Halo 4's "Original" campaign

Games Other Halo
1

Don’t get me wrong, I love Halo 4 in a number of different ways and respect what 343i was able to do for their first full game. After coming into and playing the entire Halo series only from early 2012 (before picking up Halo 4), I learnt and loved Halo and continue to expand my knowledge on the Universe through the expanded media. This is where the problem comes in, particularly with the games; 343 wanted to create something new but I feel that they barely managed to do that without clinging to a lot of the aspects of the previous Halo games.

The way the story played out and the emotional side to Chief finding his humanity made this game one of my favourite Halos, but level designs, missions and other in-game details made me think that Halo 4 was also playing off the successes of the original trilogy and sidestory games to ensure the game felt familiar to fans. Not to say that isn’t a good thing but when it is done so often it makes the levels feel tiring and drains the space for 343’s new concepts. At least to me…I’m a stickler for detail.

So now I shall run through all the so-called ‘stolen ideas’ copy and pasted into Halo 4’s campaign. Ok, go.

Level 1: DAWN

  1. Waking up on a UNSC spaceship before it gets invaded by Covenant and crashes onto a Forerunner Installation in unknown space. (Halo: Combat Evolved - POA)

This one is a bit specific but my point still stands, I know Chief falls from space near the start of every game but that is just because he knows how to make an entrance. :smiley:

  1. Room where the player is in is invaded by Covenant through two boarding craft. (Halo 2 - Cairo Station)

At least they mixed it up a little with Phantoms.

Level 2: REQUIEM

  1. The player exploring a large landscape (mainly in a Warthog) after crashing, and entering a Foreunner facility. (Halo: Combat Evolved - Halo)

This one is just a monument to all their sins, honestly.

Level 3: FORERUNNER

  1. The Covenant arriving halfway through the mission (most visibly in drop pods) and engaging the third force. (Halo 3 - Floodgate)

If the Prometheans had known how religiously devoted the Storm was to them, they should’ve told that to the Covenant.

  1. Vehicle chase to escape an area of a Forerunner Installation which is destroying itself, with a final leap of faith. (Halo 3 - Halo)

Coming up with a new escape plan? Were it so easy.

Level 4: INFINITY

  1. Standard blow stuff up and general ‘big battle’ mission. (Halo: Reach - Tip Of The Spear / Halo 2 - Metropolis / Halo 3 - The Storm / Halo: Combat Evolved - The Silent Cartographer)

This is pretty much a staple in nearly every Halo game (usually involving a tank). I’m not complaining about this one, so I’ll let 'em have it. Halo needs a little bad-a55ery.

Level 5: RECLAIMER

  1. Walking through a traditional Foreunner hallway, complete with hardlight floors, grey walls with high ceilings and Sentinels. (Halo: CE / Halo 2 / Halo 3)

I really can’t think if there is anything that stood out to me from this mission…I could’ve seen faults in this level, but this post beat me over the fence.

Level 6: SHUTDOWN

  1. Flying in a UNSC vehicle through a city of skyscrapers and landing at (at least) 3 major locations in which you need to shut down a jammer (etc) by running through the building. (Halo: Reach - New Alexandria)

Seems like this entire mission has been ripped straight from Reach. When taking whole levels from other games, 343 does know how to pick 'em.

  1. Riding on slow-moving gondolas that stop halfway so you can kill some enemies. (Halo 2 - Delta Halo / Quarantine Zone)

Gondolas? seriously? I thought there were two different Forerunner castes who designed Requiem and those parts of Installation 05 - warrior and servant? Why use ancient gondolas in newer Forerunner designs when you could simply use light bridges? Somebody please correct me if any of this is wrong but I am sure that is why the architecture differs from each Installation.

  1. The player walks into several energy conduits in order to deactivate them, using the player’s shields. (Halo: Combat Evolved - Two Betrayals)

Cortana even says that they are using a tactic from their old playbook, but they should’ve found another way to finish the fight.

Level 7: COMPOSER

Apart from a very loose comparison of the events of this mission to the boarding and desolation of the Ardent Prayer(?) from Halo:Reach’s Long Night Of Solace level, I can safely say that Composer may be the only unique mission in Halo 4. Was I wrong?

