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[lexi]

... was an RPG more than it was a true FPS.

No, it was an FPS with RPG elements. Still an FPS. Halo 2's story is above-par for the norm, but it's certainly doesn't put Deus Ex to shame. Or System Shock, for that matter.

 

[IJoel]

No, it was an FPS with RPG elements. Still an FPS. Halo 2's story is above-par for the norm, but it's certainly doesn't put Deus Ex to shame. Or System Shock, for that matter.

Deus Ex's story wasn't really outstanding, what was outstanding was the gameplay mechanics.

I loved Halo 2's story because it brought many unexpected issues on the table and, well, was presented in an excellent manner.

 

[AniHawk]

I'm going to ignore all other posts in this topic, because it seems largely split into those who love it and those who hate it.

I'll reply anyway.

The game rocked so hard - best action game, ever. I've been lusting for this game since I first played Halo, and had expectations of epic proportions.

I'll pipe in on other topics where a real discussion is going on.

Right. You're truly prepared for a "real discussion."

 

[duderon]

For all of those that are saying the story was great, i agree, i enjoyed the story. It's just that the ending was the worst i've ever experienced.

I'll reiterate what has been said in this thread many times. It should be known when you're playing the final level or fighting the final boss, that's the thing that gets me the most. Shuri explained a scenerio that could have played out as the final level, i don't see why bungie couldn't have included something like this. I guess you could blame it on Peter Moore and his tatoo if you wanted too.

 

[firex]

So what fps has a better story/setting than Halo?

half-life, any of looking glass's games, NOLF and NOLF 2.

 

[FriScho]

First Shen Mue 2, now Halo 2... I hate cliffhangers

 

[dream]

At the end of it all, I think my biggest gripe with Halo 2's ending is that we are now right back to where we were at the end of Halo 1. In that respect, Halo 2 felt more like a sidestory than a proper sequel.

 

[AniHawk]

First Shen Mue 2, now Halo 2... I hate cliffhangers

Spoiler

Shenmue II's ending wasn't so bad as for the fact that it felt like the beginning of a new game. You'd beaten Don Niu and moved out of Hong Kong. It was a tad irritating for this mystical, magical "oh shit!" moment to be the end of the game, though.

 

[Rlan]

I'm more dissapointed with the lack of a lot of things shown before the game was released.

Are ANY of these extra variation vehicles in the final game?:

Plus that the full level they showed at e3 isn't even in the final game. It appears that a lot of the actual game was made to be complete bunk.

It's surprising that with all the secrecy about the storyline, what happens during the game, and everything else, the small bits they DID release [which fans clung onto for dear life] don't actually end up in the final game.

Or am I wrong? I haven't completely finished the game yet..

 

[Timedog]

if you only look at the fact that you fought on a halo and you saved a large part of the galaxy from being obliterated, then yeah it's recycled. It's pretty easy to pick out only a FEW of the plot details, and ride with that post after post, ignoring everything else that happened. If that was ALL that happened in the game they would only have to have used like 3 cutscenes.

 

[ninge]

re: the missing stuff in those shots - i think you're right..

I can't help have the sneaking feeling that it was never meant to be quite like this and at some point during development they realised it was too big to get it finished on time and descided to break it into two games. The cynical part of me just can't get over how blatant the whole "now buy xbox2 and halo3" part is.

the fact that i've seen on other boards people discussing the fact that the level files on the disk are numbered sequentially and that level 2 is strangely absent from that list only seems to back this up. To me level 2 seems like the perfect place for the level that was shown at e3 to have taken place - i.e. right when you first get to earth. So what happened? was that level dropped on purpose?

Certainly a lot of the hyped features from the pre-release media are not in the final game and there is probably good grounds for people to be pissed about that (free conspiracy theory with this post: just why was the final game content kept so secret? were they afraid sales would suffer if people found out you didnt get to save earth? that 80% of the game wouldn't even take place on earth? and that half of what they had shown wouldn't make the final cut?)

at the end of the day the game was still an amazing experience and IMHO features some of the best audio and music usage of any game to date. It truely is an epic game that refines a whole number of areas of design and quality that should be present in AAA games. so it can't be said i was dissapointed in the final game. I just feel that in some way ive been a little bit had by aclever marketing machine in the way of closure with this one.

still, i was gonna buy part 3 and xbox2 if they arrived anyway..

