Microsoft: We Lost Our Way With Recent Halo Games

[Ogargd]

Reach was by far the best game to come out of that series, it's the universe that is the theme not a single man within that universe.

 

[Trivun]

I normally agree with Spencer on Halo topics, and I like John-117 as a character (more so with his being fleshed out and whatnot in the books), but I can't agree here. I think it was awesome change of pace with the last two games, especially ODST (as it complemented my own stealthy playing style much better than the main trilogy did), and I enjoyed playing as other characters and seeing the world from their perspectives in a non-book related way. Hell, I even enjoyed the Arbiter sections in Halo 2...

 

[RUINER ACTUAL]

Playing as Master Chief is what Halo is about, but I would disagree about Reach. In that, you get to play as you as a Spartan. Personally, I think that beats playing as Master Chief in many ways. ODST was also great for seeing the war, and Halo 2 in ways, from a different persepctive.

 

[EternalFacepalm]

Wait, Master Chief was a character? Isn't he just a suit with a gun blasting random aliens?
Well, apparently, I want to play as him, so I think I should be happy... or... something.

 

[Baconmaninspace]

So, they broaden the scope of the series' story by stepping out of the role of the main character, and this is a "misstep" just because Master Chief wasn't around?

Yeah, sorry Halo fans. Your series is about to get a lot less interesting.

 

[TheRealGoochman]

I loved Reach! I like the story and after playing the game I read the book.

But I will agree with the article that ODST probably wasn't the best (it was still fun.....it is sometimes nice playing as another character in a series.....another perspective).

 

[awsome117]

The mistake wasn't that Master Chief in the game, the mistake was having spartan IIIs instead of spartan IIs.

Well there were far more canon mistakes, but other than those, Reach was a very well made game.

I enjoyed the story of Master Chief, and I look forward to Halo 4 and the next series.

 

[Sylveria]

Yes not being Master Chief was the miss-step. It wasn't that Halo 3, Reach, and ODST were just Halo 2 with a different paint job.

I think this is a beautiful first step in Halo 4 being the POS cash-in I expect it to be. Don't address any of the actual game issues, just repackage Halo 3, again, and this time make it Master Chief and the fanboys will buy it up without a second thought. I really, really hope 343 just utterly butchers the game so the series will at long last die. Then, maybe people will start making original FPSs and not just reskin Halo and call it a different game *cough Duke Nukem Forever cough*. Oh excuse me, darn allergies.

 

[Pholark]

Contrary to what Spencer says, I loved the ODST and Reach installments of the Halo series. It broadened the original story line beyond the John Wayne-esque Master Chief and therefore allowed the players to delve deeper into Halo's history.

 

[DracoSuave]

Yes, changing your series main character is going to have a backlash with fans of that character.

Sorry, dudes, Raiden already proved this guy's point a long time ago.

 

[Ruedyn]

I dont and will not give 2 shits about masterchief until he figures out how to sleep with cortanna.

 

[SamuraiShinrai]

The halo games have become nothing more than microwaved turds, the first one was pretty good the second one had a crappy extension of the story with a lousy cliffhanger ending and decent multiplayer and from the third one on they just took a massive dump on what had potential to flesh out a good single player experience in favor of just making a multiplayer game that ended up as new and innovative as the newest dynasty warriors. As for the books....yeah theres no point the books add nothing because they dont even bother to reference any of the people in them for continuity's sake. Look at fred and the rest of his group; were they ever used in the games? Hell no and why bother to give Master Chief a personality when he can just respond to everything by shooting it he has one in the book true, but it doesnt matter because in the story mode of the halo games he has the personality and emotional range of a piece of dryer lint. The quicker they get rid of that horrible waste of space the better, the Halo series hasnt been anything noteworthy in a long long time.

 

[jacobythehedgehog]

Damn it Don't Bring the Novels into this debate whether Master Cheif is a good character or not. The writer the writes the Halo book blows balls. The books are boring and at a kindergarden level. Nothing is specail about the books at all. I wasted life reading Fall of Reach, one of the most horrible books I have ever read

 

[Couch Radish]

Microsoft saying that ODST and Reach were bad games because they didn't feature the main character, would be like Valve saying Half-Life: Blue Shift (which focused on Barney) and Opposing Force (which focused on a military grunt named Adrian Shepherd; which actually isn't too far off from ODST) were not good enough games.

