dont you mean “Tell dont show”? personally i’d preffer a combo of both, balance is great.
I mean, good for you? You can be an artist for 10+ years, it doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily good at it.
The issue is that this is the most boiler-plate plot for these characters, and smacks of familiarity - heroes return from the fray, you don’t know them but someone else does, and now there’s a threat they brought back with them. This is a very familiar, very boring plotline that the game itself doesn’t enrich and we don’t get to see any of the cool stuff that people are talking about. Dinh and Eklund talk about fighting the Banished - why don’t we get to see that, or better yet, fight those Banished ourselves? I understand the mentality of set-up, but this is the second Season and it feels like we’re sitting in the base blowing bubbles while everyone else does the cool stuff.
Because there are no connections or conclusions to draw - this isn’t your Dark Souls, where the architecture and the items you find tell an entire story, and you’re given the pieces that are used to put that story together. This is the writing staff not putting in the effort to complete the story, or provide an effective introductory hook to the remainder of the season because nothing is happening in this story. I am given no reason to care about Dinh, Agryna or Eklund, and I’m not going to conjure up reasons to care about them. At the very least, show us cutscenes of Dinh and Eklund fighting the Banished and narrowly escaping aboard that Phantom.
As for your comment about SWTOR, that’s ridiculous and indicates to me that you’ve never played the game. My playing the game is the driving force for my character who I am allowed to develop into the character I want them to be through action and dialogue. I am able to affect significant portions of my character’s storyline through individual action as well. Certain statements affect the relationship of my companions, reducing my ability to engage in more meaningful conversations with them if I negatively affect their relationship with me. Actions that I dictate my character to take affect the wider world around me - killing or sparing characters results in additional lore drops or additional rewards, as well as the potential for them to assist me later. A great example from the Sith Warrior storyline is that one can avoid several fights entirely and get a different companion out of the story dependent on the Alignment options taken.
Your criticism is bizarre, and I have no idea what you’re actually trying to get at - the player, by the nature of playing the game and making choices, are the ones actively driving the plot along. Without the player to be an active participant in the storyline and making choices, the story itself will not move on. The story of Halo 3 does not naturally progress without a player behind the controller - Chief will stand there until the heat death of the universe unless the player actively participates in the storyline.
It sounds to me like you’re attempting to make a larger argument, akin to the discussions of “Oh, well you don’t really own the games you buy” without understanding the fundamentals of how video game stories work, or any stories, really. Without someone there to begin the story, there is no story. Without someone to hit play, start talking, turn pages or click your mouse, the story itself does not exist unless the player is an active participant - the issue with Halo Infinite’s multiplayer serial narrative is that it’s presented entirely through cutscenes and the player is allowed zero interaction with elements of that story, which is terrible for an interactive piece of entertainment (like a video game). At least allow our character to have some dialogue we’re allowed to choose or interact with the environment around where the cutscene is happening - anything to at least simulate the feeling of control over this story and to be an active participant rather than a cardboard cutout.
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The ratio of people who do and don’t like my writing is about 75/2. So I must be pretty good.
Well I never said it was exciting, but I’m interested nonetheless.
Because it wasn’t our fight? Do you… Not understand that things happen beyond your perception…?
We’re training.
oh boy
Then tell me why I care, how they pulled that off? Because I am very interested.
er, actually…
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/767890653060923452/971658559341363230/unknown.png
Yeah because that’s how videogames work. Chief’s still a driving force in Infinite and if you don’t believe that you, honestly, aren’t paying attention at all. Besides, the heat death of the universe won’t happen as long as chief stands there. Wack.
Our Spartan is just… A spartan, who’s busy preparing for the fight proper. Who knows if we’ll ever actually see it. I hope we do…! But who knows.
odd assertion to make about someone decidedly and outwardly anticapitalist but okay.
Eklund and Dinh began their story at some point and we’re seeing the result of their actions. We just weren’t present for it.
Do you believe your parents disappear when they hide their faces during peekaboo, perchance? It seems like it’d still work.
Pfft. That’s a really funny take. I guess the entirety of human history didn’t happen before now either.
Were you not actually paying attention? Any match of Last Spartan Standing has been us doing exactly that. We’re doing what we were asked to do - get in that system, mess with stuff and we managed to get Iratus locked down and we saved Dinh. That’s something we did.
The only one not participating is you, honestly.
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I could make a whole dissection of this, but I’ll say this.
The story event literally just started. There’s reservations and there’s…this.
okay I will say this, this is just, wrong. Out of this entire event, the most interesting story bits has been in the item descriptions. Gives a wider idea what’s happening with these types of type of Spartans and what they are usually doing.
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Yeah, what she said.
