It is backhanded but Cortana does say there are worse things than the Flood on the ring. Which means there are Flood on the ring.
Offensive Bias is intimately connected to the Flood. Why bring in the AI which defeated the Flood into the story?
If Cortana isn’t revealed to have the Logic Plague I’d be amazed at this point. Her story mirrors Mendicant Bias too much and the Weapon presents the obvious question of how Cortana could be evil if this blank slate isn’t. A Logic Plague plot would likely mean the Flood being involved and indicates their presence.
There’s also audiolog mentions of the Flood and the Great Parasite. Along with cutscene mentions.
Also, 343 would probably want to recreate the surprise reveal of the Flood. An easy way to do that is that the Harbinger knowingly or unknowingly released the Flood. So you go down to investigate the release of the “Endless” only for the horror to emerge.
It’s just a shame dataminers will likely leak anything long before it comes out.
Not necessarily.
As long as i343 doesn’t release flood assets with updates, and has the story update function as a download on release day, then everything is fine.
The flood don’t have to be a major threat to return. The Master Chief could go in an installation where the flood is escaped and fight to eliminate them. It could be a unique horror mission, but at least we would have the opportunity to fight our well loved flood and bring them in the firefight (if firefight arrive one day …)
They didn’t do that for the original campaign and I ve been stunned how much stuff people have managed to get out of the game.
People are asking for a roadmap from 343 but we already have a good idea what content they’re working on. Maps, weapons, armour, partly complete campaign areas.
They did? I didn’t get that feeling with Reach. I thought Reach was ok but the campaign was pretty underwhelming for me after playing the original trilogy and remember being disappointed.
But yeh H4/H5 just wasn’t as good without the Flood. Just feels weird that we have all this build up for things to fight the Flood and yet there still missing.
for my own reasons i like to see the flood make a return in the halo serie’s.
my only big reason there need to return is that the fun in the open world campaign will become more and more fun then its now.
and you can do then a lot off diffrend things to kill then and with the stuff we now have in the campaign its only become then more and more fun to keep playing the campaign mode.
Given that the flood have many different forms, the open world could be contextualised and effected by their biomass, large structures made up from them, horrifying monstrosities you’d have to take on with a banshee (if they get to that stage.)
that there become that big is something to much from the good more.
i mean more in halo CE,Halo 2 and halo 3 you are limit to the stuff you can use to kill the flood.
in halo infinite open world you have so many options that you can think of to kill then.
like a Lazer Back ( thats all 5 marine’s have sentinel beam + razorback)
or a Sniper Back, Rocket back.
or the Grappelhook + First Strike upgrade = sending then in the sky.
and there are a lot of other way’s to defead then still left you can think of.
but its then more fun to have that option to defead then on a lot of way’s then it was back in the older halo’s when you most use the stuff you only can get there in the mission.
I’m curious what made the experience underwhelming for you? Narrative? Was it that it was all set in one place/not as much of a space opera? I can understand being underwhelmed by the stakes of Halo Reach after playing as Chief and saving the galaxy so much.
I started playing in '01 with Combat Evolved and while I loved it and 2, I personally go back and forth between 3 and Reach as my favorites (I was also never much of a MP player until Reach.)
Reach felt a bit less cheesy than Halo 3 to me, and it really focused on the military science fiction aspect. I loved the space combat and the inclusion of frigates/more combined arms from the UNSC. Overall I loved the plot and the progression from Long Night of Solace to the end, losing each noble team member and then finally delivering Cortana at the end to the Pillar of Autumn. Cinematically and narratively it felt like the most cohesive/coherent/complete of the games and is really strong to me from start to finish. On the other hand, Halo 3 is weak in some moments (“To War” line comes to mind,) but overall was a lot more epic and conclusive. We were all much more invested in the characters in Halo 3 than we could have been in Reach.
Would love to hear your thoughts! It’s certainly true that by not including the flood or as much forerunner architecture, Halo: Reach was lacking some of that awe and horror, but it told a very human story in a very militaristic way and personally I’ve always felt that Halo was always at its best when it was leaning into Military Science Fiction and horror.
I definitely felt that Reach leant more into the “horror of war” as we witness reach fall, till Noble 6 is all thats left, its not cosmic unstoppable horror like the flood, but a more tragic last stand of those ensuring the victory that was needed came fourth, while paying with their lives, willingly or unwilling.
