I hope bungie takes some of the ideas from halo 5 multi that 343 took from bungie halo 2-3 multi and puts it in destiny.
A ranked playlist and vehicle combat that works well and clan support/ matches.
Man halo 2 era bungie knew their shit and 343 knows it. Dunno why destiny era bungie doesn't.
Ranked playlists aren't as popular as people pretend them to be.
Also, Destiny doesn't have region locked multiplayer.
Clan support is up to First Party. Bungie WANTS clans. First party on both sides don't like clans and limit their functionality when a game has one. Halo 5's Spartan Companies are pretty much the same as Destiny, groups you make that show up in-game.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
I hope bungie takes some of the ideas from halo 5 multi that 343 took from bungie halo 2-3 multi and puts it in destiny.
A ranked playlist and vehicle combat that works well and clan support/ matches.
Man halo 2 era bungie knew their shit and 343 knows it. Dunno why destiny era bungie doesn't.
Ranked playlists aren't as popular as people pretend them to be.
Also, Destiny doesn't have region locked multiplayer.
Clan support is up to First Party. Bungie WANTS clans. First party on both sides don't like clans and limit their functionality when a game has one. Halo 5's Spartan Companies are pretty much the same as Destiny, groups you make that show up in-game.
I pretty much avoided all of the ranked playlists in Halo 3. It's a shame too, since SWAT was actually fun when it was an unranked playlist.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
So a hour or so into ODST and I can understand why people hated Halo 4.
Cause....damn.....a huge step down in presentation.
Well one game was made by dudes who knew what they were doing.
#not343
I think that's kind of unfair. The first game made by a studio new to the franchise is never going to be as good as the games coming out of a studio that's made 5 games in that franchise, that they invented.
It's certainly better than the first Halo, which seems like a better point of comparison.
+4
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
I hope bungie takes some of the ideas from halo 5 multi that 343 took from bungie halo 2-3 multi and puts it in destiny.
A ranked playlist and vehicle combat that works well and clan support/ matches.
Man halo 2 era bungie knew their shit and 343 knows it. Dunno why destiny era bungie doesn't.
Ranked playlists aren't as popular as people pretend them to be.
Also, Destiny doesn't have region locked multiplayer.
Clan support is up to First Party. Bungie WANTS clans. First party on both sides don't like clans and limit their functionality when a game has one. Halo 5's Spartan Companies are pretty much the same as Destiny, groups you make that show up in-game.
I pretty much avoided all of the ranked playlists in Halo 3. It's a shame too, since SWAT was actually fun when it was an unranked playlist.
I'm still angry they forced BTB into ranked only in Halo 3.
I'm still angry they forced BTB into ranked only in Halo 3.
That was a jackass move on their part.
Ranked BTB in Halo 3 was around for a very short time - it tanked so badly that it was the direct cause of Bungie never trying to save tanking playlists with DEXP again.
For most of it's run BTB was unranked in H3.
You must be thinking of another playlist?
0
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Casually HardcoreOnce an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered Userregular
So a hour or so into ODST and I can understand why people hated Halo 4.
Cause....damn.....a huge step down in presentation.
Well one game was made by dudes who knew what they were doing.
#not343
I think that's kind of unfair. The first game made by a studio new to the franchise is never going to be as good as the games coming out of a studio that's made 5 games in that franchise, that they invented.
It's certainly better than the first Halo, which seems like a better point of comparison.
Biggest complaint with Halo 4 was the narrative. I have no idea how Chief went from being on a planet to being on a space lab outside of 'magic'. And who exactly is this space Voldemort? Why does space Voldemort hate humanity so much? Who the fuck is this LIbarian? If the libarian 'evolved' MC, why isn't there any changes to gameplay? What exactly was change in the evolution? Why didn't the evolution protect MC from Space Voldemort space magic the second time around? Why exactly is this group of covenant trying to kill me? How come the Covenant and the promethians all of a sudden has an alliance? How exactly did Cortana stopped space Voldemort psychic powers? Seriously, who the fuck is this Space Voldemort? How the fuck did Chief being in ground zero of a nuclear device that destroyed fucking everything? Why are there Spartans all of a sudden? Why the captain of the ship just abandon the war, leaving a threat to humanity behind to attack earth? What happened to the captain? Why did they introduce more spartans, but don't give any reaction to meeting MC? If MC was gone for 4 years and just appeared on a mysterious death planet, how come nobody debriefs MC to see where he has been and learned? Why doesn't the captain listen to MC, the same MC who saved humanity multiple times in his lifetime? If a nuclear device was all that was needed to destroy the alien spacecraft, why not just launch a huge fucking volley of nuclear missles at the spacecraft?
