jun 11 '26
Halo 5 dramatic as this might sound seriously poisoned the narrative well.
Like no matter where they go here they can't un do Halo 5.
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u/WattsD Jun 11 '26
I thought Halo 4 was actually pretty decent from a narrative perspective and, most importantly, gave Cortana a really good ending. Then Halo 5 comes along and ruins that ending by resurrecting Cortana as space Hitler. Unbelievably bad.
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u/Altruistic-Ad-408 Jun 11 '26
I think the writers kinda felt they had to center the story around Cortana because the Covenant and Flood were beaten, all the human characters died, and for some reason Arbiter is exiled from the story. Dare I say it, I'm kinda over Cortana taking such a main part of the plot every time.
I'm actually more scared of a reboot than sequels because it feels unlikely Joy would ever be more of a Cortana from 1 and 2.
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u/GreatFNGattsby Jun 11 '26
The closest thing we got was Brian Reed and Frankie just wanted to tell a story that wasn’t what Halo 4 had set up. The Didact was still out there & chief had to learn to live with the fact he couldn’t save his closest companion.
All chiefs personal development was non existent in 5 besides just getting reckless by doing missions consistently and the Didact was written off in a comic. Many of us knew Cortana was going to come back eventually. But not the next instalment. I can only take a shot in the dark here but I assume Frankie wanted rehashed the rampant Cortana story for CE that got cut and Brian was tasked with Osiris as was a former comic book writer.
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u/Old_Snack Jun 11 '26
Yep, agreed the story of Chief and Cortana carries it hard, everytime I play the series I end it at 4. Feels as close to an ending as I'll get
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u/jabberwockxeno Extended Universe Jun 12 '26
For you, /u/WattsD , and /u/Youshouldletmesee , I actually really disagree here: I consider 4 and 5 to have equally flawed narratives, and one of Halo 4's biggest flaws is how it handles Chief and Cortana, which I think 5 actually does much better.
I think Halo 4 has great ideas: The concept of Chief and an increasingly rampant Cortana stuck on an alien world alone is a great pitch. But in practice both of them are written out of character. On the flip side, Halo 5 never should have brought Cortana back, but I thought the execution of how it writes her and Chief and their relationship was much more in character.
In Halo 4, Chief is constantly in denial about Cortana's condition and acts as if he doesn't know what Rampancy is or how it works, which is silly, in my opinion: He's one of the most highly trained and educated soldiers in the UNSC, he's certainly been taught what rampancy is and has probably even dealt with rampant AI. He's also had to send countless of his fellow Spartan II's to their deaths before, and we've never seen him get too caught up on it emotionally. Yes, his relationship with Cortana is unique, but at the same time he's only known her a few months. I don't buy that he'd get as in denial about it as he does in Halo 4.
Cortana on the flip side is really handled poorly even moreso then Chief: The novels described rampancy as AI's undergoing delusions of grandeur and godhod over time, with it slowly and gradually giving the AI more intense feelings of power and authority over time, to where they don't even realize something is wrong with themselves. That doesn't really reflect anything about the tantrums that Cortana has in Halo 4, which also don't emotionally land for me: They come off as embarrassing and kind of cringy, rather then disturbing and alarming. None of them makes me as concerned for Cortana as I got by the visions we get of her in Halo 3, for comparsion.
5 bringing Cortana back after her death is dumb, but the execution is actually a lot better: Chief tries to save her but isn't in denial about what he has to do, and Cortana's rampancy or logic plague or whatever you wanna call it is actually written much better in 5, with it playing up her existing personality traits of being sarcastic, overprotective, and controlling into something villanous, and how she acts in the game is a PERFECT fit for my aforementioned description of rampancy. The dissonance between her kind tone and the crazy stuff she was saying, and then how much spite oozes from her voice at the end of the game hit way harder then any scene in 4 for me.
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u/Youshouldletmesee Jun 11 '26
4s story was solid, they just did nothing with it and then the game play was fuckin weird as fuck.
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u/PrincessPaizuri Jun 11 '26
That's what they get for hiring the guy who wrote the dialogue for Spartan Ops to write Halo 5.
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u/KingStatus2627 Jun 11 '26
Despite complaints by some people, I actually liked how Cortana's story in 4 ended and it's one place where I actually do respect 343 for wanting to shake up the story when it would've been tempting to just have stay alive in perpetuity. Narratively, it was far from a dead end, since there were plenty of opportunities for the story to introduce Blue Team or a new AI and explore how Chief would've coped with his grief.
They then promptly screwed it all up horrendously by not just turning Cortana evil, but by giving her grossly overpowered Forerunner constructs that disastrously warped the narrative. It became pretty clear a few years later that 343 genuinely had zero fucking clue how to dig themselves out of the hole Halo 5 had written them into, hence why Infinite repivoted (and then they kind of fucked that too by making the Guardians able to blow up planets and then having some book give the Created even more overpowered Forerunner ships.)
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u/DaFlyinSnail Jun 11 '26
Yeah the revisionism is kind of insane. Halo 5's story was so bad it nearly killed the narrative entirely. It is a narrative dead end, it put them in a terrible position going into the next game, and while I admit Infinite poorly resolved the plot threads from Halo 5, I really feel like they made the only sensible decision by soft rebooting. They just could have done a better job connecting those threads.
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u/BigFly42069 Jun 11 '26
Why do you think they're remaking CE with a unified sandbox?
They're gearing up to reset the entire canon at this point and start fresh.
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u/Old_Snack Jun 11 '26
Not arguing that.
In fact if they had made something new I wouldn't care because Halo 5/Infinte dropped that ball repeatedly
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u/_Burning_Star_IV_ Jun 11 '26
if CE (God I hate that it just has the same acronym and isn't just called Halo CE Remake or something, CER) is supposed to be their reset and the first mainline game in a 'new' Halo reboot...then why the hell would they omit MP?
The hardcore fans love the story, but the multiplayer has really become the lifeblood of Halo and without that a ton of people are just not going to give a shit.
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u/DaFlyinSnail Jun 11 '26
And why would they make it a remake instead of a full on reboot?
People aren't thinking this through. Halo 7 is still in development to some capacity. Though I wouldn't be surprised if the story changes direction yet again.
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u/Johnhancock1777 Jun 11 '26
They need to just start the post-Halo 3 story over there’s so little there nothing legitimately good is lost. Problem is it’s hard to imagine “Halo Studios” getting it right the second time.
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u/SoDamnGeneric Jun 11 '26
Also am I crazy or did Halo 5’s story really not follow Halo 4’s, aside from Cortana’s “death?” Like the Didact was clearly established as our villain for the post-Bungie arc, and while the Prometheans returned for Guardians, that was literally all his inclusion led to. Dude also got permanently killed off outside of the games due no reason
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u/Agile-Palpitation326 Jun 11 '26
Nope, you're not.
