Bungie: Halo's 2 ending "intentional" (not rushed)
- Thread starter GhaleonEB
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arhra
Member
A few times they've managed better than me at getting past wreckage - last time i played through the tunnel sequence, the main road was completely blocked up, and i was busy trying to wedge my warthog through the tiny gap that was available, when i saw the AI-driven warthog that was accompanying me turn around, head back up the tunnel, and use a ramp to get up onto the elevated bit at the side, then happily drive past and drop back onto the main road past the wreckage.
Then again, there's a fair few times when they've driven me over the edge of a cliff, too... (although mostly it seems due to a near-miss from a wraith's plasma mortar or similar, rather than general ineptness). Still, they still seem better than a lot of the idiots who'll hop into a 'hog on Live...
Deku Tree said:So Bungie intentionally teased us with screenshots like this one which strongly suggests and earth invasion:
Then they intentionally had an ad campaign that used slogans like "the earth will never be the same" which make people think 'earth invasion'.
And finally they intentionally end the game.right as the earth invasion looks like it's about to start
Pretty messed up if you ask me.
Just like they showed Solid Snake running around sections of Big Shell or fighting a harrier jet on the bridge...
There was an invasion in Halo 2, but that invasion turned out to be something else.
That's common, though. Designing an E3 demo is not simple work, you know, and developers often DO build special levels just for E3.
It happened with Half-Life 2 that year as well. Those original demos featured SOME areas from the final game while others were clearly early versions to show off gameplay features. The traptown stuff, the strider sections, enemies that weren't in the final game, dialog that wasn't in the final game, etc.
Fixed2BeBroken
Member
um...wasnt that in the final game tho?
i mean, just cause you assume the whole game is gonna be on earth because of that pic, doesnt mean it has to be.
peace
Mike Works
Member
pj325is said:
1) Why couldn't/didn't they pick any other level/environment?pj325is said:
2) How would seeing a jackal holding a gun standing in front of a brick texture inside a ruin spoil anything? Or standing in front of a waterfall? I can understand not wanting to show a picture of the hovering gondolas or the giant covenant city-ship, but I'm fairly certain Bungie could've pulled off something.
Fixed2BeBroken said:
um...wasnt that in the final game tho?
i mean, just cause you assume the whole game is gonna be on earth because of that pic, doesnt mean it has to be.
peace
I think he was referring to the amount of devesation. In that pic, a lot of earth is getting owned. Only one city is being targeted in the final game.
Mike Works
Member
Though I wouldn't be surprised if some people did think that, I didn't. However, after watching the Earth City level demo at E3, seeing video of Master Chief jumping in space onto a Covenant Ship over Earth, seeing the commercial which featured Earth in every single clip of footage, and then having Master Chief begin chewing bubblegame and taking out his list of names as his ship approached the soon to be invaded Earth, lets just say it's unreasonable to see how people weren't upset over only getting 1 fucking level on Earth in the entire game.Fixed2BeBroken said:
um...wasnt that in the final game tho?
i mean, just cause you assume the whole game is gonna be on earth because of that pic, doesnt mean it has to be.
Mike Works said:
1) They could have picked any, they picked earth probably because it was earliest in the game and farthest along in development.
2) Well they did show non earth environments in a lot of november issues of magazines, but showing a jackal in front of a waterfall or brick wall wouldn't really tell you where they are in the universe. People could just assume they were taken on earth, it wouldn't really have served any purpose.
Fixed2BeBroken
Member
Mike Works said:
I had honestly expected alot of it to be on earth but The earth atmosphere isnt what interested me in halo 2 anyways, so I guess thats why it never really bothered it me. The game could be set in Heaven or Hell, doesnt really change the gameplay that much...which is why i wanted the game.
And there were ALOT of Outdoor enviroments which is what I really hoped for. More action outside, which does effect gameplay.
peace
Mike Works
Member
You're correct in that it doesn't change gameplay. It does change the game in my eyes though. This is a thin analogy, but I basically see it as the difference between Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima.Fixed2BeBroken said:
Kanbee-san
Member
Mike Works said:
I expected more on earth, and i expected the E3 stage to be in the final game but it wasnt. Dont know what they were thinking, but they never confirmed it either.
