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Halo 5: Guardians revealed - more at E3 - Fall 2015 [Box Art person is new guy]

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Newlove

Member
I was thinking it could be Master Chief getting a new suit but if its a new character then that theory is out the window. It just seems odd to me that this character is so predominate, above Chief.
 

TheOddOne

Member
Don't see how that could be when Kazuma said he was doing the Halo 5 OST

This is odd
He is doing music for it, but that does not mean he is exclusively doing all the production. Most likely it’s a bulk of the production and the rest is being done by others like Davidge. Same deal as Halo 4, Davidge did most of the production on the first OST while second OST was Jinnouchi heavy.

I don't think Marthy is doing music for it tho.
 

Stinkles

Clothed, sober, cooperative
He is doing music for it, but that does not mean he is exclusively doing all the production. Most likely it’s a bulk of the production and the rest is being done by others like Davidge. Same deal as Halo 4, Davidge did most of the production on the first OST while second OST was Jinnouchi heavy.

I don't think Marthy is doing music for it tho.

Marty isn't, Kazuma is. The vast, teeming bulk of it.
 

Ramadeus

Neo Member
A bit of an off topic point for me, but I was always somewhat irked by the depiction of the Promethean Knights in the Halo 4 meta-narrative.

Sure, it's easy to rationalize their vulnerability in lieu of the fact that Sentinels were never depicted as anything more than cheap Roomba's with lasers, but it creates an undeniable sense of ludonarrative dissonance when we're told that they're the Didact's personal half a ton killbots that can cut a swathe through armoured Sangheili with utter contempt, but in the narrative single pistol bullets are more than sufficient to destroy them without any sign of residual shield effects. Even Guilty Spark survived several direct hits from a laser cannon that can melt a hole through tanks.

I understand that the Knights are essentially the Didact's personal pet project, something he cooked up in his basement during a few passing moments of insanity, but I expected his robot thugs to punch somewhat more above their weight class than they did in the narrative - certainly more than Guilty Spark. I just hope this narrative/world building dissonance isn't a trend in the upcoming Reclaimer saga, where potent Forerunner military assets deployed by a galactic scale society capable of building planets can be threatened by relatively modern rifles.
 

Caayn

Member
A bit of an off topic point for me, but I was always somewhat irked by the depiction of the Promethean Knights in the Halo 4 meta-narrative.

Sure, it's easy to rationalize their vulnerability in lieu of the fact that Sentinels were never depicted as anything more than cheap Roomba's with lasers, but it creates an undeniable sense of ludonarrative dissonance when we're told that they're the Didact's personal half a ton killbots that can cut a swathe through armoured Sangheili with utter contempt, but in the narrative single pistol bullets are more than sufficient to destroy them without any sign of residual shield effects. Even Guilty Spark survived several direct hits from a laser cannon that can melt a hole through tanks.

I understand that the Knights are essentially the Didact's personal pet project, something he cooked up in his basement during a few passing moments of insanity, but I expected his robot thugs to punch somewhat more above their weight class than they did in the narrative - certainly more than Guilty Spark. I just hope this narrative/world building dissonance isn't a trend in the upcoming Reclaimer saga, where potent Forerunner military assets deployed by a galactic scale society capable of building planets can be threatened by relatively modern rifles.
I agree. The Prometheans would've been better as bosses imo, right now they don't feel like the warriors they're supposed to be.
 

tasch

Banned
I agree. The Prometheans would've been better as bosses imo, right now they don't feel like the warriors they're supposed to be.

thye dont feel like anything really. They seem more like new covenant enemies since they have no real unique or redeeming qualities.

the sentinels were a much stronger and unique enemy in the halo sandbox imo.
 

RAIDEN1

Member
It'd be interesting to see how much of an influence (if any) the didact has on the goings-on in Halo 5, as I assume he is still alive in the time-line of next part of Halo..
 

Ramadeus

Neo Member
thye dont feel like anything really. They seem more like new covenant enemies since they have no real unique or redeeming qualities.

Similarly Promethean weapons were on the whole far too multiplayer centric, so rather than interesting designs that creatively made use of the rich lore we ended up with the Forerunner shotgun, the Forerunner DRM, the Forerunner rocket launcher. The hardlight ammunition was an interesting touch but it never seemed to mesh well enough with the depiction of a society whose warriors possessed virtual telekinetic powers.

Personally I hope 343i steps a bit more outside of the box in Halo 5, giving us something that takes us back to 2001 when we first learned that the Forerunners once sterilized the entire galaxy, giving us a moment of pause.
 
the sentinels were a much stronger and unique enemy in the halo sandbox imo.