 

[Timedog]

i just want to know exactly what was said on the dvd, since i won't be able to buy the game for awhile, but I rented it on my blockbuster gamepass.

 

[Dr Zhivago]

Apart from the ending, I was bit disappointed in how much Flood there was in the game. I'd been led to believe the Flood didn't feature prominently, and I thought the Arbiter's first level was a nice way of getting them in the game.
But then they turned up everywhere.

Great game though, but the ending does take the gloss off it a bit.

 

[mumu]

But, to be totally honest, the story is incredibly well put together, and puts to shame every other FPS out there.

I figure you haven't played many FPSs.

 

[Anyanka]

I haven't finished Halo 2 yet, but all the gripes seem to point to a Angel type ending, which I don't mind so much. It ends on a cliffhanger, sure, but it also ends on a high note. It's there for a reason, they didn't end it this way just to piss off some fans.

It's not really comparable to Angel's ending at all. Angel's ending isn't really a cliffhanger, so much as it is just not showing the final battle for the sake of getting it's message across. What happens to Angel and the others when the show cuts away isn't important.



I'm halfway through beating it again and liking the story more the second time around. My big problem with it the first time wasn't the ending(though it is awful) but just how confusing the story was. It's way too hard to follow what's going on.

 

[Fafalada]

IMO, It isn't an FPS on the scale or scope of Halo 1 & 2, or Far Cry, or Doom 3, or Unreal 2Kx.

Off topic I know, but is that supposed to be implying that Doom3 story was also good and/or epic? :|
I mean don't get me wrong, I quite enjoyed D3 as a game, old school shooting action, but the story was complete trite at best.

 

[Lakitu]

When Bungie first announced the game they claimed that Halo 2 would add closure to the series, but it looks like the story will be spread across both Halo 2 and 3.

 

[Kabuki Waq]

Doom, duke nukem, Perfect Dark and many other Favourites never had great storys you guys get too caught up in the story aspects. I personally enjoyed All those games and Halo 1-2 without really getting attached to the story. Gameplay above all i say. i mean its nice bungie made and effort to make the game all epic interms of story but I consider it as an extra.

 

[StoOgE]

I love the conspriccy theories.. the first two levels on Earth replaced what was shown at E3. They said they werent happy with the way the game played, and most likely went back to the drawing board after they saw what Half Life 2 was doing. Some of that stuff was thrown in there just for E3 I am sure.. like the Brutes showing up, storyline wise, the Brutes simply wouldnt have been there.. but they wanted to show it off. Also the cut scene at the end of the movie was likely just meant to be a cool way to end the E3 demo..

As far as not showing off most of the game, they wanted the Arbiter and the rift in the covenant to be a surprise would be my best guess, the same way the flood was a surprise last time around.

The vehicles that didnt make it Im sure had as much to do with them not working out gameplay wise.. the way I see it the human vehicles all have a counterpart to the Covenant ones with a few exceptions.. there isnt a human banshee and there isnt a human ghost equivelent.. I think the ATV was supposed to work as a human version of the ghost. They added that moving turret thing for the covenant as well as a pilotable tank to match human vehicles (warthog and scorpion)... My best guess is that the ATV simply didnt work the way they wanted it to. As far as the other jeeps the snow one didnt make it in, nor did the troop transport. The camo one is just a different texture on the warthog.. but there is the warthog with the cannon on the back of it that isnt shown here at all. The reason they showed stuff like this off was because you could do so without showing anything of the story or revealing anything at all.

 

[Kiriku]

IMHO features some of the best audio and music usage of any game to date.

