My point exactly, Cortana aint dead she just wanted out of The Game.
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Halo |OT18| We're Back Baby!
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Well they're really pushing Palmer on us, so expect to see her as a main character soon.
We basically have two storylines. Chief and the "death" of Cortana and whatever the Librarian did to him, and Halsey/Jul M'Dama teaming up against Palmer, ONI and the UNSC plus whatever happened to the Didact.
343 has openly said they envision a time Chief no longer leads the series. So I imagine with the Halo One trailer, Chief has gone rogue after hearing of Halsey and wants to find Cortana. Maybe we'll play half the missions as Chief and half as Palmer just like Halo 2 in a sense.
We basically have two storylines. Chief and the "death" of Cortana and whatever the Librarian did to him, and Halsey/Jul M'Dama teaming up against Palmer, ONI and the UNSC plus whatever happened to the Didact.
343 has openly said they envision a time Chief no longer leads the series. So I imagine with the Halo One trailer, Chief has gone rogue after hearing of Halsey and wants to find Cortana. Maybe we'll play half the missions as Chief and half as Palmer just like Halo 2 in a sense.
Ozzy Onya A2Z
Member
I can't seriously believe Halsey is partnering with Jul, it's a means to an end is all and she'll return as the good guy soon enough. Maybe they'll kill her off but I'd like to see a backup of Cortana and Halsey melded together to become John's new in game AI.
I'd also like to see Halsey/John wipe out the dark side of ONI to unify ONI/UNSC/Innies and move along with larger conflicts in the universe. Put a human vs human mission in and make it something like Blue team missions in Nylund books before they had armour or got caught by the Innies etc. Assassinate Osman stealth mission would be awesome.
System Recovery and she's as good as new!
NobleGundam
Banned
343. Please focus more on Master Chief's background. The untold stories about his past. Something to have us fans clench over our seats gazing towards the screen over the amount of badassery and good story telling?
Prime Example
There's untapped potential to be told about John's past. In between Halo 4 and his birth there's Halo 2, ?, First Strike, the Fall of Reach, ?, FUD, ?, also even during the abductions for Halsey's S - II project.
This trailer and Halo FUD barely scratched the surface about his past.
Prime Example
There's untapped potential to be told about John's past. In between Halo 4 and his birth there's Halo 2, ?, First Strike, the Fall of Reach, ?, FUD, ?, also even during the abductions for Halsey's S - II project.
This trailer and Halo FUD barely scratched the surface about his past.
If the UNSC made a "new", identical AI to Cortana and downloaded all of Cortana's old "memories" into it, would you guys still consider that to be "Cortana"?
I guess it's like asking if I'm the same person I was a few minutes ago. Or if I enter a portal is what exits the other side still "me".
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^^^ Focusing on MC's backstory... again... really? Really? We have books, graphic novels, FuD and whatever else that go into detail about his history. That's seriously going the wrong way in terms of story progression, IMO. They need to start focusing on the bigger things again.
Plus I don't think I can handle 343i's interpretation of the SII project where Halsey is dressed as Hitler and all the Spartans hate her but John is complacent with the events that have occurred because he feels as if he's "destined" to do greater things
I guess it's like asking if I'm the same person I was a few minutes ago. Or if I enter a portal is what exits the other side still "me".
...
^^^ Focusing on MC's backstory... again... really? Really? We have books, graphic novels, FuD and whatever else that go into detail about his history. That's seriously going the wrong way in terms of story progression, IMO. They need to start focusing on the bigger things again.
Plus I don't think I can handle 343i's interpretation of the SII project where Halsey is dressed as Hitler and all the Spartans hate her but John is complacent with the events that have occurred because he feels as if he's "destined" to do greater things
343 pls no
NobleGundam
Banned
The only time 343 ever even attempted that was in Halo Legends. And even that part I don't accept it as canon. But seriously why be skeptical? Why not question the possibilities that if ever they do expand his untold history before and in between the war with the Covenant is interesting to at least consider how well that potential may turn out to be if done right. They took a huge step with FUD.
"Oh FUD was a failure." Etc. Etc.
Several fans not being optimistic by not giving them a chance to step into boundaries that have been untouched or unfinished to really shine on. They're already going forward with a Tv series. Why deny it? If it's straight up bad to even attempt in expanding then yes I'd agree with you. (Hardlight Cortana touching John for Realz)(SpOps Pirate Halsey)(Travis/343's version of Evil War Criminal Halsey).
StalkerUKCG
Banned
He came to Stalker's world of accounting and finance.
Mace Griffin
Neo Member
Its not a slap in the face to 343. They created a CoD emulating anti-competitive game and they knew it, they consciously made that decision. The comparatively miniscule amount of money and effort they have put into the competitive scene is in my opinion all about trying to raise the profile of Halo in order to sell more DLC and maintain interest for Halo 5. Even their tournaments have been uncompetitive in design, haha, c'mon guys!
