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  • Subject: Why Halo 2 campaign is so underrated
Subject: Why Halo 2 campaign is so underrated

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I know a lot of Halo fans aren't exactly thrilled about Halo 2 in general. They seemed to hate a lot of the aspects of the campaign that I actually have come to love and cherish. This is not an attempt to "convert" them in any way; if you hate the game, you hate the game. This is just me venting why it's one of my favorite (if not THE favorite) Halo game thus far, for anyone that enjoys reading (and discussing):


1) It is less "moody" and foggy. This is obviously due to better programming and better use of the original XBOX's hardware (they didn't have to use fog to hide polygon pop-ups in the distance nearly as much), but it just seemed to me like Halo: CE was trying too hard to be a thriller/suspense game. That's fine and all, it did the job well, but I'm more a fan of 2 for the simple reason that it's more about a war and explaining that war, rather than just trying to be "spooky."

2) It introduced dual-wielding. I mean come on, that's a given.

3) The graphical leap from Halo: CE to Halo 2 was probably the most significant thus far. Don't get me wrong, Halo: Reach is a vast improvement over, say, Halo 3. But it's not THAT far ahead of Halo 3: ODST. Halo 2 looks almost like it could be a first gen XBOX360 game, which is pretty damned impressive.

4) It delves into the story/mythos of the Covenant more than any other game. It explains more of their story, which is something the Halo series is pretty thin on the ground with. Most people hated swapping from Master Chief over to The Arbiter, but I found it very informative and they did it very seamlessly. Never was there a point where I went, "Oh, wow... bad time to do this now, isn't it?" It always left me wondering, "Hmm, wonder what's going to happen there when I come back to it?" But it never told too much of one story without going back to the other and keeping the status quo.

5) The ending may have pissed some people off, true. But think about how it setup Halo 3? Did a good job, didn't it? People were foaming out the mouth for it before they even turned off their XBOX's after finishing Halo 2. That was perfect planning on Bungie's part. They could have done it a little more elegantly, though. Built up the tension a bit more and THEN left on a cliffhanger. They way it was done was a bit shaky. Almost as bad as The Sopranos... but not quite.

6) Less Flood. I hated that about Halo: CE. They're annoying as hell. Challenging, yes, but annoying as hell. The Flood in 2 is not overwhelmingly annoying, and is more like an enemy rather than a... whatever it was in CE. Also, you mostly have to deal with them as The Arbiter and his gang, which makes it infinitely more enjoyable. The Flood in 3 is even more annoying than it is in CE. This is most true in the "Cortana" mission. Is there anyone that didn't hate that one?

7) More vehicles & weapons. That's pretty self explanatory. I think 2 has the biggest improvement/expansion of weapons and vehicles than any of the other games. Pretty sure, anyway.

8) Breaking Benjamin. You may not like them, but I personally thought it was awesome that they contributed a song to it (during the mission where you're on High Charity, fighting off a room full of Brutes & hunters, I believe, the song comes on... without lyrics of course). The song is called "Blow Me Away" for those of you who may have been living under a rock during the heyday of this game.

9) Bigger, lusher, more "fun" worlds to battle. Halo: CE seemed very open, but... bland. Halo 3 seemed very constricting, like you were playing the whole game on a very narrow, pre-set path. Same could be said for Halo 2, but it just felt less constricting. The level design was such that, even if you were on a pre-determined path, it didn't feel like you were.

I would have liked to make 10 reason, but this pretty much covers it. That all being said, I think from best-to-worst, in terms of the campaigns, my Halo list would be:

Halo 2
Halo: Reach
Halo 3
Halo 3 ODST
Halo: CE

Of course, they're all brilliant & fun games in their own right, so being last on that list isn't exactly a bad thing. Thoughts? Feelings? Opinions? Good or bad, agree or disagree, doesn't matter.

:)

  • 10.26.2010 1:11 PM PDT

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Halo CE...last?

I agree with all your points, though. But how could you say Halo 3 and ODST have better Campaigns than CE???

  • 10.26.2010 1:44 PM PDT

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Posted by: Sergeant Murph
Halo CE...last?

I agree with all your points, though. But how could you say Halo 3 and ODST have better Campaigns than CE???


I didn't like it. It's repetitive (especially "The Library") and it's too dark & foggy. The story wasn't all that bad, but it wasn't nearly engaging as Halo 2 for me. Halo: CE & Halo 3 are both ranked about the same in my eyes, in that they are both below Halo 2 & Halo: Reach. I even liked the Halo 3: ODST campaign a lot. Granted, it's just an off-shoot of 3, but it still was told creatively and not just "go here, fight, go here, fight, go here, fight," etc.

