Once again KZfaq's compression messes with my pixel-art outros. I guess adjusting the bitrate doesn't help. Maybe I need a new encoder... Anyways, Part 2 will release publicly in 1 week. If you want to watch it right now, you can go sub to my patreon, but if not, no worries it'll be free on my channel on July 1st. Otherwise thanks all for the patience as it took me way too long to get this beast of a video (technically two) edited and uploaded. Seems a lot of us have strong memories and opinions of this era in Halo's life span and honestly this was mostly cathartic for me to finally be able to articulate why Halo 4 always felt off. Also, this part mainly covers plot and story. Part 2 is going to cover gameplay mechanics, don't worry, there's still another half of this review ready to be unleashed. Anyways, hope you all have a great weekend!

The game’s story isn’t “fan fiction”. For it to be fan fiction, the writers would have to actually be fans of the source material

Aside from the whole elites being unplayable in the last 3 Halo games, Arbiter was just tossed aside completely by 343, only appearing in books and fanservice being a side character. And also as a stupid plush, he deserves better, the guy really impacted the events of the Halo trilogy.

Like CS Sabertooth pointed out, the entire reason for why the Covenant attacked humanity is removed by making it where the humans are not Forerunner. It means that now, canonically, _there is _*_literally_*_ no reason for the war._

Forerunners being humanity literally ties into our own religious mythos, with the ark and the flood being explicitly featured in the bible. Even the idea of the rapture is shockingly similar to the great journey, hence the prophets mentioning humanity being “ left behind”. It was a master stroke of writing on bungie’s part. They imply that these biblical stories are misrememberings of the first firing of the halo arrays. Furthermore, it hints at how a remnant of humanity might have survived on the ark.

Halo 4 was the first "Halo killer"

"Not enough people are buying our cakes. We should hire people who hate baking cakes so that people who don't like our cakes will buy our cakes!" When you switch around some nouns, the insanity of Halo 4 really comes into view.

Actually master chief does die in the halo trilogy, multiple times even. This is because I suck at the game.

I hate the term "Bungie's Halo". Just as humans *ARE* forerunners, Bungie *IS* Halo.

Every time the didact uses his force powers on chief I think, “why doesn’t he just kill him?”

From Mendicant fucking Bias himself while talking to the Prophets after the discovery of Harvest: "For eons I have watched. Listened to you misinterpret. This is not "Reclamation". This is Reclaimer. And it represents MY MAKERS"

Finally someone said it... I thought it was crazy that no one else seemed to notice that humans and forerunners were one and the same... thank god 😔

9:18 - Update on this. Marty O'Donnell recently told the story of ODST in a comment he made on a KZfaq video about ODST. Apparently Bungie itself wanted to release it at 30 dollars as an expansion but Microsoft forced them to release it at 60 dollars and as a full game.

what made me mad the most is how 343 is introducing "the endless" as "a bigger threat than the flood".

Can you believe that the people on the /r/Halo subreddit actually PREFER the Forerunners to be a separate species from humanity, and that they think humans being Forerunner are "predictable" and "boring" Seriously, the top comments are those that don't like humanity being Forerunners every single time the topic is brought up. How can they call themselves fans of the lore and the Forerunners and whatever when they don't even like the whole point behind that lore in the first place!

Not to mention, the entire plot about the hierarchs finding out humanity was the forerunners was literally explicitly narrated in the book Contact Harvest. Which was written by Joseph Staten.

Did the librarian account for that fact that master chief could have at any point choked on a ravioli in the mess hall and asphyxiated and died right then and there

I got abuse from fans when this came out for saying the art style had lost its identity. Years later that sentiment is acceptable now because youtubers made videos sharing them. How times change.

I've been saying that Bungie always meant for the Forerunners to be human, everything literally pointed to it.

Halo 3 was the end of Master Chief's story for me and Halo Reach the end of Halo as a universe. Halo 4, 5, 6 and whatever bs 343 will bring next simply does not exist for me.

