So, Jorge's death subplot was taken straight out of Halo Wars. That really soured the rest of the 'drama' of anyone else's death, and the rest of the game overall. That whole sequence was awful. Would it have killed Bungie's writers to actually watch the story of Halo Wars at least once? It doesn't help that they look similar, and are a letter away from having the same name. Not to mention the utter ridiculousness of him throwing 6 all the way to the surface of the planet, and 6 is barely injured. Terrible, Bungie. By then, I was rooting for Kat's death. She's a bitch who had it coming, and I really didn't care what happened to anyone else.
You didn't see the orbital re-entry pack debris after 6 hit ground? They could have made it more obvious, but it's there. As for Jorge, the execution puts his death miles above the Halo Wars tripe
At least Emile went out like a badass (even though you could see his death in the turret coming from a mile away). Now Carter's was bad, too. My sister and I were betting on which Spartan will die next. As soon as he jumped into the pilot's seat of the Pelican, we knew he was next. The pilots always die. And guess what? He's critically injured by the next cutscene.
First time I saw it, I thought Carter's death sucked, too. But there's a good bit of his motivations that are only hinted at, and at that point, what he did was what he needed to do.
But what really pissed me off was his actual death scene. Hey look, a Scarab out of nowhere! We can finally take one down, and it will be so much fun. But no, Carter shows up miraculously (I thought he was already dead) and kills it himself, making that whole scene lame and pointless. Why even tease Scarabs if you can't ever fight them?
Fight a Scarab, and miss the drop-off window for the Cortana splinter? Not a good idea.
I'm surprised how uninteresting all of Noble Team is. The ODSTs were great in their tiny little campaign, but in a full-length campaign, I didn't have any attachments to the Spartans. Halsey was a bitch, too, so the excitement of seeing her was completely nullified.
Perhaps I read more into their actions and words than was ever really there, but there's so goddamned much stuff that everyone seems to brush off simply because it's not spelled out in 72pt subtitles.
The Cortana thing was too much like Vergil from ODST. Vergil has important information that could win the war. What is that information? Who knows? Same thing with Cortana.
Extrapolation of all available data suggests that Halsey had gotten coordinates for Alpha Halo. This would suggest a retconning of the Cote d'Azur artifact, but Halsey's data ,may have been something even more potent. She was shooting beyond the stars, and I got the impression that she knew the coordinates were for something monumentally important.
As for the 'Library' or 'Cortana' of this game, definitely Long Night of Solace. The on-foot stuff is fine, but the space combat is by-the-numbers, mediocre, and boring. The Falcon segment was boring, too. ODST's Banshee mission, even with all of the copy-paste geometry, was so much better.
The last level didn't really feel like a proper last level for a Halo game. Bungie, don't give us a mongoose, an AI who only uses shotguns, and tell us to run away from everything. Give us a warthog and a bunch of stuff to shoot at, ala the snow portion of The Covenant.
Honestly I like how they subverted the "durr it's a Halo game , let's finish it with a 'hog run" thing.
It sucks that the last level of their last Halo campaign ever is a Firefight encounter (and a turret 'minigame'). Didn't everyone hate that in ODST? Bungie, we already have a Firefight mode. Save campaign for all of the unique encounters you can't get in Firefught. There's no mad dash through the service corridors of the Pillar of Autumn. No treacherous escape through an unfinished Halo as it falls apart around you. No desperate rush across a highway as the city burns around you. It was just a regular, relatively unremarkable level.
And, by not having any of these things, it's somehow my favourite Halo ending yet.
There's so much wasted potential in the campaign. The most glaring example is Tip of the Spear. You're part of a huge convoy of Warthogs, Scorpions, Falcons, Pelicans, and Mongooses, but once the gameplay starts, you're stuck on foot. Not cool. Bungie's last campaign is hardly as amazing as they think it is.
Agreed on TotS.