The Halo series may well have been far better off now if when Reach was released everyone in the competitive community stayed with halo 3. That would have at least sent a strong message to the developers. I feel some of you guys really need to judge 343 on their actions rather than their words. Its a bit like that girl who's boyfriend treats her like rubbish but she clings on to the relationship because "he says he loves me".
His untold history? I admit it's probably one part of the canon I don't have memorised, but we have a pretty clear history of the Master Chief due to extended media. What's left to tell? You said
Halo 2? I assume you mean the ending when he gets into the Dreadnought? That was explained in a graphic novel, if I'm not mistaken.
Can't remember the rest in great detail, but there isn't exactly all that much "unexplained" in terms of Master Chief during those times. In tFoR he was with Blue Team locking down and defending navigational data in space. First Strike is all about MC after Halo CE
although at this point it has become obvious that I don't understand what you mean here.
I just don't see the point in delving into his history more. We already have a pretty concise idea of how MC's life has played out.
Really not sure why you jumped straight to this point. Most of us here enjoyed FuD. By memory there were mixed opinions about the ending episodes of course, but overall positive.
Nothing wrong with exploring the past of the Halo universe. However, focusing on MC seems pretty... oh I don't know. Restricting at this point. There's not much left to tell, and what gaps there are don't particularly seem interesting and/or significant enough to set some big drama in there. Just my opinion of course.
Classy.
/Rant mode on
The industry seems to be focusing on a little bit too much on character development. Everything else besides that is seen as a backdrop. Which for some games is fine Bioshock Infinite and Last Of Us do a good job in that regard (To be fair, both franchises are promoted as character driven and were never really strong in the actual gameplay department). The thing however is that story elements outside of character development are just as interesting. Halo: CE plot was simple and it asked more question then gave answers. The whole first time out of the pod part in CE has been brought up so many times. The thing that made that so great was that you had no clue what was going on. What did you land on? What is it? Why are aliens on it? By the end you get some overall basic answers but the overall picture is still vague and mysterious. Which made us even more interested.
Notice that Chief in CE actually was the backdrop (Better said: a vessel)? We never actually ask who he is and how his feelings are about his situation. Would you really care? I mean, you could tuck that in some kind of small journal that he keeps with him (Yes, I know that sounds silly seeing as he is man-in-a-machine! But you get the jest of it.) That kind of info would make people cringe if it was in video form. Take the child soldier plotline, it is really interesting, but I rather explore the overall larger story then the vocal point being Chiefs feelings about it.
The adventure as corny as that sounds was actually the main thing driving CE. The environment, enemy engagement, scale, vehicles and more helped to define the story. But Odd, that has no relation to story! Well it does to some extent. Justifications are often used to push the game forward, nothing groundbreaking or controversial. The problem arising with these personal story driven stories however is that less thought is put in the between sections the actual gameplay sections AND are there just to be there. Which is really strange, right? The meat of the game is an afterthought. Try to remember the most recent game releases, which ones had so-so gameplay and were very story heavy. Now think of your favourite game that was so-so story wise but great in the gameplay department. Which one did you have more fun with and made you even more interested? Yeah.
To get back at my corny adventure above. You know why people bring up levels like The Silent Cartographer, Halo, The Ark, The Covenant? Those were levels that had a story and they did it without uttering a single line of text to the player or an unnecessary huge exposition. The player is meant to believe he or she is exploring and feel like the level they are going to has sense of place. And above all, those levels were very agile and gameplay based. Bungie did this throughout the Halo games and every time they deviated from that principle people took notice. Perfect example is ODST, its linear game if you analyse it as a whole, but most people dont even see it that way. That is great game, the player is indirectly the storyteller.
Look at Halo 4s Requiem. We got introduced to this new Forerunner planet and what did we do on this planet? Met the Didact, met the Forerunners, find out that Cortana is dying, UNSC is sucked into the planet and everybody acts like everything is normal. Did you get the joke? We barely got to know our new location. Everything story wise was something personal or lets throw this character in your face. Hey look, we have this huge planet but lets talk about our feelings. For nobody that played Spartan Ops: they threw Requiem into the sun. No seriously, that was a thing that happened in the Halo universe.
In short: I want bugguh levels, less talking and more pew pew.
P.S.: Multiplayer is still poop. WHY IS IT STILL DA POOOOOOOOOP.
aHebrewMenagerie
Member
I thought this was a wahrer post when i read it.
ElzarTheBam
Member
2pac lives inside me.
Ask Over and Kittens and Fracas.
Ask Over and Kittens and Fracas.