Also.
Fucking 90 billion fucking years in the future and a nuclear bomb is still the 'ultimate solve all' solution? Why not just spice things up like an anti-matter bomb or something.
But for a quick 8 hours 'turn my brain off and look at pretty colors' game, it was decently fun. Especially since I got this game for free.
So a hour or so into ODST and I can understand why people hated Halo 4.
Cause....damn.....a huge step down in presentation.
Well one game was made by dudes who knew what they were doing.
#not343
I think that's kind of unfair. The first game made by a studio new to the franchise is never going to be as good as the games coming out of a studio that's made 5 games in that franchise, that they invented.
It's certainly better than the first Halo, which seems like a better point of comparison.
Did 343 get complete access to Reach or just the MP?
Because they didn't just make a new product.
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joshgotroDeviled EggThe Land of REAL CHILIRegistered Userregular
So a hour or so into ODST and I can understand why people hated Halo 4.
Cause....damn.....a huge step down in presentation.
Well one game was made by dudes who knew what they were doing.
#not343
I think that's kind of unfair. The first game made by a studio new to the franchise is never going to be as good as the games coming out of a studio that's made 5 games in that franchise, that they invented.
It's certainly better than the first Halo, which seems like a better point of comparison.
Did 343 get complete access to Reach or just the MP?
Because they didn't just make a new product.
The only thing 343 touched in Reach was a patch that changed up some weapon/melee values. Everything else in the game is pure Bungie.
EDIT - ahh, and added 7 maps from Halo: Anniversary Edition into Reach MP. So all told, since they changed up weapon values, I'm not sure if "complete access" was needed, since that kind of stuff can be handled with a simple .ini file edit.
Erlkönig on
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
So a hour or so into ODST and I can understand why people hated Halo 4.
Cause....damn.....a huge step down in presentation.
Uh, call me crazy, but didn't people go from ODST into Reach? Besides the fact that, unlike Halo 4, they were produced by the same company.
To be honest, I'm pretty sure my overall experience with Reach is one of the reasons I liked Halo 4 as much as I did.
Or did everyone just write-off Reach entirely and pretend it didn't exist? Because while I'm not that disappointed with it, I could kind of see why...
ODST>Reach>2>3>1
I enjoyed ODST more but still played the shit out of Reach.
That's a perfectly reasonable opinion--in fact, I agree, I enjoyed ODST much more than Reach, I just didn't like Reach--but it feels like a lot of people were treating it as though we went directly from ODST (which itself felt radically different from 3) directly to 4, and ignoring Reach, which personally I thought was markedly inferior to 4. The only strength I'd give it over it, in fact, would be its horde mode (and the novelty of that one mission in the fighter)
I just know that coming from Reach, which was extremely rough around the edges, even to the point of feeling unfinished (and had some truly shitty cooperative AI) to Halo 4, I immediately was struck by 1) how amazingly better 4 looked and 2) how better everything worked mechanically.
But opinions, etc.
+1
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
I'm still angry they forced BTB into ranked only in Halo 3.
That was a jackass move on their part.
Ranked BTB in Halo 3 was around for a very short time - it tanked so badly that it was the direct cause of Bungie never trying to save tanking playlists with DEXP again.
For most of it's run BTB was unranked in H3.
You must be thinking of another playlist?
Nah. I stopped playing Halo 3 around the time they made it ranked so I wasn't there when they reverted it.
