Halo: Reach Forum
This topic has moved here: Subject: What makes a game epic or Emotional?
  • Subject: What makes a game epic or Emotional?
Subject: What makes a game epic or Emotional?

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What makes a game epic or emotional to get the gamer more involved? Could you guys list some of the things that made past games epic/emotional and how Reach could be made epic/ emotional. Then I will ad the good ideas to the post...
Past Games

Halo CE:
1. Foehammer going down. that part was epic/emotional for me. Fohammer had been flying your pelican the entire game and you had gotten to know her. Then just when you thought you were safe she got gunned down in-game!
2. Great music at critical points.
3. Fighting for survival
Halo 2: 1. Leaving Cortana was a bit emotional. Also it left you wanting to know what happened.
Halo 3: Johnson dyeing was emotional, he was killed by guilty spark even though guilty spark was your ally and it shocked me.
Halo 3:ODST: 1. I thought that the orbital elevator crashing down was epic.
2. Fighting for survival.
3. Epic music.

Halo Reach: 1. This has the potential to be a very emotional/epic experience since spartans talk more around each other and SPOILER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! many of them die in Fall of Reach...
2. Space battles possibly?
3. 1st person cutscenes or partial 1st person scenes like in ODST
4. Character development especially with the Spartans
5. Fighting for a planet you know you will lose
6. make you feel like the character you are playing
7. huge massive and epic battles
8. music that will make moments more epic and emotional
9. deep character connections and deaths.
10. Sudden and realistic deaths not long and drawn out like Johnsons


[Edited on 11.12.2009 5:16 PM PST]

  • 11.12.2009 2:51 PM PDT

Try reading my thread "A possibility in Reach". TartanSpartan117 and I discuss how space battles could be epic.

  • 11.12.2009 2:55 PM PDT

Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.

Read the ENTIRE OP.

  • 11.12.2009 3:01 PM PDT
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My new B.net account is Grizzled Ancient. If you see him, its me.

Characterization

  • 11.12.2009 3:02 PM PDT

Ending of Halo 2 was emotional, when I saw the credits rolling and realized that was actually the ending. I was quite emotional at that point.

Seriously though there was a part on Halo:CE towards the end when you come out of a forerunner structure onto a dark snow covered surface and snow falling, and then this epic music starts playing and there are flood and covenant fighting. Awesome is all I can say. So I think a key factor to making a game have epic/emotional moments is the music.

  • 11.12.2009 3:03 PM PDT

An emotional exampla in a video game?

Ending of Half-Life 2 Episode 2.

  • 11.12.2009 3:03 PM PDT

"Dear Humanity; we regret being alien bastards. We regret coming to Earth. And we most definitely regret that the Corps just blew up our raggedy-ass fleet!"
—Avery J. Johnson
click it you know you want to

heres some of the ways the games played out over the years, first it would be the desired message, then the one that was recived.
Halo:Combat Evolved
You and a bunch of people are shipwreaked on an alien artifact, Fighting for your survival against an unstoppable, mercyless alien force. This is exacly what you get when you play the game.
Halo 2
The covenant have found Earth, they now come for the destruction of all of Mankind, but something draws them away from Earth, there you find another Halo. Something similar to this, but it is lacking in the desired scale of this.
Halo 3
The covenant are back to destroy earth, but then they are now divided amongst themselfs, some of which are now aiding you in your effort to survive. A whole lot of BR spamming and noobs fill the game. Now multiplayer pits you against nooby boosters and people who call themselfs "MLG", even though they are only 8, and they also have the capabilities of getting killed by a door.....and calling it hacks just so they dont seem as bad as they really are.
Halo 3:ODST
You are a lone ODST searching for what happend to the rest of his squad after the New Mombassa Slipspace event, you find the help of an AI unit, and then you peice together what happend to them.......but then you find out that somethings arent what you think they are.......

  • 11.12.2009 3:04 PM PDT

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updated it

  • 11.12.2009 3:08 PM PDT

First person cutscenes, the ones in CoD were outstanding. I was shocked and amazed the entire game.

  • 11.12.2009 3:09 PM PDT

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thanks but could we keep COD out of this and just say 1st person cutscenes

  • 11.12.2009 3:13 PM PDT

Good, bad, I'm the guy with the clichéd lines.

Character development. I find it hard to get emotional over a game where you're just a faceless soldier in a generic war. Halo 2, even though it seems to be the most disliked of the Halo franchise, did a good job making the covenant seem more like living beings than some pixels that you need to shoot to beat the game. Halo 3 ODST did a good job with character development.

Master Chief has never really had much in terms of character development in the games. He's just always there to get the job done. I hope Halo Reach gets into some character development for Master Chief since it would be the perfect opportunity to do so.

  • 11.12.2009 3:13 PM PDT

Posted by: John_117
thanks but could we keep COD out of this and just say 1st person cutscenes


MW2 SPOILERS BELOW







No, because that could mean like the ones in ODST, which were for the majority crap. Things like Marakov shooting you at 'No Russian', seeing the Whitehouse get stormed, being burned alive by Shepherd, witnessing the look on a henchman's face as you knife him from above.

Very dramatic, very emotional.

