Last time - Spartan Assault and Spartan Strike - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=142894

This time - “You ask, you buy.”

-------

With a franchise whose success in online multiplayer had been so significant for over a decade, it may have been worth speculating if a Halo campaign still mattered in 2015. The missteps of the one for Halo 5: Guardians prove it very much still did.

A lot of the flack at the time was that half of the runtime had you playing not as the Master Chief but as a different Spartan supersoldier named Locke, but that seems a little trivial today (it’s a first person shooter, you aren’t supposed to see who you’re playing as), especially given the game’s other flaws. The mechanical Forerunner enemies from Halo 4 had gotten annoying. A new boss fight approach was okay the first time, but then the game made you do it again and again. 343’s storytelling decisions suggested it didn’t have a firm handle on where it wanted to go either; the main villain of Halo 4 was eliminated in an intervening comic book, while another villain it had developed in a cooperative campaign extension of Halo 4 was taken out in an early cutscene of Halo 5 (hilariously, the actual villain of Halo 5 would be eradicated in the events in between that game and the sixth main entry).

Still, you’d think giving Kazuma Jinnouchi the chance to write a full score for one of these games would’ve been a sure thing. His 11th hour contributions to Halo 4 had resulted in not just the best music in that game but one of the musical highlights of the franchise in 117. It seemed like things were off to a good start when the epic opening cinematic debuted in September 2015 and the composer’s new ascending fanfare theme for Spartan Locke powered his team’s race down a combat-intensive mountainside (another pantheon-level musical highlight of the franchise). A few weeks later, another cutscene debuted featuring the Master Chief and his team which had Jinnouchi providing new takes on his 117 theme and the classic Halo action sound.

Cutscene one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44oJi5w2Wjc
Cutscene two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0bYEToC0zA

Unfortunately, things got unbalanced from there. The decision to have a new sound for Locke - arguably the game’s main character - led Jinnouchi to push things more in a modern hybrid orchestral-electronic action direction. You sometimes get a level of symphonic magnificence leagues beyond what O’Donnell ever provided, which was probably why you can find evidence of me saying this was the best score of the series back in 2015. But you also get a lot of familiar-sounding action and suspense material that isn’t too far removed from what someone like Brian Tyler, Henry Jackman, or James Newton Howard might’ve done for a non-Halo property; indeed, Jinnouchi’s affinity for Howard’s music was suggested in a few parts of Halo 4 and is much more obvious in the orchestration here. And if you loved 117, you’ll be sad to find that its role is surprisingly minimized, as are the legacy theme quotes (a pity as most of those were terrific, Jinnouchi showing he could mess around with many of O’Donnell’s tunes to generally satisfying effect).

The issue with this score isn’t as much execution as it is proportionality; in making the choices they did, Jinnouchi and 343 accidentally anonymized the music of the franchise. If all you wanted from a new Halo score was more sophisticated orchestral writing you’d have been happy, but if you wanted anything else you were bound to be disappointed. Compounding the problem was the gargantuan album release that came in at 2 hours 12 minutes - the longest of the series to date - and likely exhausted many listeners. Sequencing might have solved some of these issues; around a half hour of music was clumped together in a conclusive Osiris Suite which contains some of the the score’s more interesting music (including an intriguingly ghostly take on one of O’Donnell’s secondary themes with some Jerry Goldsmith-like electronics) but also some of its weakest (namely a protracted and obnoxious electronic pulse in the wake of a Zimmer-like belch of the Locke theme which takes the album program out on a dull note).

Halo 5: Guardians: *** - https://open.spotify.com/album/6pdsDEWBozSiKc5G5MGTRG

-------

Buried in the limited edition of the game was the hour-long animated film Halo: The Fall of Reach, an adaptation of a 2001 novel covering Master Chief’s origins and activities prior to the events of Halo: Combat Evolved. Tom Salta got the call to score the game, amusingly right after his non-gamer wife had finished reading the book to understand what all the fuss about the franchise was about. The budget seemed about the same as what he had for his earlier handheld game scores, with a handful of organic elements (including solo cello this time) mixed with synthetic material here. He essentially extended the O’Donnell-adjacent sound he’d done for Spartan Assault into more of a dramatic context. An early cameo of Jinnouchi’s 117 was a nice touch. On the whole it’s a minor score in the series with a nebulous thematic core and action/suspense mannerisms that lean a bit rote at times, but as with his game scores if you approach the album with measured expectations you might have a decent time.

Halo: The Fall of Reach - **½ - https://open.spotify.com/album/6fpqsi5mFO4Dyd2TYeJ2sX

-------

Disappointment with the score for Halo 5: Guardians aside, Jinnouchi’s Halo 4 theme and his extensions of Bungie-era ideas were still entertaining enough to make you think that if the subsequent entry in the franchise was more Master Chief-centric that he could provide a knockout score. Unfortunately, we only ever got one more piece of music from him for the franchise.

But first there was an unexpected sequel.

