Campaign Constructive Criticism.

Games Other Halo
1

Now before I start, I would just like to say I had a blast in the campaign. I like the new enemies we are faced against in this campaign, as well as old ones. I also enjoy some of the things from past Halo games you implemented into the Campaign 343i.

-The end of Halo CE and Halo 3: Driving a vehicle through the map past crazy -Yoink- before you are killed. (Not necessarily at the end of the game.)
-The end of Halo 2: Boss fight towards the end of the game. (Not really a fight)
-Beginning Halo Reach mission Long night of Solace: Flying broadsword throughout space, killing enemies while doing so. (Somewhat)

However, I have a problem with two of these things, those two issues being with the Didact fight and flying the broadsword, trying to dodge everything on the last mission. The Didact fight was very disappointing. This was the only thing throughout the campaign that made me feel like I wasn’t playing a Halo game. If you are planning to do something like this in the future Halo games 343i, please make it so we actually fight the main antagonist of that game, instead of pressing several buttons and then owning him. Now, onto the 2nd complaint, flying the broadsword. This was actually very fun, the only thing that was a pain, and I feel like this was an oversight, was if you were playing Co-op split screen, and only 1 person crashed, it shakes the whole screen. When my brother and I were playing through this on Legendary the first day, one of us would accidentally crash, and then because of the whole screen shaking for several seconds, the other one would crash as well. This became very annoying after a while. Again, if you plan to do something like this in future Halo games 343i, disable this, or make it so it only affects that person’s character screen, instead of the whole T.V. Screen.

Something else I thought 343i missed was character development throughout the campaign. The only characters they really built on were Master Chief and Cortana. While 343i said this was their main mission, to show people the relationship between Chief and Cortana, it seems like they sacrificed any other character development throughout the game. The only other character I would even take into consideration for this, would probably be the Didact himself. Even then, you don’t get a clear view for his motives or why he hates humans, until you find the terminals and watch them. I’m not saying to sacrifice a story line throughout new Halo campaigns, just so every character has some sort of character development. However, I and many other gamers of the Halo franchise (I think, can’t say for sure since this is just my opinion), would appreciate it if you could find a nice balance between the two of these options.

The last thing I want to talk about is the environment, the graphics looked amazing for the most part, but besides floating objects, and some metal structures, it didn’t really look like much. On the 2nd mission (Requiem), if you look/zoom in at the waterfalls before you get into the warthogs, well I think they could be better looking to be honest. It seemed like a lack of adventure, from my experience as well. It seemed like as you progressed through the level, you couldn’t go back through certain areas and explore. Although this happened with most Halo games, it seems even more limited now. Now these aren’t really complaints, just my opinion on the environments, but regardless, I still think it looks amazing. Only thing I would say about this issue, is add a tiny bit more of scenery, between structures and background objects. Maybe even put something in there that points to different aspects of the Halo universe. For example, in Halo 3: ODST, I remember going through a building, and on the wall written in blood, it said Remember Reach (I think it was written in blood). I know 343i already put a huge amount of effort into the environment and graphics, and for the most part it payed off. I just thought I would throw in some minor suggestions.

Anyways, just thought I would state my opinion to see if other people agree with me. Also feel free to throw in your opinions about the campaign for new games in the Halo franchise, since 343i is already talking about the storyline of Halo 5. Also please keep it so you add constructive criticism, we are discussing issues we believe hinder the campaign, so I would appreciate it if we had alternatives to turn to, since complaining about something and not suggesting any new ideas to these problems is just a waste of time.

Thank you for reading this and have a nice day everybody!

2

1-didact fight
yea, I guess.
2-longsword
agreed. it happens even when coop-ing through XBL.
3-char development
you can’t be serious.
tell me what character development there was in H1, H2, H3 and ODST?
INGAME, we were never told who Johnson was, who 343 really was (a human), how Cortana was created, the past of MC, how the Half Jaw elite lost one of his mandible, etc.

in fact, Bungie took pride in making the main character silent, because “it helps the player identify to him”.
if anything, 343i ACTUALLY developed the character.

4-gfx
they were already pushing the xbox as far as possible. you are playing on ancient hardware. the game looks amazing already. it COULD look better if it was a PC game but it’s running on 6 year old hardware. don’t expect too much.

3

> 3-char development
> you can’t be serious.
> tell me what character development there was in H1, H2, H3 and ODST?
> INGAME, we were never told who Johnson was, who 343 really was (a human), how Cortana was created, the past of MC, how the Half Jaw elite lost one of his mandible, etc.
>
> in fact, Bungie took pride in making the main character silent, because “it helps the player identify to him”.
> if anything, 343i ACTUALLY developed the character.
>
> 4-gfx
> they were already pushing the xbox as far as possible. you are playing on ancient hardware. the game looks amazing already. it COULD look better if it was a PC game but it’s running on 6 year old hardware. don’t expect too much.

Yeah good points, I guess I really oversaw those two facts, I actually can’t believe that the Xbox 360 is 6 years old. They are expecting for Halo 5 to be on the new Xbox when it comes out, so I guess we will have to wait and see.

I shouldn’t have said Character development, rather, dialogue to give a sense of their attitudes. You are right there was never any real Character development inside the games, but at least they had some dialogue. I can’t remember Sarah Palmer say anything throughout the campaign other than, “I thought you’d be taller”. Granted you do see her in Spartan Ops but the Dialogue for Spartan Ops is rather dull. If she had more dialogue besides Egghead and go do that objective, I wouldn’t mind too much.

