The return of classic movement mechanics?

Games Halo Infinite
1642

> 2533274956613084;1637:
> Thanks for that anyway. I’m sorry if you see my argument in favour of Sprint as really missing the point again. I just can’t see myself conceding that there is no occasion where the choice to use Sprint is not totally unambiguous. I think that tsassi’s point about the low demand on additional understanding of the game state is a good argument for the additional depth being low, but I think that the additional depth it provides is definitely somewhere above zero; even if that depth is then offset by the negative aspects of Sprint in terms of other cascading design choices, and the lessening of the importance of positioning.

You don’t have to apologize. I read your entire post and basically whatever I didn’t quote I agreed or at least had no issue with. (Same with this quote.) As somebody that was absent from this forums for quite some time now, I just wanted to touch upon some things that I felt were skipped by the others. In the end however, it always comes down to personal preference.

1643

> 2533274956613084;1641:
> > 2592250499807011;1639:
> > In my opinion, the correct approach to the whole matter of providing a fresh experience which achieves the goals of feeling faster and also being more lore-friendly to super soldiers (a goal I don’t agree with but which 343 seems committed to) is to simply adopt the classic movement system (no added movement abilities) but increase the movement speed and acceleration of characters. Halo 3 +33% movement speed +33% acceleration (or something like that… Exact numbers would need testing) would feel very different, without compromising the core gameplay.
> >
> > This is also borderline necessary to make the game more interesting on PC, as old Halo 3s movement speed is probably too slow to feel interesting when everyone has the better aim of a mouse.
> >
> > It’s an interesting observation that no popular arena PC shooter ever uses sprint. Just faster base movement and acceleration.
>
> It’d be interesting if they did that and changed the default controller deadzones in the controller layout. You could have a very sprint-like experience without sprint. Surely that’d damage map design in the same way sprint does now though, and present the same broad issues with the emphasis on positioning?

Of the 3 factors I listed as problems with sprint, this approach would certainly retain #1 - maps are larger so individual positioning in a moment is less important. However, the other 2 factors would not apply. You wouldn’t be able to get out of bad positions more easily, as you and your opponent are always moving at the same rate (and always able to shoot). And player positioning on maps would always be predictable, rewarding game knowledge and positioning because with enough experience you could always predict where enemy players are.

I should note that Halo 5 map design appears to have a game-wide philosophy of putting obstacles and cover almost everywhere on its maps. 343, on most of its maps, designed out of the game any sort of open areas where you can get “caught” and hopelessly slaughtered for your foolish choice of position. I think this is in large part due to their desire to highlight sprint, thruster pack, and clamber in the moment to moment gameplay, but that kind of map design philosophy could also harm a game without sprint/abilities just as much as one with sprint/abilities. BTB is the easiest example in H5 to see this.

1644

> 2533274956613084;1640:
> Unfortunately I see Halo as a party game first (as long as we’re including social playlists in that definition), narrative game second, competitive arena shooter third, and canvas fourth.

Even so, this could still go either way. And I’m saying that as somebody who actually agrees with your hierarchy for the most part. (Remember, I’m a campaign person, not a competitive multiplayer enthusiast.)

Depending on how you define “party game”, one might argue that a game that is easy to learn is better suited to bust out with friends and enjoy a round or two (like, at a party). At the very least H5G does not fare well in this regard (Reach and 4 however don’t have as many of these issues) as the controller is highly cluttered with different mechanics and button actions change depending on situation (ground pound, Spartan charge, clamber, etc). Sprint does contribute to this problem in a way, but is certainly not the only issue. On the other hand, flashy mechanics do successfully create the illusion of action even when there is nothing actually happening (such as sprint having an animation when you’re actually just moving forward) so there is definitely an appeal there as the game is more visually stimulating. But if that’s all you’re interested in, it’s just as easily possible to add idle animations to classic gameplay.

