I’m gonna say something controversial, but heed my opinion:
I’m not a professional artist, I’m still in school, but art is everything I do outside of it besides video games occasionally(just a pre statement as to why I care about this). That being said, I have no idea where the fascination with reachs art game from. Perhaps texture work was better, though I’d argue it was the most dull and uninteresting to look at halo. From a design standpoint, it was a significant downgrade.
Look at the mark v helmet, from 3-reach it looks significantly worse, the design got streamlined, and no longer had that strange curved visor, or the back part that protruded. Look at the outlines, look at how bland the reach variant is. The creativity of the original had been deleted, and much like halo 4, had unnecessary lines with no purpose, and protruding boxes as vents where the mouth was, which is a more generic direction. You can see the protruding box idea in most basic helmets, cough,cough, coughity cough cough, where the previous versions didn’t just have generic vents.
The elites were pointy, and massive, yet graceful in halo 3 and 2, but in reach they are simply evil, they charge at you, and scream in their low pitched voices, with their round, rather than angular armor, the lights that illuminate their suits, showing you that their alien and futuristic, because they have lights built in. The reach elites are an alien I would expect to see in a micheal bay movie. They are not nearly as unique as they once were. This design trend continued into halo 4, but luckly the h2a cutscenes may show a return of more classic elites.I can imagine these first three shape armor less, walking around, being their own species, but the fourth looks like it would be a barbarian, he has round armor with little risk taking shapes, he might as well be green or purple with those little alien ears on the side of his helmet that don’t flay backward or forward and are an awkward sheet of flat floating metal, and look at the center joint of his leg, if you take off that black suit that thing has anorexic legs, unlike the others. It looks disproportionate at the upper area, and as such looks more savage, rather than intelligent. Having a large upper body was the point of the brutes, but ironically, they were scrawled down. Look at this, you ever see an alien design so mammalian? He has flesh and distributed hair, what a good design. Then reach happened, and we got this. Now they’re reptilian, and hairless, or in other words, the most generic features you would expect an alien to have. Also, it just looks like a guy in a suit, the proportions are so boring and human, it isn’t even funny how much of a massive downgrade this is. I hope 343’s version of brutes makes it in a game, because unlike reachs design, 343 knows how to take risks in design, and make aliens that aren’t human, and look like they would evolve from a much more brutal planet. This is how you ADVANCE design and make an already established creature interesting again, not devolve it.
The environmental level design was some of the worst, immersion breaking at times when you are on “natural” paths that happen to have randomly high edges, where it’s clear that it is just a wall. Isn’t it convenient how there is a massive direct upward curve? This map looks like someone made a giant cube in project spark and subtracted the top area with a cylinder, as opposed to these shapes, that don’t look like someone dug a ditch and called it a map. Play odst, look how well the city design is. You can imagine how the city’s work before the covie strike. Now go to reach. Look at the one building before the falcon turret section (also, halo reach had turret sections, ugh) It had a first floor with nothing really there, and a second floor that acts as a circular balcony with no additions. What was that building? what purpose did it serve? Unlike odst, it did not convince me, it was simply level design with a city texture, not a city of which levels partake.
The weapons are also much worse. Look at the plasma launcher design, it is just a mess of smooth curves and roundness. It lacks a direction, it is just a mess of weird ideas. I believe this weak design is so rarely seen in the halo prop communities for a reason. You will find a plethora of Spartan lasers, rocket launchers, and turrets, before you see a plasma launcher, it has a lazy design. Look at the assault rifle, their big original idea for it’s new design was “hey, look at these sections we put on the upper section, lets move one up” and also the bottom grip section was a very good shape, but in reach they made it a cylinder, with no interesting curves or shapes, just a literal cylinder. Look how atrocious this is, this is not an improvement. The halo magnum was this new sidearm that no one had seen, it was big and had a curve on top to show how immense it is, as if it needs more barrel to contain it’s power. Odst came along, and that team posited making a sleeker version that would be more of a subtle design, rather than something a spartan like chief would use. Than reach happened, and they said, "Halo magnums have a large upper part, so what if they have a large lower part too?" It looks like someone cut a magnum in half, and shrunk the back end, resulting in a giant barrel attached to a miniature handle. It looks absolutely absurd, disproportionate, and hideous. The reach spartan laser was near identical, 0 risks taken, except they sucked out some of it’s color.
Halo reachs saber was the most generic space ship I have seen in halo, the series with the longsword, the frigate, and the pillar of autumn. Here is a ship with back boosters, a clear streamlined space vehicle shape as a triangle, and it just shot out of holes, nothing unique at all. Halo vehicle designs have a wow factor, and the saber looked like what you think of a space ship. There is nothing interesting or dangerous about it’s design. The hornet is a shape I had never seen before, the falcon however was a shape that is quite basic. It has two sets of blades that spin, with nothing else to their design, unlike the disks and flame effect of the hornet, it has a tail that is very generic, it has a hatch with turrets just like combat helicopters, and a cockpit that is simply a basic stretched glass, like that of an xwing, rather than the strange vertical one that the hornet showcased.
There’s a ton of examples of designs becoming less unique and less exaggerated; less creative. I am not a fan, nor do I understand the fascination.
