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[Woorloog]

Honestly it still turned out to be a pretty good game. I just felt the last level should have been better and they shouldn't have copied other games by throwing in QTEs and shit

IMO it is very good.
Agree with you in that QTEs were bad though.

Don't give a crap about traditional Halo, even though the franchise has been my favorite for 10 years or so.

 

[les papillons sexuels]

Nice post. Another example is the Ammo mod: You hear two Rockets being shot, then another two and you know they're out of Rockets so that determines how you push an area. In Halo 4 you could count 4 Rockets, but you don't know if the player has the Ammo mod so if you push as a team to gain map control and they still have Rockets gg.

The list goes on.

it goes past that into primary gameplay, I'm about to land a headshot, does he have sprint to run, does he have jetpack to lift, does he have x,y,z. All of it turns the game into more and more of a muddy mess.

 

[nomis]

Right......

And this one was really about his breakfast.
https://twitter.com/JoshingtonState/status/274218625039212544

And this one.
https://twitter.com/JoshingtonState/status/274255828264042496

The idea that you're the bold creative director breaking ground for the future of Halo (shoehorning in CoD-alike mechanics and removing custom options), and saving it from the salty crying babies is supremely tone-deaf.

Did Josh Holmes wake up and go to work every morning to vow that he would give fans something they didn't know they wanted, instead of what they wanted (a game with Halo 3-esque player traits and hitscan weapons)? "Haters gonna hate"?

 

[Oblivionmancer]

This is a case of GAF bias in action. Halo 4 did a great number of things right that much of the audience here fails to recognize. Unlike every Halo game after Halo:CE, Halo 4 had that sense of wonder and discovery again. They did it by creating an interesting world and with great tech and audio. Even though Halo 4's campaign isn't perfect, I felt like it was as much as, if not more than compelling as some of Bungie's campaigns.

As far as multiple, I have welcomed just about all of the changes that 343 has made. In the end, I am very satisfied with Halo 4 and I really hope 343 keeps pushing it into new territory. Create new things. Dazzle me. Don't be afraid. I for one, am excited that its in the hands of a new developer that can give a new spin.

As far as the story, Halo 4 to me, serves just like Halo: CE did. An introduction. In Halo: CE we didn't learn anything about what was going on. We were just in the middle of it. We learned more about the things we were seeing in Halo 2, 3, and subsequent novels. I fully expect to see more of the Forerunners and have it all come together in a meaningful way. I just hope that 343 doesn't follow the route Bungie took, because once Halo 2 got out the door, the Covenant lost everything that made them an intimidating force.

Halo 4's campaign is easily the weakest in the series, for reasons I could spend pages explaining, but I'll try to keep it to a few sentences. First, the game-play was weaker, largely owing to SPOILERS BTW:

Weaker AI: enemies ignoring or barely reacting to incoming fire, bugging out and humping rocks and walls, watch any enemy banshee for long enough and it will screw up, and hilariously, every enemy becomes a crackshot simultaneously if you dare to climb into a banshee

Failures in visual design: in every previous Halo, the degree of immediate and concrete information granted by simply looking at an enemy was huge; in Halo 4, weapon and enemy designs are horribly homogenized; needlessly redesign the plasma rifle so it looks super similar to a carbine, make all human weapons into homogenous grey lumps, and good luck figuring out what that Promethean Knight is armed with until he--oh yep I guess his grey/orange blob is an incineration cannon, welp, checkpoint. And so on.

Failures in weapon design: they literally made the most boring possible decisions in 'designing' Forerunner weapons; they claim to have gone through hundreds of designs, and came up with, Glowing Orange Shotgun, Glowing Orange Battle Rifle, Glowing Orange Assault Rifle, Glowing Orange Sniper rifle that does more damage, Glowing Orange Rocket Launcher with a bigger kill radius, and Glowing Orange pistol with a cool secondary fire which is mostly useless in campaign and ruinous to balance in multi-player. Then there's the absurd irony of actually creating mechanically unique weapons to add to the bloated human stockpile like the rail gun and the sticky detonator. Surely they realize at 343 that they could have made those weapons forerunner by simply making them glow orange?

Failures in narrative: they way they must have hacked this thing together is evident from the incredible inconsistencies; gaping holes where information is sorely needed (who are these covenant what is the overall political situation in the galaxy at large) and overbearing info dumps that serve only to confuse the uninitiated and frustrate those who do care to keep up with the universe (meet the librarian). The whole chosen one arc that emerges from that encounter is both stupid, and internally consistent with the campaign design; in previous Halo's, Master Chief is the hero because he saves the day; in Halo 4, Chief saves the day because he's the hero. Why else is it that only he can destroy 4 barely defended flak cannons so that the Infinity can shoot a giant fucking laser beam (which said cannons would have stopped HOW?) and shoot a hole deep into the core of the Didact's ship, only to then be helpless to, you know, continue firing, so as to destroy the vessel with firepower that is clearly sufficient to damage the ship significantly in a single shot. It's because this is the video game level where the video game character wins the video game, not because of any bare-minimum groundwork done to contextualize the necessity of his intervention.

And maybe that would be worth it if this destined by game design showdown with the Didact didn't resolve itself with a shitty quick time event.

Overall I just can't tell who 343 was trying to please with the story. It's construction is such that it will anger people who are familiar with the lore, and baffle anyone who isn't.

In Closing: I had some fun playing Halo 4, and I don't think it's a terrible game. It is a pretty damned weak successor to Bungie's work, torn between the need to be conservative and safe, and the desire to make it's own mark on the series in terms of narrative in the worst ways possible (didact/librarian retcons, mostly just silly because of how willfully they were done--they had to be really trying to so clearly contradict the mere handful of sentences that existed explaining them--and much worse pretty much everything to do with Halsey, in particular the end of Spartan Ops). In short, they ended up with the worst of both worlds, a game that takes few risks, but 'reads' like enthusiastic and horribly misguided fan-fiction.

I still went on pretty long about this didn't I. Heh.

 

[les papillons sexuels]

This is a case of GAF bias in action. Halo 4 did a great number of things right that much of the audience here fails to recognize. Unlike every Halo game after Halo:CE, Halo 4 had that sense of wonder and discovery again. They did it by creating an interesting world and with great tech and audio. Even though Halo 4's campaign isn't perfect, I felt like it was as much as, if not more than compelling as some of Bungie's campaigns.

I disagree, the sense of discovery was ruined quickly by forcing the player to move through enviroments at a blistering pace and removing backtracking. The world was also very bland and repetitive, the majority of the enviroemtns looks the exact same but in a different colour. Purple rocky place vs sandy rocky place for example.