Steelyuhas
Member
notbad.gif
It's always been implied that cloning works in Halo. The issue was always with the flash cloning--creating an aged human in a very short period of time being comes with serious side effects. In contrast you can flash clone parts of people with no apparent issues.
That's some good shit.
I really enjoy Forerunner, Infinity and Composer. I find it about as memorable as Reach overall.
I actually agree with this entire post. Nice job. I used to think I wanted to know more about the Forrunners, and maybe I still do since 343 didn't do it well, but now I realize that I just wanted answers to the questions Bungie purposely put in my brain and didn't answer. That's pretty damn clever. We do need to go back to that. It was strange how nonchalant everyone was about being on a fake planet inside a metal shell with an artificial sun. Where was the figuring stuff out? What does this building do? Where does this walkway lead to? What's behind that door?
Only Halo 4 mission I really enjoyed was the trench run at Midnight. Not really classic good halo gameplay, but it was fun. Everything was kind of mediocre. I've had no desire to replay any mission for fun. Whereas I replayed a bunch in Halo 1-3 and ODST. In Reach I occasionally replayed Long Night of Solace, New Alexandria, and the night mission I forget the name of, for stealth purposes. and Lone Wolf for a challenge.
Reach has a decent campaign in retrospect. I think I ragged on it when it came out because I was dissapointed there weren't any bigger battles and there were lame scripted scarabs.
Reach has a decent campaign in retrospect. I think I ragged on it when it came out because I was dissapointed there weren't any bigger battles and there were lame scripted scarabs.
Reach suffered from being a prequel big time. Discovery of Cortana was cool, but for people who didn't read the book like me, it made CE make less sense. I guess it was just a different story tell idea. You are just watching this flame fighting to keep from dying out. Definitely interesting, but not my favorite halo game.
Haha, trust me. It was much worse for people who read the books. The amount of contradictions was frustrating.
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I really liked the first three missions of Halo 4's campaign. And then the humans showed up and everything from art direction, level design and story took a pretty big damn hit. And because of that, I'd have to say
First 3 missions of H4 > Reach's Campaign > The rest of Halo 4's campaign.
Definitely. I agree. I'm just pointing out the inherit flaws in Reach. I liked Reach but I think I just didn't like being in a group of chatty spartan IIIs as compared to the master chief.
Deadly Cyclone
Pride of Iowa State
Eh, that's a tough one for me. Are we going on mission structure alone? I'd agree Reach had much better, and more tight, missions. Halo 4 had some cool moments, and the game looks absolutely gorgeous too. I do seem to remember more specific levels from Reach than I do from 4 though. 4 I just remember how pretty it was. I wasn't big on Reach's story and how they ret-conned the book, but then again I wasn't big on 4's story either.
Long story short, Halo 1 and 2 had the best campaigns. 3 had some great missions.
Halo 4 looked pretty technically but Halo 3 Art Direction is still the best. Those were some really gorgeous environments.
Orochinagis
Member
Jhonson is still dea...., ok maybe they could use Miranda's brain to do another Cortana
NobleGundam
Banned
In a different media that focus isn't always effective but remember First Strike or Onyx? The locations and Alien Architectures explained in those novels were so brilliantly done it made the readers visualize how majestic and mysterious they were while at the same time balancing the stories objective progression.
In a video game, Bungie really were amazing in that position in adding all those elements to add such depths into every level. Having the player question every detail they see and visit. Halo 1, 2, 3 are the perfect examples.
Halo 4 killed those elements. And they know they did. Requiem is dead dead. So many places we players could have visited or could have in depth levels (which they sorta tried to do) just failed. Not being salty about it but the architecture didn't have almost anything to explore or even had any mystery. Their vision to design the Prometheans was a similar reflection to the actual forerunner architecture feel to them. So that explains how well 343 lack in that creativity department.
Excellent post OddOne.
Poker Face
Member
We should be getting Halo 3 playlist information tomorrow since the game is free next week, right?
Yeah, and they're all going to be consolidated and tweaked to balance the BR
Poker Face
Member
I know it sounds like a joke post, but Major Nelson mentioned in his podcast that Bravo said they were working on it.
FUNKNOWN iXi
Member
Playlist consolidation is pretty much drag and drop, no? Someone please tell me it's this complicated process that requires an entire team of super talented people to coordinate such a thing.
I'm trying to understand another reason as to why these things haven't been taken care of years ago other than laziness and lack of concern with maintenance.
I'm trying to understand another reason as to why these things haven't been taken care of years ago other than laziness and lack of concern with maintenance.
Agreed 100%.
After Halo 4 I really couldn't give less of a shit about what Master Chief is feeling, or why the Didact is so angsty, or Palmer's story or whatever. That stuff is fine for books or whatever extended media but it should not be required to understand the game, and I should easily be able to just ignore it if I don't want to read about it.
