- Tyrant122312
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- Fabled Legendary Member
Hello, Community!
Hopefully if you're reading this, it's because you're interesting in kicking your campaign experience up a notch by cranking up the Legendary with all skulls activated :-) Need advice? A guide? Maybe even a friendly community to cheer you on and help guide you through the process? Then give our Mythic thread a read, and Godspeed on your Mythic journey!
Best Regards,
The Tyrant
Posted by: Apirishin
Posted by: Tyrant122312
Posted by: Apirishin
Been following the discussion on Mythic vis a vis H:CEA in this thread and found it to be informative, so thanks for that, everyone.
With regard to the Grunt Funeral skull, I think good points have been raised on both sides, but the one thing I haven't seen anyone mention and that I'd like to add is how long the fuse times are on the grenades in H:CE, both frag and plasma.
Presumably, the fuse times will be the same in H:CEA as they are in H:CE since they're adamant about not changing the way the game plays.
It would therefore stand to reason that any grunts killed and then subject to the script of the Grunt Funeral skull would have fuse times on their "grenades" identical to that of a normal plasma grenade.
Of course, there's no way to know this for sure as of right now, but if I remember the video 343i put out when they first introduced the Grunt Funeral skull as a pre-order bonus (the one where it showed a clip of The Silent Cartographer post-beach landing), the fuse times on the grenades from the dead grunts seemed equal to the fuse time for a normal plasma grenade, so I think it's a reasonable conjecture at this point in time.
And as I'm sure everyone remembers, the fuse times on H:CE grenades are long, much longer than any other game in the franchise. Even with the doubling of the blast radius with Boom activated, if you remember the missions well enough (and who hasn't played them dozens if not hundreds of times by now, anyway?), I don't think there's really too much to worry about with the Grunt Funeral skull. Additionally, you seem to move faster in H:CE than you do in the other games, which would also mitigate the impact of the skull.
I still think there's merit to the argument to not mandate the inclusion of the Grunt Funeral skull in any Mythic or LASO adventure since it's pre-order only, and maybe it will present more of a challenge than it appears to at first glance, but I don't think there's too much to worry about with this one (other than probably making your way a bit more cautiously through each mission to make sure the way is clear and nothing is un-detonated in your path).
~Ap
Thanks for contributing to the discussion! I agree that's another interesting point regarding detonation times, though I think the major debate revolving around the skull itself was less about the effects and more about whether or not to include it because it's a pre-order only skulls. This means that if someone wanted to try Mythic further down the road, they wouldn't be able to use it.
However, I think Sangheilioz's blog sums up most of the community concerns quite nicely regarding the Halo CEA Mythic situation. It's a great read. Have a look! :-)
Thanks for responding! It's always nice to play / converse with people in the Halo universe who actually know what the -blam!- they're doing / talking about (like this community!).
I saw Sangheilioz's blog post earlier today and concur that it sums up the community concerns over definitions quite well and I generally agree with it's conclusions.
I find the whole skull thing interesting from a 343i developmental perspective because prior to H:CEA it was a given that the cumulative effect of "all skulls on" made the game as hard as it possibly could. Of course, not so anymore with H:CEA, or at the very least that's up for debate right now until we get our hands on the game.
Personally, I don't really buy 343i's argument for why they're not including skulls like Thunderstorm or any of the other ones that affect gameplay by way of AI behavior. They claim they want H:CEA to play the same as the original, but every single skull is an optional modifier. If a player doesn't want them to affect their pristine remembrances of how H:CE played in days of yore, they would be able to just leave them turned off.
My guess is that it would have required too much investment (time, money, other resources, etc.) on 343i's part to test and iterate anything that had to do with modifying the base code for the game, but I do believe there existed a genuine developmental concern for not changing the way the game played from how people remember it. I do think this makes sense to a large degree and also understand it as an overall design directive for the game because it makes the endgame / overall direction for the project much more clearly defined.
To comment on RC's point about the absence of saved films and online stat support, I'm assuming these didn't make it in because of resource constraints, either.
I think it's clear that the scope of the H:CEA project was limited in terms of the resources 343i could allocate to it, which is understandable. They're a business; they have to do what makes sense for them as a business.
Excellent thoughts!
What I'm thinking is that 343i wasn't intending for there to really be a Mythic Mode per say in CEA but rather the skulls were to serve as more of a fun element. Another way for the player to enjoy the game.
I could be wrong entirely, but when you throw something into the mix like an Infinite Ammo Skull, their intentions seem to be quite obvious :-)