Take a look at these:
- Halo 5 medals - Halo: Reach medalsWhich looks better?
Now before anyone tries to attack me let me just say that I appreciate what 343 has done with the franchise and all that jazz. This may not be an issue for a lot of you and that is totally fine but those of us that take an interest in graphic art design such as myself have most likely been disappointed with the way the medals look ever since Halo 4’s release. Graphic art design has always fascinated me especially in video games while Halo has been the one I’ve taken the most interest in because of just how unique and colorful the medals looked in multiplayer. The reason being was because the art style and design of the medals from past Halo games (especially Halo Reach) made it seem like the medals could actually exist in that world. This is where newer Halo’s seem to suffer in terms of medal art style.
The problem with Halo 4 and 5’s multiplayer medals was that they just seemed too “out of place”. What I mean by that is the medals didn’t feel like actual medals that could be given to a soldier or Spartan in the Halo universe. The old medals from Halo 2-Reach looked like actual medals that I could see being pinned on a military uniform while Halo 4 and 5’s medals look like some flashy app you can select from a smartphone. Now don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the art design 343 have done to the medals and quite frankly a lot of them look relatively cool regarding the basic artwork behind them. But the current art style and general aesthetic behind them don’t fit within the current Halo universe. Some of their designs would look so much better under the old art style that Reach used.
I miss having the old medal designs. I feel that much more time and effort were put into designing them while I feel that the medals from Halo 4 and 5 were designed using basic shapes, colors, and shaders from microsoft paint (my opinion). Take for instance the multi-kill medals. The multi-kill medals were some of the coolest looking ones in the old Halo’s simply because each one had it’s own color contrast and each one was easily identifiable and as you got more kills, the better the medal looked until you hit that pristine black hexagonal shape with 10 stars. Looked amazing. However, when I get multi-kills in Halo 5, not only is it not as identifiable (especially when you hit Killtrocity and Killimanjaro), it’s also as if I’m going through the color spectrum of a rainbow. It completely takes me out of the immersion of the whole military combat medal idea.
It would be great if Halo 6 went back to how the original medals looked but just improve upon them a little bit. I hope there’s quite a few of you who share the same concerns that I do regarding the look of the medals in this game. I want this thread to gain some traction in the hopes that someone from 343 will see this and consider changing to how they originally were for H6.
