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Halo |OT12| Last One Out, Get the Lights

D

DeadNames

Banned
DMR should be a 6sk. It would still retain it's 2 kills per mag feature, but the kill time would be slower and you couldn't spam as much, so going against a suppressor or something would actually be a challenge.
 
B

bobs...onGaf

Member
Flipyap said:
I'd love to read some detailed descriptions of their space segways, stupid skull/bunny ear helmets, or their robots' monster faces.

In hindsight, the new Forerunner tech is best left not described. That only makes them seem dumber.
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Good point, that said now that we have visual imagery for everything there is no excuse for Greg Bear to use as many random describing words to muddle up every sentence and make everything hard to understand.

I don't know if he was just a bad writer or buying the 343 artists time, but his descriptions of just about everything so far have been terrible and his books have been a headache to follow.
 
T

too much eslim

Member
DeadNames said:
DMR should be a 6sk. It would still retain it's 2 kills per mag feature, but the kill time would be slower and you couldn't spam as much, so going against a suppressor or something would actually be a challenge.
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Just no. a 5sk is already too long. Just make it as strong as the AR. Idk how strong the suppressor is because I will not use it.
 
T

Turnipboot

Banned
zap said:
I just assumed it was there to make us get back on the mammoth and play it how they want us to play, rather than rushing ahead in a vehicle.
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I think the 'toxic river' has the sole purpose of stopping you from bringing vehicles from the section prior to the rivers to the section after it.

A friend and myself eventually managed to get the Gauss Hog back into the Mammoth through one of the side doors. As soon as we went over the rivers whilst inside the Mammoth we were ejected from the hog and it exploded. After all of the effort we went through to get the thing in there... It was actually amusing how ridiculous it was.
 
H

Hydranockz

Member
Hey guys, I'm going to a LAN on friday night and I was hopin to bring along some gametypes that might have popped up. Does anyone know of any good ones?

I'd love to grab 2Forts off of whoever has it as well as some other stuff too.
 
M

m23

Member
op_ivy said:
forza horizon is amazing, pick it up folks
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Huge Forza fan, but I skipped out on Horizon since I wasn't really feeling it and also since AC3 and Halo 4 just came out. After playing the demo, I got excited for it, I'll likely pick it up on Boxing Day here in Canada. Forza 4 just completely blew me away at how great of a game it was and how much of a step up it was compared to Forza 3, Horizon will tide me over I guess until 5 comes out. Hoping for a Forza game at launch with next Xbox.
 
O

op_ivy

Fallen Xbot (cannot continue gaining levels in this class)
Munish23 said:
Huge Forza fan, but I skipped out on Horizon since I wasn't really feeling it and also since AC3 and Halo 4 just came out. After playing the demo, I got excited for it, I'll likely pick it up on Boxing Day here in Canada. Forza 4 just completely blew me away at how great of a game it was and I still play it, Horizon will tide me over I guess until 5 comes out. Hoping for a Forza game at launch with next Xbox.
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i was a little meh on the demo, but the full game is oh so much better. if you're a forza fan you'll love it. if your not a forza fan but like some arcadish racers, i think you'd also love horizon. its like if forza and pgr hooked up and had an open world baby.
 
ElRenoRaven

ElRenoRaven

Member
sltPoison said:
WARNING! 2,800+ WORD POST!

Alright, since Over pretty much nailed my feelings about multiplayer, I am going to do my best to convey my disappointment with the Campaign, and why it’s making a long time Halo fan like myself consider leaving the series. My goal isn't to make those of you who love what Halo 4 is despise it, I am glad you like it. I just hope that you can at least understand where I am coming from and get why I feel like I do. PLEASE rebuttal stuff you dont agree with, maybe I'll see it differently. I am letting it all out here so I will stop doing drive by posts.

If you haven't played the Campaign yet, obviously stay clear of the spoiler section. If you have, feel free to dive into it.

First I want to talk about Campaign design, mission design, and enemy design.

