Tafdolphin wrote:Since 343 took over, Halo seems to think it's a grand space opera ala Asimov's Foundation series as opposed to what it actually is: a game about an empty green suit shooting aliens. Something about the tone of all the post Bungie games is just...incredibly obnoxious, like 343 see the originals as sacred texts that can't be expanded upon in any meaningful way, except to get more self-serious.
To be fair, I do think Bungie started this trend with Halo's story. The first was remarkably simple, but did it's job and the stark mystery of its alien world (and its aliens) was captivating.
They then expanded it massively for the second game and piled on the "tell, don't look" approach, with loads of backstory and lore. Then came the books and all the extended universe stuff too. I always felt it lost something once they made it broad instead of deep. I can't remember if they committed the cardinal sin of "here's a character EU fans will immediately know, but let's not characterise them at all in this game", be they may have.
343 definitely did that though, and then pushed it even further, to the point that Halo 4's antagonist basically required you read a (presumably terrible) novel to understand. 343 have also made it much messier in my eyes - for all their expansion, 2, 3, ODST and Reach were still about the good humans versus the evil covenant.
I used to think Destiny was guilty of this too, but recently, as you have said, they've knocked their world-building and story out of the park for that one. I daresay it's now much, much more interesting that Halo's current plots.