Ragnarok Flames
Banned
CoD is the madden of the FPS series. people see the easy money and want that. thats why Halo did what it did and pissed off damn near everyone.
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Halo |OT19| 793 Posts, And None Worth Reading
- Thread starter Ozzy Onya A2Z
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CoD is the madden of the FPS series. people see the easy money and want that. thats why Halo did what it did and pissed off damn near everyone.
Slightly Live
Dirty tag dodger
Halo was disruptive. And trend setting.
Recharging shield
Two Weapon limit
Bold, colourful palette
Strong, non-sexualised main male/female character relationship
Comfy couch social fragging
Clans/Group support
Dynamic level editing
Social media sharing
Online gaming history
Console LAN parties
Meaningful lore/universe in a FPS
Definitive co-op experiences
Halo didn't really invent anything, but it pushed and defined these features. The series went against industry trends, rocked the boat, and defined industry standards.
Where Halo tread, others followed. Game after game.
Halo still makes the critics hand out the nice 8's, 9's and 10's. Critic awards tainted by Dorito crumbs and Dew stains. No public choice awards to be seen. We still get press releases about how many week one hundreds of millions and other meaningless numbers will make investors horny, yet gamers are anything but enamoured.
Each new Halo game meekly takes the crown, the new champion of pushing it's player base off the cliff quicker than it's predecessor.
Before Halo 4 came out, any time hard questions were asked, folks would be met with a defiant chorus of "Trust us!", as if that answered anything, The game has come out. Like others, I put in the hours. Beat the campaign. Played the multiplayer. Purchased all the maps.
I don't trust them any more.
Recharging shield
Two Weapon limit
Bold, colourful palette
Strong, non-sexualised main male/female character relationship
Comfy couch social fragging
Clans/Group support
Dynamic level editing
Social media sharing
Online gaming history
Console LAN parties
Meaningful lore/universe in a FPS
Definitive co-op experiences
Halo didn't really invent anything, but it pushed and defined these features. The series went against industry trends, rocked the boat, and defined industry standards.
Where Halo tread, others followed. Game after game.
Halo still makes the critics hand out the nice 8's, 9's and 10's. Critic awards tainted by Dorito crumbs and Dew stains. No public choice awards to be seen. We still get press releases about how many week one hundreds of millions and other meaningless numbers will make investors horny, yet gamers are anything but enamoured.
Each new Halo game meekly takes the crown, the new champion of pushing it's player base off the cliff quicker than it's predecessor.
Before Halo 4 came out, any time hard questions were asked, folks would be met with a defiant chorus of "Trust us!", as if that answered anything, The game has come out. Like others, I put in the hours. Beat the campaign. Played the multiplayer. Purchased all the maps.
I don't trust them any more.
ElzarTheBam
Member
The first decent post in this OT.
To be fair, much of that has been said in the last few OT's. It's not too surprising that you would not agree with it
Followed by a terrible one, shame on you Elzar.
No I agree Dani and I think many said already so, Halo should have expanded on the features they had and made it famous without changing up the core gameplay too much.
A custom game browser was IMO a given for Halo 3, but it wasn't there. Direct Youtube upload was a given for Reach IMO, was not there.
Stream service was a given for Halo 4 but it wasn't there.
Custom option weren't really expanded,we should be able to alter stuff to a state where people would call it modding.
Instead we got quicktime events in campaign,lost campaign theater, lost firefight, got a new mode that is boring as fuck(spartan ops), instant respawn, a wrong way of implementing join in progress, infinity and white text all over the screen.
Combined with the continuing way of destroying (hyberbole) the sandbox with shitty weapons.
And it didn't start with Halo 4. Somehow with Halo 3 the game's features came to a stillstanding and the gameplay was already different with halo 2. ( complete overhaul of how gameplay will be played with reach, where people weren't equal on spawn anymore)
Resistance 2 and Halo 2 kind of (indirectly) shared the same philosophy and that is the kitchen sink approach. Throwing all the big ideas in there and trying to make them work. In the end both games bite too much off more than they could chew. Not all elements introduced worked, but the core of those ideals was solid. The other plus side is that there was more content and features that kept players aroundeven though it was rough around the edges.
