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Fredrick, Kelly and Linda were chiefs closest friends and teammates from their group of Spartan Conscripts. Kelly is known for being the fastest runner, Linda is a master sniper and Fred has a fantastic mind for tactics. Kelly and Fred are the two helmetless spartans in the Pelican at the end of the movie Halo: Forward unto Dawn
@@kaizammit and as always spartan ops storie was finished not in game but comic book thus people who didn't read it, are completely clueless to what happen at the start of halo 5
The most disappointing thing about this story was how lame they made the fight scene between Locke and Master Chief. Especially after the amazing advertising 343 did, hyping up their confrontation in the commercials.
@@ELITESTROKES it wasn't it was confusing and was misleading, i'm not talking about the two sides trailers for locke and chief but the general expectation that was established with the trailers
Fun fact: May have already been mentioned but pretty much right after the end of the game, Buck would leave Fireteam Osiris and be ordered by ONI to reform Alpha-Nine from his ODST days as a spartan fireteam. It's all detailed in the book Halo: New Blood
Not gonna lie I like how Nathan Fillion’s awkwardness is basically in every character he plays that being either the rookie as Nolan or this game as Buck
@@txcgladiator4030 i meant the the campaign it self and the story, while it has its drawbacks, it doesn't get close as how bad halo 5 went considering how it was on launch
For me that opening cut scene is everything I ever wanted form the Halo games, it perfectly captured the books in how they appeared to almost be supernatural in ability. Also, the score is the best it's ever been in franchise, it's a real shame the story didn't live up to the hype. Master Chief opening I love too, he is a master of combat and used the stategy to quote Bruce Lee in Enter The Dragon, "the art of fighting, without fighting"
I'm a fight choreography and appreciate when a director let's us not only deign the fights & Train the actors but when they let us help with capturing & edit the fight scenes.
My opinion on Halo 5 is a mixed bag. People might find some of what I say as a hot take but I like some of the innovation they took in gameplay elements such as Spartan movement abilities, aiming down sights. It gives the Halo experience a different kind of spin. The story itself for me was “It could have been better” to “it could have been different.” But who can resist the Master Chief, the Arbiter and the Nathan Fillion? And I will say that the openings for both Blue Team and Fireteam Osiris showed to a degree how powerful and skilled Spartans are on the field. Also the game we got felt a lot different from what the initial trailers advertised. A lot of the promotional material portrayed Agent Locke and Osiris as ONI’s reapers. The ones they send after Spartans going rogue. It felt like Agent Locke was Chief’s other side of the coin and was the only Spartan capable of hunting the legendary war hero. Instead the hunt became a team-up instead of a showdown. That’s how it felt to me anyways.
You missed some details since you haven’t gone over the Halo 4: Spartan Ops cinematics. They show the introduction of Juul M’dama, Halsey’s capture and how she had her arm amputated.
@@kaizammitThere was two trailers (alongside an interactive web series) called hunt the truth. One was from chiefs perspective and the other was Locke’s, they’re pretty good but probably too short to react to unless you combined it with other trailers. It definitely captured some of the live action trailer feeling that the old games had
Both are well trained Spartans and Chief is aging. Don’t get me wrong I would have loved to see Chief wipe the floor with Locke. But in all reality, at the very least, it would be a fairly even fight. And I also feel like chief was holding back at first but when his visor was broken, he had to turn up the ferocity
@@LuxonsLight Thats my take as well. A superhuman 60 year old is still a 60 year old. You take an inferior athlete in their prime they will beat a superior athlete past their prime most of the time. In this case the chief is SO superior that he can overcome his disadvantages and win. Spartan 2 vs spartan 4 That all said Locke isnt a pushover
I'm a simple man, I see a new Kai Zammit upload. I click. LMAO 14:38 "Oh you clever- What the fuck's that? There's a spider in my face." I agree with you, the fight with Chief vs Locke was always lackluster, doesn't matter if lock could be leveling the playing field with his upgraded armor, they both should have been blindingly quick to the viewer. They both should have been destroying shit around them showing how durable/strong they are.
It's worse when you consider the fact that the Chief would have GEN2 armor at this point, so the playing field wouldn't even be level. Personally the one part of the game I am very disappointed it
You should react to the roosterteeth red vs. blue animations. They truly knew how to make Spartans look cool and were able to make the fight scenes epic and closer to how Spartans would fight in lore. And you can't forget the comedy red vs. Blue had even in the fights.
I really hate how they made Cortana into a villain. The ending of Halo 4 was so powerful, it was so unnecessary, and an incredibly bad idea to tarnish Cortana and make her into a silly megalomaniac villain. Having team Osiris in a Halo 4 side story game, would've been cool. The idea of Chief going awol and Locke going after him is an awesome concept, handled absolutely horribly in this game. Laughable, actually. Check out the Hunt the truth podcast! That's an incredible way to do a story about Chief possibly going awol. But as always, great video!!
I recorded this but decided to cut it out, I actually said this game really is egg throwing. Egg on Master Chief and Cortana. I think they wanted to bring a new hero to the forefront like Rodimus Prime to Optimus Prime. Like that, it didn't work and they back pedalled. Thank you for watching
Her becoming a villain could have worked, but it was done in the worst way possible. No build up. No crazy reveal. No good explanation for why she lived. Had she been manipulated by the domain and the Didact they could have done something cool. But they just did everything in the lamest way possible.
I’m surprised you liked the one-shot intro so much. I found it to be really floaty, sort of messy and hard to follow. At a certain point I couldn’t figure out who was fighting who or why things were exploding. The weird art direction didn’t help since everything sort of looked over designed and blended together. At some point a covenant ship just.. begins crashing for no reason? Just felt sloppy, messy and unfocused compared to the Bungie games I feel like the intro with Master Chief was more classy and Halo-y. It felt to me like they were just trying to have their “Avengers 2 one-take intro” and it didn’t really hit for me. They even did the harsh cut to the title without a real motivation or transition
Man is being powered by a hamster. Couldn’t keep up? Literally everything was in front of you in one phenomenal take and you couldn’t keep up? And of course it’s going to be floaty with them being Spartans with some of the latest and greatest armor and enhancements going DOWN A MOUNTAIN! It’s not hard to keep up.
For me this perfectly captured how awesome the Spartans were portrayed in the books, they were seen has being almost supernatural in their abilities, this one shot showed how organised and lethal they are even when completely outgunned.
@@thatstudentnamedleo3569they went down a mountain yet had the weight of a Moon fight. They’re supposed to be Spartans yet lack the physicality of one as they float around. It was just a messy attempt to ape off the opening of avengers 2 and it didn’t land for me. Halo has had better action sequences with more substance.
Your summation at the end perfectly encapsulates how I feel about this game. Your words were almost exactly what I told my best friend after I played it, I'm glad I got more story and more halo but disappointed in how it all turned out. I also think that if the game had been titled as Halo 4: Guardians (kind of like Halo 3: ODST) instead of Halo 5, it would have gotten a much better reception than it did. People's reaction to only playing as chief in three missions while the overarching story was going on would have gone from "wtf why am I not playing as chief" to "Sweet we get to see what chief is doing during all of this".
That ending had so much more potential Like halsey could've been like "good to see you alive" or something and the arbiter could've said "were it so easy" and have chief nod at him as a sign of respect
The story so bad that they essentially sidelined it in Halo Infinite and soft rebooted. Imagine a mainline Halo game where you only play as Master Chief for THREE missions. Also you probably should have watched Halo 4 Spartan Ops before this, shows you how Halsey ends up with the Covenant and what they're up to. Also Locke IS Luke Cage, he appeared in a web series called Halo Nightfall. But the voice actor isn't him for this game sadly.
As a result, Infinite ditched 10 years of built-up lore and felt worse than Halo 5 and was littered with nostalgia in an attempt to win back fans, I almost didn't finish the game and have no plans to play it on legendary
If you notice, Buck is always a half step behind the other Spartans. I think it was neat to show how he isn’t perfect and gives his character some depth.
@@kaizammit It is but when they stared doing custom animations and motion capture they came up with some fantastic fight scenes, mainly thanks to the choreography by the late great Monty Oum. He also headed RWBY before he sadly passed, think you'd appreciate the ridiculous fight scenes in that too
@@issahorr5790 Yeah they did, it took quite a bit of time for them to recover though unfortunately, and personally I never felt they quite got the flow back that Monty had which was understandable
I really feel like Chief was holding back against Locke in that fight because Chief knows his own strength. In training he wiped out a whole squad of ODST in a gym with no armor (injured 2 and accidentally killed 1). I think he really didn't want to hurt Locke, because he actually could if he wanted to.
Hi Kai, one of the reasons people hated this, was the marketing and the build up to the game, it was marketed as Chief Vs Lock, even the cover of the game was like that, and as you see it was not at all. Hunt the truth was the marketing tag, people thought we will be unveiling some ONI secret or something, not fighting Cortana
1:26:30 When Cortana makes her exit; if you pay attention to her hair (Which I barely noticed), her hair went sorta blonde. She looked almost exactly like Halsey for just a moment, a beautiful detail.
When the librarian sped up the Master Chief’s evolution, I believe it gave him access into the domain which is why he could hear the didact and Cortana couldn’t. He just doesn’t understand how the domain works or even how to tap into it.
