When I first heard the premise of "Master Chief goes AWOL and travels the galaxy to try and find Cortana" I pictured an amazing story of Chief finding himself and how to live without Cortana anymore. This story probably doesn't lend well to video game format (at least for a Halo game), so that is nowhere what they tried to do. It is a game where is little to no explanation about anything happening. It feels like 343 were banking on people reading the books or something, which most people just aren't gonna do (why is there no like recap video or something).

The game just starts with huge action/fighting, and doesnt really stop except for 3 levels which are just walk around a little npc town for 5 minutes. They introduce 4 new characters with Locke's squad (you could subtract Buck from that), and another 3 with Chief's squad, and you get NO time to really introduce them or learn more about them. This really sucks since this is a squad based game, you want to learn more about your party members and, idk, learn to like them.

The strongest part is just the emotions between John and Cortana, but I don't even think Cortana should be alive anymore. She sacrificed herself, it was a very emotional moment, and then they go "woops, we can't just kill her, she's like a main character!"

The game play does feel good.