Why Is Halo Infinite's Campaign SO AWESOME And... MEDIOCRE?!

[Music] they let me pick did i ever tell you that choose whichever spartan i wanted you know me i did my research watched as you became the soldier we needed you to be like the others you were strong and swift and brave a natural leader but you had something they didn't something no one saw but me can you guess luck [Music] this is uranus was i wrong [Music] this place will become your home this place will become your tomb [Music] there are those who said this day would never come what are they to say now i was both nervous and excited for infinite because it's hard to live up to the hype and legacy of a franchise you hold in such high regard ironically the biggest hurdle to halo's success since 343 took over from bungie has been overcoming its own legacy these games revolutionized the fps genre and with each one people expect a revolutionary title and the longer you keep people waiting and wondering the greater expectations become the more hype you generate the worse fan reaction will be if it doesn't go smoothly so how did things turn out does infinite make a big ass halo nerd like me happy satisfied fulfilled yes and kind of no it's complicated so many questions remain how does infinite carry the story forward after grabbing the sweaty chlamydia filled baton from halo 5. does 343 respect the legacy of the franchise was going open world the right direction and does infinite deliver everything you want in a halo campaign well let's call in a razorback get our [ __ ] rocked in by atriox and grapple shot our way straight into this in the time since guardians came out i've managed to get 1.2 million subscribers on youtube cure cancer and figure out how johnson made it back home in one piece my ass it's wild to think i started my youtube career making fun of halo 5's campaign i think about the act man i was and the act man i have become this is a special video because in some ways it feels like the culmination of all my other reviews one final effort is all that remains at last we finally have a real sequel to halo 5. i said a real sequel so let's recap how i and many others felt leading up to infinite's release after guardians everyone had more faith in bethesda not releasing a broken video game than they did in 343 i think it's safe to say we are all pleasantly surprised but also somewhat unpleasantly surprised infinite is the exact kind of game that the fans needed something that we could all point at and say we're out of the dark ages look at that [ __ ] halo is back and for that alone 343 you have my thanks for standing by him to the end back when halo wars 2 came out it had a promising story cutter the spirit of fire were back and the brutes returned in a new faction called the banished but by the end of it and even awakening the nightmare it felt like nothing really happened like they were just setting up for the next story which was gonna be way more epic and tie all the pieces together [Music] and then 2018 rolls around what's this a new halo game ah come on what's the catch this time i mean it's looking pretty good so far i guess i like the wildlife marines are backing oh a year after this the discover hope trailer dropped and delivered hope to us all yes things were looking shockingly good and a new year's on the horizon 2020 things can only go better from good news said 343 here's your first real taste of infinite's gameplay and one word could describe it all craig with a december 2020 deadline oh yeah there's no way this game's gonna be good it looked fun it didn't look next gen but then came a shocking turn how atypical of this modern gaming industry you mean they don't just want to [ __ ] out a game as fast as possible that extra year made my blue balls extra sore still looking back they made the right choice and eventually the sun began to peak over the horizon december 8th the start of the great journey infinite wastes no time setting the tone and paying homage the first thing we see is a halo ring which mimics the first shot of ce but the infinity is under attack our forces are under attack which is weird because the last we saw the infinity they were fleeing from cortana in her guardians we're just gonna run only until we could find a way to fight heading inside we see our boy master chief doing what he does best yes [Music] he's bigger faster [Music] straight up this is ten times better than the lock and chief fight and the action is punctuated by cortana's cryptic words if you knew how you were going to die how would you live your life differently which introduces some much needed mystery and intrigue two minutes in you already got me hooked so chief loses the fight with wait hold up chief doesn't lose tell him to make it count [Music] man atriox must be a total badass if he can three stock the master chief like that i can't wait to see what else he does in this game you said and i am the last face you will ever see the lie detector test determined that was a lot the scene fades out and we're introduced to master chief's new sidekick echo 216 aka brohamer aka the pilot aka mexican space trucker while trying to get the ship functional a hologram of his wife and kid falls out and starts to play and it's heartwarming man the way he embraces them up until it ends is this emotion i feel camera circles around and we understand that a lot of time has passed it's it's the beard that's your clue i like how the pilot doesn't say a word in this scene it allows us to feel his emotions just through his body language but there's no time to get sentimental because a friendly unsc tag just appeared on the radar this is unsc pelican echo 216 can you hear me this is johannes [Music] that piano man i knew it was coming and it still hit me this is that scene from the discover hope trailer almost the exact same with one minor change we need to run no we need a fight we need to run i need a weapon echo 216 attempts to jump-start chief's batteries and he says what we were all thinking prior to infinite's release i hope you're ready please don't die please [Music] yes we're going home the scene not only gets us hyped for what's in store but it's also that signal that moment that this is when halo is back even though infinite bombards you with throwbacks and references from start to finish it never comes across as desperate or forced in could you sacrifice me to complete your mission could you watch me could you sacrifice me to complete your mission could you watch me die even having the same tutorial gets me warm and bubbly inside look at the top light again that's it now the bottom one little callbacks like these signal to me that 343 is like yes we're not afraid to reference the bungie games this is a continuation of the halo you know and love but a brute warship the gebrakken pulls the pelican into their hangar and after seeing a new installation john117 wastes no time getting back to work what are you gonna do improvise close the door oh here we go yes yes we are gaming boys and girls we are gaming in a subtle twist the first mission actually