- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
My favorite moment was in the first half of Truth and Reconciliation. I was walking along one of the curved cliff edges, and because it was so dark and I didn't want to fall off the edge, I turned on my flashlight, and looked at the wall. That was the first time that I saw Halo's perfect, awe-inspiring textures under just the right light. It felt like I was walking around in a real world. The way the flashlight casts over the curves just right, the super crisp, spot-on light intensity, and of course the mind-numbingly high texture detail, just took my breath away! From then on, I have not gone more than 10 seconds in a dimly lit area with out turning my flashlight on just to look at the textures. However, when I got Halo 2 and looked at the textures, instead of being amazed, I thought: WHAT THE F**K HAPPENED!!!!!! Halo 2's textures are like crap compared to Halo 1's. there are a few good ones, like the floors in the Hotel Zanzibar, some of the rocks in Coagulation and Acsention, some of the walls and floors near the end of Metropolis, and especially, the only textures in Halo 2 (from what I've seen so far) that look as good as Halo 1's textures, the display panels on Oracle. But overall, most of the textures show the light too bright or too dimly, are compressed or low resolution, or are just low in detail. Bungie probably did this to add more objects to the game, like trees and rocks, and not use too much memory. The low detail textures have ruined the beautiful atmosphere that made Halo 1 such a great game. And because of the added objects, and the fact that your shields drain faster, the fighting is much less fast-paced than in Halo 1, which also detracts from the atmosphere of the game. Whenever I compare the two games, I think: "Why Bungie, why?"