I think 343 assumed most people indulged in the Halo 3's terminals which introduced to Didact

343 just assumes we all read The Forerunner books.

Personally I think that the feeling you got in Halo: CE when you first stepped out of that crashed escape pod and onto Halo is more powerful than anything written into the other games. Halo 3 though did have some feels though.

Personally the best campaign of the franchise IMO but yea you have really great points. Specially #3, i really hate Palmer and how Halsey is now "evil or some shit. Lasky is cool i guess and the admiral guy was literally made for you to hate him, Spec Ops Majestic team too.

I apologise for the wall of text in advance. The Halo 4 story was great and I really enjoyed the campaign personally, but everyone is entitled to their opinion. I will give the story a lot of credit. If someone only played the Halo 4 campaign without watching any of the terminals in the game or playing through Spartan Op's and had never played any of the other games they would have a lot of valid questions as you rightly pointed out. Didact was mentioned in the final terminal in the Halo 3 campaign on the last terminal when played through on legendary, Didact's message. Also in the terminals on Halo 4 and the dialogue throughout the game explains parts of his story but do not explain everything. Librarian wasn't suddenly introduced into the game the terminals in the game led up to her entrance. You have a point about the Nuke survival but the terminals and dialogue and cut scenes led up to this happening. Glassman's character was better explained if you also play the Campaign and Spartan OP's alongside one another. He showed his worth in the Spartan Ops a little later but at first he is not likeable. Spartan Sarah Palmer is a bit of a bitch, her character is also more understandable if you play the Spartan Assault game as well as Spartan Ops. Halsey was deliberately painted as criminal as it seems the UNSC suddenly got a conscience about the Spartan ll Program, suddenly the ethics of kidnapping children, operating on them and augmenting them with bio-mechanical and bio-chemical procedures to turn them into super soldiers. Or was it a set up by James Ackerson? Who was a Colonel hell bent on derailing Halsey's Spartan lI program and tried to kill the Chief. Anyway back to Halo 4 set up to give her a reason to possibly become a traitor and help Jul'Mdama find the second half of the composer. And possibly something else. Augmented Elites? The thought is to horrible to consider. The story was complicated at points I agree. You get more out of it if you watch all the terminals and also play Spartan Ops. But I agree if you were new to the universe you could easily get confused. I may have got more out of it personally are some other sources that really help enhance the experience. >Forerunner Saga (trilogy of novels) >Fall of Reach novel >Halo Reach >First strike novel >Halo CEA terminals >Glasslands novel >Spartan Assault, intro scenes and dialogue >Forward unto dawn I think Halo story had got a lot more interesting with the introduction of the Prometheans and the Didact. I really recommend the Forerunner saga for more information about the Didact and his motives. Roll on Halo 5, some more books are coming out and Spartan Strike to keep me busy. At least you didn't hate the campaign Soldier.

Meh I don't think you've quite got a proper handle on it OP (details rights but think just a little harder on them). For one, [i]in the campaign[/i] the UNSC is not meant to be likable. Laskey is well intentioned but quite out of his depth while Palmer is only minimally involved with what else is at stake. She's very comfortable, unlike the Chief, being just what the UNSC wanted out of the Spartan program. There's nothing [i]bad [/i]in that, but where that is problematic is getting into the growing heart of the Halo franchise. And Del Rio is quite obviously the focus of the growing split between the UNSC and Chief, the impossible to miss story point pushing him out to compliment the more subtle relationships between the Chief and other members of the crew. 343 compromises a bit here in Spartan Ops by trying to sustain a whole, independent story with the [i]narrative foils [/i]from the campaign but because, as with the missions themselves, its just so much filler you can just write that whole thing off as a bit of end-game house cleaning (which 343 surely won't expect everyone to have watched when starting Halo 5.) Anyway the other characters being [i]who they are[/i] justifies the chief's departure from the infinity and sets up his eventual split with the UNSC which is almost certain to be the focus of Halo 5 (and perhaps the rest of the franchise depending on what happens in 5) and incidentally has a little more to say than just "fan boy plot shocks!" (since it directly relates to the very human narrative arc of new Halo.) It is important to consider the pace and content of the campaign in terms of what's happening to the chief because while Halo 4 skips around a bit on some of the ancillary details (ex. homecoming on the Infinity, lead in to the librarian) which does create part of that "choppy" feel (the other part being that it does a hell of a lot more with less exposition. The first cutscene with the Didact for example concisely sets up [i]the entire emotional history of the human-forerunner war[/i]. Bungie never managed to get there after [b]5 [/b]games.) it doesn't skimp when it comes to flushing the chief out as a legitimate character. Where there is less exposition moving us between forest, desert, and mountain combat hallways there is more dialog defining who the chief is, what he wants, what he represents, and what that should mean to the audience. Look at Halo 4 from [i]his [/i]perspective and you have a wonderfully paced and rich narrative centered around a minimalist human personality which none the less manages to convey genuine depth. Everything else around him are just details fulfilling an ultimate personal tragedy which you might say actually has something to say about life, the universe, and everything (without the least bit of pretense.) He's the hero in fact, a tool in society, and yet despite doing everything [i]right [/i]he still can't have what he most desperately wants because individual action isn't sufficient to overcome the facts of his existence. In Halo 4 the Master Chief is what we all fancy ourselves as, but endlessly find contradicted by how the physical universe operates. There's definitely an element of [i]Brazil [/i]in this. In short, its good. Its perhaps VERY good. It doesn't do everything as you might be accustomed to in a AAA FPS (even Bioshock), but take a second look and you'll find that often has a very definite, and very productive, reason.

Read the books Suprise Halsey disliked before 343 soo.... Complicated??? Pretty straightforward to me of what happening, if you didn't read books you couldn't understand context of how some things done, but you always know what you are doing and objective. Only things you shouldn't understand was ... The didact and Librarian past The voices in chiefs head The first one can be answered generally with te terminals you find

I personally think it had the most interesting plot out of all the Halo games. Whether it be the Prometheans, which were AWESOME, or even the death of Cortana... amazing campain I give a solid 9/10 for lol