Reach is the best Halo game.
Cringe, Reach started the decline of Halo in every aspect except content on day 1 and community features.
I’ve been fascinated by this, going back to Halo 3 and Reach and just seeing how much… better they still are.
The skyboxes, the explosions, just the colors and lighting somehow feel much more realistic. Particularly the banished… the brutes just don’t have the realistic look they use to. It all feels so plasticy and fake.
It had everything. A single player campaign which by the way, lets you play as your own Spartan. It has co-op, split screen, multiplayer with a lot of modes, great Spartan customization, playable Elites, Invasion, Firefight, Forge, theater, challenges, and great weapons (which a few were sadly ruined by bloom).
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The campaign was predictable and lacked weight, the levels were filled with cannon fodder. Multiplayer is a direct downgrade from H3 with weapon roles being muddied and bad mechanics like bloom being added.
Predictable how? Lacked weight?
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You lost me at Halo 4
you mean how god the brutes look in reach?
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well atleast the bloom is managable unlike reack. + h3 is always dominated by the br or carbine . atleast in infinite its not the case
I thought it was the industry’s, and not yours.
Because sequels, prequels and so forth can never ever be seen as a product on their own.
Halo 4 is a great product of it’s own worthy of inclusion in the best of games?
Who automatically promise anything when making a sequel?
I’d say that’s jumping to conclusions.
As the saying goes:
“Sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe s***”. -Gennaro Gattuso
That’s not to say sequels do not overall gain something from being what their predecessors were.
Fans of previous titles will get angry with changes they don’t see eye to eye with. Fairly certain any changes I’d want to test out would boil quite a few dry from anger at how it’d change the gameplay. However I see them as potentially great things to test out, which could enhance the experience. Just like some loved custom loadouts and personal ordnance, and saw those the way I see my things.
You know, I was actually thinking of Harry Potter, and the movies for that matter.
Personally I’d say there’s something of a fine line between the Chamber of Secrets and The Prisoner of Azkaban where tones in story as well as visuals change, and the entire series goes from being a somewhat children friendly movie franchise to getting an overhaul into the more bizzare and emotional aspects far more suited for teenagers, an alteration which progressed the further the movies went.
Certainly, guns with crystals is a big leap, but I would say a change of target audience like that the movies did, also was a big one.
Sometimes, others it can succeed.
Let’s circle back to what you said at the start.
Is Halo 4 a masterpiece of it’s own?
Now let’s take a look at Halo 2.
-Removed health pickups entirely, removing a resource managing and scavenging part of the game.
-Introduced dual wielding which altered gunplay, greatly changed weapon handling in terms of mechanics and balance.
-The Pistol was practically useless for the introduction of dual wielding, a Burst weapon introduced instead.
-No AR at all, replaced with a small dual wieldable SMG.
-New styling of Chief armor.
-Dual protagonist storyline where you jumped between chief and the arbiter.
-Introduction OF boss fights
-Forerunner styling completely changed.
Want to know what ticked fans off other than a few of those?
“Defend earth”
Almost immediately jumping to a Halo ring.
People wanted to see earth, play on it, defend humanity’s home planet. We didn’t do that.
Some of the things you said about Halo 4 mirrors what Halo 2 did.
PS: that last part with the “set up” of Halo 4 being thrown out later, isn’t a fault of Halo 4.
Sure, and people were furious with Halo: Reach.
So, in order to keep a fanbase of a franchise happy, you’re allowed to make massive changes if enough time has passed? Or if it’s a small unknown game.
So the fanbase of those games don’t count?
Let’s take Doom.
Do you think the original Doom 4 would’ve gone down with the fanbase as well as Doom 2016 did?
You’ve heard the story right?
First build was “deragoratorily” labled Call of Doom, scrapped, design team changed and then Doom 2016 took form.
What??
What on earth does that have to do with anything?
That sounds more like breaking something with the intent of fixing it to do a favour.