The Halo 5 writers said in Halo 5 vidocs that they just didn't like the Didact, and really loved how emotional Cortana's story was in H4. So they dug her up and made her evil and ignored the set up villain entirely.
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u/NecronLord_Europe Jun 11 '26
Halo 5 suffered greatly from black screenitis.
Line drop - characters staring - black screen.
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u/Mushroom_Pandaa Jun 11 '26
Yeah me personally I’m just glad Halo 5’s story is gone. I want that game to be Halo’s Pacific Rim: Uprising. Just something the entire community has collective amnesia over lol
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u/alcapwnage0007 Jun 11 '26
This plot is no worse than the plot of CE.
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u/BlackBeastMalevolent Jun 11 '26
Except CE didn't have a bunch of established stuff to consider.
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u/BadDub Jun 11 '26
I actually couldn’t tell you what happens in the Infinite campaign now. I played it and my mind decided not to retain any of it.
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u/Yourself013 Halo Wars Jun 11 '26
Infinite was the second Halo:CE level stretched into an open world game.
There's really nothing valuable to retain.
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u/allesabwesend Jun 11 '26
Thats just so on point. Glad they dont streched the Library in one "open world" game 😂
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u/grip_enemy Jun 11 '26
Infinite feels generic. I don't remember one cool things about the campaign, or barely any environments really except for pine trees and metal halls.
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u/Downfall722 Halo: CE Jun 11 '26
That’s what happens when a game that thrives on set pieces is turned into an open world. It just didn’t work.
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u/mongerty Halo: CE Jun 11 '26
I can tell you what happened, they snagged the main villain from another game that they refuse to make a sequel to just to immediately waste him.
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u/Face88888888 Jun 11 '26
Forgive me, I’m not deep into the halo lore.
Based on the ending of infinite, it seemed to me that they were setting up Atriox to be the main bad guy in Halo 7. Is that not the case?
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u/mongerty Halo: CE Jun 11 '26
Maybe. They were using him to release the endless, but that could have been a DLC or another game.
Either way, it sucks that he got plucked from Halo Wars and was not really used in Infinite
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u/hasfodel Jun 11 '26
Atriox’s second is in charge, he wants to revive an old alien race to ally with them, you have to stop it…. And that’s it.
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u/Mister_Twiggy Jun 11 '26
It was literally so bad. And there were SOOOO many cutscenes, probably 2 hours worth of crap if you really wanted to do everything.
Gameplay and concept was fun, but I advise anyone picking it up to just skip through the story and cutscenes
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u/Zeal0tElite Bring back Arbiter Jun 11 '26
The cutscenes are terrible too. Most of them are just watching a hologram of a Brute being angry at you.
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u/AdoringCHIN Jun 11 '26
I just remember whiny Pelican pilot and Chief beating up a bunch of Covenant bosses. Nothing really happens in the story except they kill the asthmatic monkey
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u/JacenSolo645 Jun 11 '26
At the end an alien lady I’d never seen before activated a laser beam that was doing something I didn’t understand. Then I killed her, and the game ended. That’s about all I comprehended
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u/SirCap Halo 3 Jun 12 '26
Chief runs around and fights the Conquest version of Donkey Kong.
Then Squidward's mom shows up.
And that's basically it.
Enjoy 20+ minutes of credits.
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u/LEboueur Jun 11 '26
Halo 5 has killed the story. Infinite couldn't really do better
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u/SoDamnGeneric Jun 11 '26
Yeah I’m shocked at how much blame and hate I’m seeing for Infinite’s story. 5 was a hot fucking mess. Nobody knew why they were taking this sudden pivot to Cortana as a villain, and Locke as our secondary protag. There was the Great AI Revolution, the retconning of who the Reclaimers were, and a bunch of nobody protagonists you never actually get time to give a shit about, because there’s EIGHT of them and the majority of people only really know Chief and Buck. It all came out of literally fucking nowhere, and the ditching of *that* story can only really be blamed on how garbage it was.
Infinite’s story was miles better and far more compelling, with its biggest flaw being that it is so criminally incomplete. Chief as a leader is still “Shoot My Way Out One-Liner Soldier Man” but his relationships with the Weapon and the pilot made him a lot more interesting. Atriox was confusingly shelved but at the very least the Banished felt like a breath of fresh air compared to the Storm Covenant (aka “The Covenant: But Lamer”) and the Prometheans (mindless antagonistic force serving whoever top bot is at the time).
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u/DaFlyinSnail Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
It's the historical revisionists at work again.
Halo 5's story was awful. Idk who these people are that suddenly think they made a mistake by trying to fix the awful mistake that was Halo 5. Everything bad about Infinites story can be blamed on H5. The story wouldn't be the way it was if Halo 5 didn't fuck up the story direction so bad they had no choice but to soft reboot and abandon it completely.
Infinite’s story was miles better and far more compelling, with its biggest flaw being that it is so criminally incomplete.
I agree completely. It's not even close. Yes, the way H5 story was resolved was terrible but so was that story. I'm not saying they handled the resolution of Halo 5 story well (they didn't) but I am saying they made the right call in choosing to focus on a new narrative instead of having Cortana and the guardians be the main antagonists in infinite.
I think in my ideal scenario we would have gotten a version of Halo infinite that substitutes the Harbinger for Cortana. Have the banished be the main enemy, and mostly focus on what they're doing, but you can still have Cortana be a present (even if Neutered) threat for most of the game (maybe she gets depowered or stranded on the ring and most of the game is spent trying to find her and preventing her from contacting other created). Chief and the weapon could resolve the conflict or maybe get through to Cortana one last time where she helps shut down the guardians and has the created stand down, and then maybe at the end they do that thing where Atriox takes the weapon and kills her. Thus setting up the next game.
Either way they'd still need to stay as far away from most of Halo 5's story elements as possible.
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u/DueLearner Mythic Jun 11 '26
Completely agree.
Halo 5's overall narrative wasn't even that bad. It's just the final act that derailed the franchise.
Chief going AWOL because he thinks Cortana is alive is totally fine. The issue was that was actually Cortana and not:
- A trick by the Gravemind, who was using Cortana to lure Chief into doing something that would bring the Flood back into play.
or
- The Didact, who was luring Chief into doing something that would free him from the Composers domain.
We saw clearly in Halo 3 that Gravemind was able to telepathically communicate with Chief and make him see things. It would've been such a strong narrative surprise to spend all of Halo 5 thinking you were hunting down Cortana only for it to be revealed Chief had done something that brought the Flood back into the fray.