Look at the second level of the game, how quickly do you move through all the enviroments?

 

[Brannon]

I've said my piece on how codified the multiplayer is, and so have the player numbers, so there's nothing left for me to say there. But even the single player suffers in terms of enemy AI and map design. Railroaded level design, enemies that drop like flies since they don't have the self-preservation of the other games; it's like even the single player caters to the CoD design.

Oh well. It is what it is. Maybe H5 will be different. Maybe it'll copy that one part of CoD that everybody else is either too scared or too incompetent to copy, the 60FPS. Maybe it'll tell a story that doesn't require you to exit the damn game and use a separate app to experience. I'll not hold my breath for either, though.

 

[Twilight Gap]

Halo 4's campaign is easily the weakest in the series, for reasons I could spend pages explaining, but I'll try to keep it to a few sentences. First, the game-play was weaker, largely owing to SPOILERS BTW:

Weaker AI: enemies ignoring or barely reacting to incoming fire, bugging out and humping rocks and walls, watch any enemy banshee for long enough and it will screw up, and hilariously, every enemy becomes a crackshot simultaneously if you dare to climb into a banshee

Failures in visual design: in every previous Halo, the degree of immediate and concrete information granted by simply looking at an enemy was huge; in Halo 4, weapon and enemy designs are horribly homogenized; needlessly redesign the plasma rifle so it looks super similar to a carbine, make all human weapons into homogenous grey lumps, and good luck figuring out what that Promethean Knight is armed with until he--oh yep I guess his grey/orange blob is an incineration cannon, welp, checkpoint. And so on.

Failures in weapon design: they literally made the most boring possible decisions in 'designing' Forerunner weapons; they claim to have gone through hundreds of designs, and came up with, Glowing Orange Shotgun, Glowing Orange Battle Rifle, Glowing Orange Assault Rifle, Glowing Orange Sniper rifle that does more damage, Glowing Orange Rocket Launcher with a bigger kill radius, and Glowing Orange pistol with a cool secondary fire which is mostly useless in campaign and ruinous to balance in multi-player. Then there's the absurd irony of actually creating mechanically unique weapons to add to the bloated human stockpile like the rail gun and the sticky detonator. Surely they realize at 343 that they could have made those weapons forerunner by simply making them glow orange?

Failures in narrative: they way they must have hacked this thing together is evident from the incredible inconsistencies; gaping holes where information is sorely needed (who are these covenant what is the overall political situation in the galaxy at large) and overbearing info dumps that serve only to confuse the uninitiated and frustrate those who do care to keep up with the universe (meet the librarian). The whole chosen one arc that emerges from that encounter is both stupid, and internally consistent with the campaign design; in previous Halo's, Master Chief is the hero because he saves the day; in Halo 4, Chief saves the day because he's the hero. Why else is it that only he can destroy 4 barely defended flak cannons so that the Infinity can shoot a giant fucking laser beam (which said cannons would have stopped HOW?) and shoot a hole deep into the core of the Didact's ship, only to then be helpless to, you know, continue firing, so as to destroy the vessel with firepower that is clearly sufficient to damage the ship significantly in a single shot. It's because this is the video game level where the video game character wins the video game, not because of any bare-minimum groundwork done to contextualize the necessity of his intervention.

And maybe that would be worth it if this destined by game design showdown with the Didact didn't resolve itself with a shitty quick time event.

Overall I just can't tell who 343 was trying to please with the story. It's construction is such that it will anger people who are familiar with the lore, and baffle anyone who isn't.

In Closing: I had some fun playing Halo 4, and I don't think it's a terrible game. It is a pretty damned weak successor to Bungie's work, torn between the need to be conservative and safe, and the desire to make it's own mark on the series in terms of narrative in the worst ways possible (didact/librarian retcons, mostly just silly because of how willfully they were done--they had to be really trying to so clearly contradict the mere handful of sentences that existed explaining them--and much worse pretty much everything to do with Halsey, in particular the end of Spartan Ops). In short, they ended up with the worst of both worlds, a game that takes few risks, but 'reads' like enthusiastic and horribly misguided fan-fiction.

I still went on pretty long about this didn't I. Heh.

Mostly agree. I think it was ballsy in certain areas - moreso than Bungie could have done - and I liked their cinematics. However, the gameplay became a grind that was almost as bad as Halo 2, and the new AI - while intimidating - weren't really fun to fight. Also, the only character worth a damn was Tilson. Lasky was okay, but unless you watched FuD, you really wouldn't know why he and Chief were "best buds".

I enjoyed it (on Heroic) and it was nice watching on stream before the game launched. However, I haven't gotten much replay out of it other than Composer. I sat down to play start to finish the other day and could only make it through Dawn before I got bored. But I played ODST straight through this morning without stopping.

 

[Booshka]

I've said my piece on how codified the multiplayer is, and so have the player numbers, so there's nothing left for me to say there. But even the single player suffers in terms of enemy AI and map design. Railroaded level design, enemies that drop like flies since they don't have the self-preservation of the other games; it's like even the single player caters to the CoD design.

Oh well. It is what it is. Maybe H5 will be different. Maybe it'll copy that one part of CoD that everybody else is either too scared or too incompetent to copy, the 60FPS. Maybe it'll tell a story that doesn't require you to exit the damn game and use a separate app to experience. I'll not hold my breath for either, though.

Next Gen Halo has to be 60 FPS, it just has to be. The most successful shooter out this gen is 60 FPS and the horsepower 343 will get next gen should allow them to lock the game at 60 FPS while still having great visuals. If they can't do that, they aren't much of a AAA Studio in my eyes.

 

[Synth_floyd]

Single player was very mediocre. Crap story, boring enemies, boring weapons. Still the actual engine was nice though. People have said that a limitation of the new engine was that you couldn't do big spaces but I never really noticed it.

Still, the major flaw of the game was that the multiplayer was just a derivative ripoff of CoD. Kill cam, point system, nerfing of melee and nades (either by actually nerfing them or making the levels bigger so that they are used less and de facto nerfed), kill streaks, perks, etc etc etc.

 

[The Librarian]

Even though I highly praise Halo 3 for having the best encounters, it was actually missing something that Reach had, and that was urgency of finishing the kill. It largely had to do with the "Elite" role that the Brutes had to fill for Halo 3. Because the Brutes didn't regenerate shields, the combat could go to, what I'm going to call, a 50/50 mode. This is where you only worry about stripping the shields, because you know can clean them up later. I can think of quite a few scenarios in Halo 3 that would have been much more awesome if there was a bit more urgency for the kill.

