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object279apocalypsetank-blog · 6 years ago

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Halo Rant! (trigger warning, I get rather emotional and emphatic in some parts here complete with insults and some degree of cursing so if you’re emotionally delicate this may not be good for you to read)

So, if Tumblr is known for one thing in my experience, it’s triggered people. And in that spirit, here is something that has been triggering the everloving fuck out of me - the recent state of Halo and the beliefs of some of the Halo fandom. Before you start labeling me Anita Sarkeensian 2: Electric Boogaloo - no, what has be in such a fuss has nothing to do with identity politics or SJW insanity. This instead is me being beyond fed up with (1) the piss-poor decisions that hampered Halo 4 and ruined Halo 5, and (2) purist elements of the fan base crying about some new elements that I personally love.

Starting with the first point, especially in Halo 5, Halo doesn’t feel like Halo in the new trilogy and not in a good way.

In the original Halo: Combat Evolved especially but in all the Bungie productions (2, 3, ODST, Reach) to some extent as well, Halo was awesome because it was a versatile environment strewn with a variety of interesting weapons, toys, gadgets, and associated hijinks to take down a variety of enemies in a variety of disparate and fun ways. Individual engagements were very short, almost NEVER lasting a minute and usually not lasting even 30 seconds, but packed into that short time was a great deal of intensity, variety, and some complexity mixed together in a well-made formula that made these engagements, well... engaging, I guess. There were also various power-ups you could run across that could give additional benefits, such as active camouflage that could make you invisible for long enough to sneak into an utterly dominant position against a tough group of enemies and pick them off without them getting a fix on your location, or overshields if you wanted the extra durability needed survive an aggressive frontal assault on those enemies instead. Moreover, the location of all of these things tended to be cleverly laid out so that what was available to you in a given location would give you a variety of equally fun ways that were effective against the local challenges. I’ve heard Halo CE described as a sandbox before, even.

In Halo 3, deployable equipment came into play. Bubble shields, deployable barrier shields, land mines, radar jammers, and more liberally strewn around the levels added new potential complexity to your strategy while none were objectively vital to your success. Halo Reach brought reusable armor abilities to the table, like a reusable bubble shield that healed you, reusable active camo, sprinting, and jetpacks, which had previously been in Halo but only used by AI-controlled enemies. Again, I was personally fine with this. There’s a part in one mission in Halo Reach where you HAVE to use a jetpack to progress, but it’s very obviously there as a tutorial. I was even fine with Halo 4’s two types of armor mods, in fact I’d have liked to have had a way for the Chief to use them in the campaign. And indeed, one of the very few things that Halo 5 did right in my opinion is Spartan Abilities - because it makes sense that Spartans (who can might I remind you flip tanks and in the lore run faster than cheetahs and have literally dodged bullets) can perform some level of powerful acrobatic feats for combat usage. I’m bringing all of this up to show that these new abilities didn’t detract from the Halo experience, just to be clear, it’ll be important later.

However, Halo 4 is far more linear-feeling then most any Halo to come before it, and Halo 5 was even worse. One of the most damning things for me in the campaign is the fact that suddenly for the first time weapons dropped by slain foes despawn very quickly once you’re at least a very short distance away.

Take for instance in Halo 4 the mission with the Mammoth where, actually right after you dismount it and run into all those Jackal snipers. Were it not for this mechanic, I could (and would) pick off the first few snipers with a line of sight to my entrance to the area, before jetpacking up there and using their dropped beam rifles to pick off the other Jackal snipers and any other foes in immediate range, such as those at the initial entrance to the nearby Forerunner plaza. And then, I could go back and pick up the nice heavy weapons I took off the Mammoth where I left and proceed from there. Instead, I get use of maybe two beam rifles each with 10 shots at absolute maximum, and if I leave the weapons I swapped out for them too far away for more than a few seconds then they’re gone forever.

This, especially when combined with the massively limited ammo of so many Halo 4 weapons, so heavily hamstrings your options in the campaign, and the weapon despawning is still an issue in multiplayer. Weapons found on racks and such don’t despawn but that ultimately just railroads you into whatever few weapons have abundant ammo racks or immediate enemy drops in the immediate area, unless you want to play on Easy where you can actually melee everything and live (which would be easier if the energy swords didn’t follow Halo Reach’s mistake of costing 10% charge per use). The Prometheans are fun, but in a game that lacks Sentinels (as in-gameplay combatants anyway), the Flood, Brutes, Drones, Scarabs, and more, they barely compensate and that’s only because of how short the campaign is. Halo 5 also has the weapon despawn problem.