  • 10.26.2010 2:07 PM PDT

Your first point has factual errors all over the place. Halo 1 only has one level where the fog is capable of obstructing dynamic objects within reason, and that's 343 Guilty Spark (the other heavy fog area is AotCR/TB, and in that case the fog is only VERY high in the sky, and, judging by the GPU-heavy weather effects that get thrown at you when you're in it, probably isn't there to save performance).

And even if the game did have heavy fog, it wouldn't be there to save the game from showing graphical popping; the only graphical popping executed by Halo 1 is slightly model changes on dynamic objects, and these adjustments are far less noticeable than the object and texture popping that occurs in Halo 2 (heck, in Halo 2 you get super heavy popping even on facial closeups in cutscenes!).

  • 10.26.2010 2:31 PM PDT

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Posted by: Tupolev
Your first point has factual errors all over the place. Halo 1 only has one level where the fog is capable of obstructing dynamic objects within reason, and that's 343 Guilty Spark (the other heavy fog area is AotCR/TB, and in that case the fog is only VERY high in the sky, and, judging by the GPU-heavy weather effects that get thrown at you when you're in it, probably isn't there to save performance).

And even if the game did have heavy fog, it wouldn't be there to save the game from showing graphical popping; the only graphical popping executed by Halo 1 is slightly model changes on dynamic objects, and these adjustments are far less noticeable than the object and texture popping that occurs in Halo 2 (heck, in Halo 2 you get super heavy popping even on facial closeups in cutscenes!).


You're lecturing someone who is, indeed, a programmer as well as an artist. Just FYI. I'm pretty sure I know what I'm talking about, is all I'm saying.

And I never said Halo 2 didn't have graphical popping or anything like that, did I? I just said the fog was annoying and added to the whole sense of "moody" theme that I wasn't a huge fan of. Halo is about a war between two (or three) sides. It's not a Nightmare On Elm Street type of thing, which is the overall feeling I got from CE: it was trying to scare you too much, rather than delve deeply into a complex story (like 2 did).

  • 10.26.2010 3:01 PM PDT
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Halo 2 E3 2003

That is why I don't like Halo 2. Sure there was great difficulty with the engine etc etc, though had Bungie spent their time wisely on the development of the game instead of wasting 7 months on that E3 demo, the engine probably could've been optimised to work with the hardware given and ultimately all the dumbing down, cutting of features and story would not have occurred. 15 months of development Halo 2 got, with barely a couple of weeks of polish. Shame too :(

Had the game turned out like said E3 demo, I probably would've liked the game a lot more than I did/do.

"Earth will never be the same again" was the slogan for the advertising campaign, yet all we got was two missions which showed Earth in pretty pristine condition, if a global scale war was occurring where was it?


Multiplayer was still sweet though :)

[Edited on 10.26.2010 3:19 PM PDT]

  • 10.26.2010 3:14 PM PDT
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Halo 2 is fun especially when i can play it on my XBOX360. But in terms of campains this is how I reackon it goes

Halo: Reach, it was one of the longest campains besides 2 and CE which was definetlty more engaging but half the time u were a LONE WOLF so much for noble team.

ODST: Hardly any boundaries and if you found all the audio logs than it became more than a game but a living book that gives info on walls every where was full of info especially the Legendary ending.

Halo 3: Was by far the first step for full customization for REACH but the campaign was short which let down every HALO fan in the world. And the flood they were a huge challenge on legendary especially Cortana.

Halo 2, Was fun with the first siting of SKULLs and awesome feat. in H3 which earns some GS. Anyway, in game u as the player was aloud to stuff like walk out of maps find hidden energy swords (outskirts) water wall (outskirts).

CE- was fun a few glitches here and there but was awesome feats. I give this game lots of credit it was the first of many Halo games. MASTERCHIEF was a charcter in a rich game stacked full of mystery.

HALO WARS: I Bought it and yes I own every Halo game, in terms of a game strategy was a very dark and unexplored region but Ensumble studios pulled it of allowing players to take control of the Hallo universe

[Edited on 10.26.2010 3:17 PM PDT]

  • 10.26.2010 3:16 PM PDT


Posted by: EchoesOfWin
You're lecturing someone who is, indeed, a programmer as well as an artist. Just FYI. I'm pretty sure I know what I'm talking about, is all I'm saying.

Credentials aren't the issue here, though. I'm not addressing or attacking you. I'm doing what you asked we do in your post: addressing your argument.

And I never said Halo 2 didn't have graphical popping or anything like that, did I?
Not directly, but you did comment that Halo 1 supposedly used fog to hide popping, which implies in light of your argument about Halo 2 that it had equal or fewer popping issues.

