Story wise the thing's a wreck. If we were to compare the fantasy elements of the previous halos to say... A song of ice and fire's universe (the books that game of thrones was based on).. which is to say realistic + a fair few things that wouldn't realy count as such. halo 4 would be comparable to warcraft's universe. Which is to say that Bungie goes to some length to justify a lot of their halo universe with scientific theories and some logical reasoning. 343 just throws exalted magic bullshit in your face.
Examples include:
Every single use of hard light, apart from bridges and the occasional hologram projection.
The librarian's planning for you to come and the idea that ideas can be inserted into genes to be activated at the right time.
The need for the composer to get a new conciousness for every Promethean made. Just grab one and clone him a bazzilion times and stop being such a prick about it.
The whole motivation for the covenant.
The prophets were much better badguys than the didact.
On top of that there are some aweful art changes. Some things look shit, others might look ok.. but look illogically designed. There's no sense of awe or mystery in the art style. Some things are more 'badass' but that really wasn't bungie's intention. I mean in halo you had that lovely ring in the backround. In halo 2 you had the prophets talking to the arbiter, in halo 3 you had all sorts of wonderful things, In reach you had a unique and primitive landscape. Halo 4 is rocks inside the deathstar.
The covenant look radicaly different.
Forerunner buildings have fucking lights everywhere as if the game ports levels from Tron. It realy takes away the sense of discovery since nothing feels abandoned or old.
Everyone in the unsc has an american accent. The united nations space command is composed of one nation. There's one human who doesn't sound american in the entire game. The marines were fucked over in visual design too. Their armour looks very different and for no notable reason.
The begining cutscene implies that all spartans wore john's armour since the mark iv and that the covenant always looked like how the storm do. Most of the armour premautions simply don't fit halo.
The pelican is no longer the pelican. The broadsword looks like someone grabed a plane from the 70's and threw future thingies on
Conventions like all plasma bolt weapons (pistol,rifle,mounted cannon etc) being made between things rather than coming out of a barrel (storm rifle) are broken. It's minor but to some people it's rather like a turtle without a shell.
The warthog sounds. Oh why?
It's as if 343 wanted to insult bungie by changing shit for no reason other than to make halo their own- which is invalid as fuck because they didn't fucking make halo and they haven't made the game better. They might as well have called the game something different and outside of that universe.
The game takes far too much inspiration from cod. Don't think it does? There's a scene in the campaign where you're a fucking predator missile. But gameplay wise it's absolute bollocks to have custom loadouts which you unlock. there's no option to turn of sprint in custom games... is there even custom games?
I mean. Custom games is neutered, forge is half of what reach gave us, firefight is gone and the theatre isn't working for everything. We have spartan opps now, but the first five chapters could have been made in forge and the gamemode lets you spawn and spawn again and legendary isn't a fun difficulty (the Ai are far too stupid and have far to much health to compensate) The ai is totally shit. it's STILL a miracle if a banshee doesn't think it can fly through a wall.
Examples include:
Every single use of hard light, apart from bridges and the occasional hologram projection.
The librarian's planning for you to come and the idea that ideas can be inserted into genes to be activated at the right time.
The need for the composer to get a new conciousness for every Promethean made. Just grab one and clone him a bazzilion times and stop being such a prick about it.
The whole motivation for the covenant.
The prophets were much better badguys than the didact.
On top of that there are some aweful art changes. Some things look shit, others might look ok.. but look illogically designed. There's no sense of awe or mystery in the art style. Some things are more 'badass' but that really wasn't bungie's intention. I mean in halo you had that lovely ring in the backround. In halo 2 you had the prophets talking to the arbiter, in halo 3 you had all sorts of wonderful things, In reach you had a unique and primitive landscape. Halo 4 is rocks inside the deathstar.
The covenant look radicaly different.
Forerunner buildings have fucking lights everywhere as if the game ports levels from Tron. It realy takes away the sense of discovery since nothing feels abandoned or old.
Everyone in the unsc has an american accent. The united nations space command is composed of one nation. There's one human who doesn't sound american in the entire game. The marines were fucked over in visual design too. Their armour looks very different and for no notable reason.
The begining cutscene implies that all spartans wore john's armour since the mark iv and that the covenant always looked like how the storm do. Most of the armour premautions simply don't fit halo.
The pelican is no longer the pelican. The broadsword looks like someone grabed a plane from the 70's and threw future thingies on
Conventions like all plasma bolt weapons (pistol,rifle,mounted cannon etc) being made between things rather than coming out of a barrel (storm rifle) are broken. It's minor but to some people it's rather like a turtle without a shell.
The warthog sounds. Oh why?
It's as if 343 wanted to insult bungie by changing shit for no reason other than to make halo their own- which is invalid as fuck because they didn't fucking make halo and they haven't made the game better. They might as well have called the game something different and outside of that universe.
The game takes far too much inspiration from cod. Don't think it does? There's a scene in the campaign where you're a fucking predator missile. But gameplay wise it's absolute bollocks to have custom loadouts which you unlock. there's no option to turn of sprint in custom games... is there even custom games?
I mean. Custom games is neutered, forge is half of what reach gave us, firefight is gone and the theatre isn't working for everything. We have spartan opps now, but the first five chapters could have been made in forge and the gamemode lets you spawn and spawn again and legendary isn't a fun difficulty (the Ai are far too stupid and have far to much health to compensate) The ai is totally shit. it's STILL a miracle if a banshee doesn't think it can fly through a wall.