mirrors that of combat evolved but instead of repelling alien intruders master chief is the alien intruder and what can i say it looks like halo it plays like halo i'm having a blast what what he threw one at me they can do that and for those that didn't play halo wars 2 you get your first taste of what the banister like and it's going to be real important that we understand what they're all about since they're the main enemies of the game wink wink but uh oh chief dun rattled the monkey cage after taking down chunky kong we meet who i assume is the last member of the dk he speaks to the bandits kind of like the prophets promising greatness and glory and chief needs to free the pelican from the clutches of the bracken it's locked down requires a hack okay and you can do that no this is the chief we've been missing don't make a girl a promise if you know you can't no so he scuttles the ship ashram shows up again and is like you i've seen you humans call you their savior covenant demon the banished prey [Music] there's an epic escape sequence you're running through this huge hangar bay you can move and grapple around this whole area no restrictions i must have spent like 10 minutes just [ __ ] about in this one room master chief gets blown out into space and then bam touchdown welcome back okay let's get out of here [Music] [Applause] if this opening mission didn't set a fire in your heart something is wrong with you with the bracken destroyed chief checks the status of nearby unsc infinity tags but all that's left from the wreckage is just dust and echoes chief needs a status report he gets an encrypted message locates the source and wants to go after it but brohammer's like are you kidding me why would we go down there the banished plan to wipe us out all of us and what you think we can stop them on our own it's beautiful to see chief barely react or stagger when getting punched and the pilot shaking his hands afterwards i love the dynamic between these two it's a common point in writing that dialogue is usually more interesting when characters are disagreeing with each other because we see them fighting for their beliefs and values echo 216's desire for self-preservation directly clashes with master chiefs no we do our duty protect humanity whatever the cost which is the best line from halo 4 so hyped they included that our duty as soldiers is to protect humanity whatever the cost but it's great to see a character like bro hammer that isn't afraid to challenge chief he might be a coward but it takes balls to stand up to this guy are you kidding me you might say oh well it's not like chief's gonna punch him or whatever yeah but i still wouldn't talk [ __ ] about mike tyson in front of his face if there were five cops around you know what i mean he's a [ __ ] you that was a piece of [ __ ] you know we're we're doing we're doing live tv i don't care what you're gonna do about it so they head down to a part of the ring to retrieve a mysterious weapon remind me to touch myself when i talk about the forerunner aesthetic in this game fighting our way through we see these things called silexes and at the end of the walkway lies what we're looking for it's been six months where have you been so this is the secret weapon she was brought here to delete the rogue cortana ai that was trying to enslave the galaxy she tells chief she was meant to be deleted after doing this yet she's still here so something went wrong and cortana must still be out there this wasn't the mission the missions changed they always do it's great to see chief and cortana dialogue like this so he takes the chip and we hear whispers that voice is cortana's no it's not her just dust and echoes so much happens in these first two missions a flashback of halsey and cortana appears re-establishing the first time chief and cortana were introduced damn look at those feet cut that cut and the two make their way back to the pelican not before discovering a dead spartan who's been mysteriously killed by an energy sword and of course we get a new power up chief arrives at an elevator but what's this it's already on its way down incoming but what if it's a friend it isn't he did not specify in how many pieces [Music] after the second mission i was confident that all my fears and concerns were alleviated i didn't have a single thing to complain about but you read the title of this video didn't you once at the surface we run into an open silex foreshadowing a future villain that is hopefully not going to be killed off before we know anything about them another silex but this one's open what do you think was in it another problem donkey kong shows up yet again makes some angry monkey noises the bay doors open and first time on an actual halo ring since 2007 you love to see it after destroying the forces and outposts framonius you plop the weapon into a terminal she snaps her fingers bro hammer picks us up solid ground and here's where the world opens mixing halo's traditional formula with an open world spin was a bold strategy cotton but it 100 percent paid off open world shooters are a tough recipe to nail down isn't that right johnny acting hands eight years i prepared for this and i can't even and he's still crying my biggest fear was that 343 would ubi softify the open world and make it a vast empty landscape filled with menial tasks but it's more like banjo-kazooie where all the interesting stuff is condensed into a smaller world the game is smart because it splits it off into sections so when you're playing the mission pelican down you're only situated on this one island you see they successfully combine the linear missions with open world freedom in a way that isn't just like entirely one or the other no part of exploring the open world felt repetitive to me or like i was doing chores i do my own laundry mom isn't that enough take the propaganda towers for example functionally it's the simplest type of activity find this thing shoot it but they take this simple task and add some entertainment some lore through the form of a grunt talking all this [ __ ] at you i'm out of a job and if i'm no use to whatever harry so and so takes over for israel i'm i'm dead where i stand and you wouldn't want that to happen right how right this is some of the funniest dialogue halo has ever had that's what makes you want to find the propaganda towers holy crap there's a lot to do in this game what really stood out to me with zeta halo is something i've bitched and complained about for years on my channel an aspect of modern gaming i thought we would never get rid of every map is surrounded by invisible barriers by invisible barriers invisible walls invisible [ __ ] barriers invisible barriers and kill timers press f to not pay respects because those are barely here mission accomplished good work i'll never forget when i was exploring the first mission of halo 4 and i was greeted with a kill timer i was like this [ __ ] sucks you expect to be corralled down a single path in games like cod but this lack of restriction on your ability to go wherever and explore was one of the