As for the “narrative game” part, this has us return to the beloved topic of “lore”. Does sprint mesh well with Halo’s narrative and universe? That all depends on your own point of view.
There are two general camps in this discussion: People who are of the opinion that “Spartans should be able to sprint” and people who are of the opinion that “Spartans should be able to shoot while sprinting”. Neither of them is wrong and on paper both of them don’t even contradict one another, but the problem is that the movement from classic gameplay is not perceived as “running” by the first group. Even though the original trilogy had a movement speed of 7m/s (which means Chief is continuously running and shooting at a pace 66% of Usain Bolt’s current sprint world record) it is still viewed as “fast walking”. And while this might be remedied with FoV and BMS adjustments, those people who want sprint for the immersion aspect will not accept anything else, because they’re basing their expectations what a Spartan can do upon their own experience of how running feels like, arm swinging and all.
The same argument can be applied to the recent inclusion of ADS where some people hailed Halo for “finally embracing realism” when from the point of view of the Halo universe, aiming down sights is a laughable step back to a literally 1000-year-old technology compared to smart-linked weapons that tell you where the bullet will go. The “realism” claim comes from evaluating gameplay mechanics to what they would look like in a contemporary setting, not 500 years in the future (and actually is what 343 was basing the design of their mechanics on). On the other hand, people like me argue that Halo already had its physics ruleset laid out based on what technologies are and aren’t available in 2552 (and shooting while sprinting is part of that) and changes to that ruleset break canon and personally pull me out of the game.
These ideologies come from the difference between the concept of suspension of disbelief (a fictional universe needs to feel as familiar as possible even if it’s unrealistic to its own setting with as few outliers as manageable to be forced upon the audience) and secondary belief (a fictional universe needs to have an internally consistent logic even if it contradicts common sense). Both of them are valid mindsets - but (at least in the case of Halo) utterly incompatible. (Kind of like classic mechanics and advanced movement.) The problem, and what’s been so aggrevating to long-time fans such as myself, is how Halo suddenly flipped from one to the other a decade after its conception. It’s like as if the new Star Wars Films suddenly had no sound in space in order to be more realistic.

1645

@PhonicCanine99

> I do not believe that a game that feels like Halo CE could be a commercial success these days. I think it’s kind of tough to explain what I mean when I say “feels like Halo CE”, but I think I just prefer the more nimble feel to the Halo 5, and I think that subtle animations probably play into the feeling too.

This is really interesting, and I agree with it. I think 343 knows this as well (as did Bungie with Reach), which is why they’ve been experimenting with different things (armor abilities and bloom in Reach, turning Halo into Call of Duty for Halo 4, designing the whole game around spartan abilities in H5)

I think, however, that they have so far been looking for problems where they didn’t exist. So why would a game that feels like CE/2/3 not be a commercial success these days? To the extent that Halo’s commercial success is affected by its multiplayer gameplay, I believe that the original games fail in the following ways:

  1. Halo 1 and 2 are not balanced games. Not at all. They’re designed 100% around manipulating the imbalanced and abusable aspects of their design. Halo 5 is a far more balanced game than either Halo 1 or 2. There’s a reason Halo 1 4v4 is not a viable competitive archetype, and it’s not because Halo 1 predated Xbox Live… it’s because the spawn system in Halo 1 is an unbalanced nightmare. I’m not aware of any other major FPS game that places the responsibility of spawn placement 100% on teammates rather on the game’s spawn algorithm. So, you have to play 2v2 where the entire game is about spawn manipulation or just play 4v4 and accept that it’s for nothing more than laughs. The powerup timers are also unbalanced… the whole game - while I love it and enjoy it more than Halo 5 - would simply not work in a modern environment which expects a game to be balanced and feel fair. Halo 2 suffers from similar problems but which surround its weapon sandbox rather than the spawn system: ability to indefinitely control power weapons, imbalances such as the noob combo, and a hitscan BR in a game with slow movement speed and big open maps again creates a game which is very imbalanced. The game is also full of abusable glitches and the netcode is bad (bloodshots in a hitscan game feel awful).

  2. Halo 3 is a balanced game, but Halo 3’s main weapon (the BR) and netcode do not meet modern FPS standards of quality. The problem isn’t that the BR is a projectile based weapon instead of hitscan, the problem is that the netcode is trash, the projectiles are too slow, and the spread is about a mile wide, making the gun feel really bad to anyone who grew up on more modern FPS titles.

  3. Base movement speed in CE-3 feels slow to players new to the series, and is probably also a bit too floaty. I don’t personally understand this feeling, but it’s a nearly unanimous opinion which I’ve heard from younger players new to the series who grew up on other titles. As I’ve already stated, I don’t think movement abilities actually address this issue. But you could simply increase base speed, acceleration, adjust jump arc, etc, to improve this. It’s worth noting that this isn’t exclusively a modern phenomenon: MLG settings have almost always sped up player movement because players even at the time recognized base movement as too slow.

I think that a Halo game with a fully modern feature set of playlists, social features, customization (forge/etc), game modes (get rid of skill based matchmaking from social lists), and high quality map design, along with updated classic movement and a top quality weapon sandbox and netcode would be a great success. (And it would help if the campaign was actually good too… but we’re talking multiplayer here)

1646

> 2533274889489936;2:
> As in we all have to walk around really slowly and such?