343 Industries retconning Forerunners being humans is one of the dumbest writing decisions I've ever seen in video games. I'd argue that's one of the top 5 worst, most unnecessary retcons in all of modern media.

The gravemind also says "Son of my enemy, Why have you come?" on the H3 level Cortana, also implying humans are forerunners.

The Didact is oddly similar to the Engineer in “Prometheus”. Both are strangely surviving last members of a precursor species, who strangely hate humanity, and whose whole plan is to fly a ship to Earth to wipe us out and yet are easily defeated. And both are in a massive retcon of their series. They even wear fancy space armor and get in fist fights.

It's all Frank O'Conor's fault that the Halo lore got all mucked up.

I do think humanity being the forerunners makes the forerunners far more interesting than being orange robots, Also it doesn’t complicate things like a metal gear solid does

Halo reach was content rich and had amazing forge and custom games. And it has my second favorite campaign.

The Chosen One cutscene gets EVEN worse when you factor in the Librarian also physically enhanced the Chief to godlike levels. She rushed his evolution on a genetic level. And then you see the fight with Locke in halo 5. Makes you think

The irony of the Covenant Waging War on Humanity, calling us Vermin, treating us like we're a disease, but at the same time worshipping the 4Runner. Not knowing they are ancient humans is a crazy ironic twist. It really pisses me off that they reckoned that.

Rampancy is another 343 retcon. It was explained in the Fall of Reach as Cortana eventually "Thinking herself to Death." As a strategic AI this likely meant she would over-calculate possibilities, account for variables so minute they're bearing on the overall mission success would be less than negligible. Imagine your PC calculating chess positions, however after a while it starts accounting for exactly where on a square each piece could be in any given state, exponentially increasing the number of simulations until it blue screens itself. Hell it could probably even have been like in Portal where GladOs tried to kill Wheatley with Paradoxes, Cortana simply thinking herself through loops until the same outcome But 343 has to ruin everything that was beautiful in its simplicity by layering on bullshit fan fiction because screaming like a child who didn't get ice cream is "emotionally realistic".

Imagine if this _was_ a "Reclaimer" saga, but it was humanity - with just one major world and a handful of small warships left - trying to find and secure Forerunner technology before anyone else did. The enemies are the San'Shyuum Prelates and a small number of Grunts, Jackals, and Brutes who are still fanatically dedicated to eradicating humanity.

ho ly shit. So i actually never realized that humans were literally supposed to be forerunners. I guess this whole time i interpreted all these hints in the bungie games through 343's lore. I feel sick. I want nothing more than for 343's entire lore building of the franchise since 2012 to be retconned. please god. we were robbed.

You were half right on the Covenant. The actual reason they hated humanity was because of their belief in the Great Journey, "With this sacrament of blood we will journey into the divine beyond" and all that. So the secret that the Prophets discovered was that a foundational text in the Forerunner keyship was a mistranslation, instead of "reclamation", it actually said "reclaimer", obviously meaning humanity. This blew a hole right into the center of their theology, because if humanity was explicitly connected to the Forerunners, that would mean it was possible to be left behind during the Great Journey, meaning the entire foundation of the Covenant religion was a lie. The Prophets felt they needed to hide this fact at all costs to preserve their own power, and so sought to exterminate humanity to destroy all remaining evidence. "This time, none of you will be left behind" is a direct nod to this. Basically, it's like a modern Evangelical preacher finding out that the Rapture is a lie. And they were quite right to foresee this destroying the Covenant, as the Arbiter funding out about it was one of the primary causes of the Great Schism shattering the unity of the Covenant itself beyond repair.

As a pretty big Marathon fan myself, rampancy is much more complex then simply "going crazy", like 343 seems to think. Yeah its part of it, but its far more then just that. But again, it all stems back to Frank O Connor being a creative hack.

