Sooooo I just beat the game, and I am floored. To put it lightly, this has to be the greatest story campaign for Halo I have set my hands on (save Halo Wars, nothing tops those feels).
My general summary, I got a few complaints but overall I would give this game a 9.5/10, this is all for the campaign; I have yet to try multiplayer. The longer campaign made me very happy. After the let down that was the short 8 missions of Halo 4, this was a good change. All the missions had a good bit to appeal to them too (maybe not the bulk of the meridian missions, those were kinda linear), each one had a different aspect or objective that wasn't just going around to press buttons. How those interacted with the Story was also incredibly satisfying. The fighting was a lot more intense, and the enemy's were interesting (Or in the case of Warden, a bitch).
Now my complaints are few, two major ones really. First being at the end of Blue Team. Chief and the others kinda just pickup and leave without thought, which kinda bugged me. I mean a dead lady is telling you to go to this abandoned colony in the middle of nowhere? And they do that without hesitation? As the story moved on that made a bit more sense though, as I saw later that they had a lot more story to cover than a few more lines about hesitation.
Second, the God damn infinity high tails it like it's some frigate and nearly dies AGAIN. The way they toss this thing around like it has no weight at all is annoying as hell. If it wanted, and maybe with a little more time that thing would have came back to Earth and decked the Guardian. But instead it runs to Sanghelios? All I can say is: Lasky Pls.
tl;dr: Loved the game, but hated that Infinity acted like a scared little child again.
P.S. Cortana saying John at the last second, that broke me.
I still don't believe its Cortana that's pulling all of the strings here. i mean we KNOW Cortana, and this... thing that we've now been introduced to is completely off from what she has ever been. So either she's gone completely Guilty Spark level rampant (despite her claims to the contrary), or its only a fragment of her that's being used by some currently unknown force.
As for what those forces might be...... her lines about eternal peace and such SCREAMS Gravemind
"I am a timeless chorus, join me and sing victory everlasting"
This of course, is also closely related to the precursors, the original creators of the domain and the mantle.
plus there's the whole group of AIs that have now "pledged allegiance" to Cortana, which i'm betting is a similar relationship as the Collectors and the Reapers in Mass Effect, who are also extremely similar to the Gravemind.
That's my own little half-baked theory on what might come to light in Halo 6, of course i could be completely off and it turns out 343 just wanted to make Cortana the biggest bitch in the galaxy (speaking of which, suddenly Halsey's a good person? can they make up their damn minds already?).