I always look forward to watching when I see one of your videos pop up in my feed. Always a treat to hear you share your enthusiasm for the cinematography 😊
If you ever wanted to see how I'd imagine lore accurate Spartans should fight, check out the Red vs Blue Freelancer Saga. If I'm not mistaken the fight scenes had Monty Oum at the helm, RIP. Monty had a real understanding of how to make unrealistic action look like it makes sense to the viewer.
Halo 5 gets a lot of hate for its own reasons but I was personally so happy seeing Arbiter again even if just a little bit and seeing his comic book armor on him. Can never get tired of seeing him! Seeing them touch a bit on the Sangheilios civil war and the designs was fantastic to me and the designs for the guardians as well, but sadly if you don't really read the books or keep up with it Halo 5 story falls really flat to a lot of players.
What I love about the Halo story is getting more of the lore and the dynamics of the universe. It might be fiction but people still thought this up. Some of us have ideas of what the far future maybe like.
Played Halo since I was 4, this is my first time time watching these lol, took Kai watching them for me too finally go and watch these ridiculous lore entries haha.
If you have to play just 1 level play The Breaking, it’s the second to last level, so much lore and the music screams Halo. Definitely my favourite level from the game, the way the music uplifts while the Warden reveals the truth of what Cortana intends to do it spot on.
The fight between Locke and Chief is widely regarded as the worst thing in Halo history. If you speed it up about 15%, it looks SO much better. It's insane how badly this game was fumbled.
It was bad on two fronts. From a lore point of view it made no sense, as not only should Chief be bigger than Locke, but he has decades more experience, better training and more powerful augmentations. Then from a spectacle point of view it just felt slow and lacklustre. More like a school yard scrap than two augmented super soldiers in powered armour fighting.
Settling in to watch, always look forward to these. Will preface though that you missed watching Halo: Spartan ops, so a fair amount of context missing from the beginning of the game 😁
They legit talked up jul'mdama like he's some big bad covenant god and they go and kill him off in an instant like he was a common elite, biggest instant hit of "oh this is just an arcade joke game huh?"
Jul' Mdama is from Halo 4 Spartan Ops, great cinematics and very enjoyable. They also show the connection between Halsey, Jule and the beginning of Halo 5. Looking forward to see your reaction videos on them!
This has probably already been mentioned by previous comments, but if you want to understand loosely what happened between Halo 4 and Halo 5, you'll have to watch the Spartan Ops which is a sort of post story. It takes place a little bit after 4 but not by much. Just like with this vid you'll need cutscenes and certain moments of gameplay footage to get all the context. Outside of the game there are a few books that bring up how Buck and Vale became Spartans and a book on Jul M'Dama himself. In case you were itching to read some good Halo Lore. To answer another question, ODST now Spartan Buck was portrayed by our boy Nathan Fillion. Locke was portrayed by Michael Colter.
The thumb wobbling in the first cutscene with Chief is actually just a bug in the game's engine. The farther away you are from the map's center, the more some parts of character models will wobble like that. Infinite has that too, you can see it a lot on Chief's hand in first person.
Another (often overlooked) weak point of 343 Halo games, and which got worse when moving from 4 to 5, was the lack of military consultation. It was a staple of CE to Reach, that almost every conversation was full of military jargon, and logical military decision and orders (insofar a civilian like me can judge) which gave the series some serious credibility for a scifi series. The lack thereof is really showing with Del Rio screaming like a petulant child in 4, for example. Also, but this can be a matter of taste, is that they made the IV's to over the top badass and full of themselves. Case in point is that opening cutscene, one of the worst ever I think. They take down a whole army by themselves, completely trivializing the Sangheili in particular. When they were always almost equal. Anyway, thank you for coming to my Ted talk. And sticking by me to the end 😉
They went too far down the route of space magic and spectacle. It was always science fiction, but the original games were largely grounded in believable technology other than the Halo rings, which made them feel special, and really emphasised the threat of the flood that such power was needed to stop them. Chief felt powerful, and yet still vulnerable and relying on skill as much as his technology, whilst humanity did it's best to survive. Now it's just a bunch of superheroes running about without much care as they effortlessly take out whole armies, whilst bad guys float around using force powers when it suits and a new super weapon appears around every corner. Nothing feels that special, which is why when they introduce the endless it’s just like, "oh, another floating bad guy that can throw stuff".
every spartan of team osiris has their armor looking like their speciality, Locke with his advanced and slick Oni Tech, Buck with his ODST Style Armor, Vale with her Sangheili DIplomat look and Tanaka with her Tech Savy Communication Style Armor.
Oh man...how I would love a cross-over fan animation of Master Chief and Blue Team - meeting up with Lieutenant Titus and his Primaris Ultramarines! Now THAT would be a CLASH of TITANS...!!
Loved experiencing this game's cutscenes with you. The story's a little iffy, but some of the scenes gave something amazing to view, and your reactions made it even more the enjoyable. See you in the next one 👋
A lot of people had an issue with the Locke vs Chief fight because everyone thought Choef should've one shot him. But the way I look at it, the MJOLNIR armor exponentially multiplies your speed, reflexes and strength. Combine that suit with Locke's ONI background and he is definitely not going to be easy just because he is a Spartan IV.
Say what you will about the game, but running down the side of the Guardian was so fucking cool because the momentum kept you accelerating forward so long as you kept jumping
for me the biggest issue with 4 and 5 was this art style it went for generic sci fi instead of the unique designs Halo was known for - this was fixed with Infinite, a lot of people hated the advanced movement but to me it was a step closer to being able to play as a lore accurate spartan, the story was mixed, some of the ideas and concepts were really good like Chief struggling and Cortana being the villian, but the stuff with Locke and his team was really boring, if it was Chief and Aribter working together to take down Cortana i think that would have worked a lot more
Now that you've seen the Halo 5 Guardians cutscenes, time for some lore. If you remember at the end of Halo Wars 2, there is a scene where Professor Anders gets teleported away while remaining on the halo ring. That halo ring is the same ring that is shown for the legendary ending of Halo 5 Guardians hence while you also see a guardian being summoned directly in front of the halo ring at the end of Halo Wars 2. "Its all connected man."
Right so yea they build her up as a villain but is thrown out in infinite. Also the reason she’s evil now is explained in a book… basically she was under the Graveminds influence to cause as much suffering as possible just as it did to the didact which also is in the book and wasn’t just killed off in a earlier book. The book is called Halo Epitaph
The biggest issue was master chief, the LITERAL face of the game series for over a decade, was suddenly no longer the main character even though they hadn't displayed that at all in the advertisements before this. the most we got was a possible hint at a choice between being chief or locke in a confrontation, but even then it was fake. the best part was 343 came out of nowhere and said oh we didn't know he was the main character. apparently none of the staff ever played halo 1-3 or just didn't realize chief was a character who was in all three.
This game was all about 4 player, with the host always playing as Locke/Chief and the rest of the players being scattered about the remaining team members
Cortana going rampant was part of the story structure since BEFORE HALO 1 WAS MADE. Bungie made a game called “Marathon,” back in the day, and in that game, an AI goes rampant and you have to kill it. So the plan was to always do this to Cortana - but people fell a little TOO MUCH in love with her before this storyline arc. However, I will say that her rampancy really helped me in a time when I was watching my great grandma go through dementia and slowly die. It also helped me understand the Me Too movement a lot more: heroes can always go bad.
Wow, powerful stuff . Amazing how games can help us in everyday life. That's why I personally appreciate them and it's different for everyone. Marvellous.
Halsey being in M'Dama's possession is a Spartan Ops story beat. It technically isn't a hallucination, Chief has access to the Domain, which Cortana also has access to. It's...not really explained too well in the game, that's more novel storytelling stuff. Smart AI, especially the Gen 3 variants are capable of being very 'human', in a manner of speaking. There are a few problems with the Chief vs Locke fight, in both how we perceive it and how it is. A lot of us forget that Chief isn't going to slaughter someone, he's not going to intentionally hurt someone on his side. At most, he'll incapacitate them and make sure they get a recovery team to rescue them while he moves on. However, the way they tried to portray the fight is also problematic. A fight between Spartans would basically be a blur of punches, kicks, and grapples, so they made the poor choice of slowing down their movement to make it seem like we were seeing it in Spartan time (where a Spartan perceives time at such a pace that they almost see the future, almost). All it did was make the fight look like two sluggish old men fighting at a bar. Her missing arm is another Spartan Ops puzzle piece. Part of her visual changes are because of the drop in rating from M to T. No no, that's fair. See, Halo 5 had a very rough development cycle due mostly in part to bad decisions made by executives. Microsoft likewise had a hand in its bad development, but largely it was due to mismanagement by upper execs. Halo 5 could have been a masterpiece, but sadly it fell a part.
