So along with trying to prevent the Didact from unleashing all sorts of hell on humanity, Chief is stuck dealing with a glitching AI that he’s doing everything in his power to protect and salvage.Īfter spending so many moons in the orbit of developer Bungie, it was great to see 343 Industries get a chance to stretch its wings. For those not versed in the AI lore of the Halo universe, after about seven years of deployment, AIs begin to develop a chronic case of what I believe is technically referred to as the “herp-a-derps.” Their mental faculties eventually reach such an elevated level that they literally analyze themselves to death. Without going too much deeper down the narrative rabbit hole, there is one other key point established very early on in the campaign: Cortana is going rampant.
Related Article: How to get the La Guaracha in Segunda After all, what better way to avoid being absorbed by the Flood than to not have any organic material at all? This mean son of a bitch is a misguided remnant of the Forerunners, intent on enslaving all of humanity inside of Promethean husks. Unfortunately, they ended up making the situation infinitely worse by accidentally releasing the Didact instead. In an attempt to warn the ship about their impending doom, Chief and his faltering AI try to send an emergency. Slowly but steadily, the vessel begins its crash landing into the installation’s surface.
Out of nowhere, the UNSC Forward Unto Dawn appears and is caught in the planet’s gravity well.
Instead, the Forerunners have taken their place, and the game is immeasurably better because of it.Īs the two main protagonists make their way towards the Forerunner planet of Requiem, it becomes very apparent that the UNSC is in some serious trouble. Fast forward four years, and it feels like things haven’t changed much in the galaxy, aside from the Flood going the way of the dodo. If you’ve been keeping track at home, at the end of Halo 3 Master Chief and Cortana were afloat in a vessel, lost in deep space, and awaiting their next call to arms. However, given the opportunity to come in with a fresh set of eyes that were no longer dealing with serious franchise fatigue, my takeaways were far more positive this time around. Personally, I was always on the fence about Halo 4 in general.
This approach seems to have paid dividends, while also allowing keyboard jockeys the chance to progressively savor each morsel of John 117’s career. One of the biggest unknowns from the launch of Halo: The Master Chief Collection was: how would the game fare? After it was beaten into oblivion upon its initial launch, 343 Industries opted to pace itself and focus on releasing one game at a time on PC. Now that the Halo 4 installment is available for PC, does it still hold up? Quite a bit has changed in the last eight years. Thankfully, Xbox Games Studios and 343 Industries have seen fit to port their uber-collection of Master Chief titles to PC, albeit taking their damn sweet time in the process. Having never owned an original Xbox, ironically enough, that means that my first Halo experience was actually on PC. I used to joke that Microsoft needed to rename Halo’s primary protagonist “Master Thief,” because that bastard has stolen more hours and money from me than I’m willing to admit.