I sense we're all missing the point - Halo 5's art style in general is such a blatant departure from anything previously seen in the Halo universe, or anything established graphically in Halo 3/ODST/Reach. Elites, Brutes, Grunts, Armor, Materials, Weapons, Shipbuilding, Architecture, all of it has been washed away in such an unbelievably short period of in-universe time, and none of it looks (at the very least) familiar. Why are we still fighting about this? Riptide has some interesting spots and some nicely chosen colors if it were simply a concept design, but it isn't, and most importantly it isn't Halo. What would a Big Mac be without the secret sauce? What would Chik-fil-a be without it's sauce? Or KFC without its 13 herbs and spices? Or Wendy's without the square patties, InNOut without the grease and onions, or Chipotle without its interior decoration, $2 GUAC, or Starbucks without its illiterate baristas? Spoiler: long-winded procrastination Now, ask yourself, what the **** is Burger King? What is the glue that holds that sad lump of a company together, the guiding vision, the essence of the food that keeps people coming back? There isn't a damn thing, other than its attempts at replicating the successes of other fast food companies in its general orbit. Maybe the advertising campaigns, maybe those - but those don't carry over to the quality of the food at all; all the assets are spent building a false veneer of quirkiness and oddity to establish the brand in consumers' minds, instead of making a consumable product that does that work for you. It gets muddy sometimes - Halo 5 definitely has a clear artistic vision, no question about it. The thing is, though, that this artistic vision is absolute hash. I don't want to write another diatribe on this ever again, but the mélange of Prairie School simplicity in repeated motifs, of Post-Iron-Curtain-Western_Awareness_of_Soviet_Brutalism, and of near-religious reverence in the framing of each vista (and their function in conveying tone, story, and curiosity to the player) that is found in Bungie's treatment of Forerunner constructs is so well-braised that each flavor melts into each other, yet are able to build themselves up into something that has obviously stuck in many a mind, with the most fidelity of this vision coming in Halo 3's Ark and Control Room missions (I think). Compare this to the treatment Forerunner constructs get in Halo 5 (and 4) - sure, there's a convenient 'canonical' explanation for it, but the Rococo garishness of reflecty bits, and little floating wisps of metal is so incredibly absurd, considering what we have come to know the Forerunners for, that not only is the audience jarred out of its seats, but it cannot find its foothold once bumped, simply because there is so much needless complexity. Consider that even our (the European nobility, 1720s->1790s) own Rococo art is still largely digestible given the composition, subject matter, materials, scale, and context. Look at Riptide, then, compare that to the Cairo, to Rat's Nest, to the entirety of Old and New Mombasa as we get to experience them, any and all Human Architecture or Design elements that we interact with - just the ships for example: the Forward Unto Dawn in Halo 3/ODST is grey, grey, grey, as utilitarian as possible, with the screens and armaments (and vehicles, when unloading) serving as the only flashes of color. Then, all of a sudden, it looks like the Light Rifle, and not the DMR from Reach. What happened? Where did the boxy titanium utilitarianism of the old UNSC go? When did they find the time to taper things and add useless fins, antennae, 'underbelly', and do away with the triangular missile silos (and replace them with 3 rotating anti-air cannons on each side)? Where did that bright blue shielded hangar come from? What happened?! View attachment 63574 https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-0969954d115c0d662975f6f97a2d7b79-c View attachment 63575 https://kingofcardgames.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/blueeyeswhitedragon-mvp1-en-ur-1e.png (yes, I use Edge) And my god, look at how needlessly cluttered with detail the engine side is on the H4 rendering - sure, ok, it's more 'realistic', I guess, but couldn't they have just kept the same dimensions and macro/midlevel details of the old one? At least the silhouette, for Christ's sake. That's not to say it isn't visually appealing at all - the new one is a relatively nice-looking ship, no doubt. But it simply is not Halo. So SOS OsoSOSOOSOSo what does that mean? It means 343 got a stick up its ass trying to prove that it was super duper serious about design and stuff and making Halo less cartoony but they managed to make their Nuevo Realismo into something completely parodical in less than one game cycle. All the character that those Bungie designs and silhouettes had accumulated on their long journey, dropped into the ashtray of progress and legitimacy. Most importantly though, the cartoonish 'conceptual space realism' that Halo 5 (and kinda 4) manage to pull off (I mean, I do like the new Warthog, with the gas tanks and stuff, that at least makes a little sense) is inhuman. Maybe there's a good reason for this in-universe, but it looks like the kind of overcomplicated 'simple' things that get shown off at car shows every year - things that, practically applied, are far more alien than anything that one might dream up for the real aliens, in that those elements would be designed to break with the standards we experience, whereas the human ones do what the alien elements are attempting to do in an attempt to be recognizably human; the human art is so jarring because it breaks from the tradition far more noticeably than the rest of the art, in every possible way. And it just isn't Halo.
I really like longshore you're right - what would chik-fil-a be without the lemonade/soft-serve combo drink they tried to pass off last year?
I remember seeing this concept art a while back and getting somewhat excited for the map because this picture actually has an atmosphere and some emotion, unlike other Halo 5 maps. Turns out that the map doesn't really have any of that. The standard was low and they still failed.
Halo is coming back this Friday, guys. Hope to see you there! (Also I'm done with H5 officially, may or may not see the rest of you in H6)
I loved Nerf Arena Blast. So much so that I started to remake the main map in Halo 5. I just never got anywhere near completing it. The game as a whole was kinda **** but the weapons were on point. I always wanted a nerf arena blast 2.