So a hour or so into ODST and I can understand why people hated Halo 4.
Cause....damn.....a huge step down in presentation.
Well one game was made by dudes who knew what they were doing.
#not343
I think that's kind of unfair. The first game made by a studio new to the franchise is never going to be as good as the games coming out of a studio that's made 5 games in that franchise, that they invented.
It's certainly better than the first Halo, which seems like a better point of comparison.
Biggest complaint with Halo 4 was the narrative. I have no idea how Chief went from being on a planet to being on a space lab outside of 'magic'. And who exactly is this space Voldemort? Why does space Voldemort hate humanity so much? Who the fuck is this LIbarian? If the libarian 'evolved' MC, why isn't there any changes to gameplay? What exactly was change in the evolution? Why didn't the evolution protect MC from Space Voldemort space magic the second time around? Why exactly is this group of covenant trying to kill me? How come the Covenant and the promethians all of a sudden has an alliance? How exactly did Cortana stopped space Voldemort psychic powers? Seriously, who the fuck is this Space Voldemort? How the fuck did Chief being in ground zero of a nuclear device that destroyed fucking everything? Why are there Spartans all of a sudden? Why the captain of the ship just abandon the war, leaving a threat to humanity behind to attack earth? What happened to the captain? Why did they introduce more spartans, but don't give any reaction to meeting MC? If MC was gone for 4 years and just appeared on a mysterious death planet, how come nobody debriefs MC to see where he has been and learned? Why doesn't the captain listen to MC, the same MC who saved humanity multiple times in his lifetime? If a nuclear device was all that was needed to destroy the alien spacecraft, why not just launch a huge fucking volley of nuclear missles at the spacecraft?
Also.
Fucking 90 billion fucking years in the future and a nuclear bomb is still the 'ultimate solve all' solution? Why not just spice things up like an anti-matter bomb or something.
But for a quick 8 hours 'turn my brain off and look at pretty colors' game, it was decently fun. Especially since I got this game for free.
I'll try to help you out here, keep in mind some of the background info is in books or the terminals you find in game and need to watch later.
So the planet was basically a Forerunner modded world with teleportation portals, like a Halo. When MC leaves, it's often by way of Cortana finding a convenient teleporter to hack into.
The bad guy of 4 is The Didact. Basic explanation: evil Forerunner (guys who created Halos because they were losing to the Flood) General, with a strong dislike of humans. More detailed explanation: General in charge of Forerunner vs Human war. Humans were previously a comparable space faring power to the Forerunners, their (our) advanced technology being lost when the Forerunners beat us (because Humans had entered conflict with the Flood even before the Forerunner and couldn't win on both fronts). The Forerunner had sufficient technology to damage/devolve human genetic code back to where you'd expect to see Cromagnons and it had to start over from there. The bad memories of that war and the loss of his wife caused Didact to create the Prometheans (enemies you shoot all game) using humans as guinea pigs as anti-Flood weapons. The other Forerunner thought this more than a bit extreme and sealed him away in the place Master Chief eventually goes to in 4.
The Librarian is Didact's wife. While he was fighting the Flood, she was cataloging and taking a sample of all the life in the galaxy, in case the Forerunner decided to use the Halo (so that something could return from all the destruction). Eventually, she realized she had a choice between getting the last samples (including humans) or trying to get to a safe place to ride out the Halo activation. She chose the latter, leaving behind some kind of AI... thingy (?) a la Mass Effect to help the humans should they ever need it for some reason (say, the Flood coming back or something). The Didact couldn't understand her choice and took it as another reason to hate humans.
The Covenant. After Halo 3, the humans and the Covenant have an iffy peace between the UNSC government and the surviving Covvies who went to war against the Prophets, led by the Arbiter. Unfortunately, the Elites weren't super happy with the Arbiter's leadership AND the UNSC ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence, spies basically) wasn't ready to make nice either. So both sides do cold war moves against each other until a faction of Elites officially schism from Arbiter's leadership and begin warlike actions again, primarily wanting to get their hands on new Forerunner artifacts. This is the group you encounter on the planet and there's in game cutscenes of them making an alliance with the Promethean forces.
