Bungie Universe
This topic has moved here: Subject: Bungie's Ability to Write a Good Story
  • Subject: Bungie's Ability to Write a Good Story
  • Pages:
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • of 3
Subject: Bungie's Ability to Write a Good Story

"You dead yet? No? You will be!"

"How you like them pears? Guess what I mean by pears."

"I'm gonna rip off his partridge and kick him in the pear tree!"

As there are more Halo releases, there is less story to tell making it harder to make a good story without overlaping another.

  • 03.01.2011 1:10 AM PDT

I wake up to find myself
After all these years
And where all the time has gone
Still seems so unclear


"Zerg Rushes"


I do believe the WINTER CONTINGENCY plan was "attack all Covenant positions simultaneously." Maybe the rush was a feint for another, larger force? Maybe they wanted to sneak the Spartan assets in under a feint? In a war of attrition some sacrifices must be made to get potential game-changers into their positions. Sometimes you have to have that one Private who distracts the sniper long enough for the rest of the squad to kill him.

Now, for the actual topic...
I think that Bungie did an excellent job writing and directing the first 2 games. The production timing for the second one wasn't very well thought out, but that happens sometimes.
Halo 3 was alright. It wasn't "awe" inspiring or anything, but it wasn't "bad."
ODST was a "supplemental" game. It gave back ground information without writing a whole book, it served it's purpose. They also got to introduce and test Firefight as a viable gametype for future titles.

Reach on the other hand... I don't know WHAT happened. They seemed to go for numbers and popularity over actually writing what THEY wanted to write(I assume.)
They could have made that game a whole lot better. All the bright colored armor and new armor they introduced... It definitely made me feel like a Spartan III; Made to be thrown away.

They could have easily done quite a few missions "based" on the Spartan-II red teams missions. Those seemed believable in the books. Things Super-soldiers would be doing on a doomed militarily important colony. If they were gonna kill off all the Noble team members so... poorly, they should have just made them all the same armor and had them die randomly. I doubt anyone would have noticed at that rate.
There are a lot of things they could have improved upon for Reach. But they did it their way and we can either play the game or move on. Most of us, will probably stay playing it for nostalgia's sake.

Let's hope Frankie over at 343 does a bit better...

  • 03.01.2011 3:53 AM PDT

My YouTube Channel
Bungiepedia Page

"Sometimes life gives you lemons, and then you have to say 'f**k the lemons' and bail."

If you're reading this, you need to stop stalking me. If you can't stop stalking me, you might as well go here.

While I agree to an extent, I've always gotten the feeling that they intended Halo 3 to be their final Halo game, then got suckered into doing ODST and Reach by their publisher, Microsoft. Makes me wonder if that's why we didn't hear from many of the big players at Bungie as much leading up to Reach. (Jason Jones, Joe Staten, etc.)

I like to think that ODST's story was a bit shoddy due to it originally being intended as an expansion, but Reach kind of sealed the deal. What's most dissapointing about Reach was that the potential for a great story/game was already there with the existing canon, but they decided to scrap a lot of what they had built up for....well...I don't know.

Off the top of my head, I can't really think of any positive qualities Reach's story had.

Sure, Halo's in-game storytelling was never anything special compared to the rest of the industry, but the books added that supplemental information that created the expanded back story: it's what separated the Halo universe from games like COD and the like.

Basically saying "-blam!- it" to all that supplemental information that your game universe was built on: bad idea, and Reach's weak story kind of proves it.


[Edited on 03.01.2011 4:25 AM PST]

  • 03.01.2011 4:23 AM PDT

My YouTube Channel
Bungiepedia Page

"Sometimes life gives you lemons, and then you have to say 'f**k the lemons' and bail."

If you're reading this, you need to stop stalking me. If you can't stop stalking me, you might as well go here.

Posted by: DecepticonCobra
Posted by: ninjakenzen
I agree, if somehow Eric Nylund had a direct involvement in the actual story department of the in-game Halo cutscenes, i think most of us will be satisfied from a Canon and Great storytelling point of view.

If Eric Nylund had his way, the entirety of Reach's campaign would have been three missions.

