Why Is Halo Infinite's Campaign SO AWESOME And... MEDIOCRE?!

This was a really special video for me to make and as Mr. Lucas once said, “I may have gone too far in a few places,” but I’m very happy with the results and I hope you are too.

The Act Man was not invited by 343 to play Infinite early. He is also not in the end credits like other YouTubers. Yet he still continues to pump out THE BEST Halo content. Bravo man, you are awesome. The Halo community appreciates you.

"I'm sorry Chief, but how have you ever failed?" "I was almost duped into wiping out every living entity in the known universe by blue floating ball" "Wait what?"

41:55 bro that's it, you hit the nail on the head. What made the OG Halo trilogy feel so special and unique is that Chief is not the focus. He's one piece - albeit an important piece - in a giant galactic story that's going on. You felt like you were contributing to that story, not that you were the story. This difference is so subtle it took me years to figure out why the original 3 (and ODST and Reach) felt so special, but now that I see it it makes perfect sense

The crazy thing is that Locke still can be added in the side quests. He can tie the spartan killer into the story too like you said because he could reappear to kill Locke or something like that

Technically Atriox kept his word. His face was the very last thing we saw in the campaign.

Imagine if we actually played the first mission on the infinity. Trying to protect the pods and ships while people escape. And we get overwhelmed and the cutscene comes in and we get destroyed by Atriox. Would've have been a more dynamic start, and we would get more of the story in the actual game and not just in audiologs.

My god, the way you used the tucker and church cliff scene to describe those cutscenes at 50:12 was brilliant, absolutely hilarious and their dialoge worked so well.

I had no plans on playing Halo's campaigns at all After watching this video, I want to play through the entire MCC

I think the one thing that Halo fans can’t disagree with, is how awesome the soundtrack is for Infinite.

I think the 343 villain critique was one of the best points tbh. Your experience as the protagonist is wholly dependent on the strength of your antagonist.

as a lifelong halo fan this game made me very happy. despite any criticism i may have this truly felt like halo, and thats all that matters to me. the moment the elevator stopped, the door opened and i got to see the ring for the first time i teared up. i felt like 6 year old me sitting down to play halo 2 for the first time again. halo 2 is and always will be my favorite video game. it was the first video game i ever played, my first time even experiencing something on a screen. i had never even seen a movie or tv show before then. it changed my life. the fact that this game gave me the same sense of amazement and nonstop happiness is something im very grateful for. halo is back. i didnt get to play infinite until a few days ago, but luckily none of it was spoiled for me. from start to finish it was nothing but enjoyment. maybe im blinded by its majesty, but halo infinite has me dumbstruck. im excited to see where they take this.

I think most long-time fans have quickly realised how repetitive the mission design and aesthetics get, but you are the first I've heard pointing out the flaws in the individual enemy encounters design, and it's a very insightful critique! As brilliant as Infinite's base combat gameplay is, a lot of work still needs to be done to bring that greater level of variety, creativity and dynamism that Bungie so excelled at back in the day. You totally nailed it with that old Bungie clip: "You don't just get that sense of I'm going from room to room just killing more guys" - that right there is Infinite's main mission design problem that 343 needs to learn the most from. Also, you just pitched a much better story for Infinite in that 2 minute spiel than what 343 managed to come up with in supposedly 6 years of development! What is there isn't all bad - they do manage to somehow scrape back the core character relationship of Chief and Cortana by fixing Halo 5's narrative misdirections and, apart from the staleness of the cinematic presentation as you point out, the writing it well-done - but it is in other key areas that the storytelling is lacking, many of which you again adroitly point out: no other interesting supporting allied characters besides a single Pilot, a failure to create dramatic stakes with a better sense of the larger conflict playing out on the ring, and the piss-poor villians with their cartoonishly over-the-top monologuing and lack of proactive involvement in the plot. It really does boggle the mind how badly overall Halo's storytelling has been handled by 343. As you rightly point out, just take the Banished for instance - they have no clear motivations or ideology driving them as presented in the game unlike the Covenant who even in Halo CE's more limited story were explained so much more clearly, even without a main villian face leading them. It's glaringly obvious creative oversights like this that means Infinite, whilst it is the best Halo game since Reach, is still not as good as any of the Bungie games even after 10 years of working on this franchise! Messy management and a real lack of strong creative vision at the helm is I think to blame. Talk about screwing the pooch... Honestly my only hope for this series from a narrative standpoint is the fact that Joe Staten is back in charge in a major capacity, and I hope he actually is involved in shaping the storytelling of the no doubt Halo Infinite story expansions coming at some point. Given that he was instrumental in the original Halo games' story design, we might finally see an improvement!

The lacking of set pieces was really disappointing. This campaign has great ambience but there's limited atmosphere because there's no dynamic events happening.

Finally somebody talks about the lack of UNSC presence in this game.

OMG Steve Downs at the end was nuts!! Pretty awesome you got him to record that for you. You did it again Act man!

I got so bored with Infinite after the 2nd or 3rd area unlock. I just couldn't get myself to CARE about anything. There seemed to be no coordinated effort of resistance against the Banished. The banished didn't really seem to give a shit about me slowly pushing back their control. They'd just respawn in their forts anyway so they probably didn't even notice me clearing out a dozen of them. There was no greater plan. There was no goal to work towards except the immediate motivation of Masterchief to perform a specific action. Save this person. Get that mcmuffin. Kill that enemy. 343 writes their villains like cartoons.

For all it lacked, it felt so much more like halo than halo 5. And if campaign DLC actually happens, then halo infinite is a good solid base to improve upon.

The Blademaster could have been built up so well if, instead of just seeing all of the dead spartans after the fact, you have an encounter with him where you enter a room and he finishes off a spartan right in front of you. It would have evoked more emotion, similar to the battle with Guilty Spark after he blasts Johnson in Halo 3, and established him as a threat to spartans.

Imagine if as you took more fobs you would see like pelicans flying through the air and dog fights just happening in the background that you could jump into or just smaller scale battles between the Marines and banished that you could resolve if you felt like it