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The Official Halo 3: ODST Thread

ashism said:
All this rabble is spoiler free, for your enjoyment:

ODST's campaign is much better. Not sure how it will play with 3 other players, but I couldn't see it ruining the experience.

The narrative is much easier to follow this time around. While bouncing around the timeline through flashbacks may seem like a more confusing way to present the story, it actually works really well.
The narrative works so well in ODST, it kind of shows the glaring faults with the story and cohesiveness of the story arc presentation in general with Halo 3.

To me, M.C. and Cortana weren't as interesting in the Halo universe as the entire struggle of man versus the covenant. I found myself more emotionally drawn to the marines identifying and revering M.C. than the Chief himself. So the ODST shift in perspective was really awesome. Most of the characters feel pretty fleshed out. You definitely feel more like apart of the overall struggle through gameplay and story, than the god who leads the charge.

The gameplay is what everyone remembers from the halo series but, the big change is you have to play alot more conservatively and you have different tools for the trade.

The engine is showing its age at this point, but there are a lot more setpiece moments in this game. I can remember a few occasions where let out a Neo-like "Woah" at moments.


I wasn't disappointed spending 60 bucks on this. It's more Halo 3, but it is in no way some bastardized add on. At least that is my opinion so far.
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Thanks. Did you play Halo 2? If so, how does the story of ODST compare (quality-wise)? What do you think of the story of ODST overall? Answer all of this without spoilers of course. :)
 
Dax01 said:
Thanks. Did you play Halo 2? If so, how does the story of ODST compare? What do you think of the story of ODST overall? Answer all of this without spoilers of course. :)

And it's pretty funny to see Eazy trying to rationalize his hate spam.
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Oh god, it's been so long since halo 2. Years.
This may not be a fair assessment due to the time since I've played, but I remember playing through the city in Halo 2, hoping to god a big chunk of the game was urban warfare. I was wrong. Then the game abruptly ended with the Chief wanting to finish a fight, leaving all of our mouths agape with horror and shock.

So yeah, this is alot better. There is a beginning, a climax, and dear god, even an ending.
I feel like this is the first time the humans in the halo universe were fleshed out, not just the chief and the struggle of the covenant, like in H2.

Keep in mind I am no halo expert, I would consider myself a fan of the gameplay, and very casual with the story. But I had alot easier time following this one along without the aid of some halo lore expert or a wiki entry of some sort.
 
MC and Cortana? The supposed "romance" they had was non-evident there really, never really found it a staple of the story or even very meaningful. About as believable as the Sarge hooking up with Miranda.

ashism, what do you think of the variety of environments, and the art style?
 
Max said:
3 different regions?
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Actually 2.
Game shops in the Middle East have been importing US games for the last 20 years. During the last 2-3 years Microsoft, Sony and other major distributors started to massively distribute PAL games (Since PAL is supposedly the region's official analog encoding system). They're making a good effort but the transition won't happen overnight.
 
enzo_gt said:
MC and Cortana? The supposed "romance" they had was non-evident there really, never really found it a staple of the story or even very meaningful. About as believable as the Sarge hooking up with Miranda.

ashism, what do you think of the variety of environments, and the art style?
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At first I thought I would be spending the entire game in day and night versions of the new moombasa. With flashbacks taking place in even more of the same enviroments.

I was mostly wrong, there is a lot of visual level variety, especially during the flashbacks. I wont spoil it, but you see a lot more than just a dark ruined city, do not worry.
 
Maybe I should go shop around, Australian retails tend to be fairly good at breaking street dates.
 
Holy shit, the new Bnet is fucking awesome! I have a another question for urk.
How do the audio logs work with Co-op? Say if the other guy finds one, does it count for me too, also do they work like the ones, in BioShock or System Shock 2. I'm going threw it with my cousin and he likes too "beat games as fast as possible", but I want to take my time and go threw it slow, and want to find all the logs by myself and read or listen to them carefully!
 
ashism said:
At first I thought I would be spending the entire game in day and night versions of the new moombasa. With flashbacks taking place in even more of the same enviroments.

