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  • Subject: I really enjoyed the ViDoc, but the last part made me certain...
Subject: I really enjoyed the ViDoc, but the last part made me certain...

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My excitement for the next Bungie game is 100x greater now that I watched the ViDoc.

Halo will still be my favorite game series/storyline for now, but if what Bungie said about the next game is true...

...then and only then, shall Halo be "shafted".

  • 08.05.2011 8:50 PM PDT

Want to see advanced Halo stats not offered by other Halo stat websites? Check out MetaHalo.com, the stats website I am working on. Reach stats currently in development.

Like BTB? Check out bigteambattle.net!

Addressing the population arguments: Halo is Halo. Halo is supposed to top the charts - that's just how damn good it is. Like the first two games, Halo 3 was amazing. In its effective lifetime, it managed to 'survive' the latest three Call of Duty games. Reach? Reach 'survived' none. I don't think it's a coincidence that Reach is worse than the previous three games and didn't perform nearly as well on the charts.

[Edited on 08.06.2011 5:06 AM PDT]

  • 08.06.2011 5:05 AM PDT

I defy you to find fualt with my signature.

Nup, I liked Reach a lot. Bungie simply didn't just go off the small minority who band together in the forums to complain, versus the large majority who bought Reach, enjoyed it equal to or more than Halo 3, and didn't need to whinge about it in the forums. People feel the need to speak up far more when what they have to say is complaining, versus when people have praise for something. When you enjoy a burger, you don't go online and share how good it was. When it tastes like -blam!-, people will complain to the restaurant, the internet, anyone who'll listen.

Sorry to those who didn't enjoy Reach, but your opinions do not reflect the opinions of most Halo fans.

Population? The xbox was less than 2 years old at Halo 3's launch. Halo 3 was the biggest fish in the pond. In 2010, Halo had lost its market share due to the massive influx of games that occurred when the xbox became THE dominant online gaming platform.

  • 08.06.2011 5:46 AM PDT


Posted by: Gleebl
What angered me the most was when they went on about how great ODST was. That was the most boring, shortest and most obvious money grab I've ever played.
ODST is greatness.

  • 08.06.2011 5:51 AM PDT

"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit,
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."
-Omar Khayyám-


Posted by: Silver Sol Los

Posted by: I POWN U 666
Halo Reach is a bad game
1. Multiplayer took skill away from high ranks.
2. Campaign was ok but the characters were way to shallow.
3. It's graphics didnt feel like a halo I grew up on halo 2 (still the best with halo ce as runner up) the graphics just didnt feel right on reach i liked Halo ce, halo 2, halo 3, and halo 3 ODST graphics a lot more.
4. The only reason why i like it is because the company that brought me into gaming made it.
Halo 4 is going to be a -Blam-ing joke.


1.Bungie's Trueskill development stopped several methods of unfair gameplay;i.e Deranking. You also got paired up with smilarly skilled players,and unless you were having a brutally suckish day online,you usually end up with similar results at endgame.

2. Characters were too shallow? They weren't exactly meant to be happy-loving hippies. This was Reach,the key military planet of the UNSC's armada. Their characters were designed to be human,vunerable people. Not invincible super-soldiers like the MC. Sure,we didn't get much personalisation to like them,but it showed us that Spartan's aren't invincible. The only one who seemed Human to me was Jorge,the SII.

3. Graphics didn't feel like a Halo? The Bungie team could have easily used the Halo 3 engine and do nothing. But as I said before,this was Reach,a dark time for Humans in the Halo universe. The only way to show the loss and the beauty of Reach was the overhaul of the graphics,making things much darker and grittier than before,but still keeping it perfectly beautiful.

4. Just because the company made it,doesn't mean you have to buy it. Hell,I like Bioware for Dragon Age.But that doesn't mean I'm going to buy Mass Effect. You didn't have to buy Reach if you didn't want to.

The mantle of Halo has been left in very good hands. I can trust Frank O'Connor and the rest of 343i to make a brilliant trilogy for MC in Halo.


1) I agree with you there. I was pretty mad with Halo 3, albeit was a great game, but if you lost you got deranked. I was glad that Bungie helped rectified the deranking problem with Reach's multiplayer setup.
2)The characters weren't shallow at all. If you read the books you would realize that Ackerson had his Spartan-III's have a sort of pessimist view of reality. "They were made to die, as long as they completed their mission." Ackerson wanted soldiers who would follow his orders unquestionally even to the point of a sure death. The only "human" spartan was Jorge and that was because he was a Spartan-II.
3) I agree also. Bungie has stated that with Halo: Reach "from the beginning you know the end." They meant that you know Reach will fall to the Covenant, you know that most if not all spartans will die. Let's go out with a bang. That was their goal, in my opinion, that Bungie wanted to do with Reach. Send Halo out with a bang. Boy howdy did they send Halo out with a bang. Reach was designed from the get go to be the Halo everybody played FIRST. If you were new to the franchise and wanted to follow the story line, play Reach then CE, etc.
4)I also agree here. Bungie made the Halo Franchise, but to me it was just another great franchise they made. I was fan before Halo. Bungie made Pathways into Darkness and I LOVED that game. They followed it up with the Marathon Franchise and again, I LOVED it. Myth, I remember playing with my family and oni was pretty cool.