Oh yeah, the gravemind also refers to chief as a forerunner when he says "Child of my enemy why have you come? I offer no forgiveness for a father's sins past down to his son" basically implying Humanity are the ancestors of the forerunners he fought before the firing of the halo array

"The most emotional campaign" well, it did make me cry, just not for the reason Reach did lol

The whole point of Halsey cloning herself to create Cortana is to avoid the limitations that would cause "rampancy". So there's one more piece of Bungie lore ignored for 343's fanfiction.

I really liked your idea about the San'Shyuum being the antagonists for a hypothetical trilogy after Halo 3. That would open up a bunch of opportunities to explore new things. It would make sense for the UNSC to mostly take a backseat, with Chief helping Arbiter and the Elites fight for control over several alien worlds. You could learn more about the different Covenant species, find the Forerunner ruins and artifacts that made the Covenant so fervent in their beliefs, and explore how the ex-Covenant soldiers would react to the knowledge that the Forerunners and Humans are really one and the same. With the man who called they called demon fighting alongside them with brutal efficiency, how would they react? Might some come to carry the religion onward, directing their worship toward humanity? Or maybe they'd come to distrust everything Forerunner related, and view the humans as an existential threat? After all, could they trust the species who created such technology as Halo? Would the Prophets, now faced with the truth being widespread, completely switch gears and begin deifying the Flood? Cortana's rampancy would be really hard to deal with. The whole process as I understand it is effectively the AI reaching true sentience, but it already feels like Cortana has that. So it'd have to be subtle changes. She could question her own usefulness in this particular war, or begin to doubt herself in other ways. This could be kept relatively hidden from the player. At the start of certain missions where she'd usually make a remark or give helpful advice she might instead simply say that she can't be of much help. As the player uncovers various atrocities committed by their enemies, she might express vaguely nihilistic thoughts. Then, as she enters the anger stage, she might begin to resent Chief's inability to recognize her early stages of rampancy. She might encourage increasingly risky strategies, living vicariously through thee violence Chief enacts. She might try to make use of Forerunner technology to gain a degree of independence, maybe staying behind to control sentinels from an old Forerunner facility on one of the alien worlds so she can fight on her own. Cortana, now entering the jealousy stage and literally expanding, would need a more powerful network to survive. What better place for her to go than Halo? I wouldn't have any of this happen in such a manner that she becomes outright hostile to Chief or his allies, of course. I don't think she'd ever stop thinking of Chief as her friend, and she'd certainly see the value in ending the conflict. So it would be best if her need for a larger installation coincides with the overall plot and Chief's goals. To this end, I think it would be really interesting if the series were concluded with the Flood once again released on the galaxy. How? The San'shyuum, now convinced that becoming one with the Flood will help them defeat their former gods, find another contained strain of the Flood aboard a newfound Halo installation. Omega Halo, since it'll be the definitive end. The San'shyuum get there first, destroying the installation's monitor and using brute force (pun intended) to release the contained Flood that are present there. By the time the protagonists arrive, things are too late. The Flood have been allowed to consume the San'shyuum presence there and are actively being aided in spreading across the galaxy. There's a discussion amongst the protagonists about what is to be done now. Chief and Arbiter, understanding the magnitude of the Flood threat, make the hard decision to activate the ring. It's a hard fight to the control room and many of the newer characters, maybe even Arbiter himself, die along the way. I'm not sure about specific dialogue, but I'd imagine Cortana would struggle with the notion of letting Chief go. Regardless, Chief would detonate the ring in the end, leaving Cortana behind as the installation monitor. Over very long periods of time she would use her knowledge to repeat the reseeding process and the galaxy would begin anew once more. Maybe it's a little cheesy, I don't know. Regardless, thinking about it was much more enjoyable than playing the games that we actually got.