Both franchises successors tried to streamline elements introduced in previous games and there is where it mostly went wrong. There is tendency to focus on just core elements of games, and the rest of the stuff that just did not work that well are cut down, scrapped or streamlined. You can see that sort of philosophy in a lot of new games, they look slick and polished but tend to feel soulless. They play well, but you cannot shake the feeling that it is missing that something extra. New gamers feel welcomed, because they do not know any better and are satisfied with the core content they get.
I do not think we will see kitchen sink type games that much anymore in the future, because of rising costs. Streamlining and accessibility are key things most big budget games focus on, because there is a bigger audience out there. There is nothing overtly wrong with that way of thinking, but the way you approach can be. New gamers are fickle people, the on-to-game-of-the-week player demographic is hard to tame. And with Halo 4, they came for the graphics and a week of multiplayer, and left. The rest of the people that stayed were greeted with a very shallow game, with less content and features than they were used to. Yes, after release a lot of content was releasedbut much of it did nothing to overcome the shallow nature of the game.
Bungie was no saint in this, but their games still felt more complete and long term thinking. 343 on the other hand seem to be going down the path of great looking, but shallow games. I hope to be proven wrong though, but from the outside looking in, it looks questionable.
Awesome post and desribes what I fear will be standard for next games to come in a better English than i could write.
I wonder also if we will ever see a game that just feels like something completely new and its features will surprise everyone. But I see people shouting "game of the generation" towards The Last of Us, while this game is exactly what you said for me, a really good game that just feels soulless after a time.
The game had a good story for a videogame and pretty graphics, but it was neither a good action game nor a good stealth game, gameplaywise.The multiplayer felt out of playe for me and there were no real other features for the game.
And people praise it like it is the second coming of jesus, while other games this gen did much more for their genre.
I wish for a new game that will feel like a gamechanger
aHebrewMenagerie
Member
Deeper Rabbit Hole, etc etc.
fixed it fo...
shit.
EDIT: I've just had 3 guys hit on me in the past 24 hours, holy shit.
User 73706
Banned
Did I miss this China, IL episode?
Pandering to the wrong audience, is four's issue in that changing everything to appeal to a vastly different audience wasn't worth it in the end.
I still play I'm open to anything apart from 3 that is just to slow and laggy with how many people playing. My OT still would be better than Speedy's just saying
.BOOM. Happy New Year 343i
squidhands
Member
gatDAMM
User 73706
Banned
I want to make a joke about how I used to be a fat kid too, but I have a feeling I'd go the way of kyle "bob had bitch tits" jay.
Poker Face
Member
I hope that quote isn't from Respawn.
I 100% agree with this post.
gAg CruSh3r
Member
Does anyone else want to see a bigger player count for Halo for BTB? I don't want a Halo Battle Field but I would like to see a larger scale battles that can hold more and bigger vehicles. I just want to get that vibe of those moments in campaign of the big epic battle moments(Halo 3 The Covenant).
Slightly Live
Dirty tag dodger
License the Frostbite 3 engine. Add Halo. Enjoy money.
It's gonna work with Star Wars. Clusterfucks can be fun.
gAg CruSh3r
Member
It was such a clusterfuck because everyone had ordinance drops and could select what weapons to spawn with (far range battles). It also did not help that the maps were poorly designed. Halo 4 BTB is the worst IMO. It's only playable when you get into a game with preset loadouts.
I dunno. The largest I think I would ever want it to be is maybe 10v10. I think about it in terms of objectives; the more people, the harder it can be to successfully, say, run a flag from the enemy base with the existing or similar sandbox and player attributes.
Something vibrant definitely sounds good to me.