Eh. I thought that urgency was still there with the Brute Pack because if you're stupid and charge in they'll kill you. You have to make sure not to take too many on at a time. Additionally, I don't think the idea of regenerative shields would work well with the design philosophy of the Brute Pack.

For one, those Scarab battles weren't as fun as you describe them to be IMO. Capable of causing so much destruction in the fiction but easily destroyed and can hardly kill you with its main beam lol

You can really say this about any enemy in Halo once you're good enough. I play the Halo games on Heroic, and I rarely die from anything. Scarab battles are a lot of fun because they combine so many elements of the sandbox into one fight and there are so many ways you can take them out (which is one of the reason they're not as deadly as "in the fiction").

Also, the same thing can be said about Halo 1 in terms of exploration to find weapons and other goodies.

I know. You said it wasn't in Halo 3. It was, only in certain places, sure, but the same can be said for Halo 1. And that type of design was only present on AotCR, really.

Halo 3 Brutes just can't compare to the Halo 1 Elites either, so enemy encounters never felt tough or truly engaging because the gunplay felt weak. The vehicle combat felt decent though, but Halo 1 also had great vehicle encounters.

I'll give you that one on one, Elites are more fun to fight than Brutes, but a Brute Pack is just as fun as a couple of Elites. I'll also give you that Halo 1's gunplay is better on average, but everything else about the encounter designs is a generation ahead in Halo 3: enemy placement, level design, mission structure, how the battles evolve, the number of options available to you in one place...you name it. For one, encounter quality is a lot higher on average in Halo 3. You're simply doing more of everything each level. AotCR is a good example of CE's repetitiveness bringing down the experience. After a while, fighting in all the rooms just feels same-y, and the only thing anybody ever wants to do is get to the open canyon parts. The Ark is AotCR done right as a whole. I look forward to fighting inside as much as I do the outside. Cant' say the same for AotCR. In Halo 3, you're never doing the same thing for too long. The battles don't evolve as organically as say Tsavo Highway's bunker fight, where you're fighting the Brute Packs in one instance, then all of a sudden you're defending the same bunker.

A good example of the generation leap between both games is the "storm the beach" fight in both games. CE's takes place on a flat plain, making it difficulty to take the fight in different, interesting directions upon replays. Halo 3's has a more puzzle-like approach where you can take different paths, and depending on the path you take, which enemies are priority becomes different.

Halo 1's vehicle fights feel pretty bare bones to Halo 3's. Not too many ways for things to play out differently by comparison.

 

[orznge]

Next Gen Halo has to be 60 FPS, it just has to be. The most successful shooter out this gen is 60 FPS and the horsepower 343 will get next gen should allow them to lock the game at 60 FPS while still having great visuals. If they can't do that, they aren't much of a AAA Studio in my eyes.

lol that's probably the one feature they'll never jack from CoD

 

[Overdoziz]

A good example of the generation leap between both games is the "storm the beach" fight in both games. CE's takes place on a flat plain, making it difficulty to take the fight in different, interesting directions upon replays. Halo 3's has a more puzzle-like approach where you can take different paths, and depending on the path you take, which enemies are priority becomes different.

And then this:

:/

 

[NullPointer]

A good example of the generation leap between both games is the "storm the beach" fight in both games. CE's takes place on a flat plain, making it difficulty to take the fight in different, interesting directions upon replays. Halo 3's has a more puzzle-like approach where you can take different paths, and depending on the path you take, which enemies are priority becomes different.

I so wanted Reach's storm the beach scene to go on for another half an hour, at that pace.

Nice write-up Dax. We don't like all of the same things but I really do enjoy your perspective.

 

[Twilight Gap]

And then this:


:/

Hey, that part of Reach was so intense. My favorite easily.

I so wanted Reach's storm the beach scene to go on for another half an hour, at that pace.

Yes, it was pure gold. The music, the AA guns in the background, the seraphs flying overhead, and Noble Team blasting away behind you - it was just too good.

I like to put Thunderstorm, Mythic, and Tough Luck on Heroic to make it last longer.

 

[dragonbane]

remember when Master Chief wasn't crippled and you could go from moving left to moving right in a timely fashion?

Still love that they actually used this image for their post-mortem. While they apologized for it, the text next to it doesn't inspire me with much confidence either.

 

[ArchedThunder]

What happened to everyone at 343 being a Halo fan? Don't you love it when companies outright lie to you! This entire article made me sick.

 

[FullMetalx117]

I will never forgive Bungie for ruining Halo with that monstrosity called Reach

 

[soulassssns]

Boom.

343 is in no position to treat anyone like that. They're lucky their game can survive solely on its name. They have some major work to do for Halo 5. As someone who has purchased every Halo game (except for Halo Wars), Halo 5 will be the first one that I skip (although I will probably rent it to give it a shot). Which is really quite sad. I just don't trust in the direction that 343 is taking the franchise. To be fair though, I didn't like the direction Reach was going either.

I think Bungie's decision to move on from Halo is often overlooked by most people. They knew it was the right time to walk away from that franchise, and there's a lot to say for knowing when it's time to hang up the cleats for the last time. But Microsoft saw the money signs. You can't really blame them for that either, but as a result we have gotten a watered down version of a game that used to be so good.

I actually feel bad for the team over at 343. They were given an impossible situation when you think about it. There was no way they could have pleased everyone, but they should have tried harder to please the fans of the original Halos rather than try to do something innovative (aka what we actually got). It would have been nice if they stuck to the older formulas that were already proven successful.

RIP in peace Halo.

All I could do was laugh. I'm a Halo fan and have been since the Macworld reveal. I look forward to every new Halo game and look forward to the changes in gameplay/visuals/story that Bungie and now 343 make.

You say it was good that Bungie knew when to hang up the clears and move on but I say you need to do that same.



Halo 5 is definitely a day 1 purchase for me.

 

[Overdoziz]

Halo 5 is definitely a day 1 purchase for me.

Not a chance for me.