I was mostly wrong, there is a lot of visual level variety, especially during the flashbacks. I wont spoil it, but you see a lot more than just a dark ruined city, do not worry.
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Cool. Thanks for your early impressions man, glad your enjoying the game.
 
backflip10019 said:
Ok, ashism, a quick question: How long did it take you to complete the game solo?
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I knew this would be asked, and it would be unfair for me to answer. My SP gaming habits usually involve me walking away from the game for a few hours at a time with the menu on pause or or the map.

I did a hardcore 2 day playthrough and finished last night. Lots of random power naps, animal care (I have exotic pets), and cooking in between it all.

There are like 7 or 8 missions I think, and each took me anywhere from 30min to 60min+ to beat on heroic for each mission/flashback. Including all my deaths and stuff.

As far as the overworld map goes, theres alot of patrols, but I usually play stealthy in most games, so avoided what patrols I could. Cutting down on some gametime.

Overall, I have no clue how long it took me to beat, I am bad at judging such things. Even then, due to the overworld map, and how you approach patrols and objectives, it could take away or add hours, depending on your style.
 
ashism said:
I knew this would be asked, and it would be unfair for me to answer. My SP gaming habits usually involve me walking away from the game for a few hours at a time with the menu on pause or or the map.

I did a hardcore 2 day playthrough and finished last night. Lots of random power naps, animal care (I have exotic pets), and cooking in between it all.

There are like 7 or 8 missions I think, and each took me anywhere from 30min to 60min+ to beat on heroic for each mission/flashback. Including all my deaths and stuff.

As far as the overworld map goes, theres alot of patrols, but I usually play stealthy in most games, so avoided what patrols I could. Cutting down on some gametime.

Overall, I have no clue how long it took me to beat, I am bad at judging such things. Even then, due to the overworld map, and how you approach patrols and objectives, it could take away or add hours, depending on your style.
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So out of all that what you're trying to say is that you're not pro and can't be the game in three hours?
 
To sum it up in a sentence, yes. Unless you are trying to speedrun the game, you are getting a solid lengthed single player campaign.
 
EazyB said:
Oh come the fuck on. If that wasn't worth posting than nothing is. At this point there's no reason to look up any new ODST info, all we can do is wait. What's there to derail? More spoilers? And since when was it a crime to try and make that wait easier by linking to incredibly interesting pieces of work done by a fellow Gaffer?
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It was less that post and more that you do it all the time, and have been for months. And there's been a ton of discussion in the thread today. But even if there wasn't, surely making random assaults on your favorite target isn't the best substitute.
 
ashism said:
Firefight is seriously lonely. Maybe I will load up some MP.
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Unless you're talking about just playing the three new maps, you won't be able to get rid of your solitude there. :p There's no playlist in Halo 3 yet that supports the final three maps.
 
ashism said:
Firefight is seriously lonely. Maybe I will load up some MP.
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Please, I beg of you, find someone else around here or something that has ODST and play FireFight co-op online with them and let us know how the connectivity/latency/input lag is.

If it's like Halo 3's, I'll cry. :(
 
Dax01 said:
Unless you're talking about just playing the three new maps, you won't be able to get rid of your solitude there. :p There's no playlist in Halo 3 yet that supports the final three maps.
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Actually, just about all of them do. However, unless you can get a full party of people that have the maps, you have zero chance of actually playing them in Matchmaking.
 
There can be no doubt that this is truly a full fledged single player campaign. I'm 7 hours in on 3player coop legendary and still have the last two boards to unlock and finish.

Some of that time has been spent frustratingly lost in the hub world portion of the game. It's big and you are slow as shit and there are no vehicles and no teleportation.

There is either a bad flaw in the design or I am a serious idiot, but there is no way to just start in the hub. I will try to clarify. In the mission select screen there is no option to start on the streets of NMombasa at night as the Rookie. You can only select the flashback missions.

I'll try to explain the problems we had. We played some yesterday. Today we changed the difficulty so that apparently erased our most recent checkpoint. We were aware that would happen, but we figured we would just start in the hub city and go searching for the next level.

