- llamalizard
- |
- Intrepid Legendary Member
I wish I was still legendary.
Currently Halo has a cartoony feel to it. This works fine...except the enemies. Where an elite should be a regal, disciplined warrior, he's a hunchbacked dinosaur. Where brutes should look primitive, they look like heavily armoured knights with carefully groomed faces. Jackals look like retarded birds.
here's what I think should change for Reach:
Brutes currently are too disciplined looking, too much like they have a sense of honour. From what the bestarium says, they are a MUCH more primitive and violent society then one that has a rigid class system without conflict, grooms their faces and cooperates with others.Hell, in the books they quite happily kill one another to gain power (tartarus killed his uncle to become chieftain). IF they are in the game, they should have much rougher armour, held together by leather straps.
For example, Brute minors would have little more than a headpiece and a shoulderpad. Bodyguards would have armour made from painted metal plates, held together by leather. Chieftans would have primitive, but still more ornate armour. Jetpack brute would have a bulky jetpack like they have now, but otherwise would just be brute minors.
Any of them with shields would, to put it simply, have a visible shield emitter somewhere on their armour. Not a big one, possibly just something that looks similar to a Jackal's gauntlet strapped around their arm. In halo 3, their armour doesn't fit with the aesthetic style of the rest of the brute sandbox - brutal and primitive is what it should look like, instead we get cleanly made, shiny...well, toys.
Hunters are basically a shiny bunch of worms that look like they just came off a factory line. All that's really needed here is more worn, damaged looking armour. Something like scratches and scorch marks, if anything, or worms that fall out when they die. Different hunter ranks, such as the gold ones in ODST and the silver ones mentioned in (I think) one of the comics, could also be interesting - out of all covenant species, other then engineers, hunters are probably right down near the bottom of the list of how fleshed out their society is.
Elites are splitfaced, hunchbacked dinosaurs. They should reflect their sense of honour, pride and courage more - standing tall, commanding large amounts of units in battle. Zealots and commanders could have subtly different armour. Zealots = gold with one larger shoulderpad, for example.What we had in Halo 3 was a crappy excuse for an Elite.
Grunts should have armour that actually looks plated on more, that sound more like how they were described in the books. They'd shuffle around and make a few less funny comments, with a slightly deeper pitch. They would be seen in situations OUTSIDE of standing behind an elite for no reason - maybe pre-defined animations for certain areas, like a grunt carrying a motion scanner or a couple scouting through some trees on their own.
They'd still be cowards, but wouldn't hesitate to try and kill you from a distance. It would be really cool if running into certain grunt squads (ones doing a job like hailing approaching phantoms) and not killing the quickly could result in them alerting a phantom to your current position, dropping off more enemies.
I should stress that these are PRE DEFINED - they are NOT enemy behaviours. They are simply atmospheric stuff, like the whole interactive cinematic at the end of sierra 117 but can be interrupted at any point. Their motion tracker would NOT detect you, for example.
Jackals that are actually scary, and somehow reflect their mercenary heritage - maybe they could have a belt or bandolier with grenades or an energy garrotte on it. I'm reasonably sure that as mercenaries, they must have weapons OTHER than the covenant plasma pistols and needlers as well...Their armour would likely look slightly different too. What we have not is a retarded rat-bird, not a space pirate. Instead of jackals at extreme close range using a plasma pistol, they should take out an energy cutlass (basically a needler sword, actually) and try and gut you.
Prophets that looked more sinister then they currently do, but still regal - for example, Truth didn't look evil as such in Halo 3. He just looked like another alien. they could have gaunter faces or something, I don't really know. Truth looked like a weak, old man, more than anything else, hardly threatening at all.
Drones that act like a proper hive mind rather then independent creatures, and have armour of sorts that looks more like natural plating - the shield generator thingies would have cracks and stuff around them, to look like they were placed into the armour by force.
Look at them in Halo 3: they NEVER act like a hive. There's just a whole pile of them at once shooting aimlessly. A hive would be more coordinated than this. not necessarily 20 drones piling on you at once, but maybe breaking into squads of four who attacked a specific target.