1. Go to Circumference
2. Defend Generator
3. Wander CASTLE Base

So fun. /sarcasm
Or:

1. Training
- The obstacle course and boot camp (tutorial missions)
- The forest mission where the trainees steal a pelican
- The training mission against Tango Company

2. Initial Deployment
- Mission to capture Colonel Watts at the rebel asteroid base

3. The Covenant War
- MJOLNIR introduction
- The Battle of Chi Ceti
- The Battle of Jericho VII
- The Battle of Sigma Octanus IV
- The Fall of Reach, obviously

Everything leading up the Covenant war would be for the sake of character development. Cutscenes would include Halsey's meeting with John, candidate abductions, conscription, Blue Team origins (the obstacle course), augmentation, augmentation washouts' funeral, Sam's death, etc.

There's plenty of opportunities leading up to the war to make the player actually care about the characters, and hell, I didn't even mention in-game dialogue.

9 missions? Sounds like a Halo game to me. There's also no reason not to include missions where you play as other Spartans; the idea is to make their deaths tragic.

[Edited on 03.01.2011 4:50 AM PST]

  • 03.01.2011 4:50 AM PDT

Walk softly, and carry a big midget.

I thought ODST and Halo 3 had a good story. Reach's on the other hand was terrible.

  • 03.01.2011 5:30 AM PDT

Dark Neptune, a young amateur astronomer whose gaming life is no different from other teenagers of his age, though he controls it more strictly then others.

ODST was great, it's only problem was that it just had 14 months of production time.

Halo 3 and Reach were all Multiplayer-based games, which was why Campaign became similarly generic to other shooters like CoD; highly intense, linear and less-replaybility style missions.

  • 03.01.2011 5:46 AM PDT
  •  | 
  • Senior Heroic Member

BLAM!

If you want my opinion, and I'm assuming you do.. :D

I think with H:CE & H2 the majority of the focus was on the campaign story & gameplay.

With H3 and H:Reach, the emphasis is quite obviously on the multiplayer, much to my dismay. I love MM, don't get me wrong, but I guess I'm an old school gamer, and thus have a certain affinity for scripted storylines.

I think since ODST didn't ship with a multiplayer/MM component, Bungie felt like they could once again put the focus and attention to detail into the ODST plot & gameplay.

So, IMO, Bungie has lately been catering to the demand of the majority of today's gaming market. And if you want to know what that demographic wants, well all you have to do is take a gander over to the REACH forum board.

  • 03.01.2011 11:40 AM PDT
  •  | 
  • Senior Heroic Member

BLAM!


Posted by: Primo84
Posted by: DecepticonCobra
Posted by: ninjakenzen
I agree, if somehow Eric Nylund had a direct involvement in the actual story department of the in-game Halo cutscenes, i think most of us will be satisfied from a Canon and Great storytelling point of view.

If Eric Nylund had his way, the entirety of Reach's campaign would have been three missions.

1. Go to Circumference
2. Defend Generator
3. Wander CASTLE Base

So fun. /sarcasm
Or:

1. Training
- The obstacle course and boot camp (tutorial missions)
- The forest mission where the trainees steal a pelican
- The training mission against Tango Company

2. Initial Deployment
- Mission to capture Colonel Watts at the rebel asteroid base

3. The Covenant War
- MJOLNIR introduction
- The Battle of Chi Ceti
- The Battle of Jericho VII
- The Battle of Sigma Octanus IV
- The Fall of Reach, obviously

Everything leading up the Covenant war would be for the sake of character development. Cutscenes would include Halsey's meeting with John, candidate abductions, conscription, Blue Team origins (the obstacle course), augmentation, augmentation washouts' funeral, Sam's death, etc.

There's plenty of opportunities leading up to the war to make the player actually care about the characters, and hell, I didn't even mention in-game dialogue.

9 missions? Sounds like a Halo game to me. There's also no reason not to include missions where you play as other Spartans; the idea is to make their deaths tragic.



^ this makes me sad to think about what could have been.

  • 03.01.2011 11:46 AM PDT

Since they decided to alter existing canon, they could've just...made noble team spartan-IIs, and have them more involved with the rest of the spartans/plot. there are easily 6 unused spartan-IIs that they could've used.

