Hello seventh column! I haven’t been close to the halo community/forums since back in the days of the Bungie forums, so maybe things have changed and my outlook has dated. However, after 6 years of active participation in the old Bnet, I doubt much has changed. I am here to discuss an issue that is going to be controversial yet is rarely talked about. Although it is pleasant to hear things are different nowadays, (more polite) I am still going to zip up my flame suit and attempt to have an engaging conversation with you, the halo community.
In the dawn of a new age of 343i Halo, with the impending release of Halo 4, I would like to discuss the possibility that the halo community simply doesn’t know what it wants.
I remember not too long ago when the forums were clogged with rage threads about how much halo sucked. How much it was ruined by Bungie after the gift to humanity that was the previous halo game. What will suprise many of you is that the game in question was Halo 2.
Yes, that’s right, Halo 2 in the years following its release got as much hate as Reach did. Halo 1 was amazing, and halo 2 was too slow and broken and unbalanced and catered to noobs. I believe nowadays they have been renamed “casuals.” When Halo 3 was released suddenly halo 2 was the pinnacle of multiplayer gaming, and BR spread was rated up there somewhere between the Salem witch trials and the Bubonic Plague. After Reach was released, bloom became the new BR spread and the source of the most migraines since the N64 controller. The strange thing was that many actually called for a return of the halo 3 BR spread in replacement for bloom.
Allow me to present a specific example of our community’s ability to turn around on itself. The year is 2009, the place is anywhere with an internet connection and a Bungie.net forum account. Back then, there seemed to be only one thing the community could agree on. You see, we suffered an insufferable ill during the 3 years of halo 3, as we were missing the one map that every halo player had deepest in his heart. The most iconic map in the series, and the only map to officially appear in 3/4 Halo games. I am talking, of course, about our beloved Blood Gulch. So many fantastic memories, too many in fact for the community to argue. One of the most universally demanded features for Reach was the return of blood gulch in its original (not Valhalla) form. I still remember the countless posts of joy and excitement the day that Rooster Teeth first released the video of them playing on Blood Gulch in Halo Reach.
Fast forward to 2011, and Blood Gulch is one of the most disliked maps in Reach’s sandbox. Why? Well it’s glaringly obvious, this open and plain canyon was simply not meant for the modern halo sandbox. There was no cover, there was nothing to do, vehicles were weak and useless against infantry, and it came down to a mindless game of dropping troopers in an open, plain, boring field. Yet if you would have brought this up in 2009, you would have been met with near unified disagreement.
The Halo community is amazingly passionate about its games, so passionate that sometimes we spite the forest to see the trees. Sure, a hitscan 3shot BR with no spread looks good on paper, but what will it do to the sandbox? Everyone complains that Reach is “slow paced” compared to the faster Halo 2 and 3 to help “casuals” have an easier time. Have you guys gone back and played halo 3? Three seconds of fighting per 30 seconds of walking around trying to find enemies is NOT fast paced. In Call of Duty you die in half a second, and gameplay is about as slow and boring as you can get. My friends that don’t know much about the details of game blanace all comment/complain that Reach is too fast paced compared to previous shooters. I believe that is because when you don’t know the details, you can only focus on the experience, which in reality is the most fast paced Halo we’ve had yet, where the majority of your time is spent shooting instead of walking and searching for enemies.
Now, many of you will tell me something along these lines…
> The people that said Halo 3 and Halo 2 sucked and then later said they were great didn’t just change their minds, they just hated the next game even more. People still think Halo 2 is better than Halo 3, and Halo 1 is better than both of them, just like they always did. The community DOES know what it wants! It wants faster paced Halo, and we seem to like Halo 3 more now because every Halo game is slower and slower and Halo 3 is just faster than Reach.
Well for those of you that still aren’t sold, let me show you what I believe to be the most powerful example of all. Remember when I mentioned that after halo 2, everyone complained and asked for a return to halo 1? Well back when Bungie was in charge of Reach, they introduced a new playlist: Classic. Bungie heard that many of its fans wanted to go back to the old days, so they made the Classic playlist and asked what we wanted. The result was a huge schism in the halo community and a giant argument on the Classic playlist’s thread. The community simply couldn’t decide if they wanted the settings to emulate Halo 1 or Halo 2. The community had been screaming for the old ways for so long, they forgot which old ways they really wanted, and the result was a playlist with half gametypes that resembled Halo 1 (pistol starts) and half that resembled Halo 2 (BR starts) If you would have gone back to those days after Halo 2 was launched, this wouldnt even be an argument. Halo 2 styled gameplay would have been an outrage. Yet in a few short years, the community’s mindset on Halo 2 made a complete 180, the same turnaround that is already starting to happen with Halo 3.
So based on this evidence, I present to you that the Halo community, all the way from the casuals to MLG, has been so blinded by nostalgia that it simply doesn’t know what it wants anymore, it just wants to have fun like it feels it used to.
> TL DR: If you didn’t read please don’t respond, I am attempting to have an intelligent and serious discussion with my fellow community, If you don’t want to read there are tons of other posts you can respond to in these forums.
Please discuss kindly.
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So based on this evidence and the incredible amount of circle-jerking that has gone on around here, I present to you that the Halo community, all the way from the casuals to MLG, has been so blinded by nostalgia that it simply doesn’t know what it wants anymore, it just wants to have fun like it feels it used to.
