Halo's "Reclaimer Trilogy" Expands Into A Saga
- Thread starter Earnest Cavalli
- Start date
I dont know that there is much to say about this. Not to sound pompous or anything but I kind of thought this was going to be another beat the franchise long after it should have died situations. I liked Halo 3 a lot but in my opinion that is where they peaked. Sure 343 had a few good things in Halo 4 but not enough to really make it anything more than it was, the beginning of a long drawn out and sad end. I tend to hold the opinion that it is better to give something a good end earlier on and preserve its dignity.
Man, am I the one that really liked the Kilo-Five books? Every comment about them I've seen online has been bashing them, but I liked them better than most of the earlier-era books. (I will agree that she took the Spartans from Ghosts of Onyx in a weird direction, but K5 itself was great)Gearhead mk2 said:
As for the ongoing mission of the Starship Infinity...it would make me more excited if I hadn't essentially already decided I wasn't getting an Xbox One. The most I'll be doing with the Halo games if they don't take it back to the PC (and, let's be honest, there's no way they're going back to PC) is playing the campaigns co-op (and Spartan Ops, if they run it back - I loved SpOps), so I will never be able to enjoy whatever changes they make to Forge, multiplayer, etc. Unless they finally add in Space Battles (two campaign missions around it and no gametype yet? Really?), because then I'll take every opportunity I can to play, short of actually buying the console.
Oh, from your original post, I'd assumed that you believe it had already fit into that role, but if we're talking about milking a game, I think that the discussion should be limited to annual franchises, like the Assassin's Creed games,COD, or battlefield(both of which I still have a good interest in). I mean, Assassin's Creed will have the same amount of games as Halo next year, and Halo began in 2001(six years before AC). Halo has a lot more care put into it than other successful franchises that are respected on this site and on less snooty sites. The belief that the series is going stale is an opinion I can respect, but calling it milked right now is shameful, seeing as so much time is put into every game, and the series is willing to explore story telling styles like in ODST and expand into extended universe like in the new series. Once it becomes yearly however and no clear improvement is seen within an installment, I will abandon ship.MiskWisk said:
The first trilogy was really a saga itself, anyways. Three prime games, two branch-offs, and the final bow of Ensemble Studios with Halo Wars. Wouldn't shock me at all if we see more of the same pattern. That being said, I'm surprised that what HASN'T come up here much is the video itself. He's not holding a dog-tag, that's Cortana's AI matrix. We probably haven't seen the end of her just yet.Korten12 said:
why is the guy who is wearing a super set of advanced armor, also wearing a cloak, also why is he shielding his eyes when the visor does that.
As do I but sadly I have to say don't get your hopes up, something tells me the only form the once proud Sangheili are going to be taking in this 'new saga' is going to be evil ugly aliens at best and the ugly corpses our noble heroes stand on at worst.Soviet Heavy said:
I'm really annoyed at 343 about this, how does one go from this:
To this:
With almost no one in the game questioning it and it never being explored again. After all that time and characterization the elites are just back to being enemies again and the entire story arc of the Arbiter counts for nothing. Honestly after that scene of Thel Vadam shaking hands with Hood and seeing the elites portrayed with humanity and personality and the general theme it was being built towards in the Bungie lore being one of redemption after realizing the fault of their ways I really can't see Halo 4's contribution to the Sangheili as anything other than a regression and a really depressing one to boot. There was so much potential for interesting story and character for both Sangheili and human there and it was squandered in the name of maintaining a status quo.
I wish I could be proven wrong about this but practically every new thing in Halo even tangentially relating to the elites only buries them worse and worse. There was a spark of true greatness in the Arbiter and 343 have done just about everything they can to stamp it out
I agree completely about the Didact, putting aside the fact that casual fans who you know maybe didn't search for every single stupid terminal in Halo 3 because they didn't know/care enough to do so is now left completely in the dark as to who this guy is, he is a totally boring villain. An ominipotent god alien vampire thing who spouts out bullshit about power and control and racial dominance and who is completely unexplained. He has nothing on the Prophet of Truth in terms of being able to resonate real emotion in the audience. Truth was a guy you despised as he casually orders the mass genocide of humanity, betrays the elites and even his own friends to achieve total dominance and power. And yet even though he is clearly smart and manipulative he ultimately fails because he believes his own bullshit as much as his followers do and that's what gets him killed. We watch him from when he was at his most powerful and slowly see the Covenant crumble around him until the very end of his fanatical 'journey'. When he finally gets executed (by the Arbiter, the sacred hero of the Covenant, IRONY!!) he has had his army decimated, his troops destroyed, his fleet gone, his political power gone and even his physical form deteriorating from a flood infection. And yet he still crazily believes in the great Journey right up until the point where the Arbiter throws away his crown and stabs him in the heart.Polarity27 said:
The Didact spouts some vaguely god-like bullshit, has a very poorly defined backstory and throws some stuff around then gets blown up. Wow.
