Bungie Universe
This topic has moved here: Poll [19 votes]: Why Do Most Halo Games Have A Simple Story?
  • Poll [19 votes]: Why Do Most Halo Games Have A Simple Story?
  • Pages:
  • 1
  • 2
  • of 2
Subject: Why Do Most Halo Games Have A Simple Story?

Poll: Why Do Most Halo Games Have A Simple Story?  [closed]
Money:  16%
(3 Votes)
Too Confusing Story:  11%
(2 Votes)
Laziness:  11%
(2 Votes)
Other:  63%
(12 Votes)
Total Votes: 19

Halo has a very deep story, but how were it's revelations revealed? Dedicated Halo fans searched endlessly for subtle pieces of information concerning Forerunners, Precursors, and others to piece together the story. None of this was ever put straight into the main story. Why? Even though Halo 2 and Halo 3's storylines were simple enough, critics still complained about them for excessive complication and the notorius Halo 2 cliffhanger (I don't see the problem with it). Maybe the critics are wrong, but all of these great backstories like the H3 hidden Terminals and ODST audiologs appear to fade away into neglect. Halo Reach's story was decent, but very, very straightforward. No shocking plot twists, like the Flood in CE, the Great Schism in Halo 2, and the discovery of the Ark in Halo 3.

Why do I think this is happening? Maybe Bungie wants to allow fans to figure things out themselves with their own interpretations. Actually, I think it's the simple need of money. If someone, mostly younger gamers, people who don't play often, and people who know nothing about Halo are presented with a long story with plot twists they probably won't play the game beecause they'd rather shoot stuff than shoot it for a reason. Thus, if nobody buys it, Microsoft makes no money from it.

Is this what gaming is becoming? Halo seems like it went from "Chief, don't let the rings be activated!" to "They're big alien guys that blow stuff up, so let's shoot them!" with no plot whatsoever. Now, I will ask the most important question: What do you, faithful gamers, think about this? Input from the people who actually play the games is essential.

[Edited on 02.22.2011 7:26 PM PST]

  • 02.22.2011 7:26 PM PDT

Online ID: GriffGraff15

It's hard to have a deep story when you have a game with so many facets. Multiplayer, Forge, Custom games, campaign all in the same game.

That's why ODSTs campaign was so much better IMO than other Halo games, they focused on the story more so than other games.

  • 02.22.2011 7:46 PM PDT

Its because if the primary story was always the Precursors and such, it'd lose a lot of potential for mystery and suspense. It'd be too obvious and you'd lose the feel of there being more going on then can be conceived of.

In fact, the base story, with the Covies, is an ingenious way to contrast our insignificant struggles with a darker, much more intense and mysterious universe controlled by these highly mysterious beings like Flood, the Assembly and Precursors.

Its a veil to hide the true Halo story: the goings on behind the scenes. It makes it more interesting.

  • 02.22.2011 7:46 PM PDT
  • gamertag: Bobvob
  • user homepage:

Because you can only put so much plot into 9 levels.

Halo 3 suffered from this the most. The Ark levels had far too much plot (they should've been 9 levels unto themselves) while the Earth levels had too few plot (they should've been done back in H2)

  • 02.22.2011 7:48 PM PDT

Bungie is catering to the stupid multiplayer kiddies who don't give a damn about story, who skip all the cutscenes, who teabag every kill they get.

And sadly, also pay most of bungies bills.

  • 02.22.2011 7:50 PM PDT

@accordingto343

Your one stop shop for all of 343's fabulous errors and ridiculous notions in the Halo lore.

Posted by: Wazooty
Bungie is catering to the stupid multiplayer kiddies who don't give a damn about story, who skip all the cutscenes, who teabag every kill they get.

And sadly, also pay most of bungies bills.

You try condensing the plot points from a typical Halo book into a game.

  • 02.22.2011 7:51 PM PDT


Posted by: DecepticonCobra
Posted by: Wazooty
Bungie is catering to the stupid multiplayer kiddies who don't give a damn about story, who skip all the cutscenes, who teabag every kill they get.

And sadly, also pay most of bungies bills.

You try condensing the plot points from a typical Halo book into a game.


If it were my choice, I'd have have the campaign and multiplayer halo be completely different releases/games/disks. I'd have them commit every resource and every bit of capacity on the disks to nothing but campaign.

  • 02.22.2011 7:53 PM PDT

@accordingto343

Your one stop shop for all of 343's fabulous errors and ridiculous notions in the Halo lore.

Posted by: Wazooty

Posted by: DecepticonCobra
Posted by: Wazooty
Bungie is catering to the stupid multiplayer kiddies who don't give a damn about story, who skip all the cutscenes, who teabag every kill they get.