Also…
“Ours”
Right…
Wrong, Pitfall is 1:1 scale to The Pit, just like Ragnarok to Valhalla.
Now try comparing Mercy to Guardian, that’s where the difference shines.
It did, smallest maps in Halo 4 were bigger than the smallest maps in Halo 3, yet fastest times you could traverse a map from one end to the other remained quite close to each other.
Guardians is the smallest Halo 3 map, and it takes about as long to traverse it as Halo 4’s Mercy at full sprint with the unlimited sprint perk.
Same applies to Halo 5’s maps.
Which is why shield recharge was tied to sprint in Halo 5?
The delta between BMS and Sprint speed decreased between Halo 5 beta and release? Better stopping power added in Halo 5?
Because sprint makes it easier to get away than it preferably would be.
“My proposed Golden Rule” is what I said.
And I developed this rule after noticing that every time a sequel decided to become vastly different from the title before it, it pretty much always was received as a failure and divided the fanbase.
And it turns out, it is pretty much something that is Common Sense within the industry. It is why most sequels FEEL like an upgraded version of the original while spin-off stories and games tend to succeed because they are separate from the main narrative and are thus allowed to explore deviating ideas.
For some reason though, there was a trend that began in the 2010s were games and shows and movies NEEDLESSLY changed themselves. Whether due to new management, the publisher intervening in the development process, or just the bad choice to change something that worked into something that works less BECAUSE it wasn’t something the consumers wanted.
For example, we were promised Dead Space with Dead Space 3. Instead, we got Gears of War style combat, and the Necromorphs were no longer interesting to fight.
Halo 4 were were promised Halo. Only the combat encounters in PvE became repetative because it was Light Rifle or bust when fighting Prometheans. The Multiplayer was Call of Duty. The Art style was heavily altered for some reason, and the soundtrack had plenty of pieces that sounded like they were ripped from other franchises. Most notable offender would be the intro soundtrack to Mission 7, which LITERALLY SOUNDS LIKE STAR WARS
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXCKqt4bWDE&t=34s)
Sequels and Prequels are supposed to be extensions of the original.
Take a look at Borderlands.
You have the original.
The Sequel that expanded upon the foundation of the original.
The Pre-Sequel which took place between the two and played like an extension of the second game.
Borderlands 3 plays like an upgraded version of Borderlands 2.
Tales from the Borderlands is a Tell-Tale-Game that has a story that still matches the established themes of the franchise, but plays VERY differently with its own colorful cast of characters.
Only one of those was a spin-off.
The rest are all practically the same and I can play them start-to-finish and feel like I was just playing through the same game experience the whole way.
Take a look at Call of Duty.
CoD Modern Warfare 1, 2, and 3 all play the same. Even the story missions all have segments that are the same. Slow motion door breaches, the tank sequence, the sniper mission, the stealth mission that turns to action mission, the vehicle chase mission.
CoD Black-Ops almost followed through with this, but Black-Ops 3 and 4 are the black sheep of the saga since the story is so disconnected from the rest and the gameplay is entirely changed with the addition of Wall-Running and other mechanics.
Black-Ops 1 and 2 take place in the 1960s-to-2025. And yet, despite that difference in time-period, they are almost EXACTLY the same. Because they are direct sequels and the devs understood this.
Something wrong happened when it came around time for BO3 to be made.
Ok.
Let’s make an example.
The Elder Scrolls 6 is announced.
We know that TES I thru TES V are all RPG games that play similarly in terms of basic combat and open world being player-choice free and chaotic with what unexpected things can happen.
TESVI finally comes around with a gameplay trailer and… … … it is a Final Fantasy style turn-based RPG with a party of characters.
How miffed will players be?
I could see an Elder Scrolls themed Spin-off coming around with this idea in mind.
But if people were expecting anything similar to TES I thru TES V and got a TBRPG, they would be understandably frustrated !