1. Mission/ level design.

I’ll just think back to Halo 3 for this, damn I loved those missions. The Ark and the Covenant are shining examples to me of what a classic Halo campaign level should look like. Wide open spaces, diverse combat sections, huge encounters in both vehicles and on foot. Those missions felt truly epic once you completed them. The dual scarab battle and the Forward Unto Dawn descending literally gave me chills the first time I saw them. Halo 4 never managed to come even remotely close to accomplishing what those levels did. Play spaces are now much more linear than in Halo’s past. It makes me quite sad to think of the dual scarab battle or the battle outside the Cartographer on the Ark, and realize Halo 4 was never within range of matching them. 343’s emphasis on graphics clearly killed the scale of Halos past. Not only was scale cut back, but player choice was as well. On the level Reclaimer for example, I hijack a Wraith and want to drive it through the level instead of riding on the boring Mammoth. Well, too bad because TOXIC RIVERS will kill your ass unless you play the level like 343 intended. In levels like Forerunner, you literally have times when a door will slam on your ass, not allowing you to retreat. I remember my battle at the first pylon on Legendary. I step through the door and immediately I am getting pinged by Light Rifle fire. I attempt to move back through the door I came out of but it has locked. The game now forces me to sprint my ass into the level like Rambo. This happens multiple times throughout the game. Halo never forced me to do anything before, it let me choose.

2. Campaign Exploration.

I touched on it lightly above, but I truly believe 343’s focus on graphics resulted in our scaled back Campaign world. Long gone are the grand landscapes that Bungie created in past Halos. The beautifully rendered skyboxes have been replaced with static, low quality images. When I first emerged from that tunnel on Requiem, and gazed out over that cliff at the Forerunner structure, I was initially blown away. Then I treated it like every other Halo game and ZOOMED in. The illusion broke down immediately. The structures that appeared to stretch into the distance weren’t even real, they were just pictures. That landscape in the backdrop was now just a pixelated mess. Bungie nailed believability in their worlds because their attention to detail expanded beyond playable space. If you saw something in the distance, you could more than likely get there. Breaking out of the playable spaces and exploring campaign missions was something I loved to do in past Halos. Obviously, I can no longer do this as what once was a fully realized Campaign space is now just an image. You may think this is a dumb critique, but this was something I loved about Bungie’s Halos.

3. Repetitive Campaign objectives and lack of replayability.

Buttons, buttons, buttons. That’s the name of the game in Halo 4. Objectives dwindled down to the push of a button so damn often it became monotonous. If you weren’t pushing a button, you were finding a forerunner terminal which Cortana conveniently fit into, and inserting and removing her constantly. Come on 343, you must have felt this became boring after a while… In the later missions in particular, objectives for the mission quite literally were to travel through repetitive environments with the sole purpose of pressing buttons and inserting Cortana. My purpose in the game feels so insignificant when these are my main objectives. Campaign missions need to be created with replayability in mind. Flying through the outer surface of the Didact’s ship was cool initially, but it lacks replayability. Going back through, I found I just wanted the sequence to end. This is actually how I felt for many of the games missions. A successful Campaign mission won’t feel like a grind on repeated playthroughs.

4. The Promethean’s design.

So 343 hyped up their new enemies at every opportunity leading up to the game’s release. They said they created worthy successors to the Covenant, who was I to doubt them? The reality is that the Prometheans were an unbelievably dull and repetitive enemy to fight. The first issue stems from there only being 3 main types of enemies. The variety in encounters simply doesn’t exist with them. Watchers are simply a pain in the ass. If you don’t shoot them first you’ll just end up frustrated later in the fight. Crawlers are frustrating beyond belief. They shoot you with Bolt Shots, Suppressors, and then randomly one will one shot you with a Binary Rifle. Being overrun by them does not make them a good enemy or make their AI good. Their only purpose is to eat your ammo and distract you in hopes that a Knight will come your way. They are a very boring enemy to fight. Now the Knights. 343 royally messed these guys up. First off, Knight variation. 343 decided that throwing electricity or some fancy glowing face stripes made these dudes distinguishable from one another. At least in past Halos I KNEW a badass Elite when I saw one due to stand out design and colors. There were multiple times in Halo 4 where I’d be deep into battle with Knights only to have one show up that looks just like all the rest, and blast me with a Binary Rifle or One Shot. There is no fun in an encounter when that happens. The only way you could really tell Knights apart was AFTER they had already shot at you. That is a horrible design oversight by 343, and I am simply baffled it made it into the final game. The Knights teleporting was also poorly executed. Ok, I can see this dude is about to teleport, let me line up my shot, wait no, the dude now possesses invincibility! I am worried about their implementation into the rest of the franchise, because they sure don't have the lasting power of the Covenant.