That moment becomes decidedly less fun when you realize that it's not braindead (relative to a human player) AI that you're up against anymore and as a result you're not capable of making any meaningful impact on the flow of the match as an individual.
Much more than the current max player count and you start running into problems with lack of player empowerment, especially with Halo's damage and health mechanics. The discrete unit for successful combat maneuvers stops being the individual, and starts being a squad. Players end up being very inexorably reliant on a large pool of other people for success, people that they likely can't even communicate with by design because of sheer signal:noise concerns. When that goes bad, it fucking sucks. There's a place for that kind of dynamic in shooters (especially those that are entirely designed around that very specific dynamic), but I don't want it for Halo.
Slightly Live
Dirty tag dodger
You aren't thinking large scale.
Easy solution is to add more objectives for each team to attack/defend. Up the score count threshold too.
With this you could have 32 v 32 battles, or larger or smaller, splitting the objectives across multiple points on a larger map. It's not rocket science.
Demoncarnotaur
Member
My biggest issue with Anniversary was the fact that the art lost all the atmosphere and mystery, however I do like the use of colors.
We've already kind of seen it with maps featuring the Mantis.
If they upped BTB size but kept that objective indicator you would be suicidal to even attempt returning the objective without backup, which with randoms is likely. I would also if such up sizing occurred still like to be as effective as possible solo as with a team.
Vehicles vary too drastically in BTB in 4 with the hogs a triple kill on wheels with the plasma nades and pistol combo, where as the mantis is game breaking with that shield and it's armaments.
FUBAR McDangles
Member
I finally got my hands on the Fall of Reach comics yesterday at Barnes and Noble.
What a messy art style. I realize they want to make the Halo comics gritty and dirty and whatever else, but Uprising was hard to read because it was so haphazard. I got through it, because while it certainly wasn't neat/clean, it was easy enough to follow along. Even though the story was...lackluster.
Then you have Fall of Reach: Bootcamp
Like, what the fuck? You can make gritty/grimy/whatever the hell drawings without adding random scribbles everywhere. What the hell are they trying to do with that dude's face in the last panel? It looks horrible. The computer panels in the background are random lines. The bulkhead door in the last panel just makes me shake my head. It is easy to add shades to something. It is easy to darken certain parts of art to make them seem further away or relieve focus from them or whatever. There are other ways of doing it than just adding random lines and scribbling on something.
Halo: Blood Line had the best art out of any of the Halo comics I've seen.
That is clean and precise, yet the artist provides enough detail to give dirt and grime actual dirt and grime representation in the panels. You can tell that the environments/uniforms/armor isn't 100% pristine. It is clean enough in art style to actually well represent the dirt/grime that we know as Halo.
343 bring back the guy that did the art for Blood Line. plz.
I still think that bringing in a guy that worked with Transformers would be best. The artist would already have a lot of experience drawing robotic people and great/detailed environments which would be well suited for Spartans.
In particular, I think [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Figueroa]Don Figueroa[/url] did some phenomenal work in the recent Beast Wars comics. The animals look like legitimate animals, even though half of them are wierd ancient dinosaurs or mammals. He would be fantastic for drawing Covenant. And the robotic parts of the other transformations look great.
As you can see, his figure work is great, his environment design is very good, and he has experience doing adaptations in the past. He did the comic for Terminator Salvation, and while it isn't quite as good as his effort for Beast Wars, it's quite a bit better than the Fall of Reach(s)/Uprising/Initiation stuff that's been put out recently.
That's just one artist. There are many others that are highly qualified but 343, for whatever reason, goes for people with hardly any time to do their best or people less than ideal for doing what 343 is trying to accomplish. Bring in one of the best artists in the industry, and you'll see sales go up and better buzz about the Halo comics lines in general. A personal dream would be to bring in Jim Lee (hnnng) but I realize that probably won't happen.