Level 8: MIDNIGHT

  1. Flying in a 'SWORD/SABRE-class fighter and fighting in space before entering the ship and reaching the control center to enact a chain of events leading to the ship’s ultimate destruction. (Halo: Reach - Long Night Of Solace)

Yup…that’s about the LONG(sword) and SHORT(sword) of it. Get it? Shortsword and Longsword fighters? C’mon, it wasn’t even that BROAD(sword) of a pun. Eyyyyyyy. But to be fair, tank beats everything!

  1. Carrying a heavy cylindrical tube on the player’s back for the entirety of the final mission and only relying on it in the very end. (Halo: Reach - POA)

The missile and Cortana container even looked similar in their respective games. Chief relied on the missile in the end to defeat the Didact’s Composer, while Noble Six relied on the Cortana container getting to the UNSC in order to save humanity.In the end, she wasn’t doing it for mankind.

  1. An essence of Cortana leaving the player messages on their screen while they are away from her. (Halo 3)

This happened as full-screen images while playing the first half of Halo 3 and similar rampancy-induced messages were shown on the player’s HUD in the final act of the mission, being Cortana giving Chief his last objectives. She was his shield, she was his sword.

I think that about wraps things up, this is something I have been wanting to get of my chest since early 2013 while replaying the campaign. Again, I am not saying this to criticise the campaign, but to point out the excessive use of these old ideas by 343i when making Halo 4. If you managed to find all 13 quotes hidden throughout this post, then I will personally give you a cookie. If you agree/disagree with me, feel free to make this an active discussion! As always, keep playing Halo - until we are all dust and echoes. xD

2

I think most of that was done intentionally. The comparison to CE is the most obvious and was done so that this game by a new developer would have both the look and feel of classic Halo while also having its own unique flavor. Also to pay homage to the older titles.

None of it is “stolen”. This seems to be an issue where some people view 343 simply as the caretakers of Bungie’s games and criticize them for either straying too far from the originals or of “stealing” from them.

Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3 ODST, Reach, and Halo 4 are all owned and controlled by Microsoft & 343 Industries. Bungie has no legal ownership of any of them except for the Security Helmet in Halo 3 & Reach since that appeared first in one of their pre-Microsoft games (Marathon).

There are obvious and intentional parallels to earlier games, just like Halo 3 had to Halo CE, or Halo CE had to Marathon. It’s not “Stealing”, it’s the continuation of certain styles and formulas from within a franchise that make it familiar and make it “Halo”. Does it get redundant? At times, yes, but it’s a safe tried & true formula that we all love.

The part you mentioned about the nuke-head and Cortana’s container in Halo Reach is probably just out of convenience since Halo 4 was built off of a heavily modified Halo Reach engine (it was there, so why not use it?)

3

A lot of these are kind of stretching your original point. Might as well throw in “you shoot Covenant in the face”.

4

Hah, I knew there were some similarities, but I didn’t know they were that similar. :stuck_out_tongue:

Halo Xbox One’s E3 2013 trailer and the Halo 3 trailer were also very similar:

> It all starts in a desert.
> Halo 3
> Halo Xbox One
>
> We see a figure walking towards us, but something is obscuring our view, so we don’t know who it is.
> Halo 3
> Halo Xbox One
>
> Then the obstruction is removed and we see the glorious Master Chief!
> Halo 3
> Halo Xbox One
>
> Cortana is there too.
> Halo 3
> Halo Xbox One
>
> The camera turns to face the opposite direction (where Master Chief is heading) and we see vast emptiness.
> Halo 3
> Halo Xbox One
>
> Then out of that emptiness emerges a large, unknown mass.
> Halo 3
> Halo Xbox One
>
> Lastly, show title.
> Halo 3 (couldn’t find a screenshot, but it’s the same thing)
> Halo Xbox One
>
> I guess 343i decided to stick with what works? shrugs

5

Halo is a franchise that is constantly reusing scenes and motifs from previous games in new settings. Some of you ideas are quite the stretch in the assumption 343 just copied them. Dawn does resemble Pillar of Autumn, but did not Halo 2 start with the Covenant invading a human space station much in the same way? Requiem invokes the same feeling of Halo, but what else could they really do? Chief is in a new environment. The Covenant dropping in drop pods was also done in Halo 2 as well as Halo 3. Your critque of Shutdown is pretty funny because while you focused on the gondolas, you seemed to ignore the section where the path actually changes as you move across it while you are still fighting enemies, was that in a previous game exactly like that?

I don’t deny that 343 used ideas from the previous games as either homages or references to the past title, but Bungie was doing the same exact thing when they had Halo in their hands.