I can never understand why peeps knock things down based on their misconceptions.
Mike Works
Member
Kanbee-san said:
Why did you expect more on Earth?Kanbee-san said:
One thing should be mentioned: the E3 level is in the game, but they redesigned the architecture to reflect an Africa of the future, not just a giant city. Many of the scenarios in that demo are in the game, though they layout got a redesign.
Also, if you only paid attention to the TV ads, then I can see how you would have been disappointed that more of the game was not on Earth. I had assumed as far back as the E3 2003 demo that the MC would leave Earth once he got to the ship, and that's just what happened. It was no shock that that was the one Earth stage, especially since Bungie had mentioned all the other enviroments so early on.
Also, if you only paid attention to the TV ads, then I can see how you would have been disappointed that more of the game was not on Earth. I had assumed as far back as the E3 2003 demo that the MC would leave Earth once he got to the ship, and that's just what happened. It was no shock that that was the one Earth stage, especially since Bungie had mentioned all the other enviroments so early on.
Kanbee-san
Member
Mike Works said:
Because from what i had understood from the inception of halo 2, was that MC would be saving earth from the covies. I even expected to go back to earth right at the end if you know what i mean.
Mike Works
Member
Err, so which side of the argument are you on? So far, this is what I've heard from you;
?
Fixed2BeBroken
Member
Mike Works said:
He is on Both sides.
also wanna expand on what i said earlier about ALOT of outdoor enviroments....what i really meant was ALOT of Big Open areas...
peace
Kanbee-san said:
See this is what i dont understand...
How do you stop huge explosions like that, caused by spaceships, from the ground?
The whole MC part of the game WAS trying to save earth from the covies, driving them from mombasa, trying to catch regret to find out how he found it and what they want with it, jumping on the forerunner ship to try and stop Truth from leading the armada there.
He just isn't finished yet.
tahrikmili
Member
OK.. here's a different perspective from me.
I never owned a console before two weeks ago. I hated consoles. I abhored them. I was a PC freak that spent hundreds of bucks on graphics hardware, and was proud of it. Then one day I saw this Halo 2 xbox with secondary controller bundle offer for 170 euro and thought to myself, "What the hell" and got it. Brought it home, hooked it up and played..
Now, I was exposed to Halo 2 only as far as what I had been able to follow on the 'net - E3 presentations, trailers screenshots and hands-on previews, and the like. But now that I've played and finished Halo 2, I have to say a few things..
1) I, too, like many other people on this thread, was expecting a storyline about a major earth invasion with a much more grim/dark theme.
2) I, too, like many other people on this thread, after playing Halo (on PC) at first thought the two games were too much alike for comfort, at first.
3) But after giving the game a serious chance, I'm totally in love with it. And MUCH of my love for the game is because it SURPRISED me greatly throughout the storyline with some genuinely interesting and sometimes outrageous developments.
4) Eventually I got over my surprise that the earth invasion was not the focus of the game, I remember being dumbstruck when I found the Delta Halo because I was EXPECTING the urban commando warfare to just go on and on - a la Black Hawk Down. I was even let down, because, I thought, oh no, more of the same - but it was not. It wasn't repetitive or boring, and certainly much more focused than the original Halo, and eventually I was a convert.
5) I'm pissed off with the ending, but not because I feel like 'it was rushed'. Only because I wanted to kick Truth's ass and save the earth, and now I have to wait another couple of years for that. I don't like cliffhangers, but at least now I'm guaranteed to buy the next game - so I can see why Bungie would do that.
