I'm sure that some of them are nice guys and all but they just can't write a good campaign. And if they can't do that then there is no use for them.

• Locke was their chance of introducing a new character who wasn't a blank shell. They failed.
• Blue team should have been awesome - they weren't

343 needs to concentrate on gameplay above story and they need to understand the story telling limitations of a first person shooter and the limitations of the Halo AI.

Write a simple story with simple themes and archetypes, have the player's interests coincide with the protagonist's.

Ditch invulnerable, story meaningful, companions. <- this so much. 343 just do it, it makes campaign gameplay suck.

Halo 3

Gameplay was always best when Arbiter fell asleep.

ODST

Not particularly marred by this problem. You spent a lot of time alone and your allies tended to turn up just as horde mode was engaged.

Reach

Kat should never drive.
Jorge could be left in the first hanger bay. You could don a backpack in that shield generator level, get into the truck and drive him off of the cliff. He wouldn't die so he wouldn't respawn and he wouldn't shoot down the Banshees you were trying to hijack.

But doing these things just mitigates the suck and a good game shouldn't have any suck.

Halo 5

Spartan companions that couldn't keep themselves alive and couldn't climb a waist high ledge to revive you.

Bungie and 343 have had several games to try to make the friendly AI worthy of being called Spartans. Accept that it can't be done and move on. Also, kick ass allies leave little for you to do but could work if they were treated like Scorpions or power weapons. Its nice to break up the difficulty with rare stretches were you murderize all in sight.

more chief?

Would be nice but ODST and Reach didn't suffer from not enough Chief.

But, if you're going to put Chief in a game, then you had better make good use of him.