The stories put out in Halo comics are not bad. I haven't read the most recent two runs about Palmer yet, and have only brief experience of the Fall of Reach books (but I know they pretty accurately follow the actual Fall of Reach novel by Nylund). But otherwise they have decent and fun stories. Blood Line, Helljumper, and Uprising were alright story wise. Nothing fantastic/groundbreaking, but fun to follow. The art in 1/3 of those was less than ideal. The Halo Graphic Novel ranged from great(the Last Voyage of the Infinite Succor + Johnson's escape + the Mark VI test) to average (that story on the reporter in New Mombassa) when it came to art. All four stories were great.
343 is clearly doing something right when it comes to the stories presented in the comics. They're almost always of average quality or higher. The art, on the other hand, needs a lot of work. Either give these people more time to do their thing, or bring in better artists.
What a messy art style. I realize they want to make the Halo comics gritty and dirty and whatever else, but Uprising was hard to read because it was so haphazard. I got through it, because while it certainly wasn't neat/clean, it was easy enough to follow along. Even though the story was...lackluster.
Then you have Fall of Reach: Bootcamp
Like, what the fuck? You can make gritty/grimy/whatever the hell drawings without adding random scribbles everywhere. What the hell are they trying to do with that dude's face in the last panel? It looks horrible. The computer panels in the background are random lines. The bulkhead door in the last panel just makes me shake my head. It is easy to add shades to something. It is easy to darken certain parts of art to make them seem further away or relieve focus from them or whatever. There are other ways of doing it than just adding random lines and scribbling on something.
Halo: Blood Line had the best art out of any of the Halo comics I've seen.
That is clean and precise, yet the artist provides enough detail to give dirt and grime actual dirt and grime representation in the panels. You can tell that the environments/uniforms/armor isn't 100% pristine. It is clean enough in art style to actually well represent the dirt/grime that we know as Halo.
343 bring back the guy that did the art for Blood Line. plz.
I still think that bringing in a guy that worked with Transformers would be best. The artist would already have a lot of experience drawing robotic people and great/detailed environments which would be well suited for Spartans.
In particular, I think [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Figueroa]Don Figueroa[/url] did some phenomenal work in the recent Beast Wars comics. The animals look like legitimate animals, even though half of them are wierd ancient dinosaurs or mammals. He would be fantastic for drawing Covenant. And the robotic parts of the other transformations look great.
As you can see, his figure work is great, his environment design is very good, and he has experience doing adaptations in the past. He did the comic for Terminator Salvation, and while it isn't quite as good as his effort for Beast Wars, it's quite a bit better than the Fall of Reach(s)/Uprising/Initiation stuff that's been put out recently.
That's just one artist. There are many others that are highly qualified but 343, for whatever reason, goes for people with hardly any time to do their best or people less than ideal for doing what 343 is trying to accomplish. Bring in one of the best artists in the industry, and you'll see sales go up and better buzz about the Halo comics lines in general. A personal dream would be to bring in Jim Lee (hnnng) but I realize that probably won't happen.
The stories put out in Halo comics are not bad. I haven't read the most recent two runs about Palmer yet, and have only brief experience of the Fall of Reach books (but I know they pretty accurately follow the actual Fall of Reach novel by Nylund). But otherwise they have decent and fun stories. Blood Line, Helljumper, and Uprising were alright story wise. Nothing fantastic/groundbreaking, but fun to follow. The art in 1/3 of those was less than ideal. The Halo Graphic Novel ranged from great(the Last Voyage of the Infinite Succor + Johnson's escape + the Mark VI test) to average (that story on the reporter in New Mombassa) when it came to art. All four stories were great.
343 is clearly doing something right when it comes to the stories presented in the comics. They're almost always of average quality or higher. The art, on the other hand, needs a lot of work. Either give these people more time to do their thing, or bring in better artists.
NobleGundam
Banned
Dude bumped the Halo 5 gasp thread: http://m.neogaf.com/showpost.php?p=95381797
Yup. The squads in Invasion were the furthest that Halo should go towards squad gameplay. Small enough that one player could take on a squad, but it still kept the small team contributing to something larger dynamic.