All in all, I must say, Halo 2 was one of the best games I played this year, and is right up there in my hall of fame. Just so you know, the only people who enjoyed it weren't the fans of Halo 1 (I wasn't too impressed by the PC port..) but it actually converted people onto the xbox by its brilliance. Some of the criticism on this thread is just criticism for ranting's sake. "Boo boo, they showed this but didn't give me, mommy mommy they cheated me, where's my candy?" If you have (obviously) set your mind before you even gave it a chance, then I see no reason to make you like it, it's your loss
I never owned a console before two weeks ago. I hated consoles. I abhored them. I was a PC freak that spent hundreds of bucks on graphics hardware, and was proud of it. Then one day I saw this Halo 2 xbox with secondary controller bundle offer for 170 euro and thought to myself, "What the hell" and got it. Brought it home, hooked it up and played..
Now, I was exposed to Halo 2 only as far as what I had been able to follow on the 'net - E3 presentations, trailers screenshots and hands-on previews, and the like. But now that I've played and finished Halo 2, I have to say a few things..
1) I, too, like many other people on this thread, was expecting a storyline about a major earth invasion with a much more grim/dark theme.
2) I, too, like many other people on this thread, after playing Halo (on PC) at first thought the two games were too much alike for comfort, at first.
3) But after giving the game a serious chance, I'm totally in love with it. And MUCH of my love for the game is because it SURPRISED me greatly throughout the storyline with some genuinely interesting and sometimes outrageous developments.
4) Eventually I got over my surprise that the earth invasion was not the focus of the game, I remember being dumbstruck when I found the Delta Halo because I was EXPECTING the urban commando warfare to just go on and on - a la Black Hawk Down. I was even let down, because, I thought, oh no, more of the same - but it was not. It wasn't repetitive or boring, and certainly much more focused than the original Halo, and eventually I was a convert.
5) I'm pissed off with the ending, but not because I feel like 'it was rushed'. Only because I wanted to kick Truth's ass and save the earth, and now I have to wait another couple of years for that. I don't like cliffhangers, but at least now I'm guaranteed to buy the next game - so I can see why Bungie would do that.
All in all, I must say, Halo 2 was one of the best games I played this year, and is right up there in my hall of fame. Just so you know, the only people who enjoyed it weren't the fans of Halo 1 (I wasn't too impressed by the PC port..) but it actually converted people onto the xbox by its brilliance. Some of the criticism on this thread is just criticism for ranting's sake. "Boo boo, they showed this but didn't give me, mommy mommy they cheated me, where's my candy?" If you have (obviously) set your mind before you even gave it a chance, then I see no reason to make you like it, it's your loss
I just watched the DVD again, and here are the quotes from Bungie themselves for those interested...
"We had a vision in our mind about what Halo 2 would look like. And that vision is really easy to see in the Halo 2 announcement trailer. Stencil shadows on everything, real time reflections on Master Chief's visor, this very crisp well ?? image. And we thought, well that's what we're going to show for E3... When we got to the actual implementation of some of the choices we have made, we realized it was impossible and we went around and around on that and other questions for, perhaps, too long." (Joseph Staten)
"We came back from E3 without actually less then what we wanted to. We came back from E3 with a demo. We did not come back from E3 with a playable part of a level.... That was really bad, actually; that wasn't the goal.. " (Joseph Staten)
"After E3 instead of being able to jump into all of our levels and go right into it, we're still trying to figure out where we're going, what the quality bar is going to be, because right now the game is not fun." (Jamie Griesmer)
December 2003 (10 months to ship)
"So we had a game around 9 levels, started at Earth and then brought us out into the galaxy and then brought us back to Earth for this grand conclusion.. Well right about that moment, pandoras box was opened and decisions which were engraved in stone were rethought." (Joseph Staten)
"We messed up.. Like we didn't have the design down, we didn't have the story down, once we started to see how long the missions were taking to produce and how long they were taking to design and script.. and.. it.. it just wasn't going to work" (Paul Bertone, Mission Design Lead)
"And then everything that wasn't essential, all these things that we'd just love to see in the game, they all, they get put on the bottom of this list and we end up start hacking them off." (Marcus Lehto)
there are tons of other quotes on the DVD but I am too tired to type them all.