The thing is, Bungie keeps making better game franchise than their previous one. PiD was good, Marathon was better. Marathon was great, Myth was greater. Myth was pretty awesome, Oni(though incomplete) was the -blam!-. Oni was cool, Halo was cooler. If Bungie follows their pattern up to now, believe me they will, "Tiger" will be off the charts in terms of awesomeness. So, the only thing left is...Per Audacia Ad Astra

  • 08.06.2011 7:00 AM PDT

I'm Quadrophenic...


____________(˜˜˜||˜˜˜˜||˜˜˜˜˜)_∏______
l | --------____.`=====.-.~:________\___|================[oo]
|_|||___/___/_/~```|_|_|_|``(o)----------<)


Posted by: OniLink147
I agree with what Bungie was saying about Reach...

But honestly if you're going to talk about population there wasn't much competition with 2 or 3. Halo 2 I can't think of any. Halo 3 only had to worry about CoD 4 and Gears of War. Reach has to deal with CoD still plus the fact that every single game has an online multiplayer now. If Bungie just made it Halo 3.5 then it most likely wouldn't have as many players as Reach does now. They needed to change or add something to keep the series from stagnating.


He hit the freekin nail on the head with this one. Bungie is a business guys, you gotta remember that. And yeah, they are on a very personal level with their fans, but we don't win every battle. My guess is there were certain stipulations on things the game could have, and how close to the transfer to Micr$oft changes could be made to the game. Now we get to -blam!- at them. The days of compromise are over my friends

  • 08.06.2011 11:04 AM PDT
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Firstly i would like to say that all your comments were very good and supportive and calm apart from the idiot that said "reachtard" but i wont waste my time getting into that.

alot of you seem to focus on the fact that bungie made an imperfect game with reach. i do agree on a small part of this.

But ... i would like to say that while many of you think it was imperfect i think that it was very well executed. its not easy to make a game like reach and i think alot of you underestimated that. To make a game like reach where the campaign was visually mind blowing and the story was captivating and inspiring and then also have to do the whole multiplayer over again with the armour abilitys and the different armour attachments that you get is no mean feat i feel that if any other games company did this i dont think reach would have been the game it was.
so thats how i feel about it thankyou for listening.
i am sad however that bungie are now moving on from halo but i believe the last halo game is going to be one mind blowing awe-inspiring and shocking story... i reckon they are gonna go out with a bang and maybe a few emotional parts. so i think we can all agree that we are looking forward to the last halo game ever...

  • 08.06.2011 11:16 AM PDT
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I do not appreciate B.Net Group solicitation. If you ignore this and send me an invitation anyway, I will block communications with you.

Halo 2 was the "we screwed up" focus of the ViDoc, and even then they concluded that, in the end, they "did it". We all know how monumental a letdown that game was in the Campaign department and why.

They weren't about to turn their send-off game into a shabby representation just because it has debatable mechanical problems. Halo 2 was literally a production cluster-schmuck. Reach simply has a number of issues, just as every game has had.

To think they don't know about or even agree with a good portion of them is not only silly, but also inconsequential.

  • 08.06.2011 11:22 AM PDT

Magnum & Sprint.

The problem with Reach isn't bloom, armour abilities, or canon problems. There actually aren't canon problems, if you pay attention to the universe.

The problem with Reach is, quite simply, the weapon sandbox. The following is in terms of weapon sandbox, what the gun does and doesn't do; a weapon's appearance is irrelevant. Power weapons don't really matter, these are the core weapons.
*=Sucks at its role

Role---CE---2---3---R
Long Range - Sniper=Sniper=Sniper=Sniper
Short Range - Shotgun=Shotgun=Shotgun=Shotgun*
Sidearm - NONE=Magnum=Magnum*=NONE
Mid-Long Range - Magnum=BR=BR=Magnum
Mid-Close Range - AR=SMG=SMG=NONE
Mid Range - NONE=NONE=AR=AR*
Mid-Close/Mid/Mid-Long/Long Range - NONE=NONE=NONE=DMR

As you can see, the Reach sanbox's mid and close ranged weapons (including the sidearm) are either terrible, or gone :/

Couple that with the DMR (which wins most anywhere), the Magnum(BR) and Sniper being effective, melees beating anything up close, and grenades being way more powerful, you have long range fights, grenade spamming, and locked melee battles.

