Halo Infinite's Disappointing Campaign

#HaloInfinite's campaign is a bit of a mess and I'd like to talk about it. Also, I did my best to pronounce Jega "Rdomnai. Please go easy on me.
0:00 - Intro
4:29 - Infinite's Open World Works But Is Flawed
10:26 - Cortana And Infinite's Story
19:38 - Outro
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[@Tao_Tology]

"Infinite's story is more about what immediately happens before it and what's going to happen after it than what actually happens during it." 🎯

[@clovergambit3051]

I would've loved the campaign more if the villains actually did stuff in cutscenes, nine times out of ten 343's villains mess with a spartan and vanish. Escharum does nothing 90% of his screen time which is disappointing.

[@Amy_A.]

You're gonna be huge one day. You've got a great voice for this, your scripts are captivating and well made, and the video itself does a great job at supplementing what you're saying. Keep it up!

[@TotallyNotMark]

Incredible review. Articulate, succinct and well thought out.

[@TheGamingDiscourse]

Thanks very much for the kind words! Also, glad to see your situation with Toei ended well. We were following the news and we dread the day that something similar happens to us lol Hope everything continues to work out smoothly for you!

[@EvilPhoenix007]

@@rhinogeek9600 cope 343 fanboy

[@ayyq6795]

Infinite is missing the magic that is present in Halo 1 - Reach. A lack of memorable missions and set piece kills my interest in replaying the game. Other Halo games had interesting stories on which events happened, Infinite lacks this. Also Infinite lacks interesting and dynamic multiplayer maps like Sand Trap, Guardian, or High Ground. It also lacks Forge and Forge World and working Custom Games. Armor customization is completely gutted as it's the most restrictive system we have. All of this contributes to what I feel is one of the most disappointing Halo games in recent memory.

[@TheoriginalBMT]

Yeah the missions that you just want to play again and again. Can't exist in an open world.

[@charlesmartiniii1405]

How recent is that memory lol

[@SpartanBrix]

Honestly? I don’t remember playing a mission and wanting to replay it. I remember exploring Zeta Halo for the first time and spending eight hours playing after school on launch day, enjoying every second of it. I remember rescuing marine squads, crashing FOBs and Banished bases while trying to grind for those cool weapon variants. While yes, the visuals were the same most of the time, I still loved playing it just because it looks beautiful anyway. Me personally, I really liked the story. It wasn’t what I would’ve chosen, but I just feel satisfied. It really reminds me a lot of CE. I’m actually really hyped for the Rubicon Protocol so the audio logs can get expanded upon.

[@Goji938]

That “he’s just a soldier” line made me crack up. Like it comes virtually out of no where, the game is doing its best at trying to make Escherum a tragic villain but it either doesn’t fully commit, or it rushes through who he is as a character. Idk, this was a weird one.

[@nutyyyy]

Chief should have nothing but contempt for pretty much all Aliens at this point. He's spent 28+ years fighting them. With the only brief moment of cooperation being the Arbiter and Co. But even then, that was basically to save the world. The Aliens in Halo have almost no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

[@Goji938]

@@nutyyyy i’d fuck the shit outta arbiter if i was in chiefs shoes

[@lustrazor44]

I ended up just grappling, rocket and sentinel beamed the whole game. I saw no reason to change up what I was doing. As for the banished being interesting…I disagree. I don’t even know what their motivation is. Why do they give a shit about the UNSC if their issue is with cortana? The UNSC is fighting her too…

[@PeachesandCream225]

Yeah the Banished are a mess. They have a noble origin of breaking free of their oppressors (the covenant) and then they just act like generic villains. Like why are they even attacking the USNC

[@DigitalApex]

343 is literally three for three on bad Halo games. Nice.

[@mr.highschoollocksmith6080]

Seriously, your channel is criminally underrated.

[@iunnor]

I never thought about that. But it does make it feel a little bit “cheap” when Cortana sacrifices herself for the 2nd time in 3 games.

[@GloriousAssam]

Thank you, I'm so glad I don't remember much of Halo 4, and didn't play 5 and won't play Infinite, I'm going to stay on the timeline of the original Bungie and Halo Reach, Cortana is alive, we have mod tools, we will take the franchise from here. Thank you!

[@thenetpagan]

I'll keep it above 50 here: I couldn't finish the campaign, it killed me with boredom. I just couldn't finish and moved on to other games. It's sad coz Halo 3 is one of my favorite games of all time. This documentary by MarcoStyle just opened my eyes as to why this halo didn't resonate with me: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mZCZnJqsaL2qfpI

[@FernandoFlores-oh9cy]

What a great review. Reminds me why I'm subscribed to this channel.

