nebulous

halo 4 actually had a solid story imo, it was just brought down by poor aesthetics and gameplay

halo 5 had the opposite issue, with amazing aesthetics (except the armor and the vehicles + covenant) and fantastic gameplay but a horrendous story written by someone who'd already fucked up twice

chris schlerf was originally writing halo 5, but he left to go join bioware, so they stuck brian reed in as an emergency replacement

he was the one who wrote the abysmally bad escalation comic series, as well as the story for h4 spartan ops, so idfk why they let him be in charge of halo 5's story

It wasn't so much that I didn't find 4's story good but as someone who'd literally grown up with Halo console wise this entire new enemy/dynamic with little relation to the prior games it sorta rubbed me the wrong way. Not to mention it utterly erased the fantastic novels in regards to being canon.

Spartan Ops had fantastic cutscenes but good god was the story so utterly broken in a fair few ways.

honestly, one of the biggest lore mistakes they made up until halo 5 shat all over it was letting karen traviss write canon books for the series

in her own words, she didn't read ANY of the prior books because she "doesn't write fanfiction"

like what the fuck is that even supposed to mean

Given I fucking loved her Republic Commando series that triggers me immensely.

Like her work is literally fanfiction they accept as canon. You can't call previously canon novels fanfiction because /your/ novel invalidates them now wtf

they literally called halsey worse than hitler because ?

lucy speaks because halsey was slightly rude to an engineer, which ruins a lot of her character development, mendez acts like a whiny bitch, halsey is way too arrogant, the S3s suddenly totally incompetent, a lot of the sangheili dialogue was really poorly written

but hey, at least they finally confirmed my headcanon that sangheili smell like leather

Can I just say the fact you find your canon headcanon the one redeemable thing the best thing ever.

Ngl barely anyone can write Sangheili dialogue well in the novels. The early Halo novels did a great job but asides that all of them tend to fall remarkably short. Halo Wars does a fairly good job on that end too, imo. Even if the Elites are, for some reason, complete retards.

They tend to over-write their arrogance (which works for some Sangheili but not all of 'em) and vastly under-write their intellect and tactical thought. In the earlier books, a lot of them think their strategies through, looking for ways to maximize casualties.

Later books it's like "GRR HONOR" and they just bum-rush rocket launchers with plasma rifles. Pisses me off so much.

When 343 did a meh job with Reach, it started going down hill

Reach was good wtf.

the campaign wasn't good at all, I felt like the characters weren't spartans. They had too much.. Personality? I don't know, the ideal spartan is supposed to be a stone cold figure that doesn't give a shit about his surroundings, only his objective. Dunno, I didn't feel as brought into the story as I did with Bungie's games.

Personally I agree in the sense that I feel like the characters were killed off a bit too quickly, although they were decent for what was there.

Gameplay wise, it was pretty good, and I enjoyed the shit out of it.

Reach brought a lot of solid things in multiplayer wise imo, but it equally did a fairly poor job on quite a lot story and overall... just about everything else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdTm6moC0Sk

My fave fucking cutscene though.

Also @Zak yes. Exactly. Elites have honor but they're not all literal zealots.

Reach had the best art style in the series, hands down. As for personality, remember that except for Jorge these were Spartan-IIIs, trained more cheaply and for far less time (and also Bungie did Reach, not 343...)

Jorge and Jun were the best ones imo.

Emile was just the token badass we've all seen before

/ME CARVES SKULL INTO HELMET AND FLIPS KNIVES

If you get a chance, read "A Fistful of Arrows". It's technically fanfiction, but it follows all the characters' personalities, and the art is fucking amazing.

http://leviathan.bungie.org/

as long as it's not that kind of fanfiction I'm down

Nah, it's basically the closest thing to canonical fanfiction you'll get.

IM READY HOW ABOUT YOU