After reading a few of the Halo novels (The Fall of Reach, First Strike, The Flood, etc…) I’ve really had time to reflect on the current direction 343i has chosen to take with Halo 5. This game has completely abandoned the entire premise of the Halo universe and the Spartan Program. The game has become too cartoony, in both art design, and the Teen rating which Halo 5 received. I’m not saying Halo 6 needs to resemble the gore that Gears of War presents, but we are talking about augmented super soldiers who are bred to fight. It would be like Zack Snyder directing 300, and had made it PG-13. But after finishing “The Fall of Reach,” 343i completely ruined a great opportunity to introduce us to blue team and the events that led them to reunite. (I won’t talk about the story elements in Halo 5 anymore because it is hands down the worst storytelling in a Halo game to date, and this is coming from somebody who thought Halo 4’s storytelling was fantastic.) Marines are cartoony now, remember whenever you use to take them out in a warthog, hit a ramp and have one of them yell a few well placed curse words? Not anymore, they look like cartoon action figures. Like i said, this game doesn’t have to take the Mature rating to the extreme, but it would be nice to have a game that actually feels like you are in an intergalactic war. Whenever i snipe a guy in the head online, i want to see pieces of his visor crack and fly into the air, i want to see the blood splatter behind him. Whenever a warthog is shooting a guy on foot, i want to see pieces of his armor cracking and crumbling onto the battlefield. (Don’t even get me started on how lame assassinations are now without blood, you might as well record a 3 year old child playing with his dolls.) I personally like the way Halo 5 plays. I think the weapon balancing, and the movement is overall a really well paced shooter. But that doesn’t change the fact that i can’t help but feel like I’m playing a childs game after jumping on a game like Battlefield 1. What do you guys think?
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> Whenever i snipe a guy in the head online, i want to see pieces of his visor crack and fly into the air, i want to see the blood splatter behind him. Whenever a warthog is shooting a guy on foot, i want to see pieces of his armor cracking and crumbling onto the battlefield.
These two things would be nice, but would inevitably put stress on the system and be deemed unnecessary. All I really care for is the return of gore because it simply doesn’t make sense for a person to not bleed when shot.
Halo 5 is the breaking point when Halo 4 wanted you to fight basically Darth Vader with the Death Star that turns people into digital slaves?
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> remember whenever you use to take them out in a warthog, hit a ramp and have one of them yell a few well placed curse words?
No, I really don’t. At best they say “Hell Yeah!”, which isn’t much.
> Marines are cartoony now, remember whenever you use to take them out in a warthog, hit a ramp and have one of them yell a few well placed curse words?
Um… no… I just remember playing the campaigns and hearing them crack a joke when either they or I killed something…
I agree with the blood part at least, Halo started as an M rated game. I wish it could have stayed that way.
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> I agree with the blood part at least, Halo started as an M rated game. I wish it could have stayed that way.
The only real thing keeping Halo as an M-rated game was the Flood gore and Drone gore. Remove that and you basically have a T-rated game.
Assassinations actually do have blood.
Maybe if Chief would call Cortana his -Yoink-?
I can agree. I would like to see Halo take a more serious tone so to speak. While Halo never really deserved MA to begin with, it was easily the most tame MA game of its time. I would like to see what little blood was there. Mowing down grunts and seeing their blue blood splatter was nice.
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> > 2533274798253642;6:
> > I agree with the blood part at least, Halo started as an M rated game. I wish it could have stayed that way.
>
> The only real thing keeping Halo as an M-rated game was the Flood gore and Drone gore. Remove that and you basically have a T-rated game.
And the blood stains from Marines/anything that bleeds. It’s almost like shooting Transformer rejects is boring but that is a much different problem I suppose.
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> Halo has always been a grim and hyper realistic FPS…Such a serious game.
Your response was funny, but I think you know what he means. He’s not wrong, perhaps a little overzealous on some points, but what he’s saying is true. Halo has always seemed to balance satire and seriousness pretty well, I always felt like I was watching a movie when playing the original trilogy, but Halo 5 can be a little OTT with the satire at times. The delivery more often than not feels forced to me, doesn’t feel natural at all, not always, but most of the time.
I think halo 5’s art is fine, blood is not necessary. Let the teens play Halo without worrying their parents.
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> I can agree. I would like to see Halo take a more serious tone so to speak. While Halo never really deserved MA to begin with, it was easily the most tame MA game of its time. I would like to see what little blood was there. Mowing down grunts and seeing their blue blood splatter was nice.
Agreed, I never really believed Halo deserved it’s M rating either, but if somehow lowering its rating impedes Halo’s ability to be a good “Halo” in that respect, I don’t think it’s worth it. I don’t think a game being rated M particularly harms it’s sales if the game is genuinely good. Most of us who started playing Halo were way too young to play it at the time of it’s realse, and for years after. Yet we still bought the game in droves and Halo was very financially successful. I just fear that some combat scenarios aren’t as impactful as they could be, because of the T rating. Although that implies that Halo 5 was designed around the T rating rather than being made first, then receiving the rating after the fact. I just hope that when we (hopefully) encounter the flood and other not so savoury foes in future Halo games, they are not dumbed down to meet a T rating standard, and are as terrifying as they are in the literature and if that means future Halos donning an M rating to fully realise that, then so be it.
After reading a few of the Halo novels (The Fall of Reach, First Strike, The Flood, etc…) I’ve really had time to reflect on the current direction 343i has chosen to take with Halo 5.
