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Halo |OT19| 793 Posts, And None Worth Reading

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I just like the feeling that a team is deserted somewhere withminimal contact with the outside world. Some games have tried it, but they never really took advantage of the setting.

Imagine being stuck here and getting to free-roam this place:

Man, Ensemble/Wars had some great concept art for sure. Loved seeing some of that stuff.

Yeah, that isolation idea would be pretty cool for sure.
 

TheOddOne

Member
Well, there is a first time for everything. Trust me, you have to be a real scumbag to get on this list.

jbcNaTxjzsxiPE.png
 

Madness

Member
Man, Ensemble/Wars had some great concept art for sure. Loved seeing some of that stuff.

Yeah, that isolation idea would be pretty cool for sure.

That's sort of what I wanted with H4. Being alone, on the edge of the galaxy on some mysterious forerunner planet. It's just you and a rampant Cortana. No one can find them. They're fighting some faction of the Covenant and these new Prometheans etc.

Just roam all over Requiem, fighting the Didact. Gove you that sense of hopelessness and isolation.

But within like 3 missions in, you're in contact with the Infinity, the flagship of the UNSC and taking orders again, and that sense of fear/dread is completely gone.
 
My ignore list is much more extensive than Oddone's. It's at 23 now, but I took off two people yesterday.

Only a few members of Halo Gaf are on it.
wtzgU.gif


That's sort of what I wanted with H4. Being alone, on the edge of the galaxy on some mysterious forerunner planet. It's just you and a rampant Cortana. No one can find them. They're fighting some faction of the Covenant and these new Prometheans etc.

Just roam all over Requiem, fighting the Didact. Gove you that sense of hopelessness and isolation.

But within like 3 missions in, you're in contact with the Infinity, the flagship of the UNSC and taking orders again, and that sense of fear/dread is completely gone.

I definitely wanted to hook up with the UNSC as soon as possible in Halo 4 but yeah I could have dealt with being alone a bit longer. Oh well.
 

Madness

Member
I definitely wanted to hook up with the UNSC as soon as possible in Halo 4 but yeah I could have dealt with being alone a bit longer. Oh well.

I didn't. I sort of wanted it to be like Captain America in a sense, that he's been gone a long time, and he returns to an Earth and a UNSC he doesn't know.

The problem was the focus on Cortana. Imagine if instead of 5 years, it's been 50 years. Halsey was dead etc. And somehow, the FuD crashed on Requiem, and the 'good' faction of Prometheans extracted the rampant Cortana. Then the storm Covenant search the wreckage, somehow release Chief and he doesn't know what's happened. He searches alone, thinks he's found Cortana, but instead he released Didact. Then, the Librarian tells him she'd tried to restore Cortana but it'd been too long, and we get that angry/helpless Cortana in a sense.

And Chief only finally makes contact with UNSC Infinity and Earth at the end when he needs their help to attack the Composer. Would have been a much more powerful 'Welcome Home John' and have everyone, including Spartan-IV's, an old Lasky, Palmer stare at this ancient Spartan hero etc.

Anyways, I'm just rambling now, veering towards fan fiction, so I'll stop lol.
 
I'm trying to make sense of this. :p I can't tell if he's trying to take a jab at ODST's frame-rate (which seems fine to me) or if ODST was really inspired by Stop Motion Art?

Was ODST's frame-rate a huge issue or something? I don't remember it even being a problem.

I think its the fact that the human characters animations are exaggerated, and their faces look pretty damn awful.
 
I'm pretty sure that Lasky was the only new character that 343 introduced that people actually like. And that's only because FUD was good.

Too harsh mate, what about Roland, Thorne, Jul, Didact, Librarian, Halsey, Cortana, Chief, Truman and Tillman.

Roland was a nice pilot design AI and had great voice acting and dialogue.

Thorne is the SIV exception worthy of the old age Spartan title. Again solid dialogue and top notch voice acting.

Jul was a well rounded Elite bad buy and looks just brilliant in CGI. Voice was solid and I thought the story fit well enough.

Didact in armour is fucking sweet by design and voice acting/dialogue to die for. The CGI and terminal versions are total bad ass, pity in game was so limited and underused.

I'm in heaven with the Librarian in CGI and terminals, she was executed perfectly all around.