 

[NBtoaster]

I disagree entirely. There are a lot of facets to the Call of Duty-inspired additions to the Halo 4 progression system, but let's just focus on one of them for the sake of argument: Passive perk-like mods that change base player traits. Halo is, at its core, a game that centers around being able to internalize all the variables, make predictions based on those variables, and act decisively, which rewards players who take the time to understand all the ins and outs of the game. When I'm trying to harass a sniper in a classic Halo game, I can pepper him with fire to knock him out of scope - this is a base player trait for every player in the match, I know with 100% certainty that when I hit him he is not scoped in. When I'm trying to harass a sniper in Halo 4, I don't know if he has the Stability mod, which stabilizes the player's reticule from flinching when they're shot - my shots could be doing practically nothing to his ability to dome me and I have absolutely no indication of that until I'm dead, and even then it's a guessing game. In any Halo game, I can get a player to no shields, where some players will choose to hide so they can start to regenerate. I know that in Halo 2, his shields will start to recharge in 4 seconds and in 6 seconds he'll be at full health. In Halo 4 I don't know whether or not that player has the Shielding mod, which decreases shield recharge rate - his shields will begin to charge at 6 seconds, but I could have far less time after that to finish my kill before he's back at full health. In a classic Halo game, I know that if I can get behind a sniper, he'll likely be in scope and therefore won't have a radar, making him an easy kill. In Halo 4, I don't know if he has the Awareness upgrade, which gives players radar while in scope - I have no way of knowing if he has full awareness of me coming up behind him, which may lead to my death where I otherwise would have succeeded. One last example, because I know I'm beating it into the ground: In a classic Halo game, if a player fires two rockets and then begins his reload, I know roughly the amount of time it will take him to reload and I judge his current state (based on visual shield feedback) as well as my own state and positioning and I can make a decision on whether or not to engage based on that reload time. In Halo 4, I don't know if that player has the Dexterity mod, which halves reload speed on all weapons - he could reload in the blink of an eye and explode my face and I'd have no indication of that prior to it happening.

I think there's still some merit to a perk-based multiplayer for specific series, but it doesn't really reward player knowledge and predictive skills like Halo did. There simply isn't any reasonable way to internalize all that knowledge with how the number of variables has escalated. I especially don't think it works well in a game with average engagement time as long as Halo, which is very much cat-and-mouse, something I don't really think Call of Duty does very well. That's not even going into what having to create variety for loadout selection has done to predictability, weapon balance, and game flow.

I don't consider predictability to be core to Halo. What's core to Halo MP are the weapons, the vehicles, the shields, the grenades. Everything should be open to change. Bungie didn't think predictability was core to Halo either, or they wouldn't have added equipment pickups to Halo 3 or loadouts to Reach.

The new enemies were terrible. Glad to fight the good old Covenant.

They should have expanded on the new enemies instead of falling back on the boring old covenant.

 

[les papillons sexuels]

I don't consider predictability to be core to Halo. What's core to Halo MP are the weapons, the vehicles, the shields, the grenades. Everything should be open to change. Bungie didn't think predictability was core to Halo either, or they wouldn't have added equipment pickups to Halo 3 or loadouts to Reach.



They should have expanded on the new enemies instead of falling back on the boring old covenant.

but they did, they had an entire GDC talk on how changing the shot times of the sniper rifle by 1 milisecond had massive impacts on the game design because of how it allowed for less predictable movement from opposing players.

Recharging health was never a core to the halo franchise, niether were grenades weapons or vehicles, if they were they wouldn't have been constantly swapped out for different variations. What was core was the actual game design of even clear player communication.

 

[Syphon Filter]

I will never forgive Bungie for ruining Halo with that monstrosity called Reach

Reach was a spinoff and MS forced Bungie to do it. They didn't want to continue making Halo games after Halo 3. Halo 4 is the game that ruined the franchise possibly forever.

 

[Twilight Gap]

Reach was a spinoff and MS forced Bungie to do it. They didn't want to continue making Halo games after Halo 3. Halo 4 is the game that ruined the franchise possibly forever.

That's what we think, but Bungie has said that they made ODST and Reach because they wanted to make it. Of course they were under contract, but most of what they put into the game was of their own volition.

Yea Bungie has made mistakes like Sword Block, Bloom, BR spread, dual wielding redundancy, SMG starts, Sword Base, Uncaged, etc. The list goes on, but they never changed that arena feeling with Reach other than a select few game modes. Reach wasn't the greatest, but you'd be damned to say it wasn't Halo, especially now. They teetered over it a bit, but there was a line they would not cross that 343 did with Halo 4.

And what about all the good they did, like the UI, FF options, Forge World (big step for the community), and file sharing?

 

[Trasher]

All I could do was laugh. I'm a Halo fan and have been since the Macworld reveal. I look forward to every new Halo game and look forward to the changes in gameplay/visuals/story that Bungie and now 343 make.

You say it was good that Bungie knew when to hang up the clears and move on but I say you need to do that same.



Halo 5 is definitely a day 1 purchase for me.

I have. Haven't touched Halo 4 since like the second week after its release (other than one night a month or so ago to try that different playlist for an hour).

My Halo cleats (or "clears", whatever floats your boat) have been collecting dust for a long time now.

What 343 created is definitely not the real "Halo" that everyone fell in love with years ago. It's an attempt at Halo. You might tell yourself it is, but in reality you are buying a wannabe Halo that is only largely successful thanks to its name and not its gameplay. Microsoft essentially bought a brand name we all know so well, but just because they slap "Halo" on the disc doesn't mean it's the same thing. Sheeple will continue to keep buying it just for that reason though, and they won't think for themselves about what they are actually playing.

Here's to hoping Halo 5 is actually good though!

 

[watership]

Reach was a spinoff and MS forced Bungie to do it. They didn't want to continue making Halo games after Halo 3. Halo 4 is the game that ruined the franchise possibly forever.

This is revisionist bullshit. Games only get made when publishers allow them too. There are lots of developers that take a game assignment and put their talent and passion into those projects. And it's funny how "Bad Halo game that Bungie made = Microsoft's Fault. Good Halo that Bungie made, Bungie is awesome!" Microsoft as a publisher had a hand in EVERY Halo game. 343 is Microsoft owned developer just as Bungie was Microsoft developer for their time with them.

Btw, I don't t think Reach or Halo 4 are remotely bad games, i think both are great actually.

 

[Randolph Freelander]

I will never forgive Bungie for ruining Halo with that monstrosity called Reach

Hey now. They ruined Halo long before that. Give them some credit.

 

[Syphon Filter]

Hey now. They ruined Halo long before that. Give them some credit.

How can an expansion ruin a franchise?

 

[Randolph Freelander]

How can an expansion ruin a franchise?

Long before.

 

[Syphon Filter]

Long before.

huh Halo 2 and 3 are great.

 

[Havok]

I don't consider predictability to be core to Halo. What's core to Halo MP are the weapons, the vehicles, the shields, the grenades. Everything should be open to change. Bungie didn't think predictability was core to Halo either, or they wouldn't have added equipment pickups to Halo 3 or loadouts to Reach.

I guess everybody's entitled to their opinion, but that ability to quickly and accurately make decisions that were founded in knowledge of player traits that everyone shared was a huge part of what drove Halo in high-level play, and as far as I'm concerned, nothing that 4 added made up for that absence.