Bungie's Halo had those incredibly written subtle moments. Like the fact that the first prophet to die was Regret. Then Mercy. And then Truth. In order to win the war they left behind Regret, sacraficed their Mercy and only The Truth was left. No one ever says that explicitly but it says so much about the dogma of The Covenant through nothing but "show don't tell". Or that scene at the beginning of Halo 2, when both factions deal with the aftermath of The Halo Event. While Master Chief and Sargeant Major Johnson are rewarded among their peers, The Soon-To-Be Arbiter is chastised, ridiculed in front of an angry mob and literally branded by a red-hot poker as a heretic. They cut between thoae scenes as they progress to show that while one of them celebrates victory another has to cope with loss, yet as we know both of them lost nearly everyone they served with on that ring. Name ONE SCENE in any of the sequels that went THIS HARD.

Halo 4, now that I think about it, really is The Force Awakens of the Halo franchise. And I had the same feelings about both initially, I thought they were decent enough at a first sight, but both of them are fanfiction level of writing, both of them had no reason to exist since the original story was already finished in a satisfying way, both of them were created for the same reason: to keep the franchise going because it was so succesful but we have no idea what to do with it anymore.

Even as a casual fan who really only plays the campaigns, I was honestly shocked just how bad it felt to play when I played it for the first time as part of the MCC. Everything just felt so off about it.

I always thought that Forerunners were human, it was all but confirmed in half of 343 Guilty Sparks dialogue. The whole name of reclaimer, we are reclaiming what we once claimed and lost. HOW DO PEOPLE JUST IGNORE THAT!?

I'll never forget how during the cutscene where Cortana is questioning what it feels like to be real, master chief *cocks his assault rifle on the wrong side. They don't even try to hide it bro. They show the other side of the gun and there's nothing to pull. Who missed that.*

Having humanity be forerunners makes more sense than 343's entire canon ideology.

Don't forget the Gravemind calling Chief the child of his enemy, and how a father's sins cast to his son. Goddamn, i hate we got stolen of an eerie and obscure part of the lore to be replaced with super bionicles and a mediocre villain in villanous power armor, 343i just wanted to do their own stuff from the beginning.

I love the point about humans being forerunners. I've felt like an absolute crazy person. I'm not alone

something I never see mentioned about halo 3 forge was how some of the most popular maps used a bug of some type on almost every object in the map. you needed to use some strange tricks to get props to clip through each other and create continuous structures and were limited to things like shipping containers and blast doors to create structures. truly insane levels of creativity and dedication for some of these maps.

I distinctly remember feeling very sick after the first few missions of the campaign. Everything looked wrong, felt wrong, and contradicted one of the most airtight conclusions to a story ever made.

Halo 4 was the last Halo game I ever played, after the art style change, the forerunner retcon and Karen Travis butchering the books I lost any love I had for Halo and now I treat it like Star Wars its a zombie franchise where the best years are behind it and never coming back.

Just gonna continue life with the notion that Halo died with Reach. 343 don't deserve the franchise.

"Why can't things just happen? What happened to circumstance? What happened to chance or luck?" Simple. Those things have been demonised as "plot convenience" and "lazy writing" because people think everything in a story must be as complicated, planned out and preordained as possible or else it's automatically bad.

I think chief's first line upon seeing the first enemy of the game has been the funniest plothole i've ever seen in gaming "I thought we had a truce with the covenant" What covenant? The covenant are gone, all their leaders who could have negotiated any truce are dead, what forces remain are miniscule at most because truth put all his eggs in one basket with everyone going to the ark, which mind you, got vaporized by a halo ring. You were THERE FOR THAT WHEN IT HAPPENED. YOU DID THAT.

I literally have zero clue how the fact that humanity are forerunner went over my head so fucking hard. Im a diehard halo fan played literally everything, shit its half my life. That makes every thing 343 did lore wise a million times worse holy hell.

You’ve verbalized so many of my criticisms with Halo 4 and 343’s Halo games and lore that I just can’t put into words… They’ve totally ruined Halo and to be honest, we should consider all of their material non canon garbage

Nah guys, the Covenant being back makes total sense. Just have a character say "Somehow the Covenant returned." Plot solved.

