Blinded by Nostalgia?

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

This is something I’m sure we’ve all seen on this site for along time now. It certainly isn’t something Halo has spawned. It was used as defense for things like Star Wars Prequels vs the Original films and terminator 3 compared to Terminator 2 but you get the point it’s been refreshed to try and drive a point across, I’ts a point htt I’ve never seen gain any ground and I think it’'s extremely confusing.

I’m mostly confused on what the people think of when they use it in defense of 343i’s Halo. It’s a weird thing to say which seemingly has no end or beginning to how far it can go. I find it kind of strange to think that someone can’t feel that an older model is superior then the newer one. If thinking the Classic Halo’s are superior to the modern ones makes me blind to nostalgia, then where does that end when someone thinks another modern series is superior to their past iterations?

I think Gears of War 4 is the best of the series, does that mean I’m not blind to Nostalgia? I think the new battlefront is an expensive knock off of the original. Does that return me to being blinded by nostalgia? I liked the first Michael Bay Transformers, hated the second, liked the third, I really hated the fourth, I like the OG series until season 3, I loved the original movie, I like Transformers Armada but I hate just about every other version. What does that mean?

What I’m getting at is the whole “Blinded by Nostalgia” I guess quip is what some would call it, is useless because Halo doesn’t make the Earth spin.

There are people who believe that 343i’s Halo is superior and defend it in other forms without just saying what is essentially “YOU’RE STUPID!” Unless it’s followed by several dozen paragraphs when I usually see the “Blinded by Nostalgia” typed as an actual defense I instantly write that person says off as a blind fanboy. A tad bit ironic I know but that’s pretty much all I see.

It’s the same thing as saying,

“Halo is better without sprint!”
“Well tell us how?”
“IT JUST IS!”
“Well I guess that conversation is done.”

It’s the same thing as far as I can tell. It’s someone making the choice to blurt then to speak and it makes their side look like fools for even agreeing with it. This is a forum, not a battle arena. Thought it is a forum about a battle arena, that doesn’t mean we’re meant to fight, we’re meant to debate. That being said, all the lists of reasons to remove sprint are far better then those that try to keep it. I’M JUST SAYING!

Joking aside, I have to say Halo 5 has it’s ups and it’s very large downs but instead of just going to the sprint discussing thread and yelling at someone because they think differently then you isn’t the solution, it’s the problem and I personally think anyone who says otherwise shouldn’t be allowed on this site…or any honestly. They’re only going to cause problems and pretending the don’t exist is just another layer of the issue.

Honestly I’m surprised that there is even this much fighting going on. You’d think that after the majority of Halo fans left after such faithless games that these forums would be swamped y crazed 343i fanboys but there’s a golden nugget of…resistance that I’m proud to be apart of. Well I say golden nugget but it really feels 50-50.

Eh, I don’t know how to end this so. What are your thoughts on the matter?

2

I’m sick of the nostalgia card, there are things the old games had that I liked and would like to see in the new ones. Is there nostalgia to the old games? Yes, they had things about them that breeds nostalgia, that’s the way they were made. (At least the music was that way.)

If I don’t like something new in the games, I’ll say I don’t and usually give a reason why if it isn’t obvious.

That’s all I’m saying on that, I don’t really want to argue this anymore. Lol

3

I don’t understand people’s reasoning for the things they remember about a game negate what I remember about the game.

When I think of halo I think of campaigns I can’t stop playing, supersoldier that has energy shields and his tech and abilities improve with each instalment, social multiplayer cause I used to go to system link parties it’s not that it wasn’t competitive but we always made sure our teams were balanced and top people weren’t bad winners they were polite.

When i play halo 5 now I think of Crysis 3 because of the gameplay and so many mechanics we were used to were stripped.

4

I try to judge every video game based on its own merit, whether it’s part of a franchise or not. It’s a mindset that leads me to be more satisfied with games compared to others that have a more scrutinizing approach.

I also think of Halo as being in a constant state of flux. It’s not written in stone, and many things could be changed due to artistic interpretation. It’s why I wasn’t offended by the change in grunts or elites.

5

Nostalgia is perfectly fine for an opinion, it’s when nostalgia tries to become a fact or hyperbole it’s a problem.

“I really liked the old Halo games”

vs

“Everyone liked Halo Reach. No one hated it. It was the best game ever”

It’s also a problem when nostalgia blinds people from seeing objective problems.

“Dual Wielding was the best, they should definitely bring it back because I loved it and never saw a problem with it.”