5. Lack of Feedback from Prometheans.

For me to love fighting an enemy, I have to feel like I am doing damage, or have done damage to them. The game has to make me feel that shooting at these guys has results. I shoot a Watcher, and it continues to fly gracefully around, barely flinching at my bullets. That is a problem that spreads to all enemies. You shoot them, but it’s like they’re not responding and nothing is happening. A Crawler will continue to Sprint full speed at you while you are pinging that sucker. The only feedback you get from a Knight is the faint blue glow the more you shoot it, and if you can even tell, its head bobbing when you’re shooting it in the face. At the end of the day, they just feel like bullet sponges, nothing more. This makes battles boring and uninteresting. At least the Covenant had awesome screams, blood splatters, reactions to bullets hitting them, bright shield pops, etc. I knew I was doing damage to them.


Now I will focus on purely on story elements.

I will just spoiler tag the whole damn thing since I will talk about Crytum, Primordium, and of course, Halo 4’s story. My spoilers regarding the books will be ones that tied directly into the game so they won’t ruin the books for you, that's not my goal. You may feel that some of this is nitpicky, but these are things that contributed to ruining my Halo 4 experience.

6. How 343 killed the mystery of Halo 4.

My roots as a Halo fan to this day lay within the Campaign and narrative. From the games, to the books and comics, I have taken in so much Halo fiction. For the most part, I really loved the Universe that had been created. When 343 took control of the series, we saw the creation of the Forerunner saga, with its intent on fleshing out the Forerunner backstory. As a Halo fan, the mystery of the Forerunners was always so intriguing, but I couldn’t hold back learning more about them, so I read Crytum and Primordium. These books dumped some huge revelations on us about the Ancient Human-Forerunner War, and really helped us learn about a Forerunner known as the Didact. 343 repeatedly stated that while they did want to tie all the fiction together, Halo 4 would stand on its own merits. The game wouldn’t require you to brush up on outside fiction to appreciate the story, everything would be self-contained. What a fat lie that was.

When I read that Halo 4 was going to be a self-contained story, I was very pleased. To me it meant that there would be great new fiction in the story, and mysteries to be uncovered, but at the same time some of those narrative strings from the books would shine through without be convoluted. This is where 343 failed. 343 used key plot points from the books as main narrative threads in Halo 4. The reveal of the Human-Forerunner war, the Didact, and the Composers purpose with Promethean Knights were HUGE parts of Halo 4. Any fan with an ounce of brain power who read Primordium would have made the connection of the Composer to the Promethean Knights. Any fan who read the books already knew of the war. Sure, I can be blamed for reading those books and spoiling myself, but ultimately it is a story telling failure on 343’s part. There was no “great mystery” in Halo 4’s story. The reuse of book fiction to such a great extend killed the mystery. Past Halo games were so fresh to play simply because I did not have a clue where they were heading. Revelations, new locations, twists, and new characters all felt fresh and wonderful to learn about.

7. 343’s failure to present the story well.

This will tie into my above statement pretty heavily. With the grand amount of fiction now established by the Forerunner Saga, and the Kilo-Five trilogy, one would think that Halo 4 would do a great job fleshing them out even more. I fully expected the narrative to live up to its touted self-contained function. 343 failed to present the story on multiple levels.