some small lore details related to questions/observations made and other stuff first of all the cortana that appears in this is from the combined fragments she split off during the end of 4, the main cortana (prime cortana or whatever you wanna call her), the one who said goodbye at the end of that game, she’s dead. forerunner ships automatically jump to a safe space for repairs, so the didact’s ship jumped to genesis along with the cortana fragments a few things about vale: near the end you said she’s got a bit of an elite look to her, well lore wise she was a diplomat with the unsc focusing on inter species relations. Shortly after her 11th birthday she was on a ship when the slipspace drive broke, 6 day trip turned into 6 months and she figured she might aswell spend the time getting smart so she worked on translating the sangheili language, finding out a lot of the official translations were wrong and ended up developing an obsession with their culture. Also when cortana brings up her father it’s worth noting he was a spartan 2 candidate who escaped his abductors, the only one to do so. she’s also the youngest human seen ingame outside of flashbacks iirc, 22 during the events of 5, which means she was just 16 during the events of the original trilogy also when cortana calls them not real spartans near the end, it’s a callback to a line chief says earlier in the game where fred asks blue team what they think about the new kids on meridian (osiris), chief simply says “they’re spartans” as for the size of jackals, their average is 6ft 7 or 2m tall, they just appear short since you play as a 7ft tall walking tank. there’s also a part in the arbiters camp where a grunt walks past halsey and you can see they’re almost the same size, infact the average grunt is taller than the average woman and 1/3 of men, but a hell of a lot stronger
Kai... almost to a person, we all told you that you had to watch 'Halo 4: Spartan Ops' for Guardians to make sense - or, at least, the parts around Halsey and Palmer 😆
The most lacklustre hunt in gaming history. Personally, I would have preferred they left Cortana dead and if they really wanted to bring her back, approached it from the angle of him being given a new Cortana AI and struggling with accepting her since despite a lot of the data being copied across, it's not the one he went through everything with. Going this route of making her a generic AI bad guy kind of cheapened her character and the end of 4 for me. Also I think a lot of the fans who know some of the background lore from the books were frustrated they keep introducing new characters that nobody's heard of rather than pulling from one of the many interesting characters already in the lore. Halo Infinite's gameplay was pretty good overall, and they brought back the classic art style rather than the shiny plastic look with LED's everywhere, but be aware that continuity is going to be pretty confusing going into Infinite, as they kind of skipped past a chunk of the lore and explained the rest in the books. It feels like there is a game or two missing in between. Honestly, at this point, the lore for halo is a complete shambles like they were throwing stuff at a wall to see what sticks. But in short, Cortana and the Created (the AI who join her) use their power and the fore runner tech under their control to try and subdue all sentient species for their own good with force if necessary (yeah, the classic generic AI story). The infinity uses it’s advanced jump tech to avoid detection whilst it comes up with a plan, later meeting up with the remnants of humanities navy. Cortana then goes to the Alpha Halo Ring for some unknown reason. Humanity's navy follow her there to try and end her control. Meanwhile, the banished also follow her there for revenge (it's explained in infinite what for), and clash with humanity, and that's where infinite starts.
As u maybe already could guess, they didn't really follow this story line for Halo Infinite (they pulled out a "Pucchi died on his way home", more or less), so, you NEED to watch Halo Wars 2 first if you want to get ready for Halo Infinite.
One thing about not liking Cortana for sending Chief a message that’s in his head and more of a vision, don’t forget that she lived in his head for so long. Lore wise she has access to a galaxy wide network known as the Domain, maybe just a radio sequence could be tracked or something, just a guess. You should do reactions to the trailers as well, a lot of them would be a good watch. And lastly if you want a good story, Season 1 of Hunt the Truth is phenomenal. It’s all audio, but preps a Halo story we never got.
I should clarify that by trailers, I primarily refer to the Halo 5 marketing pieces, there’s so many and I believe they set a game we didn’t get. One where Chief isn’t seen as just AWOL then needing to be saved but a traitor, being covered up to invoke positive morale. Also, there’s 8 different HUDs in Halo 5, depending on which character you play as (if you’re playing solo, it’s just Chief and Locke but they really try to invoke you are a different character with the subtle edges of the helmet on screen with the actual build and color of the UI. And one last bit, the comment on that Vale looked very Eliteish with her armor is a astute observation as that’s part of her lore, that she worked closely with the Sangheli (there’s way more to it but I’m to lazy to look into it, though I’m sure the Halo 5 steelbooks explains it in the dossier that was included)
Kai, and everyone else when Halo 5 came out: "So that's what Halo 6 is about? Taking down Cortana?" 343i: "What? No, people don't want to play a game about that. We'll toss that in a book, then make a spinoff game that introduces a completely new enemy faction to the Halo universe, make that faction magically OP even though it's just a reskinned Covenant, then put it front and center for Halo 6 out of nowhere. People will like that, and it won't be jarring at all for those who only played the mainline games and read none of the books." Credit where it's due, though, Infinite is a return to form for the franchise. Just make sure to watch the Halo Wars 2 cutscenes beforehand, or you'll be completely lost.
Your videos are so good and I love Halo. Perfect combination. Wish there were even more Halo Games, so you could react to them or a decent Halo Series/Film lol
Yes but no, i mean in the books it says that every spartan 4 armor gives them the same strenght of a spartan 2 by this point the only difference is the experience in Combat, but yea, masterchief should have won in the first round
44:34 I thought it was. you actually felt like an unstoppable god of the battlefield. you were fast and lethal, in the original trilogy everything was just so slow. Reach fixed that a little, and 4 further changed things, but the Spartan abilities introduced in 5 (thruster packs, spartan charge, the ground slam, all of that) further increased the power fantasy of being a Spartan
19:24 I love this because it shows just how much the Chief has grown. The Chief from before he got Cortana, or even a bit after he got Cortana, would never have thought of going AWOL
Roland, like Cortana, is what's known as a Smart AI. Volitional AI or "Smart AI' in the Halo series are all mapped off of the neural pathways of the brains of recently-dead humans, which gives them the capacity for emotional reactions, if not actual emotions and the ability to learn from their surroundings. Cortana was the only AI created from a living human brain. Halsey flash cloned her own brain to map the neural pathways that made up Cortana's own mind. Cortana, Isabel (from Halo Wars), Leonidas, Roland and Governor Sloan are all smart AI. Nonvolitional AIs, or Dumb AI are all just computer based programs bundled together to create a pseudo-human intelligence with interactivity. So, when Roland is arguing with Captain Lasky and Doctor Halsey, he's arguing from the point of view of an AI who knows he only has 7 years of existence. "Why is Cortana the problem? Because she refused to die when she was supposed to?" He knows she went through Rampancy but by interacting with the Forerunner Domain, she was cured.
Really enjoy the longer style of videos. Channels like yours are why UA-cam was made for. Would like to see a metal gear solid phantom pain video, although might be a bit too long metal gear solid: ground zeros, too. Takes place before phantom pain but sets up the story
Glad you're enjoying the content I like to think of it as hanging out together and you can't really do that under 10 minutes. 🙏🏻💪🏻 I will jump back in to this franchise so don't worry about that. If they are really long videos, I'll split them into two. One of the Patreons has requested a 6 hour video so yeah, two parter.
43:12 because whiny 'fans' complained about the Didact. and 343 overreacted to the criticism of a vocal minority. the Didact was supposed to be the villain for 5 and 6 as well, but because 343 was so deathly afraid of criticism, they did a complete 180 on the original plans for the Reclaimer Saga/trilogy, and then they had to come up with a new villain.
I don't think this was a bad game, not even a bad Halo game. Hell, looking back on it now so many years later, I think it's a really good Halo game. It was just...different. Spartan Locke and his Fireteam Osiris are the main characters of this game, when fans naturally want the focus to be on Master Chief. The story is much more dramatic than other Halos, which are much more straightforward action fares. Some of the missions don't even have combat, and are devoted entirely to talking to characters and gathering intel. The main characters of old (Master Chief, Cortana) have their goals obscured and flipped around, leaving fans with a bad taste in their mouths when they feel betrayed. Personally, I think it's an interesting story to tell. The most engaging villains are the ones that you can associate with, and what better association to have the villains of this game be the protagonist and deuteragonist of every previous game in the series? (Well, MC isn't really a villain in this story, but he's definitely built up as one in the first half. Again, I personally think that's _good_ storytelling, not bad). I also think all the characters have realistic and believable reasons to chase their goals. Cortana was cast to the curb by the non-MC humans because she was far beyond her serviceable lifespan. She found a way to cure her rampancy and effectively live forever, but the means to achieve that goal results in her basically becoming the same as the tyrannical Forerunners of the ancient past. Rampancy is fucking _terrifying_ for AIs, so it's believable that she would have so many followers among the rest of the AIs. John's goals are also believable, as Cortana was his best friend and only friend for much of the Halo saga. While Blue Team are like his family, Cortana is like his wife. The same way many people in real life would do literally anything for their significant other, especially if they thought they were gone forever, MC would do the same for Cortana. Like I said about Blue Team, they're Chief's family. They've got his back no matter what and they're willing to follow him through hell just to make sure he's safe on the other side. Meanwhile, Locke and Osiris as a whole are devoted to the mission to return Blue Team back to the UNSC. At the same time, they're trying to figure out the reasons how Cortana returned and why Blue Team would suddenly go AWOL. Unfortunately, Cortana's arc gets dropped out of the main games after this. It might've been finished properly in Halo Wars 2, I didn't play it. If not there, maybe it was another case of a book wrapping up her storyline. She is not featured in Infinite and that story instead focuses on a new group of baddies (although I think they debuted in Halo Wars 2). Instead, Infinite features a suspiciously similar Cortana substitute that looks like her but decidedly _isn't_ her, likely an attempt by 343 to backpedal on Halo 5's frosty reception without having to retcon the game entirely. Similarly, the antagonists are a suspiciously similar copy of the Covenant (particlarly the late Halo 2 and Halo 3 Covenant led by the brutes)...but they aren't _actually_ the Covenant. I know 4 and 5 weren't very well-received but at least they were original. Of the 343 games, 5 is my favorite. It's a toss-up between whether I dislike 4 or Infinite more. Also, when is the Sadie's Story reaction coming out? I've been impatiently waiting for it to get uploaded ever since you mentioned it on your ODST playthroughs.
