Would Gaming be better off without Halo?

[Joa_Belgium]

I don't really care. Halo has always been a series that didn't grab my attention simply because it misses that galactic feeling that the storyline is trying to provide. It just isn't that immersive in my opinion.

I did however like Halo: Combat Evolved (i.e. the first one). But Halo 3 just didn't live up to the hype, even though it's still a solid shooter. The same goes for ODST: an amusing game, but nothing more.

 

[Galletea]

I think that Halo was the inspiration for an awful lot of modern fps games. I doubt the genre would have churned out quite so many titles were it not for the massive success of the game.
Whether people like it or not is up to them, I find it a lot of fun, the controls are easy to use and the story, well it doesn't really matter, and other than the annoying thing with Cortana in 3, isn't forced upon you too much.

 

[kawaiiamethist]

I don't blame Bungie, I blame the other companies making fps that refuse to be daring. How do they know they won't make any money if they give the audience something they haven't seen before?

 

[The Kangaroo]

Halo popularizes limited weapon capacity, dual wielding, regenerating health, space marines, and online console multiplayer.
Without Halo we would lose a lot.

I would argue that the loss of those would be a good thing

No, they are great games.

Also, I met all my closest XBL friends on that game!

Did you even read my argument?

Of course I did, I just do not think if they were "never invented" that it would be a good idea that's all. Sure you go on about how because of it we will never find the "Citizen Kane" of gaming - Which brings me to ask, what if Halo is Kane?

All the same, sorry for having a different opinion.

*sigh* I thought that you didn't read it because you didn't address my points at all and if Halo is not Kane because Kane proved that movies can be an artistic movies and Halo, if anything, hurt that notion

I don't blame Bungie, I blame the other companies making fps that refuse to be daring. How do they know they won't make any money if they give the audience something they haven't seen before?

I don't blame bungie I mainly blame the community.

 

[Simalacrum]

Frankly, I disagree.

Sure, if Halo didn't exist we wouldn't have loads of clones of that game, but in the end, I think it would just delay the inevitable - if not Halo, another, different game would have done the job instead.

There are pleanty of crappy films that make shitloads of money (Transformers, anyone?), so its inevitable that the same happen to games.

 

[The Kangaroo]

Frankly, I disagree.

Sure, if Halo didn't exist we wouldn't have loads of clones of that game, but in the end, I think it would just delay the inevitable - if not Halo, another, different game would have done the job instead.

There are pleanty of crappy films that make shitloads of money (Transformers, anyone?), so its inevitable that the same happen to games.

Please read the comments before you answer as I have already answered that

 

[Souplex]

Halo popularizes limited weapon capacity, dual wielding, regenerating health, space marines, and online console multiplayer.
Without Halo we would lose a lot.

I would argue that the loss of those would be a good thing

I can understand not liking space marines, regenerating health and limited capacity, but what do you have against dual wielding and online console multiplayer?

 

[The Kangaroo]

*sigh* I thought that you didn't read it because you didn't address my points at all and if Halo is not Kane because Kane proved that movies can be an artistic movies and Halo, if anything, hurt that notion

Well that is fair enough, I was just offering my main reasons for why they are good because at this time I'm getting ready for sleep, not gearing for intelectual computing debate!

Fair enough, I should be getting to sleep but ah well

 

[Woodsey]

Probably not.

I don't think we'd be worse off however.

 

[The Kangaroo]

Halo popularizes limited weapon capacity, dual wielding, regenerating health, space marines, and online console multiplayer.
Without Halo we would lose a lot.

I would argue that the loss of those would be a good thing

I can understand not liking space marines, regenerating health and limited capacity, but what do you have against dual wielding and online console multiplayer?

i should have said on reflection that the loss of most of those would be a good thing

 

[LordGarbageMan]

No, because Microsoft would have pumped a shitload of money into some other company and it would have been similar. If microsoft didn't have a blockbuster game similar to halo, then I doubt the xbox would have been as successful as it was, and I would not be happy.

 

[The Kangaroo]

No, because Microsoft would have pumped a shitload of money into some other company and it would have been similar. If not, then I doubt the xbox would have been as successful as it was, and I would not be happy.

The point I'm making is, what if that company had been Ice Peak Lodge?

 

[NeutralDrow]

Did we play two different games? What was flimsy about Halo's story?

For one the fact that the Covenant never tried to accept Humanity into the Covenant.

That makes the story flimsy?

Not touching the comment on Halo meaning games aren't taken seriously. You seem to be under the assumption that games were taken seriously to begin with. If anything Halo by itself (not counting the clones) probably helped.

Just to tell you of my experience, my friend, who loves movies as an art form, had just argued with me for about 10 minutes about the validity of games as an art form walked into the room where my other friend was playing Halo and saw him shoot aliens in the head with a bright blue plasma rifle going "pew pew pew" and you say that that helped people take games seriously.

An anecdote! That proves everything.

Did you get into a counterargument with him, and walk in on your friend watching the lobby shootout scene from The Matrix?

So...if there was a market for games like The Void, developers would see there is a market for them.

If the void sold well then developers would realise that there is a market for good games and make good games.