Halsey was a major flow on and step up from the Reach version, fucking top shelf execution on this character. Jen once again nails this Character.

Cortana was at her best for everything, enough said.

Yeah John , more character than ever. The voice (great work by Downes), the animation, still felt like playing Chief but grew into a real character finally. I think we don't give enough credit to how fantastic a job 343i did with John.

Truman is simply a smart and entertaining character who is well developed, his look, personal animation and dialogue were top shelf for the most part.

We didn't see her much but Tillman brought a real character to provide emotion in a mission and scenes that really needed her to. Again the facial and character animation was AAA grade and with a great backstory that altered John's mission from retrieve to destroy.

Overall for a new studio to deliver this many new characters, have the integrate to the story and with such perfect art and technical execution of facial/mocap animation combined with their specific dialogue us very impress to me. Further the interaction between many if these characters and their overlaps fit extremely well in the game and universe at large.

Fuck Palmer kicking the Forerunner tech though, that was just stupid and didn't work as comic relief either.

I know about half here are existing characters but the work put in is mostly all new.
 
Hold while I ignore everyone but OddOne and FUNKNOWN to figure out what they're fighting about.

------------

I think I'm going to buy Escalation, I wouldn't mind having more story, and then I'll get to complain about the art as a paying custom.
 
Too harsh mate, what about Roland, Thorne, Jul, Didact, Librarian, Halsey, Cortana, Chief, Truman and Tillman.

Roland was a nice pilot design AI and had great voice acting and dialogue.

Thorne is the SIV exception worthy of the old age Spartan title. Again solid dialogue and top notch voice acting.

Jul was a well rounded Elite bad buy and looks just brilliant in CGI. Voice was solid and I thought the story fit well enough.

Didact in armour is fucking sweet by design and voice acting/dialogue to die for. The CGI and terminal versions are total bad ass, pity in game was so limited and underused.

I'm in heaven with the Librarian in CGI and terminals, she was executed perfectly all around.

Halsey was a major flow on and step up from the Reach version, fucking top shelf execution on this character. Jen once again nails this Character.

Cortana was at her best for everything, enough said.

Yeah John , more character than ever. The voice (great work by Downes), the animation, still felt like playing Chief but grew into a real character finally. I think we don't give enough credit to how fantastic a job 343i did with John.

Truman is simply a smart and entertaining character who is well developed, his look, personal animation and dialogue were top shelf for the most part.

We didn't see her much but Tillman brought a real character to provide emotion in a mission and scenes that really needed her to. Again the facial and character animation was AAA grade and with a great backstory that altered John's mission from retrieve to destroy.

Overall for a new studio to deliver this many new characters, have the integrate to the story and with such perfect art and technical execution of facial/mocap animation combined with their specific dialogue us very impress to me. Further the interaction between many if these characters and their overlaps fit extremely well in the game and universe at large.

Fuck Palmer kicking the Forerunner tech though, that was just stupid and didn't work as comic relief either.

I know about half here are existing characters but the work put in is mostly all new.


I personally liked all of Majestic. Thorne has a decent team that was just written badly. CGI was great but i want more of Majestic. Maybe let them have their own armor configs and colors instead of Uniformly Cobalt.
 

HTupolev

Member
Further the interaction between many if these characters and their overlaps fit extremely well in the game and universe at large.
And this, I think, is where the disagreement lies.

For what they were going for, it's hard to say that the execution was very bad on an element-by-element basis. But the directions that things were taken in, and the overall result? Lots of people in this community hate that.
 
Too harsh mate, what about Roland, Thorne, Jul, Didact, Librarian, Halsey, Cortana, Chief, Truman and Tillman.

Roland was a nice pilot design AI and had great voice acting and dialogue.

Thorne is the SIV exception worthy if the old age Spartan title. Again solid dialogue and top bitch voice acting.

Jul was a well rounded Elite bad buy and looks just brilliant in CGI.

Didact in armour is fucking sweet by design and voice acting/dialogue to die for. The CGI and terminal versions are total bad ass, pity in game was so limited and underused.

I'm in heaven with the Librarian in CGI and terminals, she was executed perfectly all around.

Halsey was a major flow on and step up from the Reach version, fucking top shelf execution on this character. Jen once again nails this Character.

Cortana was at her best for everything, enough said.