I find it hard to understand how people like you who frequent forums where this conversation comes up a lot are this ignorant to what the other side has to say. Sprint slows down the gameplay. They stretched out the maps to get the map to speed ratios are the same and to not break the game. Its just now you have to slow down whenever you shoot at people when in halo you were always meant to be able to shoot at all times. Sprint also changes a bunch of things about the gameplay to accommodate it that end up making the game not feel like halo anymore. All pro sprint arguments in my experience come down to emotional thinking and “I don’t care about how much data you have I don’t want to FEEL slow” If the stupid animation means so much to you, you don’t have to break the entire game. Just do what doom did and let players shoot while sprinting at all times and while sprinting backwards/sideways while a sprinting animation plays if it really means that much to you.

1647

> 2533274825830455;1605:
> No, the golden triangle definitely very much emphasizes the individual actions. After all, if you didn’t want to emphasize the specific actions, you’d just be talking about “combat” or “combat abilities” or whatever, not about “weapons, grenades, and melee”. In fact, this again goes back to the context where it was coined, which was the impact of dual wielding on use of grenades and melee. The whole term “the golden triangle” emphasizes the mutual balance of these three features. Your mind isn’t immediately drawn to a radar chart type thing when seeing the phrase “golden triangle”? I can guarantee you that many people’s are. In fact, this whole conversation began from someone relying on this sort of idea of balance, thinking melee combat should have a more prominent role.
>
> If you really think the golden triangle doesn’t emphasize its individual elements, see what other people have thought in the past. This post goes on to explain how the person thinks Reach breaks each corner of the golden triangle. One commenter interprets there to be a strict hierarchy: “Note They put weapon because its the most prominent, Nades second and Melee last.” From more recent times: “that’s what the golden triangle is, and guess what, how many of your kills in halo 3 averaged out in that order?” Another comment on the balance aspect: “Grenades have been horribly neglected due to being called overpowered. Melees have been made overpowered (but the lunge has finally been corrected). Guns have been made viable but are too easy or too frustrating to utilize.”. Then there’s of course just a huge amount of comments referring to rectangles.
>
> If Bungie never prescribed a specific meaning to it, and if a large portion of people see the indivudal elements of the triangle as important, are they the ones mistaken, or are you just denying the common meaning of the term?

To me, this is what it mostly boils down to. It’s not that I don’t see why people interpret the individual elements as important. I can’t say they simply aren’t important at all, that would be silly, but I feel most people just lose context and to me the importance is upon the access to those elements at any point in time. Even if another game dev had coined a term like: ‘The four corners of *Game X’ as being weapons, grenades, melee, special equipment and having access to any one of these at any point in time, my interpretation would be nearly identical. How many FPS out there don’t have weapons, grenades, melee? It just makes no sense to me, to place emphasis on something that is a constant in pretty much every shooter I’ve ever played, so common sense tells me that the emphasis must be on the surrounding statements… and in this case, that would be having access to them at any point in time. IMO it’s a no brainer.

> 2533274825830455;1605:
> Maybe you are a lucky pioneer, and were thinking about the interplay of movement and combat way ahead of everyone else. However, the reality is that that interpretation of it only became prominent after Halo 5. Before then it was all about how bloom breaks weapons, how lack of bleed through breaks melee, how armor abilities make it a rectangle, and so on. As an individual, you may not adapt it to your needs, but collectively, the community does.

Well, what can I say? Perhaps collectively, the community doesn’t always get it right. Wouldn’t be the first time. Perhaps I’ve gone along with the community, collectively, and gotten it wrong myself in some instances. I still stand by my view of it however.

1648

> 2592250499807011;1639:
> In my opinion, the correct approach to the whole matter of providing a fresh experience which achieves the goals of feeling faster and also being more lore-friendly to super soldiers (a goal I don’t agree with but which 343 seems committed to) is to simply adopt the classic movement system (no added movement abilities) but increase the movement speed and acceleration of characters. Halo 3 +33% movement speed +33% acceleration (or something like that… Exact numbers would need testing) would feel very different, without compromising the core gameplay.
>
> This is also borderline necessary to make the game more interesting on PC, as old Halo 3s movement speed is probably too slow to feel interesting when everyone has the better aim of a mouse.
>
> It’s an interesting observation that no popular arena PC shooter ever uses sprint. Just faster base movement and acceleration.

FOV increase would be preferable at first. Halo 3’s FOV was pretty low, so it seems like you move so much slower than other games (I hope to god there’s an FOV slider on PC at least). But to address the lore argument: lore, graphics, etc. should always come second to gameplay. In the lore Spartans are able to run at speeds upwards of 50 km/h/ They certainly don’t run that fast in games, and I certainly don’t want to be able to move that fast either in game. The game should be fun to play, and the gameplay as good as possible, regardless of what the lore says about certain things (of course, within reason). If people want the game to return to classic mechanics because we preferred that system, lore is not an argument to deny that request.

