Damn. Just last month we had pages of awesome Halo 3 pics, reminiscing on our favorite romps and encounters. From a game released five years ago. Now, that's gone. I'm excited for Halo 4, but I'd be lying if I said that excitement wasn't undercut a bit now. I never thought we'd lose a feature as big as Theater.
really good read Nokyard. of all the changes i have seen, this is the most disappointing for me. i was looking forward to exploring the campaign thoroughly in theater, until i heard about this. but your post shows how this cut has greatly affected the speed run community.
this also affects the screenshot guys, the halo fails guys, the forward unto dawn guys (no cool screenshots for hindsight halo 4), and others. =(
really hope 343 brings it back for future titles.
still annoyed we didn't find out about this until 2 weeks out, and by pirates/early copies no less.
Sorry took so long, but I still wanted to answer this.
Unconquered - all you have to do is take over the snipe side and you essentially autowin unless your teammates wear diapers. You hold up top and can easily watch every conceivable attack venue, at worst on level ground (up top) and at worst, with a height advantage. Once there, you have easy access to the new snipes and GLs. There is literally no way for an attacking team to get past that point undetected (again, unless you're just screwing off). Other than picking up the new weapons every so often, the bottom of the map is *never* used and it's just the attacking team rushing the side corridor and bridge up top over and over.
Ellul - broken in much the same way. One team (I forget the color) spawns closer to rockets than the other, especially if they have a jetpacker. Even if they get shot at going for those rockets, they have multiple escape routes (like jumping straight down the lifts a la H2 Lockout) and still can team shoot. Since the sniper spawn is in that pointless tunnel, the rockets are a higher priority at the beginning and in 99% of games I've played on that map, lead to securing the sniper. I'll give some credit in that the two bases are different but both defensible, but one is waaaayyyy easier to choke access (again I don't remember the color). The map is insanely dependent on verticality and almost forces your team to jetpack if you'd like a win. There's just too much of the map where the jetpack breaks any decent flow and defensibility it might have had.
Imago - Thanks to well placed rocks and decent tactical jumps, jetpack isn't necessary. Both teams have an equal chance at equal weapons off of spawn. The sightlines are efficient but still allow for inventiveness. The geometry isn't too bland and allows for some interesting battles (do I risk the exposed path on rocket or GL sides or do we take a chance on the bottom and use the rocks and maneuverability to our advantage?). There's enough cover in the battle-prone areas without being excessive enough to lead to corridor battles (a la ellul/unconquered). You can actually have organized setups (to a point), but they aren't so overpowered that they can't be broken. *The only problem I have with Imago* is the spawns. Gaining ground means nothing. You can have 3 men on your side, 1 just past the midpoint and their entire team in their base, and they'll spawn behind you if you kill them. Or they won't. But maybe they will. Or, in an equally bad situation (for the other team), you can be all over the enemy base and they'll keep spawning there for a few lives, defenseless. And God-forbid you hold either rocket or grenade launcher side! They'll spawn with you, around you, on the ground, at the bases (either near or far), anywhere! It has potential to be fun, but when you die because of bullshit, that ruins it.
"not only has it taken the wrong features from CoD(NO IRON SIGHTS IN 2012!?!?), but Halo 4 has even removed features that made it Halo in the first place. 8.8/10" - IGN
"not only has it taken the wrong features from CoD(NO IRON SIGHTS IN 2012!?!?), but Halo 4 has even removed features that made it Halo in the first place. 8.8/10" - IGN
I don't know how credible IGN would be for a review with exclusive content for the last month with footage every day leading up now.
but we are the hardcore crowd, not that the people that read tweets and headlines will see that. Still the game should be good just sucks the things I feel in love with Halo are slowly going away. This is my version of The Notebook.
Damn. Just last month we had pages of awesome Halo 3 pics, reminiscing on our favorite romps and encounters. From a game released five years ago. Now, that's gone. I'm excited for Halo 4, but I'd be lying if I said that excitement wasn't undercut a bit now. I never thought we'd lose a feature as big as Theater.
