Wow, what a whole bunch of crap to read to get to a point. Im guessing this thread is dangerously close to being locked as its just causing too many arguments and is constantly going off topic. Its become so convoluted, I cant even remember the point of the OP anymore, so Im just going to try my best to bring it back on course. Whatever 343i do with the Halo universe now is their responsibility. MS has no say in what happens as they're basically just bankrolling the whole operation (I say this loosely, so dont quote me ). Whatever 343i do decide to do with the game is up to them, and I trust they will give me a satisfactory product as they've got a lot of previous Halo experience on board already, and I'd bet dollars to dimes that 95% of the newcomers they have on their team have been involved with the Halo universe in one way or another before being assimilated. Im excited to see what happens in this next game, as the possibilities are potentially fathomless. Could Chief be one million years in the future? Yes. Could there be a totally new threat to the universe at large? Yes. Could the Flood be back for another round? I ****ing hope not, but yes. Could this game have absolutely nothing to do with previous Halo games, apart from featuring Chief and Cortana, a few signature weapons and its sporting of the Halo moniker? Yes, indeed. Personally, Im over fighting the Covenant and I hope they're not in for another go. But if they are back, Im going to eat it up anyway and not complain, because Im a Halo nerd at heart, and that'll never change. /textwall
Well, you didnt quote me, but you still called me out on it . What you say is true, especially since its a franchise that MS has been behind since the beginning. And I guess they'd have a lot more to do with it now that Bungie isnt on the scene any more. Still, Im guessing that 343 would keep it as close to their original vision whilst compromising as little as possible. I hope anyway. If MS makes them start advertising Mountain Dew in-game for some inane reason, them Im out.
It's heavily misunderstood how big a role Microsoft played in the Halo franchise. They made the original decision to make Halo into a great game by buying Bungie back in 2001 (Or it may have been 2000. I don't remember exactly what year they bought Bungie), and if it wasn't for them, Halo wouldn't have been an FPS. It would have been a third-person shooter (Though, it was originally an RTS), and the way we played Halo just wouldn't be the same. In fact, most of us probably wouldn't have bought Halo in the first place. Whether Microsoft makes decision for 343 Industries or not, we still won't know what's best at this point. Let them make the decisions they need to make, and let's hope they make the one that's best for the Halo franchise. I don't want another Reach. I don't want another Halo Wars. I don't want another ODST. I don't want another Halo 3. I want the best damn Halo since the first two. If 343 Industries doesn't go all the way with this, then they won't be able to sell better than CoD and other big franchises within the FPS genre. They need to step up their game and make Halo 4 as great as they can possibly make it. They need to be willing to take risks and push boundaries in order to succeed. They shouldn't cater to the casual crowd, as this proved a failure with Reach. I have nothing against the casuals, but there's no denying that Reach was a disappointment. This may be an opinion, but admit it. You were hoping for more. 343 has some of the great members of Bungie who were absolutely dedicated to Halo in the beginning. Some of them left before Halo 2 and 3. Many of these employees within 343 knew what made the first Halo, which is still the best Halo if you've ever been to a CE LAN, one of the best FPS games of the decade. I'm confident that 343 will be the best choice to continue the Halo franchise. Otherwise, there's always Skyrim. EDIT - Hey, we should lock this thread up at 343 posts. Just a cool idea.
Uh, Marty O'Donell (Probably not the correct spelling of his name) is doing the soundtrack right...RIGHT? If not....well he better ****ing be. I consider this guy just as important to the series as say Joseph Staten.
They better not put in a campaign if Marty isn't composing the music. The music is a big part of that campaign. I'd be fine with a game focused solely on multiplayer, anyways. I mean, look at Quake III Arena and Counter-Strike. They are often called the greatest multiplayer games of all time. That's what happens when you put all your focus into one thing. There's no doubt that Halo 4 will be better than Reach, but my question is whether or not it will be better than Halo 3. Let's hope the next few gaming events will tell us more.
They said they're remastering all of Marty's tracks in Halo: CEA but Marty even confirmed that he is not working anything Halo related via his Twitter. I can live without his music. Especially since they'll take key notes from his previous work into consideration with H4.
Marty O'Donnell is probably too busy working on the music for the next Bungie game to worry about Halo 4.
****. I guess I'll just have to play the new games with the OSTs from Halo 3, ODST and Reach playing in the background.
Heh...even if Marty isn't composing I'm sure than can find someone qualified. Marty isn't the only video game audio composer in existence. But yes his absence will be missed
This. Everything about this is true. I agree with everything you said man and I think if 343 gets ahold of posts like this than they'll know which direction to take. Who knows, they may know exactly what they need to do to make this game badass, but then again they may not. I think the number one thing they need in H4 is a ****ing true skill ranking system! That's what pissed me off the most about Reach. I don't want to become a General just by playing, I'd much rather spend years trying to achieve it knowing that I'd probably never get it because I'm not good enough[I'm a 47 in H3].
... Anyway, Halo 4 just won't be the same without Marty's music, but I'm hopeful that they'll keep up the same musical style.
