I've always said that the guy did a pretty good job with Halo 4. Many people hate the story of Halo 4, but I still maintain that they hate it because they dont actually understand anything about the lore of Halo. This guy does a better job going into detail about just how good Halo 4 actually was than I ever could:
https://haruspis.wor...lysis-prologue/
It's worth a read for anyone that likes Halo.
But that's beside the point - I welcomed his addition to Mass Effect. He proved to me that he could take a daunting task - take a story that has more lore than Mass Effect, yet its a FPS, and somehow weave the extended lore into a FPS narrative in such a way that it set the course for a new story arc (the Reclaimer arc). Could it have been better? Yes. But I would argue that it is exceptionally difficult to address the vast lore of a game story Halo (literally it has like ten times more lore than Mass Effect) in the confines of a first person shooter...
...and so, I was interested to see what he could do with an RPG. You know, a game that actually cares about the story as it is central to the function of the game mechanics. I was cautiously optimistic, as he was unproven in this medium - but I wasn't against it like a large number of people here were (and I think unfairly so).
Schlerf clearly understood the lore behind the game and his rendition of Chief and Cortana was very good; however, his presentation of the lore was, in my opinion, poor at best. The previous Halo games worked well because they had simplistic plots held up by great pacing, enthusiastic voice acting, and a fantastic score. There was zero reliance on external lore. You could jump straight into 3 and still get into the game.
Halo 4, however, doesn't have nearly the same appeal. Obviously, it's not all Schlerf's fault (pacing issues are generally caused by more lead level designers and creative directors), but a terrible, 2 dimensional villain, a weak supporting cast, and confusing Forerunner sub-plots are all on him. It just seemed like he got caught up with the setting that he forgot the simple core formula that made the originals work so well.
I'm also not a fan of that particular analysis. It ogles over a cinematic at the beginning of a game that focuses on a character who is neither in the Master Chief trilogy nor in rest of Halo 4. The prologue brings up a lot of lofty ideas and slick cinematography which the rest of the campaign does a poor job (if any at all) of following up on. The Halo games are shooters with fairly short campaigns that are comprised of mainly shooting and a few cutscenes; there was no way that Halo 4 would somehow be able to juggle so many complex topics at once, and it didn't.
This was precisely my worry when Schlerf was announced as lead writer. Though he certainly seems to care about the source material, his writing didn't seem to extend far beyond fanfiction, playing up the lead's relationship and name dropping tons lore without finesse. I would've liked to see what he could do with an RPG length game, but my expectations were low.
Not sure what his departure means for the ME:A and the franchise as a whole is interesting.
Does this news mean that Chris finished his writing for MEA and went on to the next project? Can it be as simple as that?
It could and likely does, but that does leave the rest of the series with a different lead writer. This could mean that the next Mass Effect games won't be a trilogy or will intentionally have substantially different tones to their predecessors. This could also have implications on Schlerf's confidence in the future of the series, but there's no proof to substantiate that claim. JJ Abrams left Star Wars after VII, so this kind of move is common within creative industries.
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