That's apparently not possible. The only choice we could find was to pick a random level from the mission select screen and race as fast as possible to the end just so we could get back to the hub world to find the remaining missions we hadn't yet unlocked.

You can choose to have a waypoint provided to you at any time, but they always pointed to missions we had already unlocked. And if you accidentally start one of those missions, you are screwed.

You can't just end it and return to the hub world to look for a mission you haven't found yet. If you end the mission, return to the pregame campaign lobby, and select a starting point, the only thing available is the flashbacks.

So let's say that one day you decide you feel like roaming around New Mombasa to look for collectibles. You can't get there unless you play through one of the flashback missions and then return to the hub when you finish it.


tl;dr great game, but grrrrrrrrr!
 
Dax01 said:
Really? That's pretty sweet. Would it be reasonable to assume (no, Wu) that the Mythic playlists will be put up over the weekend?
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Mythic playlists have been up for a couple weeks now. Incidentally, the same time Mythic part 2 went into Matchmaking. Incidentally the same time MLG maps were updated, and the magnum joined the AR in all gametypes. ;)
 
Shishka said:
Mythic playlists have been up for a couple weeks now. Incidentally, the same time Mythic part 2 went into Matchmaking. Incidentally the same time MLG maps were updated, and the magnum joined the AR in all gametypes. ;)
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Yeah, the September matchmaking update!:lol I don't see the playlists as an available option in the game, though. You're confuzzling me, Shishka! Not that I could do the playlists right now if I wanted to, but you get what I'm saying, right?
 
TimeLike said:
tl;dr great game, but grrrrrrrrr!
Click to expand...

That sounds like a fairly annoying problem. Maybe you can go into the hub world once you have finished the entire campaign?
 
@timelike
I had trouble with the repeating missions as well. I couldn't tell if it was cause I just turned off my xbox without saving, or just how the game played, but I am inclined to believe it was the former. Because later I turned on the xbox, repeated the missions that didn't save, played them, saved properly on exit. Then the game had only the new waypoints available.

You can go around new moombasa just searching for stuff in co op, just select the last level. That is the new moombasa map.

As far as I know at least, I haven't played online, but I have looked around at the options.
 
@TimeLike: the news about the Hub World functioning like that sucks, but as far as transportation goes, you can
collect Audio Logs so that at some point the SuperIntendent gives you a Mongoose and possibly other vehicles.
<---- somewhat spoilerish if you don't want to know one of the modes of transportation in NM.
 
Holy crap random observation: all of my Halo 2 matches on my old gamertag are now showing on my new current one on bungie.net. I changed my gamertag about 2 years ago, and when I did my Halo 2 games disappeared since apparently they weren't associated with my new tag (I could find the account through a name search still though). But now they're all there which is practically useless now, but still neat. I know even as of a couple weeks ago it was still not showing, I wonder if the site facelift triggered something, weiiiiird.
 
Dax01 said:
You're confuzzling me, Shishka!
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Sorry, I should've been more specific. They're timestamped to become visible to coincide with the launch of ODST. Australia technically gets the game first, so they technically go live on the 21st for (red blooded, god fearing, not-platypus-eating) Americans.
 
SailorDaravon said:
Holy crap random observation: all of my Halo 2 matches on my old gamertag are now showing on my new current one on bungie.net. I changed my gamertag about 2 years ago, and when I did my Halo 2 games disappeared since apparently they weren't associated with my new tag (I could find the account through a name search still though). But now they're all there which is practically useless now, but still neat. I know even as of a couple weeks ago it was still not showing, I wonder if the site facelift triggered something, weiiiiird.
Click to expand...

I guess the stuff was still in their database somewhere.
 
Domino Theory said:
@TimeLike: the news about the Hub World functioning like that sucks, but as far as transportation goes, you can
collect Audio Logs so that at some point the SuperIntendent gives you a Mongoose and possibly other vehicles.
<---- somewhat spoilerish if you don't want to know one of the modes of transportation in NM.
Click to expand...

:lol just noticed your avatar

They don't need her to sell ODST like they did for Halo Wars though. I've heard a lot of people in EB say they thought Halo Wars demo was shit and that it wasn't "real" Halo, but they seem pumped about ODST.
 