These are the only real strategies in Reach:
-DMR x5
-Melee + DMR x1
-Grenade + DMR x1
(The Magnum(BR) may also be used in the player does not have a DMR)
-Melee x2
-Grenade x2
-Power weapons (Rocket/Laser/etc)

And finally, while everyone complains about bloom, weapons have always had slight inaccuracy in previous Halos, especially the Magnum/BR. This is why the BR wasn't usable at long range, like across Standoff, while the DMR (which isn't the same place in the sandbox, but is treated as such) can hit and kill people across Hemorrhage!

The vehicle sandbox being poorer than Halo 3, and almost none of the maps being able to support vehicles at all certainly removes from the Halo feel and diversity of the game as well, but the weapon sandbox's failings are the primary problem with Reach...

  • 08.06.2011 12:18 PM PDT


Posted by: Dream053
They weren't about to turn their send-off game into a shabby representation just because it has debatable mechanical problems. Halo 2 was literally a production cluster-schmuck. Reach simply has a number of issues, just as every game has had.


To sum up Halo Reach's impressive faults as mere "issues" is degrading to all of us who've been subjected to Bungie's crap.

I mean, it's fairly obvious that the AI in Reach is by far the weakest of any non-COD game of recent memory. It's also obvious that the writing was pretty bad as well, as well as the simple campaign level design, the unassuming sanbox, vehicle health mechanics, balancing, aesthetics on all counts (save for weapon scratches), multiplayer level design (a step back from UT1.) And of course it's obvious that in summation these contribute to a pretty terrible experience, only supported by the skinner-box like incentive programs (ie. Credits and Armor.) So to say that ninja-chopping infini-vade elites and super snipers just represent the faults that any game has doesn't assume much of us.

  • 08.06.2011 12:31 PM PDT

Wait, the AI in Reach is weak?

I went back, it's far easier to take down an Elite in the other halo games, but it's tough in Reach because they dodge around. I've seen Generals literally dodge at the last second when I try to splazer them, and NOBODY else was firing at them.

I'd have to say the AI in Reach is better.

[Edited on 08.06.2011 12:45 PM PDT]

  • 08.06.2011 12:33 PM PDT

Yessir, Halo Reach by far in my opinion is the best Halo also, Halo 2 blew, sketchy, spotty campaign, glitch happy players in multiplayer. Reach's campaign was so much more epic and mind blowing. I will agree Veteran in CoD is difficult, but By no means are the AI in Halo reach dumb, Legendary, is no joke soloing reach took me wayyy longer than Black ops and Modern Warfare 1&2. Not to mention I will always go back and play Halo Reach for its Diversity, It's not like CoD, Noble team ftw!

  • 08.06.2011 12:47 PM PDT

I just dont feel a sudden urge to abandon the halo series for the reasons you just listed halo was the game that shaped online gaming and it will stay that way

  • 08.06.2011 1:03 PM PDT


Posted by: DecepticonCobra
Posted by: Gleebl
What angered me the most was when they went on about how great ODST was. That was the most boring, shortest and most obvious money grab I've ever played.

How exactly was it boring?


"Hey, let's force the player to walk across this dark, empty city again and again in order to progress the story line. And how about we give them exactly the same weapons and enemies as the last Halo game, but instead of staging a plot that takes the player across the galaxy, let's chuck 'em in a single city for the entire game? In fact, scrap the whole 'downloadable expansion' idea, let's charge full price!"

  • 08.06.2011 1:31 PM PDT

You guys got that message all wrong. There is flaws in the game but once the flaws are fixed it is there best game yet.

  • 08.06.2011 1:32 PM PDT

Also all the people whining really need to just shut the hell up. IT HAS FLAWS BUT IT'S STILL A GOOD GAME. If you don't like this game for whatever reason shut up, stop playing and stop your -blam!-ing.

  • 08.06.2011 1:37 PM PDT


Posted by: Gleebl

Posted by: DecepticonCobra
Posted by: Gleebl
What angered me the most was when they went on about how great ODST was. That was the most boring, shortest and most obvious money grab I've ever played.

How exactly was it boring?


"Hey, let's force the player to walk across this dark, empty city again and again in order to progress the story line. And how about we give them exactly the same weapons and enemies as the last Halo game, but instead of staging a plot that takes the player across the galaxy, let's chuck 'em in a single city for the entire game? In fact, scrap the whole 'downloadable expansion' idea, let's charge full price!"


A: Why does a campaign have to spawn multiple planets to be good? I mean, Let's see.. CE was on a grand total of ONE LOCATION.
B: Price was not bungie's choice, AT -blam!- ALL.

  • 08.06.2011 1:48 PM PDT

Signatures are for squares.


