Agree on all points, but give them time to develop the story. In fact here are my gripes with the story: - Where did the traveler come from? - how come no one seems to be weirded out that they've been dead for hundreds of years and are somehow now alive? - How come my guardian has no questions and doesn't need any training to come back from the dead and jump right in to being an elite soldier in the tower? - Are all guardians former dead people? - where did these aliens come from? - Why do the aliens hate the traveler so much? - What did the "golden age" of humanity look like? - If ghosts can just revive people then how has the darkness been able to do so much damage with a seemingly endless supply of bodies to revive? - Why is every character so emotionless? - what caused there to be multiple races who could become guardians? And these are just the questions that spawned out of my brain in the last two minutes. Regardless of these holes, the game is still fun to play and I'm willing to give Bungie the benefit of the doubt (given their track record) that they will evolve this new property into something as special as the Halo series. The original Halo had a basic story and didn't really start getting deeper until Halo 2.