"2. Not ANOTHER Cliffhanger!
I'm not going to say much about the ending of the game, other than to state that 343i clearly made the exact same mistake with this game that Bungie made with HALO 2. Namely, they ended the game with several major plot points and questions completely unresolved, and now we have to wait three years to find out WHAT. THE. FRACK. HAPPENED."

I've just finished beating the first F.E.A.R. game over the weekend for about the 5th time. I love that game, probably one of my favorite FPS's of all time. The atmosphere, the gunplay, the story… all amazing. The ending would also have been perfect if not for the stupid, cliffhanger ending. The expansions did nothing to alleviate this and the sequels were crap. I get really tired of good games having a blatant sequel hook tacked on the end. There are ways to leave room for a sequel and cliffhangers like this are not the answer. I fear that this happens far more than it should and bothers me to no end. I am firmly convinced that the need to continue the story from the first F.E.A.R. game (in order to address its cliffhanger ending) ruined the entire franchise. This is a problem that needs to be fixed in video games.

To be fair, the rest of that ODST drop team was discussed in HALO: New Blood- and none of the other characters are half as interesting or as popular as Gunny Buck is.

What's interesting to me is the way that Buck's character has changed between H3:ODST and the latest game. In the former, he's a cranky, hardened drop trooper and a natural leader who somehow has to fight his way out of a complete goat rodeo. In the latter, he becomes almost the light-hearted foil for the straight-laced Locke. It's almost like they basically let Nathan Fillion play himself.

Any Halo fan who respects the franchise doesn't need this political BS.

Quite right. And I would be very surprised if we are the only ones among the HALO Nation who reacted violently to that nonsense.

It's hard to tell which direction 343 will go in and whether or not it'll be any good. Time will tell.

I got an email asking me a similar question, and I think it could be interesting. The HALOverse is at a crossroads now, what with Cortana essentially becoming the new arch-villain(ess).

If 343i does it right, the plot of the next game could easily be the most emotionally gripping and epic one ever seen in one of those games- I can totally see the Master Chief racing against time to stop Cortana from using the Guardians and activating the rings to punish those who resist her rule over the galaxy. And I can absolutely see a plot where Cortana's utter devotion to the Chief, and her inability to harm him, would result in a climactic showdown where Cortana has to choose between killing the Chief and achieving her goals.

But if they do it wrong, they could potentially turn the greatest badass in gaming into a whiny crying emo butt-boy. At which point I would have to simply walk away from the franchise.

I think the drop in writing quality can attributed to Chris Schlerf, lead writer of Halo 4, leaving the team, and Brian Reed taking his place.

Could be. Certainly the writing for the Osiris missions was pretty lame, by historical standards. I thought the Blue Team missions were great, but then the Osiris missions came along and kind of disrupted the flow. And that ending… man, that annoyed me!

I wouldn't put it past her to fire one writer and replace him with someone whose political values aligned with her own.

Given what I know of Microsoft and of how thoroughly it has been infested by SJW types, that would not surprise me in the least.

I personally -don't mind- the inclusion of Tanaka and Vale, or even a female Elite officer. But that line of how "progressive" the Arbiter was for letting women join the ranks was really jarring for me too. I couldn't help but think, "Why mention this? What's the point?" Is it to show SJW's how much of a "good guy" the Arbiter is? Any Halo fan who respects the franchise doesn't need this political BS.

What about Sangheili men who aren't allowed to form relationships with their sons? Is the Arbiter addressing that, too, 343? What's that? You don't know? Yeah, didn't think so.

I also have mixed feelings towards the story. It's hard to tell which direction 343 will go in and whether or not it'll be any good. Time will tell. I'm personally hoping they'll release an additional campaign before moving on to Halo 6 (like ODST, only an epilogue campaign instead of a prologue one) but it's unlikely.

I think the drop in writing quality can attributed to Chris Schlerf, lead writer of Halo 4, leaving the team, and Brian Reed taking his place. Reed is a decent writer, generally, but he -did- write that Escalation arc with the Didact, so, uh… Yeah…

I kind of wonder Ms. Ross has anything to do with that change. I'd like to think Schlerf left on his own, but that Bloomberg interview only made me suspicious of her motives, and I wouldn't put it past her to fire one writer and replace him with someone whose political values aligned with her own.