Why is there so much hate for these specific things? Many people dislike the Autumn-class Cruisers, the F-4 Broadswords, the Sahara-class Prowlers, Strident-class Frigates, as well as the new Marine designs and even (although to a far lesser extent) the new guns and redesigns of said guns.
I can understand disliking sudden random changes in things that really didn’t need to be changed. That’s why I hated the Reach redesigns for weapons and vehicles that would apparently get overhauls in the next few weeks. But Halo 4 is set a whole five years after Halo 3. There is still conflict going on all around the humans, the Innies are coming back, so why is it people didn’t expect new weapons and vehicles to be developed? That would be like… That would be like being surprised that WW2 had different weapons and vehicles to WW1.
It’s also apparently always forgotten that in Halo 1-Reach, you very rarely get a choice of weapons from a stocked armoury. Normally you’re in small setups with little to go off of, and whenever you’re in a base, they tend to be getting attacked anyway. People didn’t moan and cry that the Spartan Laser was silly coz it hadn’t been in the previous games, did they? Halo 2 is a fan favourite, and it introduces dozens of new weapons and vehicles with little purpose (to this day I’d take a Ghost over a Spectre and an Assault Rifle over two SMGs) and it was accepted because hell, it’s not like you had a whole array of guns and vehicles in Halo CE, you were the remnants of a ship that crashed fleeing a war. You’re lucky you had any guns.
Yet when Halo 4 does it, in a scenario that makes a lot of sense for there to be new gear, people throw their disdain at it. In the same way, people often voice their hate of the new Marine designs, as well as the fact that there are no ODSTs. Why do people think the Infinity was primed for war? It was sent out to locate other Installations, nothing more. The Marines are specifically Infinity marines. Most of them wouldn’t be anywhere near as good the vets from Halo 3, that’s why there was also a massive dispatch of Spartan-IVs. That was the Infinities fighting force.
They looked… okay, I only really liked the additions to the Spartan Laser, but overall it didn’t make sense that there’d be these predecessors to guns that would be used in the next few days. the MA5B (Combat Evolved Assault Rifle) was in the book the Fall of Reach, yet was not featured in the game at any point, making it seem as if the MA5B had not yet entered the field of battle. If it was to be on any planet first, it’d be Reach, so the lack of guns that were confirmed to be there and their replacement by ones that were rather pointless was simply bizarre.
Also didn’t like the DMR, really, or the shotgun design which just looked clunky and big for the sake of being big.
the equipment issue is just standard military supply issues though. when you have a large force deployed in various areas, not all of them may have the exact same weapons and equipment. as you churn out more new weapons, people will still be using the old until it gets distributed further. it also goes the other way and some ares and people will have the new weapons right away.
just for example, in early WWII the us forces didnt have enough rifles to go around and it would not be uncommon for quite a few folks to have a shotgun and sidearm pistol and not a rifle like the you commonly see in pictures and movies due to the shortage of already made weapons and the massive amounts of troops being armed, trained and deployed.
Of course, in the same way many developing countries at the time of WW2 still used old WW1 guns and tanks and planes and such. It was always going to be like that.
But Spartans wouldn’t be using that sort of tech. Think of the beginning of Reach, when you’re all in that base together. They’d have top quality guns there, you would think. Or at the least, some set aside for the Spartans in case the rest were taken.
Up until the fall of Reach, everything produced for the military, including SPARTANS, was designed for fighting humans. After Reach “we” had to deal with alien technology mixed with Forerunner technology, and the Flood.
Now we’re using forerunner tech.
Having said that, in Halo 4 “realism” seems to be taking a back seat to gameplay, especially concerning the appearance of troops and your SPARTAN. Military organizations love standardization and troops generally all look the same. In H4 it seems every Marine you see looks different. The options for customizing your SPARTAN has grown to ridiculous lengths.
The only different vehicle is the Mantis, which serves no real purpose except for having a mech in the game. The Wolverine would have been better.
While I don’t think anyone can deny seeing some Wars vehicles would have been amazing, the Mantis was designed as basically a step down from Spartans, but still an effective mode of combat. We’ve seen it in gameplay, the Mantis can be devastating to every kind of vehicle and person. It would likely be used by Marines when fighting against the rising Innie forces in the post-war period.
As far as the Chiefs armour goes, mm, I’m not a massive fan as it’s all a little… pointy, and such, but I feel it’s just a step up from the Reach armour, as we try to get ever closer to copying Japanese games. I for one miss the Halo 3 armour, which didn’t differentiate enough to look insane, but retained enough details to still be different.
The only real armour I have issues with in Halo 4 is the Oceanic armour, mostly coz it’d have no practical use.
And when it comes to troops, like I said, you’re dealing with a bunch of Marines who were far from expecting a war against Forerunner tech. I’m kinda shocked they even had armour. Think about it, it’s not 343 looking over the details - when all the Spartans come to help you get Lasky, they have the exact same armour, exact same colours, exact same everything. The Marines in Halo 4, I feel, are similar to the ones from CE, in that they’re confused, scared, and kinda unsure of what to be doing. So of course they’re not a united army of green.
There is the thing that people think the standard marines don’t look armored enough to deal against plasma based weaponry. The heavy variant marine looks better for it but the types we see in the spops cutscenes look less effective against plasma weaponry.
A thing might be that they’re using the old gar as much as possible to not have to destroy it and just use the new one once the old one is depleted.
I honestly don’t see a point in complaining about those things, I’m always glad to see new weapons and vehicles. The marines in halo 4 look ok, there undersuit looks very weird and doesn’t good well with there armor, I prefer reach marines.
> > A lot of designs in halo could be improved a lot. Take the scorpions. They’re not well designed for tanks. Driver is very exposed.
>
> Same goes for the turret.
If it had extra energy shields it might help, but a redesign+shields would be better. I think vehicles in halo should be shielded!
My issue wth the redesigns isn’t because of the existence of redesigning itself (it’s a time period where a lot of things are being rethought for the better), but rather because of the fact that a lot of these new designs look terrible.
I can’t stand the new Marine BDU, most of the Spartan Armors especially the redesigned ones look terrible, the new look for Covenant technology makes them seem primitive with the green lights, and the sounds of the Energy Sword, Gravity Hammer, and the Warthog are horrifying.
It’s fine for 343i to redesign things, but they have to redesign them well.
But see, this is the issue - you don’t like them, therefore they are bad. People don’t put them in the scenario and see if they make sense, they simply assume that they don’t because people don’t like them. As erickyboo said, the Marines don’t look like they could handle plasma. The reason for that is likely that the war is now over, so there is no need to have your men decked out in full metal body armour like in Reach and Halo 3.
The Spartan Armour is entirely subjective, coz the only ones I like are really the basic ones like the Recruit armour.
You do realize the Covenant Renegades are getting all the left over tech, right? And that they’re also in a war on another planet, which is where most of their good tech is actually going? That’s why most of their stuff looks really mediocre. In the Escalation comics you see a bunch of the Arbiters Elites, and they’re still decked out in Halo 3 armour. The Gravity Hammer and Sword sound fine to me, and the Warthog finally sounds like a car (probably because they recorded the sounds of actual cars and jeeps and so on).
And I agree with erickyboo, the majority of vehicles should have shields at this point.