  • 11.12.2009 3:17 PM PDT

I used to get on these forums back in the Halo 1, anticipating Halo 2 days...I'm back :)

Bungie has all they need right now to make an epic, emotional game. They have the greatest music composer ever, Marty, and they have the fact that many SPARTANs die. Killing off main characters is very good for the emotional side, and knowing you're fighting for a planet you are going to eventually lose can possibly make it epic, Bungie just needs to do it right.

I don't want to change the topic, and please don't go saying "OMGZ COK OF DUTY SUX LOLOL", but in MW2, what made it epic was the fact that America was being invaded. What added emotion was the betrayal and the deaths of Roach and Ghost, two characters the player becomes very familiar with.

All Bungie needs to do, is emphasize what a great planet Reach is, get the player to love it. They also need to make the deaths of the characters less corny. When Sergeant Johnson died in Halo 3, it was corny as hell. His last few words were, "Don't ever let her go" which is very corny.

The deaths of the characters need to be quick...surprises, not slow mushy gushy deaths. If the player is surprised at the deaths of the characters, it will become more emotional.

If you read this whole thing, good job. If you only read to the CoD part and decided to scream about how Halo > CoD, just stop. Cancel the reply.

[Edited on 11.12.2009 3:22 PM PST]

  • 11.12.2009 3:20 PM PDT

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sorry i am just a bit tired of people saying MW2 is better. I am not saying halo is better either though really they are not much like each other besides they are huge selling FPS's

[Edited on 11.12.2009 3:23 PM PST]

  • 11.12.2009 3:20 PM PDT

Posted by: John_117
sorry i am just a bit tired of people saying MW2 is better


Than Halo 3? In my opinion, it's true. But hopefully Reach will retake the crown.

  • 11.12.2009 3:22 PM PDT

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Please don't turn this into a MW2 vs. Halo debate

  • 11.12.2009 3:33 PM PDT

I used to get on these forums back in the Halo 1, anticipating Halo 2 days...I'm back :)

Posted by: John_117
Please don't turn this into a MW2 vs. Halo debate


I'm not trying to, I was merely using it as an example

  • 11.12.2009 3:40 PM PDT

You have to be able to believe you are the character. Even if its far fetched, believe you're in the game.

  • 11.12.2009 3:41 PM PDT
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A Good storyline
Epic Battles (A Huge Outdoor Map with hundreds of enemies against overwhelming odds, scarab battle, when you get the tank and own, etc.)

And some of the others which have been listed.

  • 11.12.2009 3:57 PM PDT

I am flatterd that you botherd to look at my signature.

play the Game mass effect..shepard is a bit anoying but be the good guy do the right thing to the end of the game.

Saren(the big bady) shoots himself...it totaly blew me off my ass..it was so stunning to see him do that..also the music went perfect with the moment so it added to the hocked feeling.

music has to interact with the moment and what you see has to be dramatic.

  • 11.12.2009 4:14 PM PDT

I'm a dude playing a dude desguised as another dude. I hate heritics, non-logical thoughts and people who are better than I am. People tell me that they like a lot of games, but I hate them all. Whenever I play a video game, I always go crawling back to Halo 3. Never go full retard!

Look at Gears 2. You need to have a character with a deap connection to another character. Then you need to overemphisyse that connection a lot and then boom! Have something aful happen like he has to kill her.

Look at Miranda's death. Look at Johnson's death. Look at Foehammer's death. Look at Captain Keyes's death. Look at the final cutscene when Master Chief is lost in space. They all were unexpected, things that we didn't see coming because in our minds, these characters are immortal. Once they died, they were lost forever. It came out of the blue. These were characters that we developed an attachment to and throughout the game, we never imagined in our wildest dreams that these heroic characters would ever fall. Once they did, life seemed so different. Everybody seemed so fragile.

That's what makes games emotional, not cutscenes or who you play as.

  • 11.12.2009 4:22 PM PDT

I used to get on these forums back in the Halo 1, anticipating Halo 2 days...I'm back :)

Posted by: HaloKing343
Look at Gears 2. You need to have a character with a deap connection to another character. Then you need to overemphisyse that connection a lot and then boom! Have something aful happen like he has to kill her.

Look at Miranda's death. Look at Johnson's death. Look at Foehammer's death. Look at Captain Keyes's death. Look at the final cutscene when Master Chief is lost in space. They all were unexpected, things that we didn't see coming because in our minds, these characters are immortal. Once they died, they were lost forever. It came out of the blue. These were characters that we developed an attachment to and throughout the game, we never imagined in our wildest dreams that these heroic characters would ever fall. Once they did, life seemed so different. Everybody seemed so fragile.

That's what makes games emotional, not cutscenes or who you play as.


Miranda and Johnson's deaths were not emotional in my eyes. The final words thing is overused.

I remember watching Johnson and Spark, and thinking, "Spark's gonna kill him, I can feel it." Somehow, it was just expected from me, it didn't come as a surprise to me and the death itself didn't hit me very hard...maybe because I knew the game was almost over

  • 11.12.2009 4:38 PM PDT

Posted by: Dallas Green
I make a legitimate thread on the most logical choice for the next Bond actor, and you take that away from me by creating a parody thread indirectly connecting my thread to yours.

I hope your kids have bad influences and develop bad personalities. I wish this with all my heart.

The music. Keep it up, Marty.

  • 11.12.2009 4:38 PM PDT

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updated and improved.

  • 11.12.2009 5:17 PM PDT