: I guess Captain Spark and Snipe already said it. Halo is just dead.
: The original Halo games (and the novels too) had a sort of magic to them, but
: that was over a decade ago. After a decade of 343i failing to capture that
: magic, and largely refusing to even try to capture that magic, the
: community has largely moved on.

: It's not fun to discuss where the books are going and how subtle hints in the
: books will play out later, because the books largely don't matter.

: It's not fun to speculate where the games are going, because the story arc of
: the games can switch fast enough to whiplash the fans. Reach didn't fall
: like it did in the books! Now the Forerunner are returning! Now Cortana is
: back from the dead! Now the Banished are contenders on a galactic scale.
: And all the while we're trying to flesh out the Master Chief and give him
: character, but he gets less interesting with each installment. After
: Infinite, I just don't give a flying fuck. I don't. And the Edgar-suit
: mockery that's in the Halo TV show is even less interesting.

: I hate to be so negative, but the non-event that was Halo: Infinite and the
: trainwreck that is the Halo TV show has really got me down. After the end
: of Halo 3, there was so much potential. And they chose to focus on genetic
: destiny and the Master Chief's character?

The Mantle, you've got to want the Mantle (every kick of it massively mattering to somebody, presumably ;-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MusyO7J2inM You can tell he doesn't like football and the seriousness that surrounds it. My opinion was, "thank goodness for COVID"

Now and then I remember about Halo and Google "Halo Infinite" or whatever and I see threads where people ask what you would want from Halo. The honest answer, for me, is: I don't want anything from Halo.

Well, I know I wouldn't get anything that I actually wanted.

Well, granted, Halo Infinite is missing the invincible, incompetent, story important sidekicks that bugger up the gameplay (so that IS something that I asked for).

I'm not butt hurt or anything. It's just that my gaming itch has been scratched and there aren't enough hours in the day for anything less than awesome.

OTOH I'm always glad that this place is around. It would be sad to see a 404 or an unknown domain if I clicked the HBO link on my speed dial page.

Oh, one thing that I do really miss are places that are primarily text based and where there is no text limit so you can have decent conversations.

I watched the HaloInfinite cutscenes on youtube and I thought that they did better with the story, Cortana wise, than I expected.

Was the game experience better for the lack of sidekicks or did they never bother you? The number of times I drove Jorge over that cliff to have some me-time... He still made commentary but he couldn't shoot down the banshees that I wanted to commandeer. :-)