I disagree, Sentinels were not interesting in the least. I didn't particularly dislike Prometheans, but I didn't particularly like them either - they were just there, a bit bland and sometimes annoying, but serviceable.

What I'd really like to see realized in an SF game (and Halo is as good a candidate as any) is the idea of a sentient swarm that morphs into different shapes and battle configurations whose complexity and intelligence increases with the number of participating units. I thought Prometheans would kind of be like that when I first heard about them; alas, no.
 

Unstable

Member
thye dont feel like anything really. They seem more like new covenant enemies since they have no real unique or redeeming qualities.

the sentinels were a much stronger and unique enemy in the halo sandbox imo.
I agree.

Prometheans lack identity and are simply not as interesting or fun to fight as the Covenant.

Knights are clearly designed to emulate Elites but harder (and by harder I mean x2 as much health) Look at the progression of a fight with an Elite. You shoot him, his shields glow, you shoot him some more, his shields glow brighter. Good visible player feedback. Then finally, his shields pop a followed by a stagger (the Knights have the stagger but lack visible shield pop) This is very visible and good feedback that says to the player "I'm doing damage". Now contrast that with the Knights. Which lack the ever important shield glow progression. Which results in knights feeling like bullet spongy Elites that teleport right when you try line up a headshot.

Watchers are just bullet spongy nuances. They fill the same role as engineers did in ODST/Reach and those were at least semi-threatening (overshielded grunts are no joke). See a watcher? Shoot it once, it will then run away, then kill a Knight. When the Watcher goes in for the resurrection unload a clip into it. Or the second you see it fill it with half a clip of a precision weapon and a move on to the next target.

Crawlers, the Promethean version of Grunts, but from a design standpoint then have a lot more in common with Drones sans flying. Drones were annoying, but they do at least complement the Covenant lineup and were fought rather sparingly. Having a similar swarm type as a mainline enemy? Fought in nearly every encounter with the prometheans. Annoying and unfun.

What do these enemies all have in common? They are redundant and uninteresting additions to the sandbox. Hopefully 343 will redesign the Prometheans from the ground up. Give us truly new enemies with new mechanics.
 

Ramadeus

Neo Member
I agree.

Prometheans lack identity and are simply not as interesting or fun to fight as the Covenant.

Knights are clearly designed to emulate Elites but harder (and by harder I mean x2 as much health) Look at the progression of a fight with an Elite. You shoot him, his shields glow, you shoot him some more, his shields glow brighter. Good visible player feedback. Then finally, his shields pop a followed by a stagger (the Knights have the stagger but lack visible shield pop) This is very visible and good feedback that says to the player "I'm doing damage". Now contrast that with the Knights. Which lack the ever important shield glow progression. Which results in knights feeling like bullet spongy Elites that teleport right when you try line up a headshot.

Watchers are just bullet spongy nuances. They fill the same role as engineers did in ODST/Reach and those were at least semi-threatening (overshielded grunts are no joke). See a watcher? Shoot it once, it will then run away, then kill a Knight. When the Watcher goes in for the resurrection unload a clip into it. Or the second you see it fill it with half a clip of a precision weapon and a move on to the next target.

Crawlers, the Promethean version of Grunts, but from a design standpoint then have a lot more in common with Drones sans flying. Drones were annoying, but they do at least complement the Covenant lineup and were fought rather sparingly. Having a similar swarm type as a mainline enemy? Fought in nearly every encounter with the prometheans. Annoying and unfun.

What do these enemies all have in common? They are redundant and uninteresting additions to the sandbox. Hopefully 343 will redesign the Prometheans from the ground up. Give us truly new enemies with new mechanics.

This.

In my opinion the Knights represent far too much of a dissonance between the narrative, gameplay and the world building, something that really needs to be consolidated to make any kind of internally consistent sense in the Halo universe.

Personally? What I want them to be is something extremely challenging in both the story elements and the gameplay itself. The ideal solution then is to make the Prometheans individually stronger but lesser in number, treat them more like one off fights that require heavy ordinance and environmental hazards to kill rather than just your fists and rifles. Each fight should then be more akin to the Guilty Spark battle, a dread induced slugfest where you're desperately forced to use whatever heavy firepower you can just to slow it down enough to dump a giant chunk of debris on top of it - or kick loose Pelican's missile pod and drown it in heavy ordinance.

Every time a Knight pops up, you should be thinking:

"I only have a SAW, two grenades and one rocket in the tube - how on Earth am I going to win this time?"

Not:

"Hey, more Forerunner bullet sponges, let me whip out my pistol."