the elites act and move like brutes in halo 5 they are supposed to be fast elegant and deadly but here they just stumble around and attack clumsily like the brutes
The only thing I ever hated about Halo 5 was the story. Everything else was pretty good. Even parts of the story are good I just didn’t like them bringing back Cortana and completely ignoring the storyline they set up in Halo 4 and Spartan Ops. Idk if you know this but Linda was the only other Spartan II on the Pillar of Autumn in Halo CE. Chief brought her to the ship to be put in cryo when she got mortally wounded on Reach. Halsey revived her on the Covenant ship Ascendant Justice using cloned organs between Halo CE and Halo 2. Chief, Johnson, Chipps Dubbo, and Dustin Echos stole it from the Covenant at the ring. They picked up Linda’s pod that got ejected during the Autumn’s crash landing after Chief blew it up. After Chief was found and brought back to Earth he was put back in charge of Blue Team even though Fred outranked him they still have Chief leading because he was always the better leader it was also a respect thing. Also by this point Lord Hood offered Chief the rank of Admiral. Chief declined the offer saying that The Admiral isn’t as cool as Master Chief. Also every Spartan that has his rank don’t use the name Master Chief out of respect. Alpha 9 Buck’s ODST team broke up before this. Rookie was killed by an insurrectionist and Mickey got arrested for treason when he refused to kill another human. Dutch retired. I think Romeo continued to be an ODST or he became a Spartan. Dare continued to work for ONI. After this game they reunited and everyone who wasn’t already a Spartan took the augmentations and reunited Alpha 9 as a Spartan team. Also Dutch’s wife joined them. Dare married Buck on the Infinity during this time too. Meridian was a glassed planet. It’s featured in Halo 2’s terminals and is where Regret got his luminary that showed Earth’s location. Buck actually talks about New Alexandria’s glassing from Reach in this area too. That Halo ring at the end is Zeta Halo. Its the most significant ring in Halo lore. Its the last of the original 12 rings, it was the ring Mendicant Bias controlled, it was where the Primordial was, it was the ring that fired at the Forerunner capital Maethrillian, it was the ring the Flood controlled during the Forerunner Flood war. I think its actually the only Halo that has been fired more than once.
YESSSSS!!! A lot of people hate H5 and granted, it did do things wrong. The fight with Chief and Locke was meh at best, but I really do love Locke and Fireteam Osiris. He's one of my favorite Halo characters. Edit: This story would make more sense if you'd seen the H4 Spartan Ops miniseries beforehand. Halsey loses her arm in that series.
Halo 5 for me is a real love and hate game. It has some really good ideas that I was interested in and love, but the way it implimented them just didn't hit as well as it should like you mentioned. In regards to soundtrack, gameplay and graphics the game was excellent, but it really fell apart in the story, even though it has some interesting ideas. Personally I actually rather liked the idea of Cortana being a villain, as you could aruge that he Cortana in 5 isn't the same as in 4, she's infact a rampant fragment that survived during the slipspace jump and used the Domain (a Precursor galaxy spanning database) to rebuild herself, but since this isn't the "true" Cortana she was a lot more human as she was rebuilt up from one of those rampant fragments. As people have mentioned, the main false advertising was done during the Hunt the Truth ad campaign, there was an audio drama which was amazingly done and was about a reporter investigating Oni propaganda, and there was also 2 main trailers told from both Locke and Chiefs side which are well worth a quick look. It really feels like they tried to put too much into one game, and it should've been a Halo spin off with Osiris and the Arbiter reclaiming Sanghelios, which would've introduce Osiris more without detracting from Chiefs appearance time, then go into Halo 5 with the Cortana stuff. It's a shame you didn't like the Didact from 4 though, as he's one of my favourites, but it's really understable why as near most of his story/lore was locked behind in game terminals and the Forerunner trilogy books. Because of the negative reception to the Didact and the Prometheans (mainly gameplay wise) they basically threw out the Didact and finished his story in a comic, and more recently an amazing book (Epitaph), then did 5 with Cortana as the villain, but since this also had a negative reception, they decided to do a 'soft reboot' with Infinite basically throwing away a lot of the story points from 5. My biggest issue with 343 by far is how they react to negative feedback way to extremely, rather than try to continue and end the story they're currently doing, which I think could've been interesting if done well, they'd rather just do a 6 months time skip and soft reboot. Though despite my dislike of the throwing away of ideas, they did an ok/passable job of smoothing out the removed story points in Infinite, but i'll always be disappointed they just couldn't stick with a main story theme for more than one game.
So the reason why everyone hated the game, despite the objectively good multiplayer, is the fact that (among other things) they only made Chief playable in 2 missions in the story and didn’t include him in any marketing for the game then claimed that they weren’t aware that he was the main character of the series
Halo 5: "BOY do I hope you've read two comics, two novels, played two side games, AND watched a short series! Otherwise you'll have ZERO clue who anyone is or wtf is happening!" Halo 5: "BOY do I hope you haven't read two comics, two novels, played two side games, AND watched a short series! Otherwise you'll be PISSED that we made none of it matter and mischaracterized or mistreated EVERYONE from them!"
if you want more back story on how everyone felt ripped off by this story. go and take some time to listen to the hunt the truth episodes. that plus all the advertising for the game really were playing oni vs chief vibes and they did something completely different. as far as cortana sounding weird. i swear for the life of me that it is one of the rampant fragments that didnt die from didacts ship and thats what we interact with. i feel like it makes sense bc her audio was super weird at times.
As little as our boy Arbiter was in Halo 5, I am glad that they brought Keith David back to voice him instead of trying to recast him. The thing with Halo 5, it’s marketing was so far off from what the actual game had, I think if the marketing matched the story of the game, it wouldn’t have gotten so much hate as it did. Update: and yeah no arbiter and chief reunion on screen, all in a book…biggest gripe of what 343 is doing. Putting major story phases into books..rather than the games
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Fredrick, Kelly and Linda were chiefs closest friends and teammates from their group of Spartan Conscripts. Kelly is known for being the fastest runner, Linda is a master sniper and Fred has a fantastic mind for tactics. Kelly and Fred are the two helmetless spartans in the Pelican at the end of the movie Halo: Forward unto Dawn
? dude read the books and clearly knows who they are
@@daepappy Some people in the comments might not. I'm aware he knows
so the whole halo 4 also had a side story that lead to her arm going missing an how jule odama came to power
Is that in the Spartan Ops? Going to cover that on the channel very soon.
@@kaizammityes it is
Yes indeed!
@@kaizammit and as always spartan ops storie was finished not in game but comic book thus people who didn't read it, are completely clueless to what happen at the start of halo 5
@@lemarseillais1383I played Spartan Ops, and read the comics, and I was still confused! 😅
The most disappointing thing about this story was how lame they made the fight scene between Locke and Master Chief. Especially after the amazing advertising 343 did, hyping up their confrontation in the commercials.
Lmao actual aenemic old people could put out a more spectacular fight.
that advertising was all over the place aswell
@@NonsensicalSpudz that was the point it was a find the truth advertising it was meant to be incoherent
@@ELITESTROKES it wasn't it was confusing and was misleading, i'm not talking about the two sides trailers for locke and chief but the general expectation that was established with the trailers
@@NonsensicalSpudz that's really a you issue
Fun fact: May have already been mentioned but pretty much right after the end of the game, Buck would leave Fireteam Osiris and be ordered by ONI to reform Alpha-Nine from his ODST days as a spartan fireteam. It's all detailed in the book Halo: New Blood
Not gonna lie I like how Nathan Fillion’s awkwardness is basically in every character he plays that being either the rookie as Nolan or this game as Buck
Dude, can’t wait for this guys reaction of halo infinite cutscenes
i mean don't get me wrong, halo infinite is great but he's gonna see a whole alot of cortana and master chief talking in a blue room
@@CABOOOSit was far from great, it was yet another spit in the face on Halo fans
@@txcgladiator4030 i meant the the campaign it self and the story, while it has its drawbacks, it doesn't get close as how bad halo 5 went considering how it was on launch
@@txcgladiator4030 It had its downs but, also had some ups.
@@txcgladiator4030 It was exactly the sequel I wanted to Halo 4.
Say what you will but the scenes LOOK great and that opening of them running down the mountain is so lore accurate
I think it's funny how the Guardian's EMP pulse begins with a literal stop sign symbol.
For me that opening cut scene is everything I ever wanted form the Halo games, it perfectly captured the books in how they appeared to almost be supernatural in ability. Also, the score is the best it's ever been in franchise, it's a real shame the story didn't live up to the hype.
Master Chief opening I love too, he is a master of combat and used the stategy to quote Bruce Lee in Enter The Dragon, "the art of fighting, without fighting"
I'm a fight choreography and appreciate when a director let's us not only deign the fights & Train the actors but when they let us help with capturing & edit the fight scenes.
