You just couldn't let her rest in peace, could you, 343i? Not even for one game. Instead you had to chicken out on your own decision to kill her in your own damn game, completely destroying the emotional resonance of Halo 4 in the process.

When I saw the first and second missions I thought "Oh, it obviously has to be some kind of Domain ghost taking Cortana's form just like Frankie said. Because I trust in 343i, they wouldn't shit on their own story like this." Then we learn that nope, it's the real Cortana who never really died and can now assume physical form because the fanservice in the earlier games just wasn't enough. And also some Forerunner Ultron wannabe is her biggest fanboy now.

"Cortana comes back, only evil" is the kind of idea that you'd expect to be thrown around in late afternoon brainstorming sessions: good for laughs, but not something you'd seriously entertain. You killed her, you should've stood behind that decision.

And the whole Creators-Created conflict... whose bright idea was it to take their inspiration from the Mass Effect 3 ending of all places? And the ME series even had more build-up for that sort of conflict. Here the entire ongoing story is just abandoned in favor of this whole stupid AI rebellion plot.

I mean, I'd be the first to criticize the way the Didact was handled in-game. But for all his faults he's now looking like an awfully good antagonist if this was the alternative. Not to speak of Jul 'Mdama, who's reduced to a complete joke in this game.

We're also told that it's really human AIs who are the Reclaimers, not humans. Good thing 14 years of Halo fiction isn't filled with explicit mentions that it's the humans who are the Reclaimers... oh wait.

I'd seen the spoilers early but I thought I'd reserve final judgment until I watched the whole campaign. Because you know, maybe I was just missing some critical context? And guess what, it just got worse and worse the more "context" I got.

I'd love to hear the full story of this game's development one day. Because this can't have been the plan from the start. There must've been major script rewrites mid-development, something that made this story into the horrible contrived mess it is.

And to top it all off, what was to be the game's main selling point for me, Blue Team, only has 3 missions in which they barely do anything. How wonderful.

I'm still trying to process it all and have more than once wondered if it's just all some elaborate, cruel joke, or if I've been unknowingly transported into a bizarro universe where it's possible for a fan fiction like this to end up in an AAA title.