I honestly don't believe you even need to change the Crawlers and Watcher, that dynamic in of itself is interesting enough, just make the Knights the weighted pivot of each encounter.
 

jem0208

Member
I disagree, Sentinels were not interesting in the least. I didn't particularly dislike Prometheans, but I didn't particularly like them either - they were just there, a bit bland and sometimes annoying, but serviceable.

What I'd really like to see realized in an SF game (and Halo is as good a candidate as any) is the idea of a sentient swarm that morphs into different shapes and battle configurations whose complexity and intelligence increases with the number of participating units. I thought Prometheans would kind of be like that when I first heard about them; alas, no.

That could be very cool...

There could be some very interesting damage mechanics where as they get damaged they get weaker. Or you could have it where they morph into different types of enemies mid fight with different abilities depending on how damaged they are and the surroundings. This would force the player to switch up tactics or weapons on the fly. Would make fights very dynamic...

The damage effects could look amazing as well where each shot makes a bunch of the mini robots fizzle away like the knights do on 4.
 
I honestly don't believe you even need to change the Crawlers and Watcher, that dynamic in of itself is interesting enough, just make the Knights the weighted pivot of each encounter.

No, changing Watchers is a priority for me, they're far worse than Knights. Each fight in which you don't get rid of them first becomes a tedious slog, so you basically have no choice but to hunt the Watchers down first, then deal with everything else. They're just a static obstacle, not an enemy with fun, dynamic behavior.


That could be very cool...

There could be some very interesting damage mechanics where as they get damaged they get weaker. Or you could have it where they morph into different types of enemies mid fight with different abilities depending on how damaged they are and the surroundings. This would force the player to switch up tactics or weapons on the fly. Would make fights very dynamic...

The damage effects could look amazing as well where each shot makes a bunch of the mini robots fizzle away like the knights do on 4.

Yes, when you blow big chunks of them away, they would morph into something else or just try to swamp you.
 

Mindwipe

Member
thye dont feel like anything really. They seem more like new covenant enemies since they have no real unique or redeeming qualities.

the sentinels were a much stronger and unique enemy in the halo sandbox imo.

Yup.

I guess I'd say they feel like something in that they don't feel like they fit the Forerunner's at all, conceptually, aesthetically or on any other level.
 

Ramadeus

Neo Member
They kind of semi justify it in the novels by noting that the Knights were the Didact's pet creations after the Gravemind brainwashed him to be an outright monster, but yeah, it still just seems ... Off.

I'll say it again. These are still supposedly the Didact's solution to the Flood, even if they're woefully inefficient for the job of fighting a galactic scale war they're still ten foot tall, half a ton robots that carry weapons that the mighty Prometheans of yore once yielded. Lasky kicking one should be about as effective as a child punching a solid concrete wall.
 

TheOddOne

Member
The Promethean Knights, independently of the Watcher and Crawlers, are actually cool additions. When those enemy types mix and work together it however feels like such a chore to fight them, because there is only one logical way to defeat the horde – first kill the Watchers (Which prevents respawning of enemies), then the Crawlers (Too many of them is dangerous) and finally the Knights. The Watchers and Crawlers have basic functionality, Watchers can shoot (But do very little damage), hide and revive enemies; the Crawlers have various weapons they can carry and melee. They are throwaway and filler enemies you find in a lot of games, but it is fun fighting them because they have charm and to some extent unpredictability (Take for example the Grunts). Both the Watchers and Crawlers lack that and make them forgettable.

The Knights however have and can carry various weapons, teleport, melee and dodge. A much broader skill set, which is fun to fight against one-on-one or even two-on-one, but add even more Knights to the mix and it becomes a slog. It would be more interesting if they changed up the Knights behavior patterns and equipment, for example some don’t have the teleporter ability, others avoid using melee, some try to escape when seeing their comrades perish and more of those small changes which make every Knight unique. The basics for the Knights are already pretty decent, it’s the lack of variation which prevents them from becoming enjoyable enemies to fight.
 
A bit of an off topic point for me, but I was always somewhat irked by the depiction of the Promethean Knights in the Halo 4 meta-narrative.

Sure, it's easy to rationalize their vulnerability in lieu of the fact that Sentinels were never depicted as anything more than cheap Roomba's with lasers, but it creates an undeniable sense of ludonarrative dissonance when we're told that they're the Didact's personal half a ton killbots that can cut a swathe through armoured Sangheili with utter contempt, but in the narrative single pistol bullets are more than sufficient to destroy them without any sign of residual shield effects. Even Guilty Spark survived several direct hits from a laser cannon that can melt a hole through tanks.