biggest reasons i fell in love with this series in the first place [Music] even some of the greatest games i've reviewed don't offer the same level of freedom it's so rare for shooters to adapt the philosophy of well you're not supposed to go over there but you can if you take the time to craft a world as vast and breathtaking as zeta halo then let me explore it from every angle allow me to appreciate your work and be mystified and awe struck by it i also love the infinite gives you the grapple hook right from the start the grapple just opens up endless possibilities for exploring advanced movement tech zeta halo really feels alive marines and banished patrol all around there's a day and night cycle banished ships fly in the distance the backdrops are absolutely stunning i just about [ __ ] myself when i discovered a life pod straight out of the pillar of autumn of course there wouldn't be much point exploring if there wasn't cool [ __ ] to find some of my favorite moments are when i was just [ __ ] around climbing to random areas discovering [Music] this some of my favorite moments in this game are just [ __ ] around climbing to random areas and discovering a hidden music cue [Music] or a freaking red versus blue easter egg no no but i mean even if we were to pull out today and they were to come take our base they would have two bases in the middle of a box canyon what do you [ __ ] do so much time and effort went into these secrets and finding them on your own just makes you feel like a badass oh [ __ ] i just found a skull oh [ __ ] i just killed two red hunters and then it was right in this tree stump spoilers arbiter isn't in the story at all but at least you can find a doll of him and many other classic characters the valor system adds some light progression completing objectives will grant you valor that unlocks more powerful weapons vehicles variants and extra reinforcements at every forward operating base the fobs are basically fast travel points that always come with an audio log or two and allow you to call an ordinance the marines of course are wittier and funnier than ever i literally spat out my g fuel when i heard this the marines in this are so much fun they they add this level of comedy and light-heartedness to the gameplay look i'm not saying this is as bad as reach but yeah i know it's bad it's as bad as reach this sucks dude it's almost like they're just as excited as you are to be in a new halo game and can we talk about the music at the fobs [Music] [Music] now for you lord junkies out there infinite packs a total of 111 audio logs for you to dissect audio logs that 343 kindly use to explain away all the characters and events from halo 5. some are recorded by eshrim and the banished the unsc other spartans which all detail different aspects of the backstory there's also 4runner artifacts found in those glorious glowing rings on top of this 343 introduced the absolute best vehicle for an open world game the razorback this bad boy can fit up to five rocket launcher wielding marines two fusion coils and a heavy weapon on the back this [ __ ] is just so much fun 343 made gearing up for that next adventure an adventure in and of itself at times it felt like the scorpion was restricted and i was a bit disappointed that you couldn't call in any banished vehicles by the end but you know flying around in a wasp and banshee it's just so serene another activity is these mini boss encounters they're kind of like the shadow of war orc targets and after you defeat them you get a nice weapon variant some of the bosses though are literally just like and you left there thinking is there no one else is there no one else the weapon variants are great but hot damn do they destroy the balance if you crave a bit more excitement you are gonna love the purple missions these are almost like bonus levels they put you in a huge arena with multiple objectives and you gotta fight through tons of banished reinforcements as they keep pouring into the arena each one of these is like 15 minutes of pure ass kicking halo adrenaline and it's cool stuff like shutting down a banished salvage operation or a vehicle repair shop stuff that you would like realistically find the banish doing on the ring naturally there's other collectibles like the spartan cores which upgrade your equipment mjolnir lockers for multiplayer cosmetics and the skulls so the open world kicks ass but how's the core game play well the sandbox is just as awesome here as it is in the multiplayer the game is familiar in all the right ways but with some added twists i genuinely never got bored of fighting the banished or any of the bosses there's a ton of enemy variety enemies can even swap weapons which is really cool like tremonius will swap between a shotgun and the hydra one time i walked up to an elite who was grabbing a weapon from iraq i was like oh i didn't know they can do that the skimmers are kind of not as interesting as the drones which could fly around and hang on the walls and everything they kind of just float at the same height but infinite's ai is superb the game is also very generous with checkpoints so it's rare you'll end up repeating large chunks of the game infinite has completely changed my perception of bosses in halo i especially loved the spartan killer whose tone became much more horror-like and spooky i've heard people complain about the brute duo but i must have gotten lucky because i jacked the cool chopper and then he just disappeared and i love the like sentinel enforcer agitant resolution boss fight it gave me star fox 64 flashbacks infinite's open world successfully recaptures the magic of the second mission in ce but on a much grander scale 343 delivered on what they showed us in the marketing something that cannot be said for guardians still there's some missed opportunities unfortunately you can't get a squad of marines to hop on the sides of a scorpion big sad and the marines are unable to pilot their own vehicles even in any of the linear missions it would have been nice to see the world change in some meaningful ways with the fobs and marines it's a real shame that the falcon and hornet didn't return and it's shocking that the pelican still isn't a pilotable vehicle i love environments like the bottom of the tower or it's a massive arena filled with so many nooks and crannies you can literally play through some of these areas a hundred different ways however vehicle sections are still kind of absent from the open world there is such a thing as too much freedom and with the grapple hook it kind of nullifies a lot of the tension when you're going up against vehicles core gameplay leaves me with very few complaints but for a new halo game this is one i'm going to replay a lot that being said my biggest issues with the single player lie in its main missions for a variety of reasons the first being visuals in infinite's 15 mission campaign we essentially have three environments which for a halo campaign would be like if they launched the multiplayer with six game modes and only three playlists oh you got the brute