Dan Ayoub says this is in the new Halo Wars 2 ViDoc. This sort of tweaks me the wrong way. Higher expectations than what? FPS players? It’s like 343i is admitting from behind a cracked door that H5’s story was -Yoink-. I don’t think he deserves any blame or anything, as I’m sure he was just responding to the interview and his thought happened to come out like that. However, they do pick and choose what dev. snippets go into the ViDoc, and the fact that they chose that one really irks me. All I want for them to do is be open about it. Yeah. Just say it. “We Halo 5’s story didn’t go over so well with fans, and we really wanted to bring a focus back to a core component that makes Halo so great: story.” That’s all I want to hear. Not, “RTS Players have higher story expectations [so we decided to go ahead and make a decent story on this one].”
That quote makes no sense to me. In all my time of playing RTS’s, I’ve never heard about anyone picking up one for the story. Some RTS games have decent stories, but the main focus and attraction for them has always been the gameplay.
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> It’s an odd thing to say, but no reason to really get bent over it.
I’d be liable to agree had 343 not been near-silent about Halo 5’s campaign for the past 9 months outside of things like Score Attack. Seems odd to hype up the story before the game launched and then never speak of it again.
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> That quote makes no sense to me. In all my time of playing RTS’s, I’ve never heard about anyone picking up one for the story. Some RTS games have decent stories, but the main focus and attraction for them has always been the gameplay.
Unless we’re talking about Blizzard RTS games. Some of their campaigns were too deep and lengthy.
Welcome to 343. Where we hype , but don’t deliver. We tease and don’t Please. We hear , but refuse to listen. We miss Halo , with every attempt we make.
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> > 2533274809541057;2:
> > It’s an odd thing to say, but no reason to really get bent over it.
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> I’d be liable to agree had 343 not been near-silent about Halo 5’s campaign for the past 9 months outside of things like Score Attack. Seems odd to hype up the story before the game launched and then never speak of it again.
They know what they did, and they know they pissed off a lot of people because of it. Every so often a little drop of admittance slips through the cracks, like Bravo’s remark about 'Mdama’s “quick and unceremonious end” in one of the recent CUs.
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> > > 2533274809541057;2:
> > > It’s an odd thing to say, but no reason to really get bent over it.
> >
> >
> > I’d be liable to agree had 343 not been near-silent about Halo 5’s campaign for the past 9 months outside of things like Score Attack. Seems odd to hype up the story before the game launched and then never speak of it again.
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> They know what they did, and they know they pissed off a lot of people because of it. Every so often a little drop of admittance slips through the cracks, like Bravo’s remark about 'Mdama’s “quick and unceremonious end” in one of the recent CUs.
I think that is attributable to GrimBrotherOne, not necessarily Bravo.
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> > > > 2533274809541057;2:
> > > > It’s an odd thing to say, but no reason to really get bent over it.
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> > >
> > > I’d be liable to agree had 343 not been near-silent about Halo 5’s campaign for the past 9 months outside of things like Score Attack. Seems odd to hype up the story before the game launched and then never speak of it again.
> >
> >
> > They know what they did, and they know they pissed off a lot of people because of it. Every so often a little drop of admittance slips through the cracks, like Bravo’s remark about 'Mdama’s “quick and unceremonious end” in one of the recent CUs.
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> I think that is attributable to GrimBrotherOne, not necessarily Bravo.
Which resonates more about the general disproval of the campaign than hearing it from Bravo. I take it Grim didn’t like seeing good ole Jul killed off so suddenly either.
Meh, most big RTS games have well written and lengthy narratives. Maybe Dan felt that RTS players are more accustomed to 30+ campaign missions with kick -Yoink- CGI, because SC2 really sets that precedent.
Again, 343 trying to invent the wheel…I’ve never heard of people playing RTS for the story! Why don’t they just make sure the gameplay is really good (please bring flood back). I’m pretty sure no one asked for an extremely in-depth story, but just want good gameplay. 343 just needs to reinvent the wheel… which doesn’t ever work out well.
