• Halo Reach Six Years Later
    81 replies, posted
[QUOTE=The_J_Hat;51219322]At least for me, most of them still hold up after replaying them in the MC Collection. The gameplay has remained largely the same for the past fifteen-ish years and the only one that feels kind of rough around the edges is Halo 1. Halo 3 still feels properly epic. The only one that hinges on nostalgia for me is Halo 2. There's just something about it that I love coming back to[/QUOTE] The gameplay still holds up, but what I mean is that the emotion of the game, and the atmosphere surrounding it, feeds into the nostalgia. Tons of people stopped playing Halo after Reach, and because of that they had this perfect image of the game in their head, no flaws, never to be changed. When 343 came along, and made H4 and H5, people got mad. Changing their perfect image is tantamount to sacrilege, which is why so many people continue to play Halo CE, played H2 until it shut down, jerry-rigged Halo Online into ElDewrito, so it could be just like how they remembered it. As well as this, the feeling of the 'good old days' when Halo was still massively popular, when Jenga and Fat Kid and Ro Sham Bo and Firefight and Slayer on Valhalla and CTF on Haemorrhage where all that people played, the [I]longing[/I] for those times, fuels the nostalgia. This doesn't excuse 343 for making many dumb errors, both with the multiplayer (H4) and the story (H5, especially H5), and they probably deserve a fair bit of criticism for that, but I bet that a large remainder of the hate for anything 343 does ever comes from this feeling of supposed betrayal, that they're destroying what they remember and replacing it with some twisted, corrupted core when in actuality they're making it their own. I've wanted to make a video about this or post a topic about this somewhere, but that's my thoughts on it. I would argue it's the same reason why so many new things are hated so much compared to the old, like Doctor Who.
[QUOTE=TornadoAP;51214128]Yeah and those people are idiots. ODST was very very different from any other Halo game because it wasn't a Halo game. You're a regular - if not highly trained - marine stuck in a large open city, struggling desperately to survive, not the badass supersoldier traveling across the universe kicking alien butt. Of course there's going to be some people who like that better than what Halo normally is.[/QUOTE] Problem with ODST is the gameplay never matched the theme at all and you literally never felt like an ODST. It was great, I liked the story (though the fact they [I]still[/I] made you a special snowflake super awesome guy and killed off all other ODSTs and shit sorta irked me) but they just replaced shields with 'adrenaline', slightly lowered movement speed and jump height and dropped duel wielding. You never felt exceptionally in danger compared to other Halo games.
The core of the Halo franchise is that humanity is way, way, [I]way[/I] out of its depth. They're toddlers fighting a losing war against a powerful, technologically-advanced coalition of alien zealots, poking around on ancient extinct alien space constructs with the capability to destroy all life in the galaxy, and pushing back (against all odds) a parasitic life-form that forced one of the most powerful civilizations in the history of the galaxy to plan out a galaxy-wide suicide pact. With weapons barely more advanced than modern times. And their best bet is a genetically-modified, ethically-dubious super-soldier who uses outdated tech to consistently fuck shit up and save the world. Somehow. Through pure luck, usually. Humanity blows up an ancient planet-sized WMD that can kill all life in the universe using nothing but a crashed spaceship that barely escape from the wholesale destruction of one of humanity's biggest colonies. They stave off an accidental invasion of Earth by the Covenant that managed to turn the surface of Reach into literal glass. They prevent the Halo Array from firing and destroying all life in the galaxy. They bomb the everliving fuck out of Africa to stop the single most deadly parasitic force in the history of the entire galaxy from decimating Earth - the parasites that [I]killed off the creators of a galactic kill switch.[/I] And they do this using inadequate technology, not knowing what the fuck is happening half the time, while fighting a fanatical alien coalition of multiple races that has been [I]known[/I] to literally genocide entire planets. And then 343i makes it so that Humans are an ancient race that fought the Forerunners, and they very suddenly leap forward in tech an absurd degree, and suddenly Humanity is some chosen race of ancient warlords, and the entire story of humanity as a defiant underdog fighting back against the ancient remnants of galaxy-scale warfare is basically ruined immediately. My headcanon includes Halo CE, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3 ODST, Halo Reach, Halo Wars, Eric Nylund's excellent novels, and Contact Harvest. Everything after 4 can fuck off for missing the core philosophy of Bungie's Halo, from visual design to plot to humanity's struggle against impossible odds. Literally everything 343 did to Halo spits directly into the face of what made the series great - humanizing Chief, botching the Forerunner backstory, greebling the design of literally everything - all of it is the opposite of Bungie's vision of the Halo universe.