They take 6 of the spartans that were originally in red team and make them noble team. It could open up similarly, noble team is on reach, the com goes offline, they investigate blah blah. They neutralize the covenant scouting party thanks to Jorges sacrifice. However, the "real fleet" does not arrive instantly, there is a slight lull. Since the covenant know about reach, humanity knows that their time is running out, so they organize operation red flag. There is a scene where all the admiralty (including lord hood) plus keyes and halsey meet to devise the plan in some grand meeting room on reach. Noble team joins the rest the spartan-IIs aboard the pillar of autumn to start the mission, because they know that if they dont do something crazy and desperate now, reach and eventually earth is doomed. So they formulate operation red flag and their attempt to capture a prophet to use as a hostage, because they don't know when the whole covenant fleet will arrive, so they gotta hurry. They assume it will be a week or two because that's how long slipspace travel takes but...

While aboard the POA, preparing to slip into covenant territory, the entire fleet of particular justice warps to reach. Turns out the covenant fleet found what they wanted with the scouting party noble team was fighting earlier(forerunner artifacts) and they had already set the fleet to reach to recover them and burn the humans.

So the real fleet arrives on august 15th, just like in the game. Now, noble team drops to the planet with the rest of red team just like in the books. Once they land noble team splits up from red team and does pretty much the exact same stuff they do in game. The "real" fight lasts 2 weeks just like in the game. Obviously red team and blue team would be fighting the full 2 weeks vs the 1 day they fought in the book, so they wouldn't all die the first day.

That makes noble team feel a hell of a lot more important already since they have a connection to master chief, captain keyes, cortana and 16 other spartans.

In dr halseys journey it is noted that on aug 27th, right in the middle of the battle for reach, the spartans meet dr halsey to discuss the state of things. They talk about operation red flag and such. They discuss how desparate the situation is. Note that this is before halsey discovers that the artifact the covenant are looking for contains the coordinates to halo. This could be used to set up the hopelessness and desperation. They have no plan and reach is going to be turned to glass in a matter of days. everyone more or less thinks they are all doomed.

So after parting ways you partake in levels "the package" and "pillar of autumn". It is revealed that the main inspiration for the covenant attacking reach was to get the data that dr halsey and cortana manage to get from the artifact. As spartan-IIs, noble team already know who cortana and dr. halsey are and you know just how important her discovery is: it is a glimmer of hope for the future, even if reach does fall. For the last mission you are to meet with the other spartans at the POA with the package, then you are to go with them to wherever the coordinates lead (halo). Of course the entirety of noble team dies doing their mission and almost all other spartans are (presumed) dead at this point too.

When you reach the POA, the only spartans there to greet you are master chief and linda. Chief tells you that freds team is on their way. But the covenant decide to send waves of enemies after the POA, and in the ensuing battle linda gets severely injured (basically, the injury she received at the end of TFOR is going to happen here instead). Emile dies in the mini-mac.

Keyes says the're out of time. They cant wait any longer and need to get out of there, they can't wait for red team. Chief carries linda body aboard the pelican and being the selfless hero says he will man the cannon (he wants to wait for fred team anyways, even if he knows deep down none of them will make it off the planet). But Noble 6 basically forces chief to let him stay behind, saying "She(cortana) chose you for a reason...I have the gun."

Extremely similar to the current game, but it feels a heck of a lot more connected to the grand story. You feel more important because you have an actual connection to established characters.

Or even...noble 6 could have been a spartan-III still, so through the game he has to prove himself to the "superior" spartan-IIs in noble team. And while most of noble team keep to themselves, emile would be the one to voice how he doesn't like having a "weakling" on their team. And he would be pretty unhappy about cortana choosing noble 6 to carry her over the rest of the team, as he doesn't consider 6 worthy to carry master chiefs "girl" (master chief of course being someone all spartans look up to). But in the end they all are happy to sacrifice themselves for noble 6. Making their deaths, and your character in general more meaningful.

[Edited on 03.01.2011 1:50 PM PST]

  • 03.01.2011 12:01 PM PDT

Weapon of Oppression

Halo 2 was the time I became a halo fan, but after that, I just got more and more bored with multilayer and campaign starting with Halo 3.
I was disappointed, I had hoped that halo reach, being on a new engine and all and not supposedly rushed was going to be fantastic, but it's just..."good".
I wanted to see spartan 2s in action performing acrobatic leaps and improved Ai in allies, and wanted to be part of a WAR, not some small scale pansy skirmishes, somehow destroying tanks with a light anti aircraft gun mounted on a freaking car.