On a very basic level, Halo 4’s story would throw shit at you and expect you to understand. Let’s start with the Didact’s reveal. I’ll treat this like a fan who has only played the games. So how did a Forerunner survive the Halo effect? What the hell is that ball he is coming out of? Why is he the ONLY Forerunner left? Why does this dude despise humanity so much? And the last laughable thing, his name… don’t use the garbled Elite shit as an excuse for Cortana and Chief knowing it suddenly. I actually played back through to see if I had missed the revealing of his name, but I didn’t. If I hadn’t read the books I would be wondering all of these things. Why 343 chose to leave this backstory out of the main narrative and throw it aside to the terminals not even accessible in the game is beyond me. Requiem’s purpose and function were also a missed opportunity to get fleshed out. Halo CE taught me a nice lesson on what a Halo is and does, Halo 3 taught me about the Ark, Halo 4 should have done the same with Requiem. Oh yeah, and what were the Covenant's motivations?

Now the Spartan IVs. This new breed of Spartans which are first mentioned in the Kilo-Five trilogy have hardly a whisper spoken about them in Halo 4. Why weren’t questions being asked? Why wasn’t there a moment where Chief and Cortana at least acknowledged that there were suddenly the new Spartans around? Another plot point that would have benefited Halo 4’s story greatly got thrown aside. This would have been a great time to acknowledge the ethics of Halsey’s work and the creation of Chief in contrast to how they’re doing it now. Missed opportunity in my opinion.

The horrible presentation of the Didact. This was an absolute joke on 343’s part. From our initial encounter to the laughable QTE finale with him, 343 failed to make me care about the Didact. I enjoyed his character in the books and expected 343 to build on it. What we were left with was his initial awakening, fighting his floating ball, and the final anti-climatic battle with him. If you are going to give us villain, flesh him out. Make me truly understand why I should not like this dude. The Librarian was basically our only info dump, and that was handled poorly. The lack of interaction with our main antagonist brought the story down yet again. Didact should have had a much greater presence in the story other than residing in his Crytum.

The Librarian Scene. The unfortunate part is that this one scene presented most of Halo 4’s story. We learn about the Human-Forerunner war, The Composer’s purpose, what the Didact did with it, and how basically everything humanity has accomplished is not a result of their own greatness, but a result of the Librarian. This scene failed on a few levels. First off, it presented way too much info within a short time span. It presented the info in an extremely weird abstract cutscene for I don’t know what reason. The information presented lacked purpose. Ok, the Didact used the Composer to turn humans in his army, why? Shouldn’t have to turn to the terminals for that answer. Then the Librarian apparently does something to the Chief to make him immune to the Composer. All we see is some electrity like stuff surrounding him, then it is over. What exactly did she do to the Chief? This was an important event and all we hear is, “your bio readings are all over the place.”

The lack of care for Master Chief by others. I don't get why it is not until the very last cutscene of the game that we get merely a glimpse of this. After all, this dude did save the galaxy, and everyone did think he was dead for nearly 5 years. But what do we get in the game? Spartan IV’s that basically ignore his existence, a quirky one liner about how Palmer thought he’d be taller, and Lasky saying he never thought he’d see him again. Lasky’s line only really means something if you watched Forward Unto Dawn, so if you didn’t you’d be like, “who the hell is this guy?” Just another oversight by 343. Del Rio’s lack of respect for the Chief is also unnecessary. Chief didn’t earn any of the verbal abuse Del Rio dished out on him, and 343 certainly didn’t give any reason behind his hostility towards Chief. His character feels forced and simply there so that Chief can tell someone to fuck off. I figured 343 would have wanted to make Chief appear to others like the badass hero he really is, but that never shined though in the game.

How Chief and Cortana’s story took away from the greater narrative. I understand that 343 wanted to give Chief and Cortana a better story in Halo 4, and I think they did it wonderfully. The problem is that they allowed their story to take attention away from far more important aspects of the story. A story of this scale requires more time dedicated to all of its parts. I would have loved to see an equal amount of attention put into the larger scale story as that of their personal story.