It's funny how the fog was there for technical limitations of the original Xbox, but it also contributed to the feel of the world. The 343GS mission doesn't feel quite the same without the fog.
Regarding fog in video games: Morrowind feels much, much bigger and more mysterious due to short draw distance (and it is the only game ever where i got lost).
I don't recall Halo CE having much fog though... but then i played the PC version and Anniversary i play with new graphics (The Silent Cartographer looks so good).
I don't recall Halo CE having much fog though... but then i played the PC version and Anniversary i play with new graphics (The Silent Cartographer looks so good).
FUBAR McDangles
Member
There was a lot of fog in the swamp + inside of building of 343 Guilty Spark, as well as a decent amount in the Library. The final level on the Pillar of Autumn after the Flood took it over has a bit as well.
Otherwise there wasn't a whole lot. In Anniversary, the fog in the swamp is non-existent. It was a bit disappointing to play through it.
Pretty cool
343 Industries surprised my Dad with an awesome custom gift
So a few months back I posted my Dad's Halo 2/3/4/Reach service record on reddit. It got a little attention and a lot of nice words of encouragement for my Dad (who's almost 60 years old). Andy Dudynsky from 343 Industries send me a PM saying thanks for my Dad's dedication and that he'd like to send him something to show their appreciation.
He asked a few questions like what's my Dad's favorite multiplayer level, fave weapon, fave Halo version. Using that info he put together a custom framed artwork of my Dad's favorite level, Ragnarok. He also typed up a nice letter to my Dad and it explains the artwork. Oh and he threw in four 12 month xbox live subscription cards.
Here's the album of the artwork and letter. Huge thanks to Andy and the rest of the 343 Industries guys and gals for putting this together for him. We gave it to him for Christmas and the smile on his face says it all.
Oh and here's the video of my Dad's reaction to opening the package.
Frag on!!!
Doed this mean both the Prometheans and The Covenant are confirmed to be back as enemies?
Or is it like Last time with that "official" summary debunked by Frankie?
It also feels like less fog because the classic version has more oppressive fog than the Xbox original, but yeah there's a much greater visibility distance.
squidhands
Member
I didn't know Patton Oswalt was almost 60.
Slightly Live
Dirty tag dodger
Don't take that as confirmation about anything.
aHebrewMenagerie
Member
Probably the latter. But that doesn't explicitly mean they won't be back. 100% sure they will be back, however. Even that War Sphinx or whatever, isn't that considered a Promeathean?
Vic Deleon and Bravo are wonderful people.
Yeah, I also expect them to be back anyway, but with each new hype cycle we always love it when our good old Needler is confirmed, even though there is no way it wouldn't be in. Same thing goes for the enemies.
FUNKNOWN iXi
Member
I wouldn't be surprised considering what happened to Camo and Mk.V. What kind of excuse was "we didn't have enough time" to include the oldest Halo armor in the series for launch yet we received some hideous pieces?
Trust no one. Actions > words
aHebrewMenagerie
Member
^ That's not even the worst one.
Nah, they wouldn't do that to my need-
Wait... Where's the plasma rifle in Halo 4?
...
I guess you're right.
Wait and see, as usual.
Nah, they wouldn't do that to my need-
Wait... Where's the plasma rifle in Halo 4?
...
I guess you're right.
Wait and see, as usual.
Godtier.Here's to 2013, one jackass of a year.
Don't worry fireteam jackknife with Recon spartan will save usDon't worry, we got this guy instead!
"HI GUYZ CWWWIIMMMSSOONONNNN"
He's 60 wow he got a higher rank than I ever did in reach, Ragnarock looks better with the bases that 3 had not the ones with 4 they used in the end.
Why not add back wash style fog to some of the level's add flood containment breach and some ambient noise in the background? It could be quite a decent way to up the suspense factor.
Don't worry fireteam jackknife with Recon spartan will save us
What in the hell is going on with the Spartans on the right!? This person needs a few more comics courses........
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