Posted by: Cmdr DaeFaron

Posted by: Gleebl

Posted by: DecepticonCobra
Posted by: Gleebl
What angered me the most was when they went on about how great ODST was. That was the most boring, shortest and most obvious money grab I've ever played.

How exactly was it boring?


"Hey, let's force the player to walk across this dark, empty city again and again in order to progress the story line. And how about we give them exactly the same weapons and enemies as the last Halo game, but instead of staging a plot that takes the player across the galaxy, let's chuck 'em in a single city for the entire game? In fact, scrap the whole 'downloadable expansion' idea, let's charge full price!"


A: Why does a campaign have to spawn multiple planets to be good? I mean, Let's see.. CE was on a grand total of ONE LOCATION.


3 Locations*

-Pillar of Autumn
-Halo
-Truth & Reconciliation.

  • 08.06.2011 1:50 PM PDT

General of The Irish Punks


Posted by: privet caboose

Posted by: Cmdr DaeFaron

Posted by: Gleebl

Posted by: DecepticonCobra
Posted by: Gleebl
What angered me the most was when they went on about how great ODST was. That was the most boring, shortest and most obvious money grab I've ever played.

How exactly was it boring?


"Hey, let's force the player to walk across this dark, empty city again and again in order to progress the story line. And how about we give them exactly the same weapons and enemies as the last Halo game, but instead of staging a plot that takes the player across the galaxy, let's chuck 'em in a single city for the entire game? In fact, scrap the whole 'downloadable expansion' idea, let's charge full price!"


A: Why does a campaign have to spawn multiple planets to be good? I mean, Let's see.. CE was on a grand total of ONE LOCATION.


3 Locations*

-Pillar of Autumn
-Halo
-Truth & Reconciliation.


Technically the PoA and Truth & Reconciliation are ships that were located ON Halo, except for the first level of campaign.

[Edited on 08.06.2011 1:56 PM PDT]

  • 08.06.2011 1:54 PM PDT

Been a Bungie fan since the days of Myth TFL.

Reach's performance in the market can be attributed to any number of factors, not the least of which is intense competition - much more intense than previous Halos.

But it is clear that 343 was already looking to the next 2 Halo games before Reach hit the shelves... Reach is a game that was never meant to be heavily supported after launch.

For instance, look at the timing of the title update. You and I both know Bungie could have made a title update that addressed the communities needs... but it was never theirs to make. Theydid what they could through playlist management, but the title update was not theirs to develop.

I still think Reach is the best halo yet.

  • 08.06.2011 1:56 PM PDT


Posted by: Sarg GoldIeaf

Posted by: privet caboose
3 Locations*

-Pillar of Autumn
-Halo
-Truth & Reconciliation.


Technically the PoA and Truth & Reconciliation are ships that were located ON Halo, except for the first level of campaign.


Exactly my point.

First level: In orbit
most of campaign: On Halo.
Truth and Reconciliation: Hovering not far above halo.

Basically the PoA(first mission) and T&R mission can be considered just like for ODST going underground, and into the wildlife reserve.

  • 08.06.2011 1:59 PM PDT


Posted by: privet caboose

Posted by: Cmdr DaeFaron

Posted by: Gleebl

Posted by: DecepticonCobra
Posted by: Gleebl
What angered me the most was when they went on about how great ODST was. That was the most boring, shortest and most obvious money grab I've ever played.

How exactly was it boring?


"Hey, let's force the player to walk across this dark, empty city again and again in order to progress the story line. And how about we give them exactly the same weapons and enemies as the last Halo game, but instead of staging a plot that takes the player across the galaxy, let's chuck 'em in a single city for the entire game? In fact, scrap the whole 'downloadable expansion' idea, let's charge full price!"


A: Why does a campaign have to spawn multiple planets to be good? I mean, Let's see.. CE was on a grand total of ONE LOCATION.


3 Locations*

-Pillar of Autumn
-Halo
-Truth & Reconciliation.


Uh, CE took place across multiple continents on Halo, with a variety of locations and environments. ODST was all in the same City.

  • 08.06.2011 2:31 PM PDT

But did it go across the galaxy? (as the guy implied, ODST campaign sucked because it was all on a single planet.)

  • 08.06.2011 3:00 PM PDT

Fight to the end, and give it your all.

Ehh I liked Reach personally.

  • 08.06.2011 3:09 PM PDT


Posted by: Cmdr DaeFaron
But did it go across the galaxy? (as the guy implied, ODST campaign sucked because it was all on a single planet.)


I said it was boring because it all took place in the same city, meaning everything looked the same. I was comparing it to Halo 3 when I mentioned Galaxies, seeing as you'd think Bungie would try to top their previous efforts, but any kind of variation, a la CE, would have been appreciated.

  • 08.06.2011 3:21 PM PDT