*waves*
I wrote that for Kotaku. Happy to answer any questions or whatevs.
What is the purpose of life?
*waves*
I wrote that for Kotaku. Happy to answer any questions or whatevs.
*waves*
I wrote that for Kotaku. Happy to answer any questions or whatevs.
Kotaku shits on 343 for their campaigns and story telling and they're totally right.
I agree with much of this article, but not all of it.
Master Chief was always the walking embodiment of a war crime. I don't think focusing on that is such a bad idea, considering the Covenant, whose arrival was a great distraction from the true reason for the Spartan program, is all but dead.
In fact, I think all of the tension in the universe, between ONI, Outer Colonies, and remaining alien factions prior to Halo 5 was wasted in this effort to hastily makeCortana a bad guy.
I'm also ok with Cortana being a bad guy, but I feel like they should have let the idea brew for a game or two. Maybe by having her stop and all out war between the aformentioned factions with her own show of force.
Loving them games where 3 Br bursts is enough to kill me. Damn it feels good.....
I don't save everything because my kinect is beyond useless except for Skype. I will try though next time.When that happens to me I just assume that i'm getting shot from multiple directions. Do you have a video of it happening?
*waves*
I wrote that for Kotaku. Happy to answer any questions or whatevs.
See I never understood this.
HALO 1 - All I knew was that there were enemies in front of my gun to kill.
HALO 2 - Sequel to Little Shop of Horrors. No idea what was still happening story wise. GRAVEMINDDDDDD!
HALO 3 - Chief does a Reverse Jesus and resurrects downward instead of upwards. I remember a Scarab Tank sequence. What was happening again? What's a Forerunner?
I think 343 gets a pass for what Bungie did to my brain. FROM SOFTWARE Dark Souls/Bloodborne games are easier to understand.
What is the purpose of life?
Good article, I agree with a lot of your points. The story was disappointing to say the least and you summed up why nicely, this character you've grown with and learned to love literally turns evil for no very apparent reason on a whim. It could have been okay but it just happened with not build up room reason. I just feel there are so many different directions they could have taken with this game, why this?
I do disagree about the gameplay, I thought it was great for the most part though you do make some great points (like how useless a sniper is towards Promethans). The new spartan abilities are incredibly fun to use and the levels were designed in a way that took advantage of them.
I'm actually nervous about the next game, if I have to fight Promethean for an entire campaign it won't go over well with me unless they drastically redesign them but 343i will find some stupid reason to include covenant as baddies just because they are superior enemy types.
343i needs to take some tips from Bungie... People don't want bullet spongie enemies. If anything the best enemies are the ones that require skill in shooting different parts of the body and some feedback when you do... The regular Promethean are just bullet sponge until you expose that core and then it's fun to finish them off.
Nodding along with that. I do think the movements are pretty cool though but the sandbox and AI don't make the most of it. The characters and heroic nature points, nailed it.
It's a well written piece and I enjoyed reading it, but I don't agree at all.
For me the meat of the Halo universe was always in the extended universe and stuff like the questionable morality of the Spartan II program, and how it was originally meant to be used to quell human rebellions. I felt (possibly because I am a massive Marathon fan) that Bungie wanted to tell a much more interesting and complex story than "noble space marine & friends fight against impossible odds" but were limited by the sheer popularity of the games which forced them to aim everything at the lowest common denominator. There was still a lot of stuff I really liked, like the terminals in Halo 3, but in general I thought the series lost its path in Halo 2 story-wise.
I think 343 need to get much better at telling their stories and probably rethink the entire way they deliver them because they're trying to tell a more nuanced story using the same old techniques which just isn't working, but I enjoy the general direction they are taking it.
Nah, Occasionally stream some CSGO, but I play way worse when I stream. Something about trying to focus on the chat, and just the quality drop overall makes it a more difficult way to play.
Page 117 hypu
*waves*
I wrote that for Kotaku. Happy to answer any questions or whatevs.
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My one critique is that I'm not sure you've captured the extent to which Halo's backstory and character development has always been missing from the games themselves. It's much worse now, but it's always been bad. It was really Eric Nylund that gave John 117 a set of believable motivations and a coherent history. Same for Dr. Halsey. Without this context, Master Chief is nothing more than a patriotic Clint Eastwood character in power armor.
That's why we look at real data (quits etc) before making the change. this was sensible and gives us time to do more nuanced changes.
A) Bungie's best storytellers in Marathon didn't work on Halo. They were working on Duality and then drifted off to do other things.
B) It's fine you were interested in that expanded universe, but that's not what the game campaigns were doing or why people played those game campaigns. It's like saying you like the yuuzhan vong. That's nice and all, but people wouldn't watch the movies for that.