The lore is all over the items. If that’s not enough, the blogs cover it. You wanna’ use Dark Souls as an example? Then be consistent, because Infinite is doing exactly that.
So this is Halo the Destiny version is what you are saying. This is like the people complaining about having to read lore through cards.
All I am saying that if H:I’s mission is to bring in a wider audience and players from other franchises, doing exactly what Destiny 2 did that caused people to critique its implementation of the lore to a wider audience , is this not just a recipe for failure?
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Given that Destiny 2 is stupidly successful… No.
Uh-huh.
I mean, I’m not necessarily saying that either of us are right because interest is non-universal. What someone finds interesting, I find as dull as dishwater and vice-versa.
And we still don’t get to experience… Any of it through any means? Not even a flashback cutscene? I generally hate Halo 5, but I will say that the first cutscene is a great mood-setter as well as establishing why these characters are important - they’re incredible at their jobs.
To use a more recent example, Elden Ring. We’re provided with even a PowerPoint-esque slideshow that shows us the conflicts of the Shattering, creating reasons for us to get invested in the individual characters as well as providing impetus for us to fight the Shardbearers and how difficult they will be to fight. This was supplemented with pre-release videos that generated interest and hype, as well as tied into the story (the first teaser displays Malenia and Radahn fighting, the shattering of the Elden Ring, and Radahn’s Great Rune burning to drive away the Scarlet Rot - all of which we see the effects of later in the released product)
Ah yes, the thing we’ve been doing since Halo 4, and the thing that 343 retconned into prior Halo games. So I guess we just endlessly train against one another, nothing ever happens, and Master Chief solves all the problems while we hop from Spartan University from Spartan University.
Because the care someone expresses toward a story is not universal. I can guarantee you that there’s at least one person in the world who likes the story of Aliens Colonial Marines.
I, on the other hand, strongly dislike this narrative angle because it’s Season 2 and nothing has happened so far. We’re still stuck training (after 2 prior games of this).
And that’s my point about your statement on “strides.” The game’s story is dependent on the player moving it along. Regardless of your opinion on it, the player is a driving force in the game’s story to move the plot from Point A to Point B.
That was intended to be commentary on the player’s actions. The player can put their controller down at the start of Halo 3 and the plot will not advance unless the player is actively driving the plot.
After Halo 4 and Halo 5, I’m far less hopeful. It’s more likely they’ll scrap that plotline. Again.
Don’t try and misconstrue what I’m saying.
And as a result, I couldn’t care less about these characters. I can only be told for so long that cool things are happening before I lose interest because we never get to see the cool thing.
Once again, you’re intentionally misconstruing what I’m saying in an attempt to gain a leg up in the conversation. My point, if you had read what I wrote, was that the story that the player is intended to experience does not happen unless the player interacts with it. You can delve deeper into the world of philosophy and argue that things outside of our perception do not exist to the self, but with something like Halo, the story you play through does not exist unless you play through it. This means the individual choices and actions you take during gameplay, as well as the cutscenes, do not happen unless you take the action to make them happen. Your point, at least from what I could decipher of it, was that the story does not need the player as the active driver to make the story happen. That’s wrong.
I will concede that that is correct. I will not concede that us killing each other over and over again is an intensely lame way of progressing the story. Maybe I’m just tired of the story taking place in virtual land, but it feels as if we’re still at the same starting point. The only difference is that there’s a red angry AI in the system now.
Sort of, but a lot of them are centered around the Created and while they do provide a picture of what conflict with the Created looks like, it’s hard to be invested in a conflict that was fought and was won pyrrhic fashion off-screen. My point about Dark Souls is that we often times see the result of a conflict that we deal with. There’s eventual pay-off, whether it’s with cool loot, a boss fight, or even an entire zone. With Halo under 343, my experience has been being endlessly teased with the promise of something cool happening, and then a hard 90 degree turn into something else.
My hope is that this won’t be the case this time, but I only have the history of what has happened before to go off of… And it doesn’t leave me hopeful.
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So you are saying that HI needs to rely on influencers like Destiny has with it’s lore to explain it to the fanbase?
But what happens when the influencers blow through the content in the first week of the season? Destiny has gone through serious growing pains and HI seems to be leaning into the pains as opposed to learning from the competitors mistakes.
You can not compare the quality of Destinys seasonal MP narrative to HI’s. HI is just keeping up with the jones’
Edit: if there were actual changing dialog after LSS games, or anything in MP like the training facility that ties into the campaign, I would be a bit more agreeable on this, but there isn’t.
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Nope, we weren’t there. Why should we see it?
Horrid example! It’s so Marvel, so badly choreographed and even worse, doesn’t serve your argument because Fireteam Osiris is us in that moment! Gah!
