O Lawd

I fear that Halo is taking a step in the Call of Duty direction.  Cranking out 1 new Halo game almost every year.  Sacrificing product quality for quantity of week 1 and 2 sales.

Id prefer waiting 2-3 years and have a spectacular Halo game than waiting 12 months and having a game with a rushed storyline and a MP experience that feels like the previous but with 3 new guns, a balance patch, and 4 new maps.

But 2012 to 2014 is two years. Sure, there are some spin-offs, but the main series is always a few years apart. 2001, 2004, 2007, (does ODST count? 2009), 2010, 2012.

Nocbl2 wrote:As in have both the Plasma Rifle and the SMG?

I guess that the Plasma Rifle and the SMG of Halo 2 were fairly close, but Halo 4 seemed to take that similarity up to eleven. The only reason I can think of for eliminating the plasma rifle in favor of the Storm Rifle is to give it a 'long gun' aesthetic to match its counterparts in the Human and Covenant arsenal.

Nocbl2 wrote: Also, it makes sense in terms of the story to have the same classes of weapons for each race because finding a human SMG in a 9,000,000 Forerunner ship is not going to happen.

You mean gameplay, not story.

As for walking around in a Forerunner ship, why NOT force us to work with odd Forerunner weapons?

CivBase wrote:I thought Halo 4's story was decent but rushed

It's salvageable, much in the same way that Halo Wars is salvageable. The problem is, the writing team behind 343i is... not nearly Bungie's caliber. Not even within artillery range of that milestone.

At the GDC, Josh Holmes was doing a postmortem of Halo 4, and he remarked that the writing team was surprised that people did't 'get' the Didact's motivation. And I quote, "He's a badass alien that wants to destroy Humanity".

Alright, I may not be a professional writer, but I can see the problem with that sentence right away. It contains identity, it contains intent, but it doesn't contain motivation.

What's the Didact's motivation? Why is he a villain? Why is he a completely different character from the books? Oh, you have to read Silentium to understand, which was released five months after Halo 4.

*shrugs*

The answer: He's insane. There is no real motivation. And the insanity is also why he went with a plan as bugnuts as composing humans to create the Promethean Knights.

CivBase wrote:(get rid of the spartans)

IMHO, a fourth generation of Spartans shouldn't have been done for years yet to come. Both in-universe and in real life.

CivBase wrote:the gunplay was a bit of a step down but salvageable (bring back dual wielding, brute weapons, and make the promethean weapons more interesting)

Dual wielding is something that I'm happy to leave behind, really. Comparing Halo 3 and Halo Reach, I think that dual wielding forced underpowered guns into the sandbox and overshadowed the other legs of the Combat Tripod without offering any benefit. Or maybe I just like my Brute Spikers to be as powerful as an AR. =D

CivBase wrote:and the level design was good but the mission objectives needed vastly improved (there comes a point where moving around from terminal to terminal becomes extremely monotonous).

Just my opinion again, but the levels weren't as good as previous Halo games. Too linear, and it seemed like they were flip-flopping between a badly constructed "Halo's greatest hits" and "Getting keelhauled facefirst across the entire length of a Star Destroyer." Yeah, I wasn't a fan of the new Forerunner architecture.

Also, whoever greenlighted the Mantis and its section has earned my undying loathing.

Ascendant Justice wrote:
Id prefer waiting 2-3 years and have a spectacular Halo game than waiting 12 months and having a game with a rushed storyline and a MP experience that feels like the previous but with 3 new guns, a balance patch, and 4 new maps.

Agreed, but as far as I can tell, the tempo is going to be bi-yearly. H4 was released in November 2012, H5 is probably going to be late fall of 2014.

Would prefer 3 years or so.

Angatar wrote:But 2012 to 2014 is two years. Sure, there are some spin-offs, but the main series is always a few years apart. 2001, 2004, 2007, (does ODST count? 2009), 2010, 2012.

Eh, I don't really count ODST. It's a side project, like Halo Wars and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary.