So there is still a bunch of things I could touch on, but this post is already a term paper in length so I’ll just stop here. So you may wonder why after just one game I am considering abandoning the franchise. Well the answer is simple, lack of trust. 343 told me to trust them, so I did. I played the game, these are my feelings, and now they have lost my trust. How can I feel good about the future of the series when they’ve already managed to take away so much of what I loved about past Halos? I know PLENTY of you love the direction they are taking the series, and that great for you. I just do not agree with where they are taking this franchise and how they handled it on their first attempt.

So there it is, if you made it this far, congrats and thanks for reading.
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What he said. Nails perfectly my feelings. I want to like the game. I really do. The gunplay itself is great but everything else around that is just not fun or interesting.
 
P

Plywood

NeoGAF's smiling token!
sltPoison said:
WARNING! 2,800+ WORD POST!
-snip
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Good post, I agree with most of it. I did not know the Mammoth level actually had "toxic rivers" as you say and that you're forced to ride the Mammoth.

Though addressing point 2, I don't think it's really a shocker that scale was going to get knocked back for the graphics, there's only so much you can bend outta the hardware.
Tashi said:
Do you think it's to catch Halo 4 fan's attention? Including actual character images from the game?
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Well that's a given. Still makes him look like a campy villain with a crystal ball.
 
O

op_ivy

Fallen Xbot (cannot continue gaining levels in this class)
halo 4's campaign is a lot like 2's. it smaller and certainly more linear then most, but there are a lot of really really well designed and fun playspaces. despite possibly the worst vehicle sections in the entire series, i still had a great time with 4's campaign. now, if we could only get both great indoor spaces and great outdoor in the same game, i'd be set.
 
Y

Yager

Banned
One of the biggest problems in the franchise (games) is the narrative: almost all of the games are terrible at telling a story, and I wasn't hoping that it would be any better with Halo 4. That said, I liked how the story is presented in Halo 4, with terminals, SpOps and campaing; at least is a new approach.
 
Deputy Moonman

Deputy Moonman

Member
too much eslim said:
Just no. a 5sk is already too long. Just make it as strong as the AR. Idk how strong the suppressor is because I will not use it.
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They could just make the BR a 4 shot weapon again, and leave the DMR alone. Puts the DMR in better position for long range kills, but gives the BR the edge up in close encounters. It would also counter the stupid power of the AR. I think that's honestly the best thing they could do if they were going to make any tweaks whatsoever to the weapons sandbox, which I am sadly very skeptical about.

Also, I know I'm an idiot, but before Halo 4 came out, I had it in my head that the Ammo perk was actually going to increase the clip size, not the amount of ammo. That would be an awesome boost to the pistol and BR, and I would totally use it. But sigh, no dice.
 
T

Tashi

343i Lead Esports Producer
Plywood said:
Good post, I agree with most of it. I did not know the Mammoth level actually had "toxic rivers" as you say and that you're forced to ride the Mammoth.

Though addressing point 2, I don't think it's really a shocker that scale was going to get knocked back for the graphics, there's only so much you can bend outta the hardware.

Well that's a given. Still makes him look like a campy villain with a crystal ball.
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Agreed
 
Deputy Moonman

Deputy Moonman

Member
Yager said:
One of the biggest problems in the franchise (games) is the narrative: almost all of the games are terrible at telling a story, and I wasn't hoping that it would be any better with Halo 4. That said, I liked how the story is presented in Halo 4, with terminals, SpOps and campaing; at least is a new approach.
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I don't think Halo so much as tells a story as much as it lets you act out the story. I've never thought of Halo as a story game, personally. I'm the narrative and I do what I want!
 