theme going on with levels like warship cabrakan the open world foresty sections and the underground 4runner caves now there's some variation and certain missions offer a combination of the three but for the most part this is everything you're going to be looking at from start to finish in my first playthrough i didn't feel that the lack of biomes made the game any worse which is a testament to how strong the gameplay is in my second playthrough i went back to combat evolved jerked off to it and realized just how much better this game could have been let's look at all 10 missions from the original you start off in the interior of a ship fighting through corridors crash onto a more open forested land with ancient structures then it's night time and you infiltrate a covenant ship in the air the core issued me a rifle not wings you storm a beach fight through a winter wonderland investigate a spooky jungle filled with corpses and blood everywhere damn anyone got a band-aid for this guy eventually you have to push through a godforsaken structure in a mental stability test then you replay the snow level but with a much darker atmosphere return to the truth and reconciliation as it's besieged by the flood covenant conflict before finally coming back to the dilapidated ruins of the pillar of autumn even while reusing a lot of set pieces and locations combat evolved does a fantastic job of making every level look and feel unique you see something like the drippy turquoise coolant leaking throughout keys can become an iconic piece of imagery this visual will stick with the player because it's only used in that specific level there's only one desert mission in halo 3. in halo 2 we've got a much bigger story to tell and this story takes place in a lot of different places we're going to send the player on this galactic drop from the ruins of halo to the prophet's homeworld high charity to these amazing forerunner facilities in the atmospheres of planets the player is going to transition from mission to mission from one unexpected place to the next [Music] do you get what i mean if the drippy turquoise coolant was leaking throughout every other level then it wouldn't stand out in a halo campaign and that's my problem with infinite because so many of the levels are thematically and visually similar they kind of just blend together they copy and paste rooms from like the fifth mission all the way forward into like the last mission even halo 4 into an extent 5 had a decent variety of low cows even if the gameplay was poopy i just don't feel that same level of excitement exploring these vast beautiful forerunner caves when i'm doing it for the sixth time wow this place is exactly what you'd expect yeah you can say that again but where i really start to see the cracks in the gameplay is in the enemy encounters the basic setup for the majority of the game goes like this you walk into a room the enemies are in there already now you shoot them sometimes a few doors open where brutes grunts and all kinds of banish come into fight or a phantom might fly by with reinforcements or some drop pods fall from the sky sentinels spawn in those classic halo 2 doors but that's pretty much it it's building an encounter that always keeps people thinking it's a pretty big challenge is there anything actually going on in the room before i get there are guys just sort of patrolling is there another fight going on you know or flood gonna bust through all right you can really see what i'm talking about with the enemy encounters when you look at how halo games have introduced the hunters that's right the big dogs the bad [ __ ] of the covenant and combat evolved after fighting off 10 waves they plop down and you hear them halo 2 is like someone get a satchel on the gate and then in halo 3 it's like [Music] odst bucks like [ __ ] man hunters i don't have time for this but an infinite you kind of just like turn the corner and oh there they are just standing there who are these guys hunters and what do they do don't answer that just get rid of them so i can get us in now and reach it was kind of the same but do you get what i'm saying like there's an extra level of effort when you go into a room and like how do the enemies come in to attack you what there's no covenant here i think maybe nobody's home every mission has its own feeling and you don't just get that sense of oh i'm going from room to room and just killing more guys oh i'm going from room to room and just killing more guys going from room to room and just killing more guys room to roam and just killing more guys just killing more guys just killing more guys just killing more guys i'm going from room to room and just killing more guys we also have a separate storytelling method which we call the vignettes it's just a cool little thing where the characters are animated in a very custom way you can walk into an environment and you can see a couple brutes beating up a couple marines they're not just standing there looking at the door that you just came through pointing their weapons at you it gets the sense that there's something else greater going on in the story like in truth and reconciliation there's that room with the second story and you just can't get up there but you have to fight enemies that are above you which leads me to say that sometimes i wish they would take like the grapple away from you because you don't have that encounter of like oh [ __ ] they're up there and they're down here and i can't get up there i can't just cheese my way up to the top if you can set it up so that each new situation is the problem that the player has to solve like he can do that over and over and over again looking back i'm shocked at how predictable infinite's main missions got and how rarely i was caught off guard a lot of what makes halo campaign so replayable are the tactics enemies use against you there's a lot of creativity that seems to have been overlooked in infinite's design take a section like the bridges from two betrayals and assault in the control room the layouts are the same but the encounters are different enemy variety is mixed up there might be banshees or turrets the flood jump out from behind cover and attack the covenant grunts can be found sleeping so you can take some of them out quietly there might be a group of hunters on the other side that pelt you from afar glass allows you to fall down to the second level or shoot it while enemies are on top or if you throw a grenade an elite might jump off the side in hilarious fashion all of these dynamic elements occur in a section that takes the player two to four minutes to complete and that's only one example they have gravolifts in infinite but for some reason enemies never come down them to like attack you wouldn't it have been cool if there was a section where there's like four grav lifts and then enemies are periodically coming through remember those low gravity areas in cairo station or the way drones would fly around in crow's nest the giant elephant in halo 4 the way the flood would attack you from every conceivable spot