Sadly, what good there is in the new trilogy is almost universally soured as a rule due to the new art style. Some of the Forerunner buildings, some UNSC capital starships, and the Halo 4 depiction of the Prometheans and their weapons are the only things I think look objectively good at any given time, though some other things especially in Halo 4 look good with varying degrees of frequency, such as the Battle Rifle in Halo 4. The fact of the matter is that most of everything looks like something out of a particularly childish superhero anime. Often, this comes at the expense of what visibly looks and would be actually functional.

My biggest example of this is the armor design. Although Halo CE and Halo 2 didn’t have good enough graphics to really show much in detail aside from armor players over some type of thick under-layer, Halo Reach definitely did and Halo 3 also did to some extent if you looked closely. I adore the armor design in Halo Reach - here, the black underlayer is clearly shown to be additional, interlocking plates of armor beneath the iconic separated thick outer plates. Yet these armor layers are comprehensively hinged and segmented to allow freedom of movement. That, and Halo Reach’s beautiful yet gritty graphics were at their finest with Spartan armor. Though not advanced enough to show this beautiful level of detail, an observant viewer could make out segments and plates in Halo 3’s Spartan armor to see that they had a similar design imperative there. In a similar fashion, Sangheili armor also had interlocking, fully covering layers (barring the face save for a few versions), and even in the original games, it was clearly a fully-encompassing suit of armor. Similarly, the rest of the Covenant generally had functional armor that at least covered most of their bodies, barring a few exceptions like Drones.

In Halo 4 and 5, Spartan armor looks like someone violently detonated a deformed, mechanical version of Godzilla, then half-assedly glued some of the pieces here and there to a diving suit. The underlayer might have been meant to look like chainmail or something but it really just doesn’t work for me visually and gives the impression that only the outer plates offer any protection. On the Elites this gets even worse, with the outer plates being the only part of the armor leaving exposed skin everywhere! Similar issues persist with most other 343 “armor,” the most grevious offense being the basically naked Brutes from Halo 2 Anniversary. I don’t know why they’re so bent on armor only being a few disparate plates here and there but it just doesn’t work - it looks stupid and clearly lacks functionality. That, and the way they animated it all looks, once again, like something out of a childish anime. I especially miss the old Grunts, someone get rid of these weird shitty little frogmen that have replaced them. The Prometheans in Halo 4 looked incredibly cool and were some of the few entities in said game that genuinely looked like something made to be viewed by the over-12, but then they ruined that in Halo 5 by making them look like shitty ripoffs of the T-800 Terminator that were made once again for some very childish anime.

Many of the vehicles look dumber as well. I like the old Warthog’s lines better, I’ll just be frank. And Halo 5’s attempt at a Wraith tank leaves gaping weakpoints to either side of the crew compartment whereas the original Wraith presented a thick, rounded lump of armor to the front, and again the end effect looks stupid, ineffective, and childish. I get what they were going for with the fighter jet feel to the new Pelican’s cockpit, but the original spacious cockpit with access to the crew compartment makes much more sense and we all know it - the afterburners and strapped on weapon racks are a nice touch, though. But I miss the old boarding ramp and the crew compartment turret. I also miss the Halo 3-Reach design for the Shade Turret, which looked cooler, offered more protection and easier access for the operator, and looked able to carry heavier weapons.

I also like the old sound effects of Halo more than the new ones, for the most part, barring Promethean weapons which are new anyway. And I miss aliens talking in English, the humor of Grunt insults trumps the half-assed attempt at “atmosphere” in having them make weird alien sounds every time. Sure, Halo Reach started that trend, not the new trilogy, but it should never have been repeated.

I mean, sure, Cortana is smoking hot at least in Halo 4, but... do you really think that your audience is horny and lonely enough for one great holographic blue ass to distract us from the nauseating graphics going on around said ass? Besides, if I wanted to play a game mainly for scantily-clad women, then I’d be playing World of Warcraft, not Halo.

Speaking of Cortana, Halo 5’s story. OH GOD MAKE IT STOP. Killing Cortana in Halo 4 was ballsy but was also executed quite well, like the rest of Halo 4’s story. Then they threw Halo 4’s villain (the Didact, who by the way survived Halo 4) out the window, made Halo 4’s plot meaningless by resurrecting Cortana as a villain, gave her an accomplice (the Warden Eternal) who was miniboss material at most, and jumped on the ridiculously over-filled bandwagon of AI rebellion scenarios. Halo previously had a fascinating take on AI that had them too occupied with intellectual pursuits to care about seizing power, but then Halo 5 just had to be like every fucking other setting with AI instead of staying in the nice unique little niche it already had! For fucks sake, come on 343! Maybe some AI acting out on their own, just like humans desert or rebel sometimes, might give a Halo spin to AI rebellion, but nooooooo, it has to be super-hacking AI with a sinister plot of total control using secret advanced weapons like the previous trillion times that exact thing has been done.

