You asked me my thoughts on a different thread so heres what I feel about the banished so far. One thing to keep in mind regardless of what I say is this. Remember that the Banished aren’t just the Banished, but also plenty of different groups of mercenaries and random outcasts hired and taken in by Atriox. Simply put, the Banished is anyone who opposes the Covenant.
Now, my biggest opinion here overall is that I believe 343 should be taking a lot of art direction from Halo Wars 2. HW2 wasn’t perfect, but it definately was the right direction for Halo’s modern look going classic again. I think they need to follow the same concept they used for designing which is this. They’d take the shilouettes of Bungie era models and build the new designs around that sihlouette. I feel this is a concept they should continue to follow in the future. I think 343 might be misunderstanding that alot of people were very, and I mean very, happy with HW2’s art direction.
One quick comment I do have from the reveal is that not every single enemy needs to follow this rule, but I think the banished should be more red based than what they were. The default enemies should also have more silver/grey areas in their armour. There doesn’t seem to be enough contrast which I think also counts towards this plastic look that bothered many fans.
So, one think I’d like to mention off the bat from the reveal is the Phantom. I origionally hated it at first because the Phantom I remember was in the Flood addition to the HW2 campaign. I’m starting to realize it probably wasn’t a Phantom to begin with. If it was it was a heavily modified version of the Covenant one. Now, from the very little we are able to see in the gameplay reveal and from the photo you linked in your post, I think they did the Phantom pretty well. Hell, I’d be half tempted to say it was almost a copy and paste from HW2.
Now to the grunts. To me 343’s grunts were obviousley different, but out of all Covenant species I felt they changed the least. I really don’t have any complaints about their species. As for the armour, I personally liked seeing the Bungie style and 343 styled grunts together. This reminded a lot about Reach because of the grunt variation in their classes. My only armour complaint would be the “triangled tip” on their back armour. I think this needs to be silver/grey which is like many of the toys and previous games show them to be. This would also help the armour look less like one solid colour.
Jackals I won’t say much if anything. It’s hard to tell much from any of the Jackal scenes, but they seem to be done awesomely and I don’t think they need to change. Love to see our scrawny little snipers back.
On to the Elites. I don’t have to much to say in this area either, except that if there are more than just blue Elites they should have some that are red and silver to fit the Banished look. They are higher class enemies canon wise so you’d think they be told to match their armour to a more uniform look. I don’t hate their designs at all, but I think there needs to be more than blue Elites and there should still be some variation in armour. At least one Elite class needs to be pretty Banished styled. Only other comment here is that I think the armour should have a bit more contrast in it colour wise.
Now on to the Brutes. I love their designs as I feel they are pretty Halo feeling. I don’t think the body hair is necasary and I like this idea of the higher ups being the only ones allowed to have hair. All species aside from the humans are pretty much centered around either religion or honour in a sense. This I feel is very well reflected in all the Brute variants we’ve seen so far. Now, I would like to see more HW2 styled Banished brutes rather than what I’d consider ones that have been hired by Atriox on the side. Esherum was still decently different from the Banished Brutes in HW2, but I think he was done very nicely if 343 is trying to simplify busy designs just a little bit more. Loved his looks and loved his voice actor.
Now for BoomBoom. The weapons. So far I love the Banished weapon designs and I’d really like to see the Banished rifle which has currently only been teased by Mega Construx. Heck, they haven’t even revealed a name for it yet either. My only complaint here is that I would have liked to see some weapons styled after the ones in HW2. In the cutscenes some of the Bashished weapons looked badass and I’d love to see that style carry over to Infinite.
To round every thing off I’m gonna briefly cover the Banished archetecture. I think everything looks great so far here, but I won’t lie when I say I wasn’t a hundred percent sure whether the small base set up in the demo was UNSC or Banished. The red lighting and Covenant weapons in the racks were the only give aways. Even knowing that though I’m still a bit unsure, but I’d assume its all Banished. Would love someone to clarify this for me.
Overall, I’d just like to see 343 take a bit more reference from the HW2 weapons, armours, and vehicles. I think they did a great job here and the results they currently have are something I can live and be happy with. Not even fans would be able to be prerfect recreating Halo’s classic art style. Even if someone comes damn near close it’s gonna be hard to make it perfect. As far as what 343 can give us I think they’ve done great with Halo’s art direction in Infinite. Those are my thoughts so far and keep watch on this post. I’ll probably be editing it to add or fix things over the next few hours.