Additional Spartans. As depicted in Halo Reach, Spartan IIIs were a secret experiment to create cheaper, more expendable Spartans that even Halsey did not know about. With the knowledge of both programs and additional tech developed during the war, Spartan IVs became possible. The main advantage of Spartan IVs is that the procedures to get super soldiers are both safer (they don't generally damage the people unlike the huge failure rate in the IIs, they also don't require the participants to be children) and cheaper (so they can be mass produced). It's arguable whether S IVs are truly the equal of S IIs, but they're certainly a step above any other kind of UNSC infantry. Chief's lack of surprise of their existence is down to the fact that Chief doesn't really react to much of anything. He's a quiet guy.
Librarian's help not being that helpful. Yeah, this seems to be a purely plot based powerup. Maybe something will come of it in 5?
The ending. The ship captain basically wanted to abandon the current fight and return with the intelligence of what they'd found to Earth, so that other people could make decisions for him (he is a dumb coward with low command ability). Threatened by how everyone else is willing to listen to a mere Sergeant (remember Chief's rank) over him, he latches on to Cortana's now quite apparent rampancy (insanity) as a reason to not listen to Chief. Chief goes off on his own (no one even tries to stop him) to solve the problem himself. In the final fight, Chief damages Didact's concentration enough to set off the nuke. If I recall correctly, you're near a power source, so the explosion will be a chain reaction thing, as opposed to firing it from the outside at the main armor + shields of the ship. He doesn't die because Cortana takes the "Hard Light" material that has been creating bridges and walls and force fields and etc and wraps Chief up in it (with the bomb left outside) nanoseconds before the explosion. This is also how she's able to "touch" Chief at the end, by making a "body" out of it.
All questions of "debriefing" and such were handled after the game, when the UNSC weren't desperately fighting a battle to the death. The Spartan Ops campaign takes place a few months after the Halo 4 campaign, btw and you should watch the cutscenes before trying out 5.
I'm still angry they forced BTB into ranked only in Halo 3.
That was a jackass move on their part.
Ranked BTB in Halo 3 was around for a very short time - it tanked so badly that it was the direct cause of Bungie never trying to save tanking playlists with DEXP again.
For most of it's run BTB was unranked in H3.
You must be thinking of another playlist?
Nah. I stopped playing Halo 3 around the time they made it ranked so I wasn't there when they reverted it.
Ranked BTB went from January 2008 to around August 2008. Social Big Team existed alongside it for that entire time. Then Ranked BTB became Squad Battle (6v6) which itself was later killed off due to low population.
Social Big Team was renamed to DLC Big Team, then after a while it was reverted back to not requiring DLC, then there was a Mythic Big Team that was unranked for a while, but existed alongside Social Big Team, and was killed because everyone had most of their playlist EXP in the regular one.
Hmm... I'm thinking Reach, Halo 4 (though its MP was problematic at times.), then ODST.
The customization options in Halo 4 were bleh compared to Reach (due to the gating)... the RNG drops were awkward, but different. ODST was just a fun campaign in general, but the MP was just Halo 3.
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
I'm still angry they forced BTB into ranked only in Halo 3.
That was a jackass move on their part.
Ranked BTB in Halo 3 was around for a very short time - it tanked so badly that it was the direct cause of Bungie never trying to save tanking playlists with DEXP again.
For most of it's run BTB was unranked in H3.
You must be thinking of another playlist?
Nah. I stopped playing Halo 3 around the time they made it ranked so I wasn't there when they reverted it.
Ranked BTB went from January 2008 to around August 2008. Social Big Team existed alongside it for that entire time. Then Ranked BTB became Squad Battle (6v6) which itself was later killed off due to low population.
Social Big Team was renamed to DLC Big Team, then after a while it was reverted back to not requiring DLC, then there was a Mythic Big Team that was unranked for a while, but existed alongside Social Big Team, and was killed because everyone had most of their playlist EXP in the regular one.
So a hour or so into ODST and I can understand why people hated Halo 4.