I agree about 3 feeling too slow for PC, but again an FOV increase is really all it needs. Increasing BMS solves many of the problems of sprint (such as allowing Halo to retain the constant run and gun gameplay that was present before it’s introduction), but still retains some of them such maps needing to be increased in size to compensate for the higher movement speeds, projectile velocity increased, etc…

1649

> 2533274801176260;1644:
> As for the “narrative game” part, this has us return to the beloved topic of “lore”. Does sprint mesh well with Halo’s narrative and universe? That all depends on your own point of view.

I feel like you’re going to once again think I’m insane to say this, but I think “narrative game” is a term that, depending on the person using it, could all but completely ignore the lore that sits behind the narrative. While I do enjoy reading a Halo book from time to time, this is not the narrative draw of the series for me. I think the Final Fantasy series kind of serves as an example for this - the lore behind the new Final Fantasy games, and how they all tangentially relate to each other would probably require a PHD to fully understand. But the individual stories contained within the games are imminently understandable and while, taking 15 for example, I don’t think the plot is particularly good, the character writing is a really strong draw, and the strong character writing makes the game’s “narrative” stick out to me, even if the plot is a bit convoluted at times, and the lore, particularly how the game relates to the “thirteen trilogy” (which will never stop sounding dumb to say), is almost totally alien to me.

I view Reach and Halo 4 as the best “narrative” games in the series, but the A-plot in Halo 4 is totally ill-conceived because it draws so much from the backing lore, compared to a game like Halo 3, where the A-plot is totally clear to anyone that’s cleared Halo 2, and Halo 2 which pretty much completely stands on its own, as far as I remember.

But as soon as I conceded that “the didact is bad, and will probably do something bad”, the B-plot of Halo 4 - that is the Chief-Cortana thing, really shone through as one of the best written stories in a game I’d played. I think, as long as a game is internally consistent in the story it tells, it can be a great narrative game, even if it requires a bomb squad to clean up the damage it does to the lore behind it. And that’s obviously going to be a super contentious opinion, I know.

Obviously that’s not to say that I don’t think the lore should be consistent, it’s merely to argue that, at least for me, I think it’s possible to care deeply about the quality of the plot, but pay almost no attention to “lore holes”

> 2533274801176260;1644:
> At the very least H5G does not fare well in this regard (Reach and 4 however don’t have as many of these issues) as the controller is highly cluttered with different mechanics and button actions change depending on situation (ground pound, Spartan charge, clamber, etc). Sprint does contribute to this problem in a way, but is certainly not the only issue.

As for the statements about Halo 5 as a party game, I think your point is right - I do not think Sprint functions to improve Halo’s playability as a party game. However I think as party game mechanics the rest are actually defensible - people feel good when they pull off a Spartan Charge, and if you’ve managed to get a hold of enough Xbox One’s to play Halo 5 as a party game with the uninitiated, Ground Pound is an ability with so much flare that a GP kill is often an exciting highlight, and gametypes built around GP and sniping work pretty well in a party setting. I think you’re right to talk about things as adding to the visual stimulation of the game, and I think GP plays into this in a pretty major way.

> 2533274801176260;1644:
> On the other hand, flashy mechanics do successfully create the illusion of action even when there is nothing actually happening (such as sprint having an animation when you’re actually just moving forward) so there is definitely an appeal there as the game is more visually stimulating.

I think you’re definitely right here, visual appeal is a massive part of any game as a party game. Thrust and shoulder charge also play into this - seeing someone thrust out of the way of something, or thrusting yourself, can feel exciting in a way that simply strafing does not, and Shoulder Charging to destroy a wall feels similarly exciting to at least some people. In my experience, clamber is probably the least cared about ability in a party setting, but I think that’s probably just a result of verticality not being an intuition for everyone.

I think the lack of splitscreen really makes it more tough to see Halo 5 as a proper party game, but at least when I got a good number of Xboxes and screens in the same room, my experience was as I sort of implied - people either liked or felt indifferent to most mechanics in the game. Most of the people that played then will not play Halo again, so it wouldn’t make sense to design a game around them, but it’s kind of frustrating to try to play Reach with the same sort of audience and have the group split along the lines of people who have played Halo before really enjoying the experience, and those that haven’t incessantly chanting the mantra “Fortnite is better because at least it lets you run”, which is at least my experience with party Halo recently. (The other complaint I hear a lot is about the driving being tied to the camera, but I think this merits absolutely no discussion, because the way I see it there’s literally no better way of controlling a vehicle that allows you to shoot, strafe and turn).