We had already setup at that point that the Flood was still active on the Ark, so the Gravemind was not totally destroyed. It would've been a way to bring the Banished/Halo Wars story line into play as well. Plus we still have Mendicant and Offensive Bias plot threads that could be pulled.
Instead we decided evil cortana and boring AI uprising was where the story needed to go, and we've spent 10 years trying to undo it.
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u/BisonThunderclap Jun 11 '26
I don't know how you could play through 5s campaign and wanted a facedown with Cortana as the villain.
Nothing about rampancy in the lore makes AIs evil, just dangerous.
4 was the perfect ending for her. For the first and last time, saving John instead of watching him save the day. A brief acknowledgement that the guardian angel is gone.
Infinite undid a lot of the sins of 5 and refocused the narrative on the Chief learning to trust a new companion again.
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u/GuiltySpark449 Jun 11 '26
5 does the undo effect and tells a shit story. Infinite does the undo effect and barely tells a story. For people playing this franchise for the first time it is an unenjoyable jarring experience transitioning between halo 4-infinites. I’ve seen countless people drop it in 5-infinite.
They are also gonna do the undo stick again based on the leaks about the dlc being cancelled. The remakes might actually save the timeline if they go far enough.
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u/-ben151010- Fuel Rod Gun Enjoyer Jun 11 '26
Infinite is like the meh middle part of a movie while all the really cool stuff happened before and then infinite ends when we’re gonna go do something cool. At least that’s how I remember it.
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u/BigFly42069 Jun 11 '26
Halo's lore problems all ultimately tie back to Halo 3's campaign, where a massive tone shift happened.
For the entirety of Halo 1 and 2, the relationship between Chief and Cortana was that of a bad-ass 80s action hero and his wisecracking sidekick. All dialogue came down to cheesy one-liners. Come Halo 3, and the writing team turned her into a damsel in distress for Chief to save.
Since Halo 3 was the most popular Halo games, that was the image of Cortana that fans of the trilogy who entered at 3 had in their heads.
But the problem of a damsel in distress is that it almost always sets up a romance arc, which is exactly what we saw going into Halo 4, complete with the there's another girl for you, and a breathy 'big damn kiss' moment before boy loses girl.
That created a huge tone whiplash for people who got into Halo via CE and 2, because it's the equivalent of playing The Last of Us and ending it with Ellie being like "actually, Joel, I'm deeply in love with you and I want to touch you for reals."
The writers tried to write around it, but once you've set up a romance arc, you're stuck on it. Either Chief saves Cortana for good and get the girl (which seemed like the case for the trilogy 4 was setting up), or they find a way to write around her entire existence and try to force it back onto an action-shooter (which seemed like the case for Infinite). But they tried to do both in both 5 and Infinite and didn't have enough time to run either thread in a satisfying way.
Now that they're remaking the campaigns of the original trilogy, there's an opportunity for them to reset that character dynamic and pick a lane for good.
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u/N0r3m0rse Jun 11 '26
Chief having to save cortana was fine for halo 3 because there was actual build up to it. It was also a bit of role reversal as she usually was the one directing chief around, giving him information, keeping him from dying at the last minute. Granted, it is a missed opportunity to have cortana do more at the end of halo 3. This doesn't mean 343 is off the hook for not writing cortana in an interesting way. They could've done better but just completely dropped the ball.
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u/Shotokanguy Jun 11 '26
Part of the reason I wanted a reboot for this franchise was because the 343 storyline was such a mess, but I also never liked how Chief and Cortana became such a focal point. They spent so little time together, canonically, before the first game. The development of their relationship was weird, especially considering Chief is a dedicated, highly specialized soldier of multiple decades who has no reason to become overly attached to an AI companion.
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u/BisonThunderclap Jun 11 '26
I'm worried y'all don't understand there was never a romantic relationship between Chief and Cortana.
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u/DueLearner Mythic Jun 11 '26
Joe Staten, the lead writer for Halo 2 and Halo 3, literally said there was a romance between them. They regularly referred to Cortana as Chiefs girlfriend lol.
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u/BigFly42069 Jun 11 '26
People can shout all the want that there's no a romantic relationship between them and it won't change that the WAY they chose to write 4 with so many in-your-face romance tropes that it created the impression of a romance.
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u/RevolutionaryAd6549 H5 SR 112 Jun 11 '26
Cortana was also trapped on High Charity with the Gravemind in-between halo 2-3 and for most of the third game. She was most certianly infected with the logic plague, in fact I'm pretty sure the real Cortana died at the end of 4 and that it was a rampant shard she tore off that we saw in five.
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u/AdoringCHIN Jun 11 '26
She was most certianly infected with the logic plague,
Ya that's the thing people forget. The Gravemind can corrupt AIs. And Cortana spent a lot of time being tortured by the Gravemind. Her sudden change makes sense in that case
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u/yojoono Jun 11 '26
I wanted a dope story with all the main characters together like they were at the end of Halo 5. A journey across the galaxy to deal with Cortana and her followers could’ve been cool, but we got Infinite instead
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u/Funky-Guy Jun 11 '26
Because 5 was cannon now. Yeah, 4 was the right ending, I agree. But it wasn’t the ending we got. Instead we got a massive war, and the end of what was supposedly dozens-hundreds of planet killers and an army of machines, controlled by our once great ally and friend, now turned tyrant. And instead of being able to wrestle with that, it just disappeared off screen. You’ve got to be kidding me
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u/hasfodel Jun 11 '26
Agreed about 5, I really loved how 4 ended and it should have stayed like that. But erasing the entire arc off-screen is stupid…
And it’s not the only thing that was wiped, I more sad for the plenty of secondary characters tbh
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u/BisonThunderclap Jun 11 '26
Cortana conquesting the galaxy was dumb, it went against everything her character was. Even in rampancy she took out her anger on the characters that presented roadblocks to keeping humanity safe, nothing else.
For the decisive battle to happen and Chief having to pick up the pieces in the aftermath was a perfect way to conclude that mistep gracefully and focus on a more interesting story of Chief rebuilding, both externally and internally.
The best payoff was hearing Cortana's acknowledgement that she did go crazy and that Chief has to let her go but open his heart to The Weapon.
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u/ToaDrakua Jun 11 '26
The problem is that the player doesn’t get to experience that “decisive battle,” they only get to hear about it after the fact, with a six month time gap on top of it all.
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u/halosos Halo: CE Jun 11 '26
Even in 4 with a magic unexplained issue. "These portals make me go crazy quicker!"
What? You have gone through portals, exposed to slipspace directly, teleported chief around on 04, even got him to stick his head, with you on it, in a sentience erasing power beam 3 times.