"We had a vision in our mind about what Halo 2 would look like. And that vision is really easy to see in the Halo 2 announcement trailer. Stencil shadows on everything, real time reflections on Master Chief's visor, this very crisp well ?? image. And we thought, well that's what we're going to show for E3... When we got to the actual implementation of some of the choices we have made, we realized it was impossible and we went around and around on that and other questions for, perhaps, too long." (Joseph Staten)
"We came back from E3 without actually less then what we wanted to. We came back from E3 with a demo. We did not come back from E3 with a playable part of a level.... That was really bad, actually; that wasn't the goal.. " (Joseph Staten)
"After E3 instead of being able to jump into all of our levels and go right into it, we're still trying to figure out where we're going, what the quality bar is going to be, because right now the game is not fun." (Jamie Griesmer)
December 2003 (10 months to ship)
"So we had a game around 9 levels, started at Earth and then brought us out into the galaxy and then brought us back to Earth for this grand conclusion.. Well right about that moment, pandoras box was opened and decisions which were engraved in stone were rethought." (Joseph Staten)
"We messed up.. Like we didn't have the design down, we didn't have the story down, once we started to see how long the missions were taking to produce and how long they were taking to design and script.. and.. it.. it just wasn't going to work" (Paul Bertone, Mission Design Lead)
"And then everything that wasn't essential, all these things that we'd just love to see in the game, they all, they get put on the bottom of this list and we end up start hacking them off." (Marcus Lehto)
there are tons of other quotes on the DVD but I am too tired to type them all.
The first halo was a atempt to finally make a good console fps - mission accomplished
Halo 2 was an attempt to get a good online multiplayer fps on a console - mission accomplished. Making a strong multiplayer game is very hard and time consuming, probably why Halo2's story and ending is a little lacking. Halo 2 is HALO 1, the TRIBES killer(hah sorry Bungie) they wanted from the old PC days of Halo.
Halo 3 will need alot of dev time, they have to really step up the single player story and level design. They need to add a hell of a lot. They also have to bring some new things to the mutiplyer side, this is a task even harer than the single player side. I'm saying this not because the first 2 games weren't good but other devs that have been making fps games for years are seeing the success of halo and will react(next gen console sequels of Halflife, Doom, Quake, Unreal, TRIBES, etc.)
Halo 2 was an attempt to get a good online multiplayer fps on a console - mission accomplished. Making a strong multiplayer game is very hard and time consuming, probably why Halo2's story and ending is a little lacking. Halo 2 is HALO 1, the TRIBES killer(hah sorry Bungie) they wanted from the old PC days of Halo.
Halo 3 will need alot of dev time, they have to really step up the single player story and level design. They need to add a hell of a lot. They also have to bring some new things to the mutiplyer side, this is a task even harer than the single player side. I'm saying this not because the first 2 games weren't good but other devs that have been making fps games for years are seeing the success of halo and will react(next gen console sequels of Halflife, Doom, Quake, Unreal, TRIBES, etc.)
tahrikmili said:Some of the criticism on this thread is just criticism for ranting's sake. "Boo boo, they showed this but didn't give me, mommy mommy they cheated me, where's my candy?" If you have (obviously) set your mind before you even gave it a chance, then I see no reason to make you like it, it's your loss
Littleberu, even though entering the realm of nitpick on occasion, has some very real criticisms that are shared by quite a few gamers. Instead of acknowledging this, he's dumped on by apologists and likened to a whining brat.
It's scary how much this reminds me of the hyperdefensive fan reaction after Sons of Liberty was released. I expect over time Halo 2 will sour in the eyes of many diehard Halo fans the way MGS2 did with their base...
In any case, Littleberu has hardly trolled in this thread. If anything, he's been incensed by the typical Bungie-loyal dogpile.
I do think it's funny that someone who seems to share Little's base criticism, Mike Works, is largely ignored. Is it because he's not as easy a target?
There is a very real connection between this and Sons of Liberty. It just so happens to I absolutely LOVE MGS2 and would probably still place it as my favorite in the series (though it's a close call with MGS3). As time passed, I've only grown to love it more...