1650

@Primus Ego Sum
I pretty much entirely agree with the list you’ve got there. I think Halo CE spawns are a massive turn off, but I would also argue that the map design of a lot of CE 4v4 maps has really aged terribly - I see incessant use of teleporters as a really questionable design choice (although I think some people would probably disagree with that).

I think there’s probably two other minor things that make the early Halo games not really feel modern:

I may be off base here, but I think default joystick curves in the older games kind of play into a feeling that Halo is a one-speed game, and I think this is an idea that makes the games feel particularly dated on console. I don’t think that joystick position should have a linear relationship with player speed, because while it does make it easy to move slowly, to avoid motion tracker detection, I think it also means that most of the space between “slow enough to avoid detection” and “actually moving” is useless. I’m not under the illusion that there’s a whole lot that can be done to make this area more useful - I think there’s usually little reason to want to go slower than top speed but faster than motion tracker detection speed - but I think having the curve really spike up at the end would possibly be a way to make the game feel faster without making any explicit changes to the movement speed.

I also think that a really big thing is the animations. Something Halo 5 does, I think, really well, is provide a faint swaying animation when you walk with a weapon out, that changes speed with your player speed. This is something really subtle, and obviously has no effect on gameplay, but I think it has a massive effect on how the game feels. I would argue that Halo CE in particular kind of feels like you’re controlling a camera (which you technically obviously are), rather than controlling a spartan, and I think the inclusion of weapon sway when moving sort of works around this feeling.

1651

> 2533274956613084;1649:
> I view Reach and Halo 4 as the best “narrative” games in the series

At the risk of going off-topic: Could you explain why you cherish Reach that much? I can sorta see why one would enjoy the B-Plot of Halo 4 (although I disagree, as I consider it nonsensical), but I don’t really understand Reach. That game didn’t really have a “story”, just a sequence of consecutive battles you fought, without causal connection, so I’m always intrigued when somebody praises Reach for its narrative.

1652

> 2533274956613084;1650:
> Something Halo 5 does, I think, really well, is provide a faint swaying animation when you walk with a weapon out, that changes speed with your player speed

You’re not talking about the sprint animations, are you? Because “faint swaying” would be really underselling it. In fact, I’m constantly waiting for the weapon to fall out of Locke’s hands when he’s violently throwing it from one side to the other. The pistol sprint animation is probably even worse, it just looks so unnatural, it always reminds me of Scary Movie, with the fists shaking up and down but always perfectly parallel to the direction of movement. In fact, I actually think H5G has some of the worst animations in the series.

1653

> 2533274801176260;1652:
> > 2533274956613084;1650:
> > Something Halo 5 does, I think, really well, is provide a faint swaying animation when you walk with a weapon out, that changes speed with your player speed
>
> You’re not talking about the sprint animations, are you? Because “faint swaying” would be really underselling it. In fact, I’m constantly waiting for the weapon to fall out of Locke’s hands when he’s violently throwing it from one side to the other. The pistol sprint animation is probably even worse, it just looks so unnatural, it always reminds me of Scary Movie, with the fists shaking up and down but always perfectly parallel to the direction of movement. In fact, I actually think H5G has some of the worst animations in the series.

I think he’s just talking about normal weapon sway when you move or turn, which they have in other Halo’s anyway.

1654

Well, I’d say this is a other pretty solid reason why Halo 6 should go back to more of a classic movement style (amongst other things too, no ADS style zooming, bringing back some type/form of equipment, etc, but I digress here)

> The Halo Classic by UGC has sold 128 team passes and should have the highest team turnout of any Halo event in recent memory.

Let’s just think about that for a second… the HIGHEST team turn out of ANY Halo event in long time, possibly ever. That’s pretty impressive!! It really is, on many levels I might add. Obviously there is a market for that style of FPS and to anyone who thinks there isn’t anyone interested in that kind of style or it wouldn’t be popular, well…you just got proven wrong :wink:

This information to came from the latest community update, found Here by the way :grin:

1655

As far as I’m concerned. From a gameplay perspective? I think a toned down Halo 5 with less bullet magnetism and no ground pound or thrusters is what I expect - so I’m not hoping for more.

But for the people saying that Halo 5 makes you feel more super, does it?

The suit is doing ALL the work for you. Hell you can’t even run or jump or do much without your thrusters, you’re more like a mech or iron man. Spartans are supersoldiers, not some anime hooha. I prefer the older Halo’s feel, more boots on the ground and gritty feeling. Halo 5 feels to superfluous in its appeasement of power fantasy to the point it is almost deriding for older fans.

