Looking at Halo 2's campaign

Games Halo 5: Guardians
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Hey Guys

Do you remember playing Halo 2’s campaign? I do, and in my view Halo 2 had the best campaign out of all of them.

343 should seriously take a look at what bungie did with Halo 2’s campaign with the quality and innovation and make a awesome halo 5. Halo 4’s campaign was ok, but not amazing.

  • We need to play as the arbiter again and get a much better view of the political internal structure of the elites, brutes, prophets?

  • A better general descriptive prologue, halo 4 was rather specific, too much focus on the chief and his problems.

-The story was absolutely superb: You blew up a covenant cruiser with their own bomb, kill a prophet, meet a bloody gravemind, fight from the covenants perspective, stop a halo from activating, see the covenant split up (Great Schism), the flood take over High Charity, you got to see the internal political structure of the covenant, humans and elites fought with each other! and finally the massive cliff hanger at the end.

  • Also elites in halo 2 and continuing into 3, just seemed like much smarter warriors than what the were portrayed in Halo 4. Especially spartan ops ugh.

-You got a feel of how mighty the covenant were and how humanity was on the brink of annihilation

-The plot twists in the campaign were executed subtly but also easily enough to understand. “The covenant fleet that attacked reach was 50 times this size.” - Admiral Hood (Foreshadowing of future plot twists)

  • The music of Halo 2 just perfectly fit every situation

Watch this youtube video, even for just a minute and you’ll see where I’m coming from and what Halo 4 was missing and what halo 5 needs to be like.

In the first 10 seconds you see the halo that the master chief blew up and the entire covenant fleet. What a way to start a game!!

Halo 2 was what got me hooked, I need halo 5’s campaign to bring something like that to the table!

discuss guys

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[deleted]

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OP, I disagree with everything you just said

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> OP, I disagree with everything you just said

So, are you going to explain anything or are you just here to be contrary?

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> OP, I disagree with everything you just said

This^

However, I’m going to take the time to explain my reason:

> Do you remember playing Halo 2’s campaign? I do, and in my view Halo 2 had the best campaign out of all of them.

Personally, I think Halo 2’s Campaign was mediocore (though not as bad as Halo 3). While it did have absolutely jaw-dropping moments, a lot of the characters (Miranda Keyes is notable) lacked personality and seemed more like robots than humans. After playing CE and indulging myself in the character in Jacob Keyes, Miranda didn’t live up to either Jacob, or Halsey (who happen to be her parents). She was even worse in Halo 3 with her “LEEEROOYYY JENKINS” move right before her death.

And the “to war…” statement.

> - We need to play as the arbiter again and get a much better view of the political internal structure of the elites, brutes, prophets?

I can’t imagine how playing as the Arbiter in Halo 5 would bring anything new to the story that we haven’t learned yet, however, he should be a character in the game. Also, having the Prophets (who have a population of a few thousand) return in Halo 5 would be somewhat unrealistic.

However, the return of the Brutes as both allies and enemies would make my day.

> - A better general descriptive prologue, halo 4 was rather specific, too much focus on the chief and his problems.

We certainly need a prologue that truly introduces the player to the story. Halo 4’s made lots of people complain about ret-cons despite the fact that all of it was based on Halsey’s memory-distorted interpretation rather than fact.

> -The story was absolutely superb: You blew up a covenant cruiser with their own bomb, kill a prophet, meet a bloody gravemind, fight from the covenants perspective, stop a halo from activating, see the covenant split up (Great Schism), the flood take over High Charity, you got to see the internal political structure of the covenant, humans and elites fought with each other! and finally the massive cliff hanger at the end.

The objective in Halo 2 suddenly steering from defending Earth from the Covenant to stopping Installation 05 from activating was easily what ruined Halo 2 for me. Not only was doing Halo CE all over again a very lazy move in story-telling, but the potential full-scale emotional impact of seeing our homeworld in ashes was destroyed before it could begin.

I was never really afraid for my home planet like how the game was so advertised to be like.

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I mean, 4’s music fit 4’s story just as nicely as 2’s did to 2’s story.