“Halo 5’s ranking system is -Yoink!- Halo 3’s ranking system was perfect and had no problems!”

6

Here is how I look at it. If someone doesn’t like the new Halo games for their reasons, who cares. If someone likes the 343i Halo games for their own reasons, who cares.

There is no reason to be splitting the Halo community like this. :confused:

7

> 2535410846321679;6:
> Here is how I look at it. If someone doesn’t like the new Halo games for their reasons, who cares. If someone likes the 343i Halo games for their own reasons, who cares.
>
> There is no reason to be splitting the Halo community like this. :confused:

I couldn’tagree more man. Each to thier own.

8

One way or another the game will change a little with each new installment. I enjoyed the original trilogy, but also enjoy the newer games that have come out. Do I foresee 343 going back to the original mechanics? No. They doesn’t bother me as I enjoy how they function now.
As other forums have mentioned to try and combine the old and the new might be a good way to please both, sides of the playing field. Providing playlists utilizing the older mechanics as well as ones with the newer to give everyone the choice on what they want. Had this been implemented somehow from the beginning 343 could have looked at how many were playing each type Anna how often allowing them to see what the players enjoyed the most.

9

> 2535426003987045;1:
> “Halo is better without sprint!”
> “Well tell us how?”
> “IT JUST IS!”
> “Well I guess that conversation is done.”

you’ve got that argument flipped Klaka. anti sprinters give multitudes of reasons why it shouldn’t be in the game. pro sprinters nice no reason other than “i like it” which is BS.

edit

> That being said, all the lists of reasons to remove sprint are far better then those that try to keep it. I’M JUST SAYING!

oops…

10

Wait…this topic has gone this far without someone bringing up Halo 3 multiple times?

I’ve lost all hope in the nostalgia mob

11

[deleted]

12

> 2533274833081329;5:
> Nostalgia is perfectly fine for an opinion, it’s when nostalgia tries to become a fact or hyperbole it’s a problem.
>
> “I really liked the old Halo games”
>
> vs
>
> “Everyone liked Halo Reach. No one hated it. It was the best game ever”
>
> It’s also a problem when nostalgia blinds people from seeing objective problems.
>
> “Dual Wielding was the best, they should definitely bring it back because I loved it and never saw a problem with it.”
>
> “Halo 5’s ranking system is -Yoink!- Halo 3’s ranking system was perfect and had no problems!”

Pretty much this but honestly I preferred the 1-50 system over the season resets. Wasn’t perfect but at least I could work to get better instead of being reset and then randomly dumped into a rank.

13

> 2533274833081329;5:
> Nostalgia is perfectly fine for an opinion, it’s when nostalgia tries to become a fact or hyperbole it’s a problem.
>
> “I really liked the old Halo games”
>
> vs
>
> “Everyone liked Halo Reach. No one hated it. It was the best game ever”
>
> It’s also a problem when nostalgia blinds people from seeing objective problems.
>
> “Dual Wielding was the best, they should definitely bring it back because I loved it and never saw a problem with it.”
>
> “Halo 5’s ranking system is -Yoink!- Halo 3’s ranking system was perfect and had no problems!”

i’ve never seen someone say h3 ranking system is perfect with no problems…what i have seen many times though is people saying the h5 ranking system is poor and that the h3 system was better at finding games that were closer to player skill…only for the other person to say the h5 system is better and that they are blinded with nostalgia with no further reasoning.

with h5s ranking system i didn’t find close games, in 2012 when i searched ranked slayer, FFA and doubles i still found close games with a low pop.

14

I don’t think anybody needs to be nostalgic to see that having a game (Halo 5) with a story largely disconnected from previous games and lore is a negative. Say what you will about the quality of the past games stories, but at least their is a logical flow between them for the most part.

15

The whole blinded by nostalgia thing is little more than an excuse, IMO. It’s a petty dismissal of the points people bring up and their views of what’s “wrong” with H5.

I used this before, but I think it’s pretty appropriate.

If I had a '67 and a 2016 Camaro both in my drive and I felt nostalgic, I’d go drive the '67. I wouldn’t go drive the new one and then run to Chevy’s website and -Yoink- about how it doesn’t feel the same. But if I want a newer car experience (a.k.a. I don’t feel like driving the older car), I’ll drive the 2016. If there are things about the newer one that I just don’t like, you can bet that I will both recall and base my opinion on previous experience with the same model in order to help clarify what I feel is lacking or even what is better, most especially if I enjoyed driving the older one or enjoyed it more. That’s what people who even have a little understanding of what they like and what they don’t like will do. They compare experiences to help clarify how they feel.

