Disagree.
It’s already bad enough that 343 went into Halo’s story without any clear roadmap, just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks (Forerunners return, Cortana is evil, etc.), but now that one of those things finally did stick - the Banished in this case - they should focus on that first and foremost instead of trying to reattach to the wall what already fell down.
Sadly it seems that they still keep introducing random stuff alongside them, judging from this Harbinger thing. Hopefully it doesn’t interfere too much.
Personally I would even like to have the Prometheans back at some point, in particular in a fight against the Flood, to see how effective they actually are, given their backstory. But there’s enough time for that further down the line, in a story DLC or even a future game. Infinite’s vanilla release, however, needs to make the Banished fun to fight first instead of trying to fix an enemy type that already didn’t work twice.
I don’t find it concerning at all. We have been to two other Halos and have never seen more than a monitor and some sentinals before. The Prometheans were part of the Didacts faction and the Halos were built by the builders. The didact was against the Halos and wanted shield worlds as we saw in H4 and H5. They don’t canonically make sense on a halo.
I agree to an extent. As others have stated, when 343 set out with Halo, their focus was on the Reclaimer saga which involved Prometheans/Forerunners/Guardians largely. Shit on H5 all you want, the campaign wasn’t as terrible as people made it out to be. It fell victim to a very inaccurate marketing campaign, not fully developed characters (Although I don’t think they were awful), and what I can only speculate to be a filler/build up campaign. I feel like H5 was setting up for something bigger and the Prometheans were to be included in that. What worries me is I feel 343 may have abandoned that story arc largely because of the backlash and indirectly, we lose the Prometheans. Were they the best faction? No. But I thought they were interesting enough and with a little more effort, could be something extremely cool. I just hope they aren’t tossed to the wayside along with the story arc. I would like them to return in some capacity and for that story arc to be looped back.
This resonates, agree with you 100%
I don’t think they’ve abandoned that story arc per se. People seem to have thought Halo 5 was setting up a Dark Phoenix style story where the Chief kills Cortana and beats her robot army. When, IMO, they were setting up the Chief saving Cortana and her using the army of anti flood robots against the real threat which would emerge later on. They’re just skipping to the redemption and emergent faction part.
Now they might redesign the Prometheans. They might give them a new name. It might be a long time until they show up. They might make Knights not a thing but argue soldiers aren’t Prometheans (which is true).
I totally agree with what you’re saying. Especially as it relates to the Spartan Ops stories (the Janus Key and Jul M’dama). I remember investing time into those weekly episodes. It was a bit of a half baked story but 343i shouldn’t have thrown it away, they should have tried to develop it in interesting ways.
Without being disrespectful, I’ve always seen 343i as a novice studio. They lack direction and too often implement change for the sake of it. Such changes come across as poorly thought out and don’t mesh with the wider game design. The most recent example being player collisions - who ever complained about that?
They always seem to leave big glaring issues in the games, like Halo 4’s bland multiplayer or Halo 5’s awful campaign.
I’m feeling optimistic for Infinite but even that almost got botched, that demo last year was atrocious and we’re only getting the game in this improved state BECAUSE fans vocalised their views.
Good they are not in the Game. Anything about Halo 4 and 5 needs to be forgotten anyways.
You’ve nailed it.
My biggest concern with Infinite was knee-jerking to the anti-H5 crowd and 343 just throwing everything out.
Then they released a bit of campaign cutscene vid back along introducing the Weapon, and I was just so relieved that the Cortana story wasn’t just being space magic’d away or ignored.
I don’t care if people don’t like a story thread, once you plant it, you can’t just abandon it, or you destroy the investment of those who care about the story, and exactly as you said, devalue any future investment, till eventually no one cares, because nothing ever sticks.
I liked the Prometheans. I liked H4 and H5. Because whether or not they did “what I wanted” I’m not the author. I’m not telling the story. I liked them because they moved the story forward, gave us new ideas and didn’t just sit stagnant in old glory.
So yes. Please. Bring these threads back. Because the Prometheans aren’t magically gone. Nor are many other elements, and a ten year plan has the room to do them justice and really validate our investment.
In exactly the way Destiny didn’t. Please don’t do that.
Lore
Prometheans weren’t stationed ring installations, so there’s no incoherence in not seeing them on Zeta Halo. I also don’t like their background story because they come from the H4/5/ era (including the Forerunner saga books) that revealed way too much of the Forerunner’s history and thus ruined the aura of mystery they had.
Design
Prometheans in H4/5 have a really bad design.Crawlers are just wolves, Watchers have too many small details not visible, Knights look like mutated hunchback humans, and Soldiers are just straight up humans. Apart from Watchers, they don’t look like Forerunner constructs in general shape.
