- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
It seems like many people have only seen small one-minute or even ten-second clips of the demo. People who watched the entire demo from beginning to end will know that the demo less than wowed the audience. Everyone was cheering at first but that cheering died very quickly and reminded me of the crowd I was with on the opening days of Episode One and Matrix Reloaded--disappointment, letdown, despite the fact that the crowd wanted to love what was shown. By the end of each show, it required a combination of fanaticism, obligation, and will power to applaud, in hopes of offsetting the actual disappointment of the display.
Also, many people have claimed that the demo did not have all the effects turned on. This may well be true, but how do you know, and how much do you know? Do you know exactly what the effects will be like in the final retail copy of the game? I doubt even anyone at Bungie knows that. In other words, it's a moot point. The point is that what was shown was what was shown. And based on what was shown, criticisms can be made. Some of the people here seem to be praising the graphics in hopes and beliefs that they will be better than what was shown, but that's like trying to argue against the reality with wishful thinking regarding the future. No, wait, that's exactly what it is.
Rockets seem to be a big issue here, so let me illustrate my point:
In Halo, it was often the case in Blook Gulch that a flag-carrying warthog would be madly dashing across the hills and mounds towards home base, and a player would find himself as the last line of defense, having picked up the rocket launcher, and dropping whatever he was doing or where he was going because his team shouted "they're getting away with the flag!" The player, if fortunate, would then fire a rocket some thirty meters away, coinciding its impact with the path of the fleeing warthog. Things fly up and about, and the flag is hopefully returned. This is a moment of joy that will become cheaper in value if not effect in Halo 2 with homing rockets. Being able to lock on just by having the reticule over the target for the briefest of moments is too easy.
Do not get me wrong--I LIKE the idea of homing rockets, as it gives the rocket launcher added ultility--namely, it become useful at longer ranges. But I feel there should be a lock-on time, especially since it's so easy to track things at long ranges anyway. At short range, most players probably wouldn't have to use the lock-on mechanism anyway. At it is, a player can just pick up a rocket launcher, zoom in, lock on, and release a salvo that's got a good chance to hit all within a second. I think that's unfair for the target that's so far away, which didn't even have any warning of the incoming doom.
I personally think that this can be alleviated perhaps if the warthog or vehicle being locked onto had a warning siren which signalled to the driver the precarious position it was in. This would also alleviate the disadvantage of slower vehicles without boosting abilities, who have no chance of dodging explosions that track. As far as I can tell, however, from every hands-on preview of the game I've read, no such indicator of being locked onto was in the demo.
Finall, to respond to the poster who clearly could not recognize sarcasm where it existed regarding my criticism towards the plsma sword's new look, I was trying to express the following:
1. That in my personal opinion, the swords looked better in Halo as actually appearing to be composed of plasma. No one probably cares about this point, since it's my opinion, and I don't expect anyone to. Clearly, others who must criticize my opinion think otherwise, or they wouldn't give a damn to begin with.
2. The lightning spark effects in the sword are visible, but aren't exactly wowing nor do they stand out. The plasma sword from the first Halo stood out, from any distance. From the 2003 demo, those things looked even better as they were no longer static plasma blue, but violet and even ominous blackish--that is, the rippling effects in the 2003 demo were an improvement upon the original design of the plasma sword in Halo.
