Halo 2 didn’t actually have a different legendary ending. Reach and Halo 2 were the only ones that didn’t get one. You only ever got “Sir, finishing this fight” no matter the difficulty. Halo 1 had the hug scene, and Halo 3 showed a shield world (ostensibly Requiem) floating in space. Halo 4 had the Chief’s eyes and forehead. 5 had the ring (ostensibly Zeta Halo) with Cortana humming. And ODST showed Truth finding the Portal in Africa, from underground. None of them were particularly long or anything. Honestly, I think Infinite’s might have the most additional content out of all of them now that I’m running back through them. Definitely has the most dialog - hard to be less than 0.
But yeah, I’m willing to bet that the fan reaction to the Reclaimer saga sent them back to the board some. What I find interesting though, with the whole reaction to 4/5 and the Reclaimer saga, is that - while I’m in agreement with the majority about not fighting alongside Marines being a downgrade, losing the classic art style being a downgrade, and finding Locke boring [though being a PC-only player, I’ve never experienced it first-hand, only through videos of playthroughs] - is that the whole “evil Cortana” deal was really set in motion by Bungie. Between the Cortana letters pre-CE to the interaction with the Gravemind in H3, the terminals in H3, and the setup of the shield worlds in H3’s Legendary ending, Bungie really laid out a lot of what 343 picked up and ran with, but they got dumped on for connecting the dots lol. I guess Bungie just dipped out while the getting was good. I often wonder what the reaction would have been had Bungie connected their own dots in 4/5.
Oh well, at least we’re back to a classic art style for the most part.
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I thought that the bit with gravemind rolling up to Cortana and her line “Okay Shoot” was legendary, but maybe that was just the post credit bit regardless of difficulty.
Interesting point about the plans bungie had! I was entirely opposed to the idea, I think I’m biased against a lot of the lore and plot points in 4 and 5 because I disliked the art style so much.
It was regardless of difficulty - just did an Easy run through to mess around with DLDSR and AutoHDR after a Windows & driver upgrade, got the cutscene.
Heavy agreement on the art style influencing perception of other points of the game - the whole tonality of the visual presentation definitely impacts the way someone can think/feel about the experience. I think it’s part of why I dislike the Didact the way I do. I certainly enjoy the increased visual fidelity in Halo 4 over the original trilogy, but it just feels like it’s trying to be this high fantasy sci-fi, as opposed to an 80’s corpo-military take on the future, which is what I mostly liken the OT to, and that whole tonal shift permeates every second of screen time with the Didact. Objectively, my take is that the writing for Escharum and the Didact are very similar - egomaniacal, monologue heavy, exposition heavy - but I’m way warmer to Escharum than I am the Didact, simply because it feels like a Halo version of that character, influenced in no small part by the fact that the scenes in which he delivers monologues and exposition and egomaniacal lines looks like Halo. Totally interesting how art style can influence perception of story elements, at least IMO.
All the dislike of the interim 343 art style aside, I actually hope they bring Halo 5 to PC so I can play it. I’d like to make up my mind on it after actually having played it for myself. Also, the Sanghelios missions look gorgeous on YouTube, so I’d like to play those natively.
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Agreed! I felt like one of the best parts of Halo was always having strong roots in Military Science fiction. The first few books were heavily focused on that, and so were the games. Halo: Reach was probably the peak of the Military Science Fiction, it hardly included forerunner stuff at all, and was an intense and awesome military campaign. Ghosts of Onyx was also along those lines a bit, but after that, particularly once 343 took over, they went in a different direction. High fantasy sci-fi seems like a good description for it.
As for Halo 5, definitely check it out yourself. There are some aspects of it that are good, but I will admit that when I play the whole saga I’m usually pleasantly surprised by how much of 4 I actually like (which still isn’t much,) and then I quit after 30 seconds of 5.
