As people on the Discord are no doubt painfully aware, I've been playing the heck out of some of the Halo campaigns I missed after finally getting around to Marathon 2. Here's a quick break down of my feelings on what I've done so far. Marathon 2 doesn't have a difficulty setting, but all the Halo is being played on Heroic.
If, uh, you've been following my adventures with Jason Marathon and John Halo, you can safely just skip to the bit about Halo Infinite unless you really want to see how I've rephrased complaining about Halo 4 Cortana this time around.
Marathon 2: Incredible writing and setting, solid weapon mechanics, absurdly busted shotguns, awful encounter design focused on teleportation-based ambushes, bizarre choices regarding gravity and air control, ultimately kind of feels like my deadbeat space dad abandoned me at a laser tag arena so he could go on a roadtrip to Las Vegas. Still not quite what the hosts of Abnormal Mapping would call an "eat your vegetables"-type game, but it's real close. For Carnage, Apply Within is definitely nowhere near as bad as Colony Ship For Sale, Cheap, but I'm still never gonna forget that hallway. It does say something that the Marathon franchise is host to two levels that have such standout moments of misery that I know their names.
Halo ODST: Bounced off this the first time because I was too Halo'd out when I got to it (I had played Halo 1, 2, and 3 back-to-back). Even at the time, it was obvious that it was not ODST's fault. I don't have much to say about it other than the typical all killer, no filler pacing of Halo gains so much from the downtime segments with the Rookie, the soundtrack is incredible, and the writers recognized exactly how much dialogue and story much its cast of 80s sci-fi soldier tropes can sustain. I'm not 100% sure, but it might be my favorite Halo campaign just because its lowest points are only mildly annoying at the absolute worst.
Halo 4: Knights are so good to fight. I really adore how they made an enemy type that forced me to relearn how to do aggressive play correctly after prior campaigns on Heroic taught me to stop doing aggressive play wrong. Not only that, but because Knights demand so much pressure to defeat consistently, they breathe new life into shotguns and rapid-fire weapons that had been mostly only useful as defensive options against the Flood. The campaign design is solid and largely inoffensive outside of a less-than-elegant Death Star trench run-type segment, though it feels about three Halo 4-length missions too long.
So, uh, how 'bout that story, huh?
...
Halo 4 has absolutely wretched storytelling. Miserable. It's the only Halo I've ever responded to verbally during cutscenes, and it was mostly to say "please shut the fuck up." It's obsessed with the Halo lore in a way that makes the setting feel minuscule instead of massive and unfathomable. Master Chief gets to become the Number One Specialest Boy thanks to Space Wizard Grandma's Magic Spell all the while his AI Wifemom has emotional breakdowns over her decaying ability to focus and control herself. It would be heart-breakingly true-to-life and deeply human if the camera could ever stop reminding me her breasts are all the way out and have been rendered with an adoring attention to detail like someone in management was using their clearly very talented staff as a way to commission pornography they didn't have to pay for.
I cannot stress enough that Cortana's design in Halo 4 is so extremely horny. I had to go double-check in case my memory was faulty. It's well beyond even the standards of prior Cortana designs, and it's amplified so much by being completely inappropriate for the story they were trying to tell. Cortana needs hot chocolate, a blanket, and a hug in Halo 4, not to be an object of sexual desire in the most distressing moments of her life. There are good ideas in there, something tragic and inevitable about Master Chief being unequipped to offer Cortana the emotional support she's always given him, both of them ultimately unable to escape the reality that even together they are products of their creation. They are still just a gun designed to be fired, and have been unable achieve the personhood they deserve. In some ways, I'm more upset that we didn't get the time and space that character beat deserves. But all of that is actively disarmed and invalidated by Cortana's character model. I have a screenshot of a Halo 4 scene with Master Chief and Cortana framed opposite each other that I have named malegaze.txt, and I can't post it here because I don't think it's safe for work. It is completely unsurprising to me that Halo 2 Anniversary tones Cortana's design down significantly and then 343 starts giving AIs clothing as of Halo 5.
Halo Infinite: I've only only played the early parts of the game previously, and so far have only revisited the opening stages. Ammo stations are probably a good idea for the open world segments of Halo Infinite. It lets the designers assume players get to approach every encounter with a mostly blank scorecard, and that's a valuable assumption to be able to make. For more traditional, linear Halo encounter design, they're kind of... bad's not the right word. It's different from prior Halo design priorities. I suspect I'm going to gravitate towards having one of a couple proven load-outs I'm comfortable with instead of the often very improvisational tactics of prior Halo campaigns.
The map design tho? The multi-floor battleship bridge of the first mission is amaaaazing. The grappling hook affords players the ability to reposition rapidly, but not constantly*, which permits encounter design where enemies can apply diverse pressure from multiple angles without requiring perfect play to counter it. It loses something with regards to safe vs unsafe approaches, but I think that's outweighed by players getting to use the level design as often as they're coping with the level design.
So far, the writing feels much, much better than Halo 4. First off, the game isn't catapulting the first chapter of a novel at me before I get to play the game, and secondly the UNSC pilot (who I don't have a name for yet) is completely clothed during the scenes I'm intended to empathize with him in. Honestly, I feel like you could probably play Halo 3 and skip straight to the already en media res opening of Halo Infinite and lose literally nothing. I'm told Halo 5's campaign is short, but I'm waiting on someone to be able to co-op it with me since they seem invested in experiencing my reactions to it.