Halo 4 is the only game I don't want to co-op with. It and Halo 2 are the only ones I refuse to replay. The checkpointing's bad, the enemies are bullet sponges, the visual language has been broken up in bits and pieces, the levels just aren't that fun (like, um, y'know that bit where you're just doing random, abstract teleportion and shooting people? It's not fun at all)... Plus there's the way that the story just seems to be missing its entire second act (second and third if we're going five-act here).
I really need to play Halo 2's campaign. If only I can get it to work. Damnit. Bought the game and can't get it to work on 8.1. I think I need to work out something with the installation. Interesting enough, deleting one of the dll files helps. Interesting.
Still, even if it has bad level design (Go read Karl's evaluation of it in the Halo Community thread. It's pretty good), I love how Halo 2 does it's story, from what I've seen of it. I wish Halo had more of that. So many of the other games seemed to lack a fleshed out story. Like...Halo 3 doesn't even show you Gravemind or even explain who the hell he is.
And I really hope Arby is back for another Halo.
Plus, there's this way that Halo and Halo 3 both change up their combat language that makes them the best games in the series: go along, get used to an enemy type, meet a new enemy, then mix both languages together to create a compelling experience.
Halo 4's just like "hey here are three new enemies; space dogs, space knights, and that other one so unmemorable I actually forgot it."
I really wish I had the opportunity to sit down with the Halo guys and just kinda walk through the games, understand their decisions, and stuff like that. I'd really like to see where they're coming from and why they made the choices they did.
Seriously, if I had a plane ticket and a day to play through the game and chat with 'em, I'd totally do it.
Same. I think there are a lot of people who should get that chance, but if I had to choose, like, 5 people I get to send to do that type of thing, yeah, I'd be interested to see what you would do with the chance.
And I do agree Halo 3 had the right idea of switching up it's gameplay, like you say, but I really feel like the way CE handled it was superior.
Interesting. I like that Gears is an anti-war game, but I think the problem is that it's ultimately "hey. You. Have fun, okay?" It's a game built around fun, and it is absurdly fun to play. The audiovisual rewards scream "NICE!" and "AWESOME!" at you when you do nice and awesome things. But... at its core, it's a tragedy. It could have been executed better. I think Gears 3, barring some random plot bits that got left out (seriously, they even ASK why the Queen looked human), and leaving bits behind (why not explore the 'humans may or may not have created the Locust' thing from the second game?)... yeah. Fun game with a narrative that didn't fit well with some of the game's audio barks or gameplay.
It's not as bad as 4, actually, (this whole inconsistent story vs. game thing); I was just trying to think of an example.
Didn't play the entire 3 campaign, but yes things like why the Queen looked human made me go "whoa, wait....there's a connection? What? Let's see this." And then...there was nothing to see. :/ I didn't play GoW 1 and 2, so I missed that other part.
Great idea; poorly executed > "gi;pe" should totally be a thing. I might just start using it.
Honestly, I like that they're trying to get us to feel something. I do.
But... like... they don't pull it off.
Two simple examples:
- We meet the Spartan IVs. Are we supposed to feel uneasy about this? It feels like we are, but it's mostly just 'hi guys,' and then we don't really interact with them.
Not to mention they're all flat, douche characters.
[*]The Captain randomly hates us and thinks we're an AWOL war machine or something weird. This is never explored. The game clearly wants us to feel happy that he's out of the picture near the end, but other than him going "I don't like you very much..." why should we care that he loses command of the Infinity?
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If I were writing the story, I would have, y'know, spent more time with Spartan IVs and the Captain, establishing why he doesn't like us/why we shouldn't like him, and how we should feel around the Spartan IVs (who are apparently there to replace us). There are quite a few other changes I'd make as well. I personally like the whole "Cortana am died" thing, and I know they're doing other stuff with it... but yeah.
Which is exactly what 343 should have done and failed at.
Film Crit Hulk once tweeted something about "don't people know how to tell complete stories any more?" My favorite Halo games--1, 3, ODST, and Reach--all told a complete story. Sure, Halo 3 had a bit of backstory, but you could argue the same was true for Combat Evolved.
I don't know why people shit on Reach's story. I enjoyed it. It had it's problems, but it was good I thought. At least it was a story. It had something that 4 didn't, despite being inferior on many surface levels.
And Halo 3's story was about as unfleshed out as a story can be. Stop the ring from firing. Yay.
