Halo 4: Beautiful, yet ugly.

Games Other Halo
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I’m just going to start this off saying quite openly that this isn’t a Halo 4 hate thread. If you believe it is, you should stop reading and close the page. That being said…

Halo 4’s graphics are amazing, 343 really went all the way with what the 360 can do. This seven year old tech still has a few tricks up its sleeve if the right team are working on it. The lighting is gorgeous, the textures are great and some of the effects going on in the background like skyboxes and objects floating from Requiem’s core just make the game look good.

But there’s things about the game that certainly bother me. Mainly the chosen art style/direction. I’ll be dropping a few images here to help you see what I see.

1. Art Direction - Chief’s Armor
I’ve never really liked the design choice for Chief’s armor in Halo 4, take a look at this comparison image from Halo 3/Halo 4.
Now as you can see Chief’s armor in Halo 4 has been buffed and bulked. He looks like a heavy killing machine. Which is what he is, the armor suits what he is and what he does but wasn’t this the same armor he wore in Halo 2/3?

I’ve heard many reasons for the change ranging from art direction to something I personally found to be a load of garbage. (Nanobots) The idea of Nanobots just never seemed like a good enough reason to me. In any case, I don’t have any complaints, I just feel that instead of having a full armor change they could’ve updated the look of the Halo 2/3 armor set.

2. Art Direction - Forward Unto Dawn
Yes this is another one of those silly Art Direction issues, normally I wouldn’t say anything because the newer FUD looks pretty damn awesome. But there’s a trailer for Halo 4 where the original Frigate’s from Halo 2/3/ODST/Reach appear. If these trailers and cutscenes are canon then wouldn’t that mess up the opening cutscene?

Hell, there’s even a crashed Frigate model on the map Wreckage, albeit an incredibly shrunk version. But it’s there alright. That could be chalked up to 343 just using resources for the map but I find the cutscenes a little bit harder to explain.

3. Design Choice - The Didact
This is a short one but am I the only one who doesn’t really find the Didact threatening? I just can’t take him seriously with his current getup. One minute he looks like a mutated Tom Riddle, the next an android. It just didn’t work for me. It’s not how I personally would’ve imagined a Forerunner’s appearance if I’m honest.

When thinking of writing this thread I had many more things I wanted to list…sadly I’ve forgotten most of them, so if enough people comment on it and a little discussion gets going I’ll return and try to remember them.

With this little list and the others that I’ve forgotten for the moment, I seem to be struggling on what to consider Halo 4. Beautiful? Ugly? or both?
If you have anything you’d like to suggest/discuss, write it down. I’d love to read your opinions on this!

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Yeah, I’m not a fan of Chief’s H4 armor. I don’t know why 343i felt the need to change his Halo 2/Halo 3 look, but whatever.

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The only thing I possibly would have a problem with is the FUD redesign, but that was necessary to make the first mission better so I’ll accept it.

The armor redesign is acceptable to me as well. I just write off the complaints about it to the general “complain about everything” attitude on this forum. I’d rather they’d have just said “It’s a redesign/graphical update and you all can deal with it” instead of some silly nanobot theory, but whatevs.

And while I don’t find the Didact “scary”, I never found much of anything in the Halo games too scary (besides the CE Flood, but who didn’t with that buildup). Especially in Halo 3 where it seemed like they were trying too hard with Brutes and Flood. I do find his appearance rather cool, though.

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I really do like the Forerunner structures.

I think it is the first time since Halo 1 that I just looked at the scenery as I was driving the Warthog at the beginning of mission 2.

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> The only thing I possibly would have a problem with is the FUD redesign, but that was necessary to make the first mission better so I’ll accept it.
>
> The armor redesign is acceptable to me as well. I just write off the complaints about it to the general “complain about everything” attitude on this forum. I’d rather they’d have just said “It’s a redesign/graphical update and you all can deal with it” instead of some silly nanobot theory, but whatevs.
>
> And while I don’t find the Didact “scary”, I never found much of anything in the Halo games too scary (besides the CE Flood, but who didn’t with that buildup). Especially in Halo 3 where it seemed like they were trying too hard with Brutes and Flood. I do find his appearance rather cool, though.

I liked the Didact. I don’t think he was ever supposed to be scary, but he was set up to be intimidating very well. On Composer, I really started dreading his arrival once I saw that orange beam scan through the station’s hallways. His armor should have conformed more to the Forerunners’ angular theme, though. I felt his armor was too curved, color it all purple and he might as well be a new Covenant species.

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> The only thing I possibly would have a problem with is the FUD redesign, but that was necessary to make the first mission better so I’ll accept it.

I would’ve accepted the old design, but an artificially inflated playspace for the first mission like they did with CE’s warthog run.

> The armor redesign is acceptable to me as well. I just write off the complaints about it to the general “complain about everything” attitude on this forum. I’d rather they’d have just said <mark>“It’s a redesign/graphical update and you all can deal with it”</mark> instead of some silly nanobot theory, but whatevs.

I don’t think that would’ve worked with the unaltered armor in multiplayer and multiplayer being canon now. As for the nanobots thing, I don’t see why that couldn’t be mentioned in the campaign…among other things.

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> > The only thing I possibly would have a problem with is the FUD redesign, but that was necessary to make the first mission better so I’ll accept it.
>
> I would’ve accepted the old design, but an artificially inflated playspace for the first mission like they did with CE’s warthog run.
>
>
>
> > The armor redesign is acceptable to me as well. I just write off the complaints about it to the general “complain about everything” attitude on this forum. I’d rather they’d have just said <mark>“It’s a redesign/graphical update and you all can deal with it”</mark> instead of some silly nanobot theory, but whatevs.
>
> I don’t think that would’ve worked with the unaltered armor in multiplayer and multiplayer being canon now. As for the nanobots thing, I don’t see why that couldn’t be mentioned in the campaign…among other things.