Yeah John , more character than ever. The voice (great work by Downes), the animation, still felt like playing Chief but grew into a real character finally. I think we don't give enough credit to how fantastic a job 343i did with John.

Truman is simply a smart and entertaining character who is well developed, his look, personal animation and dialogue were top shelf for the most part.

We didn't see her much but she brought a real character to provide emotion in a mission and scenes that really needed her to. Again the facial and character animation was AAA grade and with a great backstory that altered John's mission from retrieve to destroy.

Overall for a new studio to deliver this many new characters, have the integrate to the story and with such perfect art and technical execution of facial/mocap animation combined with their specific dialogue us very impress to me. Further the interaction between many if these characters and their overlaps fit extremely well in the game and universe at large.

Fuck Palmer kicking the Forerunner tech though, that was just stupid and didn't work as comic relief either.

Roland was OK, I couldn't care less if he's in any future game.

Thorne was mediocre at best, which is saying something, because he was probably the best-written character in Spartan Ops.

Jul was pretty non-existant as a character. He was merely a plot device to advance whatever semblance of a story that Spartan Ops had.

Didact was cool in the books, but in Halo 4, he was the modern equivalent of a moustache -twirling bank robber, that only serves to give the main character something to play off of. He was severly underwritten and underused in the game.

The Librarian was an interesting character, and I have a feeling we'll be seeing more of her, but again, all she is a plot device, even worse, she's a Dues Ex Machina that gives Chief a reason to survive the composer.

343 have been butchering Halsey's character in and out of the books, but part of me feels like this may be deliberate and they will be setting up something that will pay off later.

Master Chief and Cortana get a pass, obviously. We're talking about new characters.

Truman, I have no fucking clue who that is.

Tillson was an interesting sympathetic character, but she's dead, so it's a null point.

Halo 4 campaign was all about progressing Chief and Cortana as characters, which I think they did a fine job with. But Spartan Ops was supposed to progress the new characters, which they botched it up for the most part. There were no interesting character arcs, besides Halsey's.

TL;DR - Most of the characters were merely plot devices to move the story forward in Campaign, and I don't know what the hell happened in Spartan Ops. I'm sure that they'll be written better moving forward, but looking at we got, it is fucking dismal.
 
If Jul namedropped the Arbiter I would've been hyped.. Little details like that go a long way.

Going forward, I'd like for them to tap into that sort of thing while progressing with new characters, bringing them into the mold naturally without feeling forced upon us like Palmer.
 
If Jul namedropped the Arbiter I would've been hyped.. Little details like that go a long way.

Going forward, I'd like for them to tap into that sort of thing while progressing with new characters, bringing them into the mold naturally without feeling forced upon us like Palmer.

I just want majestic to be written well. There is so much potential for that Squad of S-IVs.
 

bidguy

Banned
i wish they would finally release a screenshot or something for halo on x1
feels like im wandering the desert looking for water
 

zap

Member

Fixed.

You need to use an "&" instead of "#"

Too harsh mate, what about Roland, Thorne, Jul, Didact, Librarian, Halsey, Cortana, Chief, Truman and Tillman.

Roland was a nice pilot design AI and had great voice acting and dialogue.

Thorne is the SIV exception worthy of the old age Spartan title. Again solid dialogue and top notch voice acting.

Jul was a well rounded Elite bad buy and looks just brilliant in CGI. Voice was solid and I thought the story fit well enough.

Didact in armour is fucking sweet by design and voice acting/dialogue to die for. The CGI and terminal versions are total bad ass, pity in game was so limited and underused.

I'm in heaven with the Librarian in CGI and terminals, she was executed perfectly all around.

Halsey was a major flow on and step up from the Reach version, fucking top shelf execution on this character. Jen once again nails this Character.

Cortana was at her best for everything, enough said.

Yeah John , more character than ever. The voice (great work by Downes), the animation, still felt like playing Chief but grew into a real character finally. I think we don't give enough credit to how fantastic a job 343i did with John.

Truman is simply a smart and entertaining character who is well developed, his look, personal animation and dialogue were top shelf for the most part.

We didn't see her much but Tillman brought a real character to provide emotion in a mission and scenes that really needed her to. Again the facial and character animation was AAA grade and with a great backstory that altered John's mission from retrieve to destroy.

