Ok in halo we have never been on the true front lines of the war.
We wernt ever in a siege for a military base.
Nor a huge battle field where we half to push on or we would be killed.
I mean. Were spartan II’s. Meant to be on field super soldiers. Not like spartan III’s or odst’s meant for hit and run operations.
and Yes I understand there are few of us left so we cant just be wasted…
but god, Some times you half to send your best on the field or accept loss.
So whos with me to get chief on the battle field for a change
P.S.:I highly doubt Im the only one who played reach and saw huge battle zones just off the distance and got jealous.
I was really disappointed with Reach in the mission where you start the cutscene in a warthog and the humans were about to clash with the covenant, and then you have to go do something else instead of joining that epic battle.
It would be cool but the reason they don’t do that is that the hardware has limits. Trying to render a massive battle like that may not be possible. We’ve all wanted it but 343 also have to make the game look good to get the right press. Trying to have massive amounts of AI, particles, physics effects and everything else puts a massive strain on the console.
The thing that kept on bothering me from H3 and onwards, is that we NEVER got to actually fight and witness a massive invasion like we were promised (H3 first promised to be the final stand for Earth…instead we were quickly rerouted to the Ark. ODST showed the potential…just in 2 levels, one of which basically comes from H2. Reach definately promised massive warfare…which we never got).
Yes, the games gave us some hints. We had the start of the second Battle for Earth at the end of ODST (which was epic, seeing all those ships popping out of slipspace right over your head).
And Reach, although never living up to the actual scale, did do a good job portraying the basics of a big war and the invasion…but it was mostly as part of the skybox so far (the glassing of New Alexandria, the Siege of New Alexandria which we only truely saw in large scale from the gunner seat of a Falcon, the huge battle in the distance of PoA).
Thing is: we NEVER got that invasion of big scale battle up close and personal. Always somewhere in the distance. I understand the limitations the hardware adds to this concept, but there is no reason to keep promising us things like that first H2 footage, the hints of ODST and Reach and deleted stuff like the “massive warfare” from Reach…and then never delivering on that promise or opportunity.
Instead of showing us a nice cutscene of Hogs and Falcons going head to head with Covenant on a desert plain, why not actually have that ingame for once?
Instead of only showing ships drop out of slipspace, implying an invasion, why not actually put us against overwhelming amounts of enemy troops (with for example’s sake: Scarabs walking around all over the place etc).
Instead of seeing a part of the skybox near us get glassed, why not actually have us witness and having to take cover from areas being glassed from above in first person.
And the list goes on.
There is nothing wrong with big set pieces every once and a while, with loads of stuff going on. Yes: CoD/BF has it…who cares? Additional canon has always shown such battles, but the games never delivered on those areas (just like they never delivered on the brutality of Brutes, the sizes of Brutes and Hunters and…the bigger, more gritty wars being fought within the universe).
> It would be cool but the reason they don’t do that is that the hardware has limits. Trying to render a massive battle like that may not be possible. We’ve all wanted it but 343 also have to make the game look good to get the right press. Trying to have massive amounts of AI, particles, physics effects and everything else puts a massive strain on the console.
It’s simple. Less emphasis on graphics.
Massive amounts of AI is still possible. But all that detail is just pushing it. CE could have large numbers of AI. So could H2. The only drawbacks were: lag, loss of particles (H2)
But H3 and Reach were just sad: AI being killed off, sending in AI to kill off all the AI, weapons and dead bodies disappearing even when you were looking at them, small draw distance.
Also, I think scripting is partly to blame.
When I was making armies of Councilors, I noticed that if there were still Elites that wanted to go to Tartarus, the particles would be gone and eventually, I wouldn’t be able to fire my gun. But if I killed them, the particles would come back, even though I had 20-30 Councilors in reserve.
AI collections:
-25 Hornets on The Covenant (scripted) = lag, particle loss
-35+ Hornets on The Covenant (not scripted) = particle loss
-40+ AI on The Covenant (not scripted) = nothing
-50+ AI on The Storm (scripted) = lag
-40+ AI (including dropships) on Sierra 117 (scripted) = lag sometimes
I think the first game will be a series of guerrilla warfare tactics against the enemy. When Halo 5 starts, since it could very well be on a new console, then we will get better hardware to hopefully have large scale campaign battles.
> > It would be cool but the reason they don’t do that is that the hardware has limits. Trying to render a massive battle like that may not be possible. We’ve all wanted it but 343 also have to make the game look good to get the right press. Trying to have massive amounts of AI, particles, physics effects and everything else puts a massive strain on the console.
>
> It’s simple. Less emphasis on graphics.