J

JB1981

Member
rakka said:
the sniper looks horrendous in 4. sounds wierd, and they changed the visual recoil to one that's a lot more interfering, when zoomed/scoped it's very cluttered and fucking blue on the outside. overall a less satisfying experience and mostly confusing. flinch really sucks as well.

and snipers game type has radar, wtf.
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Just throw in the towel already lol
 
H

HigherLevel

Member
I'm sure the scale of the game will be bigger in 5 because of new hardware. I think the 360 limited Bungie with Reach and 343 with 4 in that regard.

One thing I hope to see in Halo 5 is a return to earth and less of an isolated feeling. Similar to the way Halo CE and Halo 2 were. More large scale combat with Spartan IVs and marines fighting alongside you. Maybe even finally bring another one of the Spartan IIs into the games.
 
Deputy Moonman

Deputy Moonman

Member
I totally played Halo 4 last night with an old Halo2 buddy that I hadn't seen or heard from in a long time. We've never know each other in real life. He's from Virginia, but we had so much fun during Halo 2's glory days. He fell away from Halo during Halo 3 and barely played Reach. He had just picked up his copy of Halo 4 and was trying it out for the first time last night. Before we stopped playing for the night, he said he preferred the new BLOPS game over halo 4. Still, was good to play with an old friend for a little while. Shout out to Bladeogre. I don't think he even reads Neogaf though lol. And his name has nothing to do with the ogre twins.
 
P

Poker Face

Member
Alienshogun said:
I cannot wait for the next console. Bungie's next game AND Halo 5? Yes Prease.
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i hope destiny kicks ass. i miss bungie

Deputy Moonman said:
I totally played Halo 4 last night with an old Halo2 buddy that I hadn't seen or heard from in a long time. We've never know each other in real life. He's from Virginia, but we had so much fun during Halo 2's glory days. He fell away from Halo during Halo 3 and barely played Reach. He had just picked up his copy of Halo 4 and was trying it out for the first time last night. Before we stopped playing for the night, he said he preferred the new BLOPS game over halo 4. Still, was good to play with an old friend for a little while.
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yea the group of people i went to the midnight launch of halo 4 with have all either moved to black ops or just stopped playing. :/
 
B

Brolic Gaoler

formerly Alienshogun
I wish Frankie would come back in here and address why lag is still so bad in Halo 4. I've experienced it every time I've played (sessions) in at least 1 game per session and I see streamers struggling with it all the time.
 
R

Rev3rb

Member
Deputy Moonman said:
They could just make the BR a 4 shot weapon again, and leave the DMR alone. Puts the DMR in better position for long range kills, but gives the BR the edge up in close encounters. It would also counter the stupid power of the AR. I think that's honestly the best thing they could do if they were going to make any tweaks whatsoever to the weapons sandbox, which I am sadly very skeptical about.

Also, I know I'm an idiot, but before Halo 4 came out, I had it in my head that the Ammo perk was actually going to increase the clip size, not the amount of ammo. That would be an awesome boost to the pistol and BR, and I would totally use it. But sigh, no dice.
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Hmm, I wonder if this would work out... Especially since its almost impossible to get someone from long range with the BR's kick. People would use DMR for long range and BR specifically for medium to small.

Edit: Would probably fuck up other weapon balance though... I'll shut up


I wish :(
 
M

MaximumFlipFlop

Banned
TheOddOne said:
Just to balance it out.

Level and mission design

While certainly I agree that there are no levels as big and open as The Ark or The Covenant, the level design in Halo 4 is for most part really excellent. Now by that I mean level layout and not structure of the mission design. The sections in Forerunner, Reclaimer, Shutdown and Shutdown for example are exceptionably built and even inspired. In certain areas you can really notice that they wanted to make it bigger but something was holding them back; my guess would be the outdated hardware and the bump in fidelity. Drawbacks that in hindsight was always going to cramp the game. I am not worried about that aspect for future games, those guys can certainly create levels.

I will agree that for the most part, many of the Campaign spaces are built quite well. The art team did do a great job. And yeah, technical limitations paired with their vision for graphics played into the smaller scale. Like others have said, maybe Halo 5 will open it back up.