The two elements you mention do add variability, yes. But the number of possible configurations of player traits you can run into in a Halo 4 match is dramatically higher. Equipment was a known variable at any rate, since it operated like any power weapon apart from being visible on the player model. That's not to say the concept was executed particularly well (it certainly wasn't), but it's not even in the same league as a perk system. Loadouts are trickier, and they weren't executed very well either in terms of visual feedback...but even then that was a singular ability that didn't impact how a player's health system worked, what his awareness abilities were, what his reload capabilities or ammunition capacities were. It was at most five set options per standard, non-Invasion match as opposed to hundreds with all of the variables in the H4 loadout system.

 

[BattleMonkey]

Don't see how it was much different from every other halo. Halo is just as linear shooter as any other shooter.

 

[MyAbsolution]

Hey now. They ruined Halo long before that. Give them some credit.

Long before.

Yep.

huh Halo 2 and 3 are great.

Halo 2... although loved by many here. Was absolutely despised by most hardcore CE players at launch. I have almost no good memories and imo the gameplay changes were all for the worse. Dual Wield, Auto Aim cranked to 11. It did get better with patches.

 

[AdventureRacing]

Halo 4's campaign is easily the weakest in the series, for reasons I could spend pages explaining, but I'll try to keep it to a few sentences. First, the game-play was weaker, largely owing to SPOILERS BTW:

Weaker AI: enemies ignoring or barely reacting to incoming fire, bugging out and humping rocks and walls, watch any enemy banshee for long enough and it will screw up, and hilariously, every enemy becomes a crackshot simultaneously if you dare to climb into a banshee

Failures in visual design: in every previous Halo, the degree of immediate and concrete information granted by simply looking at an enemy was huge; in Halo 4, weapon and enemy designs are horribly homogenized; needlessly redesign the plasma rifle so it looks super similar to a carbine, make all human weapons into homogenous grey lumps, and good luck figuring out what that Promethean Knight is armed with until he--oh yep I guess his grey/orange blob is an incineration cannon, welp, checkpoint. And so on.

Failures in weapon design: they literally made the most boring possible decisions in 'designing' Forerunner weapons; they claim to have gone through hundreds of designs, and came up with, Glowing Orange Shotgun, Glowing Orange Battle Rifle, Glowing Orange Assault Rifle, Glowing Orange Sniper rifle that does more damage, Glowing Orange Rocket Launcher with a bigger kill radius, and Glowing Orange pistol with a cool secondary fire which is mostly useless in campaign and ruinous to balance in multi-player. Then there's the absurd irony of actually creating mechanically unique weapons to add to the bloated human stockpile like the rail gun and the sticky detonator. Surely they realize at 343 that they could have made those weapons forerunner by simply making them glow orange?

Failures in narrative: they way they must have hacked this thing together is evident from the incredible inconsistencies; gaping holes where information is sorely needed (who are these covenant what is the overall political situation in the galaxy at large) and overbearing info dumps that serve only to confuse the uninitiated and frustrate those who do care to keep up with the universe (meet the librarian). The whole chosen one arc that emerges from that encounter is both stupid, and internally consistent with the campaign design; in previous Halo's, Master Chief is the hero because he saves the day; in Halo 4, Chief saves the day because he's the hero. Why else is it that only he can destroy 4 barely defended flak cannons so that the Infinity can shoot a giant fucking laser beam (which said cannons would have stopped HOW?) and shoot a hole deep into the core of the Didact's ship, only to then be helpless to, you know, continue firing, so as to destroy the vessel with firepower that is clearly sufficient to damage the ship significantly in a single shot. It's because this is the video game level where the video game character wins the video game, not because of any bare-minimum groundwork done to contextualize the necessity of his intervention.

And maybe that would be worth it if this destined by game design showdown with the Didact didn't resolve itself with a shitty quick time event.

Overall I just can't tell who 343 was trying to please with the story. It's construction is such that it will anger people who are familiar with the lore, and baffle anyone who isn't.

In Closing: I had some fun playing Halo 4, and I don't think it's a terrible game. It is a pretty damned weak successor to Bungie's work, torn between the need to be conservative and safe, and the desire to make it's own mark on the series in terms of narrative in the worst ways possible (didact/librarian retcons, mostly just silly because of how willfully they were done--they had to be really trying to so clearly contradict the mere handful of sentences that existed explaining them--and much worse pretty much everything to do with Halsey, in particular the end of Spartan Ops). In short, they ended up with the worst of both worlds, a game that takes few risks, but 'reads' like enthusiastic and horribly misguided fan-fiction.

I still went on pretty long about this didn't I. Heh.

I have other complaints but this really sums up a lot of my problem with the game.

Don't see how it was much different from every other halo. Halo is just as linear shooter as any other shooter.

Well thankfully there is an entire thread here of people explaining why they don't feel that way for you to educate yourself with. The problems go far beyond how linear the game is and your statement is wrong anyway.

 

[BattleMonkey]

Well thankfully there is an entire thread here of people explaining why they don't feel that way for you to educate yourself with. The problems go far beyond how linear the game is and your statement is wrong anyway.

See nothing but pages of inconsistent rants and nitpicks, not much different from the hordes of complaints seen with Reach and H3. Each Halo since the original has been met with the same and it just gets worse. "Its not halo", "They ruined the map again"

 

[AdventureRacing]

See nothing but pages of inconsistent rants and nitpicks, not much different from the hordes of complaints seen with Reach and H3. Each Halo since the original has been met with the same and it just gets worse. "Its not halo", "They ruined the map again"

I think you're seeing what you want to see. You may not agree with some of the complaints but there are quite a few posts in this thread that have detailed why they don't like the direction the series has taken.

 

[Oblivionmancer]

See nothing but pages of inconsistent rants and nitpicks, not much different from the hordes of complaints seen with Reach and H3. Each Halo since the original has been met with the same and it just gets worse. "Its not halo", "They ruined the map again"

Very well, thou art granted the internet's highest honors for refusing to engage in particulars on the particular subject of this thread, unlike all the unwashed ranters and nitpickers herein. You have revealed unto us all the great dark secret: Halo is the same as all other shooters, or perhaps all other games. The inevitable conclusion is that there is only one game, revealed to us all by you. You are are The One. You have shown us the truth, and so we dub you our King, nay our God, Ser BattleMonkey. May you rule ever in peace. One Kingdom. One videogame. Amen.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

Halo 4's campaign is easily the weakest in the series, for reasons I could spend pages explaining, but I'll try to keep it to a few sentences. First, the game-play was weaker, largely owing to SPOILERS BTW:

Weaker AI: enemies ignoring or barely reacting to incoming fire, bugging out and humping rocks and walls, watch any enemy banshee for long enough and it will screw up, and hilariously, every enemy becomes a crackshot simultaneously if you dare to climb into a banshee

Failures in visual design: in every previous Halo, the degree of immediate and concrete information granted by simply looking at an enemy was huge; in Halo 4, weapon and enemy designs are horribly homogenized; needlessly redesign the plasma rifle so it looks super similar to a carbine, make all human weapons into homogenous grey lumps, and good luck figuring out what that Promethean Knight is armed with until he--oh yep I guess his grey/orange blob is an incineration cannon, welp, checkpoint. And so on.