Halo 4 and Reach Kids can whine all day but I want the game to actually be successful this time.

1656

> 2533274801176260;1651:
> At the risk of going off-topic: Could you explain why you cherish Reach that much?

So, having read the other forum posts you linked, I fear this will go in a somewhat similar direction, where I will argue that the lack of ultimate player agency is the strength of the story, and you argue that lacking agency makes a poor premise for a video game.

But if we’re going to talk about this at all, I think it’s probably worth outlining what I agree with (from the post you linked):

  • The campaign missions are disjointed - In terms of storytelling, it’s definitely preferable to have stories that do follow an obvious cause-effect structureI think it’s pretty hard to defend Reach on these two points - the best I could possibly do (and really grasping at straws) is postulate that the disjointedness of the campaign is meant to make the scale of the events more obvious. Halo CE through to 3 present the scale by flying the player to different parts of the galaxy (obviously), and using really wide shots. Reach obviously couldn’t really do that, and I think that it’s possible that it may’ve been difficult to properly convey the scale of the conflict with continuous shots, so the cut to black then show the time strategy makes it clear that a fair amount of time has passed canonically, and by assumption between a lot of missions there’s been transit. But this is being way to charitable to what is more likely just lazy writing.

To preface why I like the narrative, I think it’s worth saying that it’s likely that I look for different things in stories to other people: my primary motive for investing in any story is emotional payoff, and I’m very willing to suspend disbelief so long as a story achieves that. I also want to say first that I think that experiencing the narrative of Halo Reach blind is really important.

I think the reason I didn’t really like Halo’s narratives before is that they all felt to me like they had no stakes. I guess that’s probably a weird thing to say given that, in the first 3 games, the galaxy was in major danger every time. But I never found that I cared about the galaxy - I get that it’s supposed to be our galaxy, but I didn’t think there was anyone worth caring about in it. And even though the library on legendary is one of the most painful experiences I’ve had controlling a character in a game, I never felt narrative stakes at all. The two remotely important characters - Chief and by extension Cortana - were obviously going to be fine. Halo CE didn’t try anything particularly daring with the narrative that I saw, and even though some would contest this, after the credits rolled I kind of immediately designated the trilogy as consequence less fun. I think Halo 3 sort of improved upon this, with Cortana’s notable absense and Johnson’s death, but even that failed to strike a chord with me because I felt like the super soldier Master Chief should probably at least have tried to evacuate the man, regardless of whether or not that is a rational feeling to have on the situation.

Contrast that to Reach: without prior knowledge, I assumed the game to be in the same vein as the three main games before it - another story with extreme stakes and a predomenantly triumphant story. But obviously, Reach subverts both of these expectations (if you go in truly blind). The conflict is limited to the area around one planet, and the game has the gall to kill off a main character at the midway point. Again, blind to what was coming, I saw that as a victory - the supercarrier was destroyed - but the mission immediately after has you attempting to help civilians flee the planet, only for them to get brutally murdered in front of you, and for entire transport ships to get destroyed despite your efforts.

I think that, beyond my assumptions about where a Halo game would go, the game actually does a pretty good job of misdirecting you before this twist too - it constantly portrays large scale warfare in skyboxes and backdrops, and the first half of the game is mission after mission of rolling over Covenant holdouts.

I think this subversion is pretty powerful, and while I’m not going to claim the death of the player character at the end of Reach was Shakespeare, I saw the story as leagues above the games before it, just because it actually felt to me like a story rather than a propaganda piece. Obviously subversion isn’t always a good thing, but for me and my perspective on the Halo series, this allowed me to have a degree of emotional response that was born from within the game itself, rather than a more periphery “it sucks this is over”, or “cool I finished legendary”.

Halo 4 did this by setting up a really human relationship between Cortana and Chief (which I know you didn’t find compelling, but I really did), and allowing Cortana to ‘die’. Halo 5 regressed pretty badly from this though in my opinion, and returned to the comic-book-like story telling from the pre-ODST days.

> 2533274801176260;1652:
> > 2533274956613084;1650:
> > Something Halo 5 does, I think, really well, is provide a faint swaying animation when you walk with a weapon out, that changes speed with your player speed
>
> You’re not talking about the sprint animations, are you? Because “faint swaying” would be really underselling it. In fact, I’m constantly waiting for the weapon to fall out of Locke’s hands when he’s violently throwing it from one side to the other. The pistol sprint animation is probably even worse, it just looks so unnatural, it always reminds me of Scary Movie, with the fists shaking up and down but always perfectly parallel to the direction of movement. In fact, I actually think H5G has some of the worst animations in the series.