New points I would like to make about the new plasma sword look:
3. Don't tell me that ultimately, graphics don't matter. Graphics do matter, or people wouldn't buy Playstation 2's or Gamecubes. Those systems primarily improve upon their predecessors graphically, and that's it. The Xbox has no predecessor, yet touted online play from the beginning, a hard drive for easier data management, and in conjunction with that point, ease of development in general. That dease of development fosters better graphics, so why would developers taqke advantage of those graphical possibilites if graphics did not matter? Why doesn't Halo 2 use the same engine as the first Halo, why does it bother to redo graphcis at all? WHY THEN, DID THE LOOK OF THE PLSAMA SWORD CHANGE? Graphics do much to immerse a gamer, or distract him, or even disgust him. I know people would like to believe that they are hardcore and that if they were offered, say, Resident Evil in its original Playstation form or the new Gamecube form, that they'd just flip a coin since "graphics don't matter," but I think that the reality is that humans are human, and appreciate artistic quality, and would rather play the same game in its more beautiful or more fitting form. HOWEVER, that is not the point I am trying to make about the plasma sword's look, technically or even artistically. It's about the feeling the player gets wielding the sword, the experience--the adrenaline rush of picking that bad boy up. That is why I personally feel that I personally would be personally more pumped up by picking up a glowing rippling blade that lookds like it cuts through the very core of your livelihood than I personally would with a solid crystalline edge. Personally. Please, disagreement is fine and expected, but don't spin this into a graphics-whore-or-not argument. That's just petty and reflects a poor contrasting argumentative standpoint.
4. The handle not being visible is a valid argument against having the weapon unignited. But two things could be done about this to give players who want the lightsaber-growing-out-of-the-handle effect to be implemented. Heck, Bungie could say to hell with reason and have the thing ignited when unarmed by a player in its holding place or on the ground, and then have it unignite after a player has picked it up and put it away, then ignite it when the palyer takes it back out. This doesn't have to strictly make sense. Seargent Johnson died fifty times in Halo, and yet he was back in last year's demo. I cheered, laughed and even cried a little--I was that glad he was back.
Or, since something as tiny as a pistol was visible in Halo, perhaps the handle could be larger than we think it is, and could be visible after all. Given that it's such a valuable weapon, given the overhead flying pattern of Zanzibar shown in this year's demo, that had its own secret weapon encave for the weapon, that could only be accessed by destroying a semi-secret piece fo the environment to create a bridge path to it, I'd say that fully visible or not, Bungie is clearly capable of making is location easy to spot. Hell, you could have a flag waving with the words "boomstick here" imprinted on it. And just for the narrow one-track minded blockheads who want to argue as if I am suggesting some of these ideas seriously, I would like to tell them: "grow up."
In other words, with regards to the plasma sword's look, I don't like it becuase I feel it looks dinkier, and I personally would not get the same rush out of it as I would if it were ignited again.
Tangent: gameplay and gameplay mechanics are two different things. The former is a combination of the latter, sound, graphics, and design. It is a definition of experience, and while I'm sure the people who would like to tell themselves that they are the manifestation of the misguided term "hardcore" would like to believe that that is not how the experience SHOULD be definied; that it should equal the latter and nothing more or less, I feel that the difference exists, and is analogous to say, the rules of a poker game and the actual experience of the game, which changes based on the setting in which the game takes place, the players involved, whether or not drinks are served, etc. To say nothing of how each player's individual input (yes, game experiences are defined by more than the developer's inputs, at least half the game is the player's way to receiving the game, which, for fanboys, is already predetermined half the time) affects the end-result experience as well.
And please don't talk to me about how this demo is not the final version. I know that--people who have to play that tune like a broken record clearly believe they know how Bungie is going to build the game when they do not. Rhetoric about Bungie's credentials are redundant--everyone's at least played Halo here, and we wouldn't care that the game has some criticism going for it if we didn't care about the game in the first place. And we wouldn't care about the game if we didn't already expect it to be good. Finally, we would not expect the game to be good if we did not respect the developer--exhalt it, even.
I believe that the original poster of this topic posted his opinions, but only the ones that were constructive or meaningful. We all have opinions about everything, but he focused on his gripes about the reload animation, homing rockets, and the plasma sword look. At any rate, if there was no meaning to the original post, why do any of you vicious broken record one-lining anti-criticizers even care? If you are so insecure as to the opinions of others, why don't you go to some Sony or Killzone board and make your dud responses there? This is Bungie's board, of course we all want the best for Halo 2. Try to keep that in mind.