Played through the entirety of Halo 5: Guardians with a couple friends last night. I... I think I liked it? There were things that I absolutely adored, the gameplay, everything about Sanghelios and the Arbiter, the vast array of locations that all felt so incredibly and distinctly Halo. There were things that were just ok like the majority of the characters, which ranged from being cool characters without much of a distinct arc (Chief, Halsey, Buck, Locke) to complete non-entities, with the Arbiter's return probably being the biggest highlight for me, and Exuberant Witness being a really endearing new addition to the canon right off the bat. And then...the story. I just don't know. I really liked Halo 4, for the most part. Halo 5: Guardians doesn't have any of the focus that Halo 4 has, but I think I'm ok with that. In the same way, after the enclosed Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2 zipped around the galaxy as well. Where Halo 2 had narrative focus, however, I don't think that Guardians really ever did. I never felt as immersed in the game as I did with all of the previous outings (though playing co-op may very well have had an effect on that). Mostly though, I just can't decide if I am ok with the direction that the game decided to take Cortana. On one hand, I think the idea of an artificial intelligence uprising is a fascinating one (albeit not very original) and one that can very well give the sequel more focus than this game had, but at the same time, having Cortana responsible for the death of so many just rubs me the wrong way and retroactively tarnishes Halo Reach and the original trilogy to some extent. All of the sacrifices made for Cortana, and that Cortana made for us and for the effort against the Covenant, seem for naught. Noble Team died and Chief went to hell and back to protect and preserve Cortana and while she was key to winning the War, the fighting never really stopped and she ultimately brought forth Covenant-level destruction herself, with more surely to come. So I don't know... there were things I liked, there were things I didn't. I probably need to give it another playthrough solo to really immerse myself in it more than I did on this playthrough. I will say, whatever the hell comes next in the main narrative, it'll be really interesting to see how 343i follows up on this and where they move next. This is all way bigger that Jul and cannot be swept under the rug in the opening mission of Halo 6. I don't know if they're ever going to be able to make this development really sit well with me, but I'm curious to see how they handle everything moving forward, govenvthe fan backlash here.
After Halo 5: Guardians, I played the first four missions of Halo Wars 2. After pumping more hours into the first Halo Wars than I would probably care to ever find out, it was really cool to jump into a new game in this sub-series. For the most part, I am really loving this so far. It's great getting to catch up with the crew of the Spirit of Fire and have them now directly planted in the contemporary Reclaimer Saga portion of the Halo timeline (which I'm sure means that crossovers with the Master Chief and his crew are abound). Returning to the Ark is interesting, and while things have certainly changed (I'm sure the canon reason is that things are different because of the repairs being done since Halo 3, but really I'd imagine it's just because the design of an FPS wouldn't work for an RTS), the game aesthetically feels much closer to Bungie's Halo than either Halo 4 or Halo 5: Guardians have so far. Atriox and the Banished seem like really interesting villains so far and I look forward to continuing with the game, whenever my friends and I get back together for another Halo night.
So yeah, while I'm not sure how on board I am with the series' recent developments, I remain interested in seeing what they do with these pieces for the next installment. At the very least, it feels good finally being almost caught up with the Halo games again.