Some people dislike how the Chief talks more in the new trilogy, but that’s to some degree just because he now says some things out of cutscenes. I don’t see the problem with this - well I do, but only with the risk of taking it too far. Let’s face it, if they tried to make the Chief a talkative guy spewing one-liners like Sergeant Johnson, it would ruin the character. But having him say things that are relevant to combat (discussing with officers/Cortana about the nature of an objective, ordering local Marines to perform a certain action, etc.) is fine and occasionally even having him show some emotion like in Halo 4 is alright, Halo 4 hit the sweet spot and Halo 5 didn’t take it all that much into the too-far region. Chief is a man of few words, so what he says will be carefully-selected, but he ultimately isn’t an utterly silent robot. On that note, Fireteam Osiris was a perfectly good idea, and only was annoying because of the general poor script of Halo 5 combined with 343 being visibly unsure whether they wanted main characters, side characters, or background characters. Also, Blue Team working with the Chief should’ve been a thing from the start, it’s one of the few things done cleanly right by Halo 5.

And yet, while all of these problems are indeed problems and make the new trilogy not feel like Halo very much, there is another group that pisses me off far, far more than this. Apparently, some people think that being able to sprint WHILE PLAYING A SUPER FAST AND SUPERSTRONG CYBORG SUPERSOLDIER makes Halo not feel like Halo. Apparently, being able to do literally anything at all that you couldn’t do in Halo CE - be it equipment, sprinting, armor abilities, Spartan abilities, or armor mods - ruins the game. Some of these people are diehard challenge junkies who think that having more HP and abilities than a Grunt is heresy, sure, but some people are just weird, mentally challenged purists. For some reason, a notable amount of people have latched onto the fallacy that it was the primitive original movement system, not the variety and choice, that made Halo so great. Apparently, being able to do more than an ass-normal Marine who happens to have an energy shield is some great sin. IF I WANTED TO PLAY AS A NORMAL SOLDIER, I’D BE PLAYING CALL OF DUTY YOU IDIOTIC LUDDITES! All of these extra things, in a well-designed, open, not strictly linear mission, only add to the Halo-style campaign experience, and having these things only greatly increases the potential variety of multiplayer games!

These same people also cry about the new depictions of Spartans kicking Elite ass, when this is how good they were in the lore and it took a high-ranking Elite, not any Elite, to match a Spartan. They are of course too blinded by nostalgia to notice the Chief tearing through army after army of Elites.

This sheer hatred of anything new is so goddamned infuriating to me. WHAAAAAAAAAA! SPARTANS ARE SHOWN DOING THINGS THAT A GAME ENGINE FROM 17 YEARS AGO WASN’T ADVANCED ENOUGH TO LET THEM DO! WHAAAAAAAAAA! Fuck off, you stagnant imbeciles. As I said earlier, if you want to play a normal soldier then go to Call of Duty and join up with their whiny purists instead. And the worst part is that their bitching distracts attention away from the real problems with the new Halo trilogy’s direction in favor of whining about being able to do things not featured in Halo CE.

I on the other hand WANT variety, the “open sandbox” feel that makes Halo so great. I would love a game with Halo CE’s powerups, Halo 3’s equipment, Halo Reach’s armor abilities (though they’re in Halo 4 as well), Halo 4’s armor mods (both types), and Halo 5’s Spartan abilities, all with dramatically more versions of all of these added in and more weapons, vehicles, and enemies than all previous games combined (with no weapon despawn and much more ammo capacity too). But this is only any good with the much superior Halo Reach art style, and with an open, versatile level design with a long, long campaign tested exhaustively to be fun at every turn with a wide variety of approaches. A game with literally hundreds of enormous (like Forge World enormous) multiplayer maps, with all non-player entities able to be spawned (as either friendly, hostile, defensive, or even aligned to one specific player team) into a huge variety of hugely customizable game modes, and said gamemodes can even have scripted events set to happen at scripted times, and ONE WHERE WE CAN PLAY AS ELITES AGAIN. Likely play as Brutes and Prometheans too, or maybe play as everything and let 500 people play as Grunts in a massive free-for-all. Also with a huge degree of armor customization, with every inch being entirely modular and split into a great many individual customizable parts with upwards of hundreds of options each. That and have a good story.

But with corporate greed pulling towards short, linear campaigns with a weak story, limited multiplayer with so much less feeling of variety and long-term enjoyment, and all of this in an annoying and stupid art style, and with screeching Luddite manchildren pulling towards shitting out perfect clones of Halo Combat Evolved every few years, I am left in the middle. I have tried to be optimistic for so long, but my patience with this issue is very much now at its end and I am something beyond furious with the state of things. If and when SJW politics find their way into Halo someday, the situation will only get worse. And so I’ll be left here, playing the Bungie Halo games as well as some great fan mods (SPV3 most notably), and cursing the names of CE purists, 343 Industries, and hardline SJWs alike. Someone help.

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