- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
A long while ago ambient life was supposed to be in Halo, and it got taken out. It's supposed to be in Halo 2, but I haven't heard any more about it, so, my question is "is it actually going to be in Halo 2?" In a very early article ambient life was going to be one of the first things cut if Halo 2 was going to be too large or past deadline, but after reading and hearing comments about the ambient life (from an article here and the pre-Halo vid), I would much like it to exist afterall. While it does cause serious problems with the whole Flood thing, on Earth (or Floodless Forerunner installations) it would be another interesting thing to interact with. While I still play Halo religiously attempting to do strange things outside the bounds of the expected programming, it would have been awesome to be able to mess around with ambient life, as well as to just explore their habits (rather, AI) and whatnot. In a tactical sense, the odd pre-Halo dinosaurs could be used as diversions be prompting a stampede, and other life (such as birds) could be both beneficial and harmful to the player, as they would flee when approached, possibly giving away your position, but you could also spook them to attract the attention of the Covenant. The ambient life could also offer wonderful target practice, and bring another layer of realism to Halo 2 (I mean, if you''re going to spend a week tinkering with the pistol to rifle animation, then why not include ambient life as well? Animations like that do indeed make the game look better, but I want something to actually interact with). Not many FPS or 3PS games that focus on human-humanoid combat feature ambient life to mess around with (there probably are many that I don't know about, but with the exception of Turok and MGS2, are any actually good? And no, don't reply if you want to correct me about it), so if Halo 2 were to include ambient life it would assist in setting yet another benchmark for other games, as I am sure the final presentaion would be flawless. So please, Bungie, include ambient life. Think of the children. And attempting to melee a dinosaur to death.
ps: Maybe make a little article about it for a weekly update?