Cause....damn.....a huge step down in presentation.
Well one game was made by dudes who knew what they were doing.
#not343
I think that's kind of unfair. The first game made by a studio new to the franchise is never going to be as good as the games coming out of a studio that's made 5 games in that franchise, that they invented.
It's certainly better than the first Halo, which seems like a better point of comparison.
Biggest complaint with Halo 4 was the narrative. I have no idea how Chief went from being on a planet to being on a space lab outside of 'magic'. And who exactly is this space Voldemort? Why does space Voldemort hate humanity so much? Who the fuck is this LIbarian? If the libarian 'evolved' MC, why isn't there any changes to gameplay? What exactly was change in the evolution? Why didn't the evolution protect MC from Space Voldemort space magic the second time around? Why exactly is this group of covenant trying to kill me? How come the Covenant and the promethians all of a sudden has an alliance? How exactly did Cortana stopped space Voldemort psychic powers? Seriously, who the fuck is this Space Voldemort? How the fuck did Chief being in ground zero of a nuclear device that destroyed fucking everything? Why are there Spartans all of a sudden? Why the captain of the ship just abandon the war, leaving a threat to humanity behind to attack earth? What happened to the captain? Why did they introduce more spartans, but don't give any reaction to meeting MC? If MC was gone for 4 years and just appeared on a mysterious death planet, how come nobody debriefs MC to see where he has been and learned? Why doesn't the captain listen to MC, the same MC who saved humanity multiple times in his lifetime? If a nuclear device was all that was needed to destroy the alien spacecraft, why not just launch a huge fucking volley of nuclear missles at the spacecraft?
Also.
Fucking 90 billion fucking years in the future and a nuclear bomb is still the 'ultimate solve all' solution? Why not just spice things up like an anti-matter bomb or something.
But for a quick 8 hours 'turn my brain off and look at pretty colors' game, it was decently fun. Especially since I got this game for free.
I'll try to help you out here, keep in mind some of the background info is in books or the terminals you find in game and need to watch later.
So the planet was basically a Forerunner modded world with teleportation portals, like a Halo. When MC leaves, it's often by way of Cortana finding a convenient teleporter to hack into.
The bad guy of 4 is The Didact. Basic explanation: evil Forerunner (guys who created Halos because the lost to the Flood) General, with a strong dislike of humans. More detailed explanation: General in charge of Forerunner vs Human war. Humans were previously a comparable space faring power to the Forerunners, their (our) advanced technology being lost when the Forerunners beat us (because Humans had entered conflict with the Flood even before the Forerunner and couldn't win on both fronts). The Forerunner had sufficient technology to damage/devolve human genetic code back to where you'd expect to see Cromagnons and it had to start over from there. The bad memories of that war and the loss of his wife caused Didact to create the Prometheans (enemies you shoot all game) using humans as guinea pigs as anti-Flood weapons. The other Forerunner thought this more than a bit extreme and sealed him away in the place Master Chief eventually goes to in 4.
The Librarian is Didact's wife. While he was fighting the Flood, she was cataloging and taking a sample of all the life in the galaxy, in case the Forerunner decided to use the Halo (so that something could return from all the destruction). Eventually, she realized she had a choice between getting the last samples (including humans) or trying to get to a safe place to ride out the Halo activation. She chose the latter, leaving behind some kind of AI... thingy (?) a la Mass Effect to help the humans should they ever need it for some reason (say, the Flood coming back or something). The Didact couldn't understand her choice and took it as another reason to hate humans.
The Covenant. After Halo 3, the humans and the Covenant have an iffy peace between the UNSC government and the surviving Covvies who went to war against the Prophets, led by the Arbiter. Unfortunately, the Elites weren't super happy with the Arbiter's leadership AND the UNSC ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence, spies basically) wasn't ready to make nice either. So both sides do cold war moves against each other until a faction of Elites officially schism from Arbiter's leadership and begin warlike actions again, primarily wanting to get their hands on new Forerunner artifacts. This is the group you encounter on the planet and there's in game cutscenes of them making an alliance with the Promethean forces.