It’s also extremely hard to differentiate ranks and know what weapons Knigths are using. I had to look up Halopedia to even learn that Knigths in H4 had different ranks.
Gameplay
The most important part.
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Prometheans work like Covenant. Were the Flood acted in contrast to the Covenant, Prometheans are too similar. Crawlers are Grunts, Watchers are Jackals, Soldiers are Elites and Knights are either Elites (H4) or Hunters (H5).
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Their gameplay loop is flawed. You have to take out the Watchers first, period. They give shields to their allies, throw back grenades and resurrect Knights. Unlike the Covenant or Flood which can be fought in many different ways, a fight against the Prometheans will always start by targeting the Watchers.
Of course it would be possible to correct the Prometheans to make them work, but the changes would be so important on every single level that they would feel like entirely new units. It would be a better choice to start a new faction from scratch. And I think that developping Sentinels would be a better choice, since we already have two base units (Agressor and Enforcer) and that they could easily be expanded.
Halo Infinite is going to be be a several year journey. We could get Prometheans in a future story DLC.
I’ve been saying that Halo Infinite may follow the Destiny 2 model with future story content added.
Care to elaborate?..
The Infinite campaign is set up like a mystery sort of, with the player figuring out what happened on the ring to turn the tide of things so quickly.
If there is a big Promethean plot, maybe they want to keep it in the background and focus more on the current threat - the Banished.
But at least one Forerunner weapon has made a comeback with the Sentinel Beam.
My comment too difficult to grasp?. You know what a personality is right? How that equates to an AI in a game? How they act etc. And what there backstory is/means?. That’s it.
I think that what Minus might be getting at is that your comments are subjective, not fact. It is your opinion & Minus would like to better understand it.
For instance, my opinion is that the Prometheans actually have an interesting, deep & very impactful story, coming off their “conscription” at the hands of a horribly wounded, Logic Plagued ancient Forerunner.
Similarly, I find combating them no more or less interesting than most average Halo enemies. I actually particularly enjoy fighting Knights, though the Crawlers can eat a big bag of Sticky Grenades. The reason I find them interesting is that, much like Hunters, you’re trying to catch key weak points for the best result, dancing the Halo dance while they move in ways other Halo opponents do not. Sometimes that’s not exactly something I like about them, but at least they’re different.
So, that’s my subjective opinion, with some explanation of why I feel the way I do.
I’d suggest that Minus is interested in understanding your opinion better, as, just saying something sucks, is really just robbing yourself of your own right to expressing your opinion meaningfully.
Thanks Traize. I’m not going to put it as eloquently.
Capt_Nutella, stating that something “sucks” may be an opinion, but it’s essentially meaningless as it tells the reader absolutely nothing. You’re free to dislike whatever you like. I don’t personally think the Prometheans are amazing. I like a lot about them, but I also think there’s plenty that could be improved. For example: Recognition of different Promethean ranks on the battlefield could be clearer, specific characteristics / behaviour of each Promethean type could be a little more defined and they could do with a visual adjustment to better match the ‘legacy’ aesthetics of the Forerunners (the first two improvements looking to the Covenant for inspiration.) You mentioned you don’t like the backstory of the Prometheans and their ‘personality’. I was merely wondering what you dislike about these aspects of the Prometheans. As we’re literally on a discussion forum, it made sense to ask. No idea what I did to provoke a smartass reply, but hey, there have always been idiots on the internet.
If you think the promethians were at all fun to fight, you’re probably lying to yourself. They needed to get rid of them and try to start fresh. The storyline starting from Halo 4 has problems from the beginning. Halo 5 was just way too confusing for the average gamer to enjoy from a narrative perspective. Halo: Infinite is finally going to make Halo feel like Halo again, and I am thankful for that
oh yeah watchers were too busted. They were the perfect assist unit. Honestly I hated having my nades thrown back at me. I like fight the prometheans. I like their inclusion alot. But the nade rethrow and harlight shields were annoying.
I mean I think it’s just being kept tightly under wraps tbh. I’ve seen promethium themed vehicle variants in some of the videos.
Honestly, I saw Halo 5 in a similar way to Revenge of the Sith, with Cortana effectively taking control of the galaxy, and the ‘10 years of Infinite’ would see Chief and the UNSC playing the Rebel Alliance trying to figure out a way to bring her down, while running into other factions such as the Banished, etc.
Though given the Forerunner weapons got a bit of a classic redesign, I’m kinda curious to see what the Prometheans look like now.
They may have a surprise arrival in the campaign a la Flood Halo CE style 