So, to sum up:
brutes should look more brutal
Elites should be prouder than they currently are
Grunts should be slightly more menacing, but still kind of funny
Jackals should actually look like mercenary space pirate bird-lizard things
Hunters should be more fleshed out
Drones should act like a hive
Prophets should be sinister
Some enemy 'encounters' would have enemies playing out a preset animation that could be interrupted at any time
From random points in thread:
the possibility of danger from not killing things fast: For example, say you ran into grunts near a covenant encampment hailing approaching phantoms and banshees. If these grunts noticed you, and weren't killed off within 20 seconds, they would send off a distress call and a phantom would arrive and drop off some more enemies. Gives the feel that the covenant are actually dangerous and numerous rather than pockets of 3-6 grunts, a brute and not much else.
Updated:
ENEMY BEHAVIOURS
By this I mean special behaviours for enemies, like Oblivion's fleeing deer or Fallout's sleeping Yao Guai.
What these essentially are is a set of special animations and behaviours for characters.
Grunts: Shuffling as they do already. Sleeping like they do already. Fiddling with each other's packs could be interesting, as could having conversations with each other. A bit more frightened of their superiors than they currently are. They could also shoot at random human objects when bored.
Jackals: Shields down whilst not fighting, they would sometimes be seen scavenging for meat and fighting each other. These would be small preset animations of the two sighting a dead marine and attacking each other for it, the loser walking off sulking for a bit before coming back. Beyond eating and scrapping animations, they could also have a much better 'alarmed' animation than turning around or waving their arm. Perhaps instinctively ducking and turning on their shield whilst looking toward where the noise that alarmed them came from.
Elites: Abusing their soldiers. Grunts are cannon fodder, elites should treat them as such. Kick them to keep them moving, and punish them for failing to do something. push them out of the way if they need to. Elites could also have 'sparring' animations, where two elites will draw energy swords and spar with one another. Their animations for combat could consist of more than just strafing and rolling; ducking under bullets, diving whilst returning fire, generally the sort of thing you see commandos do in films. Berserk elites would draw swords.
Brutes: should be...well, brutal. Idle animations and behaviours would be abusing grunts and jackals. They wouldn't care about either - if a grunt got in their way outside combat, they would push it out of the way. brutes sparring could be interesting too, along with chieftains conducting sermons of the Prophet's glory.
In Combat they would be slightly clumsy and slow, but not dumb. They would try and dodge bullets, and have a considerably shorter 'berserk' animation - rather than bend down, roar, then run, they would begin running, bend down as they went, and start roaring. If another covenant got in their way during this, for example a grunt, they would THROW it out of the way.
Hunters: They don't care about most other Covenant, and have an odd culture. Seeing these creatures simple trample covenant stupid enough to stay in their way could be interesting. Enemies would ALWAYS try and get out of their way and stay far away from them. Hunters would sometimes be seen 'mumbling' - in the books, they are cited as sometimes randomly reciting poetry. In combat, hunters would act similar to what they do now. When berserked, however, they would run faster, NEVER shoot, and roar a lot more. They would also run differently - not stopping to throw stuff out of their way, but hitting it as they ran.
Drones: Sleeping would be cool, as would drones on patrols. Drones could also carry stuff in their mandibles or be caught feeding. In combat, they would stick together as much as possible.
Prophets: Well, we'll probably never fight prophets. But just in case, they conduct sermons outside of combat.
Engineers: Inside and outside of combat, so long as they are not shot, Engineers will fiddle with machinery. They will be able to take certain things apart and put them back together. They can also be seen 'talking' to one another with their cilia. When shot, the engineer will rise rapidly and hide from you until it reaches another piece of machinery it likes. They will not care if their squad is killed, and would be capable of repairing broken enemy armour, recharging your shields and producing minor amounts of ammo for Covenant guns/replacing a plasma weapon's battery.
Any further ideas contained in another post.
better grenade physics
[Edited on 10.13.2009 8:51 PM PDT]