Dear 343 - My opinion on Halo 4

Games Other Halo
1

I wanted to say thank you for creating such an amazing game. So far this is my favourite Halo game in the series but I wanted to provide some constructive criticism to hopefully outline many of the communities issues.

Halo 4’s campaign was a huge step up from the previous instalments. No longer is the Chief a mindless robot tool used by the UNSC to complete suicide missions, now he’s a living human being with emotions and worries. Finally after a decade of Halo I start to feel like the Chief is a person. You took a 10 year old series and managed to create something new and exciting, I can say with absolute certainty that this is my favourite Halo to date.

Overall the game is fantastic, however for every pro there’s a con lying in wake. The campaign although amazing is quite short, not much time is allowed to have players learn about the Didact and the opportunity to build upon this new and exciting character seems to have been wasted. Level variety is also kept to a low as I found myself going through the paces of plugging Cortana in, killing some enemies, and plugging her back into the Chiefs helmet. Going through this formula was enjoyable for me but I cannot speak for others. I loved every bit of the campaign however I felt an extra 1 or 2 hours would have been perfect for extra character development.

As for war games I found myself enjoying the new formula. Armor abilities no longer dominant the battlefield and I can choose to start with a select weapon of my choice. The tactical packages and support upgrades also add a bit of customization to the game without giving anybody a clear cut advantage. Instant respawn keeps the game moving and fast paced. However downsides include ordinance drops, and random weapon spawns. These features take away from team play as the game is no longer about map control but is merely about killing as many enemies as possible from your best found camping position.

Forge has seen a massive improve with the addition of countless new options however a bigger map would be welcome as we don’t have much as of now. Spartan Ops is a nice new addition; I don’t really enjoy it, although I’m sure others do.

Two of the biggest issues with the game include custom games and theatre. As of now we can only view one or two of our last played games, this a significant downgrade from having a long match history as we did in Halo 3. Also removing the ability to watch Campaign gameplay is unacceptable. Custom games have taken a hit with many old beloved game types such as VIP, Territories and others seemingly MIA. The few gametypes which we do have allow for very little customization and are a major disappointment compared to other games in the series.

Options which are present in most modern games such as adjusting the settings for different sounds affects (Such as dialogue, and music) are absent. Such features are expected of most games now and should be in the game.

This post is not intended to be negative. 343 you have created an amazing game but there are many issues. Regardless of how great the game is however there will be trolls. Many people appear to be upset as a result of Bungie no longer developing the game. Other people seem to hate change and will do anything to fight against it. Since the release of every Halo game people have complained. When Halo 3 was released everybody complained that Halo 2 was better, when Reach was released everybody complained that 3 was better. This is a continuous cycle that will most likely continue until the end of Halo. Halo 4 is amazing but many things appear to have been overlooked, luckily these issues can most likely be fixed in a title update.

2

A well-thought out, definitively written thank you with gently-worded constructive criticism? Where on the internet did you come from?

I have a lot of the same issues, but I share your sentiment. There’s a few balancing issues, but at the same time, I applaud the decision to move forward and try new things.

Whenever I start to complain about having no survivability against multiple opponents, or that grenades feel like I’m tossing potatoes, I just remember how Halo 2 started out. One patch later, we were set for three years or so. With the support 343 is promising, I have a good feeling about where Halo 4 is headed.

Here’s to confidence in new hands.

3

Great post! I agree with most of this! Very constructive!

4

Thanks for the replies so far. It’s nice to see that at least some people agree with a few of my viewpoints. Halo 4 has the potential to be amazing but constant threads complaining about various issues in a horrific matter will not get us there.

343 just take notice that some of us are happy with the game which you have provided. People who dislike games tend to be more vocal than those who are content with what we have received. As a result it appears as if practically everybody dislikes the game.

5

Note: The game hasn’t arrived for me yet. This is just based on what I’ve read on the forums and observed in gameplay footage.

There are some new changes I will appreciate, like how Prometheans patrol and can revert to that behavior after some time of alert activity. I’m hoping it’ll also be possible to reset them to that behavior as well. It was a major exploit in CE, you could turn practically any encounter into a stealth opportunity. I know that it’s possible to do Silent Cartographer at Shafted stealthily.

Patrolling was often neglected in Halo 2, 3, and Reach. Usually, the enemies were expecting you or were engaged with your allies. Most of the time, patrolling was left to areas with sleeping Grunts, like on The Ark at rally point bravo, second encounter, where a Brute does a really easy patrol. There’s a bit of nostalgia there but that’s all it is. Another instance, The Ark at mission start, was a huge disappointment; the third Grunt is scripted to wake up.