In fact, we saw Bethesda do the exact OPPOSITE of this when they got the rights to Fallout.
Fallout 1, 2, Tactics, and Tactics BoS all played as turn-based rpg games.
But then Bethesda got the series and the four games since then have been essentially Elder Scrolls but with Guns instead of Magic.
And the original fans were understandably furious with this change.
But since they were vastly outnumbered by the newcomers who played Fallout 3 and beyond; their cries of feeling cheated are muffled.
Halo however already had a massive following.
Then 343 changed things.
The classic fans were angry and made their rants, many of them left Halo behind. And now the fanbase is divided nearly even about which is better - Bungie Era or 343i Era.
Small changes are far more accepting than large changes.
CE fans were mad at the nerf of the Magnum when Halo 2 came around.
Halo 2 fans were annoyed by Halo 3’s Equipment and fix of the BXR exploit.
But they all got along relatively well compared to what happened with Halo 4.
Halo 4 is more of a sequel to Halo Reach than anything. Which doesn’t surprise me since the new devs likely thought “We will expand on what the last game offered.” Hence why Firefight became Spartan-Ops. Why the Balanced Loadouts of Reach were replaced with the CoD Loadouts of Halo 4. Hence why enemy A.I. is unforgiving in the higher difficulties when it comes to close-quarters engagements.
Halo 4 isn’t designed to be a sequel to Halo 3. It’s gameplay is designed to be a sequel to Halo Reach.
Odd that you point out a small change shift between Part 2 and Part 3.
Most people have that be between Part 3 and Part 4.
Prisoner of Azkaban was still very childish. It was Part 4 where we saw our first death in the series and it went more grim from there.
In fact, JK Rowling even admitted that the first three chapters were about setting up the world and the childish-wonder it brought. But since Harry was growing up, so too should the themes that surround the story and the stakes involved.
Rare cases in which either of the following is a factor -
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The game series wasn’t that well known and thus the new fans of a recent release would outnumber the old fans, so the damage is declared as “minimal” (Dark Void, Fallout, etc)
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The game is well known but it has become seriously dated by the limitations of its time OR its themes and jokes are of a different time (Half-Life between sequels, Duke Nukem with Duke Nukem Forever, etc)
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The game was crap, but a sequel released to fix the problems that made it flop (Homefront)
Outside of those exceptions, it really doesn’t work out with dedicated games with high popularity.
Story-wise? Yes.
But the gameplay and art style that surrounded the narrative was shambles.
Had halo been exclusively a series of novels, Halo 4 would be welcomed I might say.
Though people would be annoyed by the Cover Art.
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Health Packs - I agree with you on this. A change that was for the worst as you didn’t know how many hits you have got left. Halo Reach reintroduced them, but they haven’t returned since. Halo 5 and Halo Infinite have a “health” bar, but really that is just comparable to a secondary shield with how it regenerates.
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Dual-Wielding - An upgrade that let you upgrade the sandbox of the game by holding two weapons at once with multiple advantages and disadvantages. Needlers thankfully got that taken away from them in Halo 3.
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Pistol Nerf - Actually, that is how the Pistol was supposed to be represented in Halo CE. The co-founder of Bungie claimed responsibility for it’s OP status in CE. He added some code so that during the load of every level, the Magnum would have its damage BOOSTED. Originally it was just a gun to fight Grunts, Jackals, and Infection Forms; with damage equivalent to if you fired both magnums at once in Halo 2.
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Sad that the AR was gone, but the SMG more than made up for it. And with Dual-Wielding, it would easily be outclassed by the SMGs.
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New Armor - They at least did it right. They showed that Master Chief’s Mark V went through a lot of damage, optics were fried, and power-supply was useless. Instead of him waking up in a new armor, he at least was getting suited up in the new set when we started the game.
