I have been noticing this for some time. It started when the E3 demo game way to its few helmets, but only now do I find it a concern.
Out of all the helmets shown, most of them have little-to-no visor whatsoever. One of the things I loved about previous helmets is how I can actually imagine somebody putting on the helmet and being able to see well out of it. When I think of helmets from dead-space, mass effect, etc., I can’t possibly imagine how the people see through them clearly sometimes. In halo, I could almost always see the spartans with full vision, both direct and peripherals, full 180 degrees. Your vision never seemed like it could be impaired in any way for most helmets. On top of this, I loved the look of an open visor, as the visor it what truly made the look of the helmet IMO.
So far in halo 4, however, most of the helmets seen have almost no visor. It makes my wonder how anybody could see through such things. It also make the helmets look much uglier in my opinion, as the nice shiny face is replaced with dull metal/carbon alloy with different containers and plugs blocking what would be your view.
Helmets like the soldier and infiltrator have very little visor to see out of, but could possibly be done with. However these little-featured visors leave a much less appealing look in my opinion.
And these are only the beginning. As of yesterday, we’ve seen 8 more sets of armor, with helmets that, for the most part, feature almost no visible visor. My first example is the most annoying IMO, the wetworks helmet. Do you see a visor on that? I’d expect many to say no, however it has one and its not a pretty sight. The visor on this helmet is a vertical line, no more than 2 inches wide. Not only is this barely noticeable, Its highly impractical. Was this helmet made for those spartans whose eye just so happen to be one above the other in the middle of their face?
Then, theres the Engineer helmet. this looks like the scientists tried to rework with the waterworks, but talor it more towards those one, skinny-eyed spartans. not only is this little slit of a visor ridiculous, but it is compensated by the whole face of the helmet being covered in sockets, which do nothing good for the design.
Then of course, there’s The Tracker helmet. Did you have a hard time finding the visor on this? I did the first time I saw it. While there may be a somewhat decent sized visor there, most of it is blocked by 3 flashlights/sensors, directly in the center of it. The only visible part of this visor in a small slit that stretches from about cheek to cheek. Highly impractical and vastly unappealing to me.
Other than these helmets, there are a few that bug me, such as the stalker, Dead-eye, and warrior helmets, which even though they have more practical visors, still lack the iconic face-shield That I, personally, think is what made most of the great helmets of the franchise. Helmets like the Mark V, Mark VI, ODST, grenadier, etc. All of these helmets Involve a decent-sized visor, that doesn’t seem too small or too big.
I’m not saying that these new helmets are necessarily bad, and I’m sure that there are some who like smaller visors and more armor. I also don’t mind there being a few helmets like this in the game. However it seems to me that there are only about 2-4 helmets with this medium-sized visor I’ve grown fond of, and the majority shown have only small slits and abnormal shapes for visors.I would like to see a better variety of helmets in the future, with more that closer resemble the classic sized visor that is used on the most known helmets of halo.
I really want a larger variety when It comes to helmets, specifically visors.
Plus, I can imagine possibly some lag or transition problems between the sensors and the screen, and I can’t imagine staring a screen 2 inches from your face all day is too confortable.
and to me, these 2 inch visors are anything but.