Nah I was actually just talking about the normal speed animation. I think that in Halo 5, the animations reached a fidelity that made the game feel a lot better in normal speed than the games before, although that’s a pretty subjective point. To elaborate a bit, Halo:CE, Halo 2 and Halo 3 all just felt to me like I was gliding along surfaces rather than actually walking on them. I think Halo Reach and 4 improved this and by 5 I think it feels pretty good. I agree, the sprint version of the animation is pretty extreme (although I don’t dislike it for that).

1657

> 2533274956613084;1656:
> Contrast that to Reach: without prior knowledge, I assumed the game to be in the same vein as the three main games before it - another story with extreme stakes and a predomenantly triumphant story. But obviously, Reach subverts both of these expectations (if you go in truly blind). The conflict is limited to the area around one planet, and the game has the gall to kill off a main character at the midway point.

I think this is where our perception drifts apart: Other people already had mentioned that they enjoyed the “more human story” of Reach, but for me the characters just failed to connect. I basically disagree that Noble Team are main characters - at least individually, only as a group. Sure, you have somebody from Noble with you most of the time, but each one on its own merely has cameos. You so rarely fight alongside them that I had absolute zero emotional connection to them. By the time Jorge dies, you only fought two missions with him, Kat had two, Carter had two, Emile also had two, but he’s also the only guy without a face, and by the time he died I would have been desensitized to them getting killed off anyways, so… Miranda and Johnson had two games to develop, yet their deaths still felt shoehorned in to raise the stakes.
I also had no expectations subverted: Reach being glassed is one of the main pillars of the Halo canon, referenced in basically every single piece of media (the novels, the games, even the booklets that come with them).The game more or less played out exactly as I suspected - which is unfortunate. I would have wanted my expectations subverted in this one specific case. A deeper mystery maybe, linked to that “latchkey” plot device that eventually goes nowhere, but anything more than the barebones “Covenant attacks Reach, UNSC loses” would have done the trick.
As for the deaths: Even before I played the game, from the moment I watched the trailers (which basically just was the intro cutsene) I immediately noticed the Sword of Damocles hanging over each of their heads. I saw them for the Redshirts they were and was just constantly waiting when they would get killed off, not if. (It also doesn’t help that the game starts with the destroyed helmet of your main character.) If anything, Jun surviving was the one thing that surprised me most, and that realization only hit me a long time later. I can absolutely understand looking for a more character-driven approach in order to have an emotional investment - for that reason I enjoyed ODST a lot - but if anything, Reach is the game that does that least out of all of them (and yes, including CE, which so far has the only character death in the franchise that felt warranted, namely Keyes).
But still, thanks for the insight…

1658

> 2533274801176260;1657:
> I think this is where our perception drifts apart: Other people already had mentioned that they enjoyed the “more human story” of Reach, but for me the characters just failed to connect. I basically disagree that Noble Team are main characters - at least individually, only as a group. Sure, you have somebody from Noble with you most of the time, but each one on its own merely has cameos. You so rarely fight alongside them that I had absolute zero emotional connection to them. By the time Jorge dies, you only fought two missions with him, Kat had two, Carter had two, Emile also had two, but he’s also the only guy without a face, and by the time he died I would have been desensitized to them getting killed off anyways, so… Miranda and Johnson had two games to develop, yet their deaths still felt shoehorned in to raise the stakes.

Yeah, having played Reach again really recently, I do agree that you really don’t spend enough time with the individual members of Noble Team for their deaths to be as effective as they could otherwise have been.

And I don’t think I’d describe Reach as having a more human story - I agree that ODST does this better. I think, like ODST, Halo 4 tries to build emotional investment through a character based approach, but again, I don’t think Reach tried or succeeded at this. I didn’t end the story having loved or really cared about any of the characters, per se.

For me, like I said, it was just one of the only times in a Halo game that I thought that the story was worth paying attention to. Like I said, I have never felt any narrative stakes in any of the original trilogy. To me it feels like you’re playing a comic book hero. And that’s okay, it can make really memorable moments and characters (Betcha can’t stick it?), I just don’t think for me it makes memorable stories.

I think here, for me, even if the deaths themselves didn’t subvert my expectations, the fact that the game was willing to feature them probably would have, if that makes sense. That is to say, I don’t view the story as good in the franchise because of the deaths, but because there are deaths. And I think any departure from the original trilogy, is enough for me to become enamoured by its difference, even if the story is reasonably objectively flawed.

Just out of interest @Celestis, do you disagree with my views on the first three games?