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Dual-Protagonist - That was done to help further flesh out The Covenant. And oddly enough, Bungie’s devs stated that Halo 2 was more a story about The Arbiter learning the truth of everything. At least we get to play as Master Chief and Arbiter nearly an equal amount of time; unlike Halo 5 where we get to play as Blue Team for 3 out of 15 chapters.
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Boss Fights helped to mix up the gameplay a little however. And it gave us some cool setpieces to have fun with. Though even Bungie admitted that the boss “fight” of the Scarab was too on-the-rails. And they at least had variety in the fights. Halo 5’s variety was “Fight the Warden AGAIN but now in a NEW PLACE !”
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Each ring is different. And they still kept the design of the Forerunner Tech intact with sleek metal. The Stone structures were artifacts of an ancient time being preserved and cared for. And with Monitor 2401 Penitent Tangent captured by The Gravemind, the ring had no monitor to coordinate repairs, hence why the metallic structures were all a bit more rusted and weathered.
Halo 2’s rocky development had caused six-or-more missions to be scrapped from Act I and Act II of the game. You can learn more about that from the actual developer commentary playthrough of Halo 2.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAW2F6oPYMc
Also, the entirety of Act III had to be scrapped and saved for later. We were supposed to be returning to Earth and finishing the fight in Halo 2, but the final act got postponed and rewritten to Halo 3.
Here is the story-board (sadly partially out of order here and there) of Halo 2’s final script that showed off that Halo 2 was going to show off that Humans were indeed The Forerunners (a detail that Frank O’Connor would later ret-con with Halo 4)
- https://www.artstation.com/artwork/68xkw5
One of the rare occasions where a Spin-off divides fans. Another such instance is Gears of War Judgement. Fans HATE that game. And some, such as myself, like it.
Halo Reach is mainly hated thanks to Armor Abilities replacing Single-Use Equipment and the fact that it contradicts the books of The Fall of Reach and Ghosts of Onyx.
I hate ret-cons in general.
Lazy writing is what it shows off.
It is ironic that the enemies in Halo 4 are called Prometheans.
Prometheus was one of the Titans of Greek Mythos.
His name and attribute being the word “Forethought”. His brother was Epimetheus, or “Afterthought”.
I find it ironic that 343’s first game was a flop that could’ve been prevented if they actually thought of the consequences of their redesigns, their repetitive gameplay, and their choices in multiplayer development.
I use “ours” because Halo was something that we all adored. It was something that the community felt welcome within. We had an impact on development. Infection? That started off as a game-mode in Halo 2 made by fans in which if you died, you had to MANUALLY change teams to the infected. The devs recognized this and made Infection into a dedicated game-mode.
Grif-Ball was born from a gag in Red Vs. Blue and it has been a staple ever since.
It was our series that we purchased, enjoyed, and adored.
And 343 broke that adoration and trust.
Take a look at the forums around you.
The fanbase is now hateful and divided.
Respect is hardly ever found.
Might as well be Reddit or 4-Chan.
343 inherited Halo from Bungie. They were trusted with an heirloom.
And they decided to break it into pieces to make what amounts to a modern art sculpture.
But the heirloom wasn’t theirs alone. It was all of ours.
And like any family that find’s the heirloom shattered to be repurposed, we were reasonably filled with fury and sadness.
Pitfall was a bad example I see.
I haven’t played Halo 4 in a while.
In fact, I don’t think I ever encountered Pitfall in rotations.
its weird how in Halo 4 the bigger maps felt encroaching at times while the smaller maps felt big enough to move in, Halo Infinite has this effect for me.
Probably because bigger maps force you to move between rocks to avoid sniper-fire, whereas smaller maps are more mid-ranged engagements; so the need for cover out in the open is not as needed.
Not initially, no.
Then called it “Golden” and part of “game design”.
As if it was already some pretty hefty part of the entire process.
Ah yes, like Halo 4 to some was an upgrade from Halo 3/Reach.
Aside from the Halo-wannabes prior to that, money.
Chasing a larger overall audience.