That’s not nostalgia… it’s using previous experience to help articulate what one likes vs doesn’t like. I give no merit to those who throw the “nostalgia goggles” rebuttals out there because IMO it deserves none.

16

Using the nostalgia argument as a cudgel to end discussion is not a good thing. Recognizing that nostalgia-blindness is a real and legitimate thing, is good. No one should be let off the hook for a personal and subjective opinion just because it aligns with the “Bungie good, 343 bad” paradigm, and that happens a lot.

17

I have to be honest OP I had trouble understanding your point and I did read your entire post, sorry.

It’s a natural human tendency to remember everything with nostalgia goggles on. Everybody that’s old enough does it with everything. And the good ol days usually weren’t quite as good as we remember even if they were pretty good. (And there were people complaining about the way things used to be back then, too. )

With regards to Halo I think the slight majority of the community’s anti-343 thesis is not so much that their games are BAD GAMES on their own merits but that they’re DIFFERENT and DON’T FEEL ENOUGH LIKE HALO, because 343 insists on changing everything to reimagine the franchise in their own image - the art style, the musical style, the writing style, the gameplay mechanics, everything - without seemingly caring if the majority ASKED FOR or WANTED anything to change.

And anytime you introduce change, people are gonna Balkanize (dunno if I spelled that right) between the pro and anti change camps. The pro change camp asks why we can’t do what everyone else is doing and why we can’t ever try something new. The anti change camp says why should we have to give up our way when it was the first way when we got on board and we liked it the way it was…

I dunno who is right and who is wrong. (Although I have my opinion on which version of Halo I like better.) But it’s the way of life.

18

> 2533274961806222;17:
> I have to be honest OP I had trouble understanding your point and I did read your entire post, sorry.
>
> It’s a natural human tendency to remember everything with nostalgia goggles on. Everybody that’s old enough does it with everything. And the good ol days usually weren’t quite as good as we remember even if they were pretty good. (And there were people complaining about the way things used to be back then, too. )
>
> With regards to Halo I think the slight majority of the community’s anti-343 thesis is not so much that their games are BAD GAMES on their own merits but that they’re DIFFERENT and DON’T FEEL ENOUGH LIKE HALO, because 343 insists on changing everything to reimagine the franchise in their own image - the art style, the musical style, the writing style, the gameplay mechanics, everything - without seemingly caring if the majority ASKED FOR or WANTED anything to change.
>
> And anytime you introduce change, people are gonna Balkanize (dunno if I spelled that right) between the pro and anti change camps. The pro change camp asks why we can’t do what everyone else is doing and why we can’t ever try something new. The anti change camp says why should we have to give up our way when it was the first way when we got on board and we liked it the way it was…
>
> I dunno who is right and who is wrong. (Although I have my opinion on which version of Halo I like better.) But it’s the way of life.

Well I guess I’ll try my I’ll try my best to convey it in a better way.

To the first paragraph I that’s clearly not true. People just have “The Good Ole Days”. Just because something happened in the past doesn’t mean it was better. My freshman and sophomore years in high school sucked but my junior and senior we’re awesome. That’s what I consider the good times. Like I said above jsut because something happened in the past doesn’t mean it’s better when looking back at it.

I don’t look back at my girl friend leaving me because I refused to take my father to an old folks home as a fond time. It was hard on the both of us but she wanted the easy way out and here I am taking care of my old man. My mother’s life was nothing but pain until she was 52 years old. She has told me that she has too few fond memories and is happy where her life is now and to see her children grown up and living well. her past is pain, not pleasure, she has no good ole days because well, she’s living them right now.

On the note of the second paragraph, that’s completely justified. Long time relationships can come to a sad end when the two people who we’re in love with each other just have become too different over the years and grow distant and opinions and goals. Having this happen to me is something that I easily see with the changes made in Halo.just like with me an d my ex we saw the clear differences growing and decided we weren’t who we feel in love with and that’s what I feel again when I see 343i’s Halo. The things that i loved and cherished aren’t there anymore and like I’ve done in the past I’m doing my best to make sure that we can go back to those times.

I’m not sure what wrong you tried to spell I’m assuming BANZAI! but I’m not even sure if I spelled it correctly myself. Anyways I think it’s pretty clear which side of that meter that I’m on. You shouldn’t have to change for other people if the person or people who care for love the way you are. I won’t tell my niece to stop “Acting White” as her father and my brother puts it. He had little say in her development as a child I don’t think he has any say of her life as an adult. She’s found people who love her for who she is and i love and respect that. If she suddenly she changed because her father said so alienating those who’ve gathered around her then I’d feel quite hurt by that. She’d of taken all that I’ve taught her and throw it out of the window just for trying to satisfy another persons ego. My mother, sister and I raised my niece and to she her just be different for the sake of it isn’t something we’d want for her.