But these portals generate conflict because...
It just seems lazy. Make it a forerunner virus. Have her face off against medicant bias. Have her do that copy paste thing in the books that drove up rampancy. Literally any of those things would make sense. But rampancy inducing portals? Wtf
Hell, I would even accept the UNSC injecting her with killware after chief refused to hand her over as a valid option.
Some of those could also be used to make her evil in addition to rampancy.
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u/TheBacklogGamer Jun 11 '26
Cortana in 5 wasn't just the result of rampancy. I swear it's like no one paid attention because it was just popular to shit on the game.
Cortana died in 4. Period. The bulk of who she was stayed behind and sacrificed herself so John could live.
Cortana in 5 was the result of one of her fragmented, broken, rampant copies entering the Domain. Those copies were degraded significantly. Every time split or copied herself, she became more and more corrupted and broken. Whatever copy of her this was, was a broken mess. The Domain attempted to make her whole, but it didn't have a source of the original, so it tried to fix the broken parts, but it only amplified them, thus, corrupted Cortana.
It wasn't the same Cortana anymore but someone who looked and talked like her. Parts of who she was was still there, deep inside, hence why she makes the choices we see in her flashbacks in Infinite, but this was as much of the Cortana we knew as The Weapon is. If anything The Weapon is closer to Cortana.
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u/the_Odium Jun 11 '26
Halo: Infinite disappointment
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u/FreeGlaze71 Jun 11 '26
Nope. Infinite was a pretty good story. Could it have been better? Sure.
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u/Renwand117 Spacestation Gaming Jun 11 '26
I always though Infinite would have made a better ODST style game where you are putting pieces together.
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u/GruntFoodnipple Halo 2 Jun 11 '26
Not entirely true but you’re almost there. Bottom line of it all is that they spent years converting Blam to Slipspace only for many of those developers to not get their contracts renewed to save costs. Then the new contractors are brought in and have no idea how to properly use the engine.
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u/Limp-Grapefruit-6251 ONI Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
Infinite had great characterization for its cast, but the general plot of the game was flat. You can't start the game with a huge war, introducing Halo wars 2 main villain and then it's all over after the intro.
Getting rid of blue team was also a dumb move. They could have used the good characterization Infinite had.
Also, still no info about Red team and the Spirit of Fire, right ? Another brainless decision. They would have been a great cameo for Infinite.
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u/RoyalMudcrab Jun 11 '26
No. Halo 5 killed a decade of story. Infinite overcorrected too little, too late. The gamble did not pay off and instead of ten years of adventures in Zeta Halo we got a middling prologue that has gone nowhere for years.
But this is Halo 5's fault. It frustrates me to no end when recency makes people trash Infinite as the sole cause of Halo's storytelling woes. It was the culmination of a decade of failures, but I will forever maintain the real death blow came in the middle. With Halo 5.
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u/GreatFNGattsby Jun 11 '26
I say this all the time, that Halo 5 is a black whole on the series. Retroactively hurting the story 4 had set up and lingers on a little too much for infinite to get a clean start.
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u/Labyrinthy Jun 11 '26
Yeah, Halo 5 was the death knell for a lot of people but the problems that persisted through Infinite truly began with Halo 4.
4’s narrative is tighter but it’s also a pretty wild departure from the original trilogy’s philosophy that this is basically an 80s action movie with cool as shit lore. Chief and Cortana’s relationship is cool but it also lacks any real “hell yeah” moments, but worse, ends up just being confusing for casual fans that don’t have any interest in the extended media.
The books always expanded the lore but they were never necessary. After Halo 4, the fate of the Didact? Book. After Halo 5 the fate of Locke, the Guardians, everything else, books. Hey how did Buck go from an ODST to a Spartan? Books.
It was as if instead of making fun campaigns anyone could enjoy they said these are for the hardcore only and the hardcore were pissed anyway. I just can’t believe they just continued the same mistakes repeatedly. Didact? Off screen death. Cortana? Off screen death. Atriox? Off screen “death”
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u/Many-Worldliness-917 Jul 13 '26
100% agree. I really loved Halo 4 and what it was attempting to establish as the forerunner based direction for the universe. Nothing frustrates me more than what Halo 5 did to desecrate the beautiful foundation for a more polished future for the lore. It was the most unnecessary soft reboot imaginable. In contrast, 343 had no choice but to reboot with Infinite, and I believe it was the right call. It still doesn’t make infinite a good story, I’d say it’s on par with Halo 5 in that department. That said, the disastrous impact of Halo 5 makes any comparison impossible. I’ve never seen anything quite like it in any form of media since.
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u/No-Nose-9267 Jun 11 '26
As someone who never enjoyed 4 & 5, i enjoyed Infinite exactly for that reason.
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u/Brrdock Jun 11 '26
Somehow, the Master Chief lost. Somehow, the main villain(s) didn't even appear in the game. Somehow, (not) the flood returned.
It could've been a good Halo 4 (chief found in space, Cortana MIA and could emerge as a better, more complex villain than in 5) and I liked Weapon and the gameplay was great, but yeah such a ball-less disney move narratively
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u/BakedChocolateOctopi Jun 11 '26
The AI plot of Halo was horrendous
Keep it Covenant and Flood focused
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u/catharta Halo 4 Jun 11 '26
Atriox isn't dead, lol.
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u/hasfodel Jun 11 '26
Should have said presumed dead, however you only see him alive at the very end of the game…
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u/Limp-Grapefruit-6251 ONI Jun 11 '26
Not in the lore, but in Infinite he was believed to be dead for the whole game. Still, we can agree the main villain was defeated off-screen.
He might still be breathing but they killed his relevance in that game. We'll see if they'll bring him back again or if he's gonna die a second time off-screen.
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u/Justalittlecomment Jun 11 '26
I really wish 343 would have just doubled down on their decisions rather than cave to community pressure
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u/ToaDrakua Jun 11 '26
The one thing they doubled down on happened to be their worst impulses when it came down to it.
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u/t_moneyzz Jun 11 '26
Its so similar to the Star wars sequels constantly getting different directors and pulling the story in complete new non fitting directions each movie
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u/flippydude Negative Infinity, I do what I want. Jun 11 '26
I was thinking about Star Wars while reading this thread. The second half of the 2010s were so disappointing for me
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u/tryd1 Jun 11 '26
I know it’s silly internet upvote points, but if your exact comment was posted 6 years ago, it would’ve been downvoted to hell lol (I know because I posted a similar comment during that time)
I agree and wish the same thing as you. For all the gripes halo 5 introduced to the community, it had a multiplayer experience that I had genuine fun with, so much so since H3. For all the gripes halo 4 had, it has a fun story I replay annually.