1659

> 2533274956613084;1658:
> Just out of interest @Celestis, do you disagree with my views on the first three games?

Sorta. I can absolutely see where you’re coming from when you say “there’s nothing at stake”. Earth, humanity, the galaxy are all abstract concepts that conveigh no immediate urgency. But it didn’t bother me, maybe because I’m plenty used to this type of thing. Rarely any type of “saving the world” plot (from fantasy, sci-fi, superheroes, etc.) shows you the thing you’re (I’m substituting “the protagonist” with “you” for non-interactive media as well) trying to save, because while it would make the danger more palpable, it would significantly mess with the pacing of any story. I got my emotional attachement from other aspects, instead: It wasn’t the fact that Halo was a superweapon that hooked me in CE, but the sense of betrayal by 343GS. Now it was personal. 2 didn’t have me riled up in the same way because I never cared for the arbiter (and still don’t) and thus half of the game was boring to me, but they villified Truth in such a way that I was really looking forward to shoving my boot up his -Yoink- - a feeling which carried over to 3, but unfortunately was never fulfilled as he’s killed off in a cutscene… and by the arbiter no less. Again, I don’t like him as a character, but objectively I’d have to admit that it does make more sense for him to kill the prophet in order to cap off his arc.

EDIT: I’d also have to add that part of the fascination with the original Halo trilogy was the fact that you’d slowly find out what actually happened 100,000 years ago, piece by piece unraveling the fate of the forerunners, the origins of the flood, mendicant bias, the librarian, the didact (before 343 rectonned everything and made a mess out of the backstory). The lore was more interesting than most of what actually took place in the plot. Reach on the other hand, had nothing of the sorts. Everything that happens onscreen is all there is to the story. Sure there are some datapads, but they’re just some military reports with no consequence on what’s happening to Noble. Even ODST had Sadie’s Story which ties in with Vergil. I guess I can’t really agree with you on Reach’s story being “worth paying attention to” because to this day, I still haven’t found any story in the game to pay attention to.

And to be fair, you’re supposed to feel “like you’re playing a comic book hero”. Halo is a revival of 80’s cheesy SciFi action à la Terminator, Predator, Aliens, etc. That’s the whole point. And that’s also part of the reason why I think that 343’s latest stories don’t work (in games, novels and comics) because they try to enact serious drama (the Cortana tragedy arc, etc.) in a universe that was built for static characters with dumb one-liners.

1660

So back to the thread topic, I really think there’s only one way that you can have a middle ground here (even though I don’t think compromising would be the best way). I’d rather have no abilities period. But anyway…

You make all the spartan/armor abilities (sprint included here) pickups, no matter what.

This would allow there to be a base movement speed/jumps in which maps could be built around. The abilities would be one-time use and act as power weapons to fight for essentially. I really can’t see any other way to have them in the game if we want classic movement mechanics.

1661

> 2779900484279609;1660:
> So back to the thread topic, I really think there’s only one way that you can have a middle ground here (even though I don’t think compromising would be the best way). I’d rather have no abilities period. But anyway…
>
> You make all the spartan/armor abilities (sprint included here) pickups, no matter what.
>
> This would allow there to be a base movement speed/jumps in which maps could be built around. The abilities would be one-time use and act as power weapons to fight for essentially. I really can’t see any other way to have them in the game if we want classic movement mechanics.

I think that would be unhappiness on both sides. Sprint is underpowered as a powerup, compared to overshield, damage boost, speed boost (especially speed boost) and active camouflage. People on the anti-sprint side would likely be annoyed that a superfluous ability, inferior to speed boost, was added, and the people who like the new movement would be unhappy that is wasn’t base.

It could possibly work if you made it so there was one powerup that gave all the movement abilities, but this would be confusing, annoying to fans of the old movement, and would still be disliked by fans of the new movement because the whole point of the new movement is that it’s a change to how the base game plays.

To me it’s just a total non-starter. I wouldn’t like it like that in any circumstance, and while a game having new or old mechanics isn’t going to persuade me to buy it or skip it, having power ups to enable the new abilities would be such a red flag to me about the developer’s competence that I, ironically, could end up skipping the game just over that.

I think the only types of compromise that could possibly work are:

  • an optional switch in custom games to enable the Halo 5 moveset (and probably the Halo 5 moveset being utilised throughout the campaign) - a version of the current moveset with sprint and clamber removed - some weird Spartans vs Elites like situation, where you could choose the new movement set with a cost to base movement speed and base jump height, or the old moveset, then have restrictions on certain game types (which I really can’t see them doing at all)but I think that it’s far more likely 343i will just steer hard in one of the two directions.