I'd argue that two of the three Halo games do not have a foozle. Halo 1 ends with you destroying the engines of your own ship and then racing against time to escape it. The ship itself is certainly not a boss or an archvillain of any kind, and the combat challenges you face in this section are no different than elsewhere in the game; it lacks the arbitrary nature of most real boss fights-- where enemies are only vulnerable to certain weapons, in certain spots, at certain times, or under certain conditions, and exhibit a resistance to damage on a scale completely out of whack with ordinary units.DannibalG36 said:Apparently, Kaiser missed the Halo train. I would like to posit that Halo: Combat Evolved, one of the most significant shooters ever made (if not THE most significant) did not have a final boss. Yet, the ending is still thrilling as all get out.
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Of Halo 2's dual plot threads, the Arbiter's showdown with Tartarus is a boss fight. He's arbitrarily only vulnerable under certain conditions, and has been the primary antagonist throughout most of the game's plot. There's also the fight against the Prophet of Regret that is an arbitrary boss fight, although Regret doesn't really qualify as an archvillain.
Halo 3 perhaps deserves an asterisk. While the final level does include a showdown with an old friend before repeating the race-to-escape sequence, and that combat sequence is arbitrary (target only vulnerable to one weapon) the difficulty of the encounter is so low that in nearly qualifies as an interactive cutscene rather than true combat. In addition, the conflict between that character and the player, while it stretches back to the first game, is not that of hero and archvillain, but more an organic situation that evolves between characters with different agendas. Gravemind and the Prophet of Truth both qualify as better foozles, and although your actions do lead to the death of both, one is killed as a result of your final action (a button press) and the other is killed by a friendly NPC during a cutscene.