> > I like the anatomy of them, the faces look great.
> >
> > I DO NOT like the armor. It’s been retconned that different ranks wear different armor since Reach, and we saw that in CEA and 4 as well. I really would have liked for them to have stuck with that for this, I don’t like 343 going back and forth with retcons and then retconning retcons and such.
>
> Then again, we have to take into account that CE through 3 showed that different coloring will show ranks (they were made 1st). Maybe they changed CEA, because they wanted more consistency with Reach’s different armor. It’s not that big of a deal.
>
> Though if it was me, I would have just kept the colors for CE for CEA. They were right to not completely change armor that is recognizable to original game, for H2A that is.
I disagree for a few reasons.
Firstly, the reason for the color differences existing from a gameplay point of view is that it’s a visual indicator of rank for the player. Having the actual armor change is even more of an indication, but it’s likely that early on that wasn’t feasible because of technical limitations.
Canonically, since early on, it was always established that the different armor between ranks is actually different in respects other then color: The shield strength is different, for example. And though the books never said the armor we saw in game looked different aside from color, it did mention that some armor was shaped differently.
It’s a reasonable assumption that the different armor for different ranks has “always” been shaped differently in canon, and that simply couldn’t be shown in game due to technical reasons until 3 and reach, and that’s supported by subsequent materials all showing that, even for stuff taking place earlier on.
In that respect, it would make sense for each rank in H2A to have totally different armor, because that would be the “true” canonical representation of those events in universe, even if it’s different from the original game. If people want a super true to the original game visual experience, they can turn the old graphics on.
The thing is, we can clearly see that the needler model in h2A uses the needler shape we see in reach, CEA, and 4, not the one in 2, even though the elite armor uses the original halo 2 structure. If they are going to go with super true to the original models updates as we see with the elite armor, I would have liked them to do so all around, and not go with newer visuals for some things and old visuals for others.