C) Based on the stuff some of the Halo writers said, Bungie wasn't really concerned with any of that stuff. Nylund wasn't their pick, which is why they steamrolled his book in Reach. They hated the idea of ODSTs back when Microsoft came up with them. They didn't write the techncial bible--a Microsoft guy did. Etc. So, no, your theory doesn't really seem to hold up based on what some of the writers for the games have said about them.
It's not like 343 doesn't have good writers on board. Hell, Frankie's Midnight in the Heart of Midlothian (might have the title wrong) is the single best Halo story there is, imo. Brian Reed is no slouch either. The big problem is that core conceit driving the whole thing, as well as a mistaken desire to shed Halo's identity to bring it in line with games it can't possibly compete with. It's like they're Ferrari and they've decided to start competing with Volkswagen.
It's not Bungie's fault you didn't pay attention to their game. Even marginally doing so makes it abundantly easy to understand.
And anyone who only plays the games probably knows nothing about ONI, the Outer Colonies, or any tension at all. It's only present in the expanded universe. I don't think that any of the main plot points, like Chief being the embodiment of a war crime or, are bad but they're just thrown at us. We have so little context in the more recent Halo campaigns when we need it. The context does exist in the expanded universe, but relying on the expanded universe to be the only real context we have is a big issue with some of the more recent games.Cortana going mad with power
I agree with you. I also don't think the stories were particularly well told in the previous games either.Nope I don't buy that for me personally. It is Bungie's fault in making what is in essence a simple Space Marine Pew Pew game hard to follow. It wasn't all that easy at the best of times to understand. What someone already said afterwards, the extended universe information is where the meat of the story is and people interested in understanding more need to go that route and were rewarded if they did.
Halo has always been about a singular place and time to jump into and have action. The story was never going to be that meaningful.
I do agree Halo 4 was in that same vein of what the heck is happening here, but Halo 5 was not that hard to understand for me at all. But I am biased because HUNT THE TRUTH campaign added so much other material as well that I followed, could reflect on and add it to my campaign experience.
We just have different view points.
Kotaku shits on 343 for their campaigns and story telling and they're totally right.
I'm asking for a refund, this game is NOT UK friendly and when I get into BR battles, shoot first yet die because the servers think i'm a second behind in the battle i'm sorry but it's bullshit, I don't want to put up with this any longer and since 343 refuse to give us ping bars and server selections i've had enough.
That kotaku article about the Halo campaigns post bungie is quite possibly the biggest load of garbage I have ever read. Just because 343i didn't decide to baby and pamper gamers prior to Cortana's turn, doesn't mean that it somehow wasn't an amazing twist for the story, or that it doesn't make the stakes and the potential for the next Halo game much higher than they've ever been going from one title to the next.
Anybody that is even a tiny bit reasonable can see quite clearly that there's a lot more than meets the eye toCortana's character in Halo 5. She demonstrates some extremely altered, almost Iso-Didact in nature ideology, but at the same time there's still a strong degree of belief in, or care, for the Master Chief. Yes, a good bit of it could indeed turn out to be a trick, but there is enough in the game's story for even that to be in doubt. All 343i did in this game was they decided to focus more on setting the stage and waiting to tell us how the story threads established in Halo 5 and in Halo 4, end up playing out in Halo 6.
Their not including it all does not automatically make the story lackluster, and neither does their decision to tread more carefully with Master Chief and Blue Team's role in the overall story, and how they end up coping with the reality of the threat Cortana presents. They never did entirely see her as the 'enemy' in this one. She was still largely seen as someone who could be saved. The rest of Blue Team was less easily forgiving or blinded as the Chief was, but it's a dynamic that worked really well in Blue Team. With how this game ended there can be no doubt that the Chief suffers very little illusions now about what has to be done with Cortana. The Cortana he knew is no longer there.
And when you toss in Dr. Halsey and that spine tingling reunion with the chief, you just know shit is going to hit the fan in Halo 6. 343i has just set the stage perfectly for what could end up being the best story experience the Halo series has ever had. They've shown now through two games that they are a hell of a lot more in tune with the overall fiction and the characters themselves than even Bungie were, and that will only lead to better campaign experiences, not worse, which is why the last two games in the series have actually been the best overall experiences in my eyes.
I would say there was even clear evidence later in halo 4 that Cortana possessed an ability to place her feelings for the Master Chief above the rest of humanity or the galaxy when she told the Iso-Didact that she wasn't doing what she was doing for them. It was obvious she meant that the Chief was more important to her than anything and anyone else, which is consistent with her behavior in halo 5. Don't forget also that on that last halo 4 level she had split herself into many different clones. It's possible that there are many versions of Cortana, or at least one more, still out there that isn't as radical as the current Cortana. There's no way of telling that what we are witnessing in Halo 5 isn't just a case of one of Cortana's more rampant clones gaining access to the wealth of knowledge that is the domain and using it in ways that only a rampant Cortana would be expected to.