No predictions in this post, but it'll be interesting to see if the lack of feature parity with the previous game will end up with a Treyarch/IW CoD where half the userbase is on one Halo and half is on the other Halo. CoD has never done a good job of getting everyone to upgrade to the latest game. Bungie always did - each Halo up until this point decimated the previous.
But that was more than likely in part due (okay that sentence looks weird) to the fact that if you played Halo 2 and went to 3, you lost no features. Going from 3 to Reach? Everything from 3 was there in Reach. Reach even had an updated version of Firefight for all the ODST fans.
Now for someone in Reach that plays a lot competitive campaign, plays a lot of Firefight, really into Invasion.. if they didn't play a lot of 'normal' multiplayer, there's really nothing screaming "upgrade to Halo 4" for them.
I know that it's 99% likely that Halo 4 will decimate Reach (and in turn, lick more meat off the bone of Halo 3 - hence why they're probably waiting until AFTER 4 comes out to update H3 and Reach, if they do), but it's food for thought.
Yep. The canon issues were the biggest deal for me. Overall, I found the campaign had a lot of highlights but overall wasn't on par with my favorite parts of the other series. The multiplayer was fun, especially in customs, but the playlists were never optimal for the time I played. Still enjoy it, however.
Loss of theater is unfortunate, and I'd love for an explanation from 343i. I'm sure they had their reasons, but from the outside it does appear mystifying.
No predictions in this post, but it'll be interesting to see if the lack of feature parity with the previous game will end up with a Treyarch/IW CoD where half the userbase is on one Halo and half is on the other Halo. CoD has never done a good job of getting everyone to upgrade to the latest game. Bungie always did - each Halo up until this point decimated the previous.
But that was more than likely in part due (okay that sentence looks weird) to the fact that if you played Halo 2 and went to 3, you lost no features. Going from 3 to Reach? Everything from 3 was there in Reach. Reach even had an updated version of Firefight for all the ODST fans.
Now for someone in Reach that plays a lot competitive campaign, plays a lot of Firefight, really into Invasion.. if they didn't play a lot of 'normal' multiplayer, there's really nothing screaming "upgrade to Halo 4" for them.
I know that it's 99% likely that Halo 4 will decimate Reach (and in turn, lick more meat off the bone of Halo 3 - hence why they're probably waiting until AFTER 4 comes out to update H3 and Reach, if they do), but it's food for thought.
No disdain for the people, more boredom from discussing the topic to death, which included one of the darkest days in the last thread. Some people took it way too far, and I'd rather not see that again.
I'd expect very few reviewers to notice anything is missing at all. When it comes to the games press, they play it for review and then move on. And the ones that don't move on only play a little here and there.
Here's the post i mentioned i would provide earlier. Getting it out now before Sandy hits. It is not my intention to derail the hype train since most players are looking forward to Multiplayer and could care less about Campaign films and scoring. Although it may seem like one, this is not a complaint post. It merely serves as a permalink we can point to in a future 'missing features' bullet list.
This post assumes the following legacy features (Halo 3, Halo 3:ODST, Halo: Reach) have been cut from Halo 4. Campaign Saved Films and Film Clips. Uploading Campaign films to your Halo Waypoint File Share with the ability to share them with others. Campaign scoring and stats (primarily, the visible timer), both in-game and online. Should any of these features be confirmed to be in the game i will alter the post with the new information.
The intention is to demonstrate how cutting legacy features can have a devastating effect on long time fan-based communities, similar to how removing the game's API can shut down communities like HaloCharts. For those who are not familiar, the High Speed Halo site is graciously hosted by HBO and was started in early 2004 by HBO members shortly after the Going Nowhere Fast competition. The goal of the site may seem competitive in nature, but it is actually a source of highly entertaining and informative gameplay videos, where our stable of talented runners cooperate to bring the Campaign Mission times down, as an outlet to express our love of the game, the series, and the makers of the game.