And since The Void didn't sell well, developers realized there was no market for them. You sound like you're offering a circular argument.

<url=http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/5862/001batmandarkknightretu.jpg>Not films. <url=http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/4499/watchmenav.jpg>Comics. Those were a pair of unbelievable masterpieces of characterization and dark storytelling, and are remembered to this day as such.

Which is merciful, because almost everything they inspired was crap. The Dark Age of comics was a bad time. That was my point. Just because something is artistic and medium-defining doesn't mean it inspires greatness.

That is exactly my point and yes it kind of would as it proves just what you can do within that medium.

It was the exact opposite of your point.

You: "If awesome games like this one sold well, the games they inspired would be improved!"
Me: "These comics were awesome and sold well, and the comics inspired by them were shite."

 

[LordGarbageMan]

No, because Microsoft would have pumped a shitload of money into some other company and it would have been similar. If not, then I doubt the xbox would have been as successful as it was, and I would not be happy.

The point I'm making is, what if that company had been Ice Peak Lodge?

I honestly don't know if that's a made-up company or if you're referring the Russian company of Ice Pick Lodge, but that's Russian, so I doubt microsoft would have picked them. If you're trying to say that an rpg could replace halo, I do not agree. So yeah I'm a little confused, and I probably should have read more of the thread.

 

[Trivun]

halo is one of the greatest games to hit the shelves and whats so wrong with unorginality.

I'm talking about advancing games as an art form

I think that if Halo wasn't made, then the current slot filled by Halo would just be filled by another shooter and we'd all be asking "Would gaming be better off without *insert game here*?"

I'm assuming that it wasn't filled for the sake of argument

Halo is an artform. I love Halo, and I happen to think it's art. I don't mean in the traditional sense, though. I'm a writer, and an avid reader. So I find as much beauty, as art, in a well-crafted universe and in a well written story as I do in graphics. The Halo universe is one of the most expansive, and one of the most enrapturing, I've experienced in a long time. And the story is by no means unoriginal. It's extremely original, and is advanced by so much in a variety of ways unseen in any other game franchise I can think of. Or at least, very few others. So simply for the services it has done to the game industry as a whole regarding storytelling and universe development, I think Halo is a vital part of this generation of games. And this is coming from someone who also greatly enjoys point-and-click adventure games simply for the game universe...

Oh, and Halo has by no means stopped other games from advancing as an artform. Have you heard of The Path? The Graveyard? The Endless Forest? Flowers? Every Day The Same Dream? Today I Die?

So, Yeah.

 

[Awexsome]

Well if you're going to have a massively popular game that ends up being the face for a console you might as well have a revolutionary control scheme and a developer that is incredibly interactive with their community. So no, it would a hell of a lot worse without Halo.

 

[The Kangaroo]

Did we play two different games? What was flimsy about Halo's story?

For one the fact that the Covenant never tried to accept Humanity into the Covenant.

That makes the story flimsy?

By giving the main antagonist no proper motivation? Yeah it kinda does

Not touching the comment on Halo meaning games aren't taken seriously. You seem to be under the assumption that games were taken seriously to begin with. If anything Halo by itself (not counting the clones) probably helped.

Just to tell you of my experience, my friend, who loves movies as an art form, had just argued with me for about 10 minutes about the validity of games as an art form walked into the room where my other friend was playing Halo and saw him shoot aliens in the head with a bright blue plasma rifle going "pew pew pew" and you say that that helped people take games seriously.

An anecdote! That proves everything.

For games to be taken seriously, the other artistic forms of media have to take it seriously[/quote]

So...if there was a market for games like The Void, developers would see there is a market for them.

If the void sold well then developers would realise that there is a market for good games and make good games.

And since The Void didn't sell well, developers realized there was no market for them. You sound like you're offering a circular argument.

The Void didn't sell well mainly because it got no publicity

<url=http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/5862/001batmandarkknightretu.jpg>Not films. <url=http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/4499/watchmenav.jpg>Comics. Those were a pair of unbelievable masterpieces of characterization and dark storytelling, and are remembered to this day as such.

Which is merciful, because almost everything they inspired was crap. The Dark Age of comics was a bad time. That was my point. Just because something is artistic and medium-defining doesn't mean it inspires greatness.

That is exactly my point and yes it kind of would as it proves just what you can do within that medium.

It was the exact opposite of your point.

You: "If awesome games like this one sold well, the games they inspired would be improved!"
Me: "These comics were awesome and sold well, and the comics inspired by them were shite."

The point is that those comics pushed the profitable market into a bad place

 

[mcgroobber]

halo was good back in the day, now they need to move on

 

[MetallicaRulez0]

I really don't care about games as an art form. As long as the game is polished and fun, I don't give a damn what artistic value it has. Halo is both very polished and very fun, so it's doing almost everything right as far as I'm concerned. Nobody (or at least nobody with a fully functioning frontal lobe) is going to say that Halo is a perfect game. It is, however, a very good game and has done a lot for the FPS genre, especially on consoles.

Whether or not the "mainstream crowd" is ruining the industry is an entirely separate topic from Halo. Yea, Halo did play a large part in creating that "mainstream crowd", but it definitely didn't go it alone in that regard.