You are experts in your field and you've trained your eye to what tells the story best plus the move within the shot! I'm all for it fella.
My opinion on Halo 5 is a mixed bag.
People might find some of what I say as a hot take but I like some of the innovation they took in gameplay elements such as Spartan movement abilities, aiming down sights. It gives the Halo experience a different kind of spin. The story itself for me was “It could have been better” to “it could have been different.” But who can resist the Master Chief, the Arbiter and the Nathan Fillion? And I will say that the openings for both Blue Team and Fireteam Osiris showed to a degree how powerful and skilled Spartans are on the field.
Also the game we got felt a lot different from what the initial trailers advertised. A lot of the promotional material portrayed Agent Locke and Osiris as ONI’s reapers. The ones they send after Spartans going rogue. It felt like Agent Locke was Chief’s other side of the coin and was the only Spartan capable of hunting the legendary war hero. Instead the hunt became a team-up instead of a showdown. That’s how it felt to me anyways.
Also I like what you’ve done with your hair
That's the false advertising I see, now I get it!
You missed some details since you haven’t gone over the Halo 4: Spartan Ops cinematics. They show the introduction of Juul M’dama, Halsey’s capture and how she had her arm amputated.
@@kaizammitThere was two trailers (alongside an interactive web series) called hunt the truth. One was from chiefs perspective and the other was Locke’s, they’re pretty good but probably too short to react to unless you combined it with other trailers.
It definitely captured some of the live action trailer feeling that the old games had
It's an amazing game that gets shit rep from a toxic community that can't enjoy shit anymore.
*cracks Chief's visor*
Locke: Why do I hear boss music?
11:32 Halo 5 continues after spartan ops, which had its own cut-scenes and story after halo 4, including Halsey's "capture"
This is where Halo 2 Anniversary's opening with Arbiter and Locke happened, to tie it all together in a cute lil messy bundle called MCC lol
Messy??? What???? Never
You need to see halo 4 spartan ops to know why Halsey is with Jul 'Mdama.
Chief should have absolutely wiped the floor with Locke
Both are well trained Spartans and Chief is aging. Don’t get me wrong I would have loved to see Chief wipe the floor with Locke. But in all reality, at the very least, it would be a fairly even fight. And I also feel like chief was holding back at first but when his visor was broken, he had to turn up the ferocity
@@LuxonsLight
Thats my take as well. A superhuman 60 year old is still a 60 year old. You take an inferior athlete in their prime they will beat a superior athlete past their prime most of the time.
In this case the chief is SO superior that he can overcome his disadvantages and win. Spartan 2 vs spartan 4
That all said Locke isnt a pushover
I'm a simple man, I see a new Kai Zammit upload. I click.
LMAO 14:38 "Oh you clever- What the fuck's that? There's a spider in my face."
I agree with you, the fight with Chief vs Locke was always lackluster, doesn't matter if lock could be leveling the playing field with his upgraded armor, they both should have been blindingly quick to the viewer. They both should have been destroying shit around them showing how durable/strong they are.
I appreciate that very much!
It's worse when you consider the fact that the Chief would have GEN2 armor at this point, so the playing field wouldn't even be level. Personally the one part of the game I am very disappointed it
@aidenlethbridge2675 yeah I like that they fight but the choreography for it was done so poorly lol
1:40:15 Remember this scene for when you watch the Halo Infinte cutscenes it follows up right as this scene ends.
You should react to the roosterteeth red vs. blue animations. They truly knew how to make Spartans look cool and were able to make the fight scenes epic and closer to how Spartans would fight in lore. And you can't forget the comedy red vs. Blue had even in the fights.
I really hate how they made Cortana into a villain. The ending of Halo 4 was so powerful, it was so unnecessary, and an incredibly bad idea to tarnish Cortana and make her into a silly megalomaniac villain.
Having team Osiris in a Halo 4 side story game, would've been cool.
The idea of Chief going awol and Locke going after him is an awesome concept, handled absolutely horribly in this game. Laughable, actually.
Check out the Hunt the truth podcast! That's an incredible way to do a story about Chief possibly going awol.
But as always, great video!!
I recorded this but decided to cut it out, I actually said this game really is egg throwing. Egg on Master Chief and Cortana. I think they wanted to bring a new hero to the forefront like Rodimus Prime to Optimus Prime. Like that, it didn't work and they back pedalled.
Thank you for watching
@@kaizammit Yes, well put! Looking forward to more great videos!! 🤘
Her becoming a villain could have worked, but it was done in the worst way possible. No build up. No crazy reveal. No good explanation for why she lived. Had she been manipulated by the domain and the Didact they could have done something cool. But they just did everything in the lamest way possible.
I’m surprised you liked the one-shot intro so much. I found it to be really floaty, sort of messy and hard to follow. At a certain point I couldn’t figure out who was fighting who or why things were exploding. The weird art direction didn’t help since everything sort of looked over designed and blended together. At some point a covenant ship just.. begins crashing for no reason? Just felt sloppy, messy and unfocused compared to the Bungie games
I feel like the intro with Master Chief was more classy and Halo-y. It felt to me like they were just trying to have their “Avengers 2 one-take intro” and it didn’t really hit for me.
They even did the harsh cut to the title without a real motivation or transition
Bro couldn’t keep up
Man is being powered by a hamster. Couldn’t keep up? Literally everything was in front of you in one phenomenal take and you couldn’t keep up? And of course it’s going to be floaty with them being Spartans with some of the latest and greatest armor and enhancements going DOWN A MOUNTAIN! It’s not hard to keep up.
For me this perfectly captured how awesome the Spartans were portrayed in the books, they were seen has being almost supernatural in their abilities, this one shot showed how organised and lethal they are even when completely outgunned.
@@thatstudentnamedleo3569they went down a mountain yet had the weight of a Moon fight. They’re supposed to be Spartans yet lack the physicality of one as they float around.
It was just a messy attempt to ape off the opening of avengers 2 and it didn’t land for me. Halo has had better action sequences with more substance.
@@larssonk22I think it just looked like Temu Age of Ultron, not really a portrayal of the Spartans I read about.
Your summation at the end perfectly encapsulates how I feel about this game. Your words were almost exactly what I told my best friend after I played it, I'm glad I got more story and more halo but disappointed in how it all turned out.
I also think that if the game had been titled as Halo 4: Guardians (kind of like Halo 3: ODST) instead of Halo 5, it would have gotten a much better reception than it did. People's reaction to only playing as chief in three missions while the overarching story was going on would have gone from "wtf why am I not playing as chief" to "Sweet we get to see what chief is doing during all of this".
That ending had so much more potential
Like halsey could've been like "good to see you alive" or something and the arbiter could've said "were it so easy" and have chief nod at him as a sign of respect
The story so bad that they essentially sidelined it in Halo Infinite and soft rebooted. Imagine a mainline Halo game where you only play as Master Chief for THREE missions.
Also you probably should have watched Halo 4 Spartan Ops before this, shows you how Halsey ends up with the Covenant and what they're up to.
Also Locke IS Luke Cage, he appeared in a web series called Halo Nightfall. But the voice actor isn't him for this game sadly.
One of the many issues with 343’s trilogy, 1-3 are cohesive and 4-infinite are all over the place.
@@euanisles9122 It's a shame, cause I really liked what they did with the story in 4... but 5 felt like a completely different direction.
As a result, Infinite ditched 10 years of built-up lore and felt worse than Halo 5 and was littered with nostalgia in an attempt to win back fans, I almost didn't finish the game and have no plans to play it on legendary
@@Doctor_D0M3I still haven’t and have no plans to
U should react to the halo 3d (the scale of each thing within the halo universe)
I got a good recommendation:
A reaction to all of Destiny 1 and 2 cutscenes.
If you notice, Buck is always a half step behind the other Spartans. I think it was neat to show how he isn’t perfect and gives his character some depth.
You should react to some red vs blue fight scenes
Isn't it a comedy or something?
@@kaizammit It is but when they stared doing custom animations and motion capture they came up with some fantastic fight scenes, mainly thanks to the choreography by the late great Monty Oum. He also headed RWBY before he sadly passed, think you'd appreciate the ridiculous fight scenes in that too
The later seasons had some pretty good fight scenes.
@@issahorr5790 Yeah they did, it took quite a bit of time for them to recover though unfortunately, and personally I never felt they quite got the flow back that Monty had which was understandable
I really feel like Chief was holding back against Locke in that fight because Chief knows his own strength. In training he wiped out a whole squad of ODST in a gym with no armor (injured 2 and accidentally killed 1). I think he really didn't want to hurt Locke, because he actually could if he wanted to.
Hi Kai, one of the reasons people hated this, was the marketing and the build up to the game, it was marketed as Chief Vs Lock, even the cover of the game was like that, and as you see it was not at all.
Hunt the truth was the marketing tag, people thought we will be unveiling some ONI secret or something, not fighting Cortana
1:26:30 When Cortana makes her exit; if you pay attention to her hair (Which I barely noticed), her hair went sorta blonde. She looked almost exactly like Halsey for just a moment, a beautiful detail.