or how about the [ __ ] scarabs in halo 3. as new events happen throughout the level your objectives are often changing like when the scarab comes in for example you know it's pretty clear that you've now got a new barrier to being able to complete your overall objective of the mission imagine random scarabs that roamed the open world there's also a complete lack of multi-faction battles one of my favorite things about the og trilogy was just sitting back and watching my enemies destroy each other look on the bright side for now they seem much more interested in killing each other even the cheesier less polished levels of halo's past are preferable like the elevator in the oracle i mean yeah you're sitting in one spot for like six minutes but the flood climb the walls around you you have a chance to take them out before they attack if you destroy the containment pods by accident a small swarm of infection forms are released sentinels harass you couple elites and grunts back you up it feels dynamic i'm surprised that the banish despite using unsc weapons are never seen piloting unsc vehicles do you get what i'm talking about most levels aren't made to deliver a certain experience because you can pick your weapons at the fobs at any time you know like at the start of the arc they give you a spartan laser it's a vehicle mission that's why they give you that you see you can't really create curated single-player missions when you give players all the freedom in the world some missions like pelican down in the road are awesome because they offer something totally unique but a good chunk of the campaign just feels like a boring bland corridor shooter when halo has always been a pioneer of exotic locations and expert level design well let's rewind back to the story and get your popcorn ready maybe a nice drink because i have a lot to say about it the events that led to infinite are all the backstory is left in the audio logs which means i gotta play detective and piece together all this crap the timeline confuses me and it's not just the ending there's a one-year gap between guardians and infinite well what the hell was the infinity doing that whole time at the end chief lock osiris and blue team met up with palmer arbiter and halsey on sang helios while lasky and roland stay on the infinity and cortana without being galactic super villain but the next time we see chief he's back on the infinity and everyone else is gone i guess that's convenient to my knowledge roland arbiter and osiris are not even mentioned and instead the focus is put on a bunch of new spartans we only hear about in the audio logs or find them dead turns out lock is doing something called breaker trip blue team has been reassigned to do something palmer is prepping the spartans or whatever so she was on the infinity and halsey is doing something somewhere now don't get me wrong it's great that infinite is distancing itself from halo 5 story but was it necessary to write out every other character and just like have them do nothing at the very least lock lasky and palmer should all be on the surface of zeta halo but we never see them why i guess it doesn't matter because what's really important is that this is a master chief story but i guess that's all it is when you boil it down one of my problems with 343's writing is they treat the master chief as the most pivotal important character in the universe now granted after halo 5 there was this sentiment of like where's master chief why is he only in three missions so i get why they wanted to put more focus on him i just think it's too much i love john and his dialogue here might be the best it's ever been but in the past master chief was treated as a vessel for the player to experience the story not the main focus of it himself i mean when you think about it he was just a smaller part of a larger unsc military you remember this video i did a long time ago well it seems the 343 forgot the military part of making a military sci-fi shooter which is ironic right because rescuing marines bases it's all part of strengthening the unsc's hold on the ring like that's the main context for the gameplay and yet we have no cutscenes with any marines what oh scratch that there is one i saw two of them run by at the beginning but that's just it the marines are treated as a gameplay mechanic and not a tool of the story besides bro hammer we only encounter one other person that's part of the unsc on zeta halo and then he dies immediately afterwards wouldn't it have been far more interesting to explore the ring while all the stuff that's going on in the audio logs is happening in front of us like grouping up with other spartans with lasky and all these characters it'd make us feel like a part of a bigger war instead of the only person still left fighting it and combat evolved especially the first six missions had a heavy emphasis on master chief the marines captain keys echo 419 johnson as they all explored this alien ring and tried to figure out what the [ __ ] they were going to do you know they bantered back and forth about what was going on in the level oh man we're trapped in here we're screwed we're screwed man stow the bellyaching soldier remember you're a leatherneck why do we always have to listen to this old stuff sarge watch your mouth son this stuff is your history it should remind you what we're fighting to protect hey does the governor want to wipe out this particular part of my history that's live some of the most memorable quotable moments come from the marines dear side kicking ass in outer space wish you were here i heard that jackass the biggest missed is we never got to see the battles on zeta halo on a grand scale or feel it on a personal level a scene of two giant armies heading to battle or showing the unsc preparing for war it adds build up it makes halo epic and that's what infinite is lacking military strategy we started with a series of events we basically set out like okay from this date on reach to this date we built a military campaign there's no lord hood type of guy discussing battle plans where to send the troops to war they're going to try to take our mack guns offline give their capital ships a straight shot at earth master chief defend this station yes sir i need a weapon right this way who is leading the unsc right now what happened to the spirit of fire and their crew or lasky it seems like the unsc now operates without any chain of command it makes no sense why lasky is being relegated to audio logs when he should have been down on zeta halo coordinating an effective resistance i don't suppose you're any good at clearing lz's on occasion which is why characters like lasky lord hood captain keys miranda tartarus shipmaster the arbiter all work so well and why they're necessary in a game that's about two military's [ __ ] fighting [ __ ] master they outnumber us three to one then it is an even fight all cruisers fire at will burn their mongrel hides they lead and command the countless marines and covenant you encounter you know all that shipmaster needs to say is you are the