And all I get is a bunch of these random out of place spartan 3s whose portrayals make me question the exact skill level of Noble Team.
I'm ashamed that anyone would even call them Spartans.

  • 03.01.2011 12:51 PM PDT
  •  | 
  • Senior Heroic Member

BLAM!


Posted by: Wazooty
Since they decided to alter existing canon, they could've just...made noble team spartan-IIs, and have them more involved with the rest of the spartans/plot. there are easily 6 unused spartan-IIs that they could've used.

They take 6 of the spartans that were originally in red team and make them noble team. It could open up similarly, noble team is on reach blah blah. They neutralize the covenant scouting party thanks to Jorges sacrifice. However, the "real fleet" does not arrive instantly, there is a slight lull. Since the covenant know about reach, humanity knows their time is running out, so they organize operation red flag. Noble team joins the rest the spartan-IIs aboard the pillar of autumn because they know that if they dont do something crazy and desperate now, reach and eventually earth is doomed. So they formulate operation red flag and their attempt to capture a prophet to use as a hostage. Cuz who knows when the whole covenant fleet will arrive, so they gotta hurry. They assume it will be a week or two because that's how long slipspace travel takes but...

While aboard the POA, preparing to slip into covenant territory, the entire fleet of particular justice warps to reach. Turns out the covenant fleet found what they wanted with the scouting party noble team was fighting earlier(forerunner artifacts) and they had already set the fleet to reach to recover them and burn the humans.

So the real fleet arrives on august 15th, just like in the game. Now, noble team drops to the planet with the rest of red team just like in the books. Once they land noble team splits up from red team and does pretty much the exact same stuff they do in game. The "real" fight lasts 2 weeks just like in the game. Obviously red team and blue team would be fighting the full 2 weeks vs the 1 day they fought in the book.

That makes noble team feel a hell of a lot more important already since they have a connection to master chief, captain keyes, cortana and 16 other spartans.

In dr halseys journey it is noted that on aug 27th, right in the middle of the battle for reach, the spartans meet dr halsey to discuss the state of things. THey talk about operation red flag and such. They discuss how desparate the situation is. Note that this is before halsey discovers the the artifact the covenant are looking for contains the coordinates to halo.

So after parting ways you partake in levels "the package" and "pillar of autumn". As a spartan-II, you already know who cortana and dr halsey is and you know just how important her discovery is. For the last mission you are to meet with the other spartans at the POA with the package, then you are to go with them to wherever the coordinates lead (halo). Of course the entirety of noble team dies doing their mission and almost all other spartans are dead at this point too.

When you reach the POA, the only spartans there to greet you are master chief and linda. Chief tells you that freds team is on their way. But the covenant decide to send waves of enemies after the POA, and int he ensuing battle linda gets severely injured (basically, the injury she received at the end of TFOR is going to happen here instead). Emile dies in the mini-mac.

Keyes says the're out of time. They cant wait any longer and need to get out of there, they can't wait for red team. Noble 6 basically forces chief to let him stay behind.

Extremely similar to the current game, but it feels a heck of a lot more connected to the grand story. You feel more important because you have an actual connection to established characters.


nicely done. would have been so much better like this

  • 03.01.2011 1:15 PM PDT


Posted by: A Puzzled Mind
Jorge was saying "here we go" about the fight, not the Covenant being there -.-

Actually it is you who has no understanding of how the military functions, sometimes a "Zurg Rush" is the best strategy, and the UNSC was moving out for their different assaults on the different Covenant positions, in case you didn't notice when Kat drives off onto the bridge the rest of the army is dividing up too.


To OrderedComa:

What is this crap that you're spewing. Reading your comment makes me want to kill a dozen puppies. Only a fool would have dozens of light armored vehicles in no particular formation rush hardened and well defended enemy positions.

And in case you haven't noticed, Zerg Rushs incurs high casualty rates that lowers morale tremendously. See Russia and China's tactics during WWII and Korea.