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> Again, 343 trying to invent the wheel…I’ve never heard of people playing RTS for the story! Why don’t they just make sure the gameplay is really good (please bring flood back). I’m pretty sure no one asked for an extremely in-depth story, but just want good gameplay. 343 just needs to reinvent the wheel… which doesn’t ever work out well.
Never heard of Starcraft or Warhammer? There are two types of RTS games. Games like Civ or Total War, time piece games with a focus mainly on gameplay. Or there are games like Starcraft and Warhammer, or even Star Wars Empire at War, games with large stories and expansive lore.
In terms of which group of players follow stories, RTS players or FPS players, I’d have to go RTS. Halo 5’s story might be the worst Halo story to many people, but I’d gladly take it over any Battlefield and most CoD stories. There’s a reason most FPS games can throw out a mediocre American beats everyone story every year. People expect the campaign, but don’t really care about it once they play it once
To be hones he’s got a point. Think about all the popular shooters on the market now. With the exception of a few most have a throw away campaign included so they don’t get accused of skimping on content. A few have even launched without a campaign altogether (Overwatch, titanfall, evolve, etc).
If a strategy game launched without a story tho. As someone above pointed out SC2 set the bar and I don’t know about everyone else but the story and epic cut-scenes is what kept me playing HW.
I think he meant it in another way than he worded it, and didn’t really have time to better explain what he said.
First of all we have quite a lot of FPS games today where a campaign is tacked on, but there are those who just skip it and jump straight into MP. That’s not to say the same doesn’t happen in an RTS. However given the mainstream shooters today, I do think that there’s a larger part doing that SP skipping than in RTS games.
Furthermore we have the fact that people have been asking for a continuation of the Halo Wars story for quite some time, and now quite a few years later, expectations are high on what’s going to happen. Not only because it’s the continuation, but because it’s been revealed to be directly after Halo 5 so SoF is taken to the present, and IS the present at the time of launch, we’re also at the ark this time around.
I for one am more excited about this game, and have higher expectations for it, than with Halo 5.
So yes, in some regards, I have higher expectations being an RTS player at the moment.
It certainly is a strange statement. Not sure what to make of it. I would write it off as complimenting the future player base as a form of salesmanship.
I also refuse to watch any advertising in regards to HW2 though. 343 falsely advertised h5 and I’ve decided they lost the right to advertise HW2 to me. I’ll evaluate the campaign when it comes out without expectations.
This statement is a complete slap to the face to me and to anyone who loves playing the Halo campaigns. What it use to be, you get Halo to play the campaigns solo or coop (which was never forced on you) over and over and then have the excellent MP as another game mode in the game to play as well. But now, they make it sound like people don’t want an awesome campaign in Halo FPS, so that is why they didn’t put the effort into it. Everybody who thinks that the MP should be a priority is wrong and you are the reason why we get such lame story. It use to mean something when you beat the Covenant and see a beloved character fall to do so. Now is just keep shooting for no reason in campaign. So, it matters that Halo has good narrative, and a good, lengthy campaign. It doesn’t matter what other franchises do. Battlefield is just awful and haven’t touched CoD since MW 3. So make Halo great again and Halo Wars 2 seems like on the right path, however don’t say such things that other Halo games don’t deserve to have awesome campaigns.
That quote might be most accurate to take at face value. When real-time strategy video games have story modes, they tend to really wax poetic. StarCraft and Warcraft had some pretty entangled plots. Halo Wars, on the flip, was more like a traditional Halo story, in which good guys encounter some new threat from the bad guys. There’s no conflicts of interest, no nuance to problem-solving or enacting solutions. And certainly no mechanically-reinforced plot elements. Actually, felt pretty much like normal Halo for me, at the time.
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> I checked the video again, to see what he really said.
> The complete quote is:
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> > I think RTS players have higher expectations from story.
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> Key word here is “think”.
> He does not state they/we have, he thinks they/we (I count myself among RTS players) have it.
Yeah, but the extension of that thinking is still, “so we’ll try harder on the story.”