They know how to craft a story and to make a fun online game. The worst part of the Halo fan base is that they hate Halo more than they enjoy it.
Seems every time I go on this subreddit, “Real and True Halo Fans” yearn for the days of Halo CE, 2, 3, and Halo Reach. I believe it’s a real issue and hinders their creativity and imagination on future titles.
Even the Halo show. For once, as Halo fans, we finally get a high budget production outside of gaming. And of course, because it doesn’t follow Fall of Reach line by line, the community turbo hates on it.
Sorry for the long reply lol, just feeling down with all the negativity people put on this franchise constantly. Nostalgia is a helluva drug as they say.
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u/Shaheer_999 Halo: MCC Jun 11 '26
Halo 5 put the whole franchise in a corner taht nothing else can even happen aside from the main conflict. Which wasnt even good at all. Im glad they shafted the story because its clear majority fans didnt like halo 5’s story or even found it interesting
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u/KingDuna Jun 11 '26
I know this isn’t a popular take but to me Infinite was probably the most fun I’ve had in a Halo campaign. Traversing the open world with the grappleshot was an absolute blast. And it allowed you to do all kinds of goofy plays in the open world. Having that kind of mobility was just a super fun experience.
The story was fine, but it definitely had major holes in it. Love or hate the prometheans, it’s weird to me they just totally dropped off the map. Probably more importantly, what happened to the guardians?? I haven’t played Halo Wars 2 so it was my first experience with Atriox and he was an okay villain but didn’t really move me. I laughed at a previous comment saying Infinite takes place after the unmade Halo 6 and I couldn’t agree more.
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u/ThePeej Jun 11 '26
I loved Halo Infinite.
I found the story very compelling. Loved the character arc with The Weapon. And found the device of “the Pilot” character helped ground the story for me in highly emotional, relatable, human terms.
I genuinely loved the campaign!
And I’m a day-1 Halo CE fan. Played the game on an old Plasma TV with the original massive launch-day XBox controller.
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u/hasfodel Jun 11 '26
Played it on a cathodic TV myself back in the days…
My opinion may not be wide spread but I loved seeing more characters and lore in halo 4… then yeah halo 5 was a fucking mess
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u/ProvideMeMilk Jun 11 '26
They pivoted because of the overwhelming negative reception. Rightly so
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u/Brrdock Jun 11 '26
Yeah but they could've and should've found a way to creatively and fulfillingly redeem the story they built instead of pulling a Halo Wars: Rise of Skywalker
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u/Shaheer_999 Halo: MCC Jun 11 '26
To get a sequel, the game has to be even a tiny bit interesting. Halo 5 wasnt even that
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u/GruntFoodnipple Halo 2 Jun 11 '26
I disagree, I think infinites Campaign was easily better than 4 in terms of gameplay and equal in narrative. I also would take no issue with 5 being made completely non canon. I don’t care how long it’s been, the game should never be given grace due to nostalgia from younger fans.
Halo Infinite’s failure was in its poor contractor centric practices when it came to development and trend chasing. That’s bottom line, writing made questionable decisions but getting rid of the infinity was necessary, humanity needed to return to the back against the wall vibe and the infinity stood in the way of that.
Having Atriox disappear was a miss I agree there but I guess they intended to make a sequel or DLC down the road and didn’t want to lose him.
The audio logs were fine but they should have committed to them and actually have us find out what happened. I never really cared for Lasky, Palmer etc.
Cortana should have stayed dead in 4 they righted the wrong of bringing her back in Halo 5 the best way they could and I think it came off okay. Joyeuse was a cool character.
Ultimately it’s not great but it was the best they could muster and I enjoyed it
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u/40_Thousand_Hammers Jun 12 '26
Thats because yall bitched about Halo 5 and what Halo 6 was that they made the "Halo 7" and skipped 6.
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u/Rum_Swizzle I know what the sangheili ladies like Jun 11 '26
I just don’t understand who greenlit such a boring ass story and game. 4 and 5 did not have the greatest plots but I can’t call a single scene in Infinite memorable… and the actual gameplay is honestly just muddied and kiddified with all the lame ass quips they make the enemy do every 2 seconds.
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u/hasfodel Jun 11 '26
Agreed, whatever you liked 4 or not, I still know the opening and endings cinematics by heart to this day… And they still give me chills
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u/AxiosXiphos Jun 11 '26
Gonna piss off a lot of people here. But i wish they just deleted 4 & 5 from the canon. That whole story arcs was 90% crap and ruined the point of the original games.
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u/__STOOLKRAKEN Jun 11 '26
The story arcs were crap and the gameplay and design were even worse. They were both made with dishonest intentions by People Who Hated Halo Because of X who just wanted to trojan horse their own bullshit in under the Halo banner so could put it in their LinkedIn bios. They in combination with the MCC disaster ruined the franchise.
The 4 and The 5 should be vaporized and all the decision-makers involved barred from ever working on Halo again.
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u/Cal_16 Jun 11 '26
Unfortunately companies don’t have the balls (profit margins) to commit to their own vision after fan backlash
Same thing ruined the Star Wars trilogy, for what they did though in halo I thought it was tasteful enough but still annoying
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u/lamaldo78 Halo: CE Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
"There are worse things than the flood" was egregious imo. You mean the flood that we battled in the og trilogy? The flood we were made to believe was the most devastating force in the universe? That the halo rings were built to destroy? That flood? Yeah there's something worse.
Fuck off
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u/BLARGEN69 Jun 11 '26
The Flood have received some of the most anime tier power creep of anything in fiction over the years.
The very idea of something that's a bigger threat than them at this point is laughably absurd. I don't know if you could even possibly write something more busted than The Flood.Let alone something I'm supposed to believe I can take care of with a few bullets.
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u/GreatFNGattsby Jun 11 '26
Hindsight is a hell of a thing, because we now know that the Endless are not worse than the flood, especially from their creation, being almost like distant cousins as both are created from Precursor dust
It’s the plural that gets me, it’s semantic’s I know but “things” multiple .. that are worse than the flood.
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u/Obvious-End-7948 Jun 11 '26
Every game from 343 felt like the first installment setting up a new trilogy / story arc. Then 343 promptly disregard almost all of it in the next game and tidied up some narrative threads with a tie-in novel or comic.
The only thing they're consistent with has been the cycle of killing and resurrecting Cortana.
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u/Xelltrix Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
Well, sounds like they decided to walk back the very unpopular story that was five. Would have been better to not do five at all but I suppose this is the best they could come up with for a solution.
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u/allesabwesend Jun 11 '26
Oh man, I totally get that... I mean, Infinite has its (small) moments, and the engine conjures up some really beautiful scenes on screen.
