I think Reach would have been much better if it actually worked with the lore. IMO.

It took some big steps forward in the Halo world, adding Spartan Abilities, the DMR, better forge, etc. However it had a lot of chances to improve which it didn't. Bloom wasn't needed, they missed a chance at a whole new gamemode(Saber Battles) and it wasn't made with the competitive view as previous games were.

However, Reach isn't a bad game, it just isn't a great Halo game. Kinda like Halo 4. When you have high expectations from Halo 2/3, it get's difficult to live up to the hype.

i hated firefight, tbh. im honestly surprised you guys were upset that it got a backburner to MP.

talkin about the campaign though? eh, it was alright. not as memorable as the others. i think that maybe the unit was too big for every character to have impact. i know they wanted the whole "samurai 7" feel but they should have cut more then just 2 characters. Kat could have taken Cater's role, or vice versa. most people forget Jun was even in the game.

tl;dr: kill your darlings before they strangle the rest of your cast.

You know, I gave it some thought a while back, in regards to Noble's personalities. Spartans don't tend to be really.... colourful people.

They're not loud, they're not heavily chatty, they're soldiers. It doesn't mean that they don't have character however. It just means that their character tends to be internalised. Basically all that we know of Chief's character in terms of novels has been internalised thoughts. And all that we know of his outside character has been combat chatter, one liners, and his actions.

Which, tends to create some problems. Most people haven't read the novels, so Chief retains his "empty brick" personality. But throw too much outward dialouge from somebody who's supposed to be a trained supersoldier and you get the caustic "bro-dude" spartans.

It's actually probably a really hard characterisation line to walk in terms of writing. And I think Noble Team, apart from being canoe breaking in terms of origins in regards to being Spartan III's save for Jorge, mostly follow this.

Their characters are most likely internalised.

who seemed like they existed just to die.

Considering the fact we know what happened at Reach long before this game came out, yes

Quote from: Rocketman287 on July 30, 2015, 11:43:06 AM

Quote from: Azumarill on July 29, 2015, 11:27:02 PM

who seemed like they existed just to die.

Considering the fact we know what happened at Reach long before this game came out, yes

Considering the fact that not everyone died at Reach, no.

Spartans brah. Sure Jun's fate wasn't made clear, but from Halo CE you've been known as "the last spartan". So you expect people to die in Reach. It's obvious

And the books always did stuff that the games never even mentioned, so if you are simply referring to the games, you expect them to die.

Quote from: Le Mon man on July 30, 2015, 11:46:13 AM

Quote from: Rocketman287 on July 30, 2015, 11:43:06 AM

Quote from: Azumarill on July 29, 2015, 11:27:02 PM

who seemed like they existed just to die.

Considering the fact we know what happened at Reach long before this game came out, yes

Considering the fact that not everyone died at Reach, no.

Spartans brah. Sure Jun's fate wasn't made clear, but from Halo CE you've been known as "the last spartan". So you expect people to die in Reach. It's obvious

And the books always did stuff that the games never even mentioned, so if you are simply referring to the games, you expect them to die.

"The last Spartan" crap is irrelevant, because we've known that people survived Reach other than the PoA's crew for a long ass time, so "expecting" people to die on Reach isn't obvious.

Bungie deciding to ignore the EU doesn't validate Reach either.

Quote from: DAS THROWBACK on July 30, 2015, 08:52:39 AM

You guys dissing FF are dumb. That was the most fun thing in the game.

The way it was implemented in matchmaking was awful. Playing an actual survival gametype was fun as hell like in ODST, but the arcadefight shit was terribad.

Nonsense. I always had a fucking blast with it.

Quote from: BaconShelf on July 30, 2015, 09:16:58 AM

Quote from: DAS THROWBACK on July 30, 2015, 08:52:39 AM

You guys dissing FF are dumb. That was the most fun thing in the game.

The way it was implemented in matchmaking was awful. Playing an actual survival gametype was fun as hell like in ODST, but the arcadefight shit was terribad.

Nonsense. I always had a fucking blast with it.

I actually liked Reach's firefight more than ODST's. It was nice having a chance to win, not hiding from enemies and running out of ammo 5 minutes in.

Quote from: DAS THROWBACK on July 30, 2015, 01:15:31 PM

Quote from: BaconShelf on July 30, 2015, 09:16:58 AM

Quote from: DAS THROWBACK on July 30, 2015, 08:52:39 AM

You guys dissing FF are dumb. That was the most fun thing in the game.

The way it was implemented in matchmaking was awful. Playing an actual survival gametype was fun as hell like in ODST, but the arcadefight shit was terribad.

Nonsense. I always had a fucking blast with it.

I actually liked Reach's firefight more than ODST's. It was nice having a chance to win, not hiding from enemies and running out of ammo 5 minutes in.

If you're running out of ammo that quick then you're clearly doing something wrong or just extremely bad.

You're not supposed to win in ODST's FF. It's a survival gametype. Reach's was just a shitty credit farm full of fuel rod spamming idiots.

Quote from: Sandtrap on July 30, 2015, 01:27:24 PM

Oh ya. Speaking of bad memories.

How about dat glitched and never fixed, never played Juggernaught gametype?

How about LOLHeadhunter?

Remember invasion on breakpoint?

Lolno cause nobody played the DLC.avi

I remember invasion slayer on hemmoRAGE though.

If you make a tragic story it must evoke pity in some way from the audience or the experience loses impact, and at worst becomes comedy.