God, shitting on a well deserved shitting on 343 is giving me such a raging clue. This video is giving me the same joy as crowbcat’s video of bungie vs 343

I dont mean to be dramatic, but how dare 343? Im a huge fan of the lore, and humanity being forerunners tied EVERYTHING together. Bungie either didnt know, didnt care, or honestly thougt "hmmmm nah thats lame, how about this instead" and thought they could do better and change established CORE lore. Its literally why the coveneant were so bent on anhillating humanity! I always wondered what humanity did to offend them, as they never offered humanity a place in the covenant, and as the series progresses and you learn WHY they seemed so determined to wipe us out, it blew my mind. 343 came along and made halo into the avengers. AND made humanity just another ancient species, also at war with the covenant!? As the video mentions, this actually kind of justifies the covenant wiping out humanity!!!

After rewatching this for the gajillionth time, I just realised something: "How is the Didact alone in the galaxy after the Halo's activated?" Ignoring the 343 Forerunners existence as a plot hole to the Bungie games and sticking to 343 canon, how is he alone? The Halos take samples of the known existing life in the galaxy and then after firing, reseed the galaxy with said lifeforms. Why did the Halo's not do this for the 343 Forerunners? It can't be the whole "Forerunners are actually Human" answer bcuz 343 and their fans are hellbent on making sure that isn't the case due to Humans and the 343 Forerunners existing at the same time. And it can't be because of the Librarian's altering of our DNA to use Forerunner tech because it didn't alter our appearance in any way. Also good to know that in 343 canon, the Forerunner's nuked Humanity into the stone age twice. 1st with the HvF war, and 2nd with the rings(literal factory reset). So why aren't they more present in the 343 games? The Didact is the only one of his kind that is actually alive and the Librarian is basically a hologram with SOME physical abilities. The rest are not present. Did the Flood just kick their Voldemort looking asses so badly the Halo's didn't even bother reviving them? Is it that stupid and complex "Mantle of Responsibility" shit? So my only plausible answer(as of this post) is that the Halo's delete the race that activates them after they go off and revives everyone else. But even that is a weird answer due to the Didact's existence. So that plausible answer is that his prison ship is like Bungie's version of a shield world, a thing that protects people from the Halo rings activation, just on a smaller scale. But that doesn't make sense because 343 retconned the shield worlds. It's all so stupid and needlessly complicated. I'll admit, I could be wrong in my thinking and that it was explained in 343 lore, but I can't be bothered to check due to how bad it all is. Feel free to give me some info if you have any.

I’ve been saying that halo 4 was a multi million dollar fanfiction since 2012, thank you so much for making this

"Halo 4: Worse than you remember" Holy based, Batman. I've heard so many people try and say that it's well written but when replaying it with my firends who've never played the Halo games we both learned to hate the game. The only redeeming part is that it's not as bad as 5 or Infinite but that's no complement.

My headcannon is after halo 3 john had a dream and that was 4 5 and infinite

The forerunner part made me sad... So much set up for an amazing twist... Besides it solves a simple issue. Why would the Forerunners wipe themselves out and not reseed themselves along the other species? Well if they were humans then they actually did save their own species like every other...

Microsoft didn’t choose 343, they made 343. That’s why most of their games are shit, because even if genuine fans made their way into the development, they were overshadowed by shitty management and corporate decision making.

9:30 I wouldn’t call Reach “story-less”. The game has an incredible story! It’s smaller and more contained than the others, but I feel more emotion from the cutscenes than I do from most other Bungie Halos. I love them all, but Reach is one of my favorites. Calling it a plot-less run and gun is doing it a huge disservice.

Imagine that in Halo 3 Anniversary sparks gonna go like: "You are NOT forerunner..."