That's the problem with having what is basically GOD as your villain, Truth was evil as hell but still clearly humanized. He was physically weak and obviously crazy. He was still a credible threat because of the power and influence he had over the Covenant but we the audience could at least understand him to be mortal and could at least understand his motivation which makes for a compelling antagonist.
The Didact by contrast is just boring and confusing.
Pretty much agree with you on everything else about Halo 4, ugly aesthetics, dumb plot directions and really uninteresting humans. I keep rooting for Jul Mdama to win in Spartan Ops just so I don't have to listen to the Spartan IV's babble around like idiots.
343 did do some things right, the dialogue between Chief and Cortana was pretty good from what I've seen but I really think if they are going to go 'saga' they need to fix some stuff up.
Not wishing to offend you personally but I have numerous problems with Kilo five, but thankfully someone else expressed them for me.AliasBot said:
http://a1792.deviantart.com/journal/Why-I-dislike-Glasslands-Kilo-5-Part-1-361761200
http://a1792.deviantart.com/journal/Why-I-dislike-Glasslands-Kilo-5-Part-2-361761618
Not wishing to be offensive or anything, if you like it that's cool but I thought I should give the other perspective too.
I treid reading Glasslands. BB was great, Kilo 5 was great, the expleration of Elite society was great. I loved all that. But the "heroes" are essentially planning an Elite genocide, there are a whole bunch of lore incosistencies, and the sheer amount of times people insisted on Halsley being a monster for the SPARTAN-II program (Includinmg the people who WORKED WITH HER ON IT and Halsley herself) got to the point where I realised it was just the author venting her spleen at Halsley and I put the book down because I couldn't take it anymore.AliasBot said:
It only enforces the "check list" approach to design that they're taking. It's as though they're looking at the list of tropes that the "lone hero" must have, and included them all in the trailer:Drizzitdude said:
- unknown cloaked figure wandering through nondescript wasteland? check!
- ambiguity about whether or not he is walking toward something, or roaming aimlessly? check
- a monolithic challenge (literally) rising before him? check
- ambiguity about whether or not this is what he was searching for all along, or if this is something unexpected that he must now overcome his isolation in order to defeat? check
- remove cloak (totally unnecessary seeing has how he has powered armor much better served at protecting him from the elements than the shroud could ever hope to be) to reveal familiar, yet unexpected, protagonist? check!
The trailer, as I suspect the game and the franchise, appear to be very "paint by numbers."
I gotta say the members of Kilo five really do have some nerve. They take a moral stand against Halsey while they are involved in a plot to go behind their government's back to destabilize an ally of the human race and an entire alien government, arming a group of fundamental terrorists to do so all the while aiding in a plot to ultimately bring about the systematic genocide of an entire race down to the last child and they have the gall to get shitty at Halsey?Gearhead mk2 said:
I'm sorry but if they can rationalize all of that shit with 'the ends justify the means' they have no right to get mad about a few kids that were experimented on.
Apart from BB and maybe Adj the only one I like is Phillips because he seems like the only one who might ever have something resembling a redemptive character arc. The rest of them are just xenophobic empty headed yes men who should be tried and executed as war criminals, since by definition that's what Kilo 5 is.
The problem with this is its author. The essay you linked to was interesting (although dude really needs to learn how to structure an essay, first one was all over the place and hard to read) and I agree with him, but you really have to take Traviss' crap as an entirety for what's really going on to be more clear-- she has an agenda. She always has the *same* agenda, in fact, what she's doing in Halo is the same crap she pulled in Star Wars. She's got this idea in her head that the canons she writes for are simplistic and their morality childish* and she's going to dark-n-gritty it up and make it more "realistic", something only she can do because SHE, you understand, was a JOURNO. And a journalist automagically understands real life politics in a way a mere fiction writer does not, and she cut & pastes her fury and Bush and Blair into every god. damned. thing. she writes, regardless of whether it makes any sense or not. She picks a Hated Foe to stand in for Bush and Blair (the Jedi in SW and Halsey in Halo), and the other characters stop being characters and start being finger-puppets for her issue-fiction, excoriating the Hated Foe regardless of whether it makes sense or whether they're just as bad. She also has a Thing for Proud Warrior Race Guys as favored finger-puppets, it sounds like the Sangheili are given the same treatment as the Mandalorians (that were, y'know, a lot more interesting and morally complicated before she got her hands on them).Vrex360 said:
What I absolutely cannot forgive about Halo 4 is 343 compounding the mistake they made hiring her in the first place by canonizing the Traviss-ty and elevating her shitty, shitty worldbuilding way beyond where it ever should have been allowed to go.