Showing extra characters lets a game show off it's story from different viewpoints, which can help expand and give unknown depth to the narrative.

 

[Polarity27]

As a big Halo lore fan, I really really don't agree with this. One of the things I like best about Halo is the "impenetrable plot" that Yahtzee complains about-- Halo doesn't assume its audience is stupid. You can engage as much or as little as you want with the lore, you can skip right through it and go right to pwning n00bs if that's your thing. But the complexity is there for the lore buffs who want to reach for it, and I like that. I didn't love that the Cortana interludes in Halo 3 interrupted gameplay, but I loved their content, that it was there for people who read the books and could be ignored by those who didn't.

I welcome seeing my old friends John and Cortana back, but I do hope that Microsoft doesn't dumb it down in an effort to make it more accessible.

 

[Conn1496]

Do you really want me to give my opinion? Really? Bungie, do you really? Well. Master chief can go and literally go and fuck himself. And as for spartans in general, ODSTs beat them any day. ODST is sooo much better. Everything about it (Except multiplayer, obviously) was better. Even the crap characters (Except Mickey and Dutch.) were better. I don't know about you, but playing as the same **** over and over for 3 games that fan-boys worldwide fap over is not my style. He's done a "sonic the hedgehog". Sure, he USED to be cool, that was until people basically threw themselves over him. You know, I like originality and Reach brought that. The spartan armor shop brought a new thing into halo, and it was good, because it gave you your own look. Your own role in the halo universe if you wish (Though, Fully customisable elites would have been good too). No-ones making a mistake by ditching the chief. If anything, creating your own character is part of the fun in reach. It's your armor, YOURS. That's why I make my character look as different to others, while keeping in my own style. Those who make thier spartan look like master chief in reach have no imagination, and you know what. They make me a little sick. Chief was not a good character. He is one of the least interesting in the story in my opinion, and his little holo-whore Cortana can suck it too. Now, tell me you never got fed up of saving Cortana. It's like 343 and bungie are just using her as a plot device now.

[Note]: Those Gravemind/Cortana moments sucked balls btw. One of the many reasons I despise Cortana. Also, try to tell me defferent that Mickey was one of the best characters in ODST.

 

[Netrigan]

Master Chief was great in the first two games, but he was not what made Halo: Combat Evolved so great. It was the gameplay, the setting, and the presentation. It was the simple but dynamic AI and the element of tactics and meaningful choice introduced with the weapons and weapon swapping system, that kind of thing. As much as the PC guys are going to hate me for this, Halo was much more interesting to play than your standard 'twitch' shooters of the day. That's why I get annoyed when people (ahem, Yahtzee) call Halo a standard, run-of-the-mill shooter. It set the standard. For those of us who were actually there and playing the damned thing, Halo is the original and everything else is imitators. It's like how this generation thinks Seinfeld is just a run-of-mill sitcom and Citizen Kane is just a boring old movie.

Halo was the final pieces of the modern shooter. That final pieces being vehicles, better integrated melee, and a recharging health/shield system that I wouldn't find interesting for another half decade. I was a major first person shooter fan back when it came out and there was a lot of a been-there/seen-that attitude I had toward the game. The game it most reminded me of was the original Unreal, which featured a lot of the same visual feel and utilized bot-style AI in the single player game to give the single player game a more deathmatchy feel.

Ultimately, that deathmatchy feel is what puts me off of Halo's game play. Dashing at characters to hit them with the butt of my gun is the sort of silly, insanely aggressive tactics you use in multi-player where you simply don't care about taking damage and it breaks immersion for me. The recharging shields mean that you can take tons of damage, so long as you remember to hide periodically. I got bogged down in Reach out of boredom, because, unlike other games, I wasn't being over-whelmed by numbers and having to re-think my tactics to get through a battle. Rather it was cheap one-hit kills that were providing the difficulty.

 

[Iron Lightning]

Wait a minute, Master Chief is a character? This is news to me.