So you’re willing to go through all that work for Elden Ring, what with the videos elsewhere… But you won’t read dev blogs? You won’t read Canon Fodder? You won’t read lore entries in the Rakshasa armor core?
You are NOT putting work in for this game on purpose. Every example you cite requires footwork from you, but here? You aren’t putting any in because you’re jaded and cynical. I’m jaded too! And a bit cynical, but I have hope it’ll be interesting and… Yeah, honestly, it is. Spartan Dinh has spent time around Sangheili, you can tell because of the lore about his pauldron. He used to repurpose Covenant stuff back before he was a Spartan, and half of his armor is Banished gear repurposed. He’s really interesting. But did you know any of that?
I mean it was the gameplay that was trash tbh, dunno’ about the story.
So about that… No. In Halo 4 we were active participants in the Requiem conflict as Fireteam Crimson. That was us. Now because Fireteam Crimson cannot canonically include Spartan Thrace, my girl (who is also trans!) I have lore that coincides with the Requiem conflict. There were like 400-500 active Spartans in that conflict. We were part of it, but we also did do wargames. Halo 5? Yeah, that was wholly wargames. Up to you what your Spartan was doing at the time tbh. Now? We’re a lot more active.
Aaaand we did that. Iratus is captured, Dinh is safe and Agryna thinks we’re pretty cool.
Doubt it. Infinite’s been mad successful financially.
Then that’s a you problem, homie. If you don’t care because you weren’t there, there’s nothing anybody can do about that. Even in a flashback you weren’t there. Even in Dark Souls or Elden Ring item lore, you weren’t there. In trailers, you weren’t there. You got to see it, but you weren’t there. By your logic, you shouldn’t care.
But you’re arguing in bad faith because you have a bone to pick with Infinite. Not how it’s being handled.
You’re acting like this isn’t a Chief VS. Atriox scenario where you’re playing the role of Chief, since I’m dismantling your argument piece by piece and the best you can do is say I’m misconstruing what you’re saying.
Stories we are not part of happen all the time. Sometimes we walk in. That is one of many ways stories work. Buddy, I don’t think you’re very qualified for literary analysis… because…
You are demonstrably wrong. It is happening right now in Infinite, no matter what you say.
One that has the entire Banished archive, and will serve to inform the braoder UNSC of the Banished forces’ exact capabilities, limits and so on. Iratus is a latchkey discovery. Dinh may well have just saved Humanity, but it would have been impossible without us.
See that’s a fair criticism. One of Halo 5’s issues was they got a comic book guy to write escalation of events, and that uh, never goes well. The Created were never as dangerous as they seemed though, turns out. Atriox is just that bad.
Sure, that’s fair. That’s what happens when a creative vision is lead by a corporation instead of writers. You know exactly what to blame for that.
Again, Infinite has been exceptionally successful. Press never wants you to think that, but the financial numbers are all right there. Their absolute biggest title for Halo yet.
If I’ve been a right pillock? Look, I’m sorry. I don’t have a lot of love for bad faith takes and self slapping arguments that are inconsistent. You can point to my stances and say I haven’t doubled back or treated different media differently.
Not in the slightest, it’s all in the game right there… But they already do this. Installation 00, various Halo youtubers, etc., have been covering this game’s lore forever. It is a part of the machine.
That’s extremely fair.
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Because story-telling methods, including Halo, utilize cutscenes that do not feature the character to tell the story? Mass Effect 1, you see Saren raging inside of Sovreign because Shepard used the Eden Prime Beacon and orders Shepards assassination. All of Spartan Ops in Halo 4 features cutscenes that do not feature Fireteam Crimson. Do it the Halo CE way if you have to. Master Chief wasn’t there for the Flood Outbreak, but still saw it attack the Marines via Jenkins’ helmet camera.
It’s not like there’s no precedence for this in prior games either, Halo 3: ODST’s story line is for the most part told from flashback sequences that are also gameplay sequences where we hop around different playable characters (all members of Alpha-Nine except Dare)
That’s not my point, and also not addressing the argument fully - the cutscene still demonstrates the character’s abilities in that context. You can utilize similar levels of cutscene to demonstrate Eklund and Dinh’s capabilities.
I also hate that cutscene for largely the same reasons, but is a tone-setter and establishes the Osiris team level of skill.
Because the game should make me want to put the effort in. It doesn’t. There’s also the argument of different expectations for different media. Elden Ring and Dark Souls are more strongly predicated on the player seeking out the lore rather than giving it to them directly. Halo, especially under Bungie, was giving the player the story directly with little necessity for outside understanding that was not directly related to the story - armor lore, species lore and the like was far less necessary for understanding the plot.
Yeah, I did, because I also read the armor lore.