To the industry, innovation is a larger risk than making what’s familiar to the bigger gaming population. Henche all WoW-clones, CoD-clones etc.
Not a single thing in that wall of text even closely tangents what I said.
Halo 4 was not a masterpiece because it didn’t follow “your golden game design rule”, but because it on its own was a mediocre game.
Not a single person who had never touched Halo before came into Halo 4 and was like:
“Aaw yee this is awesome, best game ever. Too bad it’s not like the games that predate it, which I haven’t played or experienced at all”.
Or you could’ve just taken Oblivion to Skyrim.
Quite big changes between those two titles, especially on the cutting board.
They said they couldn’t figure out what to do with the attributes, despite them having functions in the previous games.
Everything replaced with three attributes they did have ideas for, and a skill tree for different things.
But here’s the thing, everything you talk about fall flat with this:
This is what it all hinges on.
“The Golden rule of Game design”, isn’t so golden anymore when it hinges on players enmasse coming in to overthrow the old ones.
You’ve already made the exception of “small unknown games” and “old enough” games, both of which already have an existing fanbase.
Stalking supposed murderer, execution of a noble beast, betrayal of a close one “scabbers”. Werewolf.
Myes, Professor Querill turning to dust doesn’t count?, face under a turban. Ron getting his head bashed. Neville breaking his wrist, screaming book, the forbidden forest.
Then the Chambers, gelly arm after breaking it, petrified people, basilisk getting its eyes gouged out and head cut off. Leg torn with the venom, self harm (dobby).
Doesn’t need to be death involved to raise the stakes, and age appropriatness.
Oh, and it’s the first time we don’t see Voldemort. Was kind of a thing that he’d appear in some way by then to confront Harry, “big change”.
So it’s yet another exception then?
Exceptions exceptions exceptions.
It is ok to change the franchise in some way with a sequel as long as a majority, or a new entering majority is ok with it.
That’s all it boils down to.
We don’t disect, we take the entire piece or nothing.
So, ignoring the rule, and all previous Halos, Halo 4 still isn’t a good game. Glad that’s covered.
Maybe you shouldn’t try to undermine your own rule by trying to justify every single thing I listed for changes between Halo CE and Halo 2. Especially things which wasn’t too well received and did cause a divide.
Or compare it to never installations for that matter…
Halo 2 was succesful despite all its changes from Halo CE.
I should’ve said it sooner.
I do not need a lecture on video game history.
I have the documentaries, I have watched them.
It doesn’t matter what happened during development, it doesn’t affect the end product and reception of it.
The rumored cut 2/3rds of Infinite’s campaign will still be missing no matter how many horror stories on development are released.
What’s supposed to be is entirely different to what we get.
No one defended Earth in Halo 2 no matter how much we were supposed to do it.
Pretty sure i343 thought through their decisions as their actual first build was very well received by the playtesters, but the suits they displayed the game to barely shrugged. It was deemed “too legacy”, and a new direction was taken.
Different topics, same rethoric as a decade and more ago.
Nothing has changed.
no the maps feel too small for vehicles, which is what makes it feel like a bowl at times.
“managing” bloom isn’t a valid point because you must subject yourself to RNG to attain the best possible TTK.
Infinite is dominated by the BR and AR and neither require enough skill to add depth to the game, whereas the BR in 3 required a high degree of skill at different ranges to attain even average TTK.
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Not really. It only took the engine and animations from Halo Reach. What 343 did was remove things from Reach, not expand on them.
When Bungie split from Microsoft, Bungie kept the Reach version of the engine (powering Destiny) and Microsoft Kept the Halo 3 version. You can kinda tell by the way Halo 4 renders lighting and surfaces, as well as some low res texture work that Reach never suffered from (Reach still looks phenomenal).
They reworked that into Halo 5 (gorgeous game) and then took that engine and Frankensteined the hell out of it and called it “Slipspace”.
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The Slipspace Engine is a complete failure. Even the Serious Engine is a lot better despite its issues.