Hopefully this adds more clarity to why I think what I do. The past is not always great, one one looks fondly to WWII and change for the sake of it isn’t productive. Change should only ever happen if a problem arises with the previous established setting.

Like how people complained how Halo felt slow, so Bunige added sprint. Looking at it now, that seems like a lazy option to try and fill in that blank since we have more choices now but Halo’s speed was a constant issue that came up which drew people away. I understand why sprint exists, I don’t like it because it hurts alot of the old. We shouldn’t sacrifice too much for the sake of change but something does have to go to the additions of it. that’s just how change works but we shouldn’t give up too much.

19

> 2535426003987045;18:
> > 2533274961806222;17:
> > I have to be honest OP I had trouble understanding your point and I did read your entire post, sorry.
> >
> > It’s a natural human tendency to remember everything with nostalgia goggles on. Everybody that’s old enough does it with everything. And the good ol days usually weren’t quite as good as we remember even if they were pretty good. (And there were people complaining about the way things used to be back then, too. )
> >
> > With regards to Halo I think the slight majority of the community’s anti-343 thesis is not so much that their games are BAD GAMES on their own merits but that they’re DIFFERENT and DON’T FEEL ENOUGH LIKE HALO, because 343 insists on changing everything to reimagine the franchise in their own image - the art style, the musical style, the writing style, the gameplay mechanics, everything - without seemingly caring if the majority ASKED FOR or WANTED anything to change.
> >
> > And anytime you introduce change, people are gonna Balkanize (dunno if I spelled that right) between the pro and anti change camps. The pro change camp asks why we can’t do what everyone else is doing and why we can’t ever try something new. The anti change camp says why should we have to give up our way when it was the first way when we got on board and we liked it the way it was…
> >
> > I dunno who is right and who is wrong. (Although I have my opinion on which version of Halo I like better.) But it’s the way of life.
>
>
> Well I guess I’ll try my I’ll try my best to convey it in a better way.
>
> To the first paragraph I that’s clearly not true. People just have “The Good Ole Days”. Just because something happened in the past doesn’t mean it was better. My freshman and sophomore years in high school sucked but my junior and senior we’re awesome. That’s what I consider the good times. Like I said above jsut because something happened in the past doesn’t mean it’s better when looking back at it.
>
> I don’t look back at my girl friend leaving me because I refused to take my father to an old folks home as a fond time. It was hard on the both of us but she wanted the easy way out and here I am taking care of my old man. My mother’s life was nothing but pain until she was 52 years old. She has told me that she has too few fond memories and is happy where her life is now and to see her children grown up and living well. her past is pain, not pleasure, she has no good ole days because well, she’s living them right now.
>
> On the note of the second paragraph, that’s completely justified. Long time relationships can come to a sad end when the two people who we’re in love with each other just have become too different over the years and grow distant and opinions and goals. Having this happen to me is something that I easily see with the changes made in Halo.just like with me an d my ex we saw the clear differences growing and decided we weren’t who we feel in love with and that’s what I feel again when I see 343i’s Halo. The things that i loved and cherished aren’t there anymore and like I’ve done in the past I’m doing my best to make sure that we can go back to those times.
>
> I’m not sure what wrong you tried to spell I’m assuming BANZAI! but I’m not even sure if I spelled it correctly myself. Anyways I think it’s pretty clear which side of that meter that I’m on. You shouldn’t have to change for other people if the person or people who care for love the way you are. I won’t tell my niece to stop “Acting White” as her father and my brother puts it. He had little say in her development as a child I don’t think he has any say of her life as an adult. She’s found people who love her for who she is and i love and respect that. If she suddenly she changed because her father said so alienating those who’ve gathered around her then I’d feel quite hurt by that. She’d of taken all that I’ve taught her and throw it out of the window just for trying to satisfy another persons ego. My mother, sister and I raised my niece and to she her just be different for the sake of it isn’t something we’d want for her.
>
> Hopefully this adds more clarity to why I think what I do. The past is not always great, one one looks fondly to WWII and change for the sake of it isn’t productive. Change should only ever happen if a problem arises with the previous established setting.
>
> Like how people complained how Halo felt slow, so Bunige added sprint. Looking at it now, that seems like a lazy option to try and fill in that blank since we have more choices now but Halo’s speed was a constant issue that came up which drew people away. I understand why sprint exists, I don’t like it because it hurts alot of the old. We shouldn’t sacrifice too much for the sake of change but something does have to go to the additions of it. that’s just how change works but we shouldn’t give up too much.

