Halo: Reach In-Game Trailer - Same old, same old

[Hawkwings]

I have a feeling that this will mostly involve a new class of Spartan-IIs. The numbers on their armor goes too high to be in the original class, though they're low enough on some to suggest that they were some of the first. The group appears to be composed of a couple of the first class and a bunch of people from the second/third, including you, presumably.

Considering the second class was started after the Covenant had glassed Harvest, I find it entirely plausible that they upped the age limit, making people with accents more possible.

[Darth Wong]

I wonder whether MW2 will be the new Halo Wars/ODST, in terms of a franchise's shark jump? (See the thread lack of dedicated servers.) Instead of MW3 being anticipated in the wake of RAWRsome, now (thanks to The Onion) it's a punchline. At least MW2 is distinctly different from its predecessor in multiplayer (for better or for worse), plus its co-op isn't just two-manning certain campaign missions (even while reusing the same maps for all three modes) and has more variety than ODST's "Firefight" mode.

MW2's only real publicity problem is on the PC front. On the console front, everybody's happy unless they notice how stupid the story is. And seriously, repeatedly killing off the character you play? Why?

I think it soured after Master Chief's story arc basically concluded. Right now there's just no character that can really stand and have people say, "This is Halo [for the new generation]." In fact, while of course it's not Bungie's fault that GameStop TV basically describes an ODST as "you have less armor than Master Chief, and therefore, a bigger challenge"... that's telling, isn't it? Both of the post-Halo 3 games in the setting have Master Chief solely as a background character off doing his own thing, while the protagonist of both Wars and ODST is... who is it, and why should I care?

That's a good point. Halo Wars is completely devoid of emotion, and Halo ODST is about an insignificant corner of the Halo storyline.

Mind you, you can still make compelling games out of insignificant corners of a larger storyline, but you have to make sure you get in on some of the big set-piece action, like the way "X-Wing Alliance" eventually plunged you into the Battle of Endor. Why they set Halo 3 ODST after the battle for New Mombasa, so that you're basically sneaking around picking off Covenant peons in the ruins of the deserted city, is beyond me. Especially since you know from Halo 3 that the whole region is eventually glassed by the Covenant anyway in order to wipe out a burgeoning Flood infestation. Nothing you do in Halo 3 ODST matters.

If they wanted to make a new game, they should make your actions actually be important in some way. They could also add genuinely new stuff, like having you operate an Earth starship's MAC guns during one of the space battles (the way "Call of Duty" has you operating the machine guns on an airplane).

[Themightytom]

Both of the post-Halo 3 games in the setting have Master Chief solely as a background character off doing his own thing, while the protagonist of oth Wars and ODST is... who is it, and why should I care?

Waaaatch it....

I think Bunjee has decided in terms of plot to do what Lucas has been doing for a decade, miliking the shit out of a creative universe, unfortuantely they are blundering into the same disdain that met The Force unleashed. Its too close to the established story, something farther back or further ahead in the same universe might attract some attention, maybe a surviving band of Spartans on Reach not THE attack on Reach that we saw already...
As with ODST I will play it for the new maps and aht will be all. I too would avhe liked to see new vehicles, like a motrocyle maybe? Some of those tripod walkers from Unreal Tournament, a freakin spaceship??? A dogfighting component top the game might be nice, and anyone whose gone banshee to banshee knows you can't really do it in Halo 3, somehow Starfox 64 has more advanced map technology

[Stark]

MW never sold itself as an epic story or with such absurdly unrelated live-action stuff as ODST. It's a franchise built on being over the top and having good multi, not on i's scifi universe or iconic green armour or whatever. I'm not sure how they could offensively milk that - so long as the story is absurd and the underlyng mechanics work, it'll sell.

Didn't Bungie try to change things with Halo 2 and fans got cross?

Edit - actually, maybe Bungie is reacting to the MW style. That could explain the characters and perhaps the story will be in the same over-the-top vein. If they're looking to steal back top spot, it could be the idea to reposition the franchise.