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Halo 3 had -
- Dual-Wielding
- Single-Use Equipment
- Equal Starts
- Same Art Style
- Same Soundtrack Style
Halo Reach had -
- No Dual Wielding
- Armor Abilities
- Pseudo-Loadouts (pre-determined by the game-type you were playing. And if it wasn’t Firefight, you had the same guns just different Armor Ability at spawn)
- Deviated Art Style,
- Deviated Soundtrack Style, though minor.
Halo 4 had -
- No Dual-Wielding
- Armor Abilities
- Custom Loadouts
- Vastly-Different Art Style
- Vastly Different Soundtrack Style
Halo 4 borrowed most of its gameplay aspects from Reach. The only thing it borrowed from Halo 3 was where it picked up in the story and the Battle Rifle. Everything else was pretty much copied from Reach, and I am not talking files I am talking intentional game design.
- Enemies melee strike faster so close-quarters is a nightmare to deal with on higher difficulties.
- Weapon-Bloom being a thing
- Spartan-Ops was just Firefight but more boring as now to start the next wave you had to complete an arbitrary objective.
- Maps are more cluttered so vehicular combat is essentially restricted down to roads rather than being a bit more open as it was in previous games.
Removing a couple weapons and vehicles is pretty much all they removed from Reach.
The gameplay mechanics are either exactly the same or an evolution of Reach’s gameplay. Although it is a bit more of an amature-ish design.
Take the enemies you fight.
The Covenant have been changed, and I am not just talking how they are now designed to be more monstrous in appearance rather than resembling what their nicknames represented.
It used to be that only Grunt Majors and Jackal Majors could over-charge their plasma pistol out of all the enemies that wielded them.
Only now ALL Grunts and Jackals do this regardless.
So now every target with a Plasma Pistol is a lethal threat to your shields unless you take them out from out of their range.
The Drones, Skirmishers, and Brutes don’t make a return; so now the combat has become a little more bland when fighting The Covenant.
Now lets look at the Prometheans
Watchers are annoying because -
- They can summon turrets
- They can summon a pack of Crawlers
- They can throw your grenades back at you
- They can deploy a Hard-Light Shield to defend Crawlers and Knights from your guns
- They can revive a freshly killed Knight.
Crawlers are annoying because -
- Some of them are equipped with Boltshots and Suppressors while others are equipped with a Binary Rifle, which on higher difficulties might as well be comparable to the Jackal Snipers of Halo 2 Legendary; since it is almost impossible to tell a Crawler from a Crawler Snipe at a distance until it is too late.
Knights are annoying because -
- They can one-hit kill you at close range and it is nearly undodgeable since melee strikes are quick like in Reach
- They can teleport-blitz to you to melee kill you.
- When their shields break, they can teleport behind cover and have their shields fully recharged once again.
- They can summon Watchers.
This leads to a repetitive gameplay loop of which you target the Watchers first, you then target the Knights with a ranged weapon, and if the Crawlers are up close and personal, you then focus your fire on them.
Encounters with multiple classes of enemies in previous games changed entirely based on where they were positioned, what kind of variant the enemy was, and what their arsenal was. If I encountered Two Grunt Minors, A Grunt Major, A Jackal, and an Elite; my order of targeting them would depend on what weapons I am carrying and what positions they were in. But fighting the Prometheans is just about always the same.
- Kill the Watcher
- Find and kill the Knight to prevent another Watcher
- Clean up with the Crawlers.
And let’s talk about weapons.
You now carry far less ammo for bullet weapons
Batteries drain on energy weapons WAY too fast.
And with most encounters, you end up with the Light Rifle as a guaranteed weapon to contend with Knights and Watchers at range.
I think Hokiebird428 can tell you the rest in far better detail in his video about how Halo 4’s Weapon Sandbox and Enemies were mishandled -
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBv8UVOSG8U&t=815s