-------

Next time: “We are just one ship… and an old one at that. But here we are.”

This is one of two Halo titles I haven't played, as I don't have the Xbox it came on (and 343 and/or Microsoft swear it will never be ported to the MCC, damn it). I'm definitely higher on the music than you are, but by how much I'm not sure. I remember greatly enjoying the album, but I also can't remember much that isn't Osiris Suite, Warthog Trials or Light is Green. Going off what you wrote about style and limited theme quotes, it does beg the question about composer choices vs what the devs wanted from him.

(Also, I bought the album at Wal-Mart, remember when you could buy recent major soundtrack releases at Wal-Mart? The silliest things one gets nostalgic over lol)

My "Albums Listened" insists I listened to Fall of Reach just last year, but damned if I can't remember having heard it (I also haven't seen the film). Also, apparently the video doesn't cover the, y'know, Fall of Reach, so... I wonder if this was a budget choice, or avoiding the canonicity thicket Bungie created by intentionally contradicting book author Eric Nylund's plotting for the titular fall. A bit of a shame, as the space station's sacrifice is considered an iconic novelverse moment (or was when I was reading them).

Also, this great clip from Brian David Gilbert's video on having read all the Halo novels (as of like 2019): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPvIqulJuk0

Again, love love love this series, your recounting and thoughts are so fun and informative!

> (Also, I bought the album at Wal-Mart, remember when you could buy recent major soundtrack releases at Wal-Mart? The silliest things one gets nostalgic over lol)

Hey, it could’ve been worse - it could’ve been a Wal-Mart exclusive with extra tracks! Now there’s a blast from the past…

THere's like a good hour or half hour of 5 star material in Halo 5 and that's all you really need. I guess you're on to Halo Infinite. Which is the most faithful to the original sound but it also sounds completely lacking. Like Gareth Coker had no idea how to reinvent what was already a pretty balls to the wall propulsive theme with the Warthog Run cue from Halo 3.

Then there's the DLC multiplayer cues which you should one hundred percent skip. They're boring as all hell. Although it seems you might have to improvise for the Paramount+ show. They never released the Callery and McCreary scores, did they?

> THere's like a good hour or half hour of 5 star material in Halo 5 and that's all you really need.

Yes, very strange having a three-star score with a Mount Rushmore-level track for the franchise. A 90s VS album may have been perfect for this one.

> I guess you're on to Halo Infinite.

Yes, but not immediately!

> Which is the most faithful to the original sound but it also sounds completely lacking. Like Gareth Coker had no idea how to reinvent what was already a pretty balls to the wall propulsive theme with the Warthog Run cue from Halo 3.

All I’ll say for now is that Infinite took the longest to properly (re)assess, including creating composer-specific playlists and writing track-by-track theme notes.

> Then there's the DLC multiplayer cues which you should one hundred percent skip. They're boring as all hell.

I didn’t.

> Although it seems you might have to improvise for the Paramount+ show. They never released the Callery and McCreary scores, did they?

They actually did for one of them, but when they did remains the most amusing element of this rundown.

> Yes, very strange having a three-star score with a Mount Rushmore-level
> track for the franchise. A 90s VS album may have been perfect for this
> one.

I don't know why they released all the music. I would have preferred suite style in the original first scores form. They could have left the complete score to the guys who rip everything and post it to youtube.

> Yes, but not immediately!

Man, you really are plowing through some mid material to get to like the 40 percent of good stuff that exists. It's basically the O Donnell Scores (and even then I wouldn't listen to all of it), some of the Jinnuichi and all the stuff of Gordy Haab's from the Blur cutscenes in Halo Wars 2 that's the best stuff in this series.

> All I’ll say for now is that Infinite took the longest to properly
> (re)assess, including creating composer-specific playlists and writing
> track-by-track theme notes.

Damn...uhhh...damn...that's some commitment. Especially when it's the same as Halo 5. It's a mid score with incredible high lights.

> They actually did for one of them, but when they did remains the most
> amusing element of this rundown.

Yeah, they told Sean Callery not to use the Halo theme which is like...did the people who made that show even like Halo??? It's not some sacred goose. It's literally like an old style Rambo Part II science fiction style story. It's so simple and yet they managed to overcomplicate it.

> Yeah, they told Sean Callery not to use the Halo theme which is like...did the people who made that show even like Halo??? It's not some sacred goose. It's literally like an old style Rambo Part II science fiction style story. It's so simple and yet they managed to overcomplicate it.

I recall one producer saying something like “we’re making this for the football dads.” So it’s possible they didn’t.

And you’re on to something with the goose point as I think 95% of the fans who use the phrase “but it’s lore accurate” do so in jest.

> Last time - Spartan Assault and Spartan Strike -
> https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=142894

> This time - “You ask, you buy.”

> -------

> With a franchise whose success in online multiplayer had been so
> significant for over a decade, it may have been worth speculating if a
> Halo campaign still mattered in 2015. The missteps of the one for
> Halo 5: Guardians prove it very much still did.