Additional Spartans. As depicted in Halo Reach, Spartan IIIs were a secret experiment to create cheaper, more expendable Spartans that even Halsey did not know about. With the knowledge of both programs and additional tech developed during the war, Spartan IVs became possible. The main advantage of Spartan IVs is that the procedures to get super soldiers are both safer (they don't generally damage the people unlike the huge failure rate in the IIs, they also don't require the participants to be children) and cheaper (so they can be mass produced). It's arguable whether S IVs are truly the equal of S IIs, but they're certainly a step above any other kind of UNSC infantry. Chief's lack of surprise of their existence is down to the fact that Chief doesn't really react to much of anything. He's a quiet guy.
Librarian's help not being that helpful. Yeah, this seems to be a purely plot based powerup. Maybe something will come of it in 5?
The ending. The ship captain basically wanted to abandon the current fight and return with the intelligence of what they'd found to Earth, so that other people could make decisions for him (he is a dumb coward with low command ability). Threatened by how everyone else is willing to listen to a mere Sergeant (remember Chief's rank) over him, he latches on to Cortana's now quite apparent rampancy (insanity) as a reason to not listen to Chief. Chief goes off on his own (no one even tries to stop him) to solve the problem himself. In the final fight, Chief damages Didact's concentration enough to set off the nuke. If I recall correctly, you're near a power source, so the explosion will be a chain reaction thing, as opposed to firing it from the outside at the main armor + shields of the ship. He doesn't die because Cortana takes the "Hard Light" material that has been creating bridges and walls and force fields and etc and wraps Chief up in it (with the bomb left outside) nanoseconds before the explosion. This is also how she's able to "touch" Chief at the end, by making a "body" out of it.
All questions of "debriefing" and such were handled after the game, when the UNSC weren't desperately fighting a battle to the death. The Spartan Ops campaign takes place a few months after the Halo 4 campaign, btw and you should watch the cutscenes before trying out 5.
This was really helpful. But Spartan Ops? Jesus, how many Halo games are there?
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The dropshit/ghost shenanigans level for hours!
I'll probably be more inclined to buy Halo 5 if I could play Warzone with other people from PA, so yeah, please make one.
Haven't used any sort of Xbox in over two and a half years.
Haha, didn't notice Terra in the background.
She was 20 bucks. Picked her up along with a lot of nonsense while I spent half a year teaching English in Japan.
Fun game. Though I have no idea what the fuck is going on in this game half the time.
One moment I'm on a planet, next I'm fighting i a lab, next I'm fighting Voldemort Cyber X.
I bought one of those too! It is purty.
Cause....damn.....a huge step down in presentation.
It was the best Halo.
A ranked playlist and vehicle combat that works well and clan support/ matches.
Man halo 2 era bungie knew their shit and 343 knows it. Dunno why destiny era bungie doesn't.
Ranked playlists aren't as popular as people pretend them to be.
Also, Destiny doesn't have region locked multiplayer.
Clan support is up to First Party. Bungie WANTS clans. First party on both sides don't like clans and limit their functionality when a game has one. Halo 5's Spartan Companies are pretty much the same as Destiny, groups you make that show up in-game.
ODST is my favorite single player experience in the entire series (thus far).
Well one game was made by dudes who knew what they were doing.
#not343
I pretty much avoided all of the ranked playlists in Halo 3. It's a shame too, since SWAT was actually fun when it was an unranked playlist.
I think that's kind of unfair. The first game made by a studio new to the franchise is never going to be as good as the games coming out of a studio that's made 5 games in that franchise, that they invented.
It's certainly better than the first Halo, which seems like a better point of comparison.
I'm still angry they forced BTB into ranked only in Halo 3.
That was a jackass move on their part.
Ranked BTB in Halo 3 was around for a very short time - it tanked so badly that it was the direct cause of Bungie never trying to save tanking playlists with DEXP again.
For most of it's run BTB was unranked in H3.
You must be thinking of another playlist?