 I sympathize with Reach because it had the task of conveying heroic tragedy in an interactive experience. Pity and power seem very disparate, but that's what the story had to deliver on in this setting (Halo doesn't have moral ambiguity like a Spec Ops the Line type game does). I think Reach tries to convey the futility in heroism against overwhelming odds, and some moments in Reach really do capture this kind of tragedy ( the Lone Wolf mission and Jorge's death) and they're some of the game's highlights. When these two qualities are treated not as disparate, but different aspects married, there's a sense of dissonance in player actions vs. the setting and it really makes players think about their experience.

I can't say there's this kind of effect in most of the game though. I don't feel connected enough to characters to feel pity, instead their futile heroic acts seem more comedic, especially considering their contrived archetypes which make them more like caricatures than people. Soldiers don't need sob stories, true, they need substance. They need enough emotional range to convey the message of the narrative, and I don't get this feeling from Reach most of the time. Everyone reeks of a flat, idealized (and cliche) stoicism which doesn't convey human depth, but of automatons following orders.

I don't have as much to say on gameplay, but I liked it.
The new things Reach did with space combat and diverging objectives were well implemented and enjoyable. I didnt expect anything from the space combat, but it's one of my favorite sections in the game.

I'm not familiar with level design at all really, so I can't add any meaningful comment on that. Except Nightfall on Legendary Solo was a conveyor-belt of ass kicks. Fuck Skirmishers. 

I'd have to play matchmaking again (I didn't play it nearly as much as 3's) to give my perspective on it, but I remember enjoying it overall (not really any of the modes though). I particularly remember liking Living Dead getting its own permanent lobby.

The forge world editor had rotation snap and physics modifications, which alone made it superior to Halo 3's awkward base-building.

I don't think Reach is a bad game, honestly, I do think it has some story flaws, mostly tangential to characterization.

Halo does have the morally grey stuff, it's jut all in the books. And starting to creep it's way into 343's work. Obviously there's the SII and SIII program's for instance.

It's pretty obvious Bungie just saw it's crowd as a bunch of kids that can't comprehend a story, so they just got worse and worse over time.

Quote from: BaconShelf on July 31, 2015, 04:39:18 AM

It's pretty obvious Bungie just saw it's crowd as a bunch of kids that can't comprehend a story, so they just got worse and worse over time.

This. In Halo 2 we have Grunts and Hunters fighting the Brutes along with the Arbiter. But in Halo 3 we don't have a real civil war due to having no other species besides the elites fighting the brutes, grunts, hunters, drones and jackals. It's a civil war that seems more like the elites simply broke off and waged a war with the humans against the Covenant. When it comes to the games there's nothing civil about it. It's like Bungie thinks we're too retarded to tell the difference between grunts and hunters that could have a different color to determine their side for us.

Then when it comes down the Covenant instead of them calling each other their actual species name they use the names the humans gave them. Once again Bungie thinks we're too retarded to handle them calling each other names that we're not used to.

Well, actually, most Covenant don't speak english by default. The higher ups have a grasp of it but they rarely speak it, and most speak with difficulty.

Any gameplay we had with english speaking covenant was most likely translation software. And cutscenes using human applied names to species?

Consider that translating for the audience.

When it comes down to the brutes or the prophets talking to the arbiter it's straight up English without any software. Whenever the mention a species during that it should be the actual name, not the nickname.

it's in english because it's translated for the player so we know what they're saying. canonically they aren't speaking english.

it's literally the same reason why movies do it - so the viewer knows what they're fucking saying.

Quote from: LemonLime on July 31, 2015, 03:07:45 PM

Quote from: BerzerkCommando on July 31, 2015, 03:01:00 PM

When it comes down to the brutes or the prophets talking to the arbiter it's straight up English without any software. Whenever the mention a species during that it should be the actual name, not the nickname.

it's in english because it's translated for the player so we know what they're saying. canonically they aren't speaking english.

it's literally the same reason why movies do it - so the viewer knows what they're fucking saying.

I know it's like MGS 3 when that scientist guy tells Snake he's speaking good Russian when they're talking in English. To me it's just out of place having the members call each other those nicknames. When it comes down to names to me it makes more sense having the Covenant call each other the real name and for the humans they use their nicknames. Having the characters and NPC's speaking English is easier but when it comes down to names I think they should be using the real name for it. It's not out of place and it doesn't brake immersion.

how old are you?

Quote from: LemonLime on July 31, 2015, 03:20:00 PM

Quote from: BerzerkCommando on July 31, 2015, 03:17:30 PM

Quote from: LemonLime on July 31, 2015, 03:07:45 PM

Quote from: BerzerkCommando on July 31, 2015, 03:01:00 PM

When it comes down to the brutes or the prophets talking to the arbiter it's straight up English without any software. Whenever the mention a species during that it should be the actual name, not the nickname.

it's in english because it's translated for the player so we know what they're saying. canonically they aren't speaking english.

it's literally the same reason why movies do it - so the viewer knows what they're fucking saying.

I know it's like MGS 3 when that scientist guy tells Snake he's speaking good Russian when they're talking in English. To me it's just out of place having the members call each other those nicknames. When it comes down to names to me it makes more sense having the Covenant call each other the real name and for the humans they use their nicknames. Having the characters and NPC's speaking English is easier but when it comes down to names I think they should be using the real name for it. It's not out of place and it doesn't brake immersion.

how old are you?

22 turning 23 in December.

are you sure?