arbiter the will of the prophets but these are my elites their lives matter to me yours does not and just like that we get it this guy is a cool leader i mean if this is your first halo experience you don't even got a clue who lasky is or what he looks like with lasky as a supporting character eshroom would have someone to bully and something to do besides play flash games in the computer lab and we could have seen what eshrim is like as a commander of the banished how does he take the fight to the unsc most of the characters from five should have all been aboard the infinity at the start and then it gets attacked as master chief you fight to defend it ashram is on the bridge of the warship gabrakhan while atriox boards the infinity looking for chief that way we could see our villains be involved with the plot somewhat lasky would abandon ship with whatever forces he could while chief gets caught up with atriox all our characters start in the same place and then go their separate ways the infinity is destroyed chief is left floating in space when we arrive on zeta halo we find lasky there and in the six months the chief was m.i.a he's been beaten back by the banished retreated with his remaining forces to a secret base and is in total survival mode unwilling to make a push against the enemy and risk losing more soldiers but the reappearance of chief inspires hope amongst lasky and his troops check it out no way a spartan for real you better not be oh man he's here this would make the unsc struggle appear more desperate and make us feel more heroic when capturing fobs and doing stuff rescuing marines would be more emotionally engaging you see i'm far more interested in the banished unsc war on zeta halo than i am in chief in the weapons fetch quest to track down a mysterious race of aliens that we end up learning next to nothing about and all this military strategizing made the original five games feel just way more epic we shall cut into the heart of this infestation retrieve the icon and burn any flood that stands in our way because you saw how intense characters got and it built up the impending conflicts where's the rescue platoon wasted sarge and we will be too sir if we don't get the hell out of here you hit maureen no sir then listen up your job in halo 3 is the absolute salvation of humankind and the rest of the galaxy no more no less humanity is sort of down to its last defenses there's this overwhelming feeling of desperation this is either the best decision you've ever made or the worst all you can do is strap on your weapons and go to work i just think 343 severely limited the scope of infinite by focusing almost entirely on what master chief is doing when the story could have been so much more than that but i think i have an explanation for why the game is so narrowed on chief and believe it or not it's a stylistic one did you notice that every cut scene is basically one long uncut shot it's great in a lot of moments keeps the story grounded and personal and it sets infinite apart from a lot of other first-person shooters halo's never done something like this before and you have to appreciate how good the animations facial expressions are the dialogue it's top tier it looks next-gen so what do we do now we finish the fight yes sir every time it transitions into the chief's helmet it's just like [ __ ] let's go it's so perfect and we get to see every angle of these characters it makes me appreciate how much time went into mocapping these long extended scenes all at once but you are barking mad if you don't see how this limits the game's presentation i'm gonna take a blind guess and say that you uh noticed the same things i did that there is an overabundance of the chief and the weapon in a dark room type of scenes in fact there's so many i'm gonna put each one up on screen for you this is exhausting to look at what are they doing what i said what are they doing now god damn i'm getting so sick of answering that question you have [ __ ] rifle i can't see [ __ ] don't [ __ ] at me because i'm not going to just sit up here and play with my dick okay look they're just standing there and talking okay that's all they're doing that's all they ever do is just stand there and talk that's what they were doing last week that's what they were doing when you asked me five minutes ago so five minutes from now when you ask me what are they doing my answer is gonna be they're still just talking and they're still just standing there what are they talking about you know what i [ __ ] hate you just when this formulaic cinematography starts to get tiring is when you should throw in a pre-rendered cutscene to switch it up there's so many moments upon replaying where i feel like i should be seeing something cool but instead i'm looking at chief and the weapon just kind of standing this is there i see vanished everywhere did you hear me everywhere what the banister everywhere oh [ __ ] it'd be totally epic if you cut to a shot of the bandits looking up at the pelican like what the hell is that doing up there you get on the gun blast him and you see gunfire all around the pelican as chief holds on on the inside but now i guess just sit in the back with chief i don't know that type of scene just sounds more movie-like interesting we're being a lot more cagey about the way we sneak story in there's the cortana channel there's the perspective channel there's the letterbox channel which are the traditional cinematics all of those work together to tell our story across the entire game and i just cannot wrap my head around how we have such a glorious beautiful world to explore and yet we don't have any like establishing shots of it nothing while these uncut shots are great and creative just like cheez-its if it's all you ever eat you get sick of it now let's shift back to the story chief heads to this interrogation tower run by an elite named chatlock welcome to my tower master chief after beating the game and looking back at some of these moments i have come to the realization i [ __ ] hate the way 343 writes their villains i don't like it all of them have been written the exact same way since halo freaking 4 and i don't understand it the didact appears after being locked away for thousands of years force chokes the chief flies away in a giant orange ball and then does nothing until you jam a lego in his chest warden eternal shows up he talks [ __ ] you fight him and you fight him again and then after that you fight three of him while cortana sits in the back just like i wonder when master chief's gonna beat my cronies and arrive in halo wars 2 atriox is introduced in the coolest way possible crush is a spartan helmet and is like suspected [Applause] and then he just he runs away and does nothing atriox appears again in awakening the nightmare and do you see the pattern a bad guy shows up messes with the master chief or some other spartans and then [ __ ] off till the very end of the game while they just send all their cronies at you atriox and eshrum are very compelling villains but they're not presented to us in an interesting