Halo 5: Week 1 Quick Review

Now that I've had a week with this game, and 130+ games played, I'm ready to review the first week of my experience in this game.

I know that 343 desperately wants to create their own identity, but there is so much that has made Halo great that isn't here.

Campaign is completely detached from multiplayer and your rank. Aside from the achievements, collecting the Skulls and Intel does absolutely nothing. There's not even a scoring system. Do you know how many times I replayed missions in Reach's campaign to fulfill challenges for XP? Do you know how shocked I was that the plasma pistol, Halo's ultimate throwaway weapon, was the go-to gun to have a prayer at Reach's Legendary? There is nothing here in the campaign that has any replay value unless you're an achievement hunter or a lore nut. I also believe making it as lore-intensive as they have is a mistake. I haven't read any books since Ghosts of Onyx, and if I hadn't spent hours on the wikis, I would have been very lost.

Warzone is unique, and this is good and bad. Good that it's a fun mix of PvE and PvP. Bad in that it's not a suitable replacement for either BTB or Firefight. On one hand, I really want Firefight. On the other hand, Prometheans in Firefight would cause me to throw so many controllers.
In short, there is no dedicated PvE activity for you to grind experience or REQ points in.

The "Message of the Day" has been the same for 6 days. Change it to Message of the Week, or become more involved in the community, 343.
Where is the Double XP/RP weekend we were promised? Where are the social playlists? Warzone does not count, because I have had a couple matches where my team was absolutely raped. I'm talking core destruction not even 6 minutes in.

Arena is fun for what it is, for now. I could go for a slight bump in RP rewards, and some of the power weapons that were in the beta.

Last but not least is Forge, which is coming in December, and I pray that there is a File Browser there, or it will be immediately useless and forgotten. I know the community has been warning you about this, 343.

We still have a few weeks to go to determine Halo 5's ultimate fate, but so far, 343 has not done enough to convince me that we will avoid the 90% population drop that decimated Halo 4. Time will tell. Black Ops 3 drops on Friday, and Battlefront in a couple weeks.

In short, for now, 7 out of 10.