Drums, Cellos, and Monks

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

Those are what identified Halo music, those 3 brought a sense of wonder, exploration, epic, drama, and a battle to survive into the universe that is Halo. The score was amazing and captivated the sense of astonishment precisely as we encountered Covenant or Flood or stumbled upon ancient ruins on Installation 05.

Halo Combat Evolved was astonishing and revolutionary because of how exotic it was to the modern fps, WWII or Desert Storm era shooters. Halo became a blockbuster hit because of its uniqueness. Sadly Halo has more competition on consoles, COD, BF, etc. but instead of competing against them by remaining unique and exotic it is beginning to assimilate with modern day shooters to compete ever since Reach.

Reach was a fantastic game but it also marked Halo downgrading into “realism” by the art design (fantastic as it was it was showing too much realism to feel like a true Halo) and gameplay with the addition of loadouts and the DMR which IMHO does not differ at all from a Modern FPS weapon from design and use.

I am not trying to say new Halos shouldn’t change and add and remain the same always, not at all, what I am driving at is Halo should remain it’s unique self with exotic weapons, enemies, vehicles, locations, remember how BA the chopper was? Remember first arriving on Installation 04? Remember the dreaded atmosphere of the campaign level 343 Guilty Spark?

The Halo franchise no longer has anything exotic to differ from today’s fps’. What I truly hope for in Halo 5, is to introduce new environments, new enemies, new vehicles and weapons of which can only be done in Halo. Weapons such as the Needler or vehicles such as the Brute Chopper or Scarab.

Reason why I titled this the main “instruments” behind the original Halo Trilogy OST is because it solely depicts what Halo stood for, how Halo was a franchise that was clearly away from the crowd and stood amongst the best such as Half-Life or Doom for it was revolutionary in many ways, but it remained amazing for it’s rich story and just amazingly exotic.

TLDR: Halo needs to be more exotic as it was before.

2

Bongos, viola, and gospel choir.

3

Bringing on Niel Davidge was a great decision. He definitely brings in a new and interesting perspective from his Massive Attack experience. That being said, i do think they should return to what made Halo’s music great and build off of that for the next game and beyond.

4

I think not only cello, but strings in general. Also, I would like to see ethnic instruments explored more for the soundtracks of future Halo games.

For anyone who is interested in that kind of stuff, look up an instrument called a Dilruba. If they could make that kind of sound work with Halo, I would love that.

5

didgeridoo, accordion, and bagpipes

but in all seriousness the shift in music and style is for the best since the original Halo Trilogy is completed. This new Saga is going in a new thematic direction and telling a different story with a different emotional core so the standard halo music would be a out of place contrast to the story and concept of the new Saga.

6

I agree. We need more monks! I wouldn’t mind though if they created something new but it still sounded similar to the original styles.

7

Yeah I agree, they need to bring back the original Halo music. Neil wasn’t bad, but the music sounded like it could have been from any blockbuster movie, not a AAA game, and it didn’t sound like the original Halo music at all.

8

Also electric guitar and piano are very halo ( halo 2 and Halo 3)

9

I definitely enjoyed Halo 4’s music, but the lack of string instruments and monks made it so the game was missing something. I’d also love to see the Halo theme actually appear in the next game.

10

I’d say an electric guitar was the instrument of Halo 2… but whatever.

Also… drums are pretty much mandatory for most tracks. Just saying.

11

Wouldn’t mind hearing a bit more of some of Steve Vai’s guitar work in a Halo game tbh.

My biggest gripe with Halo 4 is that the music didnt really strike me with emotion like it did in the earlier games.

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> My biggest gripe with Halo 4 is that the music didnt really strike me with emotion like it did in the earlier games.

My biggest gripe is that it was poorly implemented, especially in SpOps.