Biggest complaint with Halo 4 was the narrative. I have no idea how Chief went from being on a planet to being on a space lab outside of 'magic'. And who exactly is this space Voldemort? Why does space Voldemort hate humanity so much? Who the fuck is this LIbarian? If the libarian 'evolved' MC, why isn't there any changes to gameplay? What exactly was change in the evolution? Why didn't the evolution protect MC from Space Voldemort space magic the second time around? Why exactly is this group of covenant trying to kill me? How come the Covenant and the promethians all of a sudden has an alliance? How exactly did Cortana stopped space Voldemort psychic powers? Seriously, who the fuck is this Space Voldemort? How the fuck did Chief being in ground zero of a nuclear device that destroyed fucking everything? Why are there Spartans all of a sudden? Why the captain of the ship just abandon the war, leaving a threat to humanity behind to attack earth? What happened to the captain? Why did they introduce more spartans, but don't give any reaction to meeting MC? If MC was gone for 4 years and just appeared on a mysterious death planet, how come nobody debriefs MC to see where he has been and learned? Why doesn't the captain listen to MC, the same MC who saved humanity multiple times in his lifetime? If a nuclear device was all that was needed to destroy the alien spacecraft, why not just launch a huge fucking volley of nuclear missles at the spacecraft?
Also.
Fucking 90 billion fucking years in the future and a nuclear bomb is still the 'ultimate solve all' solution? Why not just spice things up like an anti-matter bomb or something.
But for a quick 8 hours 'turn my brain off and look at pretty colors' game, it was decently fun. Especially since I got this game for free.
Uh, call me crazy, but didn't people go from ODST into Reach? Besides the fact that, unlike Halo 4, they were produced by the same company.
To be honest, I'm pretty sure my overall experience with Reach is one of the reasons I liked Halo 4 as much as I did.
Or did everyone just write-off Reach entirely and pretend it didn't exist? Because while I'm not that disappointed with it, I could kind of see why...
Did 343 get complete access to Reach or just the MP?
Because they didn't just make a new product.
ODST>Reach>2>3>1
I enjoyed ODST more but still played the shit out of Reach.
All hail the Church of Armor Lock!
Twitch Wed-Sun, 2-5pm CST
The only thing 343 touched in Reach was a patch that changed up some weapon/melee values. Everything else in the game is pure Bungie.
EDIT - ahh, and added 7 maps from Halo: Anniversary Edition into Reach MP. So all told, since they changed up weapon values, I'm not sure if "complete access" was needed, since that kind of stuff can be handled with a simple .ini file edit.
That's a perfectly reasonable opinion--in fact, I agree, I enjoyed ODST much more than Reach, I just didn't like Reach--but it feels like a lot of people were treating it as though we went directly from ODST (which itself felt radically different from 3) directly to 4, and ignoring Reach, which personally I thought was markedly inferior to 4. The only strength I'd give it over it, in fact, would be its horde mode (and the novelty of that one mission in the fighter)
I just know that coming from Reach, which was extremely rough around the edges, even to the point of feeling unfinished (and had some truly shitty cooperative AI) to Halo 4, I immediately was struck by 1) how amazingly better 4 looked and 2) how better everything worked mechanically.
But opinions, etc.
Nah. I stopped playing Halo 3 around the time they made it ranked so I wasn't there when they reverted it.
I'll try to help you out here, keep in mind some of the background info is in books or the terminals you find in game and need to watch later.
So the planet was basically a Forerunner modded world with teleportation portals, like a Halo. When MC leaves, it's often by way of Cortana finding a convenient teleporter to hack into.
The bad guy of 4 is The Didact. Basic explanation: evil Forerunner (guys who created Halos because they were losing to the Flood) General, with a strong dislike of humans. More detailed explanation: General in charge of Forerunner vs Human war. Humans were previously a comparable space faring power to the Forerunners, their (our) advanced technology being lost when the Forerunners beat us (because Humans had entered conflict with the Flood even before the Forerunner and couldn't win on both fronts). The Forerunner had sufficient technology to damage/devolve human genetic code back to where you'd expect to see Cromagnons and it had to start over from there. The bad memories of that war and the loss of his wife caused Didact to create the Prometheans (enemies you shoot all game) using humans as guinea pigs as anti-Flood weapons. The other Forerunner thought this more than a bit extreme and sealed him away in the place Master Chief eventually goes to in 4.
