Campaign Criticism

Games Other Halo
1

Well, we know from the forum posts on this website that a lot of people have some problems with Matchmaking/Multiplayer, Custom Games and the lack of options, Theater, and some others have a lot to say about the Forge and Spartan Ops in this game as well. While we have probably heard majority of the complaints about these aspects of the game, I haven’t heard many people talk about the Campaign. So I am gonna talk about my opinion about this game and what could make it better again in my opinion, and then I will talk about the problematic things that most of us can agree upon.

Minor Opinions

The Dialogue didn’t quite feel right for me, a lot of obvious stuff being said, and a lot of repeated words. Towards the end of the first level when you are being sucked into the planet, Cortana feels the need to say, “We’re caught in the gravity field”, (Something like that, not exactly sure). We can obviously see this, and Dialogue like this is put into Spartan Ops as well, but I’ll focus on the Campaign for now. During the 5th mission, right before we meet the Librarian, Cortana goes missing and Chief says her name, seeing if he gets a response. The first time I didn’t mind, but he just kept repeating her name… “Cortana?..Cortana?..Cortana?”. Get’s a little annoying after a while.

Another negative opinion I had on the Campaign, involves the interior details of some of the building. I never really saw any patterns on the inside, didn’t see a reference of another game on the wall, ( In ODST – Remember Reach), All I really saw was a gray wall. I thought they could have done a little bit more with it. That or I just have really bad sight and passed all of it.

Last thing that kind of annoyed me in the Campaign, is the Kill barriers/Invisible walls. In the levels of Forerunner, Infinity, and Reclaimer, It seems there is a lot of open space in certain areas, but the minute you try to explore and travel off the trail the Campaign wants you to go, you find a lot of Invisible walls and Kill barriers trying to make you go back on the original track. One of my favorite levels of all time in the entire game series of Halo, is in Halo 2, where you are fighting the covenant in the city. You can jump up onto the roofs and explore the map, jumping from rooftop to rooftop. This was also one of the reasons why I liked the ODST campaign. You could travel around the map and explore some sweet places.

So these are my Opinions on the Campaign that I feel only a few people will agree with me on. But now I want to move on to some major issues with the Campaign that I found/had.

Real Issues

There are definitely some issues with this Campaign I think need to be addressed. One of the biggest issues being QTE (Quick Time Events). For those of you that don’t what this is, it “involves the player following onscreen prompts to press buttons or manipulate joysticks within a limited amount of time” as according to Wikipedia. Perfect example is in the beginning of the first mission, when you force open the door, climb up the ship, and tap the melee button to kill the Elite. Not only does this take the Halo feel out of this game, but whichever person gets to the door first is the one who operates the controls, also killing Co-op to a certain extent. This happened at the end of the game as well, when you “Dealt” with the Didact, very disappointing. I would recommend taking this QTE feature out of the Campaign entirely for future games.

Another Issue I have concerning Split screen Co-op involves is driving the ghost at the end of Level 3, (Forerunner), and operating the Broadsword, (End of Level 7 or beginning of level 8). With the ghosts, if you do not keep equal pace, one player keeps dying, which wouldn’t be a big deal, but if the 2nd person hits a rock and slows down, and the 1st person doesn’t immediately notice this, he’s already too far ahead. Also if the person who fell behind is killed and respawns, or is reverted to the location of the 1st person, they are spawned/reverted backwards, making it so they have to turn around and catch up. It is a small annoyance, but it can screw up the game play at the end of that mission. With the Broadswords, if the 2nd person were to crash, not only would it shake his screen, but it shakes the screen of the 1st person too. Again, small annoyance that can screw up the game play of that specific part.

The last issue I will talk about for now, again, involves being on Split screen Co-op, however this issue has happened in both Campaign and Multiplayer/Matchmaking. We’ll be killing Grunts, Elites, Knights, Other Spartans, etc… and then my Frame rate will go way down for a few seconds and then will come back up. Although it is only a few seconds, it is infuriating, (Especially in Matchmaking), and can easily get you killed in Campaign depending on what situation you are in. This is definitely a buzzkill for the game.

