Halo 5: Guardians is the fith official game in the main Halo series. Halo is produced by 343industries, published by Microsoft Studios and runs on Xbox One. It takes place about 8 months after Halo 4, with the Main character of the first 4 games, Master Chief, going absent with out leave (AWOL). The whole basic plot of Halo 5 is that of a new character, agent Locke, being tasked with hunting down Chief.
Advertising
The advertising of Halo 5 made it seem as though it was going to be two different campaigns that would playoff of each other. 343 Industries told the fan base that you would play both as Chief and Locke during the game and both of them having the same amount of play time. In the end the 343i lied to the fan base and only gave three missions to Chief and the other six missions to Locke. This ended up really pissing me off with the fact that 343i completely did not do what they said they were doing for Halo 5.
Campaign story
Halo 5’s campaign story was very intense with progressing the Halo universe and furthering the game to being more of a story than just a shooter. However, 343i drew to much information from the dozen or so halo novels and tried to shove about 15 years of history and world building of a universe into an 8hr-12hr campaign. This made it so that new players and fans that have only played the games felt like they had missed a huge amount of information about the game, even though it was never that important in the previous games. If 343i had brought in the extended universe over time throughout the other games, then I believe that the overall gaming community would have been more accepting of the influence of the extended universe on the Halo 5 story line.
Multiplayer
The multiplayer side of Halo 5 is a complete game changer from that of the first four games. The style of play is more fast pace and competitive. It requires a better understanding of how to get around the maps and how to use a weapon. This is not a bad thing per say, due to the fact of twitch and streaming services making competitive gaming more common. Its just that 343i took away the Halo community and made Halo 5 a huge competitive game. If you came in looking to be able to relax and mess around with friends then you were in for a huge shock. However, over the past couple of years 343i has brought pack the more relaxed play style with more options on what game modes you can play and a better custom games lobby.
Conclusion
Overall, Halo 5 is not a bad game. It is just not what the original Halo community was expecting/hoping for. It was a breed of its own with how it brought in outside game material into the games campaign and with how it tried to bring in a new main character. Also with the multiplayer being more fast paced and not as community orientated at first, Halo 5 got a bad reputation for not being a good game. However after playing it for a while and with 343i making changes to the multiplayer aspect through free updates, it has become a better and more enjoyable game to play.