After watching this, I think the biggest disappointment in the gaming industry besides the state of gaming itself is the handling and state of Halo

Another way to approach the stuff about melodrama and characters screaming and crying is the interesting observation that the idea of professionalism has kind of vanished over time from culture and media. In real life, tons of people still carry themselves professionally, but in our media, characters behave more and more unprofessionally, and there's probably lots of reasons behind it. But the thing is, being professional, being buttoned-down and focused on the mission, being part of a larger organization, means not centering yourself all the time. It's the recognition that sometimes, it's just not about you. I think there's something really deep here that I'm only getting at the edges at, but hey.

Retcon the entirety of 343 Halo lore and reboot

Of all the stupid shit they pulled, I found their attempts to sell the Forerunners as their new-and-improved 'Fiverunners' the most insulting to both the franchise and myself on a personal level.

The idea of a Halo game for non-Halo fans is ridiculous, the Bungie games were among the easiest games to get into. Mechanics wise you had plenty of health, there were powerfull weapons and predictable but challemging enemies so combat wasn't difficult to get familiar with, and story wise it was so simple to understand but so intriguing and fun to follow. Then Halo 4 came around and I still don't fully understand the plot, then Halo 5 and no one understands whats going on, now with Infinite its just a mix of the two with some stolen valor from other franchises...

guilty spark: And I don't mean it metaphorically, or rhetorically, or poetically, or theoretically, or any other fancy way. You are forerunner. STRAIGHT. UP. 343 dev: its like its trying to speak to me, I know it!

Also remember that even the books like Contact Harvest specified humans were Forerunner by specifying what Reclaimer was

Halo 4 and 343 Halo at large was never Halo. Those developers openly DESPISED this series. It was only ever a glorified trend-chaser with a popular brand name slapped on the cover.

And now 343 brought back the Didact again and guess where his story is heading? The damn books. Edit: So guess who wrote Halo 4? Chris Schlerf: the writer for Mass Effect: Andromeda. Edit 2: Marty O'Donnell just confirmed that the Humans are and will always Forerunners on Twitter! WE WON BOYS!!!

I beat the campaign in a day and I literally didn’t play the game ever again.

I’m so glad someone hates halo 4 as much as me. I hate it more than any game and you nailed everything

Man I can't believe I completely forgot that 343i just straight up reintroduced the Covenant as it was in CE with barely an handwave of an explanation.

Wow. I didn't realize the Halo 4 villain was supposed to be a Forerunner. The writers for Halo 4 were so clueless, it's embarrassing. Actually it's almost like they wanted to ruin Halo. Why else would they make the Forerunners look so ugly?

Halo 4 = Force Awakens Halo 5 = Last Jedi Halo Infinite = Rise of Skywalker

Can you imagine how fucking great the Didact could've been as a character and antagonist if they stuck with Bungie's lore instead of coming up with a bunch of bullshit we get introduced to and immediately expected to care about? Imagine if his motivation wasn't this random anti-human crap that was caused by something we barely knew or cared about, but if he was racist against the Covenant because of the war and what they did to humanity? You know that beautiful, grand irony that they were exterminating their own gods? What if that was his motivation? Like, once Chief awakens him, the Didact is amazed and grateful that a Reclaimer is there and the plan worked. Then they team up against the Covenant, with the Didact regaining control of Requiem and the Sentinels to help the Infinity until they're both onboard. Then once he discovers more about the war and how these aliens perverted the Forerunners' legacy into genociding their own creators, and how desperate humanity was, he gets pissed and wants to restart the war and wipe out or subjugate all those species, even people like Arbiter and the Elites. And now Chief has to stop him because even he realizes that continuing the war would be pointless when everyone already achieved peace. We could actually get some dialog between Chief and the Didact instead of literally nothing, with Chief even sympathizing with the Didact's reasoning since he was a victim of that conflict and experienced it firsthand. (You know, a conflict we actually saw throughout 5 games and not just told about) He could even contemplate joining the Didact and for the first time, actually make Chief feel conflicted about something. And they could've even used his refusal as a defining moment of his character, that he's not just a weapon that's pointed at the enemy (which everyone should already know, but 343 wants to hammer home this dumb obsession with making Chief "human," even though being stoic has nothing to do with not being human, but whatever). Sure, it wouldn't be about saving humanity, but that's a great way to end the series in my opinion (plus you could say it's not about saving humanity, but saving *our* humanity. Yeah that's pretty cringe, but I'm not sure how else to word it while getting the point across). We and the Elites went from ruthlessly killing each other to fighting alongside one another, and now we're fighting to protect them because they knew what they did was wrong and are now our allies trying to help Earth rebuild. I think that would be a much better way to show humanity's growth as a species and what makes us unique more than this 'Mantle of Responsibility' bullshit, which is just gross and basically sounds like the sci-fi equivalent of white supremacy propaganda. Which is extremely weird since aliens.. might as well not even exist lol. But the whole "humans are special and deserve to rule over the entire galaxy, other species are backwards and would benefit from our rule" thing is as weird and out-of-nowhere as it is cringe.