And sadly, also pay most of bungies bills.

You try condensing the plot points from a typical Halo book into a game.


If it were my choice, I'd have have the campaign and multiplayer halo be completely different releases/games/disks. I'd have them commit every resource and every bit of capacity on the disks to nothing but campaign.

Have fun failing at making video games.

  • 02.22.2011 7:58 PM PDT
  • gamertag: [none]
  • user homepage:

well the story needs to be simple enough for the idiot, *AHEM* I mean casual audience.

  • 02.22.2011 8:00 PM PDT

Ignore my gamertag. It's actually Dragonzzilla.

The Story is so Complex, its simple.

  • 02.22.2011 8:05 PM PDT
  • gamertag: Potomo
  • user homepage:

Boomer.
Best. Ship. Ever!


Posted by: DecepticonCobra
[Have fun failing at making video games.

Why do you think Rocksteady chose not to include multiplayer in Arkham City? They knew it would take away from the single player experience due to more resources being put into multiplayer. I respect game developers who don't cater to the norm and choose to put value into what matters, the story.

Why do you think the recent COD games have terrible plots or why Reach failed to deliver in its campaign? Because game developers put to much emphasis on multiplayer and not single player.

[Edited on 02.22.2011 8:08 PM PST]

  • 02.22.2011 8:07 PM PDT

@accordingto343

Your one stop shop for all of 343's fabulous errors and ridiculous notions in the Halo lore.

Posted by: Potomo

Posted by: DecepticonCobra
[Have fun failing at making video games.

Why do you think Rocksteady chose not to include multiplayer in Arkham City? They knew it would take away from the single player experience due to more resources being put into multiplayer. I respect game developers who don't cater to the norm and choose to put value into what matters, the story.

Why do you think the recent COD games have terrible plots or why Reach failed to deliver in its campaign? Because game developers put to much emphasis on multiplayer and not single player.

Separating two games into two separate purchases is not economically viable.

  • 02.22.2011 8:09 PM PDT

PEANUT-BUTTER SLAP!

Posted by: Samurai102
Actually, I think it's the simple need of money. If someone, mostly younger gamers, people who don't play often, and people who know nothing about Halo are presented with a long story with plot twists they probably won't play the game beecause they'd rather shoot stuff than shoot it for a reason.
That doesn't make sense. Not just because most people don't know the story of a game until after they play it, but because I've never heard of a game that had a story so complex and convoluted that it detracted from gameplay.

[Edited on 02.22.2011 8:19 PM PST]

  • 02.22.2011 8:17 PM PDT
  • gamertag: Potomo
  • user homepage:

Boomer.
Best. Ship. Ever!


Posted by: DecepticonCobra
Posted by: Potomo

Posted by: DecepticonCobra
[Have fun failing at making video games.

Why do you think Rocksteady chose not to include multiplayer in Arkham City? They knew it would take away from the single player experience due to more resources being put into multiplayer. I respect game developers who don't cater to the norm and choose to put value into what matters, the story.

Why do you think the recent COD games have terrible plots or why Reach failed to deliver in its campaign? Because game developers put to much emphasis on multiplayer and not single player.

Separating two games into two separate purchases is not economically viable.

I agree but then again developers don't have to make a multiplayer component for every game they make. There are plenty of single player only games out there that are doing much better than a lot of multiplayer oriented games.

[Edited on 02.22.2011 8:28 PM PST]

  • 02.22.2011 8:26 PM PDT

Have you seen my mind anywhere? I seem to have lost it...

0x0 x0x 0x0 000 000 x0x 000
x0x 0x0 0x0 0xx 000 0x0 000
x0x x0x x00 0xx 0x0 x0x 0x0

I have seen you future

It is really difficult to have a truly complex story told through cutscenes and campaign dialogue. You can only really hint at a complex story with the small amount of time available to you, something that Assassins Creed, as well as the first two Halos did very well. Adding things like the Flood and the Forerunners hints at a much deeper story without actually spending time to go into any real depth in a cutscene that is less than five minutes long.

BTW, Reach's campaign was terribly done, it was incredibly straightforward, and any details they added trampled established canon. It was also ruined by things like rainbow soldiers and terrible voice acting.

  • 02.22.2011 8:30 PM PDT

Don't worry, you're still your mom's favorite Bnet member.

The irony is that while most of us consider the games' fictions "simple", most Halo players don't even understand them.