So what are your opinions on these issues? Do you agree/disagree? Have you dealt with some of these issues yourself? Do you have any other issues you think needs to be dealt with in the Campaign of Halo 4?

2

I agree with the dialogue, sometimes the things some characters say is just plain annoying, obvious or just stupid. For example, the mission where you have to hold off the phantoms whilst on the Infinity. When the Infinity fires the MAC and drives the Didact’s cryptum away, Del Rio calls the ship to stand down from combat readiness. The problem being that here is at least one Covenant Battlecruiser close by, definately in weapons range, with no damage. That class of ship has, according to the books and previous games, been able to destroy multiple UNSC ships single handed, and even though the Infinity is much more advanced than previous UNSC ships, it’s grounded and likely has no shields as Phantoms have been able to land on the hull with relative ease. No ship Commander would call the ship to stand down when by are in such a bad position (unable to move, no shield, limited weapons and in weapons range of an enemy ship). I don’t believe Del Rio is incompetent, however that moment really made me question his skill as a ship commander, let alone commander of the UNSC flagship.

3

What’s wrong with Campaign? flexes fingers, cracks knuckles

Omissions:

  • No flashlight
  • No compass
  • No Brutes
  • No drones
  • No engineers
  • No skirmishers
  • No Revenant
  • No Scarab
  • No Falcon
  • No Hornet
  • No Elephant
  • No Troop Hog
  • No Incendiary or Spike grenades
  • No Grenade Launcher
  • No Needle Rifle
  • No Airstrike/Target Locator
  • No Brute Shot
  • No ODSTs
  • No player models ingame or in cutscenes
  • No Theater Mode
  • No campaign scoring
  • No hammer assassination

Changes:

  • Unnecessary non-canon changes to enemies. Reptilian grunts and Jackals, for example.
  • Pointless graphical changes and desaturation to Chief’s armor
  • New (and often worse) weapon and vehicle sounds.
  • Why does a hydrogen-powered Warthog require strapped-on Jerry cans?
  • Nerf’d Banshee
  • No secondary explosion on Ghost
  • No non-American marines
  • Reduced animations on Grunts and Jackals
  • Can’t shoot off Grunts’ backpacks
  • Stupid new Grunt voices
  • No collectible campaign skulls, they’re all unlocked from the beginning
  • Barely hidden terminals
  • You have to go to Waypoint to watch unlocked Terminal content

Limitations:

  • Non-drivable Mammoth
  • Linear levels with very few alternate paths or scope for exploration
  • Copious airwalling and killzones
  • Low-res skyboxes ruin sense of immersion

(Poor) Additions:

  • Two words: Sarah Palmer
  • The Spartan IVs are unprofessional, undisciplined -yoinks-
  • Over-reliance on button-pressing and destroying three items to progress in the level
  • QTE sections
  • Didact is an underwhelming antagonist with no clear motivation
  • Static “audio play with pictures” style chosen for Terminal clips - why not nice CG, like the Spartan Ops cinematics?

Sloppy execution in general:

  • Over-reliance on “knocked unconscious, wakes up in new location” as a mode of storytelling
  • Too much of the action takes place either in cutscenes or altogether offscreen
  • Poor scale. Why are the Marines at the start of Reclaimer taller than Chief?
  • Del Rio as a ridiculously contrived foil to Chief/Cortana
  • Enemy pain dialogue continues after they’re dead
  • Marine AI prioritises shooting corpses rather than clear incoming threats
  • How did 343i manage to make fighting alongside AI Spartans seems such a limp experience? It should be all kinds of awesome.
4

I havent read the glass lands or thursday war yet but I hope del rio goes away. I mean look at how much -Yoink- infinity has gotten into with del rio at the helm. He’s not even in spartan ops. If you ask me hes a useless character. Id rather see Lord Hood take the reigns of infinity.
My only flaw with the campaign was the lack of objectives. Its all just go here and press this button. Ok good. Now go get the other 12 buttons

5

The campaign and story was very a massive let down for me, it all seem rushed and wasn’t produced or fleshed out very well. Too much was going on at the same time in a short amount of time, I think the campaign could have used an extra 3 levels or so for the story to unfold a little better.