If i use your quote please don't feel the need to respond. You just happened to type a key word which set the stage for my reply.
It is.
Halo CE and Halo 2 were played on the original Xbox. Both games had issues where the PAL and NTSC versions played very differently. For instance, Halo CE on PAL boxes saw slower Ghost speeds, the doors on The Library opened much slower, yet there was almost no "fall timer" so you could drop down from the AotCR bridge with ease. Halo 2 PAL users could Sword-lunge through glass (there are more examples which elude me atm). It was decided early to keep things simple and let the PAL/NTSC players dominate on Missions where they had the advantage. If there were any differences between the various hardware generations and configurations it was not apparent to us.
Halo 3 saw the introduction of the VERY accurate in-game timer which was reflected on the Post Game Carnage Report following the film, and available on b.net. Due to this addition we didn't realize that those those tiny pauses you barely notice during gameplay, sometimes accompanied by a 'Loading...Done' marker, added up to a great deal of time.
With Halo 3 the PAL/NTSC issues were gone but it became clear that different configurations of the XBOX 360's hardware, the HD, and the various DVD drives, and the fact that some gamers had loaded the game onto their Hard Drive, had a huge impact on the mid-level asset and cut scene loading times.
Over the course of a 4 minute run there can be up to 30 seconds of these micro-pauses caused only by the hardware. Imagine what this could mean for Single Segment runs (whole game in one sitting).
Fortunately, the in-game timer also paused with these loads so the timer accurately reflected the actual time that the runner was in control over the duration of the speed run. As you can see we came to rely on this feature as it allowed us to verify runs beyond any doubt. If YouTube commenters cried foul we would quiet them by pointing to b.net.
Along comes Halo: Reach. For some reason they (Bungie, obviously) decided to eliminate the Post Game Carnage Report from the end of game films. They also changed the stat reporting at b.net so the completion time of the mission was rounded up to the next whole minute, eliminating the ability to link to an accurate timer. This was not too much of a problem since the in-game timer was running in the bottom right of the HUD and the time on the final frame of the video was now used as the official run time. A visible in-game timer was one of the requirements for submitting a run and several runs were disqualified for omitting it.
SLASO is a different story. Halo Waypoint rightly dropped the Blind skull requirement on LASO Challenge runs but at High Speed Halo we only recognize SLASO runs with the Blind skull turned on. With no visible timer on the HUD scoring a SLASO run without an accurate Carnage Report is a contentious amalgam of science and witchcraft. RC Master is the only person in the world i trust to accurately time a SLASO run and his methods for doing so required a similar Legendary run with the timer running for comparison.
It is absolutely impossible to accurately time a speed run based on the video alone unless someone is willing to sift through each one and remove the redundant frames. WSplit, Kazami, and w00ty may work for other games and consoles, but for Halo on the Xbox there is no alternative to the in-game timer.
High Speed Halo has processed nearly 200 Reach speed runs. We had assumed CEA would bring back many of the old runners and a new breed of runners eager to bring down the old records. When it was announced there would be no Theater mode we were disappointed but figured we would still receive a large number of runs from players with HD capturing rigs.
Do you know how many Halo CEA speed runs we received?
Two
.
That's right,
TWO!
Our entire gallery of CEA runs contains
two Heroic runs submitted by ferlodergarnil
.
The next issue is barriers to entry and this includes video capture.
With Halo CE and Halo 2 runners weren't even required to subscribe to XBL. They would keep the VCR running while they made their speed run attempts. When you ran out of tape you would rewind and try again. Runners actually mailed VHS, Betamax, and DVD+-R Halo CE and Halo 2 runs to Cody Miller and myself. Cody even had the means to read out of region DVDs.