Anyways back to the main point. Halo CE introduced Master chief, and Cortana… Obviously. Halo 2 went into the Covenant more, Though it wasn’t really character development, more of short/brief explanation of what was going on inside the covenant. in ODST there was some sort of character development between Dare and Buck.

I guess I see your point, for some reason I just felt a lack of character development though, more than usual in most Halo games. It might have been because they did start to go down this path of character development, but since it was only for a few characters of the campaign, I might have not realized it. Still, hopefully in future games, if they do continue to go down this path of Character development, they will include more characters throughout the game to do this too, instead of just a select few.

4

I went into detail about campaign problems, purely from a gameplay angle here.

As for character developement, I felt that it was forced faster then beign written well. It really needed a second game or third game to make us truely care about Cortana and Chief. They need to look into the mind of Chief more, why he would even care about Cortana. They also needed to re-write Cortanas “rampancy”. When I think of going rampant, I think of the A.I saying illegible sentences or nonsense. Not screaming every now and then for no reason.

Also, I hated how they wrote Del Rio. They went sooo cliche with him that it was unbelievable. Not only that, but her was perfectly justified in wanting to arrest Chief, disconnect Cortana from the ship and leaving him there. It was so unfair when he was forced to step down, merely for doing his job, and in a timespan that it wouldn’t be possibly for him to lose his position.

5

All of these points are fair, and some I hadn’t noticed (screen jitter on split-screen while flying), but there’s one thing that has bothered me more than anything else, and that’s the actual story.
I’ve stated this in another thread, but I’ll reiterate; Halo 4 feels more like Halo 2 to me than any other Halo game. The pacing of the campaign is off. It’s like they ran out of time and had to ship what they had.
I’ll try to make this clear as possible, keeping in mind Halo has been pretty much the only video game I’ve devoted any time to in the last decade, and am very passionate on the topic.
The beginning of the campaign ‘feel’s’ fine, up to the point of finding the Infinity. After that, especially after leaving the Infinity, it all feels rushed.
You could have made an entire game out of the events in the second half of the campaign.
In my opinion (and I’m a -Yoinking!- nobody, I know) the game should have been stretched out, filled in, and ended with the Didact escaping Requiem, and the chief leaving for the Composer.
I’m not really sure what there’s left to make two more campaigns from, unless they plan on fazing out the Chief entirely over the course the the next two games :frowning:
And the boss fight at the end? WORST BOSS FIGHT EVER…OF ALL TIME.

6

The Didact fight and the Promethean tease at the end of the 2nd mission were probably going to be boss battles but they didn’t have enough time or resources to do it so they dumbed them down.

Honestly, why so much Incineration Cannon ammo? I think they intended for you to use that against the Didact. I’ve read some posts that said they carried it all the way to the end expecting to fight him. Why the sudden gravity hammer appearance? It’s clearly not just there for box launching (which seems like a reason for it being on the level). And why is the grav lift still active after going onto the light bridge? Hell why not just start the cutscene immediately after you land on it?

Yes I was very disappointed they didn’t finish it.

But my main disappointment is that Halo 4’s difficulty is a lot like Halo 2. The good news is that turning on skulls is no longer purely detrimental. Catch and Tilt are so merciful. And oddly, whenever I have 10 or 11 skulls turned on, I have a completely different mindset, take my time with most encounters instead of running past them, and have less frustrating moments. Standard Legendary is just unplayable, it’s garbage. I can’t stand having to rely on the noob combo and needler just to get past a few Elites. Knights are much more worthwhile though the Battlewagons are extremely unpleasant! I’d have preferred if they had distinct fighting (no guns) to differentiate them even more from other Knights.

7

> 1-didact fight
> yea, I guess.
> 2-longsword
> agreed. it happens even when coop-ing through XBL.
> 3-char development
> you can’t be serious.
> tell me what character development there was in H1, H2, H3 and ODST?
> INGAME, we were never told who Johnson was, who 343 really was (a human), how Cortana was created, the past of MC, how the Half Jaw elite lost one of his mandible, etc.
>
> in fact, Bungie took pride in making the main character silent, because “it helps the player identify to him”.
> if anything, 343i ACTUALLY developed the character.
>
> 4-gfx
> they were already pushing the xbox as far as possible. you are playing on ancient hardware. the game looks amazing already. it COULD look better if it was a PC game but it’s running on 6 year old hardware. don’t expect too much.

On the topic of character development. Yes, 343i did a better job than Bungie when it comes to developing characters, but this isn’t a comparative exercise, you don’t stop improving once you surpass Bungie.

Something neither of you have mentioned is Lasky, he’s met Chief before, yet the game treats the relationship between him and Chief like it’s the first time they’ve met, it’s just too cold.

The Didact got nowhere near enough screen time, you only actually see HIM on level 2 and the last level. 343i could have shown segments at the end of levels, show Chief’s story, then cut to the Didact and show a bit of him, then launch us into the next mission. 343i never explored what a flawed character the Didact is, not the way the terminals or the books do it anyway.

The Didact, Palmer and Lasky were all really underdeveloped, particularly Palmer, she just felt like filler. The Didact is Chief’s nemesis and the villain of this entire trilogy, he should be shown off more, regardless of how Bungie did it.