9. Having Your Ad Campaign Lie To The Fans - Halo 5: Guardians
Once Bungie left to embark on their most lucrative project yet in Destiny, it left 343 Industries to inject their own flare into the mythos by taking the Master Chief down a far more personal road. Halo 4 saw him broken down into a lab experiment dependant on Cortana to keep him sane, whilst Guardians' marketing alluded to a heinous act he'd either done or was framed for, the ensuing galaxy-wide manhunt being the game's crux from multiple perspectives. You were to play as both the Chief and newcomer Spartan Locke, the various trailers and marketing materials positing the question - and hashtag - of 'hunting the truth'. In the end, Locke's previously personal engagement with the Chief's actions was nothing more than a neutral assignment, and although the two do tussle momentarily as the MC decides he'd rather pursue a lead on Cortana's whereabouts than come back to HQ, that's literally the beginning and end of everything over two year's worth of hype was building towards. Both fans and 343 themselves could argue that the mixed messaging of the pre-release materials was all in favour of another twist that happens midway through the campaign, but ultimately we were fed quite a few porkers, all of which can taste increasingly sour depending on if you thought the 'real story' was done well or not.
