Reclaiming Some Sense: A Halo Reclaimer Trilogy Deep Dive Part 3: Halo Infinite
Alright, let’s say that you follow up your story about two friends dealing with one of the friends death with a story where the friend comes back to life and is evil and then you mostly see the story through the eyes of some other characters who aren’t really connected or present for the important parts of the story. Okay, it’s bad but you ended your story with some setup for the final installment of the story, where the one friend is trying to find a way to stop the dead friend from taking over the galaxy. There’s a decent premise so how do you follow through on it? By having the plot you setup happen offscreen and instead you have a war against the villains from one of the spinoff games mixed with some sequel hooking for the next trilogy? If that sounds confusing to you, well welcome to Halo Infinite, the disappointing and confusing conclusion to a mostly disappointing and confusing trilogy.
Welcome to the final part of my Reclaimer Trilogy deep dive. In part 1 we covered Halo 4 which was actually really good. In part 2 we covered Halo 5: Guardians which was a very disappointing follow up. Now, we’re going to talk about Halo Infinite, a game that doesn’t feel like a follow up at all because it has practically nothing to do with what came before it.
Because yes, when Halo 5 ended, Master Chief and Blue Team were recovered by Fireteam Osiris and Cortana had launched her scheme to seize control of the galaxy for her fellow AI’s because nobody else could be trusted with it. So Blue Team, Fireteam Osiris, The Infinity, Halsey, The Arbiter, they were all forced to go on the run and find a way to combat Cortana and her army and powers. When Halo Infinite opens, the war is already over, Cortana is dead and the UNSC are fighting The Banished who proceed to kick their asses and leave Master Chief to have to single handedly save the day again. What the hell happened?
Your guess is as good as mine, because this game does a terrible job of explaining itself. So everything about this game feels like it was a response to people not liking the last two games, like they just pivoted hard from where the story was going and just quickly went with something else. As such damn near everything that had been a major element in the last two games was gone. Gone was Blue Team, the most we get in the way of explanation is some audio collectables saying that they’re off on some other mission. Gone is Fireteam Osiris, who get no explanation and who may be dead as team captain Locke’s helmet was being worn as a trophy by one of the bosses in the game. Gone are The Arbiter and the Swords of Sanghelios who get no mention at all. Gone are Captain Lasky, Commander Palmer, Dr. Halsey, and the ships AI Roland, like Blue Team we only have audio collectables to know their fate, which is that they got off the Infinity and that’s it, and Roland doesn’t even get that much. Oh and of course there’s the Infinity itself which gets destroyed after being a prominent fixture for the last two games.
Cortana’s side doesn’t do much better. The Promethean’s, the Forerunner’s AI soldiers, they’re gone. I guess they were all destroyed or something. The Guardians, the super planet destroying ships, they’re gone. I guess they got blown up. All the AI’s that Cortana convinced to join her? The Created? You guessed it, they’re gone too, I guess they also all died. Cortana herself has it the worst, because as we find out she was killed prior to the start of the game. You might think that this is a fake out and she’s actually alive because come on, are they really going to kill Cortana offscreen? Yes, yes they are, you get to the end and find out that yes she is dead. So yeah, gonna have more to say about this later.
But yeah this illustrates just who much this game dumped from the previous game. If you’re wondering about Lore Overdosing, like how of the inbetween ended up in the expanded universe, the answer is a lot and a little. There were a whopping three trilogies and two duologies of books that covered the events between the two games. No comic books this, apparently all the ones that came out between the two games were prequels. As far as the contents of the books go, they fill in the blanks a little bit and do establish the villains of Halo Infinite a bit better but there’s not a lot of the war with the Created in there.
It’s funny, when I started this series I was complaining about how the games needing you to have done home work to understand what was going on, and now I’m complaining because there’s basically nothing to fill in the blanks. There needed to be more homework to explain the sudden shift!
Okay, so 343 Industries dumped pretty much everything from the first two games in the trilogy, what did they replace it with. Meet The Banished, a group of Covenant separatists who were introduced as the villains of Halo Wars 2, the Real Time Strategy spin off series. Their whole shtick is that they split off from the Covenant because of not sharing their religious dogma and as such don’t have the reverence the Covenant have for the Forerunners and their technology. In Halo Wars 2 they were trying to take control of the Ark to gain control of the galaxy and in this one they want to take control of Zeta Halo because it has it’s own secrets. They also want revenge because Cortana destroyed the Brutes homeworld prior to the start of the game. And so, at the start of Infinite, The Banished Fleet ambushed the UNSC after they fought Cortana and completely destroyed them
The leader of Banished is Atriox who at the start of Infinite takes out Master Chief and then apparently dies later on, though unlike Cortana, that one was a fake out. So instead the Banished leader you deal with for most of the game is Escharum, Atriox’s mentor and second in command. Escharum’s situation throughout the game is that he’s stuck between a rock and a hard place. On one hand he needs to secure the ring because The Banished need a home, on the other he’s dying and he wants to die at the hands of a worthy opponent, namely Chief. I will say I do like Escharum, he is one of the games better developed parts.