Bungie did it right by focusing entirely on developing the games and letting someone else handle the external stuff (albeit with some oversight to make sure nothing is too contradictory) but I think the fact that 343 does everything under the same roof has led to everything being too closely tied together to the point where the games aren't the most important thing anymore. Lately it feels less like "the Halo games, and their extended media" and more like "the Halo universe, which also includes games." Which is bad because if you fall out of the novels and comics you're missing out on actual game stuff.
Pretty much all of that kind of mystery was in Spartan Ops. Too bad everything just turned out to be a teleporter.
Surprised it isn't taking another six months then.
Lack of concern probably. You gotta focus on the present when you compete with CoD which just makes an entirely new game every year. I really am surprised this happened at all considering how difficult it was the "make" halo 4. I heard that most of the problems and length of time between changes was due to the fact that they had entirely new people using an old engine. That means they didn't grow along with the engine for 10 years and that small little nuances are harder to find. I can see playlist management and consolidation taking a long time as a result of not knowing where to find the right code to make the change.
Orochinagis
Member
Why do they have bother to update a playlist for a old game if they had to update Reach's mess and Halo 4.
FUNKNOWN iXi
Member
So it's not drag and drop? I ignorantly thought the process was just switching out Team Slayer with Super Slayer, for example, or changing settings within the game options to dump into Matchmaking.
Things like TU's require the coding, no? This is the problem with game development IMO; a lack of transparency.
Oh don't misunderstand, I honestly do not care if they ever update Halo 3 at this point because of how dated it is. I was referring to the past, Reach included.
Orochinagis
Member
The consolidation update on Reach era right? Yeah I dunno if is really hard to put a playlist but it looks easy to just put it online on the server.
They really took their time to fix Reach But I liked how much the added forge maps constantly compared to Halo 4 (or maybe I dont notice it because I barely play the game now)
Well Bungie was very fast with changes compared to 343. Growing up with the engine helps a lot as we've seen. 343 going back to a 6 year old game and making updates 3.5 years after it's successor came out is kind of a big deal. I don't know how intense it is, but it isn't a simple cut and paste like you said.
The Henery
Member
I'm inclined to believe it's a blasé attitude to anything that isn't profitable in an immediate sense rather than man power issues. I suspect this because they got one guy to undertake the entirety of Reach's title update, which included manipulating bloom settings, sword behaviour, bleedthrough and a slew of other changes which some purported to be impossible at the time. If they can pay one guy to strip a game from the inside out and change its mechanics, they can afford to assign an intern to update playlists one afternoon. The time consuming aspect of playlist management is in deciding which settings to use/which playlists to merge or delete, not the physical task of implementing said changes. There's been plenty of well thought out posts detailing a proposed playlist consolidation for Halo 3 and Reach; read them and choose what they feel to be the fairest, implement it and be done with it.
Anyway here's hoping that update does come true and that Bravo is spearheading it. guy knows his Halo 3.
Prinz Eugn
Member
I dunno, I've gotten the sense from past weekly updates that switching playlists and settings is actually a pretty arcane process. I think it would have to be unless they are outright spiteful given how long some changes took and/or never happened.
lybertyboy
Thinks the Evil Empire is just misunderstood.
To say the least, it certainly is a more difficult process the further you go back in the series. One of the largest time sinks is the comprehensive test pass that is required before pushing anything out to you on Live.
Deadly Cyclone
Pride of Iowa State
For one of the bulletins you guys should do a look into the playlist update process. I think a lot of us here have no real idea what it takes to, say, add one playlist to the rotation in Halo 3/Reach/4 etc.
Be an interesting read. I certainly don't know what it takes.
Zeouterlimits
Member
Sounds like a great feature or podcast topic ;-)
I wonder how many people have ownership over those older systems. In the cross training hand over between 343 & Bungie (assuming it went deeper than documentation) how many were required to be confident in their own ability to support them?
I'll second this. Was talking to some gaffers at PAX East last year and we were saying how we think the playlist updating process is probably very complicated but the public knows nothing of it which is frustrating because to us some key problems can be fixed in a 3 minute forge/options tinkering session. And its baffling how it doesn't get fixed faster. We said an insider look into the process would help people understand.
Make it a cool vidoc showing Domino and Tashi after you guys hire him WHICH IS COMING SOON RIGHT?
Zeouterlimits
Member
Well at a certain point if you show how complicated something is you make people look bad.
So there's a balance there in how much you should you show.
A lot of people don't really want to understand how complicated it is - see Skullgirls game dev cost controversy.
So there's a balance there in how much you should you show.
A lot of people don't really want to understand how complicated it is - see Skullgirls game dev cost controversy.
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