By Timothy Cho
Editor-in-Chief

Following Halo 4’s cliffhanger, Halo 5 quickly takes players back into Microsoft Studios and 343 Industries’ latest game in the series. Sparing no time, players are introduced to Fireteam Osiris, a new squadron of Spartan IVs, the latest line of genetically modified super soldiers, as they hunt for the Master Chief, the most respected, decorated, famous and important Spartan to ever exist, also known as 117 (his Spartan tag identification number), Sierra-117, the Chief, who has gone Absent Without Official Leave.

Halo 5 revolves around these Spartans, serving under the United Nations Space Command in the year 2558. This particular squadron of Spartans follows the command of Spartan Jameson Locke, as they search and hunt for the Master Chief.

Previous to Halo 5, the Master Chief, along with the Artificial Intelligence sentinel Cortana, fought against the Covenant, a technologically-superior coalition of alien races united under a religious hierarchy, and contribute to a civil war between the Covenant and the alien rebel Thel ‘Vadam, commonly referred to as the Arbiter; the journey from the Master Chief’s early battles to the beginning of the Covenant Civil War spans Halo 1, 2 and 3.

Halo 4 introduces the Forerunners, a prehistoric race of aliens that surpass both humans and Covenant in terms of technology, knowledge and age. Halo 4 ends with Cortana’s sacrifice to destroy the Forerunner antagonist, the Didact, after his attempt to convert humanity into digital information.

Halo 5 picks up roughly eight months after the end of Halo 4, where players learn of the Master Chief’s rogue status; Fireteam Osiris is tasked with finding and retrieving the Master Chief, while the Master Chief, and his squadron of Spartans, Blue Team, search for Cortana, despite Halo 4’s ending that implied her death.

Spoiler alert: Cortana lives. During her battle with the Didact, she accessed the Domain, a digital realm of archived knowledge spanning to the days of the Precursors, prehistoric even by Forerunner standards. These Precursors, dating back billion of years ago, were responsible for creating the Domain through their advanced technology, able to travel to different galaxies and quicken the evolution of life.

Halo 5’s narrative lacks cohesiveness in how the lore and canonized information are presented. The Halo series is composed of a grand wealth of information, which defines the plot of the video game series. However, the greater picture is ignored; Microsoft and 343 focused on the mechanics of the game, from new Spartan abilities to updated combat maneuvers, rather than explain the complicated plot of Cortana’s ascension into the Domain.

Exactly how Cortana reached the Domain is not revealed in Halo 5—ever. Of the 15 missions, the Master Chief reaches Cortana at mission 14; the first 13 missions served as a build-up to this encounter. In the last two missions, Cortana reveals that she desires to dominate the known galaxy as a kind of galactic dictator, enforcing peace and harmony at the expense of individual liberty and freedom through the use of Forerunner technology and the Domain’s vast span of knowledge regarding the known universe.

Halo 5 ends with Cortana fleeing the human forces and beginning her counter-strike against humans and Covenant alike, with the Forerunners on her side. The final scene, in all difficulty settings but Legendary, UNSC captain Thomas Lasky is shown feeling from Cortana’s fleet of Foreunner space ships. In the Legendary setting, the final scene includes a Halo ring, a Forerunner creation capable of annihilating all source of life within a 25,000 light year radius, activating, while Cortana is heard humming.

Halo 5 boasts a smoother and more natural game experience, but for some fans, the story, not gameplay, is what holds priority. While Microsoft and 343 delivered another game that reminds players of the Halo games of old, the story development is far from phenomenal. The goose chase players follow between Osiris and Blue Team for the first 13 of 15 missions felt meaningless and felt more reminiscent of a typical point-and-shoot game.

The story contrasts Spartan Locke and the Master Chief nicely, as the predator-prey relationship between the two evolve into a common struggle against Cortana while highlighting each character’s philosophy towards Cortana; for Locke, Cortana is a threat, a weapon set loose, while for the Master Chief, Cortana is a friend gone fiend, consumed by ambition and idealism. However, few answers were provided as even more questions now exist.

As Halo 6 will finalize the trilogy of Halo 4, 5 and 6, Microsoft and 343 set expectations high as Halo 5 fails to develop the plot in a coherent and easy-to-understand way. In Master Chief’s own words: “Is this what you were looking for? Was everything you’ve compromised, everything you’ve done worth it? Was it?”