Besides The Banished however we had another antagonist. So you know how I said that Zeta Halo had secrets? And that this game had a bunch of sequel hooking? Well it turns out that the ring was a prison to a species known as the Endless who could apparently control time. We never get to actually see the Endless but we do get to see some of their fellow prisoners, namely the Skimmers, a species of winged creatures and the least annoying flying enemies in the entire series. But more so than them, we also meet The Harbringer, a mysterious alien who is (apparently) not an Endless but is associated with them and spends all game trying to free them. There’s not much to say about either of these, we learn nothing about the Skimmers and The Harbringer is very underdeveloped, she speaks only in cryptic nonsense. That is literally all there is to say about her, not good.
So lets circle back to Master Chief and the UNSC. So all the supporting cast have been kicked out, who replaced them? A couple of people. Up first we have Fernando Esparza AKA Echo 216 as he’s known for most of the game is a Pelican Pilot who rescues Chief after his defeat at hands of Atriox and who spends most of the game flying Chief around and bringing him supplies. They set Fernando up as a contrast to Chief, where Chief is stoic and duty bound, Fernando is quite expressive just wants to pack up and flee the ring, with him eventually gaining some courage after Chief opens up to him about his own failures. It’s a decent relationship, I do like this pairing.
Up next we have “The Weapon” an AI who was created specifically to kill Cortana. She was supposed to have been destroyed afterwards but was prevented by Cortana (As we find out later). Chief retrieves her to get her help in fighting the Banished as she can hack the Forerunner’s machines. She’s another contrasting character, not just to Chief but also Cortana as she’s quite bubbly and cheerful. She’s also basically a child so she has to have a lot explained to her by Chief throughout the game.
I like the character, I think she’s fun and I like her relationship with Chief. But she does a bit of messiness tied to the character due to her connection to Cortana. You see, “The Weapon” is a second Cortana AI, which is what allows her to do her original mission. This ends up causing a bit of conflict for the Weapon once she realizes that she came from the same material that made a genocidal monster. I don’t know if this was supposed to be a twist or not, it’s hard to say based on how they presented her, because “The Weapon” looks and sounds exactly Cortana. But they also made Cortana look like her old Halo: Combat Evolved appearance to possibly try and disguise it. I don’t know, but either way it was really obvious. But speaking of Cortana, it’s rant time again.
So let’s talk about Cortana in this game and in turn talk about what the hell happened in this game. So yes, Cortana is dead, for realsies this time. She dies when she blows up part of the Zeta Halo in an attempt to kill Atriox. She’s not totally gone though as Chief encounters echos of her throughout the game, as well as old programming that helps Chief and “The Weapon” throughout the game. At the very end Chief and “The Weapon” encounter one final Echo that gives a goodbye speech to Chief, telling him that she tried to fix her mistakes and that he and “The Weapon” will be good together. It’s a load of shit.
It’s kind of hard to do a final heartfelt goodbye speech when one, the person giving the speech was a mass murdering villain right until it happens, and two, you already had a touching goodbye speech two games ago and it wasn’t bogged down by the baggage of Halo 5. I felt nothing upon viewing it because they stole all the pathos from the moment via the everything that was Halo 5 and Halo Infinite.
Like, it’s extremely obvious that 343 just backpedaled after the poor reception to the plot of Halo 5 so instead of following through on the setup they just abandoned the whole thing in favor of something completely different. Because there’s no way that this was the original plan, and if it was that makes this even worse because this is terrible. Like yes, it was a bad idea but if you’re going to start something, please give it a finish, even if it’s bad and nobody likes it. Because just pivoting to something else all of the sudden is honestly even more unsatisfying.
This whole trilogy has been a mess, it started so promising, fell down low, and just ended on a confusing note that wrapped up nothing. I’d love to know what the original plan for this trilogy was because there’s no way that this was the original plan.
All thing being said, this hasn’t ruined Halo for me, regardless of what they did with Halo 5 and Infinite I still consider Halo 4 my favorite game in the series. I’ll probably still play Halo 7 when it inevitably comes out but I hope they plan things out better next time.