My point as to the PR was to have the more powerful, slower-firing Plasma Rifle, not the "kind-of-a-medium-range-shield-breaker" weapon, so that the SMG and the PR would be different, and the issue solved.

And no, it makes sense in terms of the story. The human SMG might be better than all of the other weapons and might fit the mission perfectly, but if you're on a really old Forerunner ship all it would have would be Forerunner weapons, thus necessitating that they be at least similar to the SMG (or any other conditional weapon) that they could be used effectively in that environment.

Rasq, while Bungie had good story telling, you pretty much had to throw out any older content to be able to accept the new content haha.

I mean Reach made no sense storyline-wise, and Forward Unto Dawn didn't either. Both were pretty good as isolated stories though.

Nocbl2 wrote:And no, it makes sense in terms of the story. The human SMG might be better than all of the other weapons and might fit the mission perfectly, but if you're on a really old Forerunner ship all it would have would be Forerunner weapons, thus necessitating that they be at least similar to the SMG (or any other conditional weapon) that they could be used effectively in that environment.

Once again, that is gameplay demands, not story demands. If you're stuck on a Forerunner ship and thus confined to Forerunner weapons, you have no say on what environments those weapons would be effective in. The SMG is not the only weapon that is effective in its particular environment, so it stands to reason that it is somewhat unlikely for guns to be exactly paritied, as there are multiple ways to approach each need. The Forerunner might have said "we need a weapon that is really effective at short ranges" and decided to use a flamethrower or an automatic shotgun rather than a high rate-of-fire low accuracy submachine gun.

Rotaretilbo wrote:

Nocbl2 wrote:And no, it makes sense in terms of the story. The human SMG might be better than all of the other weapons and might fit the mission perfectly, but if you're on a really old Forerunner ship all it would have would be Forerunner weapons, thus necessitating that they be at least similar to the SMG (or any other conditional weapon) that they could be used effectively in that environment.

Once again, that is gameplay demands, not story demands. If you're stuck on a Forerunner ship and thus confined to Forerunner weapons, you have no say on what environments those weapons would be effective in. The SMG is not the only weapon that is effective in its particular environment, so it stands to reason that it is somewhat unlikely for guns to be exactly paritied, as there are multiple ways to approach each need. The Forerunner might have said "we need a weapon that is really effective at short ranges" and decided to use a flamethrower or an automatic shotgun rather than a high rate-of-fire low accuracy submachine gun.

Thank you, Rot.

To be honest, I have a hard time connecting the concepts of "Forerunner" and "Standard FPS guns". With ten MILLION years of development, the Forerunner's weapons might not even fit into our conception of what a gun is.

So, how about a gun that is useful at both long and short ranges? I'm thinking of a gun that uses a conical gravity well to accelerate a slug of dense matter to high-hypersonic speeds, functioning as a sniper rifle with a charge-up time. Since the gravity well is uncontained, you have a short-range gravity gun that punts enemies out to medium range or slams them against bulkheads.

Or how about a Sentinel beam? It's functionally an assault rifle with no bloom and no spread. What's wrong with it?

As for 'fitting the mission perfectly', "343 Guilty Spark" was perfectly designed for shotguns, but you didn't get one until the level was half over.

That's because Bungie wanted you to cry during 343 Guilty Spark.

I wasn't specifically speaking to the need for the EXACT replica of every weapon, but one of a similar design. The SMG was really a placeholder example; it could be ANY weapon, and it doesn't have to be a Forerunner ship, but a reasonable situation for the story where a firearm or weapon close to the other firearm or weapon would be needed, i.e. a shotgun, hence the need for the Scattershot.

But, again, that would be a gameplay need, not a story need. Gameplay dictated that they needed weapon parity for Forerunner tech; more specifically, unimaginitive, close-minded, lazy gameplay.

I gotta agree with Rot here... in a million years development I would expect a hyper advanced species to basically have only 1 weapon in their arsenel that can do anything they need done.

the whole gun shape and everything is made entirely because we use a gas chamber to accellerate lttle bits of metal really fast, any weapons NOT doing that could be basically anything

I think so too, but 343 has already gone with the model of weapon parity, likely because the one super weapon would just blow up everything and it wouldn't be diverse or exciting.

and keeping visual similarities is for easier player recognition.