> A lot of the flack at the time was that half of the runtime had you
> playing not as the Master Chief but as a different Spartan supersoldier
> named Locke, but that seems a little trivial today (it’s a first person
> shooter, you aren’t supposed to see who you’re playing as),
> especially given the game’s other flaws. The mechanical Forerunner enemies
> from Halo 4 had gotten annoying. A new boss fight approach was okay
> the first time, but then the game made you do it again and again. 343’s
> storytelling decisions suggested it didn’t have a firm handle on where it
> wanted to go either; the main villain of Halo 4 was eliminated in
> an intervening comic book, while another villain it had developed in a
> cooperative campaign extension of Halo 4 was taken out in an early
> cutscene of Halo 5 (hilariously, the actual villain of Halo
> 5 would be eradicated in the events in between that game and the sixth
> main entry).

> Still, you’d think giving Kazuma Jinnouchi the chance to write a full
> score for one of these games would’ve been a sure thing. His 11th hour
> contributions to Halo 4 had resulted in not just the best music in
> that game but one of the musical highlights of the franchise in
> 117. It seemed like things were off to a good start when the epic
> opening cinematic debuted in September 2015 and the composer’s new
> ascending fanfare theme for Spartan Locke powered his team’s race down a
> combat-intensive mountainside (another pantheon-level musical highlight of
> the franchise). A few weeks later, another cutscene debuted featuring the
> Master Chief and his team which had Jinnouchi providing new takes on his
> 117 theme and the classic Halo action sound.

> Cutscene one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44oJi5w2Wjc
> Cutscene two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0bYEToC0zA

> Unfortunately, things got unbalanced from there. The decision to have a
> new sound for Locke - arguably the game’s main character - led Jinnouchi
> to push things more in a modern hybrid orchestral-electronic action
> direction. You sometimes get a level of symphonic magnificence leagues
> beyond what O’Donnell ever provided, which was probably why you can find
> evidence of me saying this was the best score of the series back in 2015.
> But you also get a lot of familiar-sounding action and suspense material
> that isn’t too far removed from what someone like Brian Tyler, Henry
> Jackman, or James Newton Howard might’ve done for a non-Halo
> property; indeed, Jinnouchi’s affinity for Howard’s music was suggested in
> a few parts of Halo 4 and is much more obvious in the orchestration
> here. And if you loved 117, you’ll be sad to find that its role is
> surprisingly minimized, as are the legacy theme quotes (a pity as most of
> those were terrific, Jinnouchi showing he could mess around with many of
> O’Donnell’s tunes to generally satisfying effect).

> The issue with this score isn’t as much execution as it is
> proportionality; in making the choices they did, Jinnouchi and 343
> accidentally anonymized the music of the franchise. If all you wanted from
> a new Halo score was more sophisticated orchestral writing you’d
> have been happy, but if you wanted anything else you were bound to be
> disappointed. Compounding the problem was the gargantuan album release
> that came in at 2 hours 12 minutes - the longest of the series to date -
> and likely exhausted many listeners. Sequencing might have solved some of
> these issues; around a half hour of music was clumped together in a
> conclusive Osiris Suite which contains some of the the score’s more
> interesting music (including an intriguingly ghostly take on one of
> O’Donnell’s secondary themes with some Jerry Goldsmith-like electronics)
> but also some of its weakest (namely a protracted and obnoxious electronic
> pulse in the wake of a Zimmer-like belch of the Locke theme which takes
> the album program out on a dull note).

> Halo 5: Guardians: *** -
> https://open.spotify.com/album/6pdsDEWBozSiKc5G5MGTRG

Late to respond, but this was surprising to read. I haven't had a chance to relisten to this one like I did with the earlier batch (that's on the other JB), but I remember being very fond of this score. Some of that was because it was 2015, when every new score I liked felt like a revelation. Some of that is because it entered my study music rotation in a way the O'Donnell/Salvatori scores didn't. Maybe its highlights wowed me so much that I ignored how the rest was fine.

"The Trials" is definitely one of my most listened to cues from the entire franchise. Probably the most listened to track outside of Halo 3.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAYPkVeWjXM

Super late to replying to this, but wanted to say I really appreciated the write-up! I agree that the score can turn anonymous at times and definitely blends together after a while, but man, when it hits, it really hits. I love the use of both the Covenant and 117 themes in "Scavengers" and the desperate tone of "Crypt," and the return of O'Donnell and Salvatori's action theme in "The Trials" is very welcome. I also am a big fan of his Locke theme, even though its major/minor chords remind me a lot of Kraemer's Jack Reacher. I've found myself coming back to this and Halo 4 with surprising frequency.

For those who found the album too long, I put together a 73-minute playlist of highlights that I usually revisit. I end it with the first part of the Osiris Suite; still not sure exactly why Jinnouchi decided to separate out these tracks at the end.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7LXf8KxbdQEQsdmSXK9Il8?si=55ada68dd5804e7e