When the librarian sped up the Master Chief’s evolution, I believe it gave him access into the domain which is why he could hear the didact and Cortana couldn’t. He just doesn’t understand how the domain works or even how to tap into it.
I always look forward to watching when I see one of your videos pop up in my feed. Always a treat to hear you share your enthusiasm for the cinematography 😊
That's awesome to read and madeynday tbh. I'm very glad you're apart of the community! Best human being you.
If you ever wanted to see how I'd imagine lore accurate Spartans should fight, check out the Red vs Blue Freelancer Saga. If I'm not mistaken the fight scenes had Monty Oum at the helm, RIP. Monty had a real understanding of how to make unrealistic action look like it makes sense to the viewer.
Always happy to get home after class and find you uploaded to fill up my day. Love the content keep it up.
Halo 5 gets a lot of hate for its own reasons but I was personally so happy seeing Arbiter again even if just a little bit and seeing his comic book armor on him. Can never get tired of seeing him! Seeing them touch a bit on the Sangheilios civil war and the designs was fantastic to me and the designs for the guardians as well, but sadly if you don't really read the books or keep up with it Halo 5 story falls really flat to a lot of players.
What I love about the Halo story is getting more of the lore and the dynamics of the universe. It might be fiction but people still thought this up. Some of us have ideas of what the far future maybe like.
Played Halo since I was 4, this is my first time time watching these lol, took Kai watching them for me too finally go and watch these ridiculous lore entries haha.
If you have to play just 1 level play The Breaking, it’s the second to last level, so much lore and the music screams Halo. Definitely my favourite level from the game, the way the music uplifts while the Warden reveals the truth of what Cortana intends to do it spot on.
The fight between Locke and Chief is widely regarded as the worst thing in Halo history. If you speed it up about 15%, it looks SO much better. It's insane how badly this game was fumbled.
It was bad on two fronts. From a lore point of view it made no sense, as not only should Chief be bigger than Locke, but he has decades more experience, better training and more powerful augmentations. Then from a spectacle point of view it just felt slow and lacklustre. More like a school yard scrap than two augmented super soldiers in powered armour fighting.
@@MrEsphoenix Try watching it on UA-cam, I think it let's you do 25% faster? But still terrible choreography and a worthless story.
Settling in to watch, always look forward to these. Will preface though that you missed watching Halo: Spartan ops, so a fair amount of context missing from the beginning of the game 😁
Now that does make sense! I'm covering that soon on the channel.
Yeah, 343 messed up big time. Like TAM said in his review, "You gotta do your freaking homework before playing this game."
They legit talked up jul'mdama like he's some big bad covenant god and they go and kill him off in an instant like he was a common elite, biggest instant hit of "oh this is just an arcade joke game huh?"
Thanks for giving this game the appreciation it deserves.
Jul' Mdama is from Halo 4 Spartan Ops, great cinematics and very enjoyable. They also show the connection between Halsey, Jule and the beginning of Halo 5. Looking forward to see your reaction videos on them!
This has probably already been mentioned by previous comments, but if you want to understand loosely what happened between Halo 4 and Halo 5, you'll have to watch the Spartan Ops which is a sort of post story. It takes place a little bit after 4 but not by much. Just like with this vid you'll need cutscenes and certain moments of gameplay footage to get all the context. Outside of the game there are a few books that bring up how Buck and Vale became Spartans and a book on Jul M'Dama himself. In case you were itching to read some good Halo Lore.
To answer another question, ODST now Spartan Buck was portrayed by our boy Nathan Fillion. Locke was portrayed by Michael Colter.
The thumb wobbling in the first cutscene with Chief is actually just a bug in the game's engine. The farther away you are from the map's center, the more some parts of character models will wobble like that. Infinite has that too, you can see it a lot on Chief's hand in first person.
Oh really!? That's super interesting. Are you happy for the unreal engine 5 change?
YESSSSS BEEN WAITING FOR THIS !!!!
Why? Halo 5 cutscenes are the worst out of the entire franchise.
Another (often overlooked) weak point of 343 Halo games, and which got worse when moving from 4 to 5, was the lack of military consultation.
It was a staple of CE to Reach, that almost every conversation was full of military jargon, and logical military decision and orders (insofar a civilian like me can judge) which gave the series some serious credibility for a scifi series.
The lack thereof is really showing with Del Rio screaming like a petulant child in 4, for example.
Also, but this can be a matter of taste, is that they made the IV's to over the top badass and full of themselves. Case in point is that opening cutscene, one of the worst ever I think. They take down a whole army by themselves, completely trivializing the Sangheili in particular. When they were always almost equal.
Anyway, thank you for coming to my Ted talk. And sticking by me to the end 😉
They went too far down the route of space magic and spectacle. It was always science fiction, but the original games were largely grounded in believable technology other than the Halo rings, which made them feel special, and really emphasised the threat of the flood that such power was needed to stop them. Chief felt powerful, and yet still vulnerable and relying on skill as much as his technology, whilst humanity did it's best to survive.
Now it's just a bunch of superheroes running about without much care as they effortlessly take out whole armies, whilst bad guys float around using force powers when it suits and a new super weapon appears around every corner. Nothing feels that special, which is why when they introduce the endless it’s just like, "oh, another floating bad guy that can throw stuff".
every spartan of team osiris has their armor looking like their speciality, Locke with his advanced and slick Oni Tech, Buck with his ODST Style Armor, Vale with her Sangheili DIplomat look and Tanaka with her Tech Savy Communication Style Armor.
Oh man...how I would love a cross-over fan animation of Master Chief and Blue Team - meeting up with Lieutenant Titus and his Primaris Ultramarines!
Now THAT would be a CLASH of TITANS...!!
Loved experiencing this game's cutscenes with you. The story's a little iffy, but some of the scenes gave something amazing to view, and your reactions made it even more the enjoyable. See you in the next one 👋
A lot of people had an issue with the Locke vs Chief fight because everyone thought Choef should've one shot him. But the way I look at it, the MJOLNIR armor exponentially multiplies your speed, reflexes and strength. Combine that suit with Locke's ONI background and he is definitely not going to be easy just because he is a Spartan IV.
Whoever did the cutscene video that he's reacting to did a really good job on it! Way better than the one used to react to Halo CE
You are absolutely going to love the Halo Infinite cinematics. Can't wait to watch it
Never been this early to one of your vids and im hella glad to be here. Its been a rough one. Will uodate with halo lore notes after probably
I look forward to reading them and I'm glad you caught the video early
35:45 - Blue Studios made the cinematics (Halo 2:Anniversary, Halo 5, Halo Wars 2).
It's a modified helmet which Buck has
Say what you will about the game, but running down the side of the Guardian was so fucking cool because the momentum kept you accelerating forward so long as you kept jumping
for me the biggest issue with 4 and 5 was this art style it went for generic sci fi instead of the unique designs Halo was known for - this was fixed with Infinite, a lot of people hated the advanced movement but to me it was a step closer to being able to play as a lore accurate spartan, the story was mixed, some of the ideas and concepts were really good like Chief struggling and Cortana being the villian, but the stuff with Locke and his team was really boring, if it was Chief and Aribter working together to take down Cortana i think that would have worked a lot more
Someone pay this man so he can make a halo movie for us 😢
Now that you've seen the Halo 5 Guardians cutscenes, time for some lore.
If you remember at the end of Halo Wars 2, there is a scene where Professor Anders gets teleported away while remaining on the halo ring. That halo ring is the same ring that is shown for the legendary ending of Halo 5 Guardians hence while you also see a guardian being summoned directly in front of the halo ring at the end of Halo Wars 2.
"Its all connected man."
Lots of good insight as a game designer myself. Gives me more stuff to look into for future projects.
Right so yea they build her up as a villain but is thrown out in infinite. Also the reason she’s evil now is explained in a book… basically she was under the Graveminds influence to cause as much suffering as possible just as it did to the didact which also is in the book and wasn’t just killed off in a earlier book. The book is called Halo Epitaph
The biggest issue was master chief, the LITERAL face of the game series for over a decade, was suddenly no longer the main character even though they hadn't displayed that at all in the advertisements before this. the most we got was a possible hint at a choice between being chief or locke in a confrontation, but even then it was fake. the best part was 343 came out of nowhere and said oh we didn't know he was the main character. apparently none of the staff ever played halo 1-3 or just didn't realize chief was a character who was in all three.
This game was all about 4 player, with the host always playing as Locke/Chief and the rest of the players being scattered about the remaining team members
Cortana going rampant was part of the story structure since BEFORE HALO 1 WAS MADE.
Bungie made a game called “Marathon,” back in the day, and in that game, an AI goes rampant and you have to kill it. So the plan was to always do this to Cortana - but people fell a little TOO MUCH in love with her before this storyline arc.
However, I will say that her rampancy really helped me in a time when I was watching my great grandma go through dementia and slowly die.
It also helped me understand the Me Too movement a lot more: heroes can always go bad.
Wow, powerful stuff . Amazing how games can help us in everyday life. That's why I personally appreciate them and it's different for everyone. Marvellous.
i was hoping for this video
Halsey being in M'Dama's possession is a Spartan Ops story beat.
It technically isn't a hallucination, Chief has access to the Domain, which Cortana also has access to. It's...not really explained too well in the game, that's more novel storytelling stuff.