[QUOTE=.Isak.;51220836]They stave off an accidental invasion of Earth[/QUOTE] This is probably my favourite detail in Halo. The Covenant had no idea where the Human homeworld was because we put all our resources into awesome computer tech, while they were all about that plasma sword life. The group who invaded Earth weren't even looking for it, they just followed a Forerunner trail and ended up there. Even Cortana mentions that the Covenant seem completely baffled by the fact that they're invading the Earth.
Remember the exp challenges per week that would be something like complete X mission on legendary with a, b, and c skulls activated? Fun times.
[QUOTE=.Isak.;51220836]The core of the Halo franchise is that humanity is way, way, [I]way[/I] out of its depth. They're toddlers fighting a losing war against a powerful, technologically-advanced coalition of alien zealots, poking around on ancient extinct alien space constructs with the capability to destroy all life in the galaxy, and pushing back (against all odds) a parasitic life-form that forced one of the most powerful civilizations in the history of the galaxy to plan out a galaxy-wide suicide pact. With weapons barely more advanced than modern times. And their best bet is a genetically-modified, ethically-dubious super-soldier who uses outdated tech to consistently fuck shit up and save the world. Somehow. Through pure luck, usually. Humanity blows up an ancient planet-sized WMD that can kill all life in the universe using nothing but a crashed spaceship that barely escape from the wholesale destruction of one of humanity's biggest colonies. They stave off an accidental invasion of Earth by the Covenant that managed to turn the surface of Reach into literal glass. They prevent the Halo Array from firing and destroying all life in the galaxy. They bomb the everliving fuck out of Africa to stop the single most deadly parasitic force in the history of the entire galaxy from decimating Earth - the parasites that [I]killed off the creators of a galactic kill switch.[/I] And they do this using inadequate technology, not knowing what the fuck is happening half the time, while fighting a fanatical alien coalition of multiple races that has been [I]known[/I] to literally genocide entire planets. And then 343i makes it so that Humans are an ancient race that fought the Forerunners, and they very suddenly leap forward in tech an absurd degree, and suddenly Humanity is some chosen race of ancient warlords, and the entire story of humanity as a defiant underdog fighting back against the ancient remnants of galaxy-scale warfare is basically ruined immediately. My headcanon includes Halo CE, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3 ODST, Halo Reach, Halo Wars, Eric Nylund's excellent novels, and Contact Harvest. Everything after 4 can fuck off for missing the core philosophy of Bungie's Halo, from visual design to plot to humanity's struggle against impossible odds. Literally everything 343 did to Halo spits directly into the face of what made the series great - humanizing Chief, botching the Forerunner backstory, greebling the design of literally everything - all of it is the opposite of Bungie's vision of the Halo universe.[/QUOTE] Didn't Bungie make the whole ancient humans thing? The Librarian, Diadact and the Mantle were all in Halo 3. Plus, it kind of doesn't make sense that the covenant falls apart, the flood is destroyed and the humans get to use forerunner tech only for the humans to not be on top now. Either way, you might have gotten your wish because it looks like that humans are now on the back foot for Halo 6.
[QUOTE=Janus Vesta;51220905]This is probably my favourite detail in Halo. The Covenant had no idea where the Human homeworld was because we put all our resources into awesome computer tech, while they were all about that plasma sword life. The group who invaded Earth weren't even looking for it, they just followed a Forerunner trail and ended up there. Even Cortana mentions that the Covenant seem completely baffled by the fact that they're invading the Earth.[/QUOTE] Even the scarab was just a mining vehicle. And it's a great show of how powerful the Covenant war that they still managed to invade much of Earth with what they had. [editline]18th October 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=FlandersNed;51221150]Didn't Bungie make the whole ancient humans thing? The Librarian, Diadact and the Mantle were all in Halo 3. Plus, it kind of doesn't make sense that the covenant falls apart, the flood is destroyed and the humans get to use forerunner tech only for the humans to not be on top now.[/QUOTE] They were talked about but Halo: Grasslands is what made the ancient humans idea. Before that the theories were either that Humans WERE Forerunners or the chosen successor to them, both theories being much more fitting to what we got. Also nobody said the Covenant didn't need to fall apart.