way it's a classic case of show don't tell let's start with eshrim now the idea of an old grizzled brute past his prime is an interesting angle having beaten the unsc you get the sense that he and the banish don't really have a purpose anymore they need someone to fight so when master chief arrives he's licking his lips at the thought of conflict a chance to make his story legend without challenge i grew weary lost alone but here you now stand but what does he do besides sit in the back and talk [ __ ] through a hologram nothing do i have your attention spartan no he kidnaps the pilot i guess but the problem is we never understand what's going on in his monkey brain what is extra i'm actually doing what is he thinking feeling because of the limited camera angles we aren't allowed to see the bad guys do much of anything except talk hear atriox words only appears after master chief does something now they tried to add depth to him at the end when you fight him and chief is like he was a monster yes but at the end he was just a soldier huh he was a soldier for what we don't even know hoping he'd done the right thing what questioning his choices what what was his purpose or goals now if they added a scene of ashram like looking through the archives of the great brute chieftains and their accomplishments then we might see some envy in him he might look at tartarus and be like damn i want to be remembered like him we might understand his quest to become legend amongst his people especially since the brute homeworld was just [ __ ] destroyed and he wants to preserve his legacy eshram stays in the same location the entire game he's bowser behold master chief i have captured your beloved princess yet you have made it through my dungeon of doom i was too busy doing nothing to intervene in the slightest but now that you are here at last we shall do battle look my point is we can only learn so much about a character or villain when all they do is talk [ __ ] through a radio shroom was just a missed opportunity let's talk about atriox who's been in two games and an expansion yet i still can't find the words to describe his personality so he disappears after the infinity and everyone's like where did he go ashram is constantly referencing the will of atriox but i don't know what that will is the harbinger and the banished share the same goal we fight together to honor the will of atriox what the [ __ ] is that even supposed to mean to you ashuram i leave all my hopes and dreams and you'll have to figure out what those are because i certainly won't tell you now atriax's motivations are a little bit more clear after his homeworld is destroyed by cortana he becomes mad monkey and hates humanity because cortana was made by humans uh so what does he do he attacks the infinity and leaves cheap for dead in order to piss off cortana but he also tries to free this mysterious race of aliens known as the endless to do what recruit them into the banished i think and that's why he teams up with the harbinger i think but why does he want to recruit them anyways like what what is he trying to do with the banished at all what does victory look like to atriox i don't know so with our two main villains left with ambiguous motivations and unclear long-term goals we have to question what the rest of the banished are getting out of this the aliens that make up the banished all have great personality that's been created over the course of two decades but as a collective we still don't understand anything about them what the what's their culture like what do they believe in or desire like what were they trying to do on the ark what are they trying to do on zeta halo was all this just deployed by atriox to reawaken some ancient aliens to get revenge on cortana you know what the covenant wanted i shall light this holy ring release its cleansing flame and burn a path into the divine beyond pretty much the prophets in halo 2 and 3 are basically corrupt religious politicians and the reason why the covenant is a thing is the because as the name implies is religious they follow out of blind devotion we don't understand why the banished follow atriox despite appearing in only two levels that's all that was necessary for the audience to understand what the heretic leader and his followers are about ask the oracle about halo how they would sacrifice us all for nothing look my point is it doesn't take much to establish clear goals and motivations for a group of weird aliens and if we don't know why our bad guys are the bad guys then we don't care the harbinger is just a vessel for the plot to progress and not really important or memorable on her own then we arrive at the spartan killer who appears at the start and then appears at the end hey remember these guys well of course you do because they actually did something what if the infection defiles the relic i care not for your little life remember when eshrim was like falling spartan from a distance but actually don't follow him in fact don't even appear on screen until the second to last mission okay like what the [ __ ] was the point of the swordmaster he was meant to be this badass spartan hunter but we only see his handiwork after the fact now i can't believe the words are going to come out of my mouth lock should have been in this game [Music] i've always loved the concept of lock being this unorthodox anti-hero kind of spartan like the spartans are always portrayed as heroic saviors so to have one guy that's like i'm a bit of a [ __ ] boy you know that's cool in those halo 5 trailers you were like what the [ __ ] the spartan is a bad guy i'm fine with blue team and osiris being cut but lock should have been down with lasky on the ring imagine if there were a series of side quests where you meet up with lock as he's tracking down and hunting the spartan killer when ashram said i have a job for you he should have followed it up with there is another spartan and at this point we wouldn't know who it is and we'd be intrigued like what every target is just another target buck maybe you run into lock next to a dead spartan and he's like looking for tracks and [ __ ] chief raises his weapon and then the spartan killer shows up in a cool cutscene fight there you go side villain established and now we have a character that can go off and fight him again this would broaden the scope of the story while still having chief and the weapon doing what they're doing locke's character could have been redeemed and given a unique dynamic with the chief since the two are no longer enemies and are now working together sound familiar now for comparison let's take a look at who i consider to be the best written villain in all of the halo games [Music] every single scene that tartarus is in he's doing something he's being a bad guy he laughs during arbiter's trial showing he's amused by his embarrassment he berates arbiter [ __ ] brands him with the mark of shame drawn quite a crowd if they came to hear me big they will be disappointed are you sure he's like he's such a cocky [ __ ] he does the prophet's bidding by