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Gonna vent a little bit, but it feels good to talk about Halo story.
I've made the comparison before and I'll make it again, but so far 343's trilogy is very much like the star wars prequel trilogy.
343 (or maybe the MS overlords?) seem to be really trying to stick to the formula of the original 3 games.
I recall for Halo 4 (in an interview with Frankie, or maybe it was the vidoc) they really wanted to capture that moment of 'awe' and scale from Halo 1 where you step out of the life pod and have this vista before you. They verbatim tried to put that moment in Halo 4 when you step out into the area where you get your first warthog in the second mission.
They wanted the story to be more Chief and Cortana focused, like combat evolved (and if you'll recall, a departure from where we last saw them in Halo 3, which was apart for 90% of the game). In that regard, I'd say they succeeded. Librarian and Didact aside, they did a great job showing Chief as more of a person.
THEN HERE COMES FRIGGIN HALO 5.
Chief is Chief, and Locke is Arbiter. Heyseewutwedidthere!? We surprised yuo guies! Like Halo 2! You thought you'd be playing the Cheif, but no, Bamboozled again! Har har har!
Except it wasn't fun, for all the reasons mentioned in that reddit post.
Mechanically, Halo 5 is a really damn good, fun to play game, and so was Halo 2. Story wise it suffered. Too much too fast, too grand for what it was trying to accomplish.
I'll have to see if I can find it (pretty sure its in the comic collection mega book I got at Paddy's LAN) but there is a fucking footnote from Brian Reed in there (and I'm paraphrasing a bit) about how they weren't sure what to do with the Didact and Requiem story line, so in a meeting, someone jokingly suggested having it crash into the sun or something..... and Frankie said, "ok" ..... then they did it.
That was done for at least one of these reasons:
A: They wrote themselves into a corner and needed a way out
B: Their plot wasn't well received and they needed a way out.
One of the characters from Spartan Ops was supposed to be on team Osiris, but they went with Buck. I feel this is because that character wasn't well received, and they wanted to ensure that someone popular and familiar took his place. So Buck.
Every footnote I read from Brian Reed in that book made me angry as a fan. He's a terrible writer, and he doesn't take his job seriously. "Oh they're going to let me kill another character, who will I pick" said another footnote. You're not fucking G.RR Martin, dude. This isn't *your* fan fiction. GIT GUD.
As for the AI trope, it's been done in sci-fi before and I think it's just the popular thing right now. I'm certain Destiny 2 will have more of it as well, with Rasputin and others etc.
I'm almost certain that somewhere, Frankie was asked in an interview or a forum post about where he wanted to see the direction of Halo go (I can't remember if this is before 343 got the reins or after) and he brought up the Terminals in Halo 3 and the Data pads in Reach. Those stories with Mendicant and Offensive bias, and the council of AI's gently guiding humanity behind the scenes were there, in Bungie games.
What I'm getting at is, the seeds were there and 343 decided to go that route for Halo 5, after trying to reintroduce the Covenant in Halo 4 didn't pan out (how could it really?) and the Didact\Librarian thing fizzled as well.
Personally, I would have rather seen more of the flood origins and precursor stuff, but space zombie trope has also been done to death at that time. So I get it, I guess.
I predict Halo 6 to follow the trend and mirror or at least have much in common with Halo 3 thematically.
343 seems afraid to innovate, thus they imitate or tweak what was done before and play it safe.