- The Shepherd214
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- Veteran Member
I love the entire Halo series, Halo 2 being my favorite of the games. I think that the universe is compelling and the story is deep, sweeping, and powerful. The hidden layers in the Halo trilogy and rich details of the backstory in the novels are something I love to be lost in, and im greatly looking forward to the story that Halo: Reach will weave. Bungie has carefully and lovingly crafted a mythic tale that will stay etched in my mind until the end.
The ones at Bungie responsible for crafting the Halo story and cinematics are very good at what they do.
However, something that I feel Halo 3 and ODST was sorely lacking was the Covenant perspective.
Halo 2 introduced a character named the Arbiter, a disgraced fleet commander who failed to protect the Forerunner Installation 04 off-screen during the events of Halo Combat Evolved, and as a result is force to don the armor of a long line of predecessors before him. While the player followed this character throughout his missions, the viewer also simultaneously followed a Spartan II soldier known as the Master Chief as he raced to stop the Prophet of Regret and unravel the plans of Tartarus and the conniving two remaining Prophets.
This was a departure from the previous Halo game, in that in Combat Evolved, the player was limited to only the Master Chief 's perspective as he cooperated with the A.I. Cortana and a monitor of Installation 04, 343 Guilty Spark.
The fanbase of the Halo franchise was more or less split between the Combat Evolved style and the Halo 2 style. One section of Halo fans believed that seeing the story through the Covenant perspective gave much need depth and weight to the Halo fiction, while others simply wanted to stay rooted in the Master Chief's boots and save the universe without knowing too much about the Covenant.
The point of this thread is to bring awareness to the situation. In Halo 3, Bungie listened to the fans of the Halo CE style by forcing the player to play as the Master Chief throughout the whole story, while the Arbiter was cast into the background. The story arc for the Arbiter was completely halted from the end of Halo 2 all the until he finally kills the Prophet of Truth near the end of Halo 3. The Arbiter had sparse dialog and little screen time in cutscenes. This severely limited the development of the Covenant point of view, intentionally done as to cater to those who did not like the Arbiter or his missions in Halo 2. Halo 2 introduced things like a hierarchy system within their city, High Charity, a glimpse at what a Covenant trial is like, tensions between different races of Covenant, a vague description of certain elements of Covenant history(such as the Grunt Rebellion, the formation of the Covenant, the purpose of the Arbiter, the position of the Elites in the Hierarchy, etc.). All of this was lost in Halo 3 and ODST, and like too many other Human vs Aliens stories, we only saw what it was like from a human perspective.
In ODST, we follow multiple storylines that develop and intersect into a solid climax that works more like a side story than an actual sweeping epic like in the original Halo trilogy. It was very well presented and from what i've studied it has much hidden intelligence to its story. But, once again, Bungie has listened to the fans that dislike the Covenant perspective and given a completely humans-only story, with absolutely no Covenant dialog at all except for random combat dialog in gameplay. For fans of Halo 2, this was yet another huge disappointment.
What I am wanting to discuss is the subject of a Covenant perspective in Halo Reach. Im not asking for anything from Bungie, because I realize that they care nothing for my opinion, they have already decided where the Halo Reach story is going and how it will unfold, and they are not going to change it less than a year away from Halo Reach's release date.
However, I have seen many intelligent posts from respectable Bungie employees here on the forums who answer to lesser posts than my own, and I have seen how they respect a well developed ideax rather than a ranting troll post with no real weight or thoughts behind it. I have seen Bungie employees respond to criticisms of the Battle Rifle, spawn points, AR starts, etc, and all I am asking is the same, only for story, not for gameplay. I have tried my best to create this thread with intelligent points and ideas so that it may lead to a well developed discussion about the artistic aspects of a game we all enjoy playing.
If anything, a cameo appearance from the Arbiter would be very pleasing in Halo Reach, since the Arbiter, before be became the Arbiter, was commander of a fleet during the destruction of Reach and was responsible for pursuing The Pillar of Autumn as it fled the chaos.
So, what do you guys think?