Reach’s aesthetic is definitely good, I just really wish they’d paid attention to Nylund’s works when laying out the story. I find it bothersome to have to contort the canon around Bungie’s distaste for integrating the EU in the games. One day we’ll get 343 to the point where they’re pushing out Bungie style gameplay systems and aesthetic, but with the 343 style EU integrations and character writing. I think Infinite, while not perfect, is definitely an important step in that journey.
I am someone who enjoys Halo 4. Not necessarily for the plot per se, but more for the improvements in character writing. Chief, Cortana, and Lasky, I really enjoy the way they were all written for Halo 4. Though, I do find Del Rio’s writing to be Halo 3 Miranda level cringe (I know I’m probably in the minority here, but I feel like her writing took a hard dive after Halo 2).
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Agreed about Keyes in Halo 3, “To War” was the singular worst moment of that game.
I think in general I do agree about the improvements in character writing, but personally I wasn’t much of a fan of the AI girlfriend direction they went in with Halo 4, and same with the focus on Chief. I felt like it worked out better in Infinite (just as far as Chief’s writing/lines.) They really started to show his cracks in Infinite but in Halo 4 I felt like he was played a bit over the top. I had a hard time paying much attention to Jen Taylor’s performance because of the thing they added where she is touching holographic buttons, it sort of just didn’t make sense to me (plus there were a few lines that were just too blatant, like “Chief, wake up, I need you.”
I think that could have been delivered much better from Chief’s perspective (like whispering and echoing in his ear before he wakes up.)
Huge agree about Reach… I was so excited for it with everything I knew about Reach, and I remember how everyone was trying to guess which Spartan-IIs they would be, but they really just grabbed the timeline and ripped open a hole to put their game in, without it really connecting at all to the canon. There was so much ignored potential.
In the future I would love to see 343 create some canon that fits into that era… Sigma Octanus IV, maybe even earlier, the 2530s and 2540s are relatively bare canon-wise. Then again I just watched Alien for the first time in a long while and I’m craving some Halo: CE before remastering style visuals
I think the Chief/Cortana angle feels more awkward due to Cortana’s design in H4. Pretty sure that design is something 343 regrets these days lmao.
And yep, 2520s-2540s, Chief/Blue team, Johnson, and a squad of ODSTs dropping in for fighting retreats, evacuations, and asset denials during the darkest days of the Covenant war would be awesome. Though, I do think it comes with unique gameplay challenges when compared with Halo expectations - Mk IV had no energy shield for the base armor, and it’d be interesting to see if that kind of system could still work well these days. Though, they could always explain around it as “prototype shields”.
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Yeah, I didn’t like so much that they fudged the shields in Halo Wars. I think that with the success of ODST, that could work out really well. You’d still have the movement and melee strength etc. of a Spartan, but they could potentially focus more on armor damage? Have a meter for armor and a meter for health, and some possibility of repairing armor in some locations? You would certainly still be stronger than you were in ODST.
Good point tho!
I’m not sure if you ever saw the idea when I’ve posted it on other forums, but I have this idea that they should make a parallel set of games that are open world RPGs, where you play as maybe a special forces soldier who is recruited as an ONI agent after the first mission. They could play with the Mass Effect style multi-planet open world/having your own space ship, and play with stealth elements, contrasting between stealthy moments/being behind enemy lines vs. receiving more UNSC support and engaging in larger battles.
The games could span from relatively early in the war to post war era, maybe at some point you get nominated to be an S-IV and get to do augmentations (Which you could focus on certain things, and could be an RPG element.) That could lead to having mjolnir that you can customize and upgrade for both aesthetics and real gameplay upgrades.
Hmm, my first thought reading that was open world Hitman where you’re an ONI agent hunting innie cells on rebel planets [collecting clues, doing quests to work your way into the underground, etc] and then get a Covenant invasion tossed into the mix at the end? If they did it right, would be neat to work up towards taking down the bad guys to suddenly fighting alongside them.
Man, that time period has so much potential. Would be great to play a good story set there, even if it’s a shorter DLC.
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