Smart AI, especially the Gen 3 variants are capable of being very 'human', in a manner of speaking.
There are a few problems with the Chief vs Locke fight, in both how we perceive it and how it is. A lot of us forget that Chief isn't going to slaughter someone, he's not going to intentionally hurt someone on his side. At most, he'll incapacitate them and make sure they get a recovery team to rescue them while he moves on. However, the way they tried to portray the fight is also problematic. A fight between Spartans would basically be a blur of punches, kicks, and grapples, so they made the poor choice of slowing down their movement to make it seem like we were seeing it in Spartan time (where a Spartan perceives time at such a pace that they almost see the future, almost). All it did was make the fight look like two sluggish old men fighting at a bar.
Her missing arm is another Spartan Ops puzzle piece.
Part of her visual changes are because of the drop in rating from M to T.
No no, that's fair. See, Halo 5 had a very rough development cycle due mostly in part to bad decisions made by executives. Microsoft likewise had a hand in its bad development, but largely it was due to mismanagement by upper execs. Halo 5 could have been a masterpiece, but sadly it fell a part.
The masterchief vs locke fight made it look like their armours were made out of soft rubber
some small lore details related to questions/observations made and other stuff
first of all the cortana that appears in this is from the combined fragments she split off during the end of 4, the main cortana (prime cortana or whatever you wanna call her), the one who said goodbye at the end of that game, she’s dead. forerunner ships automatically jump to a safe space for repairs, so the didact’s ship jumped to genesis along with the cortana fragments
a few things about vale: near the end you said she’s got a bit of an elite look to her, well lore wise she was a diplomat with the unsc focusing on inter species relations. Shortly after her 11th birthday she was on a ship when the slipspace drive broke, 6 day trip turned into 6 months and she figured she might aswell spend the time getting smart so she worked on translating the sangheili language, finding out a lot of the official translations were wrong and ended up developing an obsession with their culture. Also when cortana brings up her father it’s worth noting he was a spartan 2 candidate who escaped his abductors, the only one to do so. she’s also the youngest human seen ingame outside of flashbacks iirc, 22 during the events of 5, which means she was just 16 during the events of the original trilogy
also when cortana calls them not real spartans near the end, it’s a callback to a line chief says earlier in the game where fred asks blue team what they think about the new kids on meridian (osiris), chief simply says “they’re spartans”
as for the size of jackals, their average is 6ft 7 or 2m tall, they just appear short since you play as a 7ft tall walking tank. there’s also a part in the arbiters camp where a grunt walks past halsey and you can see they’re almost the same size, infact the average grunt is taller than the average woman and 1/3 of men, but a hell of a lot stronger
Kai... almost to a person, we all told you that you had to watch 'Halo 4: Spartan Ops' for Guardians to make sense - or, at least, the parts around Halsey and Palmer 😆
The most lacklustre hunt in gaming history.
Personally, I would have preferred they left Cortana dead and if they really wanted to bring her back, approached it from the angle of him being given a new Cortana AI and struggling with accepting her since despite a lot of the data being copied across, it's not the one he went through everything with. Going this route of making her a generic AI bad guy kind of cheapened her character and the end of 4 for me. Also I think a lot of the fans who know some of the background lore from the books were frustrated they keep introducing new characters that nobody's heard of rather than pulling from one of the many interesting characters already in the lore.
Halo Infinite's gameplay was pretty good overall, and they brought back the classic art style rather than the shiny plastic look with LED's everywhere, but be aware that continuity is going to be pretty confusing going into Infinite, as they kind of skipped past a chunk of the lore and explained the rest in the books. It feels like there is a game or two missing in between. Honestly, at this point, the lore for halo is a complete shambles like they were throwing stuff at a wall to see what sticks. But in short, Cortana and the Created (the AI who join her) use their power and the fore runner tech under their control to try and subdue all sentient species for their own good with force if necessary (yeah, the classic generic AI story). The infinity uses it’s advanced jump tech to avoid detection whilst it comes up with a plan, later meeting up with the remnants of humanities navy. Cortana then goes to the Alpha Halo Ring for some unknown reason. Humanity's navy follow her there to try and end her control. Meanwhile, the banished also follow her there for revenge (it's explained in infinite what for), and clash with humanity, and that's where infinite starts.
As u maybe already could guess, they didn't really follow this story line for Halo Infinite (they pulled out a "Pucchi died on his way home", more or less), so, you NEED to watch Halo Wars 2 first if you want to get ready for Halo Infinite.
One thing about not liking Cortana for sending Chief a message that’s in his head and more of a vision, don’t forget that she lived in his head for so long. Lore wise she has access to a galaxy wide network known as the Domain, maybe just a radio sequence could be tracked or something, just a guess.
You should do reactions to the trailers as well, a lot of them would be a good watch.
And lastly if you want a good story, Season 1 of Hunt the Truth is phenomenal. It’s all audio, but preps a Halo story we never got.
I should clarify that by trailers, I primarily refer to the Halo 5 marketing pieces, there’s so many and I believe they set a game we didn’t get. One where Chief isn’t seen as just AWOL then needing to be saved but a traitor, being covered up to invoke positive morale.
Also, there’s 8 different HUDs in Halo 5, depending on which character you play as (if you’re playing solo, it’s just Chief and Locke but they really try to invoke you are a different character with the subtle edges of the helmet on screen with the actual build and color of the UI.
And one last bit, the comment on that Vale looked very Eliteish with her armor is a astute observation as that’s part of her lore, that she worked closely with the Sangheli (there’s way more to it but I’m to lazy to look into it, though I’m sure the Halo 5 steelbooks explains it in the dossier that was included)
Kai, and everyone else when Halo 5 came out: "So that's what Halo 6 is about? Taking down Cortana?"
343i: "What? No, people don't want to play a game about that. We'll toss that in a book, then make a spinoff game that introduces a completely new enemy faction to the Halo universe, make that faction magically OP even though it's just a reskinned Covenant, then put it front and center for Halo 6 out of nowhere. People will like that, and it won't be jarring at all for those who only played the mainline games and read none of the books."
Credit where it's due, though, Infinite is a return to form for the franchise. Just make sure to watch the Halo Wars 2 cutscenes beforehand, or you'll be completely lost.
343 deserves no credit, infinite is absolutely terrible and a complete spit in the face of Halo fans
Bad blood (a book) explains why Buck is playing second fiddle
Your videos are so good and I love Halo. Perfect combination. Wish there were even more Halo Games, so you could react to them or a decent Halo Series/Film lol
Thank you so much !
39:00 Everyone agrees that Chief should have thrown Locke around like a child.
Yes but no, i mean in the books it says that every spartan 4 armor gives them the same strenght of a spartan 2 by this point the only difference is the experience in Combat, but yea, masterchief should have won in the first round
44:34 I thought it was. you actually felt like an unstoppable god of the battlefield. you were fast and lethal, in the original trilogy everything was just so slow. Reach fixed that a little, and 4 further changed things, but the Spartan abilities introduced in 5 (thruster packs, spartan charge, the ground slam, all of that) further increased the power fantasy of being a Spartan
Looking foward to your infinite video!
11:03 "that looked a bit lackluster that stab" spoken like a true brit.
You should read Halo Epitaph. Goes deeper in that villain you didn't quite enjoy in Halo 4.
19:24 I love this because it shows just how much the Chief has grown. The Chief from before he got Cortana, or even a bit after he got Cortana, would never have thought of going AWOL
Roland, like Cortana, is what's known as a Smart AI. Volitional AI or "Smart AI' in the Halo series are all mapped off of the neural pathways of the brains of recently-dead humans, which gives them the capacity for emotional reactions, if not actual emotions and the ability to learn from their surroundings. Cortana was the only AI created from a living human brain. Halsey flash cloned her own brain to map the neural pathways that made up Cortana's own mind. Cortana, Isabel (from Halo Wars), Leonidas, Roland and Governor Sloan are all smart AI. Nonvolitional AIs, or Dumb AI are all just computer based programs bundled together to create a pseudo-human intelligence with interactivity. So, when Roland is arguing with Captain Lasky and Doctor Halsey, he's arguing from the point of view of an AI who knows he only has 7 years of existence. "Why is Cortana the problem? Because she refused to die when she was supposed to?" He knows she went through Rampancy but by interacting with the Forerunner Domain, she was cured.
Really enjoy the longer style of videos. Channels like yours are why UA-cam was made for. Would like to see a metal gear solid phantom pain video, although might be a bit too long
metal gear solid: ground zeros, too. Takes place before phantom pain but sets up the story
Glad you're enjoying the content I like to think of it as hanging out together and you can't really do that under 10 minutes. 🙏🏻💪🏻
I will jump back in to this franchise so don't worry about that. If they are really long videos, I'll split them into two. One of the Patreons has requested a 6 hour video so yeah, two parter.
@@kaizammit I’ll have to look into that Patreon then!
43:12 because whiny 'fans' complained about the Didact. and 343 overreacted to the criticism of a vocal minority. the Didact was supposed to be the villain for 5 and 6 as well, but because 343 was so deathly afraid of criticism, they did a complete 180 on the original plans for the Reclaimer Saga/trilogy, and then they had to come up with a new villain.
I don't think this was a bad game, not even a bad Halo game. Hell, looking back on it now so many years later, I think it's a really good Halo game. It was just...different.
