- ROBERTO jh
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- Fabled Heroic Member
Posted by: Plasma Prestige
This thread was originally created in the Reach forum. Since pages fluctuate constantly on that forum and since mature discussion is difficult to maintain, I have decided to post this here.
These are not all the problems this game's story faces. These are just some chief examples.
For a larger discussion theme: do you follow the book canon as being the "true" canon, or do you follow the latest canon that Reach has essentially imposed. Why?
I've noted that most people on the Reach forum in particular tend to complain about the multiplayer aspect of the game far more than anything else. However, one aspect which I feel has suffered from a severe lack of attention, and also been ignored by much of the community and Bungie at large was canon.
The canon for the Halo franchise has kept me going, for a large part. Its science fiction and ingenuity is truly seen in the first three games, and more significantly in the novels written by Eric Nylund, which contained masterful continuations and expansions of this Universe I came to love.
The best books by far were the Fall of Reach, First Strike, and of course, the Ghosts of Onyx. Unfortunately, Halo Reach has muddled the canon from all of these works. It hasn't destroyed canon, but it sure did bring up inconsistencies. I didn't want to see this great Universe suffer from a tremendous lack of attention to story detail, but unfortunately, that is exactly what has happened.
The Spartans
For anyone who may have been new to the Halo franchise, and picked up Reach and just went through the campaign, it would seem as though these soldiers just wore upgraded armor that gave them energy shields and such. There would have been no indication of augmented, battle-hardened, trained, super-efficient machines that the Spartans actually are.
no Halo game has ever--repeat EVER--showed the Spartans in their fullest abilities.
The biggest flaw in this respect was Jorge, the Spartan 2. Spartan 2's were not tanks! They functioned as soldiers who could get an impossible mission done, quickly, stealthily, and efficiently. They did not use huge weapons all the time as Jorge did. They used small weapons to maximize their mobility, and their hand to hand combat, with the MJOLNIR armor that increased their already super-human strength five-fold.
Jorge was the designated heavy weapon specialist, just like Sam, who used primarily the heavy weapons.
Unfortunately, the Spartans that Nylund depicts are infinitely superior to the ones Bungie depicts. The only Spartan Bungie has actually nailed is Master Chief. The other Spartans weren't much more different. In fact, some were stronger, smarter, faster, and even more practical! Noble Team sounds like a rag-tag group of marines who don't know what they are doing. This may be as a result of the poor generic voice actors. Noble Six, was definitely more of a Spartan 2 than a Spartan 3.
Noble Six was designated Hyper-Lethal, of course he'll be more badass. You seem to be under the impression that--just because they are S-III's--they are automatically inferior in every way to SII's. These are still people, remember, and they all have their inherint traits and abilities.
The Fall of Reach
There were also major inconsistencies on the actual event the game focused on. Although I didn't mind the editions Bungie made for their own liking, in certain cases, they completely broke perfect canonical elements. Noble Six didn't need to deliver Cortana to Captain Keyes for the story to matter, or for that matter, the Pillar of Autumn's presence at all.
Furthermore, Bungie should've have concentrated on the actions of established Spartan 2 squads rather than putting together an absolutely awful character cast of Spartan 3's who had control over a battle-hardened Spartan 2, who by the way, didn't display any Spartan 2 like traits as mentioned before.
while I agree at the date discrepancies I repeat: No Halo game has shown what the Spartan--II's were ACTUALLY capable of. When was the last time you sprinted at 40kph as Master Chief? Didn't think so.
This is not to say that the game should have followed the book's events. The story instead should have served those loyal fans that have stuck with the franchise, and read the fiction. You know, if people complained about too many references, that isn't Bungie's problem. There are books that could've been read for a much more authentic and satiating campaign experience, traits that simply didn't apply to this narrative.
Also, where were the super MAC guns? These were the most important defense of the system of Epsilon Eridani from attackers. They shot super-heated metal slugs the size of mountains at several thousand miles per second. The Covenant would have no problem glassing Reach without them. To omit these from space combat (seeing them) simply wasn't wise. Also, what happened to the massive fleet of UNSC ships sent to defend Reach, and that actually did defend Reach. We also maybe five or four actual ships in this game fighting. The sense of scale was completely off in space.
The SMAC was used, but on extremely low power, against the Corvette in the Sword Base level.
And their were only 20 SMACs, which didn't--most likely--want to risk being destroyed by the Supercarrier if they dared move into position to fire.
The space scene was underwhelming as it was before the forces truly went to war with each other. It was only the local fleet vs a Supercarrier fleet. Even the FoR states the huge-ass fleet you seem to think existed at Reach wasn't there to begin with; they recalled all forces to Reach once the Covie's made their grand appearance, they were not always there.
Conclusion
Halo Reach had some truly fantastic gameplay elements incorporated into its package. However, the campaign, compared to the works of Nylund, and relative to the potential this story had for such an exciting point in the fiction, fell short. It was completely uninspired from good works such as the novels. The only references that were made were from Halo CE, but that was more gameplay than anything else.
The common argument of "games trump books in canon" is largely irrelevant to the matter hand. It doesn't matter which one has priority, it matters which one is good! Everything from the gross distortion of the Spartans to actual flaws in the story make it very disappointing. It seems to me that Bungie ignored any opportunities to make their campaign stand out in the crowd of bad FPS campaigns to set a standard. Unfortunately, Bungie paid significantly less attention on their series' driving force, the canon, and just spent all their time on gratuitous matchmaking mayhem.
I do agree with you here, though; its rediculous that they botched some perfect canon elements for the sake of an underwhelming story
[Edited on 12.16.2010 5:18 PM PST]