The problem with the game is not the levels, but the mission design and objectives behind them. Yes, you do spent a lot of time pressing buttons; but that isn’t really the big thing that makes the campaign tiring, it is the sense of urgency. Do this, do that and act fast is what really kills it. Halo’s before it also had that, but they never felt like they were pushing you this much. There was always the sense that you were in control of the pace. With Halo 4 it feels lost, that balance feels now that you are being held too much. Looking back at Halo 3’s The Ark and The Covenant, the missions had multiple objectives yet it barely (or even none?) markers that said what to do. That all gave the impression of freedom, while you were actually subtly being led.

This is a great point that kind of ties into my door shutting on your ass thing. Firefights often feel you no longer set the tempo.

With the pace being gone, you really start to notice how repetitive the objectives are while every Halo before also had the same objectives repeated verbatim. Here is where is where the design also fault, it took tons of objectives from the older games but never felt like the designers made their own spin on it. It feels like a sloppy cut-and-paste job, that sounds really harsh but this seemed like the perfect place to add some new objectives to the rotation. Pushing buttons and three-way objectives where done perfectly fine in Halo 4, but the amount was certainly a problem. There was nothing wrong with them, but more variety would certainly help. This is something that can change and I like to believe that 343 designers acknowledge that.

Prometheans

I feel that the Prometheans are fantastic additions to the sandbox, but I feel they also have limited them to certain extent. With the Covenant you could fight them any way you wanted, with any weapon and it all felt effective. There was also no set pattern to defeat them, you could mix it up like. With Prometheans, to effectively combat them you had to learn which ones to take out first. The Watchers first (so they can’t respawn Knights) , then the Crawlers and finally the Knights. This rigid structure is what kills the fun, the inability to kill them on their own merits. If that makes some kind of sense. It also doesn’t mesh very well with the 30 seconds of fun matra, feels more like an rigid learn or die routine. However I never really had any problems fighting them though, if I failed I always tried to find a strategy to defeat them more effectively.

You nailed it with the rigid formula. Sure the Watcher does some fantastic things in combat like shielding, reviving, catching grenades etc. But when it comes down to it, that forced role also forces my hand in how to approach the battle. Same goes for Crawlers, unless I immediately start picking those suckers off, they will group up and come at me. It makes combat diversity lack.

Yeah, there is a distinct lack of feedback from the Prometheans. With the Covenant, they all reacted at every shot you took at them but with Prometheans you don’t have it. Yes, the Watchers fly away when you shoot them, the Crawlers go down when you beat them and the Knights phase out when they are in danger. However it is not enough, every shot needs to have an effect. In light of all that, the Knights are really awesome to fight against. Especially when you figure out how bait them, shoot ‘em the Suppressor and finishing them with the Scattershot. There is ton of room for improvement in the enemy department, but doesn’t seem like too much of lost cause. There is something there, but it really needs to be reworked to some extent.

I do agree that for Prometheans to see the longevity the Covenant have, they need a serious makeover in behavior and appearance. Perhaps I found Knight battles boring because of the monotony of dealing with the little guys first every time. Again, it always felt the same fighting them to me.

Story and “Mystery”

Yes, the fractured storytelling is really a huge problem in Halo 4. I know somebody will kill me for this (Be gentle with me Flipyap), but take account the whole story from the Terminals, Spartan Ops (thus far) and the main campaign and I say it is one of the more appealing game stories thus far. I loved that they went in this direction and should be praised for taking such risks. There were always awesome stories in the Halo universe, but they were always stuck behind other obscure things. They were often grander then what we were playing. Now that it has been brought to the foreground is freaking amazing. The subjects they explore are far and beyond anything I expected them to do in a game. There is some cheese, but for me I felt it was minimal.

I do agree that as a WHOLE, the games story does improve. But the main Campaign story which a majority of the people play through really needs to help sell the big picture.