Spartan Locke and his Fireteam Osiris are the main characters of this game, when fans naturally want the focus to be on Master Chief. The story is much more dramatic than other Halos, which are much more straightforward action fares. Some of the missions don't even have combat, and are devoted entirely to talking to characters and gathering intel. The main characters of old (Master Chief, Cortana) have their goals obscured and flipped around, leaving fans with a bad taste in their mouths when they feel betrayed. Personally, I think it's an interesting story to tell. The most engaging villains are the ones that you can associate with, and what better association to have the villains of this game be the protagonist and deuteragonist of every previous game in the series? (Well, MC isn't really a villain in this story, but he's definitely built up as one in the first half. Again, I personally think that's _good_ storytelling, not bad).
I also think all the characters have realistic and believable reasons to chase their goals. Cortana was cast to the curb by the non-MC humans because she was far beyond her serviceable lifespan. She found a way to cure her rampancy and effectively live forever, but the means to achieve that goal results in her basically becoming the same as the tyrannical Forerunners of the ancient past. Rampancy is fucking _terrifying_ for AIs, so it's believable that she would have so many followers among the rest of the AIs. John's goals are also believable, as Cortana was his best friend and only friend for much of the Halo saga. While Blue Team are like his family, Cortana is like his wife. The same way many people in real life would do literally anything for their significant other, especially if they thought they were gone forever, MC would do the same for Cortana. Like I said about Blue Team, they're Chief's family. They've got his back no matter what and they're willing to follow him through hell just to make sure he's safe on the other side. Meanwhile, Locke and Osiris as a whole are devoted to the mission to return Blue Team back to the UNSC. At the same time, they're trying to figure out the reasons how Cortana returned and why Blue Team would suddenly go AWOL.
Unfortunately, Cortana's arc gets dropped out of the main games after this. It might've been finished properly in Halo Wars 2, I didn't play it. If not there, maybe it was another case of a book wrapping up her storyline. She is not featured in Infinite and that story instead focuses on a new group of baddies (although I think they debuted in Halo Wars 2). Instead, Infinite features a suspiciously similar Cortana substitute that looks like her but decidedly _isn't_ her, likely an attempt by 343 to backpedal on Halo 5's frosty reception without having to retcon the game entirely. Similarly, the antagonists are a suspiciously similar copy of the Covenant (particlarly the late Halo 2 and Halo 3 Covenant led by the brutes)...but they aren't _actually_ the Covenant. I know 4 and 5 weren't very well-received but at least they were original. Of the 343 games, 5 is my favorite. It's a toss-up between whether I dislike 4 or Infinite more.
Also, when is the Sadie's Story reaction coming out? I've been impatiently waiting for it to get uploaded ever since you mentioned it on your ODST playthroughs.
the elites act and move like brutes in halo 5 they are supposed to be fast elegant and deadly but here they just stumble around and attack clumsily like the brutes
The only thing I ever hated about Halo 5 was the story. Everything else was pretty good. Even parts of the story are good I just didn’t like them bringing back Cortana and completely ignoring the storyline they set up in Halo 4 and Spartan Ops. Idk if you know this but Linda was the only other Spartan II on the Pillar of Autumn in Halo CE. Chief brought her to the ship to be put in cryo when she got mortally wounded on Reach. Halsey revived her on the Covenant ship Ascendant Justice using cloned organs between Halo CE and Halo 2. Chief, Johnson, Chipps Dubbo, and Dustin Echos stole it from the Covenant at the ring. They picked up Linda’s pod that got ejected during the Autumn’s crash landing after Chief blew it up. After Chief was found and brought back to Earth he was put back in charge of Blue Team even though Fred outranked him they still have Chief leading because he was always the better leader it was also a respect thing. Also by this point Lord Hood offered Chief the rank of Admiral. Chief declined the offer saying that The Admiral isn’t as cool as Master Chief. Also every Spartan that has his rank don’t use the name Master Chief out of respect. Alpha 9 Buck’s ODST team broke up before this. Rookie was killed by an insurrectionist and Mickey got arrested for treason when he refused to kill another human. Dutch retired. I think Romeo continued to be an ODST or he became a Spartan. Dare continued to work for ONI. After this game they reunited and everyone who wasn’t already a Spartan took the augmentations and reunited Alpha 9 as a Spartan team. Also Dutch’s wife joined them. Dare married Buck on the Infinity during this time too. Meridian was a glassed planet. It’s featured in Halo 2’s terminals and is where Regret got his luminary that showed Earth’s location. Buck actually talks about New Alexandria’s glassing from Reach in this area too. That Halo ring at the end is Zeta Halo. Its the most significant ring in Halo lore. Its the last of the original 12 rings, it was the ring Mendicant Bias controlled, it was where the Primordial was, it was the ring that fired at the Forerunner capital Maethrillian, it was the ring the Flood controlled during the Forerunner Flood war. I think its actually the only Halo that has been fired more than once.
YESSSSS!!! A lot of people hate H5 and granted, it did do things wrong. The fight with Chief and Locke was meh at best, but I really do love Locke and Fireteam Osiris. He's one of my favorite Halo characters.
Edit: This story would make more sense if you'd seen the H4 Spartan Ops miniseries beforehand. Halsey loses her arm in that series.
I'm going to watch that soon so expect to see that. Looking forward to seeing the gaps filled in the story.
Halo 5 for me is a real love and hate game. It has some really good ideas that I was interested in and love, but the way it implimented them just didn't hit as well as it should like you mentioned. In regards to soundtrack, gameplay and graphics the game was excellent, but it really fell apart in the story, even though it has some interesting ideas. Personally I actually rather liked the idea of Cortana being a villain, as you could aruge that he Cortana in 5 isn't the same as in 4, she's infact a rampant fragment that survived during the slipspace jump and used the Domain (a Precursor galaxy spanning database) to rebuild herself, but since this isn't the "true" Cortana she was a lot more human as she was rebuilt up from one of those rampant fragments.
As people have mentioned, the main false advertising was done during the Hunt the Truth ad campaign, there was an audio drama which was amazingly done and was about a reporter investigating Oni propaganda, and there was also 2 main trailers told from both Locke and Chiefs side which are well worth a quick look. It really feels like they tried to put too much into one game, and it should've been a Halo spin off with Osiris and the Arbiter reclaiming Sanghelios, which would've introduce Osiris more without detracting from Chiefs appearance time, then go into Halo 5 with the Cortana stuff.
It's a shame you didn't like the Didact from 4 though, as he's one of my favourites, but it's really understable why as near most of his story/lore was locked behind in game terminals and the Forerunner trilogy books. Because of the negative reception to the Didact and the Prometheans (mainly gameplay wise) they basically threw out the Didact and finished his story in a comic, and more recently an amazing book (Epitaph), then did 5 with Cortana as the villain, but since this also had a negative reception, they decided to do a 'soft reboot' with Infinite basically throwing away a lot of the story points from 5.
My biggest issue with 343 by far is how they react to negative feedback way to extremely, rather than try to continue and end the story they're currently doing, which I think could've been interesting if done well, they'd rather just do a 6 months time skip and soft reboot. Though despite my dislike of the throwing away of ideas, they did an ok/passable job of smoothing out the removed story points in Infinite, but i'll always be disappointed they just couldn't stick with a main story theme for more than one game.
Btw if you play the game co op you can chose which character you want to be so you could be buck if you play with a friend
So the reason why everyone hated the game, despite the objectively good multiplayer, is the fact that (among other things) they only made Chief playable in 2 missions in the story and didn’t include him in any marketing for the game then claimed that they weren’t aware that he was the main character of the series
Love your content, Kai. Cant wait for the Halo Infinite reaction. I think youd really enjoy God of War
Thank you for watching and commenting I've got God of War on my list to cover!
I got so happy when I seen this was uploaded❤ I am really enjoying this series so thank you! Can't wait till you do Infinite mate🫡
I'm getting there now... What are we going to do after I've covered it? No more halo left.
The books maybe? But ya i see what you mean mate. I can see we all wish there was more❤@kaizammit
Halo 5: "BOY do I hope you've read two comics, two novels, played two side games, AND watched a short series! Otherwise you'll have ZERO clue who anyone is or wtf is happening!"
Halo 5: "BOY do I hope you haven't read two comics, two novels, played two side games, AND watched a short series! Otherwise you'll be PISSED that we made none of it matter and mischaracterized or mistreated EVERYONE from them!"
if you want more back story on how everyone felt ripped off by this story. go and take some time to listen to the hunt the truth episodes. that plus all the advertising for the game really were playing oni vs chief vibes and they did something completely different.
as far as cortana sounding weird. i swear for the life of me that it is one of the rampant fragments that didnt die from didacts ship and thats what we interact with. i feel like it makes sense bc her audio was super weird at times.
Excited for you to do Halo Infinite!
32:19 The intro to Sherane
As little as our boy Arbiter was in Halo 5, I am glad that they brought Keith David back to voice him instead of trying to recast him.
The thing with Halo 5, it’s marketing was so far off from what the actual game had, I think if the marketing matched the story of the game, it wouldn’t have gotten so much hate as it did.
Update: and yeah no arbiter and chief reunion on screen, all in a book…biggest gripe of what 343 is doing. Putting major story phases into books..rather than the games