Overall for a new studio to deliver this many new characters, have the integrate to the story and with such perfect art and technical execution of facial/mocap animation combined with their specific dialogue us very impress to me. Further the interaction between many if these characters and their overlaps fit extremely well in the game and universe at large.

Fuck Palmer kicking the Forerunner tech though, that was just stupid and didn't work as comic relief either.

I know about half here are existing characters but the work put in is mostly all new.

I played SpOps and couldn't tell you anyone's names except Palmer (and only cos she's terrible). That is proof of bland characters and mediocre story in my books.

Also, bolded for funnies.
 

zap

Member
Works for me either way, I just right click the video > copy at current time.

Hm, weird. I'm on firefox and just tried it on chrome and it just plays from the beginning for me without the ampersand.

I just used the copy at current time and it did the same as yours, but wouldn't work for me - maybe it's my end.
 
I personally liked all of Majestic. Thorne has a decent team that was just written badly. CGI was great but i want more of Majestic. Maybe let them have their own armor configs and colors instead of Uniformly Cobalt.

I'm much the same, aside from a few glaring poor dialogue or step out in the open with a shotgun I really enjoyed the CGI premise of SIV's and SPOPS. Seeing the Infinity and all the hangar bays with them suiting up etc was just crazy. Finally the scale Halo deserved.

And this, I think, is where the disagreement lies.

For what they were going for, it's hard to say that the execution was very bad on an element-by-element basis. But the directions that things were taken in, and the overall result? Lots of people in this community hate that.

Lots of people hate the Halo 2 arbiter too, there's always that level of hit and miss. I would have preferred more Forerunners than another faction of Elites but I suppose they didn't want to change the game on us. I don't really understand than approach myself. A fresh set of Forerunners would have in fact been easier for new fans to absorb.

CAUTION: HYPERBOLE AHEAD

You know it. I thought I'd distract from the in fighting :) I don't usually post on Sundays but I have some time before I head out with the kids/fam.

Roland was OK, I couldn't care less if he's in any future game.

Thorne was mediocre at best, which is saying something, because he was probably the best-written character in Spartan Ops.

Jul was pretty non-existant as a character. He was merely a plot device to advance whatever semblance of a story that Spartan Ops had.

Didact was cool in the books, but in Halo 4, he was the modern equivalent of a moustache -twirling bank robber, that only serves to give the main character something to play off of. He was severly underwritten and underused in the game.

The Librarian was an interesting character, and I have a feeling we'll be seeing more of her, but again, all she is a plot device, even worse, she's a Dues Ex Machina that gives Chief a reason to survive the composer.

343 have been butchering Halsey's character in and out of the books, but part of me feels like this may be deliberate and they will be setting up something that will pay off later.

Master Chief and Cortana get a pass, obviously. We're talking about new characters.

Truman, I have no fucking clue who that is.

Tillson was an interesting sympathetic character, but she's dead, so it's a null point.

Halo 4 campaign was all about progressing Chief and Cortana as characters, which I think they did a fine job with. But Spartan Ops was supposed to progress the new characters, which they botched it up for the most part. There were no interesting character arcs, besides Halsey's.

TL;DR - Most of the characters were merely plot devices to move the story forward in Campaign, and I don't know what the hell happened in Spartan Ops. I'm sure that they'll be written better moving forward, but looking at we got, it is fucking dismal.

Yeah I wouldn't want Roland to say replace Cortana but he was a welcome addition for SPOPS.

I didn't think he was mediocre but it's subjective with characters anyhow. I'd put Truman (the Halsey scientist while she's out of action so to speak) and Thorne on equal footing.

Didact was great everywhere except in the actual gameplay. I'm curious if they ran short on time or they're saving the Didact for next gen Halo...

The Librarian is far more than a plot device, she's the cornerstone of the human path. Watch the terminals or read the books, I'm sure you have anyhow.

I think fans have been getting sucked into this butchering of Halsey, it's not new as ONI has always had it in for her. We're just seeing that more and I agree it's setting things up for the next series of games. I'm always happy with more Halsey, especially of the quality I've seen with SPOPS. I don't get the dislike here.

John & Cortana were more than a pass here, they were at their best IMO. The best interaction, the most emotion, best facial animation, best HD character models etc. I ate all of that up and would go back for seconds and third. Don't undersell this it deserves far more than a pass.