Failures in weapon design: they literally made the most boring possible decisions in 'designing' Forerunner weapons; they claim to have gone through hundreds of designs, and came up with, Glowing Orange Shotgun, Glowing Orange Battle Rifle, Glowing Orange Assault Rifle, Glowing Orange Sniper rifle that does more damage, Glowing Orange Rocket Launcher with a bigger kill radius, and Glowing Orange pistol with a cool secondary fire which is mostly useless in campaign and ruinous to balance in multi-player. Then there's the absurd irony of actually creating mechanically unique weapons to add to the bloated human stockpile like the rail gun and the sticky detonator. Surely they realize at 343 that they could have made those weapons forerunner by simply making them glow orange?

Failures in narrative: they way they must have hacked this thing together is evident from the incredible inconsistencies; gaping holes where information is sorely needed (who are these covenant what is the overall political situation in the galaxy at large) and overbearing info dumps that serve only to confuse the uninitiated and frustrate those who do care to keep up with the universe (meet the librarian). The whole chosen one arc that emerges from that encounter is both stupid, and internally consistent with the campaign design; in previous Halo's, Master Chief is the hero because he saves the day; in Halo 4, Chief saves the day because he's the hero. Why else is it that only he can destroy 4 barely defended flak cannons so that the Infinity can shoot a giant fucking laser beam (which said cannons would have stopped HOW?) and shoot a hole deep into the core of the Didact's ship, only to then be helpless to, you know, continue firing, so as to destroy the vessel with firepower that is clearly sufficient to damage the ship significantly in a single shot. It's because this is the video game level where the video game character wins the video game, not because of any bare-minimum groundwork done to contextualize the necessity of his intervention.

And maybe that would be worth it if this destined by game design showdown with the Didact didn't resolve itself with a shitty quick time event.

Overall I just can't tell who 343 was trying to please with the story. It's construction is such that it will anger people who are familiar with the lore, and baffle anyone who isn't.

In Closing: I had some fun playing Halo 4, and I don't think it's a terrible game. It is a pretty damned weak successor to Bungie's work, torn between the need to be conservative and safe, and the desire to make it's own mark on the series in terms of narrative in the worst ways possible (didact/librarian retcons, mostly just silly because of how willfully they were done--they had to be really trying to so clearly contradict the mere handful of sentences that existed explaining them--and much worse pretty much everything to do with Halsey, in particular the end of Spartan Ops). In short, they ended up with the worst of both worlds, a game that takes few risks, but 'reads' like enthusiastic and horribly misguided fan-fiction.

I still went on pretty long about this didn't I. Heh.

I already didn't agree with most of this post, but this part is especially ridiculous. Anybody who is actually familiar with the lore wouldn't somehow automatically be angered by the story. I'm as familiar with the lore as just about anybody on this entire forum, that much I'm certain, and I came away very pleased with the story and feel that it's one of the strongest ever story efforts in a Halo campaign. If you're a fan of the books, you should be a fan of Halo 4's story, simple as that.

In previous Halo titles, it always felt to me like Bungie failed to take advantage of all that was there in the books just waiting to be taken advantage of in the games. I enjoyed the games anyway, but I still came away feeling that they were also wasted opportunities. I really didn't feel that way with Halo 4. Halo 4's story felt more like the story that I read about in one of Nylund's books. Halo 4 had the Master Chief that you read about in Fall of Reach and First Strike. I loved seeing Cortana pull that multiplying trick that she picked up from a Covenant AI in First Strike. Cortana's rampancy was handled extremely well. They didn't just talk about showing more of the Master Chief's human side, they actually did it, and did it successfully. I actually enjoyed that the Chief was essentially humbled in the way that he was. He just didn't have it in him to beat the Didact on his own, to escape completely unscathed as is usually the case for him in situations such as these. The Master Chief was made to taste failure in the most personal of ways that we've ever seen, and I commend 343 for having the guts to do it. It makes what's to come in the sequels even more exciting.

Very well, thou art granted the internet's highest honors for refusing to engage in particulars on the particular subject of this thread, unlike all the unwashed ranters and nitpickers herein. You have revealed unto us all the great dark secret: Halo is the same as all other shooters, or perhaps all other games. The inevitable conclusion is that there is only one game, revealed to us all by you. You are are The One. You have shown us the truth, and so we dub you our King, nay our God, Ser BattleMonkey. May you rule ever in peace. One Kingdom. One videogame. Amen.

So because he disagrees with you and points out an obvious truth, the best course is to instead weasel your way out of admitting that the complaints being thrown out now are a lot of the same ones that get tossed out after every Halo game, and that were certainly tossed out after both Halo 3 and Halo Reach? Where did all those people go that said Bungie screwed up the end of Fall of Reach the book with Halo Reach's ending? Where are the people that said the whole Noble Six, copy of Cortana, latchkey discovery idea felt forced and screwed with major aspects of the Halo lore? Where are the people who said that Bungie didn't take any risks with Halo 3's story, and completely failed to do anything with Cortana's predicament at the end of Halo 2? You just got Cortana back and it was back to business as usual, all the hype and build up for nothing. Where are the people who said that Bungie failed to touch on one of the more interesting aspects of a potential Reach game by not even venturing to touch upon the rare Forerunner artifact located beneath Oni's Castle base? I can go on and on. Bungie were hardly perfect, so I don't see what 343 is getting all this crap about. Halo 4 was a fantastic game.

 

[MaximumFlipFlop]

Don't see how it was much different from every other halo. Halo is just as linear shooter as any other shooter.

You'd make a great focus tester.

 

[Oblivionmancer]

I already didn't agree with most of this post, but this part is especially ridiculous. Anybody who is actually familiar with the lore wouldn't somehow automatically be angered by the story. I'm as familiar with the lore as just about anybody on this entire forum, that much I'm certain, and I came away very pleased with the story and feel that it's one of the strongest ever story efforts in a Halo campaign. If you're a fan of the books, you should be a fan of Halo 4's story, simple as that.

