Heretic: Worthy to be called "Midship Remake?"

I would call Heretic a successful remake.

 

Having not played much Halo 2, but having listened to plenty of teammates who did, Heretic is definitely a successful remake. The biggest differences seem to be solely derived from the differences between Halo 2 and Halo 3, rather than from the map being too different. In fact, the map is hardly different at all.

 

Somewhat off-topic but I believe Valhalla was loosely based off of Blood Gulch as well.

 

Most halo 3 maps are loosely based off of a previous map, but not everyone believes this so take it as you will.

 

I think that some people are a little over dramatic about Blackout's gameplay because it isnt exactly the same to Lockout... It still plays smoothly and is a great map. People flip out over the glass in the middle and some of the small jumps and details missing and thus calling it "the worst map.."

I think that Heretic is good, but I prefer the bouncing bridge in the middle because it was fun.

 

Blackout has spawn issues that make it almost completely unplayable in doubles, and over 4v4 is basically just pure chaos around the BR tower.

There's a lot more mechanically wrong with Blackout than "... the glass in the middle and some of the small jumps and details missing"

 

See, my problem with that isn't the idea that it shares many similarities, its the term "based on" which implies Bungie was trying to make it very, very close but with some twists. Even if they intended it to take inspiration from Blood Gulch, it does so no more than Guardian takes inspiration from Lockout. "Similar to" "related to" "in the same vein as" are all terms I'm perfectly OK with using to describe just about any map's relation to older maps. "Based on" I don't like, because that makes it sound like its going to be Cold Storage or Blackout style remaking.

 

Just because you don't like that term doesn't suddenly make the similarities go away.

How bout in the same vein? Is that good enough?

 

Well its not a total remake. Heretic is Midship, literally. They basically took Midshp and chose "Save New File As..." They were talking about it in the Bungie Podcast, Midship was already a great map, why change it? They smoothed a few edges and redesigned its aesthetics but thats about it.
Bungie has said for previous maps that its not just as simple as porting a map from Halo 2 to Halo 3 but I think they admitted that is what they did for Heretic

 

Spawns are fixable if it were a major dilemma... over 4v4 is chaos because it is a small map- thats like saying that Guardian is bad because you cannot play Squad Battle on it...

 

I like the remake, but the small changes agitate me. Also, the map plays HORRIBLY with AR starts imo. It is certainly a better remake, and I am a fan of them all. I wonder if Bungie will do more. Part of me wants them to, but part of me doesn't. Regardless, I view Heretic as a success. Also, I barely knew the real name. "Midship" ftw.

 

Blackout is pretty good the tower is cool because you can sneek up and assasinate th n0ObZ heretic is fun toO i like the stickies

 

Bungie stated (some where) that no more DLC is coming out for Halo 3. So remakes, unfortunately, will not happen.

Heretic is perfect in my opinion. I don't see any major flaws - It flows fine and is overall a fun map. Bungie was even able to pull off plasma grenade starts. I think its a job well done for Bungie.

 

Spawns are fixable, but map geometry isn't. This is where the doubles spawning issues propogate.

You've played guardian Squad Battle? Because I know I sure haven't. What I have played is 5v5 Blackout and Guardian. On Guardian the play is somewhat chaotic but there's still a flow to it. On Blackout 5v5 90% of all the play takes place in or around BR tower. This is a bottle necking issue that kills flow and hurts the map. A map flaw in other words.

I realize that if you have your beliefs regarding blackout there's nothing I can do to change them. All I know is that I have spent more time analyzing Lockout vs Blackout than probably anyone else (including bungie), so I've had time to pick out every minor detail and figure out just why it's significant.

Just to show you a little bit of the thought I've put into it, here's a long post I wrote for a different forums.

Spoiler

If you've never played halo 2 of course you don't understand the criticism, because that's not the only difference. They're the most obvious because you instantly notice that one of the most powerful jumps in the game is hilariously missing, they even tease you with it by having the tube and open S2. The other obvious exclusion is the window in the library. This is an obvious exclusion that makes one element of the many that completely changes the gameplay. In Lockout you could use the library as a power point that could watch top lift, the entry to BR, as well as the entries into the library. Now the library is worthless, you only have one line of sight inside of it and you're basically in a death trap if you stay in there. What once was one of the most traversed areas on the map is now one of the most avoided areas.

We then look at the ramps, everything is very flat, and in order to make things flatter you must make things longer if you want to keep the same height. Thus everything is very long, like the ramps going from BR1 to BR3, or the rap from S2 to S3, this makes it so the height changes are much more advantageous in situations like BR 3 (the player doesn't have to look up as high to move up, thus making them more susceptible from attacks from above).

