I want to start of by saying two things. 1) Halo Anniversary is my favorite game in the series and one of my all time favorite games. 2) I’m going to try and avoid the complaints that people have already done over and over again. It’s a brilliant game but I think we can all agree that, like any game, there was room for improvement.
Don’t do things because you can, do things because you should
I’m specifically referring to the major upgrade in graphics and animation. I know I’m not the only one who has noticed that some of the cutscenes had excessive/over the top animations. It seems to me that this is due to the developers trying to hard to show off the major upgrades. Improving animations and cutscenes are one thing but lets face it, the Master Chief doesn’t wave his arms around when he talks, at least he doesn’t in any other appearance in the franchise.
Truth and Reconciliation
This is something that has been bugging me. Halo, to myself and many others, has served as something as an escape from the excessive amount of brown that plagues modern games (especially shooters). It seems that the developers took note of this and tried to remove all traces of brown, including in places where it belongs. The third level of the campaign takes place on a desert plateau, it even says so at the end of the prior level, yet in the new graphics, the scenery is not even arid. Having a single brown area in a game is not a bad things. The Ark was one of the best levels in Halo 3. A little scrub would have been fine but TaR did not seem desert like at all.
Audio
I think the tracks were brilliantly remastered but the audio levels in the game were messed up. The music was far too loud compared to the voices, more care needs to be taken when mixing the audio. The audience needs to be able to hear what characters are saying.
There’s also the little matter of the game’s opening and menu. The music simply cuts out, and not on a natural beat either. At least fade it if you can’t be bothered doing anything else.
Subtitles
CEA had some of the worst subtitles I have ever seen in a game. They would appear as lengthy paragraphs taking up a third of the screen. Show what they are saying, when they are saying it. This just felt extremely lazy. One, maybe even two lines should be on the screen at a time. When you have more than four, that’s when you know you put the wrong guy in charge of this.
> Audio
> I think the tracks were brilliantly remastered but the audio levels in the game were messed up. The music was far too loud compared to the voices, more care needs to be taken when mixing the audio. The audience needs to be able to hear what characters are saying.
>
> There’s also the little matter of the game’s opening and menu. The music simply cuts out, and not on a natural beat either. At least fade it if you can’t be bothered doing anything else.
>
> Subtitles
> CEA had some of the worst subtitles I have ever seen in a game. They would appear as lengthy paragraphs taking up a third of the screen. Show what they are saying, when they are saying it. This just felt extremely lazy. One, maybe even two lines should be on the screen at a time. When you have more than four, that’s when you know you put the wrong guy in charge of this.
I couldn’t wait to start the game up amd listen to that haunting chant and watch the Halo ring. That image combined with the music was unlike anything I had witnessed in a video game and it is still my most striking memory of Halo. When the music is unceremoniously severed short it’s a bit jarring to say the least.
Also the subtitles have errors in them. Today I saw the word “didi” and I also noticed an underscore between two words. That’s baffling considering the pages of QA testers listed in the credits. How could they have missed the many errors/mistakes that were clear to me on my very first play through?
There’s a lot of beauty and effort in this remake but there’s also a lot of simple mistakes that come across as lazy.
> All good points.
I agree. And I’ll add to the audio level criticism that reloading or beating someone down with a weapon should not be louder than actually firing it. Perhaps the programmer involved in, say, balacing the sound-scape of the pistol hasn’t actually heard the difference between a gun-shot and handling the weapon itself, but a trip out to the range for him should fix this.
But one thing I will say about the animations is that they worked well with the facial models (see Cryo Officer Baby Face, the Captain with the disturbingly beautiful eyes) to produce a lot of unintentional humor which I did appreciate. And if Halo CE tought us anything, back in the day, it’s that happy accidents have some value to them as well (so long as they don’t come at the expense of future growth in the franchise, so here’s hoping that all is worked out for Halo 4.) In fact if given the choice between what we had in Reach and the mistakes made for CEA (in the context of this game only), I’d take CEA simply because it’s more entertaining despite itself.
I have to agree with your point on The Truth and Reconciliation. All the lush grass and the full little shrubs make it hard to use the sniper angles that I used to prefer. Sure I just switch back to classic graphics but I’d like for the difference between this gameplay aspect to not be so noticeable. When going through legendary I just used old graphics and I could stand next to that tree or just behind the top of that hill and have good sight lines but not in the remastered.
I think another thing that should be noted is the menu sensitivity. Push down slightly and you skip several menu options. I can’t begin to express how much frustration this has caused.
^^^ Yeah accidentally picked alot of levels I hadn’t intended to and had to wrestle my analog to get the skull I wanted.
The menu sensitivity is indeed incredibly annoying, I get very nervous loading levels that I have in progress because I don’t want to accidentally hit the wrong button and erase my current progress.