[QUOTE=FlandersNed;51221150]Didn't Bungie make the whole ancient humans thing? The Librarian, Diadact and the Mantle were all in Halo 3. Plus, it kind of doesn't make sense that the covenant falls apart, the flood is destroyed and the humans get to use forerunner tech only for the humans to not be on top now.[/QUOTE] Ancient Humans in Bungie's canon we're just the tribal people of Africa that the Librarian found. Just because 343i used the Didact and Librarian in stupid ways doesn't mean thats what Bungie was going to do with them
[QUOTE=FlandersNed;51221150]Didn't Bungie make the whole ancient humans thing? The Librarian, Diadact and the Mantle were all in Halo 3. Plus, it kind of doesn't make sense that the covenant falls apart, the flood is destroyed and the humans get to use forerunner tech only for the humans to not be on top now.[/QUOTE] Halo 3's terminals talk about the Flood coming from somewhere, and the Forerunners battling the Flood because of the Mantle (their responsibility to act as stewards for all lesser-developed life). The Maginot sphere was made as a protective barrier hidden from the Flood, and the Halo Array was created to eliminate all life in the known galaxy. The Ark was made to create the Halos and also to preserve specimens of sentient life. The big-ass Mombasa portal was created to easily transport early humans back home after the Halo Array eliminated all life (except that on the Ark) - and other portals were made for the same purpose. But Halo 3 [I]never[/I] mentions humans being super advanced in any way. What it does say is that the human race was chosen as the "Reclaimers," but it never details [I]why[/I] - so you're partially correct in that humanity was a "chosen race" in Halo 3. But never super-advanced, never nearly as strong as the Forerunners in ancient times, none of that - the only thing "special" about humanity is that they had some bond with the Forerunners and were given the ability to access the Indexes in the Halos and fire the Array. The rest was totally created post-Bungie, with the Human-Forerunner War and super-advanced prehistoric humans and whatnot.
[QUOTE=.Isak.;51221303]Halo 3's terminals talk about the Flood coming from somewhere, and the Forerunners battling the Flood because of the Mantle (their responsibility to act as stewards for all lesser-developed life). The Maginot sphere was made as a protective barrier hidden from the Flood, and the Halo Array was created to eliminate all life in the known galaxy. The Ark was made to create the Halos and also to preserve specimens of sentient life. The big-ass Mombasa portal was created to easily transport early humans back home after the Halo Array eliminated all life (except that on the Ark) - and other portals were made for the same purpose. But Halo 3 [I]never[/I] mentions humans being super advanced in any way. What it does say is that the human race was chosen as the "Reclaimers," but it never details [I]why[/I] - so you're partially correct in that humanity was a "chosen race" in Halo 3. But never super-advanced, never nearly as strong as the Forerunners in ancient times, none of that - the only thing "special" about humanity is that they had some bond with the Forerunners and were given the ability to access the Indexes in the Halos and fire the Array. The rest was totally created post-Bungie, with the Human-Forerunner War and super-advanced prehistoric humans and whatnot.[/QUOTE] I see. Although I don't see how that ruins the story as the humans aren't on top in either Halo 4 or 5.
It ruins the backstory And 343 canon had humanity as the most powerful faction in the galaxy
[QUOTE=FlandersNed;51221349]I see. Although I don't see how that ruins the story as the humans aren't on top in either Halo 4 or 5.[/QUOTE] Uh have you not seen Halo 5's opening?