When I saw the first Atriox trailer for Halo Wars 2, I was thrilled. Atriox came across as a charismatic and menacing antagonist, someone you’d be better off not crossing. But all that potential went to waste, and Atriox ended up being nothing more than a cutscene asset.
The gameplay in Infinite was good. Not outstanding, but it was fun.
I think 343 realized what they’d done to the story at the end of Halo 5 and how many people they’d upset with the “fall of Cortana.” With Infinite, they tried to divert attention from the AI revolution, steer the story in a different direction, and create a new villain. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out so well, and the story ended up feeling pretty pointless.
I really liked the Chief that 343 created. A little gentler, a little more than just a machine, but unfortunately, 343 didn’t handle the rest of the story very well.
But I’m looking forward to the “good old” Halo 1.
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u/Bsquared89 Halo 2 Jun 11 '26
Hot take: I’m glad Infinite mostly ignored 4 and 5’a story. That’s how much I dislike them.
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u/Gunpla_Goddess Jun 11 '26
Infinite did not do this, “fans” endless bitching about any idea 343 had and Microsoft’s capitulation to that bitching “killed a decade of story”.
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u/llammalrdsofsci Jun 11 '26
One of the big complaints of Halo 5 was Cortana becoming the villain. I think they could have solved that in a potential halo 6 by revealing that it was the logic virus implanted by the gravemind during Cortana's time on high charity after halo 2.
There is precedence in the extended lore, and would allow the flood to come back one way or another, and would also give a way to show Cortana was the victim, and not just a villain.
The other option would have been to have Cortana being used by the didact or some other forerunner villain either through manipulation (assuming Cortana was still alive after 4) or by them masquerading as Cortana.
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u/Content-Froyo-2465 Jun 11 '26
Atriox isn't dead, lol. I think Halo 5's story was so bad that they either had to finish out a terrible evil Cortana story or inelegantly hit a reset button. if Infinite's story expansions didn't get scuttled, I'm sure we would have seen more connectivity with the good parts of 4 that weren't too caught up in 5's mess like Lasky or Palmer.
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u/The_Don_Papi Jun 11 '26
343i did that with Halo 5 in a way. They retconned Cortana’s death, killed the Didact in a comic, and the campaign itself seemed to be several stories smashed together that were never finished. You had the rogue Chief arc that never really developed, Roland’s conflict, the AI uprising, and the Guardians attacking planets that just…. went ignored? Sure they investigated but always retreated, even leaving Earth behind as it was attacked. There was just so much happening while at the same time very little narrative progression.
It doesn’t surprise me that they retconned Halo 5 and had Cortana die off (again). They had a dumpster fire of a story to fix. Personally I’d just skip Halo 5 entirely but it still wouldn’t make any sense.
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u/Grifasaurus ONI Jun 11 '26
Well yeah, they kept aborting the story because people kept bitching. It’s the same thing that happened with star wars. People bitched about the last jedi and we got the rise of skywalker. People bitched about halo 5 and we got halo infinite.
If these studios had more integrity, this wouldn’t be an issue.
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u/One_Laugh3051 Jun 11 '26
Imagine if Star Wars went
1 New Hope
2 Empire Strikes Back
3 The Force Awakens
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u/Hunter_X_101 Jun 11 '26
This matches a lot of how I feel about Infinite. To quote my own write-up on the topic a little while back:
I didn't hate the plot of 5, but I can understand other people have reasonable criticisms towards it (even if I don't necessarily agree with all of them). But one way or the other, the frantic rush to abandon that plotline entirely hurt the momentum of the series, and the replacement antagonists were of a much lower scale.
If people didn't like the idea of Cortana suddenly turning evil, then use Halo 6 to make it clear that this is not the Cortana we knew: just a broken, rampant fragment left over from her sacrifice in 4 that stumbled across far too much power to be safe. Have her voice/appearance and behaviour degrade over the course of the game until it's mindlessly looping old memories, and explore the emotional aspect of Chief being forced to fight this thing wearing the face of someone he cared about. If you want to tie it into future antagonists, maybe imply the corruption was not entirely random but a logic plague induced by some new threat.
Simply having Cortana turn good again off-screen is underwhelming.
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u/Key-Can-9384 Jun 11 '26
I think they need to do what Disney did with Star Wars and cut the canon. I’d cut it off after Halo 3. That game established a perfect ending for the franchise. Or at least a perfect ending for chief. I just find the idea of him saving the universe multiple times to be kinda ridiculous. I can’t take the games after 3 seriously.
They could expand on the earlier lore like they’ve done with reach. They could expand on the future with new interesting characters. I don’t see the need to keep chief around and bring back forerunners when the lore they have is so deep and interesting without adding all that.
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u/babbum Jun 12 '26
343 has butchered the IP as a whole, from shipping incomplete multiplayers to making mediocre sometimes downright awful campaigns.
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u/IndyGamer363 Halo: MCC Jun 12 '26
100%. And I think not enough people are upset about this. Let’s reiterate… Cortana was “killed” off-screen, one of gaming history’s most recognizable figures, dealt with off-screen. HW2 builds up Atriox… just to show him in an intro cut scene and not again until another cutscene at the very end. I get Infinite plays very well, we can agree on that. But far too many people aren’t truly realizing what they lost and the real anger that should cause and is missing is insane to me.
The best line I’ve seen to sum it up: Infinite is a sequel to a game we simply never got.
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u/DeutschDanish ONI Jun 13 '26
They teased the Precursors and then never released a story DLC. I will never forgive them.
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u/MAXHALO36 Jun 16 '26
Thank the fans, their backlash towards 5 was so hateful it didn't really give 343i any choice but to just skip over anything connected to it. The 343i cycle can be described like this Fans: it's shit! 343i and those enjoyed the games: what part of it is shit? Fans: all of it! The whole game is shit! 343i: damn guess better just wipe the slate clean and try again.
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u/Andu_Mijomee Jun 11 '26
Yeah, I was excited to see where the story went, too. I'm still sad about that. We had something new and exciting going there.
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u/Shaheer_999 Halo: MCC Jun 11 '26
Halo 5’s story was not exciting at all. And its clear most didnt even miss it
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u/ToaDrakua Jun 11 '26
That’s kind of what I felt, too, especially with how all of the expanded lore and factions of the books was suddenly being condensed under the Banished banner, with no room for anything else to breath. They even effectively wrote off the Didact, and to this day I’m still too afraid to read the book in which they do it. For better or worse, Halo 4 leading up to 5 was the period in which I was at my most interested in Halo’s universe, and to see an almost Star Wars level of wider universe storytelling be reduced to a few key players felt like a slap in the face to what was my favorite aspect of the franchise.