Definitely not as simple as that, and I'm the proof. I'm as familiar with the lore as most, I did find the story frustrating, for reasons I've already described. I won't disagree that it was a strong effort, but I stopped getting graded on effort in elementary school. Like I said, it was enthusiastic, but horribly misguided in many respects. Much of that frustration is specifically because of my familiarity with the books and other expanded lore. I addressed two of the most important failures of Halo 4, the Covenant and Dr. Halsey, and those disappointments (particularly Halsey) flow directly from my experiences with the books. I don't dispute your right to disagree, but please don't try to hand-wave mine away with that book assertion.

In previous Halo titles, it always felt to me like Bungie failed to take advantage of all that was there in the books just waiting to be taken advantage of in the games. I enjoyed the games anyway, but I still came away feeling that they were also wasted opportunities. I really didn't feel that way with Halo 4. Halo 4's story felt more like the story that I read about in one of Nylund's books. Halo 4 had the Master Chief that you read about in Fall of Reach and First Strike. I loved seeing Cortana pull that multiplying trick that she picked up from a Covenant AI in First Strike. Cortana's rampancy was handled extremely well. They didn't just talk about showing more of the Master Chief's human side, they actually did it, and did it successfully. I actually enjoyed that the Chief was essentially humbled in the way that he was. He just didn't have it in him to beat the Didact on his own, to escape completely unscathed as is usually the case for him in situations such as these. The Master Chief was made to taste failure in the most personal of ways that we've ever seen, and I commend 343 for having the guts to do it. It makes what's to come in the sequels even more exciting.

I actually agree with you about Bungie's shortcomings as storytellers. Don't mistake my disdain for Halo 4's narrative as glowing praise for everything Bungie did. I wish I felt the same about the Didact encounter as you do, but it just came off as too designed, to poorly contextualized to come off as anything other than a very clear video-game moment to me. What I think Bungie generally did much better than 343 is to use what story there was to convincingly contextualize what the player is doing within the narrative. I (I'll say almost, I'm sure Bungie didn't bat .1000 on this) almost always very simply bought into what I as the chief was doing/needed to do based on what was happening in the game. In 4, as I explained, I frequently felt detached from that; instead of feeling like the guy for the job in the world I was inhabiting, I felt much more mechanically like a guy playing a video game. This isn't an absolute claim about every moment of 4, it's just something that happened frequently enough to seriously bother me. As for Cortana's death, yes it's a good thing that they finally addressed that plot point and gave it it's due (unless they retcon it in 5, here's hoping they stick to their guns), but for me at least, the hatchet job they pulled on Halsey pretty well wipes out the good will they built there.

So because he disagrees with you and points out an obvious truth, the best course is to instead weasel your way out of admitting that the complaints being thrown out now are a lot of the same ones that get tossed out after every Halo game, and that were certainly tossed out after both Halo 3 and Halo Reach? Where did all those people go that said Bungie screwed up the end of Fall of Reach the book with Halo Reach's ending? Where are the people that said the whole Noble Six, copy of Cortana, latchkey discovery idea felt forced and screwed with major aspects of the Halo lore? Where are the people who said that Bungie didn't take any risks with Halo 3's story, and completely failed to do anything with Cortana's predicament at the end of Halo 2? You just got Cortana back and it was back to business as usual, all the hype and build up for nothing. Where are the people who said that Bungie failed to touch on one of the more interesting aspects of a potential Reach game by not even venturing to touch upon the rare Forerunner artifact located beneath Oni's Castle base? I can go on and on. Bungie were hardly perfect, so I don't see what 343 is getting all this crap about. Halo 4 was a fantastic game.

Okay, this bit pisses me off but good. He came in here and dismissed an entire thread's worth of discussion, and I'm the one weaseling out of something by poking some fun at him for it? I don't think so man, that's some bullshit right there. Yes, of course people complained about aspects of the previous games, and many of those complaints are legitimate too; my perspective, as expressed here and in my initial post, is that Halo 4's faults are greater. BattleMonkey found it worth his time to enter the thread and basically belittle everyone for having a conversation or an opinion, because hell they're all basically the same game anyway. As a self-avowed big fan of the game, that should piss you off too. The argument that because the previous games/developer have faults, or that people had complaints, that this should somehow diminish the legitimacy of complaints about the current game, which are in distinct at least in part, if not in whole, is a) wrong and b) a lazy and useless contribution to the thread. He didn't address any specific post or argument, just dismissed them all out of hand as rants and nitpicks.

So no, I didn't care to address his point (if he had one) in greater detail. Here it is though, one more time: sure, Bungie's games were imperfect. 343's was, in my view, substantially greater in its flaws, and did not live up to the (imperfect) but proud legacy left behind by Bungie's Halo games.

 

[FUNKNOWN iXi]

^ Well said.

Very well, thou art granted the internet's highest honors for refusing to engage in particulars on the particular subject of this thread, unlike all the unwashed ranters and nitpickers herein. You have revealed unto us all the great dark secret: Halo is the same as all other shooters, or perhaps all other games. The inevitable conclusion is that there is only one game, revealed to us all by you. You are are The One. You have shown us the truth, and so we dub you our King, nay our God, Ser BattleMonkey. May you rule ever in peace. One Kingdom. One videogame. Amen.

This might be the greatest post I have ever read on a forum.

 

[Twilight Gap]

See nothing but pages of inconsistent rants and nitpicks, not much different from the hordes of complaints seen with Reach and H3. Each Halo since the original has been met with the same and it just gets worse. "Its not halo", "They ruined the map again"

Most people don't waste time complaining for the hell of it.

The reason this has been posted since the beginning of time is because the games have deviated further and further away from where they started.

CE > H2 > H3 > Reach > H4 is used in this case to show that Halo 4 is the least like CE, whereas H3 is more like CE compared to Reach. It doesn't necessarily mean it's better because that's a mostly unjustifiable parameter left solely to the individual and their experience. The only objective criteria we can measure it by is how close it is to the first game. So when people say "it isn't Halo", all we're really saying is that "It's further away from Halo CE than it ought to be", and this is mostly referring to the core gameplay. Different parts will get closer but as a whole the games have moved away from CE's style over the years.

Yes, there will be a shitstorm around every game, and there will be people who say the previous game was better. But instead of dismissing it as history repeating itself, we should look to see why players feel that way. After what I have highlighted, it should be easier to begin to understand.