I just said the fog was annoying and added to the whole sense of "moody" theme that I wasn't a huge fan of.
You also said the game was "too foggy." This seems to imply a substantial amount of fog. However, as I noted, there's almost no fog in the game to speak of. Namely, there is heavy horizontal fog in only 3 sections of the game. A short section at the begining of 343GS and a short section at the end have substantial fog. There is also some noticeable horizontal fog in a single room on The Maw (the armory).

Apart from that, there is light verticle fog that masks high cliffs and gives color to deep pits, but that's not really the kind of fog you're getting at.

And finally, it isn't used to mask graphical popping because there very nearly isn't any graphical popping.




Please don't take this post offensively; again I'm not attacking you. I'm simply attempting to defend HCE from factual innacuracies.

  • 10.26.2010 3:31 PM PDT

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Posted by: Frenzia
Halo 2 E3 2003

That is why I don't like Halo 2. Sure there was great difficulty with the engine etc etc, though had Bungie spent their time wisely on the development of the game instead of wasting 7 months on that E3 demo, the engine probably could've been optimised to work with the hardware given and ultimately all the dumbing down, cutting of features and story would not have occurred. 15 months of development Halo 2 got, with barely a couple of weeks of polish. Shame too :(

Had the game turned out like said E3 demo, I probably would've liked the game a lot more than I did/do.

"Earth will never be the same again" was the slogan for the advertising campaign, yet all we got was two missions which showed Earth in pretty pristine condition, if a global scale war was occurring where was it?


Multiplayer was still sweet though :)


I actually think that demo was rubbish, compared to how the game turned out. Sure, 2 is far from what it COULD have been, but they had a very high demand to appeal to. The more people who play & love your franchise, the more opportunity there is for you to upset or disappoint people. Ultimately, they did what they thought was best. I think it turned out beautifully, to be honest.

The one thing from that video that I am sorry to see not in the final game, was the DMR. That would have been freakin' sweet. But alas, not until Reach.

  • 10.26.2010 3:32 PM PDT

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Posted by: Tupolev

Posted by: EchoesOfWin
You're lecturing someone who is, indeed, a programmer as well as an artist. Just FYI. I'm pretty sure I know what I'm talking about, is all I'm saying.

Credentials aren't the issue here, though. I'm not addressing or attacking you. I'm doing what you asked we do in your post: addressing your argument.

And I never said Halo 2 didn't have graphical popping or anything like that, did I?
Not directly, but you did comment that Halo 1 supposedly used fog to hide popping, which implies in light of your argument about Halo 2 that it had equal or fewer popping issues.

I just said the fog was annoying and added to the whole sense of "moody" theme that I wasn't a huge fan of.
You also said the game was "too foggy." This seems to imply a substantial amount of fog. However, as I noted, there's almost no fog in the game to speak of. Namely, there is heavy horizontal fog in only 3 sections of the game. A short section at the begining of 343GS and a short section at the end have substantial fog. There is also some noticeable horizontal fog in a single room on The Maw (the armory).

Apart from that, there is light verticle fog that masks high cliffs and gives color to deep pits, but that's not really the kind of fog you're getting at.

And finally, it isn't used to mask graphical popping because there very nearly isn't any graphical popping.




Please don't take this post offensively; again I'm not attacking you. I'm simply attempting to defend HCE from factual innacuracies.


I understand your intentions, don't worry.

And what I'm saying is: compared to other Halo games, it uses too much fog. That a bit clearer? I never said there was an excess of it, though I could see how what I said could come off that way. What I meant was that other Halo games, such as 2, used far less, and it served the game brilliantly.

I also said that typically, fog is used to hide graphical popping or dynamic texture mapping. I never said there was "too much" of that in Halo: CE, but that it was a typical "programming trick" back in those days.

Hope that clears it up.

  • 10.26.2010 3:35 PM PDT


Posted by: EchoesOfWin
And what I'm saying is: compared to other Halo games, it uses too much fog. That a bit clearer?

Not really. Halo 2 uses far heavier fog in several places than Halo 1 does anywhere. (Sacred Icon, High Charity...)

I never said there was an excess of it, though I could see how what I said could come off that way.

Yes you did.

"I didn't like it. It's repetitive (especially "The Library") and it's too dark & foggy"

I also said that typically, fog is used to hide graphical popping or dynamic texture mapping. I never said there was "too much" of that in Halo: CE, but that it was a typical "programming trick" back in those days.

No, you said:
"It is less "moody" and foggy. This is obviously due to better programming and better use of the original XBOX's hardware (they didn't have to use fog to hide polygon pop-ups in the distance nearly as much),"

You were talking about Halo 2 relative to the other Halo title on XBOX (Halo 1). You said that "they didn't have to use fog to hide polygon pop-ups in the distance nearly as much." So yes, you did say that Halo 1 had too much of something it had almost none of (and implied that Halo 2 had less of it).

