- petarded2
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Posted by: Saso Chicken
Aside from that what else bothered you?I'm in the mood for a nerd rant. Apologies in advance.
1. Alien Politics
Halo 2 was where the series jumped from a military science fiction story with a mysterious backdrop to the story of a squid monster discovering flaws in his government. Yes, the change was pretty jarring, but my main complaint is that the Covenant were (and still are) the least interesting part of the story to me.
Similar to the Pfhor in the Marathon series, the only purpose of Halo 1's Covenant - from a storytelling perspective - was to prevent the gamer from experiencing the story. Making it so we have to fight for every cutscene, for every terminal. It created suspense, and made me hate the Covenant and the Pfhor for the religious / slave-trading bastards that they are. But Halo 2 throws interesting plot elements (Forerunner, A.I.s) aside as it continues showing me Alien politics, the honorable Sanghelli warriors and all the other crap that should stay in the expanded universe where it belongs.
2. Space Pickles
Halo 2 had a nasty habit of jumping the shark. For example, upon completing the first mission of the game, Master Chief drags an alien bomb that he just found into an elevator. Cortana tells him that she knows what he's thinking, and that he's completely bat-blam!- insane. She is proven right when his plan is revealed to be aimlessly launching himself out of an airlock in an attempt to reach the Covenant ship kilometers away, planting the bomb in its core by going through a hole in the hull that didn't exist at the time he came up with the plan, and escaping by using the sheer power of his leg muscles to propel himself away from the gigantic explosion and land perfectly on top of Johnson's ship (also presumably kilometers away).
While this scene rates high on the "Totally -blam!- Awesome" scale, it abandons all logic completely, which is a bad thing to do when you're trying to make your audience take squid monsters and plant poets seriously. Speaking of which...
3. Plant Poets
I know this is just one character, but it deserves its own section. With all the amazing things that wound up on cutting room floor, why was the Gravemind one of the ideas that was actually realized? Does knowing that the Flood's central intelligence is located in the monster from Little Shop of Horrors and enjoys reciting the occasional nursery rhyme make them any more interesting? But if you're like me or anyone I knew at the time Halo 2 was popular, you didn't know what the hell this character even was. To us, Master Chief may as well have been saved from drowning by Freddy Fish (that would make for one hell of a crossover).
I think less silly way to make the Flood interesting would be having the Gravemind keep its flytrap shut, and having Cortana be the Flood's only spokesperson. Cortana would be corrupted by the Flood, trick you at the end of the game into helping the Gravemind get to High Charity, and then she could spend Halo 3 doing interesting things rather than simply appearing in vague visions.
And that's my slightly-off-topic tarp of a post. If nothing else, you at least got a decent nap out of it. If you need me, I'll be in the angry dome.