taking felvatimi to the mausoleum noble prophets of truth and mercy i have brought the incompetent he chose up after the fight with the heretic leader zaps zaps343n is like that is the oracle so it is the brutes and their actions are also an extension of their leader we see how ferocious and primal they are as they usurp the elites as the new honor guards we see tartarus try to get a rise out of the arbiter as he escorts him to retrieve the index the human has killed the prophet of regret who was it who do you think the demon is here why looking for a little payback retrieving the icon is my only concern of course he backs you up in a phantom fighting the flood i'll do what i can to keep the flood off your back shortly after this tartarus steals the sacred icon from you takes credit for your work kidnaps miranda and johnson and then betrays arbiter and the prophets learn of this they will take your head when they learn fool they ordered me to do it tartarus brings the index to truth asserts his devotion to the covenant's cause the hopes of all the covenant rest on your shoulders chieftain my faith is strong i will not fail the flood attack we see him defend the prophets he takes miranda to the control room threatens three different people and then activates the halo ring like you see how tartarus is taking an active role in every scene he's in that's what a villain needs to do i think tartarus is someone who you really will at the beginning trust a little bit but then end up end up loathing and i think putting a bullet in his head is going to be extremely satisfying for people but when you look at all the scenes with ashram and i'll put them all on screen i can't help but wonder why this dude is just sitting in the computer lab talking [ __ ] through a megaphone could they really not think of anything cool for him to do the didact warden eternal rogue cortana atriox ashram the harbinger these characters are interesting from a design point of view but none of them have any presence to me because they don't actually do anything the only exception is del rio but he was just such an over-the-top [ __ ] you couldn't take him seriously to begin with unlike 343's villains which typically have confusing unclear and ambiguous motivations tartarus only needs two lines of dialogue for the audience to understand why he does what he does awaits you and the rest of your incompetent race and i darturus will send you to it these are all the reasons why i don't care about infinite villains and why i don't feel what's at stake so why is this not an awesome and bad review act man you seem to hate the story well the saving grace is found in these characters and the fan service it's really in the small moments where infinite pays homage that i find myself holding back tears here in the halo theme blast during that part of the road was so [ __ ] epic or when chief is flying towards the pelican these are the parts that stand out to me not the constant talking in a dark room the game takes bits and pieces from all the other games and manages to tie them all together in service of its characters you're not a machine you can't be that closed off and soldiers aren't machines we're just people the throwback quotes from cortana were always nice and when captain keys showed up voiced by pete [ __ ] stacker i [ __ ] myself twice and you know what i'm gonna go out on a limb here controversial hot take this is the best master chief has ever been written i trusted you why can't you do the same you don't understand try me cortana he's gone dead all that's left are echoes and sooner or later they'll be gone too will they to combine the stoic bad ass one-liner delivery man with the grounded human aspect of halo 4 and to make the players still feel like they are master chief i never expected they could deliver that so flawlessly throughout he struggles with his mission to destroy cortana and then the weapon likely holding some regret over his actions in five she saved me but i couldn't save her while i got bored of what i was seeing a lot of the time i never got tired of what these two were actually saying while a little cheesy at times i loved the weapon and how she became her own character she's still lighthearted and jokey but in a naive cute kinda way and by the end she must accept the fact that despite being in a new relationship master chief has not gotten over his ex now people complain about the pilot i get where they're coming from but disagree though he complains a lot uh wouldn't you if you wanted to get the [ __ ] off the ring and save your life but this seven foot monster keeps saying no we need to fight chief and the pilot play off each other so well the pilot gives master chief new perspective and he realizes there's more to his existence than just the next objective you know chief has always been in go go go mode so being stuck with a fish out of water who doesn't want to fight is something he doesn't know how to deal with so when the pilot has a breakdown and all the emotion comes out not this i'm not you chief is able to slow down and remember who he's really fighting for people like him you should leave me here with the rest of the carpets we all fail we all make mistakes it's what makes us human i'm sorry chief but how have you ever failed i should have protected cortana stopped everything from going wrong i failed her i will not fail you brohamer struggles with motivation and hopelessness and it's that last scene of him when he's so excited to see chief back and he's fully embracing this new role he has that sold the character for me and finally we say our goodbyes to the real cortana look at us we just keep saying goodbye don't we but this isn't an end it's a chance to make amends to rectify mistakes and it starts here in these final moments i know what my last mission is i need to make sure you two learn from my mistakes become stronger because of them i chose well master chief i really did [Music] now it's up to you is halo infinite an awesome video game yes does it have some mediocre elements you betcha but i think i'm willing to admit that 343 has earned the mantle of responsibility in heralding the future of this franchise i'm intrigued in where you're going with this 343 i'll be waiting and that is why halo infinite's campaign is so awesome and mediocre [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] listen up spartans it's steve downs the voice of master chief sierra 117 subscribe to the act man for awesome content and finish the fight master chief out

Channel: The Act Man

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Keywords: halo infinite, halo infinite review, halo infinite campaign, 343 industries, Halo infinite campaign review, act man, the act man, master chief, halo infinite ending, halo infinite easter eggs, act man halo, microsoft, halo infinite gameplay campaign, xbox series x, halo infinite trailer, halo mcc, halo 2, cortana, halo infinite gameplay review, halo infinite walkthrough

Id: noKLXT9m8z0

Length: 71min 33sec (4293 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 15 2022