In order to make the ramps less steep but not make the map twice as large they had to cut down the size of the middle and lift. This had several effects, making it much quicker and less dangerous to move across the top, making the glass room be very very vulnerable, making lift room much less defensive, making shotgun hallway a short skip, etc.

Now let's look at the line of sights. The most obvious exclusion to me is the line of sight from s1 to BR3. Now there's only 2 main ways of clearing out BR 3, s2 and s3. This has a very negative effect on gameplay because of 2 reasons. 1 s2 is much larger than on Lockout thus you can only go like a step out or else there's no way you can get back in cover, this is also due to the "guard rail" they added, which hurts gameplay in multiple ways I'll talk about in a sec. So you're very limited on where you can attack from s2, and s3 is even worse because you're basically trapped up there. BR3 is way too overpowered because of it's size. By being twice as large as lockout the benefit of being up there is much greater. The line of sight from top lift is greatly cut off making it damn near impossible to counter from that point, simply crouching makes you invisible to top lift and it's almost impossible to grenade effectively from there. Then you look at attacking from sniper, again crouching is equally effective as well as being easy to move behind the covers or completely off br 3 onto the ramps. Thus flushing out BR3 is incredibly difficult, simply by adjusting the LoS.


The graphical changes are very obviously affecting gameplay. Like I mentioned before the "railing" over the sniper ramp, this brings several huge changes by what seems to be a small variation. The first is that it slows down gameplay. Now instead of being able to quickly jump off the ramp onto s2 you have to walk basically to the very end and then make your way over to the open area of s2, also making you have a very limited mean of getting onto s2 making it easy to camp. The 2nd is it kills S2 as a power point, since before if you were ever getting attacked you had a few options, 1) hide behind the pillars, 2) stay on s2 but get behind the walls and 3) fall down to sniper ramp. This 3rd method had a drastic change making s2 practically worthless. We see other visual changes (layout of sniper that affects LoS, layout of lift room that affects defendability, lowered lift room perches that makes them much weaker, etc) and what appears to be slight visual changes adds up to huge variations that alter gameplay drastically.

BR tower... this tower is practically the reason I built Blockout. It's ****ing horrible. Roughly twice the size it plays completely different. As if it wasn't easy enough to camp these rooms initially bungie added handy dandy camping points. This makes BR1 be very powerful with the sword, maybe the only way the sword is of any use. Then you look at the retarded jump between BR1 and BR2. What once was a powerful spot in BR2 is now a weak point, and where there was a way to grenade down into BR1 from BR2 is now aesthetic crap that acts as a grenade trap, enhancing BR1 as a camping point. BR3 is incredibly flawed. The front entry has been adjusted so you're only able to get up from the middle part, making it very easy to defend that point with grenades, whereas before you could come up from the middle or either side, thus making this a much more aggessive position, decreasing the strength of BR3. The flat area has been given twice the size of the original and raised higher than S3 so that now you can crouch down and not be seen, or making it very easy to get back to the cover. The cover has also been changed, now the side that used to be away from the barrels is so far you don't get hit by any splash, plus there's a part that's been cut away making it more difficult to stick a grenade in there. Now the entry into BR3 is accessible through jumps from either direction, however since the angle on one side is very flat and the other shortened greatly defending these points from the top is very easy. Along with this during games of doubles if both players are killed and spawn in BR1 the team camping BR3 has a huge insurpassible advantage, as the people in BR 1 have few escape routes and will repeatedly respawn in BR1 if they die. Overall BR3 is a campers wet dream and completely kills the map.

While Blackout isn't a "bad" map in the ways that Snowbound or Epitaph are Bad maps, it falls short of a successful remake in that it makes the gameplay less fun than the original, turning what was an A+ map into a B/B- map.

Really I could talk all day about what makes Blackout flawed, so let's just say this. The person that created Blackout didn't even play video games. He likely didn't play Lockout, or even talk to the person who made Lockout. He just looked at the original schematics and made some pretty looking map that fit the shape, but not the feel. And really feel is everything.

Hopefully this gives you some more insight into why it's so drastically different.

 

Heretic looks just like midship and it plays well, but the only thing I do not like is the name, the map has nothing to do with the heretics. It is a covenant ship.

 

Heretic is by far the best remake of any Halo map onto any other Halo game.

 

Heretic is amazing in my opinion, true they did change the p3 jump a little and front jump too p3 is harder but not impossible. The MLG Heretic map with the secured weapon holders is beast, same jumps same way to get into and out of bases.

My only hatred of the map has nothing to do with it but how bungie enginered their grav lifts. The lifts from Midship had a different physics, if you jumped up it at an angle you went up the lfit at an angle. Now on halo 3 you have to go up the same way ever time. In a map like Heretic the player can simply wait for you to come up and assasinate you via mid air. Truly a killer for competetive play. Also not a biggie but the middle plat form doesn't move. Nothing that affects game play but just a little thing.