[QUOTE=SpartanXC9;51221432]Uh have you not seen Halo 5's opening?[/QUOTE] It's very 'show-offy' I agree, but I think it's supposed to show how powerful the UNSC thinks they are, rather than how powerful they actually are. I'd also argue that by the end of Halo 5, the humans are back to square one because they've basically created their own subjugators through their arrogance, kind of like how the Forerunners did to the Precursors/Flood (that being the best interpretation of the story.) Halo 5's story is shit but my point still stands; even if the ancient humans were superpowerful, it makes no difference now because the humans weren't superpowerful through Reach-3 and still aren't the masters of the universe in 4 or 5.
Reach remains my absolute favorite Halo game primarily for the multiplayer which brought me hours upon hours of joy with my friends. Firefight was a great "horde" mode and building Forge maps with buddies never got old. Campaign was alright. Loved it back then, can see its flaws now. Last level is absolute hell (one before Lone Wolf) and caused many controllers to be thrown.
[URL="https://youtu.be/o9SftNFSvH4?t=2m6s"]Because nothing says "humans aren't that tough" just like a fuckhuge Mary-Sue tier ship just ramming Covenant ships in half that used to be vastly superior in size and technology[/URL]
[QUOTE=FlandersNed;51222154]It's very 'show-offy' I agree, but I think it's supposed to show how powerful the UNSC thinks they are, rather than how powerful they actually are. I'd also argue that by the end of Halo 5, the humans are back to square one because they've basically created their own subjugators through their arrogance, kind of like how the Forerunners did to the Precursors/Flood (that being the best interpretation of the story.) Halo 5's story is shit but my point still stands; even if the ancient humans were superpowerful, it makes no difference now because the humans weren't superpowerful through Reach-3 and still aren't the masters of the universe in 4 or 5.[/QUOTE] They pretty explicitly said we own the universe and nobody can fight us sustainably, and we've somehow nearly completely recovered from the war that killed off over half of the Human population in a few years. We somehow managed to build the fuckhuge Infinity (somehow during war time too, despite the fact the UNSC faced constant material shortages), we are powerful enough to be starting civil wars on former Covenant planets and the remnant are not see as any more than pitiful terrorists.
All 4 of 1-3 and Reach are all excellent that have good things that they do differently. I cant really objectively compare them. I think that Halo 1 had the best individual missions and arguably campaign, 2 had the best multiplayer, mostly due to it having the best map design (especially in competitive contexts like 4v4), Halo 3 had the best co-op experience and did a lot of things consistently well but less so then the peaks of the other games, and Reach had the best customization and custom games. I had amazing, distinct and memorable experiences with all of them and I love them all.
[QUOTE=Bokito;51222546][URL="https://youtu.be/o9SftNFSvH4?t=2m6s"]Because nothing says "humans aren't that tough" just like a fuckhuge Mary-Sue tier ship just ramming Covenant ships in half that used to be vastly superior in size and technology[/URL][/QUOTE] I agree with you on this one, but I don't think it's completely Mary Sue though. It doesn't really do much in Halo 4's campaign (not Spartan ops) other than crash, blow up a gravity generator protected by AA things it couldn't destroy and open a small hole in the Diadact's ship later. [QUOTE=TheBloodyNine;51223952]They pretty explicitly said we own the universe and nobody can fight us sustainably, and we've somehow nearly completely recovered from the war that killed off over half of the Human population in a few years. We somehow managed to build the fuckhuge Infinity (somehow during war time too, despite the fact the UNSC faced constant material shortages), we are powerful enough to be starting civil wars on former Covenant planets and the remnant are not see as any more than pitiful terrorists.[/QUOTE] The Infinity started construction in 2544, 13 years before Halo 4. By civil wars, are you talking about that mission in Halo 5 or something else? It's also worth mentioning that a lot of the elites allied with the humans after the war, and they still fought against the non-allied covenant a lot. Wouldn't say it was 'pitiful.' Althought otherwise I do agree it doesn't make much sense. 343 have made some very stupid mistakes with the franchise but they haven't destroyed it.