  • 10.26.2010 3:52 PM PDT

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You're misunderstanding me again. What I meant by my last post, was to correct how I said certain things in my original post. I may have said something in my original post that was worded incorrectly, or that didn't convey my thoughts as accurately as they should have.

  • 10.26.2010 4:14 PM PDT

Getting back to the main topic, I agree with most of what you wrote. I still love the Campaign for all the reasons you stated but I would add the skulls (and Easter eggs) and exploring to your list. I'm glad Bungie did not have time to get the skull menu straightened out, I loved hunting for skulls and I still love exploring and launching with Sputnik. I could go on and on......

Edit: The Scarab guns were awesome for me too. Not firing them, though, that got old fast enough. No, it was the journey to grab the gun that was fun. I've grabbed all three guns in every manner I think that is possible including grabbing the OS gun from inside the tunnel) so I'm eternally thankful to Bungie for that.

[Edited on 10.26.2010 4:37 PM PDT]

  • 10.26.2010 4:29 PM PDT

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Forgive my ignorance, as I have only just recently played through the Halo 2 campaign in it's entirety... but what do you mean by "getting the scarab guns?" You mean the turrets that are located on them? What significance does that have with anything? Do you get something special for that, or...?

  • 10.26.2010 10:59 PM PDT


Posted by: EchoesOfWin
Forgive my ignorance, as I have only just recently played through the Halo 2 campaign in it's entirety... but what do you mean by "getting the scarab guns?" You mean the turrets that are located on them? What significance does that have with anything? Do you get something special for that, or...?
Whoa, I wish I were you, then I could go get the guns all over again. You are in for a treat.

Here's a sample.

Here's a better one for the OS gun (coop).

The Scarab guns are a hand-held weapon that fires the Scarab beam. It's pretty awesome and you can find one on Outskirts and two on Metropolis. Just type in Metropolis Scarab gun or Outskirts Scarab gun on YouTube search and you will see.

Bungie used the gun (in the form of a Plasma Rifle) as a placeholder for when the Scarab fires, similar to the Gondola and elevator switches. If you are a programmer then you probably know about place-holders.

Anyway, Metropolis has two plasma pistol place-holders. One is located at the Scarab when it first fires (it only appears once) after spawning at the Marine HQ building and there's a hidden one way up on one of the bridges (straight up from the Marine HQ building).

Outskirts has one that appears once when it first fires. There's two places to view/get the gun. One is out in the water and one is inside the tunnel yet it is the same gun due to overlapping maps.





[Edited on 10.26.2010 11:33 PM PDT]

  • 10.26.2010 11:12 PM PDT

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Very nice. Yeah, I'll have to do this.

Yeah I only just recently bought and played through them all. I've never had an XBOX or XBOX360. I just got my first 360 (the new "slim" one) a little over a month ago. But I've played Halo: CE and Halo 2 before at friends' houses and whatnot. Never really payed much attention to the campaign story the few times that I played through a few missions in the past (with friends, always co-op), so when I got my 360, I decided it was time to play through them all again, alone, all the way through and pay attention to the story. Especially since I had just finished Reach, so it would make sense, chronologically, to play the rest afterward.

Glad I did, too, because I only remembered a few fragments of CE, hardly ANY of 2, and only the pain-in-the-ass parts of 3 (like the Cortana mission *shudder*). I beat 1 on normal, 2 on easy (because after 1, I really just wanted to enjoy the story, pretty much), and 3 on normal except for the last two missions (again... Cortana... *shudder*). There really wasn't much incentive to beat 1 or 2 on legendary, since there are no achievements for it, and the "legendary endings" are rubbish and not worth it at all. But 3, on the other hand, I at least still have to go back and do the last 2 missions on normal to get the last 2 achievements for "normal" difficulty that I am missing. Heroic and legendary can wait until after I'm done beating Reach on legendary, which is about 4 more missions. I went and played Reach through on normal AND heroic, first. I'd beat it on easy if it weren't for the fact that... there's really no point.

  • 10.27.2010 12:41 AM PDT

You noob go frag yourself

I loved H2's Campaign the most because of the Bosses
(Regret and Mr. Mowhawk as examples)

  • 10.27.2010 11:51 AM PDT
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Because nobody ever heard of a cliffhanger before and like to cry like little girls.

  • 10.28.2010 2:09 AM PDT

Don't be a D-Bag!

Agreed. Blow Me Away is also played briefly during the first mission as Arbiter while in a Banshee.

  • 10.28.2010 4:35 PM PDT