AngryJoe reviews Halo 5

[binary solo]

Mr Puggsly said:

binary solo said:

I don't recall any of these games having cliff hanger endings. AFAIK they all told complete stories with no unresoved threads. What ME and TLOU did was give us a world / galaxy we want to see again. But for God of War the end did not really beg any kind of continuation, at least not in my opinion. Still, nothing inherently wrong with a cliff hanger. The question is whether the game was openly promoted as the start of a new trilogy. I have no idea on that count. If it was openly promoted as a new trilogy then there is no basis for complaining about a cliff hanger. If it was not openly promoted as a trilogy then I can understand some annoyance, but again once you realise it's intended as a trilogy continuing to complain seems a bit petty.

Actually I wish more people would write games with definite plans for a multi-game story, rather than a let's see how this game goes and then we can think of working out how to tell multiple stories with good cohesion between the games. In that respect more cliff hangers are desireable as that means the developer has a longer story already planned out, which is much better from the perspective of video games as a story-telling art.

Mass Effect ends with the reapers still a threat, as does Mass Effect 2. God of War II ends with Kratos riding on the back of a titan climbing Mount Olympus, the first level of God of War III. Gears ends with a speech of the Locust continuing their war. Hence, all the games I mentioned clearly leave a window open for a sequel.

I don't want to get into the details of Halo 5, but its not much different than other series intended to have sequels. The threat still exist, they merely won a battle.

OK well we have different parameters for what's a cliff hanger. To me Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 are not cliffhangers because for something to be a cliff hanger the game needs to end at a moment of fairly high drama esp. where the fate(s) of (a) key character(s) is/are in doubt. this is not the case for Mass Effect. I agree about GoWII (dramatic assault on Mt Olympus, but not much question about anyone's immediate fate) but when you said God of War I thought you meant the first game, being that Halo 5 is the first game in a trilogy it equates to GoWI. I don't know anything about Gears so I can't comment.

But if people think something is a cliff hanger merely because there is an obvious intent of a continuing or larger story then they have a different understanding of what a cliff hanger is. Doesn't matter really. The fundamental thing is a cliff hanger is not inherently a negative, with the proviso of if it is cheesy or if you feel like the story that is contained in the game was unfinished and lacked any substantial dramatic conclusion. A game should always have the 3 elements of story: beginning, middle and end. A cliff hanger is meant to be a dramatic transition from end to next beginning. If the cliff hanger is merely a denial of the end then that's bad storytelling.

If Halo 5 ends in a Mass Effect kind of style then I would not call it a cliff hanger ending at all.