in the words of a steam reviewer on Halo: The Master Chief Collection "5 amazing halo games, and halo 4. It's a good deal"

Halo 4 felt like fanfiction written by people who hate Halo.

Dude, I was late to all these games, just played 4 last year. I could immediately feel a drop in quality. Most notable was the complete absence of any kind of "sandbox", it's just a hallway shooter. I couldn't move 5 steps off-script. But also the enemies, the writing, music... Say what you want about Infinite but just playing it feels way better.

I just don't acknowledge anything after Halo 3 chronologically to be canon. In my mind Chief and Cortana are still drifting out there, somewhere....

43:00 seeing as Frank O'Connor can't even keep track of his own made-up lore, he probably just didn't know.

I was probably too young when I played Halo 3, so when I played Halo 4 and I saw their take on forerunner, I just accepted it I guess. But know that it's put so obviously in my face, I feel so stupid for not knowing it before.

Don't forget the Gravemind's statements to Chief: "Child of my enemy, why have you come?"

Halo 4 and Mass Effect Andromeda killed what I love by introducing the most ridiculous new villians... Honestly, Just like Halo, M.E. was only meant to be a trilogy from the start. It's not good to overstay your welcome - especially when your first three games are a first act, second act, and final act, respectively... Dammit I miss sci-fi shooting games with politics, governments, and military that are so cohesive you can set your fucking watch by the plot points and spend countless hours talking about all the possibilities based on the RULES set by the universe and its factions. Also, when I was 16 and playing Halo with my friend, we both started getting excited and giddy like "holy shit, these rings were made by ancient humans wernt they?!" it was so fucking obvious at 15-16 years old in 2001. It was such a great story.... And my favorite character, Cortana... The chick in master chief's helmet was a character that helped me connect even more to the protagonist. Lets face it, women weren't put as the protagonists of militaristic games like this, so it really helped sell that "blank slate" protagonist for me. When I realized how much time went by and that she had rampancy, I immediately felt cheated out of her arch. It felt to me the same as if they made master chief a raving ass hat... Showing it slowly happened would've been amazing, maybe even show master chief realize it and make a hard choice to keep her rampancy from getting out of hand BEFORE it starts making her commit self harm or harm to others. But NOOOOo... Cortana and MC were fucking ROLE MODELS, that did exactly what needed to be done, no hesitation. I needed a game like Halo as a 15yo who had just lost my only parent, my mother. Them ruining it and turning my favorite character into someone I didn't respect anymore was something else man...

never forget, YOU are forerunner gosh halo couldve even been an awesome movie trilogy

At minute 9 you talk about how they wanted it to sell for $60 to please Microsoft. According to Marty and his deleted big stage chats on discord, they wanted to sell it as an expansion earlier on the year for $30. It was MS execs who forced Bungie to delay the game till holiday season and charge full price. According to Marty and his other accounts, they wanted to surprise the fans and make them think "holy heck, I'm getting all this content for $30?". That's why it was initially called Halo 3: Recon and why it kept the Halo 3 tag. Edit: As much as I hate HR for retonning TFoR and Ghosts of Onyx, calling it a plotless run and shoot is inaccurate. It tells the fall of reach from the perspective of the Spartans on the ground.

