Besides the ever awesome multiplayer, Halo 4's the first entry in the series in which the campaign is written with terrific character arcs, layered thematic content, and an absolutely hard-hitting emotional core. 343 has not only taken up the mantle of Halo after Bungie, but even improved upon the storytelling and characters to a greater degree that belong among the best explorations of speculative fiction in video games.
This game is haunting reflective study of the nature of humanity, death, meaning, obsolescence and inevitability. Cortana and Chief have never been as well realized as people until this game with an ending that ranks among the very best stories I've ever experienced. Chief is faced with confronting whether he's a man or machine for the military with Cortana coming face to face with her own mortality in a manner she's never understood before until facing her own "rampancy" (a stage of AI deterioration) where she, quite literally, thinks herself to death. Alongside all of these plot threads, the duo have to contend with the Didact - an ancient enemy with a grudge against humanity and with no qualms of using destructive means for what he sees as "the greater good". It's an engaging yarn from start to finish that manages to let the story breath and develop naturally while never forgetting the humanity behind all of the explosive action.
Well done, 343. Well done.
This game is haunting reflective study of the nature of humanity, death, meaning, obsolescence and inevitability. Cortana and Chief have never been as well realized as people until this game with an ending that ranks among the very best stories I've ever experienced. Chief is faced with confronting whether he's a man or machine for the military with Cortana coming face to face with her own mortality in a manner she's never understood before until facing her own "rampancy" (a stage of AI deterioration) where she, quite literally, thinks herself to death. Alongside all of these plot threads, the duo have to contend with the Didact - an ancient enemy with a grudge against humanity and with no qualms of using destructive means for what he sees as "the greater good". It's an engaging yarn from start to finish that manages to let the story breath and develop naturally while never forgetting the humanity behind all of the explosive action.
Well done, 343. Well done.