Realistically, forerunners wouldn't even use a trigger system or easy ability to fire. They'd likely have used turret type weapons like predator lol

But that's not very good for an arcade shooter.

speak for yourself, the plasma caster in AvP 2 was a fun weapon to use, in fact that game had some very fun weapons that broke the traditional mold

Nocbl2 wrote:I think so too, but 343 has already gone with the model of weapon parity, likely because the one super weapon would just blow up everything and it wouldn't be diverse or exciting.

I don't know how many times I'm going to have to say this, but again, this is a GAMEPLAY concern, not a STORY concern. They are different. Gameplay is what dictated that have one super amazing weapon wouldn't be diverse and would likely get stale. Lazy gameplay is what dictated that weapon parity would be easier than trying to create a whole new set of weapons that operate in similar capacities without being the same. At no point did story have anything to do with the decision to make the weapons paritied. The story doesn't care if the weapon is fun to play with. The story only wants the weapon to make sense. And as it happens, perfect weapon parity between two completely unrelated cultures almost never makes sense.

look at variations on swords in human culture... such a simple thing with WIDLY varying applications and shapes, and all humans are, well... human


human technology a couple hundred years from now should be vastly inferior and different than a species technology after a million years.

I would argue that initially there wasnt much weapon parallels between even the covenant and humans, yes they are both using GUNS, but the plasma pistol and the human pistol didnt do the same thing, and just look at the needler! THAT was an awesomely different weapon.

Nocbl2 wrote:I wasn't specifically speaking to the need for the EXACT replica of every weapon, but one of a similar design. The SMG was really a placeholder example; it could be ANY weapon, and it doesn't have to be a Forerunner ship, but a reasonable situation for the story where a firearm or weapon close to the other firearm or weapon would be needed, i.e. a shotgun, hence the need for the Scattershot.

So, the Forerunner would have to have a bullet hose with loose accuracy, or a single-shot high damage weapon with loose accuracy, or a semi-automatic/burst fire rifle with zoom, et cetera?
How about a bullet hose with tight accuracy, or a gun that immobilizes targets, or a weapon that locks onto targets and then makes them spontaneously combust?

Also, whoever came up with the idea of Forerunner using a break-action hand loaded shotgun needs to have his science fiction license revoked.

Nocbl2 wrote:I think so too, but 343 has already gone with the model of weapon parity, likely because the one super weapon would just blow up everything and it wouldn't be diverse or exciting.

No, it's because 343i thinks that you're an idiot.

I'm serious. The Promethean Knights originally had a more diverse weapon sandbox. Josh Holmes said that they dropped those weapons in favor of generic shooter guns because players didn't 'get' sci-fi.

KristallNacht wrote:and keeping visual similarities is for easier player recognition.

Yes. That is why the model for the Storm Rifle is so similar to the Carbine, am I right?

Can you tell the difference between them? Or between a Light Rifle and a Binary Rifle? There will be a quiz on this, and it'll be in the middle of a firefight when your shields are popped. Also, good luck selecting the proper weapon when they're clustered together in those crates.

KristallNacht wrote:But that's not very good for an arcade shooter.

Yeah, I've been agreeing with you a lot more recently, but now I think that you're categorizing games just a little too hard.

Rasq'uire'laskar wrote:

KristallNacht wrote:and keeping visual similarities is for easier player recognition.

Yes. That is why the model for the Storm Rifle is so similar to the Carbine, am I right?

Can you tell the difference between them? Or between a Light Rifle and a Binary Rifle? There will be a quiz on this, and it'll be in the middle of a firefight when your shields are popped. Also, good luck selecting the proper weapon when they're clustered together in those crates.

What?

Yes, very easily. I don't think I've ever had issues identifying weapons in Halo 4. I'm pretty sure it even gives you the weapon names.