I understand that the Knights are essentially the Didact's personal pet project, something he cooked up in his basement during a few passing moments of insanity, but I expected his robot thugs to punch somewhat more above their weight class than they did in the narrative - certainly more than Guilty Spark. I just hope this narrative/world building dissonance isn't a trend in the upcoming Reclaimer saga, where potent Forerunner military assets deployed by a galactic scale society capable of building planets can be threatened by relatively modern rifles.
It's not just a problem with the Prometheans, Elites also die from a single pistol bullet, seemingly have no shields and on top of that seem to be very stupid. Hell in the shit tier comic running right now a fucking reporter kills an Elite that was up in her face holding an energy sword with a single shot from a pistol. It's like the writers don't even know the universe at all.
 

The_Poet

Banned
Could we finally get a good movie/game adaptation?

images
 
I think its not only the skillset of the promethean which is lacking something. For me its more that they are just machines without any emotional context. Its just a core experience of Halo that the Covenant have their hierarchy on the battlefield and every one of them reacts dynamically to their own status, their environment, the status of the player and the status of their mates. When you kill an Elite you see the grunts running around in panic, when you are dangerously low on shield a lot of enemy try to hunt you down, the enemy even give their own mates commandos the throwing granades simultaneously at your position, etc - That all makes you really believe you fight an army of different individuals.

Prometheans just have their few manoveurs, but dont work together (the crawlers just can run stupidly towards to) or react to eachothers death
 

Ramadeus

Neo Member
It's not just a problem with the Prometheans, Elites also die from a single pistol bullet and seemingly have no shields. Hell in the shit tier comic running right now a fucking reporter kills an Elite that was up in her face holding an energy sword with a single shot from a pistol. It's like the writers don't even know the universe at all.

Which is odd, because the intro to Halo 4 clearly demonstrates Sangheili warriors with visibly flaring shields - so the creators evidently did take this rather important fact into account - however Spartan Ops soon forgets this, with both Knights and battle harness wearing Sangheili being dropped left, right and centre by small arms despite the games consistently depicting both as shield wearing bullet sponges.
 

Detective

Member
I just hope for good old Halo CE campaign. Sandbox, Mystery and over all CE feeling.

Remember the feeling when we first saw Halo?
Scrn_009.jpg


When we first saw the Silent Cartographer?
LANDSCAPE.jpg


The Truth and Reconciliation?
Cc_gravlift2.jpg


The Mystery and the thriller feel on 343 Guilty Spark and The Library levels?
scrn_033.jpg

Library4.jpg



I must have finished the campaign at least 100 times and never grew tired of it.
 
Which is odd, because the intro to Halo 4 clearly demonstrates Sangheili warriors with visibly flaring shields - so the creators evidently did take this rather important fact into account - however Spartan Ops soon forgets this, with both Knights and battle harness wearing Sangheili being dropped left, right and centre by small arms despite the games consistently depicting both as shield wearing bullet sponges.

Hilariously enough the writer of Spartan Ops is writing that terrible comic I mentioned. I don't think he should be writing ANY Halo material .
 

Flipyap

Member
I agree. The Prometheans would've been better as bosses imo, right now they don't feel like the warriors they're supposed to be.
Warriors? They're just mindless machines with glaring design flaws and a comically complicated manufacturing process. They're robot skeleton bugmen with robot butterflies living inside their butts, made from digitized cavemen. They feel about as lame as they sound.
Maybe if the Didact only collected skilled tacticians or the few Spartans who aren't completely useless, using them as bosses would make some sense, but I don't think Space Granny Tillson would make a very good video game boss.
 

Wounded

Member
I just hope for good old Halo CE campaign. Sandbox, Mystery and over all CE feeling.

Me too man. I loved Halo 2, but didn't enjoy the parts set on Earth as much as the rest of the game.

I enjoyed that in 4 we were at least back to exploring alien feeling facilities and worlds again.
 

Ramadeus

Neo Member
Regarding the Prometheans in future Halo releases, they could even handwave their apparent deficiencies by noting that these were strictly the result of Composing unwilling human subjects, cannon fodder created from the digitized components of the Didact's long hated rivals for use as common security drones.

The "big bad" then whips out the true Knights, Composed Forerunner Warrior-Servants who once served the Didact, walking Durances encapsulated within a "battle coffin" equipped to preserve the fighting capabilities of even long dead Forerunners. Since too few Prometheans volunteered to be Composed they are incredibly rare, encountered once or twice in the entire campaign, but when you do? oooh boy, where's the nearest armoured platoon?

Sorry, I appear to have been caught up in my own personal fanon world there.
 
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