Halo is famous for it’s stunning visuals, it’s beautiful and imposing landscapes, it’s art direction… But that doesn’t mean the opposite can’t exist in the wide array of maps the games have. Now let’s look at the stains in the painting. The spots where we go “what were they thinking when designing this?”
My vote goes to Longshore from Halo 3.
EDIT: I don’t count forge maps, unless they were always there like Asylum or Sandbox
I nominate Tombstone.
I’m not a fan of the Halo 2 version of Mombasa architecture. It’s too simple and flat and grey for anything humans would live in. But Tombstone is not just that, but somehow manages to be incongruous with it, having completely different style of texturing from what we see in other places in Halo 2. At a glance, you can’t even tell what materials the textures are intended to present, so the intent of the design doesn’t come across well. The geometry is pulled from Hang 'em High, which combined with the unmotivated texture work makes the map look really not at all like an actual industrial complex I could believe to exist. Of all the maps in Halo, Tombstone raises the most questions about the artist’s intent to me.
> 2535459079655548;1:
> My vote goes to Longshore from Halo 3.
Any reason why? Because I happen to think that Longshore is a beautiful map with that decaying aesthetic seen in many of Halo 3’s New Mombasa maps. It’s a picturesque old harbor, rusted by decades of salty ocean winds, lit by the rising sun through a morning haze. In the ocean sillhouttes of the futuristic war ships looming behind the fog. This is a very nice contrast between the new and the old. The map really motivates itself as a believable location, and tells a clear story of an old fish processing plant abandoned in war.
Foundation from Halo 2 is an aesthetically boring and bland map.
Anything built on Forge World in Reach. All of that ugly gray… Yuck.
I have to say, “Hang 'Em High” from Halo: Combat Evolved. The colour palette is incredibly bland and the map design is just awful. The Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary remake is somewhat of an improvement on it, however.
Tombstone would be my vote
Warlords
> 2533274947044147;3:
> Foundation from Halo 2 is an aesthetically boring and bland map.
Agreed 100%. Foundation is by far my least favorite map (to play, and visually speaking) in any Halo game.
honestly a lot of the H5 remakes, or forge maps
> 2535459079655548;1:
> Halo is famous for it’s stunning visuals, it’s beautiful and imposing landscapes, it’s art direction… But that doesn’t mean the opposite can’t exist in the wide array of maps the games have. Now let’s look at the stains in the painting. The spots where we go “what were they thinking when designing this?”
>
> My vote goes to Longshore from Halo 3.
Tombstone from Halo 2 omg is soo orrible!!!
I can’t stand Isolation. It was that map for Halo 3 where if the match was taken place on I would deliberately betray my teammates and hope to get booted. There’s just something about that ticked me off. Perhaps the size, the look of it wasn’t all that interesting to see either. Though the remakes are sort of okay to play on.
Oof people giving Tombstone and Foundation grief here makes me sad. Love those maps, even if they’re kind of a dusty palette.
I can’t stand Assembly. The skybox is cool, but all of that purple and plasticy looking grey just makes my skin crawl. Like being stuck inside a bad Barbie set, smelling of plastic and warm rubber.
Not sure if you count Forge maps, but Nexus in Reach.
> 2535431933064458;13:
> Not sure if you count Forge maps, but Nexus in Reach.
I feel like Forge maps are bit of cheating because even if you restrict to ones that have appeared in matchmaking, there is that one MLG map in Halo 3 built on Foundry which is just overlapping geometry galore and no sense of aesthetic because it wasn’t made as a map to be looked at, and it was before Bungie understood to make Forge objects phase together in sensible ways.
I’m not OP, but I feel like restricting oneself to non-Forge developer maps gives more interesting answers.
I agree with the people who said foundation. Very boring, indeed.\
> 2533274825830455;2:
> > 2535459079655548;1:
> > My vote goes to Longshore from Halo 3.
>
> Any reason why? Because I happen to think that Longshore is a beautiful map with that decaying aesthetic seen in many of Halo 3’s New Mombasa maps. It’s a picturesque old harbor, rusted by decades of salty ocean winds, lit by the rising sun through a morning haze. In the ocean sillhouttes of the futuristic war ships looming behind the fog. This is a very nice contrast between the new and the old. The map really motivates itself as a believable location, and tells a clear story of an old fish processing plant abandoned in war.
Simple: In general that’s my same problem with the art direction in H2 - Reach, human architecture: It takes me out of the futuristic sci fi universe, I don’t buy it. Compare it, or that hut made out of sticks and mud in the Sword Base level to things like H4’s Skyline, Erosion, Perdition or the city in the demo of H2.