For your information that's not what I was saying the UNSC was doing there, I only said that sometimes rushing is the best strategy. As I said in the post, which you apparently misread, their purpose there was not engage that group of Covie ground forces, they were moving out to take out the various Covenant positions such as the AA guns or whatever else they might have set up as defensive positions. You can see this happening as Six's 'Hog and several others split off, if you look the rest of the army is splitting up too, it's not just 3-4 'Hogs plus Six's.

  • 03.01.2011 4:36 PM PDT

I breathe BR, not kidding homie.

looking @ reach

they can set up a quick story of set objectivities, but it seems like they have a harder time going into more detail w/ things, just like character interaction in games, but as well as the universe itself

  • 03.01.2011 4:55 PM PDT
  • gamertag: [none]
  • user homepage:

My only gripe with Reach is that I think Jun should have died in Kat's place. Not because Kat's a woman, or entirely that I hated Jun, I just think that being sniped would have been a more fitting death for a sniper.

  • 03.01.2011 10:21 PM PDT


Posted by: SoldierOfAthena
My only gripe with Reach is that I think Jun should have died in Kat's place. Not because Kat's a woman, or entirely that I hated Jun, I just think that being sniped would have been a more fitting death for a sniper.


It certainly would have been a much more ironic death XD

  • 03.02.2011 8:48 AM PDT
  • gamertag: [none]
  • user homepage:

I mean, think about it;

Carter (Leader) - Killed by a leader-like action of self-sacrifice.
Jorge (Heavy Weapons) - Killed by a "bomb"
Emile (CQC) - Killed by a sword
Kat (Tech Specialist) - ...sniped?

Jun (Cooking specialist) - Gets to continue team-sniping Spartans when he decides to waste a sniper rifle shot on a 5m Grunt. :|

  • 03.02.2011 10:09 AM PDT

Loyal Halo fan.
H:CE, H:CE PC, H:2, H:2 Vista, H:3, H:3 ODST, H:Wars, H:Reach

What the most recent games have lacked I think is any sense of dicovery and mistery. That is what truly makes a good Sci-fi story. In Halo CE remember landing on Halo for the first time and discovering the flood. In Halo 2 we discovered more about the Covenents races as well as the Gravemind and that there were more Halos. Halo 3 was the Ark and the final moments of the Human-Covenent War and the Flood.

These were epic, truly epic moments. Halo: ODST had some discovery but there wern't any truly stand out characters as the silent Rookie spent so much time on his own little time was given to the others. All had some personality but not enough to make you truly care.

In Reach you already knew the conclusion, you were going to loose. While Cortana and seeing the Autumm were nice twists, unintresting characters and no new major insights into the Halo universe lead to a boring campaign that just turned into 90% gameplay 10% story which just isn't enough from a series that is renouned for its epic plotlines. It was just a set of objectives with little or no story.

However as long as new ground is now covered in future Halo games I look forward to the new stories, whether the characters be old or new, from 343 Industries.

  • 03.02.2011 10:42 AM PDT

Loyal Halo fan.
H:CE, H:CE PC, H:2, H:2 Vista, H:3, H:3 ODST, H:Wars, H:Reach


Posted by: Primo84
1. Training
- The obstacle course and boot camp (tutorial missions)
- The forest mission where the trainees steal a pelican
- The training mission against Tango Company

2. Initial Deployment
- Mission to capture Colonel Watts at the rebel asteroid base

3. The Covenant War
- MJOLNIR introduction
- The Battle of Chi Ceti
- The Battle of Jericho VII
- The Battle of Sigma Octanus IV
- The Fall of Reach, obviously

Everything leading up the Covenant war would be for the sake of character development. Cutscenes would include Halsey's meeting with John, candidate abductions, conscription, Blue Team origins (the obstacle course), augmentation, augmentation washouts' funeral, Sam's death, etc.

There's plenty of opportunities leading up to the war to make the player actually care about the characters, and hell, I didn't even mention in-game dialogue.

9 missions? Sounds like a Halo game to me. There's also no reason not to include missions where you play as other Spartans; the idea is to make their deaths tragic.

Yes. I would play this.

  • 03.02.2011 10:54 AM PDT

  • Pages:
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • of 3