User Warned: Lazy dev rhetoric.
Halo 5: Guardians takes the prize for me. What warrants putting it on top of my list? This piece of shit. This individual kills any and all momentum the campaign could've possibly had during the second half of the game...
THE ETERNAL FUCKING GUARDIAN!
The first time he popped up during Locke's campaign I was like "Huh, that was a neat fight!", the second time wasn't that bad either really. I thought to myself "Well, his established gimmick is he has countless copies of himself, guess I'll be fighting him one last time towards the end!" But no, he pops up FIVE different times over the course of the game's 10 mission campaign! The third and fourth encounters in the second half of the game were tedious and he just felt like a fucking obstacle in the way by that point rather than a genuine threat. And then we have the final battle, something which the Halo series has had problems with in the past. Tarturus in Halo 2 was merely okay, and Guilty Spark in Halo 3 may as well have not even been there to begin in. What trump card does 343 have up it's sleeve? A curveball to perhaps surprise and challenge the player? Turn the whole repetitive Warden schtick on it's head?
The most cookie-cutter, and basic thing you can do to ramp up the difficulty. Just copy and paste more of him into the final arena, genius! By the time I got to this point I wondered if the artist(s) who designed the Warden Eternal had a blackmail deal going on with the lead designers or something because jesus did they overuse this guy with next to no tweaks to his moveset, behaviour, or toolset. The same old tired battle each time, the only real difference being the arena each fight took place in. Warden Eternal is one of the main reasons I think Halo 5 had the worst campaign in the series by FAR. I can't think of anything in more recent big-budget AAA games I've played as egregious as rehashing a boss this many times.
THE ETERNAL FUCKING GUARDIAN!
The first time he popped up during Locke's campaign I was like "Huh, that was a neat fight!", the second time wasn't that bad either really. I thought to myself "Well, his established gimmick is he has countless copies of himself, guess I'll be fighting him one last time towards the end!" But no, he pops up FIVE different times over the course of the game's 10 mission campaign! The third and fourth encounters in the second half of the game were tedious and he just felt like a fucking obstacle in the way by that point rather than a genuine threat. And then we have the final battle, something which the Halo series has had problems with in the past. Tarturus in Halo 2 was merely okay, and Guilty Spark in Halo 3 may as well have not even been there to begin in. What trump card does 343 have up it's sleeve? A curveball to perhaps surprise and challenge the player? Turn the whole repetitive Warden schtick on it's head?
The most cookie-cutter, and basic thing you can do to ramp up the difficulty. Just copy and paste more of him into the final arena, genius! By the time I got to this point I wondered if the artist(s) who designed the Warden Eternal had a blackmail deal going on with the lead designers or something because jesus did they overuse this guy with next to no tweaks to his moveset, behaviour, or toolset. The same old tired battle each time, the only real difference being the arena each fight took place in. Warden Eternal is one of the main reasons I think Halo 5 had the worst campaign in the series by FAR. I can't think of anything in more recent big-budget AAA games I've played as egregious as rehashing a boss this many times.
