: I remember at the time of completion being rather dissatisfied with the
: ending of Halo 4. Unlike some, I felt no emotional distress with the
: apparent passing of Cortana. The lines of dialogue between Chief and our
: girl Blue during the course of the game were so ham-fisted and awkwardly
: paced that I found myself hoping the game would end so that I could be
: done listening.

: But all of this falls to the wayside after having watched the end in
: retrospect. I've found that the sentiments and setup for the future games
: stand fairly well on their own. Listening to the final words of the Didact
: I found myself genuinely interested in the future progression of the
: series.

: Though most, if not all, of Halo 4's main dramatis personae were wooden and
: poorly constructed facsimiles of characters that one would actually find
: interesting, I have hope that 343i will take a cue from others. Others who
: have helped establish that the Halo Universe can have drama that we care
: about, people like Nylund, Bungie, and Bear.

: Halo 4 wasn't my cup of tea. But I still love Halo, and I believe that with
: just a few lessons learned the coming games may be able to recapture the
: elements that made the earlier titles so engrossing.

: tl;dr I like where things are headed.

I definitely agree that the ending monologue was interesting. It was the first time in the game that Halo 4's Didact actually felt like a character, perhaps even an interesting one at that, and not a 'super-villain-of-the-week-out-to-destroy-Earth." Halo CE's Covenant were perhaps just as simple in the game, but they were not 'villain' - they were a faceless enemy faction, an integral part of Halo's universe out to get you. Stuff like that can be much more easily accepted by the player than having to believe an individual's passion to wipe out a world.

Maybe they should have started the game with something like that monologue (and more) instead of Halsey's interrogation prologue. Other than a vehicle to bring new players up to speed on the plot (kind of), I still don't understand the relevance of that scene or the who the mysterious interrogator is (and if that is even important).

I think Cortana's goodbye feeling forced and melodramatic is a symptom of pushing a story into existence instead of letting a story naturally grow and then follow it to its fitting end. That's why the characters introduced in Halo 4 are so unlikeable - they're just tools to move the plot along. If a committee is deciding that Cortana should die at the end so that the game is impacting and dramatic, it's going to feel like that's how it came about. By that point in the game I had stopped believing 'this is where the Halo story goes' and instead just felt like 'this is what 343i wants to happen and here's where they want me to react." So of course, I didn't. :)

Contrast this with the scene directly afterwards. Lasky has been somewhat established now and his conversation with the Chief is written as a natural reaction to the events that preceded the scene. I wish that's what the whole game felt like!

P.S. I also wasn't impacted by Cortana's 'death' at all because this is a successful franchise with more sequels planned and Cortana is one of the two main characters and one of the most identifiable parts of Halo. I know she's just going to show up in the next one in the Domain, as a clone, as a real person by turning the Composer's 'reverse' switch on, or show up as a teenager on the Genesis Planet...