*-the hell of this is that as far as Star Wars goes she's not wrong. Where she *is* wrong is that her stuff has the same black-and-white morality that she hates about what she writes for, it's just different people wearing the white hats. Stover, now, actually did the thing she set out to do (in "Traitor") and did it beautifully-- Vergere is miles away more interesting than any of Traviss' characters. I dislike the Jedi, so you'd think I'd be eating her stuff up with a spoon. I mean, you p much have to fuck up catastrophically to get me to *not* be on board with making them the bad guys.
It sold about the same as 2, and only a bit worse than 3. ODST did about a third of 3's numbers, so maybe that's what you'te thinking of. Still, those numbers aren't horrible, either way.j-e-f-f-e-r-s said:
The way sequels work these days, the Halo after Halo: Ghost will simply be called "Halo", and everyone will forever be confused when its name is mentioned.Frotality said:halo, halo2, halo3, halo odst, halo:reach, halo4, halo5, halo6, haloost-modern warfare, halo:black ops, halo:ghost, halo:reloaded, halo:10-2, halo online, halo infinity, duke halo forever, halo:cancelled, halo(property of the disney company).
"You mean Combat Evolved? Or the bad one?"
"Honestly, they all blur together at this point. Thanks to the power of CASH-COWS and BOURBON!"
Anyway, back on topic...
I used to be a massive Halo-nerd until Halo: ODST. Frankly, as much as I loved the universe and the lore and gameplay, I feel they should have stopped after the fairly competent and reasonably fun Halo: Wars. From then on, it's just been a downhill slide...
This seems to be a recurring thing with people that don't like Halo continuing.
"Ugh, fuckin' Halo being miked for all it's worth. Just let the series die. Star Wars? Fuck yeah, let's keep getting more Star Wars shit! It's not like Star Wars hasn't been done over and over again for the last three or four decades."
Granted, I didn't see a post anywhere close to that, but people seem to have this thing where, if they don't like something, they want it to end, and anything more of it is considered milking it. But god forbid you were to say that's exactly what happens with something they like. That's completely different.
Personally, I hope there are more Halo games. THey may not have the characterisation or depth of something like Last of Us, but I enjoy them (Except ODST, which felt like a bit of bullshit when you had no shield...but you had Stamina which acted exactly like a shield. And that the same gun as MC uses in Halo 3 seems to do less damage when an ODST uses it, etc), and even moreso, I love the books. The books are fantastic, especially the early ones written by Eric Nyland (SP?).
"Ugh, fuckin' Halo being miked for all it's worth. Just let the series die. Star Wars? Fuck yeah, let's keep getting more Star Wars shit! It's not like Star Wars hasn't been done over and over again for the last three or four decades."
Granted, I didn't see a post anywhere close to that, but people seem to have this thing where, if they don't like something, they want it to end, and anything more of it is considered milking it. But god forbid you were to say that's exactly what happens with something they like. That's completely different.
Personally, I hope there are more Halo games. THey may not have the characterisation or depth of something like Last of Us, but I enjoy them (Except ODST, which felt like a bit of bullshit when you had no shield...but you had Stamina which acted exactly like a shield. And that the same gun as MC uses in Halo 3 seems to do less damage when an ODST uses it, etc), and even moreso, I love the books. The books are fantastic, especially the early ones written by Eric Nyland (SP?).
They said it in the beginning of the game, it is a rogue branch of ex-Covenant soldiers. I mean, if you don't know at some point in time, especially after a war, most branches of the military have SOME kind of people going rogue. Not to mention there are far more than just Elites in the Storm Covenant.Vrex360 said:
Anyhow, I could have seen a new trilogy, but I don't know about a saga. That's just too fucking much, there wont be enough story for it to work with.