An intriguing thought...

I think it was less spectacular because we all knew what was going to happen. The fact the campaign was based on a human planet has little to do with it. Any good Halo player knows that 117 was the only Spartan to survive Reach (as far as we know), but because we really didn't know what was going to happen in the Halo Trilogy storyline simply adds the "spectacular" that was missing from Reach. Because we know so much about what happened to Reach, all Bungie had to do was re tell the storyline, although they managed tot do it from a completely different angle. I don't think that there were any big moments, but as I played through, I came to care about each member of Noble Team, and the sacrifices they made for their cause. Those for me were the spectacular moments. The way each one sacrificed themselves to ensure the survival of others really touched me.

 

The massive scale and the unknown factor is what attracted me to the series to begin with. While Reach does retain those iconic vistas, the game was just more personal. That's fine on its own, but I simply prefer the intrigue of the main series.

 

I would agree with that. My favorite part of the original campaign was the long sections where it was just you (as the Chief) moving through eerie silence and bursts of combat in these impossibly huge and open settings. To tell you the truth, I sometimes think game designers don't even quite realize what they are creating. I had heard that they initially wanted Halo to be lots of larger battles with more going on and more AI supporting you, but technical limitations ended up making you feel like more of a lone wolf in the wilderness that occasionally got mixed up in a small-scale battle. It may be that part of the unique feel of Halo wasn't even really intentional, and Reach is more like Bungie doing what they always wanted to do... but we were all hooked on the original, compromised version.

I also think the original Tomb Raider may have benefited from this. The limits of the technology at the time made you feel like you were on your own in these bizarre, almost alien settings - mostly caves and tombs and other stuff rendered very primitively. And every once in a while, a lion would come charging out of nowhere. Each subsequent game the graphics got better, there were a few more enemies running around, it felt more real and less isolated - and yet it lost a little something.

 

I personally have never loved the Halo campaign experience as much as I did with CE. Is this at least partly due to nostalgia? Almost definitely.

However, I think there's something significant to be said for that sense of intrigue, mystery and sheer scale (just like you said) that CE really captured. There was something daunting about the whole campaign experience that only a new universe can bring if you ask me, but even beyond that I don't think any campaign since CE has matched the sense of loneliness that CE brought for me. From that first moment when you touch down on Halo and walk around this massive, mysterious environment, with a character so blank and faceless that it's easy to put yourself in their position (as the MC developed a background, a character and a set of companions throughout 2 and 3 this sense faded for me) the atmosphere just grabbed me and wouldn't let me go.

As I say, the background surrounding MC and the current timeline (I don't feel that the Forerunner background detracted from this sense of awe since it only added to the mystery of exploration rather than making your current character and situation more detached from yourself) bulked up and, whilst it developed very well in story terms, it took away from my investment and sense of awe at every second of play. It even impacted upon the gameplay specific atmosphere in the sense that coming out of a corridor or tunnel in to one of those huge expanses just filled me with a true 'woah...' feeling that has never been equalled since.

This isn't something that is crystallised in memory either. My brother played through CE PC about 6 months ago cause he knows how much of a Halo nut I am and had never tried it himself. He was so incredibly impressed at how enthralling an experience it is, even now 10 years after its release. I sat there and watched for nearly his whole playthrough, even had to take the controls at times and it still had that magic in spades.

H:CE campaign is by far my favourite computer game campaign of all time, it's just epic. Whilst I get your point, I personally feel that Reach beats both 2 and 3 in terms of how I reacted to the atmosphere, and how engaging I found story/characters/environments etc. 2 was great but the scale seemed a little small and it wasn't as balanced as well in terms of different environments/experiences, 3 seemed like it was trying too hard to be epic and just came off bland and somewhat characterless for me. CE stands head and shoulders above all of them.

EDIT: yeah, well put megapwn, and I think you're probably right about it being accidental. It seems like a lot of the things people loved about CE (Pistol power, unobtrusive button glitches, campaign experience) were accidental....

 

I'm not going into great detail, but for a many reasons, I loved Reach's campaign above the others. I thought it was more personally attached, and I didn't feel like a walking tank. I felt human, and vulnerable, which I liked.

My only complaint was knowing how it was all going to end, but that's not really the games fault...

 

felt about the same for me. I was never that blown away by the storyline of the 2 and 3 campaigns, more by the playing itself. I mean I find the story/canon fascinating, but as for gameplay, I've replayed reach's campaign way more than I ever played H3. Of course, I wasn't in on the "ground floor" so to speak of halo3, i started playing it about 2 years after it came out. So maybe reach was just as exciting for me because I was waiting for it on 9/14, and with every mission finished i couldn't wait to start the next one.

I gotta admit, the end scene with the Pillar of Autumn taking off was an awesome feeling, more so than then end of any other of the halo games (for me anyway)

 

That's true for me too, but I think daily challenges had more to do with it than anything else. I do think Reach has a pretty good campaign, I've memorized most of the levels now. None of them will ever touch CE in my mind, though.

 

One reason that CE's campaign stands out to me is that they left an open world feeling. You could explore and get lost and not totally understand at times. I liked that. They've been getting more and more one-way-point A to point B since. I dislike that feeling.