Beru seems to really hate MGS2, however, and has claimed that he was very upset by the introduction of Raiden. Another friend of mine (who hates Halo 2's campaign) feels the same way about MGS2...
I think some of his assumptions are wrong, though. The way he is talking, it makes it sound as if Bungie had created a large set of Earth maps and simply "cut" them. That just isn't true at all...
Beru seems to really hate MGS2, however, and has claimed that he was very upset by the introduction of Raiden. Another friend of mine (who hates Halo 2's campaign) feels the same way about MGS2...
I think some of his assumptions are wrong, though. The way he is talking, it makes it sound as if Bungie had created a large set of Earth maps and simply "cut" them. That just isn't true at all...
Littleberu
Banned
dark10x said:
Well for the last part of your post, yeah, at the beginning of the thread, I was really thinking they made a large set of Earth levels. But further in the thread, other people came with the excuse : "They did that to hide the game from the public." That's what bugged me really.
Kojima didn't do it this time with MGS3, he even showed spoiler in many trailers. But you didn't know they were spoilers, so what's the problem? You saw the game in its integrity, and you know what you'd be playing. I really thought Halo 2 would have been about Covenant invading earth, and I thought maybe there could have been a secret Covenant base in the South Pole or something, you know, the classical Sci-Fi plot.
That's what Bungie lend me to believe anyway. Halo 2 isn't a bad game by any means. I just didn't like Bungie way of working. And apparently they know what they did wrong, and that's a good thing.
i actually wish they'd shown less of mgs3. if you've seen all the trailers, you've seen excerpts of virtually every cutscene in the game. the dialogue is deliberately mismatched, so it doesn't really spoil the plot, but it still takes away from the final experience.
and i can't believe discussion about halo 2's pre-release hype campaign persists. it's in no way material to the quality of the game. and the game is out, you'll notice.
and i can't believe discussion about halo 2's pre-release hype campaign persists. it's in no way material to the quality of the game. and the game is out, you'll notice.
I guess that's where we differ...
I prefer when developers go out of their way to confuse me and show things that will not necessarily represet the game from a story/experience perspective...
I'm always hungry for new info, so I tend to view most of the new media and read the articles. When a new game is released, and matches up with what was shown, I feel as if I already knew too much. When they trick us, though, it always manages to leave a much better impression on me. I honestly did not know about Raiden prior to MGS2, and it made the experience 10000x better for me. The entire big shell felt incredibly fresh to me, as I never even knew of its existance.
I kid you not, for MGS3, I was hoping there would be a much stronger connection with MGS2 and I was hoping that the whole 60s thing was actually created in order to fool us. I was a bit disappointed when I discovered that MGS3 is very straightforward. The content was incredible, though, so it didn't matter...but I would have preferred a much more twisted game (like MGS2). That's fun to me, as it questions all of the thoughts I had about the game prior to release and it creates a very fresh experience.
Littleberu
Banned
dark10x said:
I didn't knew about Raiden too, and I would've appreciated a lot more If I knew IMO. I mean, I thought it was just a short sequence, and then we see Pliskin. I was like : "Now we know he's alive, let's just continue with him." And we didn't.
Well that's really subjective you know. I liked the way he didn't fool us into a trap like he did in MGS2.
6.8 said:
Not surprised really. Every project needs more time. It's just that the ending doesn't seem intentional. I think that if they had more time, we would have the final act in the game. But, as they said themselves, they basically started over after e3 2003, so I don't think they really had enough time to finish the game properly.
Don't get me wrong, I love Halo 2. I didn't like Halo 1, yet I absolutely adore this sequel and it is in my top 10 games of all time. It's just that ending!!
My heart was racing as the cutscene came up. When the admiral asks the chief what he was doing on that ship. When the Chief says "Ending this now" my palms were sweating in anticipation of taking the fight onto the Forerunner ship. Then the black screen and I'm thinking the start of the level is coming... Roll Credits. WTF?!?!?!?!?!