Mask

So here’s this!

I have a LOT of thoughts on this. And honestly we still know so little about the game so it’s a total guess what to actually expect. So these feelings are just on what’s shown here and not on my expectations for the final release later this fall (as if any of you are going to take the time to read all of this lol):

Positives:

Master Chief and Brohammer’s friendship is fantastic. It’s kind of funny having someone who doesn’t respond to Chief’s Spartan like nature with awe, but instead “wtf is wrong with you, we need to GET TF OUT OF HERE”

An open world has potential. If it’s done right. I’ll hold out hope…

CHIEF’S ARMOR. Don’t need to say anything more other than I need to start building it ;_;

The Banished were fantastic enemies in Halo Wars 2. I’m excited to get to directly pew pew at them.

Negatives:

Gun designs were boring. I honestly could barely tell when Chief switched weapons. Halo’s weapons use to be iconic, every single one was unique and memorable. You looked at it and it was clear what kind of weapon it was, yet was ingrained within the sci-fi / fantasy elements that made Halo what it was. Now Halo weapons just look like every other shooter’s guns. I don’t understand why the art designers insist on muddying the very things that made Halo stand out just so it can look like all the white noise around it.

Advanced movement has honestly hurt Halo ever since it was introduced in Reach. And just like the boring weapon designs, it only serves to blend Halo with every other shooter around it, where as it could be offering something unique and different by returning to it’s arcade roots.

The open world… I hope the final product delivers on this because what we saw in this game was just empty. It looked like you could travel to every mountain in the distance, but for some reason I just felt like there was no reason to. There need to be things to actually do in the open world otherwise all it did was pointlessly pad out hte campaign so they can brag about a 20 hour campaign that only actually had 5 hours of things to do in it, and the other 15 were just trying to get from point A to point B

It seems like the story entirely abandoned where 5 left off. And don’t get me wrong, I consider Halo 5 a mistake. A Last Jedi level screw up that only harmed the narrative and gave people less reason to stick with the franchise. BUT I prefer a clean and coherent story, so Cortana and the Created suddenly just having no presence in the galaxy after literally conquering it in the previous game is concerning.

And that’s all for now. Again this is just my impression on that demo alone. Either way I am happy to see Halo getting some new content.