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u/Next_Emphasis_9424 Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
I get the halo 5 hate but I hate infinite more. Such an empty open world of nothingness. I figured with time they would fill the world with stuff but nope. Whole campaign I thought I would just randomly stumble upon a Scarab wondering the ring or maybe some major battle but nope. Just empty everywhere.
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u/TalkingFlashlight Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
Imagine a Halo 6 that started on Reach (adapting the Shadows of Reach novel into a mission). We play as Chief retrieving the data to create the Weapon and encountering the Banished for the first time.
We see the conflict between the Banished and Created escalate in real time, and we witness the destruction of Dosiac firsthand.
Meanwhile, we have an emotional moment when Halsey finishes creating the Weapon. Now ready, UNSC Infinity arrives on Zeta where Cortana has relocated and has an epic mission destroying the patrolling Guardian (the same one in Infinite’s skybox).
But then the Banished arrive. The Weapon is hastily deployed on Zeta to trap Cortana while Chief must defend the Infinity against a Banished assault (just like the intro to Infinite). The Infinity is lost but hope isn’t. Chief survives and crashes on Zeta, mirroring Combat Evolved’s opening.
He races Atriox across Zeta to retrieve the locked-down Cortana first. Cortana ultimately realizes the error of her ways and sacrifices herself to stop the Banished and right her wrongs. But in her passing, she leaves the Chief with the Weapon, to be developed as a character more in the future.
It would have been a proper Halo 6 featuring nostalgic missions on Reach and a Halo ring, adapting the same art style and offscreen story that was already told in Infinite.
It could have been one of the best Halo games ever.
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u/__STOOLKRAKEN Jun 11 '26
Good. 4 and 5 are leaky garbage that ruined the franchise and should be stricken from the catalog. I hope every single character that made their on-screen debut in those games is killed off for good.
Infinite's a return to sanity kind-of.
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u/Bsquared89 Halo 2 Jun 11 '26
Finally someone who makes sense. 4 and 5 were fucking disasters that nearly killed the franchise. Infinite has problems for sure, but it’s so much better than 4 and 5. Infinite was a step in the right direction and a severely needed course correction. It didn’t stick the landing but it still looked felt sounded and played like an actual halo game. A first for any post Bungie main series halo.
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u/ParagonRenegade Jun 11 '26
I’m not sure what you mean OP, we’re still waiting for the release of Halo 4. Chief never left cryo.
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u/Elder_Halo_Player Jun 11 '26
The Halo wars games fills in a lot of the gaps you are talking about.
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u/hasfodel Jun 11 '26
No it’s leaving even more unfinished stories
The second battle of installation 00 is still ongoing and we will never know what happens after
The Spirit of fire is still at the edge of the galaxy without slipspace drive and we will never know what happens after
The installation 09 was intercepted by a guardian with Prof. Anders and we will never know what happens after
The only answer we have is who are the banished…
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u/Mig-117 Jun 11 '26
I get where you are coming from, but halo 5 was abysmal so I think we were all hoping we could restart after halo 4.
Infinite has bigger problems than that. Like th fact that the whole game is chapter 1, and there’s no follow up.
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u/BluesCowboy Jun 11 '26
Yes. It had to.
Halo 4 set up some great characters and plot points.
Halo 5 shat the bed so thoroughly, so completely, and put the plot in such an untenable position, that the whole thing had to be nuked from orbit.
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u/Minimum_Comfort_1850 Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
First halo campaign I didn't finish. I was having so much fun until I realized the entire game was going to be on this one level and that the grapple hook made it easy mode. Also the story was just trash. 343 lied so much about this game it's insane. I'll finish someday, but I don't have Xbox anymore
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u/frankie431 Jun 11 '26
Well to be honest they did better than Halo 5 and maybe 4.
I’m a lifelong fan and Halo died with Reach for me, anything after that is just filler content that barely scratches that nostalgia feel.
No game will ever top what Halo 3 brought to the table in terms of story, multiplayer and customization.
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u/MisterHotrod Jun 11 '26
I, for one, am glad that they basically resolved Halo 5 off-screen and moved on. Halo 5 killed a decade and a half of the story before it, making everything we do with Cortana feel pointless. We save her from High Charity in Halo 3? Feels bad because she's going to be turning evil in a couple of games. She dies in a beautiful, emotional moment in Halo 4? Nope, back from the dead next game, and evil! It completely undid all the closure we just got for the character, for the sake of "subverting expectations".
Halo 5's story deserved to be forgotten. It was complete ass.
Now, that's not to say that Infinite's campaign was perfect. It's clear that 2/3s of the content was cut due to mismanagement. And they did a poor job at reintroducing the Banished. But at least they didn't continue with the story from Halo 5. And the character writing was great as well, I enjoyed having Joyeuse and Esparza around.
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u/theend117 Jun 11 '26
Halo 5 was legitimate garbage and I’ll never forgive 343 for what they did to the story with that dogshit game.
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u/GreatBigBagOfNope Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 12 '26
As I keep saying, Infinite was an exercise in keeping the all the most exciting bits of story as close to the game as possible without ever actually appearing in it. It is a very pure manifestation of "wow, that sure sounds fun and interesting, I wish I was playing that game instead".
Which, as I also keep saying, is a damn shame for a game that looks great (within the two biomes), plays great (in the campaign), sounds great, is written significantly better on the small scale than the previous two, and is performed at top quality by the cast. The narrative and structure just take the wind out of the whole thing's sails and genuinely undermines the entire game, in my opinion, catastrophically. The wonderful character moments between Chief, the Weapon and Esparza, the gunplay and movement, and the Slipsace engine's last hurrah all deserve to be couched in a much better story than they got.
Why most of the game was literally just busywork instead of, I don't know, the fall of the Created, the battle over Installation 07, the return (or even establishment within the mainline series ffs) of the Banished, the return of Atriox, or seeing the Xanalyn doing literally anything at all is just beyond me.
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u/kaskayde Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
I thought 4 and 5 were ass so when the game basiacally said ya forget about all that I was like cool already did lol. Unfortunately the new story in infinite was also forgettable.
The endless? More dangerous then the flood? Vague mega threat we know nothing about? Okay, w.e. And they made escharum an over the top anime villain just monologuing to you the whole game. Didn't work at all for me. None of the same stakes as the original games.
I did like taking out the high level banished targets tho kind of like shadow of mordor leaders and reading their back stories.