Cortana did state the rest of her was destroyed, but you really and truly never know. I for one am a huge fan of Halo 5's campaign. Osiris' role was also well handled. All their exploits from the start of the game to the finish were meant to make it believable that they possessed the capabilities necessary to challenge and thwart a key element of Cortana's master plan to rule the galaxy. If Osiris didn't get that much screen-time it would've been a whole lot harder imagining them pulling off what they did when they rescued Blue Team and the Chief at the end. And Osiris' role was far more than the silly "stop chief from being badass" analysis of the article. They observed some very clear threats to the galaxy and they felt that maybe the Chief was a little too emotionally involved to be the right person to deal with the situation without some kind of intervention or assistance, and guess what? They were right! Osiris was just going with the information that they had. Their purpose wasn't solely just to screw over and stop Chief and Blue Team. It started out that way maybe, but it clearly became much more as the game progressed.
And as others have said, I laugh at anyone that believes the storytelling in previous Halo titles was somehow leaps and bounds better than what's present in Halo 4 and 5. It sure as hell wasn't.
Refused a refund, xbox support wanted to try and trouble shoot the lag issue lol, I left my feedback on the matter (true feedback, not a rage swear filled reply) and that was that :/
I'm rather bummed out that I have a game based around the US when it comes to multiplayer and it sucks.
I even bought up the single return game pass people seem to get but they said it was a game by game basis, I could tell they did not want to refund me.
It bums me out, because I like so many people at 343, and I like some of 343's ideas. I wish I could fly out to Microsoft and actually do some consulting work on the franchise, 'cause there's a lot of small things that could be done to tweak stuff.
While it sucks that you're having a shitty experience I can't really blame them for not wanting to give you a refund when you've played the game for more than 60 hours according to Waypoint.
I hope we get the option to select servers eventually...
yes I did think play time might go against me and they most likely saw that on their profile listings, but I gave them the truth and did not lie so I don't feel guilty asking for a refund, it's not been a month yet.
I'm not being an ass, but why is it always the same 2-3 guys complaining about lag? There's a ton of people here from overseas, and I never see much complaints from people I know like Ozzy(AUS) and Dani(Ireland?).
Refused a refund, xbox support wanted to try and trouble shoot the lag issue lol, I left my feedback on the matter (true feedback, not a rage swear filled reply) and that was that :/
I'm rather bummed out that I have a game based around the US when it comes to multiplayer and it sucks.
I even bought up the single return game pass people seem to get but they said it was a game by game basis, I could tell they did not want to refund me.
I'm not being an ass, but why is it always the same 2-3 guys complaining about lag? There's a ton of people here from overseas, and I never see much complaints from people I know like Ozzy(AUS) and Dani(Ireland?).
I'm not being an ass, but why is it always the same 2-3 guys complaining about lag? There's a ton of people here from overseas, and I never see much complaints from people I know like Ozzy(AUS) and Dani(Ireland?).
And anyone who only plays the games probably knows nothing about ONI, the Outer Colonies, or any tension at all. It's only present in the expanded universe. I don't think that any of the main plot points, like Chief being the embodiment of a war crime or, are bad but they're just thrown at us. We have so little context in the more recent Halo campaigns when we need it. The context does exist in the expanded universe, but relying on the expanded universe to be the only real context we have is a big issue with some of the more recent games.Cortana going mad with power
Kotaku shits on 343 for their campaigns and story telling and they're totally right.
I'm from the UK, and I never really feel like lag is or latency is in my games - better players than I, certainly. But not anything screwy server wise.
I would love to see videos of all this lag/latency - without wanting to sound like an ass, half of it is in your head. I remember Leyasu (?) posting a video claiming latency, and the vid showed he missed his shots and was outplayed. :/
maybe because I can feel it effecting my game more then a lot of casuals? I dunno but it's there and it's annoying, playing online games where the server is closer to one guy then another always has a benefit to the other guy even if it's a matter of frames, gunplay in halo relies on it with how fast you can BR someone.
I'm not being an ass, but why is it always the same 2-3 guys complaining about lag? There's a ton of people here from overseas, and I never see much complaints from people I know like Ozzy(AUS) and Dani(Ireland?).
I'm from the UK, and I never really feel like lag is or latency is in my games - better players than I, certainly. But not anything screwy server wise.
I would love to see videos of all this lag/latency - without wanting to sound like an ass, half of it is in your head. I remember Leyasu (?) posting a video claiming latency, and the vid showed he missed his shots and was outplayed. :/
I will slowly put my hand up and say that the vid I posted was not hmmm great. But...
Anyway, I will get a couple of vids to compare before the weekend.