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- Exalted Mythic Member
Posted by: Kira Onime
This "latch key" or black ops mission was obviously very important, "the fate of human kind laying on it".... why should I have to either, grab the higher version of the game, or visit a 3rd party website to even know what the hell I'm doing.
I don't know about you, but this is quite frankly stupid.
It is free, as you alluded to, to look it up. The information is all available, but considering the fact it needed a whole book to clarify it, perhaps they didn't have time to include it into the game. I enjoyed the read the journal provided. If you didn't, well, that's your opinion.
Posted by: Kira Onime
Oh right yeah, we were fight against the covenant "invasion".
When did it start again? Other than the cinematic at the beginning of ToTS, I don't recall fighting anything worthy of being called an "invasion force".
They began their own serious invasion force during Nightfall, remember? You recon the enemy, learn they are massing an army on Reach, then you try to fight them off. Before that you get a command center going in Sword Base, which the covies re-take over during your space efforts.
Posted by: Kira Onime
But then we do know they're there and we keep on fighting "strike forces" at best.
And I agree that the game could have used more major battles. I said that in my initial post.
Posted by: Kira Onime
ODST, less game development time, 10x better relation with the characters than Reach could ever hope for.
ODST's campaign was terrible. You played as a silent guy walking through the streets, or as people who you had seen for 10 seconds beforehand in a couple cutscenes. Moreover, I don't recall any of the information learned through ODST being mentioned in either Halo 2 or 3, so the campaign is essentially irrelevant. I'll further add that, for a bunch of highly trained soldiers who supposedly go through Hell in their training, most of them are whiny smartasses who seem as green as grass throughout the game.
Posted by: Kira Onime
Reach's campaign is poor at best.
It tried to jump along the memories of iconic missions on the previous games, but fell right on it's face.
That's your opinion. I disagree. I think it could have used better battles, but I enjoyed the campaign a lot, especially the last mission. I think The Pillar of Autumn was one of the best campaign missions in Halo's franchise to date.
Posted by: ajw34307She states that Cortana is split into two fragments, yes (one aboard the Autumn, the other under SWORD Base) but there is absolutely no explanation about the Latchkey Artefact at all. It can't be ANYTHING to do with the Halo Rings because humanity knew absolutely nothing about them until Captain keyes was rescued from the Truth and Reconciliation and it can't have been anything to do with getting to Installation 04 becaue Cortana already had the coordinates from Sigma Octanus IV weeks before the battle of Reach.
How can it not be anything to do with the Halo rings when it's a forerunner artifact? The artifact itself is data of the rings which is then delivered to the PoA's Cortana and is used to guide the jump, as far as I'm aware. They can receive coordinates without information easily.
Posted by: ajw34307
The Latchkey was just an unnecessary plot device designed to shoehorn in Haley, Cortana, Keyes and the Autumn in a futile effort to try to make Noble Team out to be more important than they actually were.
You mean to say that the plot device meant to make the story was an unnecessary piece in making the story? If you don't like what the story was about, fine, that's your opinion. I happened to enjoy it, however. There's no debate there. Just agree to disagree.
Posted by: ajw34307
But that's no good at all. Bungie just went and stuck some plot device in the game in the last 30 minutes and claimed that THIS is what Noble Team is fighting for, yet even that loathesome -blam!- Carter expresses nothing but confusion at this because there was absolutely no build-up for this other than a vague mention at the end of ONI SWORD Base.
They didn't just "go in and stick in" some device. Do you know how story developments work? They couldn't have just gone in and added this in in the final days. You're talking about level designs, dialogue, story chronolgies, etc. The game was designed to flow as is from start to finish when the story was drawn up long before the game came together.
Posted by: ajw34307
Again, it CAN'T have been anything to do with Halo because Cortana already had the coordinates. She admits herself that using them was a 'last-resort' option to get away from the Covenant.
She receives the info from Noble 6's information that he delivers.
Posted by: ajw34307
Then why on earth are they introducing completely NEW characters for their LAST game a PROTAGONISTS if they can't adequately develop them?
Because they are done with Master Chief at this point, and making one final Halo game. That's a developer choice. If you don't like that, fine, but that doesn't mean that the campaign is going to suck for everybody.
Posted by: ajw34307
The only important characters are Six, Jorge and Kat - the rest of the game would have made absolutely no difference without Carter, Jun and Emile. They never do anything important in the game and they're absolutely horrid characters themselves.
They discover the Covenant, they recon the size, they help a counter attack into the heart of their army, they take down a supercarrier, they realize they are losing and help rescue as many people as they can, then they find important information and deliver it to allow the discovery/destruction of Halo.
Posted by: ajw34307
Most of the time Noble Team aren't even there, they're either voice on a radio or just totally absent.
Reach is a big planet which is being attacked all over. It's likely they were needed elsewhere.
Posted by: ajw34307
There's no build-up for me to care. If Bungie had actually put any effort into the character development, we'd be seeing something along the lines of a close bond between Kat and Six because they're both from Beta Company and grew up together, but juxtapose that with her fierce loyalty to Carter and then have some kind of moment in the game where she has to choose between saving you or Carter -
There was plenty of character buildup. The "Deliver hope" trailer shows you what you have to live up to. You even enter the game knowing that nobody really wants you there, and you are given attitude for some time. Emile gets built up as a disgruntled person who's seen too much death, Jorge is shown to be a softer person, etc.
Posted by: ajw34307
by taking this action out of the hands of the player and showing a build-up of their characters through flashbacks (like the flawless narrative of ODST) then we'd actually be emotionally involved with the characters. But we're not because Reach doesn't have any characters, they're all sterile and one-dimensional.
Oh, are you talking about the game where the main character is a silent, unrelatable nobody from nowhere? And where all the characters are whiny brats who act more like a bunch of high school students than hardned veterans?
Posted by: ajw34307
Better yet, since Bungie were so focused on making a "human story" then why not make the protagonists ODSTs? Why not have Buck as the main protagonist and have him live out the events of the battle of Reach, not only making the main series come full circle but also the notoriously underrated ODST side-story too.
It's your opinion that that decision would have gone better. Others may agree, others may not. Focusing on "what if"s won't change the story now though. If they did that, there's no guarantee it would have been any better at all.
Posted by: ajw34307
They had a full 3 year development cycle for this game, the same amount of time that they had for Halo 3. The final product wasn't nearly as close to the quality of Halo 3 at all in terms of both campaign, story, characters and multiplayer.
Halo 3 had characters built up for two prior games, a multiplayer that was built up over two prior games, and a lot of hype over it.
Reach was a branch into a different direction which Bungie took knowing that they were about to leave their franchise behind. They made new characters, a new multiplayer, and a new twist on it. They probably could have done even more, were they not about to send everything over to 343. That's why they never gave a TU, why they made new characters, and why they made a standalone game. Bungie did all they could for the title while they had it. They made new playlists, updated all the specs they could, and stuck with the community for a while. It was all on borrowed time though.
Posted by: ajw34307
ODST was done in just over 8 months, in this time Bungie crafted the most sophisticated story in the Halo series through their inspiration and reference to classical literature like Dante's Divine Comedy and more modern noir films. The characters were very well done, the dialogue was cheesy as -blam!- at times but I ACTUALLY CARED about the characters and they masterfully juxtaposed the main storyline with Sadie's Story.
In 8 months, they managed to do this and Firefight. If ODST were a full game, Bungie would have had 2 years and 4 months left.
And again, that's your opinion. I played that game and didn't enjoy the story much at all. I thought the characters flat, boring, and childish and I definitely prefer playing through Reach to that.