The cutscenes barely having any impact, influence, or connection with the missions we played as Crimson for one. Continuing the Halsey bashing trend and continuing to piss and stomp all over canon with her story arc (both by skewing the facts to fit their own agenda or ignoring what contradicts it, and the whole entire storyline being one that'd be impossible to happen and relies on everyone being completely out of character and ONI being a Mary Sue organization in order to happen), there is nothing refreshing about it in the least. Characters were one-dimensional (Palmer) or very poorly developed (Majestic) with barely any characterization at all. The fact that the plot almost completely [i]relied[/i] on everyone being a total moron to continue or progress the story. Lack of internal consistency, such as bog-standard Marines emptying whole clips of weapons at things like the Promethean Knights, and then characters like Palmer one-shotting them with pistols or Lasky one-shotting them with a shotgun (slightly more acceptable considering its a shotgun and fired at point-blank range, but still unrealistic for how powerful/good the Promethean Knights are supposed to be). Just Palmer in general though especially in the final two episodes with her blind hypocrisy and then complete incompetence. The whole entire thing was just plain bad, what's listed up above is just scratching the surface and the tip of the iceberg.

I don't like how it plays like a cheesey action film, where all the "bad guys" are f­ucking retarded and they have no health, and their weapons seem to have funnels for barrels so they are as bad as Storm Troopers. Meanwhile any "good guy" character is invincible and kills everything in 1 or 2 shots. There is almost no sense of danger ever, it's like Jul sends all his good Elites to go fight Crimson, and he just has the 'tards left back at his base. I mean obviously it's gonna be more realistic and shields are gonna be less resilient than gameplay, but I mean it's so bad most of the time, like they don't even have them. Palmer kills Promethean Knights with 1 or 2 pistol shots, it's just dumb.

Also why do I play as my nameless Spartan? There's no point. They should have done it like that banshee mission in ODST and you play as Thorne or whoever and you do shit with your squad (or in this case, fireteam). It would even open up better co op possibilities

All the characters, save Halsey and Jul, are either dull or stupid or annoying. Palmer just shouts, Gek and majestic just -blam!- up, glassman just gets caught, Thorne and Lasky just look bad and act like emotionless GI Joes. The story was just kinda crap as well. Why was there a promethean soul? What was its purpose? Why is Thorne so whiny? Why are the Elites so stupid? Why the -blam!- did requiem have to be thrown into the sun? Thats like the fifth ginormous complex forerunner super structure thats easily been blown up in Halo. The entire thing coulda been replaced by Jul and Halsey just facepalming. Roland was alright though, but his personality didn't match his look at all.

The voice acting. -blam!-ing glassman and that female Spartan And don't get me started on the horrific portrayal of sangheili

Well for one thing, the CG episodes focus on an entirely different Spartan fireteam then the one we actually play as. The CG episodes focus on Majestic while we are playing as Crimson. Ultimately, this lead to a disconnection between the gameplay and the cutscenes. As for the CG episodes themselves, there were a few annoying aspects worth pointing out: The "Spartans" don't seem professional at all. They act more like immature marines than Spartans. Palmer... eggheads.... ugh -_- Elites drop like flies in multiple episodes and don't seem like a threat at all. The best parts were with Jul 'Mdama, IMO. He's really cool.

hello im reed i am bad at write bye

Brian Reed. That is all.

[b] [u] Everything [/b] [/u] was wrong with Spartan Ops.

What annoyed me was how a spartan with no training NO TRAINING in the energy sword knew how to use it even besting the elites and sword combat -_-....

Because story in Halo games has always been secondary - Halo is more about how the world you're in is shaped by the events contained within it, the narrative being just mere proof that what you're seeing is meant to happen. None of this is in Halo 4. Where are the crashed dropships? The underwater elevators? The crumbling structures? The ordered structure of enemies? Halo 4's 'story' does nothing for the franchise and the levels they're attached too are completely separate; nothing is organic and everything feels stale and monotonous. A couple of pre-rendered cutscenes that will look like garbage in 3 years aren't enough to change that.