The didact was one of the worst villains I have ever encountered in a video game, all that hype and marketing and this big picture 343 painted of how the didact was going to be the biggest threat Master Chief will encounter, the “ancient evil awakens” thing they did, his symbol appearing all over different videos and websites, the live action trailer. And all for what 5 mins of appearance? in the campaign we meet the didact hey says a few lines gets back in his cryptum and flies off and all we do is persue him through out the entire campaign and finishing of a very poor and anti climatic 1 to 1 at the end. He barely said or did anything in the entire game. Did it feel like the didact and the prometheans were the biggest threat yet? Did it feel like humanity was again on the brink of destruction? didn’t feel like that to me.

The whole thing lacked the feeling of mystery, curiosity and the want to explore, it just didnt feel deep. And the fact that the main points, the most vital points of the story was told in terminals and to make it even worse they are not watchable in the game. Now that was very VERY bad story production, those very terminals tell us the reasons behind the didacts motives and hate towards humanity and we have to leave the game or wait until we complete it to go and watch them. Now thats not giving a good experience of a campaign with a story if we have to leave the game to know the story. The characters weren’t very memorable and couldn’t build any kind of connection with them and didn’t really care for them.

The objectives were so damn repetitive, upload and download cortana and push switches, and there was no beauty about requiem just rocky environments with dirt roads. Yes the forerunner architecture was beautiful but 343 didn’t really provide any natural beauty about the planet.

And the music, how unmemorable and dull the music was. I could listen to any piece of music from Halo 1-3 i could immediately tell you when and where that music was played. Marty’s music was so memorable, iconic and unique it really gave halo an identity. So much feelings came from his music, feelings of mystery, curiosity, crypitc, dark and eerie. It has a lot of depth and atmosphere and really connected with the story and what was going on.

Over all Halo 4’s campaign and story was not a great experience for me and the campaign and story is the reason I am a Halo fan.

6

Batou up there pretty much covered everything but I just want to add that there are invisible walls in Campaign.

Since when have there ever been invisible walls? What happened to climbing the Forerunner structure on The Ark in H3 for the Skull up there and so on?

Sigh.

7

> I havent read the glass lands or thursday war yet but I hope del rio goes away. I mean look at how much Yoink! infinity has gotten into with del rio at the helm. He’s not even in spartan ops. If you ask me hes a useless character. Id rather see Lord Hood take the reigns of infinity.
> <mark>My only flaw with the campaign was the lack of objectives. Its all just go here and press this button. Ok good. Now go get the other 12 buttons</mark>

Indeed, I think 343i has a problem with creating a storyline without adding a good dozen or so buttons to push, they do the same thing in Spartan Ops, shame really…

> it all seem rushed and wasn’t produced or fleshed out very well. Too much was going on at the same time in a short amount of time, I think the campaign could have used an extra 3 levels or so for the story to unfold a little better.

Yes, I agree. I think 343i might have used too much time creating new weapons, Enemies, music (Which was poor compared to Marty, he’s a legend), environments, and other things to set up a good story line. With the new gen. Xbox coming out within a year or two (Estimated) they’re probably gonna do the same thing, up graphics, variety of environments, etc… I just hope they can keep track of the story and have a good vision of it a good time span before the release of the next game, this game felt very rushed. That’s part of the reason why I think they added that QTE in the end of the Campaign.

> Since when have there ever been invisible walls? What happened to climbing the Forerunner structure on The Ark in H3 for the Skull up there and so on?

Indeed, included that in the OP since that upset me, they have these wide open areas, and as soon as you try to take a path that does not progress the storyline and you try to explore, it stops you and makes you turn around.

@Batou, Agree with a lot of what you said, the theater, skulls, and scoring they took away was just stupid, You added a lot more things than I did, and by the look of your list, you agree with everything I said, as I do with you.

I’ll be looking into Halo 5 a lot more than I did with Halo 4 before I Pre-order that game, I know that much. Might not even pre-order it, or buy it at release.