Crashed on an unknown planet.
Introduce Prometheans
Introduce Didact
Introduce Librarian
Introduce new Spartans
Introduce Mantis
Introduce Infinity
Broadsword run
Cortana/Chief story

4 was just as solid to me dude.

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OP, I agree with everything you just said.

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> > Do you remember playing Halo 2’s campaign? I do, and in my view Halo 2 had the best campaign out of all of them.
>
> It’s not a matter of opinion. Halo 2 is, without a doubt, the best Halo campaign, ever. People who disagree, really agree, they just won’t admit it.

Now that is pretty biased.
I found Halo 2’s campaign boring, and even some levels felt like fillers and were extremely annoying to beat (The Arbiter, Regret…)

I dont agree that Halo 2’s campaign was the best, if you ask my opinion about what Halo campaign was the best, i would say CE or ODST.

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[deleted]

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> > Now that is pretty biased.
> > I found Halo 2’s campaign boring, and even some levels felt like fillers and were extremely annoying to beat (The Arbiter, Regret…)
> >
> > I dont agree that Halo 2’s campaign was the best, if you ask my opinion about what Halo campaign was the best, i would say CE or ODST.
>
> Oh hahahahaha! That’s ol’ halo mahkyla for you! Always joking about this and that being better when we all know Halo 2 is better in every conceivable way! Hahahahaha!
>
> He’s joking folks. Ain’t that right, halo mahkyla? Yeah…
>
> :stuck_out_tongue:

okay, now you have seriously started to freak me out D:

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Halo 2 is the best game in the serie, with Halo CE on a close second place.

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The whole “Let’s stop another ring from firing” was already done in Halo: CE, and really the only other innovation in campaign (gameplay innovations do not count i.e. dual-wielding) was the fact that you played from the Covenant’s perspective.

Some levels were boring, and some levels were awesome. It had it’s share of dialogue that was corny (Tell that to the Covenant) and some dialogue that was good. I wanted to see what the Covenant were doing to Earth, of all places. If you pick up your copy of Halo 2 and look on the back it even says “Earth will never be the same.” meaning holy crap, Covenant, at Earth.

The whole plot siding thing “The fleet that attacked Reach was 50 times this size” was kinda cool as it did foreshadow the Prophet of Regret accidentally discovering Earth, but that’s really as far as it went. The cliffhanger ending actually pissed a lot of people off.

In terms of best campaign, I would have to say Halo: CE, ODST, or even, yes I’m saying it, Halo 4. You heard me. Halo 4’s campaign really blew me away, far more than Halo 2’s did. I remember it well.

I thought Halo 3’s campaign was going to be the best, but it sadly was not…

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Personally for me I thought halo reach gave you a better understanding of how powerful the covanent were compared to the unsc. I loved halo 2s campaign because of the arbiter’s story and chief mostly felt like a side character to me in halo 2 and it gave more depth about the covanent. To be fair on halo 4 it did have one of the best writing as it tries to humanise chief but without ruining his character and we felt a more emotional connection towards chief than any other halo. When it came to level design halo reach offers you everything from fighting in the farmlands of reach to being in outerspace, halo CE comes close second by truly showing how epic and how mysterious the halo ring is. Halo 2 does have the best music in my opinion because the guitar music makes everything seem epic :slight_smile:

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Its good to hear you guys have different views.

I’m just really anxious as I want halo 5’s campaign to be super awesome. Bigger than halo 4’s.

It’s all opinion based I know, but I just felt expressing that “in my view” halo2’s campaign was the best. I could watch all the cutscenes and I’d be hooked again straight away.

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The concepts halo 2 brought were great. The story they were trying to tell was great. But the way it was told was awful. Almost no character depth for anyone. The “threat” to the planet didn’t feel like a threat. And the gameplay was awful.

The boss battles were just bad. The missions are shorter then any other game. IMO halo 2 over all was a sub par halo title. I feel like the only reason halo 2 is praised so much is because it was hyped to the heavens.

Halo 4’s story was told beautifully and it really set the stage for things to come. Almost as good as CE did. Really the only short comings i found with 4 was some of the enemies. Halo 4’s gameplay as far as story goes wasn’t as bad as halo 2’s though.