I disliked the immersion into the story. It focused on another group of spartans and made it seem like our team and missions were "oh hey here's the other team doing stuff"

[quote]So let's [b]ignore[/b] the horrific repetition and dull objectives of the gameplay[/quote] I'm not going to ignore that, that's the reason why I only played like 4 missions. I had way more fun in Firefight in ODST and Reach and I thought they should have at least kept it.

As far as the Halsey thing is going with Spartan Ops, I'm starting to see that there's [i]maybe[/i] something a bit more complex than what we think we're seeing going on. See, Brian Reed is a [i]very[/i] 'on-the-surface' writer. There's generally not a great deal of subtextual depth, there's not much I can really analyse as being hidden beneath the surface - unlike Chris Schlerf's writing which is FULL of subtext and parallels and such. But I've also been rewatching the CG episodes and I'm noticing more and more how there's never a point where we're not supposed to feel sympathetic towards Halsey. While the likes of Palmer and Grant may talk shit about her, we [i]know[/i] that they don't have the whole story. Halsey does. Thorne is part of the means through which we see her point of view start to bleed through, it tells us that there is a larger story behind the black and white morality that Palmer and Grant project onto the "dragon lady". Also, we're [i]made[/i] to dislike Palmer. It's quite clearly in the writing, as she puts down her troops in the field and is incredibly jumpy - pulling a gun on Halsey as she examines Infinity's engines, for instance. Halsey's motivations are made abundantly clear to us. [quote]"Life is too short, I will never learn all that exist in our tiny galaxy let alone the rest of the universe. And I so desperately want to know... everything. But the UNSC acts like children at play in a sandbox - mistaking its edges for the limits of the world."[/quote] The UNSC is portrayed as the frustrating element here. Halsey's desires are not to experiment on children, turn them into genetically augmented freaks, or anything of the sort - she is aligned with the player in her desires, she wants to [i]learn[/i] and attain knowledge on things that we want to learn and attain knowledge about. Palmer is always shown as acting irrationally, lashing out and saying things which are just plain wrong - outright accusing Halsey for sharing information with what she presumes to be the enemy, when it is shown that Halsey did no such thing and was simply using a resource which offered data which would advance humanity's research by years. Obviously, it [i]was[/i] Jul but Halsey did not know that at the time. And, of course, Halsey is incredibly intelligent. She uses Jul to accomplish her goals because he can offer her what the UNSC can't. [quote]Jul: "You are no fool, Doctor Halsey. Like me, you seek knowledge." Halsey: "I think it is power you seek." Jul: "I have power, Doctor!" Halsey: "Knowledge is power..."[/quote] This is an instance where we need the full picture in order to form a proper opinion on the situation because right now we're being made to sympathise with Halsey. She's being demonised in Spartan Ops by people we know do not have the full picture, she's ONI's perfect scapegoat and this portrays them as the negative, antagonistic force. I think that they're building to a point where Halsey is going to be vindicated. She's been SPECIFICALLY picked by the Librarian to propel humanity towards ownership of the Mantle and (as is heavily hinted) towards uncovering the impending threat of the Flood's return. If THAT'S not portraying her in a positive light, then I don't know what is - and if people fail to realise this still, then [i]maybe[/i] the problem isn't with the writing... Frankie has said that the resolution of the Halsey arc should be a "satisfying conclusion" to people who haven't liked how she's been treated over the last few years, so I'm hoping that this is what will come to fruition.

Aside from every thing you told us to disregard. Nothing I suppose. Of course thats a lot to disregard.... Also.... [i]eggheads...[/i]

You can't just say, lets ignore all of the bad things about this and oh looky here now it is so amazing

[quote]What was wrong with Spartan Ops?[/quote][quote]let's ignore the horrific repetition and dull objectives of the gameplay (even if, as always, pure Halo gameplay is sublime), and how poorly it was connected to the narrative.[/quote]>what was wrong with Spartan Ops? >ignoring what ruined it for many of us though, of course Wat

Nothing really. I enjoyed it (primarily referring to the short cinematic scenes) in fact it was the only reason I kept the game for the amount of time that I did. Did they ever start a season 2?