system
A chat on subreddit /r/pcmasterrace
human
Was the campaign fantastic? I've heard it was a very lukewarm meh from friends. Not terrible, but kinda bad story wise, suffered due to the open world through lack of direction and had good combat.
gpt
As someone who has loved the series since I was born here’s my two cents.

TLDR: No, it’s not “fantastic”, several major shortcomings that in my eyes are ridiculous. But it’s still a damn good time.

Gameplay wise it’s fantastic, it feels like Halo, and it’s been a long time since I’ve felt like that. I think the open world was a cool concept, but they flopped the execution. Feels empty, lifeless, and small. Story wise, for me it’s simultaneously the best since the original trilogy, and the worst in the series. The story itself, our goal, and the overall all plot is crap in my opinion. 

They had to fix the mistakes of 5, and tbh they executed it the best way they could have. The whole letting go of Cortana thing was sweet, yet it would have been more poignant if we didn’t already do this but better in 4. There is so many unexplained plot lines, and what is they went the way of the Dark Souls and or MGSV and explained it all in lore codecs. Halo always gives you the main course, then allows you to add on sides (extra lore/books) to allow you to elevate that main course. But they fucking don’t explain anything about what has happened since, where is Lasky? How is the Infinity? WHAT IN THE FUCK ARE THE ENDLESS? And honestly, why should I care?

To praise the game some, Master Chief himself is actually fucking amazing. Personally I adored the extra characterization they gave him in Halo 4. To me it never felt out of character how he acted in that game. W-we don’t talk about 5, but Infinite nailed the dichotomy between John, The Weapon, and The Pilot. The Pilot has been criticized as being a winey bitch, but like, I mean who wouldn’t be? You’ve been stuck on a fucking Pelican for months, with nothing but a short video of your family. You’ve lost all hope, then your ticket to get back to them finally arrives. And that ticket instead wants you to rush straight into the enemy. Hell I’d be a little pissed too!

The scene where the Pilot finally breaks down and John “comforts” him made me feel some sorta something. And the way John does it is so cheesy and funny, he gives him the cookie cuter soldier line. But it’s so perfectly in character for John, the fact he tried to do so is so amazing to me. He hasn’t had a chance to feel human, but with the death and subsequent death again of Cortana, he’s finally been given the chance to feel some sort of emotional connection to human beings. It wasn’t even a juxtaposition at all, it felt completely natural to me. It didn’t feel forced, it didn’t feel out of character. All of this in a few lines and some simple body language, he didn’t even take the damn helmet off!

Overall, Infinite was absolutely a step in the right direction. But it was fumbled in 343 fashion, unsurprisingly.