But I don't complain about that, however. Since, ya know, 3 was originally "act 3" of Halo 2, and thus would have made much more sense.
When I mentioned 2's fleshed out story I most certainly wasn't suggesting adding a bunch more cut scenes. Halo could always use with less of those, but there are ways to tell a rich story while still cutting down on cut scenes.
Halo 4's like "oh, and you have to read this book and that book and..." no. I like the expanded universe. I do. I really would love to see a Halo story with art design driven by Tsutomu Nihei (his work in the Halo OGN introduced me to three of the most incredible manga I've ever had the pleasure of reading); comic, game, film, whatever. I'd love to see it. I'm all for more diversity.
But when it comes to the game... give me one game, with one point, with all the things you need to know in that main campaign. Tell that story. Even if it's part of a larger story, you need to have that kind of focus. A random "I'm the Didact I hate humans for random reasons blah blah blah..." no. You need clear motives, clear... ugh.
Granted it was their first game, I'll give them that, but 343 showed a lot of incompetency when they mistook "paying homage to" and "tying the story into" the lore for "Make the lore the central thing." Then again, what can you expect for a company that was, up to that point, responsible for nothing but lore?
It honestly feels like Halo 4's writers need a Writing 101 refresher. I have very little faith in future Halo installments if they're at the helm. Maybe, for giggles, once my own game is finished, I'll work on a Halo game on the side...
Someday I will storm Microsoft as CEO and then drop down through the ranks as Creative director and have you as Story and Level design lead lol.
But seriously, no, I do think you have a handle on what makes Halo so great. You should drop into the Halo community thread more often.
Awesome. Do you know me from GAF first and foremost, or is it Kotaku, or somewhere else?
Almost about the same time. Probably GAF first, since I don't visit Kotaku near as often.
I wish you would post here more often.
I honestly felt that Halo 3 and ODST had it best. They toned it down a little bit, but at the same time, didn't lose the consistency by creating a lot of random Elite visuals they had in Reach, where the visual language was lost. Anniversary was a bit too... something about the way the pieces don't fit quite together. They jar. Just a bit too much.
I have to disagree here. While I almost feel that yes,
something was off, it was pretty much perfect.
Did you here the thing where somebody told Marty (as the simple instructions for the OST): "Ancient, Epic, Alien" ?
I've just been thinking about this, and realizing how much that was really a factor of Halo itself.
Ancient: Forerunners. Epic: Everything, and I feel like it could have applied to the UNSC. Alien: Covenant. I absolutely loved CE's aesthetic, and I really thought 343 did a fantastic job recreating it.
I'm going to get flak for this, but Halo 3 is an ugly game. :/ It just is. Halo 2 is as well, but not the same way. The lighting in Halo 3 is this weird yellow that so many other games of the time seem to have (like GRID, which was good looking otherwise) -- around 2007-09.
ODST has a cool aesthetic though, but much two dark for a mainline Halo. I like how well it was implemented. That interesting combination of Jazz, Suburban surroundings, Dark and rainy atmosphere -- very well done.
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Long post is long. Lol. It's not just because of you, though. I post long posts anyway.
Am so looking forward to this.
The only thing halo need in my opinion is:
Amazing storytelling. Think gow,mgs,uncharted.
Except I hope they don't try to act like uncharted. Uncharted and MGS style stories just would not fit Halo's style of story telling. I prefer to refer more two 2's story.
Besides, we've seen how 343 handled Halo 4's pretty abysmal story. I would much rather they focus on Halo's level and multiplayer design for right now.
Go back to what made halo Halo. Innovation, sandbox levels, no corridor shooter. Mystery with some taste of horror, Remember the first time we met the flood?
EXPLANATION EXPLORATION EXPLORATION. Halo got these amazing places, but no exploration, remember the silent cartographer?
Unpredictable enemies.
And that's the beauty of Halo's enemies though! Unpredictable can mean anything, but in Halo it means intelligent enemies that, while it's hard to predict them, you can almost always "learn them" as you would a real opponent. I have always enjoyed fighting Halo's enemies.
Silent Cartographer is good, but I think they need to also go for the open feel of....that one level. The one where you're in this canyon and there are banshees and turrets and wraiths everywhere. You have to steal a Banshee and fly up and there's this kind of Island/Mesa thing where there's like a gold elite and a bunch of unused Banshee's at the top. That level is LOADS of fun. I want to go play it again.