Actually, I only just now found out that nanobots was actually an official explanation. In which case, I still like the armor, but the explanation for the change is pretty weak and I’d have preferred “we redesigned it”.

I don’t think all the stuff in multiplayer is canon, though. Like FOTUS

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I would have also preferred that his halo 3 armour was graphically enhanced for the new engine… They could have given Chief his halo 4 armour in the NEXT Halo. And it would have been easier to explain.

The Didact looks cool, IMHO

As a whole the game looks very nice. Little things like low-res texture work being a little obvious sometimes, takes the sheen off, but nothing drastic

Imho, some design choices are dull: storm rifle design; bland MP levels; crawlers (pretty boring as an enemy); and forge palettes, especially the pieces for Erosion

Edit: 80% of MP armour looks bland.

My two cents

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I remember someone saying that his suit is kind of alive and can change and adapt, maybe it’s what happened while in cryo.

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For the Didact, I’d expect him to look WAY different than the regular Warrior-Servants. He was the supreme commander of the Forerunner army, you know.

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Making the Didact the only antagonist in the Campaign does seem like a step back.

CE: Covenant, Flood, 343 Guilty Spark
H2: Covenant, Prophets, Tartarus, Heretics, Sesa, Flood, Gravemind
H3*: Covenant, Prophet of Truth, Flood, Gravemind
H4: Covenant, Prometheans, Didact

*I’m not including 343 Guilty Spark as an antagonist because he turns on the alliance at the end and is killed shortly afterward

I can understand Halo 4 introducing set pieces like CE. But leaving Jul out of the picture was wrong IMO.

> For the Didact, I’d expect him to look WAY different than the regular Warrior-Servants. He was the supreme commander of the Forerunner army, you know.

This is a good point. The armor does befit a general.

> And while I don’t find the Didact “scary”, I never found much of anything in the Halo games too scary (besides the CE Flood, but who didn’t with that buildup). <mark>Especially in Halo 3</mark> where it seemed like they were trying too hard with Brutes and Flood. I do find his appearance rather cool, though.

I felt Halo 4 also tried too hard with the enemies.

Knights screaming in our faces.
Zealot’s wicked armor.
Elites and their hands.
Grunts without their masks.

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> ]
>
> I don’t think that would’ve worked with the unaltered armor in multiplayer and multiplayer being canon now. As for the nanobots thing, I don’t see why that couldn’t be mentioned in the campaign…among other things.

Chief looks at new forearm armor
Cortana- I rewrote your firmware while you were out.
Chief- You’ve been busy.

-Opening dialogue of campaign.

Not mentioned you say?

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I can’t take the Didact as a good villain due to my first playthrough of Halo 4 when I first saw him in the cutscene I heard the grunt birthday skull activating quite a lot in the backround, how do you take him as a bad guy when you see him and hear YAAAAAY YAAAY YAAAAAAY.

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> > ]
> >
> > I don’t think that would’ve worked with the unaltered armor in multiplayer and multiplayer being canon now. As for the nanobots thing, I don’t see why that couldn’t be mentioned in the campaign…among other things.
>
> Chief looks at new forearm armor
> Cortana- I rewrote your firmware while you were out.
> Chief- You’ve been busy.
>
> -Opening dialogue of campaign.
>
>
> Not mentioned you say?

Google the definition of Firmware. That’s not his suit’s appearance. That’s why his HUD was different and that’s what he was referring to.

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I like John’s armor. It looks -Yoink!- IMO. And definitely looks tough and buff like it’s supposed to act. Halo 2/3 armor didn’t look tough. I’ll live with the nanobot excuse.

FUD. It makes sense from a gameplay and art perspective. Though I think the original Frigate looks much sexier (and I think it’s still canon since it was in Wreckage, so I’m assuming there’s two variants of the same Frigate).

The Didact. His armor is -Yoink!-; So -Yoink!-! And I don’t think he was meant to look scary. Imitating, yes, and his armor kinda (and size, and the fact you just can’t fight him) does that for me.

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> The Didact. His armor is -Yoink!-; So -Yoink!-! And I don’t think he was meant to look scary. Imitating, yes, and his armor kinda (and size, and the fact you just can’t fight him) does that for me.

Eh, I just can’t find the love child of Voldemort and the Cloverfield monster intimidating.

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> I can’t take the Didact as a good villain due to my first playthrough of Halo 4 when I first saw him in the cutscene I heard the grunt birthday skull activating quite a lot in the backround, how do you take him as a bad guy when you see him and hear YAAAAAY YAAAY YAAAAAAY.

Did you skip any enemies?

Afaik, the Knights defending the console do not appear in the cutscene but what about the Knights fighting the Covies?

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Well, I wasn’t really intimidated by the other main antagonists, the prophets. I did, however, piss my pants every time an elite zealot would charge me in Halo CE.

As for the Didact, he seemed very threatening, yet calm at the same time.

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Don’t really understand this thread. I don’t mean to demean the content, but the thread title was Halo 4: Beautiful, yet ugly. And then you said it was good looking and said you only had like three parts of the game that you thought were bad. And two of them were just canonical except for the Didact look. So… really the only part of Halo 4 aesthetically you disagreed was like 1 character’s armor. Granted he was the villain, but it was just such a broad thread title. Just a little confused here.