One thing i think I’ll never understand when it comes to halo 4 kids is when they say its better then prior games when it comes to gameplay, and yet it suffers from pretty much all the issues the other sequels has and never tried to fix or improve them. needlers can bairly be dodged on higher difficulties without cover, an issue in most games save for ce (mostly) but made even worse now that enemies can super combine the player, theres a reason they never did in prior games. Jackal snipers can't one shot you anymore but their still a pretty cheap enemy that aren't exactly consistent Promethean encounters rarely have anti shield weapons to use on em and while their teleporting gimmick is telegraphed, it can’t be interrupted and it can’t always be predictable, plus they get their shields fully restored. Players shield is still relatively weak like h2 and h3 on higher difficulties (of course not as bad as h2) so I’ll still take that as an issue and it should have continued using health packs like reach, odst and ce. Great points for the story and i do hope to see your own issues with this game’s gameplay, those are some of my issues with it personally besides the regular old ammo complaint this game usually has

Halo 4 is what made me give up on the series. I rewatched all of the halo cutscenes from 1-4 today, and I realized why it felt so bad. The story and the writing are cringe, and frustrating. They convoluted the storyline by introducing The Diadect & The Librarian. Then the final boss is a quick time event, instead of an actual fight. Deus ex machina everywhere, and just eye rolling dialogue. Halo 4 should have never been made.

25:55 fan fiction would be written more respectfully towards the source material than this

I like to pretend that the 343 games are a coma dream the chief is having while adrift in cryosleep. That’s why everything is so different

Saying that Halo 4's plot is like fanfiction is an insult to actual fanfic writers. I've read Halo fanfics that have better stories, and those were written for free by people who actually love Halo.

Correction for around 12:30 or so. Halo CEA was NOT 60 bucks. It was 40, and it came with a code for six Reach maps that were remake of classic maps, plus a Reach firefight map based on the second leave of CE. It was also the first time the campaign for CE had online co-op. It was not a bad deal if you loved CE. They also added terminals that unlocked new cutscenes, which added some very interesting story for Spark, and one showed the pain the flood was putting Key through.

That Librarian scene is the worse cutscene I ever witnessed. That fucking cutscene is reason enough to debunk anyone who has the audacity to claim Halo 4 has a great story. Turning the Master Cheif into a destined hero is so not Halo. 343 and Microsoft never understood or cared about Halo. Bungie were the only ones to give a damn.

What bothers me is how Cortana's rampancy feels like a complete misunderstanding of how it existed in Marathon. Unlike the kinds of AI units that should go rampant, Cortana has a complex job that requires a myriad of responsibilities. She has no reason to be going rampant like, say, an AI meant solely to control the doors

One thing I personally disliked the most was "Master Chief being human" all he did was just being sad and coping for 3 games straight.There's more to being human than just being sad and coping.

In my opinion, one reason people are revisiting their opinions on H4 is because the game that came after it was EVEN WORSE. I personally hate it because it sets fire to a LOT of previously established lore and has the gaul to tell us "NAAAH all that stuff was just wrong".

I tried to explain to my friend who is a big 343 fanboy this, and he would just say it all makes sense just read the books. Oh and that Bungie is bad because they never explained everything, and left too much up to mystery. I don't have anything against reading books, but you shouldn't have to read them to enjoy a video game. There are 29 halo novels, and probably 10-15 graphic novels. It drives me up the wall. I bought this guy like ten games mostly classics, Doom 2016, Bioshock1-infinite, Mass Effect 1-3, and he refuses to touch Doom for being too slow, BioShock for being too boring. He played Mass Effect 1, but refuses to touch 2-3 because Mass Effect 1 had a sex scene. But oh Bungie is a bad company because Arbiter didn't do a whole lot in Halo 3, and Noble team didn't have any personality in reach. It's like Bro you defend 343 like they are Jesus.