EazyB said:
Mine is comparable in size to the ones we used as PAX to play Halo 3. It has its own amplifier which needs a power source.
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Heh, with these the headphones themselves need power for a total of 2 AC adapters.

They sound great, though. Now all I need is September 22nd to get here and I'll be set.
 
ashism said:
@timelike
I had trouble with the repeating missions as well. I couldn't tell if it was cause I just turned off my xbox without saving, or just how the game played, but I am inclined to believe it was the former. Because later I turned on the xbox, repeated the missions that didn't save, played them, saved properly on exit. Then the game had only the new waypoints available.

You can go around new moombasa just searching for stuff in co op, just select the last level. That is the new moombasa map.

As far as I know at least, I haven't played online, but I have looked around at the options.
Click to expand...

If we selected the last level that we completed, it started that level right at the beginning of it. So we played through it on easy for speed's sake, and got to the hubworld. One of the players started what he thought was the next mission, but it turned out to be a level that we'd already played.

So we ended the game, went to the mission select screen, but there is no frikkin way to just start on the Mombasa streets. You have to play through a whole mission first, then return to the hub.

This is actually the reason we stopped playing tonite. We were sick of trying to figure out how to get back to where we left off. So we collectively said, "Fuck it!" We'll try again tommorrow.


Domino Theory said:
@TimeLike: the news about the Hub World functioning like that sucks, but as far as transportation goes, you can
collect Audio Logs so that at some point the SuperIntendent gives you a Mongoose and possibly other vehicles.
<---- somewhat spoilerish if you don't want to know one of the modes of transportation in NM.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. That's news to me.
that shit should be provided from the get go.
 
Shishka said:
Sorry, I should've been more specific. They're timestamped to become visible to coincide with the launch of ODST. Australia technically gets the game first, so they technically go live on the 21st for (red blooded, god fearing, not-platypus-eating) Americans.
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That makes more sense. Thanks.

Gomu Gomu said:
I'll be getting this game today :D . Only $50. So is there COOP in SP mode?
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...

...

Hint: read the OP.

Edit - I don't mean to be rude or anything, but a fair number of people have come into this thread asking questions that are easily found in the OP. It's what the OP of an official thread is for: lots of general information about the game. It's just frustrating to see the fantastic OP Ghal and m0dus worked on being ignored in this manner.
 
bishoptl said:
You too! I'll give you a month of uninterrupted time to getcho freak on. Best of luck, friend!
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it seems the mods (at least bishoptl) will be keeping more of an eye on this thread than the last one.

which is a good thing even though we may end up losing a couple of people. be careful juices and kevinro
 
vhfive said:
it seems the mods (at least bishoptl) will be keeping more of an eye on this thread than the last one.

which is a good thing even though we may end up losing a couple of people. be careful juices and kevinro
Click to expand...

Co-sign on GFs being awesome, as well as this ^. More focused discussions are better. Although after what happened to the Halo 3 thread, there sure will be bans coming 9/22. Can you get banned for large unmarked spoilers?
 
re: Team Flag

Ugh, it's like beating a dead horse, but why is CTF Heavies so high in weights? I see Multi-CTF and 1-CTF have 34.1% and 42.9%, respectively, but Heavies is close to mid twenties.

Heavies on Valhalla is just... :|

Still no One Bomb or Multi-Bomb in Squad Battle... and won't be in Team Throwback. :\
 
Now that I'm on a browser that displays it properly (you'd think Intel would be using state of the art tech, but no...), I must say, the new bungie.net coat of paint is pretty damn slick. Visually it's a bit more stylish, but the sheer volume of information crammed into some of the pages is really impressive. It take some pretty sharp design to compress that much data into something that's not too cluttered or disorganized.

The new Career stats pages in particular are incredibly well put together.

Sai-kun said:
I believe. :lol.

So, who wants to do campaign day 1? Or even day 0?
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I'm taking Tuesday off for a solo Heroic run, maybe some co-op with my daughter. I'll be up for Firefight and co-op probably on Wednesday or Thursday, after my first solo run. I like to experience the campaigns at my own pace the first time through.
 
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