  • 02.22.2011 8:35 PM PDT


Posted by: DecepticonCobra
Posted by: Wazooty

Posted by: DecepticonCobra
Posted by: Wazooty
Bungie is catering to the stupid multiplayer kiddies who don't give a damn about story, who skip all the cutscenes, who teabag every kill they get.

And sadly, also pay most of bungies bills.

You try condensing the plot points from a typical Halo book into a game.


If it were my choice, I'd have have the campaign and multiplayer halo be completely different releases/games/disks. I'd have them commit every resource and every bit of capacity on the disks to nothing but campaign.

Have fun failing at making video games.


Good thing I'm talking soley about telling a story, not about making a game that i'll never make.

  • 02.22.2011 8:48 PM PDT

In some cases the simplicity is actually to allow more complex means of storytelling than raw exposition. If you view it from any single standpoint, Halo CE is quite simple, but the way its components resonate and juxtapose and have undertones and whatnot is quite complex.

In some cases it's because the story doesn't need to be complex. Halo 3's biggest flaw is just that the writing on the surface isn't all that good, and its pacing is perhaps also a little wonky. It does need a separate compaign told from either Half-Jaw or Arby's perspective between Halo's 2 and 3 that would deal with the intricaces of the covenant civil war, but the actual Halo 3 campaign itself does what it sets out to do reasonably well. Basically, that particular final act doesn't have to be all that complex; the complexity should exist and thrive in an unfortunately nonexistant covenant campaign that should take place immediately before it.

  • 02.22.2011 9:01 PM PDT

Halo CE felt like such free innocent self contained game. But there is so much depth to it. There was a 25 year genocide against humanity, and the discovery of halo was done out of complete desperation at brink of extinction, and out of necessity. The covenant had been looking for halo since their inception, and luckily halsey caught on to the pattern just in time enough to find is coordinates and get someone there to decipher it before the covenant did.

So much backstory and meaning to halo ce, yet to most its just a fun romp around a ringworld.

Not that that is a bad thing. When taken by itself CE is perhaps the most canonically fitting and important halo game. You dont need to know the backstory to enjoy, but the events of the game are about 1000x more significant and dramatic if you do.

  • 02.22.2011 9:09 PM PDT

In memory of those fallen in the defense of Earth and her colonies.

March 3, 2553

I think that compared to games like CoD it has a good story line, it has a interesting and vast back-story but doesn't have enough time to flesh it out in an actual game.

Still better than CoD campaigns.

[Edited on 02.22.2011 10:00 PM PST]

  • 02.22.2011 10:00 PM PDT

http://i.imgur.com/fsISj.png

Because gameplay > storyline. Bungie basically thinks up a basic story, comes up with a load of awesome mission ideas and squeezes as many of those missions into the Campaign as they can. I'm with you in that I'd like future Halo games to have better stories, but gameplay has to come first.

  • 02.22.2011 11:03 PM PDT

The Razor.

For the honour of the Mirratord.

Posted by: annoyinginge
Because gameplay > storyline. Bungie basically thinks up a basic story, comes up with a load of awesome mission ideas and squeezes as many of those missions into the Campaign as they can. I'm with you in that I'd like future Halo games to have better stories, but gameplay has to come first.


This.

  • 02.23.2011 2:10 AM PDT

I'm an Anarchist. I don't need a government to be a good person, but I'm glad it's here because some of you clearly do.

I think they have a simple story because the primary concern in production was to make a fun game, rather than a deep and complex story. You can argue that the three original books, TFoR, Flood, and FS were part of the first game, rather than having just been booked based on the first game, which would suggest that the first game had a pretty complex story...

Regardless, I think it's just a smarter move to make a game based on a simple story. It's not like a movie where the audience goes for the story. The majority of the Halo consumer market is just here for slaying bodies in matchmaking.

  • 02.23.2011 3:06 AM PDT

Vengeance only leads to an ongoing cycle of hatred.

I think Bungie wanted the story to be as simple as possible in the games. Which is ashame, since Halo is very deep. They should have let that shine in all their games, but they always just simplify it.

[Edited on 02.23.2011 3:41 AM PST]

  • 02.23.2011 3:40 AM PDT

Thank You

Yours Sincerely,
Teh Phantom Panda

well, Halo CE aimed at a fast-paced, 1980's badass Rambo action plot that focused less on plot and more on solid and fast paced gameplay. This worked out well and Halo CE sold alot so Halo 2 and 3 continued with the shallow badass action plot that emphasized gameplay and action. However in Reach, Bungie tried a deep and emotional plot, but failed to do enough character development on N6 and hence I would consider the Reach campaign just a little inadequate.

  • 02.23.2011 6:54 AM PDT

  • Pages:
  • 1
  • 2
  • of 2