Story certainly didn’t save it, and was not a good follow-up to Alien 3 (Hicks comes back and says that his body was misidentified, and he’s actually for realises alive)
And my wider point about the storyline of training is that it’s back-to-back training simulations. When do we get to see actual action? If the excuse is “Oh, it’s different characters” each time, then what’s the point of establishing it as canon if your character doesn’t carry over?
And it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like we just ran around, shot each other for a few hours, and then we got a “You Win!” screen. It feels like the story sat stagnant, then someone pushed a button, and then we won. Even a Firefight simulation with the AI taking the role of boss-level enemy would have felt like there was more involvement from us in affecting the story.
So were Halo 4 and Halo 5, and the stories still got scrapped. Granted I hated those stories, but it’s not like the precedent isn’t there. Even if the game is financially successful, they can still put it on the chopping block.
I didn’t come into Halo Reach caring about Noble Team. I didn’t come into Halo 3: ODST caring about Alpha-Nine. I came out of both caring about both because the game made me care through effective storytelling, through the struggles and losses of the characters as well as definitions of who these characters are. The introduction to both teams was incredibly strong for different reasons, with Alpha-Nine being more humorous and Noble Team being more cool-professional.
Obviously, there’s still more road here for the Spartans featured in this story, but the introduction to their story, and especially coming off of prior Halo experiences with 343 and the prior season does not leave me hopeful as to where this is going.
Because what you’re doing, is you’re attempting to draw allusions to a ridiculous precedent and say their the same. Misrepresenting what I’m saying, basically.
My point with this section is to state that the player in most, if not all, video game stories are the active drivers of the story so that the story can move from Point A to Point B. Without the player pressing “Start” or moving the control sticks, the characters in the story remain stagnant. To the player who is experiencing that story, their interpretation and experience with the story remains at Point A because nothing has moved on past Point A due to their lack of interaction. This is basically where head-canon is derived from, and why some people will say that the Enlightened Ending for Metro 2033 (spare the Dark Ones) is canon while the Ranger Ending is not. They got Enlightened and then never played Metro Last Light.
Now, in this case, I will say that the story will move along without the player being an active participant in it, as this is a Seasonal style game and 343 probably isn’t going to leave these cutscenes in. My point is basically that most games stories, at least to the interpretation of the player/reader/entity viewing do not move along for that individual if they are not the ones participating with it (ala, if you finished reading Lord of the Rings at Fellowship of the Ring and are never going to pick up The Two Towers or Return of the King, Fellowship is where the story ends for you). I will also say that if you do not do all of the Event Challenges for Interference, you won’t be the Spartan moving the story along because the end cutscene does not happen for that player. I am curious as to how they’ll handle that, as well as the wider Seasonal narratives for new players, because the player Spartan appears to be the only one that matters for the individual player’s storylines (unless Agryna is talking to each Spartan individually or something, but that doesn’t solve the Spartan in the cutscenes situation). This is also a criticism I have for Seasonal story lines that are not adaptive to the player entering the story later than everyone else, but that’s a different discussion.
Similar statements were said for Halo 4 and Halo 5, which were also the largest Halo titles at the time. Both of them ended up having their storylines totally scrapped.
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So, what, never try anything new? I don’t get you. We do not have to see everything.
You know people hated any time Spartan IVs were shown to be as competent as IIs, right?
That’s honestly a you problem. I care. Put the damn legwork in sometimes.
Then - YOU LITERALLY HAVE ALL THE SAME INFORMATION I DO. My Gods you really do need a little popcorn flick to make you happy don’t you?
eh.
Shrug We fought in the Requiem campaign. Not sure what else to tell you. Up to you what adventures your Spartan goes on.
That’s on you buddy. Feel that way or not, we did it.
Mm… Those weren’t as successful.
Wild, I still barely care about Noble Team outside of Jorge tbh. My wife likes them a lot more than I do, but Alpha-Nine is pretty good. Well kinda’. I’m mostly just there for Buck, since Nathon Fillion is just plain a gift to mankind. What a gorgeous man.
And you, have made plenty of incorrect assumptions about me, so, like, whatever to be honest.
alright first off Head-Canon is just someone’s personal belief about how a story went in a particular way that they stick to or assert, it’s - it’s not a gamer only thing (Gods please tell me you engage with media beyond video games) but I gotta’ say, this argument you have about player agency WRT things staying active unless acted upon, how many times are you gonna’ say it? 'Til I get it or something? Because, I do, whether you believe that or not.
See I think that’s honestly all pretty interesting. It’s also part of why I haven’t gone back to Destiny, lol. I have to figure out where my frakking IRON LADY ENDED UP THIS WHOLE TIME.
That ain’t ever easy with lore THAT shrouded in… Whatever fog Bungie likes to write everything interesting in.