[@wereitsoeasy189]

I hated how much everyone talked through the whole game. Every thirty seconds a dumb quip or child Cortana telling me how I’m such a great guy

[@htf2387]

Really great and well thought-out analysis of Infinite.

[@Ripjaws95]

Couldn’t have said it better myself. My disappointment in this outing of Halo is immeasurable and my year has been ruined.

[@ARuiz-eu3hk]

Yeah basically infinite story was juat pure damage control story by necessity, not by plan. Can't truely fault its clean up attempt here as it was setup to be basic. Just really sad. Also the whole "Logic Plague" excuse makes it poor storytelling for Cortana's turning evil like it wasn't all on her own choice.

[@Phillibetrus]

In terms of the story a soft reboot isn't going to cut it for me. I want a hard reboot. I despised Halo 4 and 5 was even worse, so just acknowledging those 2 is a painful thorn. Ignoring those bits, Halo Infinite just on its own is pretty much the first half of CE with a little character reflection, ending with the endless reveal, while pretending that it was done better than the flood reveal which I find laughable.

[@RyneLanders]

The biggest problem with open world games, whether this or the numerous Ubisoft ones, is that the game always feels so slow and uncaring about you as a player. Because the game has to proceed at your pace, there is never any rush. You can do whatever you want for however long you want, so there's never a sense that you're participating in a larger war and have the pressure of time against you as we did in evey single previous Halo game. Rather than being a small part of a larger narrative with multiple moving things happening all around you (ala Halo 2 and Halo 3), the entire story is on your schedule, and the enemies, rather than having their own motivations and being cunning, ruthless, fully fleshed out characters are just mindless checkpoint sets pieces that literally wait until you get around to handling them to do anything. This was most obviously driven home at the Riven Gate scene, where the loud speakers kept narrating how the enemies needed to now focus on you and stop you as you brought down first the external gate, then the internal ones. While I get it's a system of gates, there was no greater Banished pursuit of me before or after that. There was nothing that those enemies were doing for the greater narrative except to be right there as a gate for me to spend time fighting through. They were in essence simply a larger set of the small packs of enemies that also dot the landscape sitting at their little predetermined camp grounds waiting for you to come by and engage them. And they'll wait as carefree and unhurried as ever for as long as you want, because there's nothing bigger actually going on.

[@ThemePVT]

Desperately need a new vehicle, the razor back barely counts as one …

[@nooralamgir3703]

its literally just the troophog lol

[@bobafett3035]

I enjoyed Halo Infinite’s campaign despite its major flaws, but I really wished there was a mission with a large battle similar to The Covenant from Halo 3, and the fact that there wasn’t a banished scarab fight is a huge missed opportunity.

[@ksks6802]

Any terminal interface Cortana interacted with (inserted into) should have bits of Cortana, a unintentional backup if you will. Infinite should have been about revisiting all those "interfaces" revisiting levels from halo 1 to 4 and recompiling cortana. Not a retool, but interesting takes on previous locales.

[@KRawatXP2003]

Good review, me like it.

[@TheNerdForAllSeasons]

"Nor give a satisfying conclusion to 343's rocky trilogy, even though it seems within its ability to do so." Actually, it can't. You can put as pretty a bow you want on a cold hard lump of dogshit, it's still a lump of dogshit. You can't save a trilogy in the 3rd act.

[@hookinsu7842]

I played through Halo 1-4, Reach and Odst just last year. Also played Halo 1 after it came out

[@templarkid.]

you just got a sub

[@mcreal109]

Master Class 👉👍

[@mikelreborn3254]

Like what Disney did to starwars...

[@riftshredder5438]

Remember the good old days when Halo was actually rated M?

[@Alphalete7]

It's not that hard to learn equipment and grenade combos. Think of it like a fighting game. Maybe Doom Eternal made this a non-issue for me due to multitasking.

[@ShadowDrakken]

Halo Reach was my introduction to the series, and I loved it. It got me to try the original games, and to purchase Halo 4... and none of them came anywhere close to the same feeling that Reach had. They all felt flat, and the difficulty curves were all over the place. I just couldn't enjoy any of them.

[@man3358]

I started with halo 4 and went back and loved every game I played even more, especially reach

[@flabbywall1780]

It is. But 5 & 4 were just shit.