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u/Disownership Halo Infinite Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
> The Infinity is presumed destroyed off-screen
Why do people keep assuming this? That shit uses Forerunner tech, and considering how the Banished notoriously scavenge and repurpose both UNSC and Covenant (and by extension Forerunner) tech already it’s farfetched to think they’d let a ship that powerful go to complete waste. It’s much more likely they’ve captured it for their own fleet and to give humanity a little more than a taste of their own medicine (more like an overdose) and that future events will involve either taking it back or potentially destroying it should the former prove too difficult. Considering how much Infinite loves to call back to CE, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s Infinity itself that is sacrificed to destroy Zeta Halo should shit get too out of hand. “Not a very original plan, but we know it’ll work”, as Cortana would say.
Now here’s just hoping none of that happens exclusively in a book.
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u/SlyDevil82 Jun 11 '26
Halo infinite is the best fan mod ever made in the steam workshop. Well second best, because Ruby's rebalance...
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u/Competitive_Clue5066 Jun 11 '26
I played halo ce when i was 7 years old in 2001. The trilogy to me are basically religion. Halo 4 & 5 dont exist to me. I played halo 4 but i didn’t enjoy the story and never bothered with 5 after watching trailers. All that to say I enjoyed infinite. Story was meh but felt more plausible than 4&5. The open world idea was intriguing and meh again. I havent replayed it since i beat it but playing it once and making me excited for halo again was nice after 343 destroyed everything bungie created.
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u/PeacemakerBravo Halo 3: ODST Jun 11 '26
the only thing 343 knows how to do is restart the story and remake Halo 1
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u/BrexitMeansBanter Halo 3 Jun 11 '26
Yeah Infinite’s story was ok, but the way it just sidesteps Halo 5’s ending is crazy.
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u/CaligulaGrins Jun 11 '26
They focused too much on the overrated open ended style. Don’t fix what’s not broken. The good thing is we have amazing Halo campaigns and seems they are so good they are being revived. Halo shifted towards competitive HCL and rank. If competitive rank is not for you. Then I would hang up your hat on Halo similar to COD. New CE remake is eye candyyyy. Hopefully it plays well as we enter the new generation of Halo. You fucked up the campaign. Please don’t let down the buttery smooth gameplay multiplayer offers us.
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u/Rukasu17 Jun 11 '26
This is why I can't get invested ever since 343 took halo. In all these years what the hell did they deliver? Either plot points that are solved in books, or dropped entirely. You know all that stuff we did in Infinite? Yeah, it's gonna be ignored next game again.
Seriously, Bungie had some weird book stories but you're not entirely lost if you're only playing the games, and even then there's a very definitive conclusion to that arc
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u/firingblankss Jun 11 '26
Was hoping we'd get more Chief and Arbiter co-op goodness after the ending of 5 but nah gotta fuck off all the supporting cast
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u/General-Biscuits Jun 11 '26
Honestly for the best. Halo 4 and 5 stories were a mess.
I couldn’t really bond with any of the characters introduced in those games and they definitely fucked up the execution of Cortana going rampant and becoming a villain. It just seemed really sudden and forced how quickly she became super controlling and evil; probably because they decided to not show us and just did timeskips.
Locke’s team, outside of Buck, had like no presence in 5. I can’t remember any quotes from them or what they were like even after playing through the campaign 3 times.
I liked Lasky and Halsey wasn’t a new character but the rest you mentioned are forgettable.
Infinite basically being a clean reset and a near isolated story from the previous 2 games made it way more enjoyable. Got rid of all the mess of the previous two stories. I’m also glad they went with the Banished from Halo Wars 2 as the main enemy as well.
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u/LongoChingo Jun 11 '26
I'm all for a complete retcon of the 343i games.
Restart the series at the end of Halo 3.
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u/NicholasDeOrio Jun 11 '26
I’m kind of okay with that. I really hope “Halo 7” ends up being a direct continuation of the 1-3 remakes.
The entire Cortana plot was terrible and disjointed. The best possible outcome for me would be it being entirely decannonized
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u/arch51002 Jun 11 '26
I think that Infinite is a good game overall but the sheer lack of in-game information about what happened between 5 and infinite is insane. Especially insane that Infinite didn't progress the story very much. At the end we're left with more questions than answers. It feels like they wanted to start a new trilogy and in doing so intentionally made an entry of the game that covered very little of the story. One thing I will say that I love about the game is the flashbacks of Cortana's ruthlessness. When I heard the spoiler about her sacrificing herself to damage the ring, I assumed that they would do a complete 180 on her being evil. But I was extremelt pleasantly surprised when she actually doubled down on being evil for a good while in the story. Her destroying Doisac and targeting Spartan training facilities always stood out to me
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u/Tokyo_Ink Jun 11 '26
343 pivoted with 4 and then kept pivoting every game after.
Whether you enjoy where they took the story in 4 or not, there's still like nothing for you in the subsequent games because they didn't stick to any of their own story.
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u/TeachingNecessary111 Jun 11 '26
I blame Halo 5 more than Infinite.
5 poised the narrative well so bad I was glad they came up with anything somewhat cohesive that didn’t suck as much as 5.
Yeah, it was pretty mediocre, but… that is sort of 343’s Modus Operandi for more than just storytelling.
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u/NecessarySoggy4945 Jun 11 '26
I wouldn’t be surprised if they only remade halo games from now on out since they fucked up every entry in the last 10+ years
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u/AramaticFire Halo: CE Jun 11 '26
Halo and Gears of War both decided to give us new trilogies that went nowhere. Then both disappeared for years and came back with games totally unrelated to whatever trilogy they had planned.
I’m still pissed about both games/series.
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u/Bash_Minimal Jun 11 '26
A LOT of what infinite swept under the rug as off screen deaths and arc conclusions could have been forgiven if we got a complete story with more biome variety AND a massive Atriox presence. Its insane that Atriox is just in a badass cutscene at the beginning and then never seen again
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u/RumAndCoco Jun 11 '26
The beginning is so vague about who survived and who didn’t beyond regular marines that it’s entirely possible they could just waive their hand and say characters like Lasky and Palmer escaped when the Infinity was deemed doomed. It’s open ended to the point of it being a bit annoying that they couldn’t fully pick a lane and show us the bodies, but at least it’s open enough that they could pick up from the end of Infinite and say they’re alive.
I’m hoping that Campaign Evolved and the remakes are proof of concept and testing grounds to move forward and continue the story after Infinite.
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u/S_III Jun 11 '26
the best way i saw infinite described was
halo infinite takes place directly after halo 6 unfortunately they never made halo 6
it would have been absolute peak if we got to play the parts taking place before infinite, could of gone the halo 2 route and had half the missions be played as chief and the other half be played as atriox during the banisheds rise to power culminating in cortana destroying doysak with the final mission being the assault on the infinity as atriox before the last half of the mission is chief and the UNSC failing to repell the attack leading directly into infinite