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1/13/2013 9:14:00 PM
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1) Add in a few more lines of dialogue to allow for better understanding of the story for newcomers. Seriously, all it would take to clear up the Storm Covenant is (In the cutscene where Chief first meets Del Rio and is told of the Infinity's purpose):
"What are the Covenant doing here?"
"They're a rogue faction Chief. They call themselves the Storm, and they still follow the Prophet doctrine."
Don't get me wrong, I still think the story of 4 is [I]by far[/I] the best of the series and one of the best in any recent FPS, but a little extra dialogue would have been enough to clear up half of everybody's problems with the story.
2) Completely redo half the level design in the game. Stop with this Halo 2/3/Reach lack of player choice and sandbox elements bullsh1t. Give me the open, airy fields of CE where I can setup battles like the Rockslide megabattle, or the Twin Bridges megabattle.
3) Completely redo the Covenant AI. I like the Promethean's chaotic approach to the battlefield (though that could still be greatly improved), but the Covenant are at their (excluding lolwallhackauotaimconcussionriflespam Reach) absolute worst. Make them [I]reactive[/I] again, bring back roaming from CE, widen the variance gap (i.e. make Zealots ACT like Zealots, minors ACT like minors, etc.)
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1) Definitely, it's not just a case of "oh well, [i]I[/i] know why they're back", Chief [i]never[/i] finds out how they were reformed. I'd have appreciated a few extra Terminals to be found in some Covenant areas retelling the story of Glasslands and The Thursday War. 2) This is pretty much my issue with the last 2 missions of the game, it descends into a linear corridor shooter. Requiem got things spot-on by being comprised of large, open areas while Composer and Midnight were massively scaled down. 3) Absolutely, one of the points in the OP agrees directly with that.
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Actually, I greatly appreciated Midnight. It had this "against all odds, descent into hell" kind of feel. It really (at least to me) gave off the same vibe as when I first launched the Suicide Mission in ME2 (granted I was disappointed with the rest of the plot beforehand, unlike this game). But yes, in terms of gameplay and replayability, I can clearly see where you're coming from with your comments towards the mission.
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I really liked the opening and second half of Midnight. The Broadsword bit was really fun, I'll sometimes just boot up the level just to play that bit, and the parts toward the end where you are travelling these immense distances and jumping across platforms definitely created a frantic, against-all-odds atmosphere. But the first half of the mission where you fight your way through these compact corridors with Scattershot-wielding Knights and an abundance of Watchers just pissed me off on Legendary.
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For some reason I couldn't stop laughing at the Crawler hallway on Legendary. I knew 343 made that part specifically to piss us off.
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That bit felt [i]so much[/i] like those bits of The Library where Guilty Spark told you to defend a door while he went to open it. :P
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You're absolutely right, because I couldn't stop laughing at those parts either.
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Edited by kgj: 1/13/2013 9:25:13 PMAlso, have you noticed how great of an antonym the Prometheans are to the Chief? Chief is a machine turning human whereas Prometheans are humans turned machines. It's these ingeniously subtle things like that which make Halo 4 my favorite of the main series. [I]Sh1t.[/I] I knew I'd posted this somewhere before.
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Yes, I picked up on a lot of the really subtle storytelling things and how they illustrated the themes that went into the game. It's brilliant. I notice a lot of people talk about the continued sexualisation of Cortana, but few seem to notice that when she speaks the camera is [i]always[/i] focused on her face to convey the emotions she is displaying. I spoke to Mackenzie Mason a while back and she told me that they really wanted her to, during her performance, put a great deal of emphasis on her face because that's what conveys a lot of the impact when coupled with Jen Taylor's [bloody amazing] voice-work.
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I know many will disagree with me on this, but I found some of the scenes without any music to be by far the most powerful. After my first playthrough, I associated the track "Green and Blue" with the "You know it won't be me" scene, but then I went back and played through it again, I realized there [I]wasn't[/I] any music there. Just Chief and Cortana talking. And that hit me even harder.
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In the cutscenes, I definitely agree that silence is golden at times. But during gameplay segments where music is absent it's definitely noticable when there are tracks that would fit the scenario perfectly.
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Oh, definitely. In fact, that's probably another thing that I'd do to improve the game. Give me the options to mix audio. I could barely hear [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AipmHqKNCLs]This[/url] while piloting the Mantis.
