By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe.
Posted by: chubbz
how many people say they buy CoD because they love the characters and the story?
This is because the vast majority of the community for Call of Duty are simple minded, one-dimensional morons. And yes, that's a generalisation, and yes it's absolutely true - the past 5 years have taught us all that.
However, the effigy presented by the community doesn't drag the storyline down with it, look at Black Ops, it was a well-structured multilayered story that could have easily filled a decent 500 page novel. The characters in BO were well constructed with their motivations and appeared as more than "ok, let's go kill Russians". The build up and eventual conclusions of Black Ops was a turning point, not just for the plot, but for the characters too and I actually cared what was going on.
With Halo, whilst the plot is absolutely fantastic, I seldom feel any sympathy or relation to any of the characters because the games leave them remarkably underdeveloped. The most developed John got was when he had Thel with him, as Wolvers has pointed out, there is a mutual respect between them that grows into a strong bond as the story progresses, ultimately culminating in John checking to see if Thel is okay. This seems like a small point, but think of his priorities at the time, Halo is about to fire and everything pivots on escaping and as soon as he recovers he looks to see if Thel is still alive. That is subtle character development that can only be appreciated through understanding, this is the best development John had, but in Halo CE and 2 he had nobody to relate to. Many people will say Cortana and John share a close bond, but it's not real to us, she's an artificial construct that makes it hard for the players to sympathise with, Thel is a real living being that can be hurt and engage our sympathies.
I realise I've dragged on here, but Halo really needs to take a leaf out of Black Ops' book and Halo 3's and start engaging with character development like what I've described. Motivations, friendships, conflicts - Halo needs to start showing these in the games, it's one aspect that Halo 3 definitely did right but was underutilised whilst Black Ops had it throughout with Reznov and Mason, the final revelation about Reznov is shocking to us because we've grown to care about the characters.