^Respect for sharing things like that.

Following along, I can… will… say with absolutely no doubt and 100% conviction that it is completely untrue that “Everybody that’s old enough does it with everything”. That’s a very stereotypical statement IMO. I’ll be 49 in a little over a week… had a childhood I wouldn’t wish on anyone… to the point that I’ve wondered, at times, if I don’t have a few repressed memories. There are plenty of things I’d like to forget. I’m a very ‘look forward’ type of person. I embrace the new for the most part, I want the new. But I don’t simply throw away the good from the old because of it. I’m quite aware that finding the good isn’t always easy and holding on to the bad isn’t a good thing.

So no, not everyone that’s old enough wears nostalgia goggles with everything. I didn’t buy H5 in the hopes that it would be the same as H:CE, 2… etc. I wanted H5 so I could have a new game and a new experience, not a trip down memory lane. I have no need to go back to those days… “good old” (and there were a few of those times) or not.

My proof that the nostalgia argument doesn’t hold the weight that those who wield it seem to think it does comes from my own experience. Gears 4 is a perfect example. I’m loving that game. I’ve always been a Gears fan (except Judgment). I played the previous games as a warm up for 4. They were fun, but I was more than ready for the new game because I wanted a good, solid GOW experience… but updated… new. Why would I want GOW 4 to be little more than GOW3 with better graphics when I just played that and could’ve been playing it all along? Short answer is I wouldn’t… and I don’t.

Aside from not being a fan of MTs in general, I like what they did with the booster packs and the character skill cards, the new executions… knife executions are awesome. I like everything new about it. Well, at least that I’ve come across, haven’t even played all of it yet. TC has done it right IMO. They brought back the good things that worked, made the game great and a blast to play and they’ve added new and different, that changes things up enough to not feel like a rehash of the ‘good ole days’. Better yet, they completely threw the ridiculous mistake that was Judgment in the trash where it belongs. “Evolution, not revolution” as Rod Fergusson stated has brought me back to an all time favorite and if the new series follows along the lines as well as the OG series did, they’ll have no problem keeping me. I think Halo could benefit from taking a few notes.

20

> 2533274812652989;14:
> I don’t think anybody needs to be nostalgic to see that having a game (Halo 5) with a story largely disconnected from previous games and lore is a negative. Say what you will about the quality of the past games stories, but at least their is a logical flow between them for the most part.

Easy to have a ‘logical flow’ when the story’s hardly present and conveyed through disjointed and unexplained cutscenes. Say what you will about Halo 5, but it has the best self-consistent and character-driven story in the main line of Halo games. And you want to talk about lore? I’ve heard people complain that it’s nothing but lore, and others that there’s no lore at all.
If you want my opinion (you don’t), the hate on Halo 5’s campaign is largely unfounded. People didn’t get to play as Chief the whole time, and this has somehow translated to a weak or nonexistent story.

Halo 1- Chief lands on Halo, awakens Flood, blows up Halo.
Halo 2- Arbiter discovers the true purpose of the Covenant- also, the Chief does some stuff, meets the Gravemind, and gets a cliffhanger.
Halo 3- Chief fights stuff in places and does the Warthog thing from the first game again, only on the Ark this time.
Halo 4- Chief crashes on Requiem, vows to save Cortana, and wakes up the Didact. He leaves Requiem, doesn’t save Cortana, and kinda stops the Didact.
Halo 5- Reunited with his team while on a mission to scuttle ONI secrets, the Chief receives a transmission from Cortana. Desperate to hunt down the truth of her existence and actions, Blue Team goes awol. It’s up to a crack team of Spartans, led by the Spartan responsible for infiltrating the Covenant and killing their leader while rescuing the creator of the Spartan program- and Cortana. After a failed attempt to capture the Chief, who mistakenly believes Cortana can be reasoned with, Fireteam Osiris must take the fight to Sanghelios, awaken a Guardian, and save humanity’s greatest hope from being frozen away for millennia.

Yeah, I may be simplifying things a bit to make a point, but the point is still valid: earlier Halo stories were more implied or guessed at by players than truly told. Halo 5 actually tried to tell a story, and what does it get? Dumped on by a community that wouldn’t have liked it if it was ‘Citizen Kane’.