I guess for me with Reach is expectations higher than what we got. It’s like we’re expecting on a full invasion of the Covenant but instead it felt more like a random encounter with a small fraction of their armada’s and I didn’t care for Emile since his character was pretty basic and had no redeeming qualities for me to care about plus he looked ridiculous with that skull blocking his visor.
Plus most of the campaign felt lazy at the time because of how much content was just ripped from the multiplayer. I miss cool characters like Sergeant Johnson because he helped make the story engaging and I can’t say the same about random marines on Halo Infinite.
I felt like most of the time with Halo Infinite is it felt like mostly fetch quests and occasionally take over stuff and the door puzzles felt lazy. I feel like Reach did interesting things with the night/day stuff but then Infinite felt like a downgrade since so many things could happen with dynamic weather or scarab battles but we got nothing.
One of the biggest I was expecting from Infinite was the Flood and I feel like I’m talking to a wall when it comes to 343i because the Flood the main part of what makes Halo…a Halo game and it would have been fun to see the Banished infected and seeing them deal with the Infections as best as they could.
I’d find it a relief if dataminers found evidence of flood. At this point Halo Infinite isn’t as hyped up and I don’t like trusting 343 for any reason.
The campaign doesn’t do a great job at incorporating the pre-existing canon about reach, that’s for sure. There wasn’t enough combat on a massive scale.
I also hadn’t realized until just recently just how much of a bait and switch Halo: Reach was, I think they could have done a better job by using more recognizable Spartans and lining up better with the books.
I’m certainly on the same page as you about Infinite. Really feels like a lot of missed opportunities, and frankly it feels like it just barely integrates Halo enough to be a Halo game, there are so few of the things we’ve come to expect (Elite characters, ODSTs, living Spartans, non-generic humans in general…)
Well they managed to sell it fine the 10 years olds for 6 games with 16s rating and the rating is still 16s in europe even now. Its a kids game flood included.
I agree with OP the flood needs to return but not before biomes, prometheans, created enclave and the didact are properly integrated into infi ite and the stage is set for a pay off of the logic plague-didact-cortana arc.
Hopefully it isn’t rushed once they are added a campaign for the release of the parasite and infection and a second for pure forms and the grave mind. But hopefully not before they do small campaigns so they can get the level design to a higher level.
For me the grapple was fun as hell but caused many issues in game play I hope it becomes a less constant element in our arsenal to creat true variety in levels with the non story missions handling the play as you please approach to level designa and a grand encroaching infection turning fobs into proto Garve minds if you die too much and things of that nature.
@M3RC1FUL_M3RC3R for sure but, and I’m just spit balling here, why not both? Bring back aloha nine or blue team and have them allownfor the smaller scale emotional horror admist the growing threat of the flood.
I think it does.
Or have a squad that can and will die and tie it to progression and difficulty fail to keep a team of named marines alive they become infected but also let you xcom style level up the longer they live.
that way the impact of the flood is made super personal. Let them serve as in mossion npcs and give them side objectives so say after finishing a mission you get a distress call and they need help holding the point you tasked them with you can use them as a pacing tool that also gives the floods impact a personal and tangible threat to players and a sense of horror as you risk needing to take out the lv99 marines you served with for hours of gameplay
Perhaps as the threat gets worse you can choose to save and recruit banished forces abandoned by their commanders around the ring and build up a safe location on the map the final stand of campaign having diff weapons and ai depending who you save or don’t.
Halo2 had friendly grunts and it was the series highpoint.
(Not editing out aloha nine, now want Hawaiian odst cosmetics in an event called aloha nine.)
Everyone was mad when we got forerunners so why the hell would they give us precursors.
Make them a mystery fi is the flood/didact/warden/created arc instead of adding another random threat for no apparent reason aside from lack of confidence in direction.
The Endless wouldn’t leave such a bad taste in my mouth if they weren’t verbally implied to be “worse than the flood.” I feel like a much better phrasing of that moment would’ve been “I don’t need the Flood to bla bla bla”. It distinguishes the two as separate and menacing without undermining what is arguably the biggest endgame threat thus far in Halo.
Hopefully the Flood at least appear in DLC. I normally wouldn’t mind too much but we are on Zeta Halo which is such an important location.