[QUOTE=FlandersNed;51219671]The gameplay still holds up, but what I mean is that the emotion of the game, and the atmosphere surrounding it, feeds into the nostalgia. Tons of people stopped playing Halo after Reach, and because of that they had this perfect image of the game in their head, no flaws, never to be changed. When 343 came along, and made H4 and H5, people got mad. Changing their perfect image is tantamount to sacrilege, which is why so many people continue to play Halo CE, played H2 until it shut down, jerry-rigged Halo Online into ElDewrito, so it could be just like how they remembered it. As well as this, the feeling of the 'good old days' when Halo was still massively popular, when Jenga and Fat Kid and Ro Sham Bo and Firefight and Slayer on Valhalla and CTF on Haemorrhage where all that people played, the [I]longing[/I] for those times, fuels the nostalgia. This doesn't excuse 343 for making many dumb errors, both with the multiplayer (H4) and the story (H5, especially H5), and they probably deserve a fair bit of criticism for that, but I bet that a large remainder of the hate for anything 343 does ever comes from this feeling of supposed betrayal, that they're destroying what they remember and replacing it with some twisted, corrupted core when in actuality they're making it their own. I've wanted to make a video about this or post a topic about this somewhere, but that's my thoughts on it. I would argue it's the same reason why so many new things are hated so much compared to the old, like Doctor Who.[/QUOTE] The atmosphere and emotional weight is the stuff that has aged the best IMO. As a kid I didnt really appreciate Halo for the tone it conveyed, just how badass the UNSC and Chief were. Playing through them again nowadays really makes me appreciate how special they were. And I've played 4 and didnt think it was all that bad. I can recognize that it was definitely worse than the original trilogy and reach though, and not just because it "changed things". You can change things in a positive way, and the 343 games didnt do that. [editline]18th October 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=.Isak.;51220836]The core of the Halo franchise is that humanity is way, way, [I]way[/I] out of its depth. They're toddlers fighting a losing war against a powerful, technologically-advanced coalition of alien zealots, poking around on ancient extinct alien space constructs with the capability to destroy all life in the galaxy, and pushing back (against all odds) a parasitic life-form that forced one of the most powerful civilizations in the history of the galaxy to plan out a galaxy-wide suicide pact. With weapons barely more advanced than modern times. And their best bet is a genetically-modified, ethically-dubious super-soldier who uses outdated tech to consistently fuck shit up and save the world. Somehow. Through pure luck, usually. Humanity blows up an ancient planet-sized WMD that can kill all life in the universe using nothing but a crashed spaceship that barely escape from the wholesale destruction of one of humanity's biggest colonies. They stave off an accidental invasion of Earth by the Covenant that managed to turn the surface of Reach into literal glass. They prevent the Halo Array from firing and destroying all life in the galaxy. They bomb the everliving fuck out of Africa to stop the single most deadly parasitic force in the history of the entire galaxy from decimating Earth - the parasites that [I]killed off the creators of a galactic kill switch.[/I] And they do this using inadequate technology, not knowing what the fuck is happening half the time, while fighting a fanatical alien coalition of multiple races that has been [I]known[/I] to literally genocide entire planets. And then 343i makes it so that Humans are an ancient race that fought the Forerunners, and they very suddenly leap forward in tech an absurd degree, and suddenly Humanity is some chosen race of ancient warlords, and the entire story of humanity as a defiant underdog fighting back against the ancient remnants of galaxy-scale warfare is basically ruined immediately. My headcanon includes Halo CE, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3 ODST, Halo Reach, Halo Wars, Eric Nylund's excellent novels, and Contact Harvest. Everything after 4 can fuck off for missing the core philosophy of Bungie's Halo, from visual design to plot to humanity's struggle against impossible odds. Literally everything 343 did to Halo spits directly into the face of what made the series great - humanizing Chief, botching the Forerunner backstory, greebling the design of literally everything - all of it is the opposite of Bungie's vision of the Halo universe.[/QUOTE] This hit the nail on the head and put my exact feelings into words. Excellent post.
I miss Bungie. 343 can go stick it, along with their fanfiction-tier writing and art design.
[QUOTE=NoobSauce;51224132]I miss Bungie. 343 can go stick it, along with their fanfiction-tier writing and art design.[/QUOTE] I always just absolutely loved Bungies style and flair and how much they really, truly cared about the games they made. They were making the most popular franchise in the world and they never abandoned their roots and never got a big ego or anything. They really did love the fans and the franchise that they had made. These credits will probably always stick with me. Halo and Bungie were truly special. [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB2NNSE8ZDY[/media]
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