This game has completely abandoned the entire premise of the Halo universe and the Spartan Program. The game has become too cartoony, in both art design, and the Teen rating which Halo 5 received.
I’m not saying Halo 6 needs to resemble the gore that Gears of War presents, but we are talking about augmented super soldiers who are bred to fight. It would be like Zack Snyder directing 300, and had made it PG-13.
But after finishing “The Fall of Reach,” 343i completely ruined a great opportunity to introduce us to blue team and the events that led them to reunite. (I won’t talk about the story elements in Halo 5 anymore because it is hands down the worst storytelling in a Halo game to date, and this is coming from somebody who thought Halo 4’s storytelling was fantastic.)
Marines are cartoony now, remember whenever you use to take them out in a warthog, hit a ramp and have one of them yell a few well placed curse words? Not anymore, they look like cartoon action figures.
Like i said, this game doesn’t have to take the Mature rating to the extreme, but it would be nice to have a game that actually feels like you are in an intergalactic war.
Whenever i snipe a guy in the head online, i want to see pieces of his visor crack and fly into the air. i want to see the blood splatter behind him. Whenever a warthog is shooting a guy on foot, i want to see pieces of his armor cracking and crumbling onto the battlefield. (Don’t even get me started on how lame assassinations are now without blood, you might as well record a 3 year old child playing with his dolls.)
I personally like the way Halo 5 plays. I think the weapon balancing, and the movement is overall a really well paced shooter. But that doesn’t change the fact that i can’t help but feel like I’m playing a childs game after jumping on a game like Battlefield 1.
What do you guys think?
Edited version of the OP. 
The Act Man did a video that covered a similar topic.
Link.
Personally, I’d like a “sprinkle” of GOW-type gore to be in future Halo’s, just to make them more “immersive” (I use that term loosely).
I get your point, you’ve worded it like you want to make Halo more serious and realistic (which may of been what you are trying to say but that wasn’t the vibe I was getting). I think Halo would be better if it were a little more mature. Some blood doesn’t hurt (well…), some military order is cool,some jokes should have an actual punchline instead of just being silly, and the story should be somewhat plausible (despite being sci-fi, the characters and the way they go through events still needs to seem real or else it’s hard to invest into them; Take Tanaka for instance, she is just there. A boring female character who just kinda doesn’t exist. Or Cortana, who has lived her entire lifetime saving humanity to the point where she is basically human. She dies and comes back trying to create galactic genoside.)
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> > Halo has always been a grim and hyper realistic FPS…Such a serious game.
>
> Your response was funny, but I think you know what he means. He’s not wrong, perhaps a little overzealous on some points, but what he’s saying is true. Halo has always seemed to balance satire and seriousness pretty well, I always felt like I was watching a movie when playing the original trilogy, but Halo 5 can be a little OTT with the satire at times. The delivery more often than not feels forced to me, doesn’t feel natural at all, not always, but most of the time.
No, he’s actually wrong. At least in the sense that the foundation of his opinion is wrong. Halo has never been a franchise that was focused on realism or blood and gore. There was a tiny bit of it, but it was never significant. In the last fifteen years the goriest thing I remember was punching through captain Keyes flood form’s head.
The only reason to focus on gore and blood the way the OP wants is to attract small children who want to hear cursing and see blood. That ‘M’ Rating is something to make 8 year-olds scream, “Buy me that one Mommy!” Halo isn’t and never was Mortal Kombat and while I’m okay with kids playing the game and eventually joining the community I have no desire to go out of my way to attract them.
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> > 2533274831850844;12:
> > > 2533274880633045;2:
> > > Halo has always been a grim and hyper realistic FPS…Such a serious game.
> >
> > Your response was funny, but I think you know what he means. He’s not wrong, perhaps a little overzealous on some points, but what he’s saying is true. Halo has always seemed to balance satire and seriousness pretty well, I always felt like I was watching a movie when playing the original trilogy, but Halo 5 can be a little OTT with the satire at times. The delivery more often than not feels forced to me, doesn’t feel natural at all, not always, but most of the time.
>
> No, he’s actually wrong. At least in the sense that the foundation of his opinion is wrong. Halo has never been a franchise that was focused on realism or blood and gore. There was a tiny bit of it, but it was never significant. In the last fifteen years the goriest thing I remember was punching through captain Keyes flood form’s head.
>
> The only reason to focus on gore and blood the way the OP wants is to attract small children who want to hear cursing and see blood. That ‘M’ Rating is something to make 8 year-olds scream, “Buy me that one Mommy!” Halo isn’t and never was Mortal Kombat and while I’m okay with kids playing the game and eventually joining the community I have no desire to go out of my way to attract them.
Yeah, agreed. Pretty much said something similar in my comment above.
I don’t know where you’re coming from, honestly. Halo: Reach was probably the “grittiest” in the series, and even it had a decent balance of humor in the characters’ banter.
Just go back and look at Halo CE, 2, and 3 and observe the goofy UNSC Marines with their campy one-liners and all the cheesy references made to Starship Troopers and the Colonial Marines from aliens. The classic Marines are some of the most cartoony in the series. Your memories might be just a little clouded with rose-tinted glasses.
I think small touches like visors shattering and stuff would be nice, but if you took the gore too far I think the game would be even harder to take seriously. You can take it too far, there’s definitely a balance to be had. If something takes itself too seriously, it eventually gets to where it becomes a parody of itself.
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