story i thought was great, but gameplay changed a lot of things that weren't broken, especially in multiplayer, that made it sort of call-of-duty-ified

which, at the time, was sort of an industry trend

my coworker was big mad people on the internet are wrong about halo, but I do not understand enough about it to know if he is justified.

great gameplay, terrible story
good emotional beats with the chief and cortana, but those beats shouldn't have happened (see above, re: story)

wait no, "great gameplay" is 5

LOL two completely different takes

4 is "it's fine i guess" gameplay

who is correct about halo 4?

i'm not a big multiplayer person, though

also they changed the grunts in 4 and that's a fucking war crime

most of the brain cells i used to be mad about halo 4 are now occupied being mad about halo 5 tbh

oh, halo 5 is garbage, full agree

i mean, everything about halo these days is garbage

my coworker says halo 4 is the worst, has no redeeming qualities, destroyed the canon, and is the unloved child

halo 5 is second worst

maybe this is a generational gap?

from a genX - what is halo? can you eat it?

even the multiplayer bros hate halo 5's story

but the gameplay is fun

nah, the story was pretty much "done" after 3, then it changed some creative hands and he's probably angry the original cortana "died" and passed the torch on to a new, uncorrupted cortana in one of the latest games

so, like you do have some original trilogy fanboys out there

it's a real shame they never made a halo game after reach

but story-wise they 343 did try to explore the forerunners, which are a big part of halo lore as a whole and they were sort of mysterious in the way that like... protheans are in mass effect, if you are familiar with THAT canon at all

h4 fucked up the didact's characterization so badly they had to recton that there were two of him

rofl

my coworker is 22 and apparently the original halo trilogy is his sacred childhood canon

there is also a section of the fanbase that aligns in the same way that like star wars eu and the new trilogy fandom conflicts

in that there are a lot of very beloved halo books that expand the lore

LOL

yeah that makes sense

on a level it does but it's also deeply funny

halos 1-3 (and also odst and reach) sort of stumbled their way into a story because they honestly had no idea they were getting a sequel

it was just supposed to be a nice but forgettable launch title for xbox so you'd buy the system and immediately have something to play

20 YEARS LATER...

plus the soundtrack goes incredibly hard for a shootmans space marine game

yeah i played a bunch of halo 2 multiplayer with pals in college

oho, never forget the Big Mad over being forced to play as the bad guy in campaign

oh yeah, when they switched out marty on ost fans raged

it's funny because master chief really is sort of a beloved character to both the neurodivergent AND weird alpha chuds who aren't really paying a lot of attention

god forbid you have to play as the arbiter voiced by keith david

keith motherfuckin david

the one thing everyone agrees on is the chief is Good and if you don't like him, you suck

and arbi was tryna kill him, so obviously he was the Worst

then he turned out to be the chief's biggest fanboy and now the fandom loves him

backlash the likes of raiden in mgs2

my coworker says master chief is a zombie and that he's right but no one reads the lore correctly

like... literally.... a zombie?

"he is undead, and this is supported by the games"

he's not, but like... speak your truth, i guess

lol

he doesn't seem to believe halo 4 is canon

i mean, is he referring to the spartan 2 augmentation?

cause i mean, john definitely did survive that

i mean, he is a fuckin hormone induced super soldier freak cyborg who underwent unethical genetic testing, but

despite the best efforts to the contrary, he did survive

"no, he's dead at the start of the story"

"he awakens from 'the hushed casket'"

brother that's just a keat's reference

he's in cryo sleep

he did not know who keats was

i

am sure you had a blast with that one

i do not really blame him, a lot of his schooling wasn't in english

but lol

the hushed casket, and it's canonically cryogenic sleep

...oh thanks for loading half of this late, plurk

i unintentionally shattered this man's entire world

he's sticking with the zombie theory because of 'casket' and something to do with previous games by the same devs

he also thinks master chief is from a different universe...

oh, marathon?

they have a lot of similar themes, and cortana's name is a nod (the ai in that is durendal) but the chief is very much not from marathon

if any of the spartan-iis are undead, it's linda

she got iced in the first novel, but they rectonned in the second

now he is trying to explain how halo 4 isn't canon because it would retcon itself out of existence somehow

he accepts that 'hushed casket' is a keats reference

you can't help them when they've spiraled down the lore rabbit hole

and like, someone correct me if i'm wrong, but the hushed casket is more or less an alien casket of some ancient lord or warrior who asked to be placed in the casket by his love or queen or something, and the casket was never found (as far as halo lore is concerned)

so, it's sort of just like a comparison to the chief, who went to sleep in cryo sleep at the end of 3, wherein the rest of the world mourned him and thought him dead, asked cortana to 'wake him when she needs him'

nobody could find his ship

I MEAN it seems a little like he's taking literary devices literally, but i literally haven't thought of halo in years, so who knows if anything i say is right anymore

that seems like something that would happen if you play the game at age 11 tbh

yes, absolutely