[@omarchehab7452]

Excellent review, although I disagree with the overall consensus. Halo Infinite is not a particularly bad Halo game, I just feel that it is simply kind of an attempt to modernize Halo CE (simple story, more mystery). It still was leaps and bounds above H4 and H5, and I even prefer it to ODST and even Reach (sorry guys). Yes, it is basically a part 1 of 5. Overall I think it is a good campaign with excellent gameplay with an open world and linear levels that can leave a lot more to be desired. I feel that 343 has done an excellent job overall, though. I honestly think some people give it a little bit too much hate because “it isn’t like the old Bungie games.” However, I feel you and the Act Man have given the best and most accurate reviews so far.

[@alexandersaltsgaver8194]

If you’re making a campaign that’s supposed to last for the first 1-2 years the game I out until you can make DLCs it should not be a “1 of 5” it should be a full campaign.

[@omarchehab7452]

@Alexander Saltsgiver I agree. I’m not saying it’s perfect but you have to at least give the campaign credit where credit is due rather than simply calling it horrible like some people do. IMO the campaign is the only salvageable aspect of the game at the moment and 343 should at least be commended for that, despite the deplorable multiplayer status

[@thetruestar6348]

All they did was abandon the story they had before and skipped the interesting things at the start the whole campaign is just flashbacks to offscreen events that should have been at least the first half of the campaign

[@gabrieltejada1697]

Nope, the story was bad and boring with nothing but hologram cutscenes telling us all the interesting stories that already happened while Chief was “asleep” in space.

[@z304legend]

Does it really say the best credit seller at the end of the video is the 100$? Who the hell is buying that, rich people, spoiled kids? I would of said the 20$ ja the best seller

[@TheDevilHydraProdsXXI]

To say Infinite had a bad campaign is an understatement, I personally think it has the worst campaign in the entire Halo franchise, it's just an overall terrible game. They killed off Cortana after she was built up to be the main villain, her entire Empire practically died overnight, and we don't even see it. The Banished are HORRIBLE villains, they're boring, cliché, and obnoxious, I preferred them in Halo Wars 2. Escharum is a boring, atheist version of Tartarus, the map is not helpful in the slightest, the lack of splitscreen co-op is a joke, customization is awful, the updates only focus on multiplayer, and underwhelm regardless, and of course, 343 has been ignoring complaints and a declining fanbase. 343 should be shut down.

[@EvilPhoenix007]

​@@rhinogeek9600"customization is literally Reach but better" - 🤡

[@goodsoup6085]

I actually liked lasky I hope they bring him back. definitely agree with you that infinite feels like trying end one story and make a base for a new one. I just never felt like I was apart of what lead up to the events of infinite, obviously with them just telling us what happened after halo 5 in cutscenes but also not playing and fighting to save the ship/ crew before being launched into space. why do the banished want to wake the endless or how they found out about them. will properly be answered but it just feel kind of blank, but I guess that's what they wanted a blank state and if it leads to good story dlc in the future I'm happy because I enjoy the gameplay itself. and the infinity was super powerful and felt like a safe bet for humanity in the past games, but as the endless are potentially very powerful as they came from a time with the forerunners and ancient humanity I hope the infinity isn't destroyed because I really like that ship XD, maybe adrift or crash landed

[@Leman.Russ.6thLegion]

NO one cares about Cheif's vulnerability or his feelings. It's Clint Eastwood in power armor, running and gunning.

[@nutyyyy]

Can't emphasise this enough. Beyond a few lines of dialogue he shouldn't be much more than a cyborg. He doesn't need to be. All the other elements of Halo are far more interesting.

[@Frank_West]

This is a weird video for me. On the one hand, I agree with all the negative points you brought up, but on the other, I don't agree with any off the positives you pointed out. I've never agree so much with anyone, while also disagreeing with them an equal amount. Maybe you're just a nicer person than me or more lenient, but I'd argue none of your positive points are correct. I think HI fails in every way and has no up sides, no redeeming qualities. And if we ever want things to get better, I don't think we should be pointing out its positives, even if it had any.

[@phoevo8898]

I mean I enjoyed the campaign. Its not perfect and corny at times but they manage to make the campaign linear while leaving the open world for side missions and exploring.

[@OnettBoyXD]

The moment I heard fascism and colonization brought up I knew I had to press dislike. Im trying to find someone with a personality not your typical left leaning generic white guy who makes video essays.

[@Carl-ks7cy]

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