By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe.
Posted by: Tartan 118
Posted by: ajw34307
This is one of the many problems with this game, it relies way too heavily on the originals to bring about that nostalgic feeling to keep the players involved. But, like the Star Wars prequels, this attempt just falls flat on its face.
Compare 'Nightfall' to 'The Truth and Reconciliation'. The former can be finished SLASO in less than 5 minutes because you can just run past everyone; it's almost insulting that they used T&R as the basis for this level because T&R is a mission I consider to be perfect, or at least somewhere close to perfect. You get to assault the Covenant at your own pace in your own way, you can actually get to the ship without being spotted at all but you still have to kill all the enemies. There's a lot of enjoyment in seeing Grunts panic and run for their lives when you headshot their commanding Elite while in active camouflage, the dsorderly nature of the Covenant's underlings adds a lot of entertainment value when you can feel like you're in control of the situation.
But Nightfall? You're discovered about a second after you fire a shot, then you've got Jun shooting enemies when you don't want him to and even shooting you. There's absolutely no enjoyment in Nightfall other than a few assassinations you can make, frankly I don't see why anyone would want to play through the whole level and not skip through it in 5 minutes.
And what ultimate effect does this mission even have on the story as a whole? There's nothing at risk in this mission other than revealing your position to the Covenant... great, I feel so pumped about this already. In T&R, you're assaulting the ship for a purpose - there is something extremely valuable at risk in this mission, Captain Keyes. He's the leader, without him you're just a scattered and disorganised force. And upon releasing him from Covenant captivity, you then progress further into the story because you learn that Halo is some kind of weapon and the Covenant plan to use it against humanity. There's the tone of danger as a result of all the build-up throughout the mission, this is totally absent in Nightfall, and indeed about 85% of Reach's campaign.
/rant
I just remembered to look at this thread again. And well put. For me, actually boarding the ship was half of the fun of Truth and Reccy, ploughing through this beautifully designed architecture with any amount of danger potentially lurking around the corner in the heart of the enemy behemoth.
Indeed. Another point I'd like to raise that your post has reminded me of is the sounds of Halo CE, specifically the Ambient Wonder track that plays when you enter the T&R. This kind of ethereal music creates an atmosphere of mystery and makes you realise that you are in a completely ALIEN environment with no understanding of the curved purple corridors and strange holographic panels.
Reach never did this sort of thing, it was way too focused on the action instead of the ambience and wonder (pun 100% intended). The action itself was pretty boring since you were stuck in small corridors and had a grand total of 3 rooms to walk around (the first room, the hangar and the bridge) whereas in T&R there were over a dozen places you could visit.
Just more fuel for the fire. :/