A thoughtful article about the inherent laziness of the Forerunner characters and weapons in Halo 4:
> …these are the Forerunners we’re talking about. The hyper-advanced space magic race that have been in the background and have wowed us with their mystery and their technology in nearly every game since Halo: Combat Evolved. They are arguably one of the most important–if not THE most important–of aspects in all the Halo franchise.
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> And they’re being reduced to Call of Duty, generic monster designs, and chocolate cake!
I have no problem whatsoever with people making harsh criticisms about games, however when people start complaining about things that were done well now thats when I start getting pissed off.
you might as well say that halo 4 has crappy graphics while your at it.
This guy is pretty darn picky and even a little bit hypocritical. He compares the new enemy class and their weapons to Call of Duty, which is by its definition, unchanging and unbalanced. He complains that these weapons are horrible portrayals of the awe-inspiring Forerunner technology as well, even going so far as to suggest replacements for them (Including am miniature Halo array for a gun). He says that 343 stole the idea for the face-opening from a line by Bill Cosby and the Promethean character models from two other alien creatures I can’t recognize for the life of me. Seriously–343 is awful because they allegedly ripped off a comedian’s joke? This complaint is a joke.
Any Forerunner weapons of the scope the complainer’s wants would be too overpowered to be put in the game, thus unbalancing it. Perhaps there’s explanation in the lore why the Prometheans look more like humans than sentinels, and perhaps there’s a reason why they shoot hardlight ammo instead of carrying around Halo rings. Wait–there is. Prometheans were built to fight against the flood eons and eons ago before the Forerunners extincted themselves–it stands to reason that their defense AIs might not be so planet-bustingly amazing after millions of millions of years.
This article amused, and then irritated me. I’m going to restrict my rants on it, :P.
The weapons rant, to a degree, is a fair point. The weapons are recreations, or variations. But, canonically speaking, is it surprising different races came up with different classes of weapons that excel in different areas? No, it’s logical. Another thing is that they’re variations. They do different things better than other, existing guns. Case and point:
> Gunblade: an elegant weapon from a more civilized age. Replacing the Scattorshot. A blade of light that can also be charged to fire a powerful bolt (like from Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask) or maybe a beam (the beam version might have short duration like the Spartan Laser, though not as powerful, and need to cool down before being used again).
It amuses me how, after complaining about the boltshot, he describes the boltshot as a suggestion. Stagnation is something that can’t be avoided now, because originality is pretty hard to create. 343 have done a reasonable job with the weapons. (Note the author got all of his ideas off of different games).
Finally, he complains Prometheans aren’t generic enough. After complaining the guns are too generic. It’s almost as if 343 didn’t go with the “only sentinels as an enemy option” because they actually had a way to diversify gameplay.
But hey, if we wanted a better game with Halo 5, I’m sure everyone would enjoy wall-hacking, sentinel-creating death-star and halo guns (lolwut).
> This guy is pretty darn picky and even a little bit hypocritical. He compares the new enemy class and their weapons to Call of Duty, which is by its definition, unchanging and unbalanced. He complains that these weapons are horrible portrayals of the awe-inspiring Forerunner technology as well, even going so far as to suggest replacements for them (Including am miniature Halo array for a gun). He says that 343 stole the idea for the face-opening from a line by Bill Cosby and the Promethean character models from two other alien creatures I can’t recognize for the life of me. Seriously–343 is awful because they allegedly ripped off a comedian’s joke? This complaint is a joke.
>
> Any Forerunner weapons of the scope the complainer’s wants would be too overpowered to be put in the game, thus unbalancing it. Perhaps there’s explanation in the lore why the Prometheans look more like humans than sentinels, and perhaps there’s a reason why they shoot hardlight ammo instead of carrying around Halo rings. Wait–there is. Prometheans were built to fight against the flood eons and eons ago before the Forerunners extincted themselves–it stands to reason that their defense AIs might not be so planet-bustingly amazing after millions of millions of years.
The only point, and I mean ONLY, is that the Prometheans have a bit of the space pirate look to them (second alien species he posted). But this is to be expected when you look at the fact some of the metriod prime people work at 343 now. Also metriod is godly so i am fine with this (except other m. that game sucked)
That article is spot on with a lot of different points. The Promethean weapons aren’t that original at all, his Needler comparison is a good one. Why couldn’t they have any unique functioning weapons like that? I also agree that the concept art looked a lot better than the final product in terms of the Promethean Knights.