NO, not as long as they keep talking in fuzzy, distorted voices while you're in the middle of a fight with no way of hearing what they say. That's just clumsy sound mixing/game design. I dunno why they didn't even bother to do anything about it, since the first Halo had the EXACT same problem. And they even made it worse in Halo 2 in some ways. It's just weird, am I the only one having trouble hearing what they say in-game?! All my friends have said the exact same thing, about both Halo and Halo 2. Maybe it's easier to hear what's being said if your first language is English? I dunno...:/

It doesn't ruin the game of course, but it's frustrating because I'm not sure what I'm missing. If it's some extra info related to the story, or a new order more in-depth than in the pause menu.

But apart from that I agree that the sound and music in Halo 2 is great. It still irks me though...

 

[Anyanka]

It is NOT just you. I have the same problem with the sound mixing. It is just AWFUL. Probably the worst in any recent game I can remember with the exception of Prince of Persia. It's very hard to understand Cortana's banter when you're in the middle of a fight. 343 GS's high pitched voice is especially hard to hear.

 

[DopeyFish]

I can hear everything. You guys are borderline deaf.

 

[Lakitu]

Yeah, I had the same problems during the original Halo, but with Halo 2 I never noticed it I guess.

 

[dark10x]

It's just weird, am I the only one having trouble hearing what they say in-game?! All my friends have said the exact same thing, about both Halo and Halo 2. Maybe it's easier to hear what's being said if your first language is English? I dunno...:/

That's gotta be it...

I never had a single problem understanding what was being said (even when things around me were loud).

 

[Kiriku]

Strange...maybe this has something to do with surround sound vs stereo sound? Because I'm using stereo sound only, but I imagine the voices being easier to make out if they're coming out from a particular speaker instead of having everything mixed up?

 

[Azih]

I couldn't hear everything that was said especially when Cortana started yapping in the middle of a huge firefight. You can't make out what she's saying over all the gunfire, explosions and screaming. That was just bad design. Maybe you can make it out in surround sound systems, but in stereo Cortana's voice is subsumed by the in-level audio. Bad Bungie, Bad.

Plus there seems to be a confusion here between 'bad story' and 'horrificly horrible ending'. Very few of us are saying that Halo 2 had a bad story, most of us are saying the ending sucked balls. So if you want to defend the ending then go ahead, just don't think you've done it by saying the content of the story is fine.

 

[GhaleonEB]

I'll reply anyway.





Right. You're truly prepared for a "real discussion."

Just out of curiosity - do you own the game? Have you beaten it? Or are you only here to jump in and try and piss people off? Looks to me like the latter is the case. That's not what I call a 'real discussion', either. But thanks for trying.

 

[Azih]

I bought the game, I finished it, I truly hate the ending. Where the heck do you get off assuming that everyone who does't like the ending to the game is an unreasoning troll?

 

[Seth C]

I had trouble understanding some of the in-game dialogue in Halo and in Halo 2. Dolby Digital for me.

 

[Ryu]

I had no problem with the cut scenes as captions did assist there in some points as the voices of the Covenant were a bit muddled because of their umm... accents I guess you can call them. Like a lot of people have said here though, a lot of the banter during tense firefights is pretty incoherent on my stereo TV. I'm not complaining about it, but I did find it hard to hear everything being said during those times. Not a big deal in my opinion as a lot of the dialogue during firefights is uhh... superfluous.

 

[FartOfWar]

Disagree completely. My heart literally stopped when the Halo appeared to have activated

So EMS arrived quickly, I take it?

 

[mumu]

I've played most, if not all of the major releases in the last few years. It's also the reason I built a pimp Athlon 64 system, As that is pretty much the only type of game I will play on my PC these days. On the contrary, it seems YOU haven't played too many FPS's (not too many available on the cube?), if you don't see the excellent crafting that went into Halo 2's plot.

I don't own a cube. What FPSs have you played? Name a few.

Nice try, though.

I wish i could say that for your post as well.

 

[lexi]

So EMS arrived quickly, I take it?

:lol

 

[firex]

I liked the "excellent crafting" of the halo series' plot when it was called Marathon, and didn't require us to have an xtreme badass main character.

