legendp said:
Try playing halo 2, that really mixed things up with the whole covenant religion thing, something which most people seemed to have missed, or atleast watch the opening cutscene for halo 2
I did watch the cutscenes for Halo 2 and 3 on YouTube.
At the beginning of 2, I was convinced that this was what all those Halo fans had been talking about when they mentioned its great story, but it ended up being a convoluted mess before the halfway point. It's all fairly standard sci-fi stuff, most notable from cobbling together ideas from a wide variety of novels and not just Aliens, Predator, Starship Troopers, and Terminator, which is the usual practice of sci-fi shooters.
I will say that Combat Evolved is probably the best execution of pure plot up until its release, with a pretty tight story that moves from one set piece to another fairly effectively without subjecting the player to endless cut-scenes. Largely this is through utilizing a bunch of tricks that were pretty common, such as much of the story being told via a voice-over character. But where most games told a long, rambling tale with lots of needless digressions, Halo didn't have an ounce of fat on it. Every chapter followed logically from the one before and was always moving forward.
I wasn't interested in the story, mostly because I thought Cortana was the only interesting character in it, but I can appreciate a well-constructed game plot when I see one.