The Librarian is Didact's wife. While he was fighting the Flood, she was cataloging and taking a sample of all the life in the galaxy, in case the Forerunner decided to use the Halo (so that something could return from all the destruction). Eventually, she realized she had a choice between getting the last samples (including humans) or trying to get to a safe place to ride out the Halo activation. She chose the latter, leaving behind some kind of AI... thingy (?) a la Mass Effect to help the humans should they ever need it for some reason (say, the Flood coming back or something). The Didact couldn't understand her choice and took it as another reason to hate humans.
The Covenant. After Halo 3, the humans and the Covenant have an iffy peace between the UNSC government and the surviving Covvies who went to war against the Prophets, led by the Arbiter. Unfortunately, the Elites weren't super happy with the Arbiter's leadership AND the UNSC ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence, spies basically) wasn't ready to make nice either. So both sides do cold war moves against each other until a faction of Elites officially schism from Arbiter's leadership and begin warlike actions again, primarily wanting to get their hands on new Forerunner artifacts. This is the group you encounter on the planet and there's in game cutscenes of them making an alliance with the Promethean forces.
Additional Spartans. As depicted in Halo Reach, Spartan IIIs were a secret experiment to create cheaper, more expendable Spartans that even Halsey did not know about. With the knowledge of both programs and additional tech developed during the war, Spartan IVs became possible. The main advantage of Spartan IVs is that the procedures to get super soldiers are both safer (they don't generally damage the people unlike the huge failure rate in the IIs, they also don't require the participants to be children) and cheaper (so they can be mass produced). It's arguable whether S IVs are truly the equal of S IIs, but they're certainly a step above any other kind of UNSC infantry. Chief's lack of surprise of their existence is down to the fact that Chief doesn't really react to much of anything. He's a quiet guy.
Librarian's help not being that helpful. Yeah, this seems to be a purely plot based powerup. Maybe something will come of it in 5?
The ending. The ship captain basically wanted to abandon the current fight and return with the intelligence of what they'd found to Earth, so that other people could make decisions for him (he is a dumb coward with low command ability). Threatened by how everyone else is willing to listen to a mere Sergeant (remember Chief's rank) over him, he latches on to Cortana's now quite apparent rampancy (insanity) as a reason to not listen to Chief. Chief goes off on his own (no one even tries to stop him) to solve the problem himself. In the final fight, Chief damages Didact's concentration enough to set off the nuke. If I recall correctly, you're near a power source, so the explosion will be a chain reaction thing, as opposed to firing it from the outside at the main armor + shields of the ship. He doesn't die because Cortana takes the "Hard Light" material that has been creating bridges and walls and force fields and etc and wraps Chief up in it (with the bomb left outside) nanoseconds before the explosion. This is also how she's able to "touch" Chief at the end, by making a "body" out of it.
All questions of "debriefing" and such were handled after the game, when the UNSC weren't desperately fighting a battle to the death. The Spartan Ops campaign takes place a few months after the Halo 4 campaign, btw and you should watch the cutscenes before trying out 5.
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Ranked BTB went from January 2008 to around August 2008. Social Big Team existed alongside it for that entire time. Then Ranked BTB became Squad Battle (6v6) which itself was later killed off due to low population.
Social Big Team was renamed to DLC Big Team, then after a while it was reverted back to not requiring DLC, then there was a Mythic Big Team that was unranked for a while, but existed alongside Social Big Team, and was killed because everyone had most of their playlist EXP in the regular one.
The customization options in Halo 4 were bleh compared to Reach (due to the gating)... the RNG drops were awkward, but different. ODST was just a fun campaign in general, but the MP was just Halo 3.
I like how you know that.
Pistol and assault rifle.
This was really helpful. But Spartan Ops? Jesus, how many Halo games are there?