SD capture cards could be had for $20 to $30, and recordable DVDs could be ripped with MPEGStreamclip (free software) and other screen cap programs for Halo PC and Halo2 Vista. Halo 3 saw these devices tossed out and never replaced by the average player since we offered to capture and host their runs in 720p. With Halo 3 and beyond you were required to subscribe to XBL but with theatre available there were workarounds for players who couldn't afford XBL.
Now, anyone wishing to participate must purchase an expensive HD capture card (there is no way we are going back to SD quality) and have the bandwidth available to upload multi-gigabyte video files. Not to mention the fact that i would have to up my bandwidth cap (wtf!! Canadian ISPs) because i have to download the run and upload to the HSH YouTube account. If we switch our focus to SpOps we will be requiring runners to also purchase that DLC.
So, where are we at?
No Theater or File Share.
No scoring, stats or timer, in-game or online.
Hardware differences severely affect video length (keep in mind new speed runs routinely beat old runs by 1 or 2 seconds).
No methods to properly verify a run.
Video quality will suffer due to different capture devices and compression codecs.
Difficult to detect cheating (runs with editing, accelerated video, and modding have been submitted previously).
Switching to SpOps requires DLC and will certainly pale in comparison to the main Campaign as far as entertainment value of speed runs are concerned.
Without the means to capture and upload (unverifiable) runs, most of our stable of runners will be left behind.
Is this the end for High Speed Halo?
Pretty sure it is, but i'm going to wait until the other admins get back to me, then see if SpOps can sustain a level of interest before i make any decisions.
Who knows, there may be some compelling aspect of the game we're not yet seeing.
I'd expect very few reviewers to notice anything is missing at all. When it comes to the games press, they play it for review and then move on. And the ones that don't move on only play a little here and there.
Interesting stuff.
Just... are SD capture cards unavailable nowadays, you don't accept SD submissions or people don't want to make SD submissions?
If either of the latter ones, i'd say that's a people's problem, ie lazyness or too high standards. This doesn't seem to be the case though, if i'm reading your explanation right.
I still maintain it is not an end to speedrunning scene... just the community due to too high entry barrier due to lack of theater or other in-game tools. There are always going to be people who insist breaking and setting records, don't think lack of those is going to stop them.
And this reminded me of High Impact Halo... or something like that. Trickster community. I assume it and HSH are somehow related? Anyway, lack of the same tools means trick videos are going to be rare, no? Something i'm far more interested in than in speedrunning (usually watching a vid longer than 60 seconds strains my patiency, unless it is fun or really interesting (fails or tricks when it comes to Halo)).
Still not sure how i should react to lack of theater and scoring. Something in me says i should complain about lack of them and emphatize with people affected by lack of them, otherwise i just can't bring myself to care at all since i rarely if ever used either feature.
I need help getting my last Reach achievement.
Are there mongooses on Breakneck in the Team Snipers playlist? I really need to boost that Anniversary splatter achievement...
Speaking of Campaign Theater, was it possible to record clips or rewind the film in Halo 3? We couldn't figure out how to do it. Having only one chance to watch a funny moment in the whole mission seems mighty lame.
Speaking of Campaign Theater, was it possible to record clips or rewind the film in Halo 3? We couldn't figure out how to do it. Having only one chance to watch a funny moment in the whole mission seems mighty lame.
To be honest the lack of inclusion of Theater for Singleplayer hardly moves the dial for most people. As long as the campaign and multiplayer are great, little else will matter.
people who are so pissy about some campaign shit youll play once and never finish need to get a grip. go play some jrpgs and hold your iphone on your tv, done
I was just pointing that out. It is my sincere hope that at least one reviewer does his or her homework and catches the content and features that are missing.
No disdain for the people, more boredom from discussing the topic to death, which included one of the darkest days in the last thread. Some people took it way too far, and I'd rather not see that again.
If Halo 4 was launched a year sooner (back when I didn't have an internet connection), it'd just be a rental for me. Very disappointed in all this. Why in the world couldn't they have just said it earlier?