In Halo 3, I can only engineer 2 stealth opportunities, first and third towers respectively. In the first tower, cloak, send the elevator up, then hide and the enemies will stroll to the entrance. In the third tower, if you keep all your Elites alive, get onto the elevator without going through the door, spawning the Brutes who will walk instead of running. Wait near the door, paying attention to your motion sensor. When you see red, go through it and the Brutes will turn around. But it’s not an easy kill (this is a good thing), you have to wait for the right moment because meleeing a Brute through another one will alert them.

And in Reach, I can only engineer 2 stealth opportunities: on LNoS at mission start if you position yourself well (I’ve taken out all of the dropped off enemies several times) and in the hangar, if you take the time to build a blockade where Jorge spawns later (without Jorge, they don’t see you coming and it makes fighting the 4 Ultra Elites really easy).

So I appreciate how Halo 4 will present more of these moments.

It is very uninteresting when you alert enemies and they never revert, change position, etc., always waiting for you to come back. Patrolling is one of the reasons why I loved AotCR despite it’s repetitive rooms. I had the option to engage Elites or to stealth them. Lots of encounters in Halo 2, 3, and Reach felt forced to me. Like the first major encounter on Nightfall. Did I forget to mention that was another one that can be engineered? Normally, Jun will alert everyone. But if you block him with two conveniently placed crates, you can get lots of stealth kills: the General, sleeping Grunts, an Elite, the 3 patrolling Grunts, and 4 other Elites if you get really lucky. But the problem is that the patrolling is very random. You’ll have to revert multiple times to even take out those 3 Grunts.

Halo 4 seems to have more believable animations, believable enemy attacks (the Hunter had a noticeably big melee range in Halo 3 and Reach compared to other enemies. It’d seem that has been corrected), and believable AI activity and that is one of the main reasons why I’m still planning on playing it. But leaving out campaign theater from the get-go was a huge mistake and something I won’t easily tolerating.

6

Probaly the best post i’ve seen in weeks, and I agree with mostly everything you said :slight_smile:

7

Thanks for all of the positive responses. Hopefully from the vast amount of topics complaining about issues such as these 343 will do some tweaking. Congratulations on your success 343, I hope Halo 5 is just as good.

8

I agree that the missions could’ve been a bit more varied, but they should have made them longer. I thought the pacing was back to Halo CE/2/3(The Ark, The Covenant) quality. No longer where we thrown back and forth from one place to another after short bits (bar Nightfall and New Alexandria), we actually felt grounded in the world instead of playing an interactive movie like Reach (although the cinematics felt much less movie-like compared to Halo 3 which was welcomed to me, and it’s one of my main complaints with Halo 4). So the thing of putting Cortana back and forth didn’t bother me all that much, because that’s how I like my FPS. I liked those long corridors in Assault in the Control Room. It makes you feel like you are the character, rather than merely following his journey. I was particularly disappointed in the first two missions because of how brief they were, particularly the second one which had a lot of potential. It had one of the nicest environments, but it’s almost the one where you spend the less time in.

I agree that developing the Chief character is a good thing, but I totally disagree with the means. Please, am I the only one who LOATHES this kind of overly emotional and ‘‘epic’’ stuff? Please, we need some balance. Being overly emotional doesn’t make something more clever, what makes something clever, is if it’s actually clever and/or if it’s well done according to the circumstances. The dialogue was cheesy, cheap, cringe-worthy at times (wanna take a girl for a ride made me literally facepalm as some others) and the music simply made matters worse. I also loathe this kind of over-present music which tries to dictate you how to feel. Good video game music (and movie music for that matter) complement the feel conveyed by the game, they don’t replace it or fix what is lacking. And it always depend on what kind of moment, sometimes music needs to be more or less evocative, and it always depends on what is happening. An overkill of cheap (or even not so cheap) emotions is certainly not a good thing. And this Hans Zimmer type of stuff needs to go back to standalone listening. Alone it’s not that bad but certainly not my type of stuff, but I can’t stand it in movies or video games. It cheapens everything, particularly when the storytelling isn’t that good to begin with. Inception’s story was -Yoink-, and the music made the film feel like glorified -Yoink-, which is hardly better.

But otherwise I was surprised with Halo 4 and there is definitely untapped potential for Halo 5.