Not as simple as that. 343 and Microsoft are pushing a AAA game. Its graphics have to be up there with the best of them to achieve the desired sales. At least that’s the thinking in the industry. I personally think it’s bull but they’re going to do what sells and unfortunately, it’s the graphics that sell the game these days.
All I have is Reach, so forgive any ignorance. You guy are talking about being more involved in the big battles,right?
I do see the point. In tip of the spear it would have been nice to see more going on right where you see it. I kind of hate showing up and see all the UNSC failures scattered about and nobody left for you to help. It may seem silly but I like to try and save the marines and other people I run across in the campaign. I always get disappointed when I finish killing the aliens and find all of the AI humans were killed while I fought.
That being said I want to point out that the Spartans were developed to work in small teams like special forces in real life. You don’t see them showing up in the middle of big battles.
Well you can see that they tried in Reach with radio chatter, troops and vehicles all running around and talking about things happening off stage like in a play.It may not be possible to show a giant battle up close, but they could have had more still going on at each location when you arrived. Or maybe had unrelated battle elements go by while you were fighting to make it seem bigger. They did that in the New Alexandria mission where you fly around. You see troops and vehicles completely unrelated to what you are doing running around and even fighting away from you
> Ok in halo we have never been on the true front lines of the war.
> We wernt ever in a siege for a military base.
> Nor a huge battle field where we half to push on or we would be killed.
>
> I mean. Were spartan II’s. Meant to be on field super soldiers. Not like spartan III’s or odst’s meant for hit and run operations.
> and Yes I understand there are few of us left so we cant just be wasted…
> but god, Some times you half to send your best on the field or accept loss.
>
> So whos with me to get chief on the battle field for a change
>
>
> P.S.:I highly doubt Im the only one who played reach and saw huge battle zones just off the distance and got jealous.
I was very jealous in Reach too. I have hope for Halo 4 though.
It might be fun and would look impressive if they pulled it off, but you don’t put your limited number of super soldiers on the front line. III’s would have been more likely to be on any ‘front lines’ back when there was thousands of them, or at least a thousand.
The II’s seemed to me used more for high value missions more than just sticking them on the front line. Though to be honest, the term front line is rather a moot one in terms of the Halo universe.
On Reach the covies came along and stomped everything, positions weren’t held very long and there was no front line per say as the entire planet was at war. The only time you would have that kind of military strategy in the Haloverse would be when attacking a location or when fighting in space.
So I doubt we’ll ever see anything like that, normally you don’t just run your troops together and wait for the outcome, all out war is more like a collection of skirmishes. Since the fight doesn’t appear to be taking place on, or near earth I can’t see MC having the back-up of any more military strength than he got when taking on the Halo rings and the Ark.
Umm we’ve been in the front lines A MILLION TIMES!! Like in Halo 3 when the convineant attacked the military base built in the 20th century. Or in Reach where we were in a city fighting the Covenent so WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!
> It would be cool but the reason they don’t do that is that the hardware has limits. Trying to render a massive battle like that may not be possible. We’ve all wanted it but 343 also have to make the game look good to get the right press. Trying to have massive amounts of AI, particles, physics effects and everything else puts a massive strain on the console.
> All I have is Reach, so forgive any ignorance. You guy are talking about being more involved in the big battles,right?
>
> I do see the point. In tip of the spear it would have been nice to see more going on right where you see it. I kind of hate showing up and see all the UNSC failures scattered about and nobody left for you to help. It may seem silly but I like to try and save the marines and other people I run across in the campaign. I always get disappointed when I finish killing the aliens and find all of the AI humans were killed while I fought.
>
> That being said I want to point out that the Spartans were developed to work in small teams like special forces in real life. You don’t see them showing up in the middle of big battles.
It depends on the spartan
spartan ones and IIs were originally meant to fight front lines to just destroy
sadly they were to expensive to re build after a bunch died. SO when the spartan III’s came around they were given thinner armor with out shields (only sqaudrens were aloud shields like noble team) And could be made a lot easier. So after the on field mass spartan II death they made spartan IIIs built for suicide missions.
but chief is a spartan II
He is a on field soldier by make but never is given on field missions because they are afraid to loose him as a asset.
> Umm we’ve been in the front lines A MILLION TIMES!! Like in Halo 3 when the convineant attacked the military base built in the 20th century. Or in Reach where we were in a city fighting the Covenent so WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!
Front line:Military definition: Large battle zones with open ground where military on field strategic mode in a battle
What chief was doing are defined as Operations
As in little to none man power sent out to get a job right
Even when on the ark they were just small operations being performed while the battle (front line) was above us
The first and only time we were ever front line was in reach on the space level
and even then it ended quickly with us halving to perform a operation.