Which is why I felt the campaign for ODST was a step in the right direction.

 

Very true. Level design in Reach is extremely linear - even when you get outdoors, things look a lot more open than they really are. Whatever happened to "plop the player in the middle of a giant open area, give them an objective, and if they don't do anything for a minute give them a waypoint"? I really liked that. I think they've been striving for something more cinematic and action movie-like, so linear design helps with that - the player is unlikely to interrupt a planned sequence by wandering off somewhere for 15 minutes, because there's nowhere to wander off to. But damn, I miss all that wandering. There's certainly a reason that my most-played game besides Halo is GTA (and Red Dead Redemption too).

 

the lack of space-zombies also made a big difference. i miss those gigantic flood vs. covenant battles in CE, and the sheer sense of loneliness that you feel once keyes and your marine buddies get killed off and guilty spark turns against you.

also, warthog runs

 

i'll agree with that last part. not enough warthog in reach. only rocket, no regular.... Boo

 

I think part of Reach's Linear style comes from the invulnerable Teammate mechanic, because (this is just my own theory, I think it's true, but really have no grounds to support it) I think the Spartan teammates don't actually do anything but lower the sheilds of enemies in front of you, but if you travel ahead of them, they seem to mow down all enemies between you and them. And also, Linear levels would probably lead to less AI's getting lost or left behind, and since you can see them, you'll notice when they get stuck or forgotten.

Anyways, aside from the linear style of campaign, I absolutely loved it. I loved it more than Halo 1 and Halo 3, I think Halo 2 had the best campaign, simply because of the Elite's switching sides (I really loved that part, and Gravemind, I loved him too). But I thought that the campaign was amazing because of how the player knew that everyone was going to die one way or another, and seeing them unfold, was beautiful. Especially 6's death, that part was the ****!

 

I agree completely.

For me, storyline of the previous trilogy was more like the Iliad, an epic created simply to evoke awe and entertain the listener, while Reach had something more akin to Othello; the longer the story goes, the more you know everyone is going to die, and its much more emotional and engaging on that level.

It appears to come down to what kind of person you are. Since most gamers are very practical, it makes sense that most will find that awe-filled story more, but those emotionals among us see the humanity as something much more engaging. Its just preference ;D

 

I kinda of disagree with you about their deaths, with the exception of emile, that seemed rushed. Also I think Jorge's was the greater sacrifice, he thought he was saving the planet, unfortunately he didn't.

Agree with the game looking amazing though. Several visual feasts: the inky black/nebula ridden space with a view of reach behind your space battle, the architecture of exodus and the skyscrapers of new alexandria, returning to the crumbling elite ridden sword base, seeing Spire for the first time, carter's previously mentioned death, ditto Jorge... and thats just the big things.

 

I liked the Reach campaign for the same reason as mentioned before; I felt vunerable. With Halo campaigns, I always felt like I was the driving force of the UNSC's victory. Nothing seemed to phase Master Chief, and there were rarely any enormous setbacks.

Reach, on the other hand, felt different. That moment where you destroy the Corvette, only to have hundreds more appear, made me feel overwhelmed and slightly hopeless. It's a feeling that peaked around the New alexandria levels, where you see the futile rescue attempts in Exodus, followed by the burning cityspace in New Alexandria.

The feeling that you were caught in a desperate struggle to bring hope to a doomed planet was enough to keep me hooked.

 

You probably loved ODST then.

And you did. lol.


Halo has always been A-B. The only difference is there were more occasions per level where you could go A-B via a first, b first or c first in some cases if you know what I mean. Basically it was still very linear in terms of where you started each mission and where you needed to be to end each mission but had more choice in the order of the sub objectives you needed to do in between.

We lost that in Halo 2 damn near completely and I can't remember ANY occasion of it in 3.

ODST was the exact opposite though. The entire game was one big A-B with lots of little a's b's and c's and your choice entirely as to the order you take them once you get past the first one. Very GTA 3-4. And once again you were a faceless (and this time voiceless) force in the world. Very easy to insert yourself into this character.

The only downside of that campaign that I can see is that it went nowhere. It was just a side story completely unconnected to anything else going on in the greater story. All that work to save an alien balloon that may or may not have helped at all. And I have my doubts that it did.

So it had information on the covanent, ok. But by this point in the war we had the Elites on our side and could get the same info from them. So what was the point?

So yea as far as the feel of the campaigns, I rank CE at the top. Followed by ODST, 3, 2 and then reach. And 3 only beats 2 because of lack of arbiter play and the epic warthog run at the end.

 

Reach's campaign did what it was meant to, personalize the experience with each Spartan. In all reality, no, it's nowhere near the legendary material that the original trilogy was made of, but it did what it was supposed to do. How did you not feel for a few of these Spartans giving their lives to complete their most important, and last, mission? Some where a little less moving, and in one case (KAT) I was actually quite happy, but when Carter sacrificed his life, that was great, and of course Emile's cocky attitude as he was killed was entertaining as well, and that's what the story was really about, some of the few remaining Spartans and their stories, not particularly the main story.

What else did you expect from a prequel?