[DPDarkPrimus]

I have a feeling that this will mostly involve a new class of Spartan-IIs. The numbers on their armor goes too high to be in the original class, though they're low enough on some to suggest that they were some of the first. The group appears to be composed of a couple of the first class and a bunch of people from the second/third, including you, presumably.

Considering the second class was started after the Covenant had glassed Harvest, I find it entirely plausible that they upped the age limit, making people with accents more possible.

If by "new class of Spartan IIs" you mean "Spartan IIIs".

Yes Stark, you're right, they did try to change things in Halo 2: They added the Arbiter as a playable character, and while he had more to him in the first couple of cutscenes than the Chief ever has in the whole series in terms of characterization, the masses hated him because he wasn't a faceless super-soldier.

[Ford Prefect]

Personally, I found the switching perspective of Halo 2 to be at least narritively interesting, because you switch from 'big green guy kills aliens' to 'disgraced former leader uncovers the truth of his culture's central belief system'. I don't think the Covenant intruige was really capitalised on, but when the alternative is the Chief just going from place to place and painting it technicolour in the blood of aliens you really grow to like it. This was a part of my disappointment in Halo 3, where the Arbiter goes from top billing to bit character - he doesn't even count as a sidekick! I don't know much about fan backlash against the Arbiter but you can see a serious change in the narrative to focus on the Chief's story, but the guy is a total robot so he doesn't really have one. In retrospect they could have actually done something interesting with Chief/Arbiter buddy cop business, as opposed to focussing on the past of a man with no personality except 'I'm attracted to a hologram who looks like my mother figure'.

[DPDarkPrimus]

The whole reason they cut Arbiter back to a bit character in Halo 3 was because of the rabid idiots blaming the Arbiter for everything that was wrong with Halo 2, even though most of the legitimate complaints had nothing to do with him.

I was pretty disappointed to find out that one of the possibilities they'd talked about when looking to make a smaller scope game (that eventually turned into Halo:ODST) was to do a story centered around the Elites set after the events of Halo 3. That would have been infinitely more interesting to me.

[Hawkwings]

If by "new class of Spartan IIs" you mean "Spartan IIIs".

Nope, I mean "New class of Spartan IIs". CPO Mendez went off to train them, as stated in TFoR. We never heard anything about them, but that doesn't mean they're not around.

Actually, if you consider the I Love Bees event to be canon, then we know that there was a second class, and we know one of those selected; Yasmine, who died during augmentations and was used as a model for the AI Melissa.

[Ritterin Sophia]

I have a feeling that this will mostly involve a new class of Spartan-IIs. The numbers on their armor goes too high to be in the original class, though they're low enough on some to suggest that they were some of the first. The group appears to be composed of a couple of the first class and a bunch of people from the second/third, including you, presumably.

Considering the second class was started after the Covenant had glassed Harvest, I find it entirely plausible that they upped the age limit, making people with accents more possible.

From what I understand you're playing a SPARTAN-III, better than an ODST but cheaper than a SPARTAN-II.

[Lord Relvenous]

Edit- nevermind.

[DPDarkPrimus]

If by "new class of Spartan IIs" you mean "Spartan IIIs".

Nope, I mean "New class of Spartan IIs". CPO Mendez went off to train them, as stated in TFoR. We never heard anything about them, but that doesn't mean they're not around.

Any future Spartan II classes were delayed indefinitely, and Mendez was shipped out on active duty for a few years, then wrangled back to run the Spartan III program.

[Darth Wong]

All of this background stuff is from the novels, yes? I tried reading the novels a while ago and discovered that after a reasonably strong start, they lost my interest. I suppose that should have been a warning sign about the franchise.