I myself am a semi-purist. I welcome new additions so long as they don't touch the core game, so if I say "it's not Halo", that means somebody went in there and changed it. For example, I welcome Sprint to Campaign, Firefight, and even Invasion. However, it really hinders the way maps are built by making them unnecessarily large. RIP small maps like Beaver Creek and Midship.

 

[King Beyond the wall]

It was pretty evident that once Bungie left and a Microsoft owned studio took over design Halo would drastically change. It is only natural that they would want to 'modernise' the game to attract a bigger audience and get more sales, justifying their own existence. The fact that many of these developers did not even like only helped push this direction more.

With this in mind, what we can expect from Halo 5 Is scary - further codification. More customisable killstreaks, more perks, less Halo. Thankfully Halo3 and Reach have a strong username still, and there are also rumours of halo 3 for PC. In terms of Halo's future, I'm done with it, and this is coming from someone who used to be a massive halo fan, playing 10,000 halo3 games and reading all the books.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

Definitely not as simple as that, and I'm the proof. I'm as familiar with the lore as most, I did find the story frustrating, for reasons I've already described. I won't disagree that it was a strong effort, but I stopped getting graded on effort in elementary school. Like I said, it was enthusiastic, but horribly misguided in many respects. Much of that frustration is specifically because of my familiarity with the books and other expanded lore. I addressed two of the most important failures of Halo 4, the Covenant and Dr. Halsey, and those disappointments (particularly Halsey) flow directly from my experiences with the books. I don't dispute your right to disagree, but please don't try to hand-wave mine away with that book assertion.



I actually agree with you about Bungie's shortcomings as storytellers. Don't mistake my disdain for Halo 4's narrative as glowing praise for everything Bungie did. I wish I felt the same about the Didact encounter as you do, but it just came off as too designed, to poorly contextualized to come off as anything other than a very clear video-game moment to me. What I think Bungie generally did much better than 343 is to use what story there was to convincingly contextualize what the player is doing within the narrative. I (I'll say almost, I'm sure Bungie didn't bat .1000 on this) almost always very simply bought into what I as the chief was doing/needed to do based on what was happening in the game. In 4, as I explained, I frequently felt detached from that; instead of feeling like the guy for the job in the world I was inhabiting, I felt much more mechanically like a guy playing a video game. This isn't an absolute claim about every moment of 4, it's just something that happened frequently enough to seriously bother me. As for Cortana's death, yes it's a good thing that they finally addressed that plot point and gave it it's due (unless they retcon it in 5, here's hoping they stick to their guns), but for me at least, the hatchet job they pulled on Halsey pretty well wipes out the good will they built there.




Okay, this bit pisses me off but good. He came in here and dismissed an entire thread's worth of discussion, and I'm the one weaseling out of something by poking some fun at him for it? I don't think so man, that's some bullshit right there. Yes, of course people complained about aspects of the previous games, and many of those complaints are legitimate too; my perspective, as expressed here and in my initial post, is that Halo 4's faults are greater. BattleMonkey found it worth his time to enter the thread and basically belittle everyone for having a conversation or an opinion, because hell they're all basically the same game anyway. As a self-avowed big fan of the game, that should piss you off too. The argument that because the previous games/developer have faults, or that people had complaints, that this should somehow diminish the legitimacy of complaints about the current game, which are in distinct at least in part, if not in whole, is a) wrong and b) a lazy and useless contribution to the thread. He didn't address any specific post or argument, just dismissed them all out of hand as rants and nitpicks.

So no, I didn't care to address his point (if he had one) in greater detail. Here it is though, one more time: sure, Bungie's games were imperfect. 343's was, in my view, substantially greater in its flaws, and did not live up to the (imperfect) but proud legacy left behind by Bungie's Halo games.

Refreshing post. We still disagree, but at least you took my own points and concerns seriously while making your own points. What they did with Halo 4's story just worked really well for me, but then this is likely also why some people like a specific movie or book that others may not.

If 343 is taking these criticisms seriously, which I believe they are, then it should bode well for future Halo titles. This is the most anticipation I've honestly ever had going into a new Halo title.

 

[Krilekk]

Scrapped traditional Halo, then why the hell did they keep the most traditional enemies on board and failed to come up with new and exciting challenges? Every single new enemy type (there are only three) sucks more than the Flood ever did.

 

[Shake Appeal]

Not a chance for me.

Yep, no chance here. And that, coupled with a buncha other wacky decisions and directions taken, means I almost certainly won't be buying the next Microsoft console.

I hope 343 and Halo can find success somehow, but I'm literally not going to put my money on it.

Just thinking, if you compiled the list of long-term HaloGAF members who have just checked out of the series, it would be pretty damning. Everyone from Ghaleon to Trasher to Dirtbag to Dax to me. That's a pretty broad swathe of constituents.

 

[Ken]

Scrapped traditional Halo, then why the hell did they keep the most traditional enemies on board and failed to come up with new and exciting challenges? Every single new enemy type (there are only three) sucks more than the Flood ever did.

Because lore.

 

[Devolution]

They scrapped the reason me and so many people play it.

Awesome show, great job.

 

[Plywood]

They first need to learn how to tell that story in-game. Bungie never really figured that one out either.

I'd say they nailed it in Halo 2, no idea what they thought in 3.

 

[Toa TAK]

They first need to learn how to tell that story in-game. Bungie never really figured that one out either.

The Forerunner story? I agree with the issue for 343, but I thought Bungie's aim wasn't to focus on it, but keeping it in the background of the series (mainly the trilogy).

 

[Retro]

I'm not touching Halo 5, especially when you figure that a new hardware purchase will be part of the price of admission. I haven't touched Halo 4 since the weekend after it came out. Not for Forge (which added a ton of shelflife to reach for me), not for multiplayer (Spastic, paper-thin), not for single player (story is obtuse, gameplay is linear, set pieces are flat), not for Spartan Ops (why would I care about the story and the world when the springboard for SOs is so terrible?). I have literally no interest in Halo 5, and I've been a Halo fan since it was shown at Macworld (Well, technically, a fan since Marathon...). Bought an X-box when that was all the system had, bought into the Live scam just for H2, bought a 360 and Crackdown just for the Beta access to H3. Halo was actually the only shooter franchise I liked. Too bad.

Eh. I thought that urgency was still there with the Brute Pack because if you're stupid and charge in they'll kill you. You have to make sure not to take too many on at a time. Additionally, I don't think the idea of regenerative shields would work well with the design philosophy of the Brute Pack.

Brutes should have gone to grab whatever armor you blew off them, ripped something off the walls to improvise as a shield. Yeah, they go berserk, but you can be crazy without being stupid.

That'd have been scary, a pissed off brute with a chunk of hull bearing down on you.