 

[Mr. Lemming]

I liked the "excellent crafting" of the halo series' plot when it was called Marathon, and didn't require us to have an xtreme badass main character.

Hey, maybe Cortana will end up being the main character of the Halo story, sort of like how Durandal is the main character of the Marathon story.

 

[firex]

I wouldn't be surprised. sorry if I sound bitter, halo is a great series. but the story is watered-down marathon if you ask me. it's the gameplay that makes the games own, and they own hard.

 

[Great Wasabi Man]

it has a story?

 

[Dead]

Oh god I finished it, and all I can say is FUCK YOU BUNGIE

 

[beerbelly]

I completed the game a few hours ago. I have to say, the last stage was pretty fun, and the co-op mode makes the game 10X better because of teamwork. My bro, who played with me, was really upset with the ending :lol

 

[Dead]

The last level feels NOTHING like a last level. What a dissappointment considering how stellar the rest of the game is....

 

[AniHawk]

Just out of curiosity - do you own the game? Have you beaten it? Or are you only here to jump in and try and piss people off? Looks to me like the latter is the case. That's not what I call a 'real discussion', either. But thanks for trying.

I'll own it come January. I'm not here to piss people off, so sorry if I pissed you off.

I just find it funny that you have your mind really made up about this game. I don't think there's much changing it. You'd fall into the "people who love it" category for the ending. I'm not faulting you for being a fan. It's stupid to do so. I'm just saying this is probably about a real a conversation about Halo 2's ending you're going to get.

Look, I beat TWW, I realized its faults (...the second time around ), and I still loved the game. I won't call people who dislike its ending people who are not prepared for a real discussion. I'd argue with them. Though, if I said what you said, I'd be acting like I was clearly above them when I'm really not.

 

[Synbios459]

There are 2 questions I hope someone can answer:

1. How did Regret get eaten by Gravemind/
2. Why did Tartarus need that one women to insert the Index?

 

[Celicar]

The story was utter shit in my opinion. I was kind of confused to be honest.

Bungie did not do a good job telling the story. What the fuck was that giant plant? I was disappointed.

 

[Bog]

If you're playing Halo 2 for the story, something might be wrong with you. It wasn't until just before Halo 2 released that I found out people gave a shit about Halo 1's story.

 

[Sai]

You weren't paying much attention then.

 

[Tellaerin]

If you're playing Halo 2 for the story, something might be wrong with you. It wasn't until just before Halo 2 released that I found out people gave a shit about Halo 1's story.

So how does the fact that you were clueless equal something being wrong with me? (Yes, I'm one of those people who was interested in Halo 2 for the story. IMO, the first game had some problems that kept it from rising above 'average FPS' in the gameplay department, but I enjoyed the plot and wanted to see where things would go next. To my surprise, the sequel not only delivered on the story, but also addressed a lot of the gameplay-related points that kept me from really getting into Halo.)

 

[GashPrex]

Just a few thoughts

I liked the ending, was a great cliffhanger, can't wait to play part 3

Secondly, if the story "sucked" nobody would give a shit, and obviously by your reaction to the cliffhanger, you do(did)

Third, if Bungie really didn't "finish" the game they could have just had the game end when you removed the key and never mentioned that earth was the Ark or that there was a failsafe that activated all the other rings.

Fourth, after watching the making of dvd I sincerely hope bungie still has that excitement for Halo 3 after what was obviously a very difficult development in halo 2.

 

[Azih]

There's absolutely no reason why you can't have a crappy story and still have a severely adverse reaction to a horrible ending.

For the record, I thought the story was ok to decent, but holy shit that ending was terrible.

 

[Jonnyram]

Well the AI seemed generally improved, the extra monsters and weapons were cool, but the story... hmm, I have mixed feelings. I only finished it yesterday so I'd like to think about it for a while, but it did feel immediately disappointing for some reason.

It might be related to the Gravemind incident - he just appeared without explanation and none of the characters seemed to wonder what was going on, they just accepted it and continued. If he turns out to be the father of the Flood, I think the story's going in a bad direction. But it would be even worse if we get to play as Flood in the next episode