[Chris OFarrell]

Even my boys, who were huge Halo fans (the original Halo was their very first videogame) and clamoured for me to buy Halo 3 ODST, were totally disillusioned by the game. We're talking about a couple of boys who virtually grew up with Halo, who had toys and posters and the whole nine yards, and who declared: "The Halo games suck now. Call of Duty is way better". That's a major defection. Yes, Microsoft got our money one more time for ODST, but as I said, that was out of habit. Once more: the game was such a disappointment that it completely turned off a couple of lifelong fans who were seriously invested in the franchise. You can't get a bigger failure than that.

QFT

I loved HALO 1, I found the story very interesting, the game design a lot of fun, soundtrack great, characters 2.5D, but still a lot of fun...

HALO 2 disappointed me in some ways, but it still kept me down and playing it and I could see Bungie were at least trying to mix things up a bit. And I liked how they brought out Johnson as a character, and even The Arbiter grew on me after a while.

HALO 3 looked nice, but it was my least fav of the trillogy. Still, for all that, it closed up the story nicely, it brought out more of the other characters, had some nice throwbacks to the Halo EU which showed that Bungie actually cared.

ODST I brought exactly as said; out of habit. I thought that a sort of Ghost Reconish game could be a new twist on HALO, humans who really were fragile and you would need to take a lot more care as you weren't a genetically modified Cyborg wearing power armor.

Instead after several hours playing Co-Op with Vympel, I was feeling like that chick out of Aliens moaning 'Kill...me...."

[DPDarkPrimus]

All of this background stuff is from the novels, yes? I tried reading the novels a while ago and discovered that after a reasonably strong start, they lost my interest. I suppose that should have been a warning sign about the franchise.

There's a short story collection that just came out. I only ever read Contact Harvest, so I can't comment on the other novels, but the short stories have all been more interesting than that book at least, though the general theme of "Humans get their butt kicked but take aliens with them" gets a bit repetative.

[Ford Prefect]

All of this background stuff is from the novels, yes? I tried reading the novels a while ago and discovered that after a reasonably strong start, they lost my interest. I suppose that should have been a warning sign about the franchise.

Novels, comics, the recent encyclopaedia and so on. One of the bigger parts of its 'EU' is the Animatrix style compilation of short films Halo Legends, the whining about of which has been pretty funny to watch. There's something I've noticed about the more serious Halo fans is that they are obsessed with everything in the universe 'fitting' with the established information, even though it was hopelessly inconsistant to begin with. They have a particular view of the setting as being this super serious, totally plausible universe where everything fits together like the real world, despite trying to reconcile mile long spaceships which pull thousands of gees and have the firepower to turns planets into spheres of molten glass with ground warfare that looks like it could have come out of a bad Vietnam War film. People who would cling to the idea of a SPARTAN II running at eighty or a hundred kilometres per hour or being able to lift twenty tons will suggest that a SPARTAN II doing a flip over a Brute Chieftan seems silly.

[Edward Yee]

Darth Wong, why did you eventually lose interest with the novels?

For me, the direction of the SPARTANs as being such 'ridiculously' augmented, being abducted child soldiers replaced by body doubles programmed to die young (sounds worse than the clone troopers, don't it?)... didn't they even have what was called "Spartan Time"? I'd have be more interested if they were less "SPECIAL warriors" and were instead "soldiers who do special things."

[Ford Prefect]

For 'ridiculously' augmented warriors they're pretty fucking mild, especially given how much money was invested into them.

[Edward Yee]

Not to mention that, glancing at the Halopedia, SPARTAN-II basically missed the damned point whereas the SPARTAN-IIIs were a step in the right direction (eventually). It actually reminds me of an anecdote about the SAS eventually having a manpower problem because at one point the requirements were raised so unrealistically high that the very operators doing this would have failed Selection themselves.

[DPDarkPrimus]

The problem with the Halo Legends shorts is that they are all (so far anyway) extremely stereotypical Japanese anime tropes given a coating of Halo-colored paint. Every one has felt like the studio making it was just cashing a paycheck.

