- ROBERTO jh
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- Fabled Heroic Member
It didn't depress you because the characters started dying five levels into a ten level game. There was no moments of true character devolopment.
See, Bungie's good at what I call subtle character devolopment. The characters in the Halo trilogy devoloped, but it was quiet and not in your face. Johnson got less cocky in H3 as age and the war catch up to him. Master Chief started to show brief snippets of emotional struggle towards the end, looking ready to snap when Johnson died and sounding exhausted when he said "we'll all go home."
The problem is, this leaked into Reach. Subtle character devolopment takes time, over a few games and stories, not all in one game. Reach should've been more emotional with less badassery and more rain, more somber piano, and (at the risk of sounding psychotic) more blood, noticable civilian death and the intense emotional impacts of, say, a child losing his or her parents.
I know it sounds harsh, but in a game where you KNOW the planet's screwed, where several hundred million people die and you need to compact this into one game, you need to throw caution to the wind and really bring out the horror of a genocidal war that humanity is desperately losing, take advantage of tha "M" rating and give us an unbelievably powerful Halo game. Especially drop the more adventourous style to Halo and make it dark, depressing and real, like the BELIEVE trailer, or the Halo: Reach live action trailers.
Its kind of sad when that ONE trailer where Thom sacrifices his life for his friends (a trailer that was supposed to be a mood setter for the game) had more emotion then the entire game. I want to see Saving Private Ryan, or Platoon, not Live Free Die Hard.
This is what I hope 343 does, and considering the grit and emotions they've played with so far, I'm really looking forward to it.
So, is a dark and depressing Halo game possible? Yes.
Will it be controversial? Yes.
Will it be effective? Hell yes.
[Edited on 02.16.2011 7:35 PM PST]