Truman, the other science guy in SPOPS with the. Oh wait I meant Glassman. MY BAD MATE!

Tillson highlights a perfectly integrated charcter story that affects gameplay and progresses the story while making us care about here. It also is a pivotal point in seeing John & Cortana react as humans vs. machines. To me this was easily on of the best written and executed series of scenes/missions in the Halo 4 game.

Most characters of SPOPS were't at the level of the ones above but overall I think they succeeded in introducing the SIV program, the Infinity, ONI changeover, FuD integration etc. When you look at the overall level of what they had to do I think it's more hits than misses. In terms of character by character then it's subjective but could have been less pokey-jokey and more SII Nylund book stuff.
 

Madness

Member
Didact was cool in the books, but in Halo 4, he was the modern equivalent of a moustache -twirling bank robber, that only serves to give the main character something to play off of. He was severly underwritten and underused in the game.

I was so disappointed with the Didact. This was supposed to be the Ancient Evil and 'consequences will never be the same' enemy? He basically reminded me of Shao Kahn yelling 'You Suck' during the final mission as he kept taunting you. I was so bored out of my mind having to do that stupid press button sequence like 3 times in a row before him. And then, no fight, it just ends in a QTE.
 
Fixed.

You need to use an "&" instead of "#"

I played SpOps and couldn't tell you anyone's names except Palmer (and only cos she's terrible). That is proof of bland characters and mediocre story in my books.

Also, bolded for funnies.

Your avatar reminds me of how people were ready for a new Halo game. We want to love this franchise.

Lots of people hate the Halo 2 arbiter too, there's always that level of hit and miss.

I don't think anyone hated the Arbiter's story, they just disliked playing as him instead of MC.
 
Too harsh mate, what about Roland, Thorne, Jul, Didact, Librarian, Halsey, Cortana, Chief, Truman and Tillman.

Roland was a nice pilot design AI and had great voice acting and dialogue.

Thorne is the SIV exception worthy of the old age Spartan title. Again solid dialogue and top notch voice acting.

Jul was a well rounded Elite bad buy and looks just brilliant in CGI. Voice was solid and I thought the story fit well enough.

Didact in armour is fucking sweet by design and voice acting/dialogue to die for. The CGI and terminal versions are total bad ass, pity in game was so limited and underused.

I'm in heaven with the Librarian in CGI and terminals, she was executed perfectly all around.

Halsey was a major flow on and step up from the Reach version, fucking top shelf execution on this character. Jen once again nails this Character.

Cortana was at her best for everything, enough said.

Yeah John , more character than ever. The voice (great work by Downes), the animation, still felt like playing Chief but grew into a real character finally. I think we don't give enough credit to how fantastic a job 343i did with John.

Truman is simply a smart and entertaining character who is well developed, his look, personal animation and dialogue were top shelf for the most part.

We didn't see her much but Tillman brought a real character to provide emotion in a mission and scenes that really needed her to. Again the facial and character animation was AAA grade and with a great backstory that altered John's mission from retrieve to destroy.

Overall for a new studio to deliver this many new characters, have the integrate to the story and with such perfect art and technical execution of facial/mocap animation combined with their specific dialogue us very impress to me. Further the interaction between many if these characters and their overlaps fit extremely well in the game and universe at large.

Fuck Palmer kicking the Forerunner tech though, that was just stupid and didn't work as comic relief either.

I know about half here are existing characters but the work put in is mostly all new.

aXbn49P_460sa.gif
 
If Jul namedropped the Arbiter I would've been hyped.. Little details like that go a long way.

I posted it a few months ago, but a theoretical Spartan Ops Season 1.5 intro I had written (before Episode 6 released, basically) involved Jul and friends temporarily retreating to Sanghelios to kidnap the Arbiter and started you out jumping / hijacking Lich-to-Lich with nothing but Jetpacks and SAWs to make your way to the Cruiser that arby was being held prisoner on.
 

Mistel

Banned
I played SpOps and couldn't tell you anyone's names except Palmer (and only cos she's terrible). That is proof of bland characters and mediocre story in my books.

This is the state I'm in no idea who majestic are by name the only people I can remember, is Palmer and Parg Vol from Spartan ops (it was an elite in field commander armor?)

I sat through the whole season remembering two character's and a key thingy and that's about it also unsc doesn't guard scientists.
 
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