[Ford Prefect]

Halo is itself bland as all get out and constructed from its own collection of stupid cliches, so the only real change here is that Legends is vaguely visually dynamic. It's not like Halo is a rich and detailed universe: it's at best a thin justification for a big green guy to go and shoot colour coded enemies. It barely exists as a setting. I think Legends is pretty terrible for a number of instrumental reasons (ie. the production is nowhere near the level that the money behind this should be capable of supporting and the vocal work is terrible), but the idea that its main problem is that it's not 'true' to Halo of all things is pretty daft.

[Vympel]

MW2's only real publicity problem is on the PC front. On the console front, everybody's happy unless they notice how stupid the story is. And seriously, repeatedly killing off the character you play? Why?

I think Infinity Ward got so caught up in the press reaction to the dramatic death-by-nuke in the original (far superior, though still quite short) game that they went the classic idiot Michael Bay route, and just decided to make the sequel 100% more of everything, hence:-

* The character you play getting killed out of your control - twice!
* The absolutely ludicrous amount of dramatic escapes into helicopters/ aircraft. I mean seriously, I can't remember a level where that didn't happen.

[Ritterin Sophia]

All of this background stuff is from the novels, yes? I tried reading the novels a while ago and discovered that after a reasonably strong start, they lost my interest. I suppose that should have been a warning sign about the franchise.

Just use Halopedia and treat it like Wookieepedia, expect it to be good as a general reference, but for anything real specific make sure to get outside verification. That's what I've done and I'd like to think I have a better grasp on it than most of the fans.

[Hawkwings]

For 'ridiculously' augmented warriors they're pretty fucking mild, especially given how much money was invested into them.

Well they did pretty much win the war for humanity. Or John did at least. Honestly, past about 5 paragraphs in the first book, the augmentation is rarely mentioned again. It certainly reads like they're just soldiers doing special things, as opposed to some super-special soldiers. Well, then there's the S-IIIs, who really got on my nerves.

Regarding the books, I'd say that the first one, The Fall of Reach, is the best, followed shortly by First Strike. Ghosts of Onyx comes next, then Contact Harvest. Then the travesty that is The Flood. The graphic novel is decent, but I certainly didn't read it for the story content, I read it to look at pretty pictures. I hadn't heard about this short story collection. The only Legends clip I've seen is Babysitter, and I simultaneously laughed and facepalmed when I saw the big reveal. It certainly wasn't a bad story, but that's only because it's so stereotypical.

[DPDarkPrimus]

Halo is itself bland as all get out and constructed from its own collection of stupid cliches, so the only real change here is that Legends is vaguely visually dynamic. It's not like Halo is a rich and detailed universe: it's at best a thin justification for a big green guy to go and shoot colour coded enemies. It barely exists as a setting. I think Legends is pretty terrible for a number of instrumental reasons (ie. the production is nowhere near the level that the money behind this should be capable of supporting and the vocal work is terrible), but the idea that its main problem is that it's not 'true' to Halo of all things is pretty daft.

Did I say it wasn't "true" to Halo?

I was complaining that, given the opportunity to tell interesting, innovative and/or thought-provoking stories in the setting (and don't tell me that isn't possible), every one of them decides to phone it in.

[Darth Wong]

Halo is itself bland as all get out and constructed from its own collection of stupid cliches, so the only real change here is that Legends is vaguely visually dynamic. It's not like Halo is a rich and detailed universe: it's at best a thin justification for a big green guy to go and shoot colour coded enemies. It barely exists as a setting. I think Legends is pretty terrible for a number of instrumental reasons (ie. the production is nowhere near the level that the money behind this should be capable of supporting and the vocal work is terrible), but the idea that its main problem is that it's not 'true' to Halo of all things is pretty daft.

Halo had more potential when the Covenant were mysterious, the Forerunners were mysterious, and there was a sense that there was some really meaty backstory out there to learn.

The problem was that, as more of the backstory was fleshed out, it really wasn't as good as we might have hoped, to put it mildly.