What in the world? The general concept of Halo, of a super soldier that fights alien monsters to save humanity is what... an original inspiring tale never seen before? Why complain now with Halo 5... Oh yeah its 343 and you, so why the fuck not? Plenty of games out where with unoriginal worlds/stories which still manage to have the best story (TLOU?).
"This box art is emblematic of how uninspired the 343i's game design philosophy is." Wow, un-aware or purposely ignorant?
(wow hero points at screen with gun
(wow hero looks into this distance in heroic pose)
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But hey, lets
SPECIFICALLY complain about 343, and not act like its not been a thing in the past???
Halo CE was great because it focused on gameplay and almost followed a Nintendo-esque game design philosophy. The narrative was subservient to the gameplay. Master chief was an empty vessel for the player. The little dialogue that he did have functioned in Duke Nukem-like fashion in that it was usually "badass" humorous little quips after significant gameplay moments.
The Halo 2 campaign represents the beginning of a downward trend in the campaign/narrative of the Halo franchise. It might be considered a classic now for nostalgia reasons (and the multiplayer), but many hardcore Halo fans (at the time) absolutely hated the covenant religious war nonsense, the decision to have elites speak english. Yes, the cinematic experience (whatever that means) was amped up. However, the dialogue and narrative was creative writing 101/fan fiction levels of bad... and it pissed off a lot of people. Halo 2 came out during the height of the Iraq War, and my personal opinion was that all of the religious war stuff was some writers poorly thought out commentary on the Sunni--Shia relations and the height of the Bush administration. It was perhaps an interesting idea, but seemed out of place (especially following Halo CE)... Mainly it was just poorly constructed.
Halo 3 represented a return to the basics, with the exception of Gravemind (only because his plot was introduced into Halo 2). However, largely... Halo 3 is simple story that mimics a lot of the same beats from Halo CE.
ODST, is the only good plot/mood heavy Halo game. It was smartly designed as a one off, and had more creative liberty to do whatever it wanted because it was from a perspective that had not been explored up to that point.
The narratives in all of the Halos that came after Halo ODST make absolutely no sense. The post ODST Halos merged the tone of ODST with the main master chief narrative. Instead of using the fun/goofy sci fi tropes that were present in Halo CE. The new Halo games feel like have some of the worst elements of Star Wars prequels (i.e. almost completely incomprehensible and uninteresting except for the people that have consumed content outside of the main game).
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To whomever, criticized me for my comments regarding the new music. I referenced Hans Zimmer because he is essentially an institution. We can obviously quibble about how diverse his sound is, or how his music sounds nothing like Halo 4's soundtrack. The point remains that these big AAA studios/publishers keep trying to up the cinematic-ness in these big games, but they're doing it at the cost of the game's original soul. Marty O'Donnell's original music is iconic because it confounds the expectations of the typical FPS game. The new Halo games sound like a completely unmemorable boom of strings and brass, just like most Hollywood movies do these days. Yes, there are obviously outliers, but the point still remains that there are a lot of big movies and games that sound nearly indistinguishable from one another.
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Regarding the cover arts. The original cover arts were fine. Master Chief is supposed to be an empty vessel. Their genericness makes a lot of sense. They're not going to win any awards sure, but they were functional. I want a functional Halo game. I want a campaign that doesn't restrict me to narrow corridors. Hell, I'd honestly prefer blowing up another ring and a final level where you have to drive a warthog through a collapsing environment to the melodrama about Cortana and the feelings of master chief and jumping into an overpowered mech (why the fuck are there mechs in the Halo universe again???) and killing endless waves of enemies in a dark and ugly environment.