AI rampancy, death, reflection, war crimes and politics in this one contained story already? I really like where this is going. From all the criticism that game gets for keeping if safe, the story direction is nothing but safe and biggest step the game has taken. I can’t shy away that 343 has done a terrible job of highlighting one the best things about the campaign. It is really a shame that such a great story is buried and scattered like it’s nothing. For future games, never do this again. Burry smaller story bits in terminals, but not huge aspects that are integral to the main story.

Agreed, make one cohesive story, leave non essential filler stuff for terminals.

I kind of baffled by your points though about mystery, Poision. You knew going in that The Kilo-five and Forerunner trilogy would directly tie in Halo 4, seeing as you are a fan you would know way more than an average gamer going in. Is that really the fault of 343 as you claim? Any outside casual gamer would be confused by the story, no doubt, but you could argue that they did it to simplify the story. If you read many comments after people have finished the game: what happened at moment x, why did person a hate person b etc. Which bred a lot of discussion, more so then Halo stories before.

Like I said, I was just disappointed huge book revelations became huge game revelations. I really thought there would be some greater mystery for Halo 4, on top of that stuff. That's my main argument against it. Like I had said, I could be blamed for reading those books, but 343 tied them into pivotal plot way too much.

Intentional? Yeah, I think so. That sense of vagueness was also apparent in the first Halo. You can’t show your full hand in the first game, you have keep people guessing. That is certainly one way to look at it. You can’t expect to have every answer given to you right off the bat, which reading your complaints it is what you expected. Which is kind of funny considering you didn’t get enough answers but argue that the “mystery” is gone. It feels like much of the outside stuff not relating to Cortana and Chief had taken a backseat in this game, now the question is will the story setups play a pivotal role in the sequels? Time will tell.

In regards to not giving us answers, my main arguments is that things that needed answering to enhance the story were not. Obviously you can leave certain things a mystery in the story, but the major things 343 left unanswered in Halo 4 really made a negative impact on it in my opinion.

Also, the skybox thing strikes me as a really bizarre thing to say. Like disregarding the fantastic locations, but being overly harsh at a skybox you see for one level. Another observation is that it feel like you went in to the game with full on hype, believing every little thing 343 said and now you burned yourself without objectively looking at what they were saying. Never ever believe PR hype, always look with a skeptical eye. They are out to sell you a game, they will say anything to do it. Remember Invasion vidoc for Reach? Yeah.

I already said it, but I think for the most part, the playable spaces we were given were beautiful. The art team did do a great job there. Now the low-res image for a skybox spreads throughout the whole Campaign, and in SpOps it's really bad. I just felt like every Bungie Campaign level was teeming with detail and believability due to their scale, and how they felt as if they were part of a much larger world. Halo 4's Campaign missions will never capture that feeling from me. I know many of you find it nitpicky, but I for one will always love Bungie's environments and how they worked as a whole.

I know people are going to go all “Odd is Team Slurp leader”, but I genially think people are downplaying some of the finer aspects of the game.
Click to expand...

Great post. My replies are bolded :)
 
T

Tawpgun

Member
That cover is when marketing loses some of its integrity. Everyone here agrees the old cover fits the theme of the books and actually looks a whole lot nicer.

This is when the desire to squeeze more money from the book by overlapping characters like that to make it recognizable ruins the look of the product.

It's the book equivelant of

tumblr_mdl59fdjtP1rtobu5o1_1280.jpg
Click to expand...

vs

tumblr_mdl59fdjtP1rtobu5o2_1280.jpg
Click to expand...

Imagine if, in order to make Halo's covers more recognizable, they had overlays of multiplayer and other well known halo characters
 
D

dalVlatko

Member
I just finished the campaign and I was actually had fun and enjoyed it more than I expected...then the final level happened and it just made me angry. Its like it was made to highlight every single thing that was wrong with Halo 4's single player from the story, to the gameplay, the enemies, the level design...

I think the Halo 2 comparisons are really fitting because both 2 and 4 took the story in a direction I didn't like and became a chore to go through in some levels. Too bad 4 doesn't have a multiplayer component that it can lean on.
 
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