I can understand why some people didn’t enjoy halo 4’s story though. 1-3 was more of an action packed story of war. Not much was focused on character’s depth or really the universe in general. Then halo 4 comes along and now we’ve been shown that chief is a human. Chief has emotions. then we are given more information on the universe in one game then we have gotten in a decade of past games. Halo 4 could be easily seen as some sort of “space opera.”

None of this was out of character though. In fact anyone who invested time into the novels knows this. Some things should have been better explained. Not through terminals. Those should have been interesting snippits of the universe. Not something as crucial as the storm covies.

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OP, I completely and respectfully disagree with you.

With the exception of boarding the Scarab, I found nothing about Halo 2’s campaign to be memorable. The boss battle with Tarter-sauce and the Breaking Benjamin song were only memorable to me because of how lame they were.

I don’t expect 343 to make a campaign as good as CE or Reach, but as long as Halo 5 ends with an epic 'Hog run, I’ll be satisfied.

Don’t anyone get butt-hurt. This is only MY opinion.

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> - A better general descriptive prologue, <mark>halo 4 was rather specific, too much focus on the chief and his problems.</mark>

That was the point of Halo 4’s campaign!

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> > - A better general descriptive prologue, <mark>halo 4 was rather specific, too much focus on the chief and his problems.</mark>
>
> That was the point of Halo 4’s campaign!

He is having A.I problems I feel bad for chief son, I’ve got 99 got problems but Cortana ain’t one.

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> OP, I completely and respectfully disagree with you.

I’ll have to agree with this and respectfully disagree with the OP as well.

To me the Halo 2 campaign had a few crippling problems and introduced some of the more annoying elements of present Halo campaigns. The first point, the problems, stem from it’s heavily crunched and perhaps ill-conceived development. We didn’t get an ending, and the game side-steps a very interesting area of the Halo universe (Earth) in favor of a retread of CE territory. Besides utterly failing to satisfy the expectations set up by the Metropolis E3 trailer, it set up a rather dull game where we moved through cluttered ruins of ruins that didn’t have much connection even to what we had in CE. Plus you have the covenant defanged (from imposing and perhaps even believable aliens to typical villain fodder) and the flood shoved into the mold of the Zerg or half-a-dozen other generic, hive mind dominated monsters.

Then you have gameplay problems. Weapon balance for the first time became multiplayer oriented, levels became much more linear, and we had a plethora of damage sponges soaking up the fun as well. All of which, mind you, we are still dealing with in games that used H2, not CE, as the basis for their design. So on the one hand you had a flawed game in its own right but on the other you also have one which has had a negative influence on successive games (at least as far as the campaign is concerned.) It’s easy to look at Halo 2 as being perhaps the least of the series. Despite the opportunities, it squandered the initiative driven CE format in favor of a fluffier, more cinematic, game that led the player by the nose through set-piece levels and empty plot points.

It was the original Xbox’s equivalent of COD.

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Halo CE: Destroy the ring.
Halo 2: Save Earth and stop a ring from firing.
Halo 3: Save Earth (again) and stop multiple rings from firing.

I would say there wasn’t a lot of innovation with the actual premise of the story. All three games had the same basic plot.

However one thing I feel Halo 2 did right was exposing us to both the Covenant and the Flood’s point of view. Even if we don’t necessarily play as the Arbiter in Halo 5, I would like to see Escalation have some relevance to the story.

Perhaps have the campaign revolve around the forerunner conflict and have spartan ops be its own narrative about the elites and brutes.

> The boss battle with Tarter-sauce and the Breaking Benjamin song were only memorable to me because of how lame they were.

Both of these things.

Halo 2 had an amazing soundtrack, probably the best in the series, but not because of Breaking Benjamin.

> - Also elites in halo 2 and continuing into 3, just seemed like much smarter warriors than what the were portrayed in Halo 4. Especially spartan ops ugh.

I liked how Elites in Halo 2 and Halo 3 came off as noble warriors and not just WARBABLARGH. Of course Reach and Halo 4 felt the need to step back to Halo CE’s level.