Well, I'd agree with 4shot on most of that except this part, First...according to sales figures Reach was certainly no failure. It didn't sell nearly as much as Halo 3, but also Reach didn't have quite the advertising campaign Halo 3 had. (Remember the Peter Jackson directed "finish the fight" live videos, the f'ing amazing diorama, the Mountain Dew promotions, hell they closed a block of Times Square for its release day) Reach's "Remember Reach" videos didn't quite have the same impact and weren't as widely shown on TV. As far as that last part there about us all expecting more...that might be a case of you hyped yourself up so much that NOTHING they could have realistically given you would have been enough. They knew people didn't like the little story of Halo 2 and Halo 3 and favored the many people's story lines of ODST so they added that to Reach. They improved on forge (yes improved on, the lag caused by the pieces is annoying but that existed in halo 3 if you geo-merged too much). Overall, being completely objective, Reach was a good send-off for Bungie. Things like a complete dev kit for forging was never going to happen, a 40 hour story was never going to happen in a game like halo. Sometimes you just have to be realistic and take stock of what you do have before complaining that you don't have enough.
Interesting, I thought Halo 3 was more casual in comparison to Halo: Reach. I could easily pick up the controller and get to work, which is why I got to 46 in Doubles in Halo 3. In Halo: Reach, I can rarely get a k/d above 1. I absolutely suck at Reach and that's probably why I don't like it as much. I do agree though, I hope they go back to "classic Halo." I'll honestly probably buy it no matter what though. Which is the sad truth.
Agreed. It may have something to do with the fact that I didnt get proper internets until the very end of H3s lifespan, but Ive spent a lot more time playing Reach than I did H3, and Ive enjoyed Reach a lot more (my service record dictates that, very much so). I didnt know what to expect when I jumped into it, and I prefer this over all of the other Halo games, to be honest. Sure, it doesnt have as many pre-fab maps as the others, but Forgeworld makes up for that lack. And Forge itself may not be perfect, but its a hell of a lot more than most other devs give us in terms of longevity. This is just a general comment, Im not singling anyone out here, but to me, it seems trivial to complain about something that we have little control over changing or influencing, so we may as well just go along for the ride and enjoy it while it lasts.
Agreed. I have yet not to buy a Halo game, and judging by the very small amount of information about Halo 4, it's shaping up to be pretty good. Although it's highly unlikely, if there are armor abilities, the game may just blow. Jetpack and sprint are fine, but anything else...
Personally I'm hoping they ditch armor abilities. I've played a lot of Reach and I'm fine with 'em generally, but to me a big part of what made the original Halo so great was its beautiful simplicity: two weapon slots. Two types of grenades. A very limited (yet functionally diverse) weapon set. You could melee, you could jump, and that was it. And just ten maps and a handful of core gametypes. Somehow Bungie wrung from that a multiplayer experience that was different, intense, and fun every single time I played it - which was at least once a week for years. As much as I have played and enjoyed all the subsequent Halo games, they all suffered from trying to make a functionally simple game into something more complicated, and it always felt a little wrong to me. Dual wielding and all the different permutations of it in H2; equipment and new grenade types AND dual wielding in H3; armor abilities and assassinations in Reach. And along the way, of course new vehicles and new weapons keep being added, but to seemingly no real end. No one ever uses the spiker, and barely used it in H3. Outside of dual wielding, the SMG was basically an ersatz AR. The various plasma weapons - there have been too many of them since H3, and their functions overlap too much; I rarely see a map that has both a plasma repeater and a plasma rifle on it, because why would you..? The covenant/human weapon duplication thing has been, at least to my mind, always something of a mistake, though at least the focus rifle is a little bit different from the sniper, unlike its predecessor the beam rifle, which was basically the sniper rifle reskinned. And ditching the freeze effect of the plasma weapons (which I believe they did to make dual wielding less overpowering) was a mistake - it took the best part of using those weapons away, and made them just slight variations on their human counterparts, except for the plasma pistol's EMP effect. Then you take something like the revenant - much as I love tooling around in it, it's basically just what happens when the wraith and the ghost have a baby. I think the game creators have been guilty of always wanting to add on without taking anything away (for the most part - there are exceptions). They have probably been afraid of a chorus of people saying, "A Halo game with no ghost??? I refuse to buy it!!!" They also keep piling on the features, which has led to some masterstroke minigames, but also has really split up the fanbase - Halo is no longer one thing to a large group of people; it's now fifty different things to a significantly reduced and fractured group of people. A truly bold Halo 4 would start with a butt-simple template like the original game had. It might not be exactly like CE - it might be half the same and half completely different - but it would be in the same vein: stripped down to its very essence, utterly confident in what it's giving you and unafraid of what it's NOT giving you. Don't get me wrong, I've had lots of fun playing firefight and stockpile and headhunter and Halo ball and Grifball and flying around with my jet pack and throwing my power drains and detaching two kinds of turrets to walk around with and blasting people with five different weapons that are all basically equivalent to each other in a one minute span... but enough is enough. (Wow, that was long. Sorry.)
^ I'm confused, reach has 2 grenade types, all the same weapons of H2 except the DMR and needle rifle and apart from the armor abilities plays about the same as classic halo. So basically your problem is the AA?