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It sucks because in the Terminals the music was absolutely bang-on. In the one where the Didact laments being forced into war with the Flood to the Lord of Admirals, Legacy plays and I produce a sticky transparent fluid. If only they used his [i]whole[/i] speech from Primordium... [quote]My finest opponent, the Mantle accepts all who live fiercely, who defend their young, who build and struggle and grow, and even those who dominate—as humans have dominated, cruelly and without wisdom. But for all of us there is a time like this, when the Domain seeks to confirm our essences, and for you, that time is now. Know this, relentless enemy, killer of our children, Lord of Admirals: soon we will face the enemy you have faced and defeated. I can see that challenge coming to the Forerunners, and so do many others.... And we are afraid. That is why you, and many thousands of your people who may contain knowledge of how humans defended themselves against the Flood, will not pass cleanly and forever, as I would wish for a fellow warrior, but will be extracted and steeped down into the genetic code of many new humans. This is not my wish nor my will. It arises from the skill and the will of my life-mate, my wife, the Librarian, who sees much farther than I do down the twining streams of Living Time. So this additional indignity will be inflicted upon you. It means, I believe, that humans will not end here, but may rise again—fight again. Humans are always warriors. But what and whom they will fight, I do not know. For I fear the time of the Forerunners is drawing to a close. In this, the Librarian and I find agreement. Take satisfaction, warrior, in that possibility.[/quote] This is a lot more telling about the Didact as a character, especially in showing his remorse about using the Composer and that the time of the Forerunners is at an end. Most of all, he seems to understand and accept it.
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And another point. Didact should have gotten a [I]hell[/I] of a lot more screen time. Novel Didact is probably my favorite character in the series, and Terminal Didact is pretty damn well presented as well, but the in game Didact, while having a great buildup to a final fight, is ruined by 1) Like what, six minutes of screen time? 2) lolQTE And the scene where Forthencho wipes out the planet with Haven playing in the background... that was [I]awesome[/I].
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I think that the Terminals in Halo 4 should have been cutscenes you see as flashbacks in the [non-existant] two-part mission on Installation 03, uncovering his past and learning his motivations. He could have done with a bit more screen time, but ultimately I think what he has is sufficient - like Sovereign in ME1, he only appears like 3 times yet you get a very good measure of the threat he poses. The QTE was just so unnecessary, it should have just been one long cutscene IMO. And when the Knights are deployed to the Flood vessels with Revival playing, that one was really epic.
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I guess so. Bringing him up too many times would have detracted from his overall prescence. Instead of "holy sh1t here comes the Didact", repetition of his appearance would probably have made me go "oh, look, it's Didact. I like to use the Steven Spielgberg/Michael Bay analogy- when Spielberg makes a building fall, the audience goes holy sh1t. When Bay makes thirty buildings fall, the audience yawns. Agreed. I would have also liked a gameplay segment (not where we fight Didact, but where we had to fight a large number of Prometheans, or say, a War Sphinx with the weapons I'd been hoarding) before the cutscene. Another thing that Halo 4 did awesome- Halo's theme of "life always overcoming". Despite the clear superiority of the Prometheans, in the end life finds a way.
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Edited by Haruspis: 1/13/2013 10:35:01 PMAn apt analogy. :P I thought that the Didact not showing his face for much of the time allowed scenes to have more impact, like the one at the end of Composer where everyone on Ivanoff Station is composed. Because whenever the Didact actually shows up, shit goes down, usually in the form of some kind of gorgeously, gravelly-voiced monologue. The action of composing Ivanoff Station seems a lot more horrific without a face we've seen so many times to reconcile it with - which is part of what Gravemind feel threatening in Halo 2 and 3 because we only saw him once in-person. I mean... just [url=http://24.media.tumblr.com/6025f808891c65606e4f342a70a47e49/tumblr_mgl2ebZaZd1ru1svko4_500.gif]look at this shit![/url] While I thought the campaign did that theme really well, I don't think Spartan Ops managed to do it justice. In Episode 2, Hoya just leaps out of cover and guns down a load of Knights with just a few shotgun blasts which took the tension out of the scene because he escaped with only minor injuries. In the campaign, there's a sense of real foreboding that you're going up against a threat that is going to bitch-slap you more than Halo 2's Jackal Snipers and ODST's Drones combined.
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Edited by kgj: 1/13/2013 10:24:42 PMI don't take Spartan Ops in general that seriously. Hopefully episodes 6-10 will be better. I think Spartan Ops would have worked a lot better as a set of campaign sized missions delivered in 5 rally points per week.
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I'm loving certain parts of it, like the development of Halsey and Thorne, and Jul is a great antagonist, the progression of the story is going well, but it's the missions that are seriously letting it down. It's no wonder there's so little replay value when most of the missions have the same objective, and for the most part they don't even tie in with the main story of Spartan Ops.
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Oh yeah, the portrayal of SIVs and their contrast with the psychologically disfigured SIIs is great. But aside from that, I really can't think of much reason to care for the series.
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I hope they hurry up with the Forerunner stuff in Spartan Ops and bring back the Librarian, I really want to see where that goes. And that weird Scarab-esque building in the trailer, that looks pretty cool - totally unlike [i]any[/i] Covenant or Forerunner architecture we've ever seen before.
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I'm more interested in the Didact, if anything. Can't wait to see his inevitable return in Halo 5. Keith Szarabajka: "Problem, Reclaimer?"
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And in under 2 months now Silentium will be out, can't wait to see how his story picks up from the last 2 novels.
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Ohoh yes. Hopefully Greg Bear goes all out on this one. Greg Bear Halo is best Halo. Oh and, Precursors. I can't wait for their appearances.
