Thread 724721971

>come up with game idea
>write whole book about it before game even releases detailing protagonists
>they're huge super fast bullet-timing demigods wearing power armor that combined with their own weight makes them weigh nearly half a ton
>game releases
>you play as a floaty guy who serenely strolls around at a casual pace, can barely hear your own lazy footsteps

halo books are corporate mandated slop

>>724721971 (OP)
Bookslop and 343 slop is not crucial to the cannon. Bungie games is all that matters.

>>724724432
This and fuck all of you 343 and bookfags for ruining Halo.

>>724721971 (OP)
>reads book
>plays game

>>724726990
Many claim to do this.

>>724723563
Is food mentioned in Halo? At all? How do you ass pull a cookbook out of a series like this?

>>724721971 (OP)
Halo games 2001-2010 was Bungie's universe
Halo media along with Halo Wars was Microsoft's universe. Bungie made it clear that they didn't consider anything from Microsoft's Halo universe canon to their universe, seeing Campaign Evolved, it seems like the feelings Microsoft has for Bungie's universe are mutual.

>>724729861
Most of these cookbooks are just normal cookbooks but the food are vaguely named after the source material. I for one have the Michael Jackson cook book in my collection.

My problem with halo always was that chief didn't actually felt powerful. Deeds wise yes, walking genocide, but when you control him - no feeling of force. He was kinda slow, kinda floaty kinda, kinda glassy on higher difficulty. When odst came out and everyone was like "you're not a spartan this time, you're fragile and a flimsy human, but still an operator etc.", I wasn't feeling this at all, literally the same gameplay as before with dingy thick atmosphere. Gimped jumping height but thats it.

>>724721971 (OP)
Only Halo book I care for is Flood, and event then, only parts of it. CE doesn't really need extra lore. That extra lore eventually led to the mess we are in right now.
>>724723563
/hg/ is leaking
ENDLESS

>lil bro didnt read Larry Niven's Ringworld
>neither did his unc
Grim

This kills the lorefag

>>724733519
Damn, this is why I can't be angry at Halo Infinite, I'm disappointed we didn't see or fight the Endless, not that they were created. Halo 4 and 5 neutered themselves because they tried to tie the games to Halo's shitty novels instead of just making a game. The fact that Halo Studios is only using lore for cool shit is a huge positive. Bookfags and MPfags need the bullet.

It was better than Reach.

>>724735350
>you can tell from the cover how much SOVL your book has
I will now read your book

Are the books actually any good seriously asking

>>724736289
The only one I read, the first one, was pretty autistic. I didn't read it all, but I remember a lot of dryly described spec ops operations and military stuff and not much dialogue or characterization. Typical of the genre.

>>724736289
Fall of Reach and Contact Harvest are good reads. First strike as well. Cole Protocol may tickle your fancy and if you want a recap of the first game with extra details then The Flood is also a good read. Ghosts of Onyx might make you mad depending on your opinions on Spartan III's.

HUMANS ARE FORERUNNER
FUCK ANYTHING THAT CONTRADICTS IT

>>724737015
>HUMANS ARE FORERUNNER
In Bungie's lore, universe, and canon, they said so themselves. Bungie games is our universe, that other stuff (books and games we didn't make) is Microsoft's universe, lore, and canon. You can not change what isn't Bungie's because they're not the same Halo universe. One of the good things Infinite and the shitty TV series did for this series.

>>724721971 (OP)
Chief's move speed in CE is still faster than sprinting in Reach.

>>724737682
Trve...

>>724737682
this
low fov makes it seem super slow but you're basically moving at ut/quake walk speed

>>724736289
The Bungie era ones were legit good sci-fi and contrary to some parroted beliefs today were actively discussed at the time and taken for granted as canon. It was Bungie themselves who got pissy about them first.

Where do you guys sit on the Spartan III issue? Are they a good lore extension to show the desperation of the UNSC or are they shallow and shows that the people writing have no idea on military logistics?

>>724729861
it's certainly not halo 3 inspired

>>724735350
the ground battle on reach is in a different book thoeverbeitst've

>>724721971 (OP)
The MC is huge; that stroll is a run for most people. and the hud makes it look like you're slowly walking.
>>724737015
I will never understand why 343 did the forerunners are aliens idea; and then made humans also ancient space aliens, it sounds like alot of bs work. ik that one of the writers of the halo3 terminals worked on 4; but their ideas were separate from main game.

Ya think it be simpler to make humans forerunner, and have an alt ancient-alien pissed-off species that got wiped by halo array, wanting revenge against humans.

The whole humans are not forerunners and fought forerunners; is so stupid that it destroyed the halo story. The flood seems like an afterthought, not the end of life in the galaxy. oh also that there is an even older ancient-alien species before them was dumb.

>>724736289
no
if you enjoy shit anime then you'll like the halo books

>>724738535
>Where do you guys sit on the Spartan III issue? Are they a good lore extension to show the desperation of the UNSC or are they shallow and shows that the people writing have no idea on military logistics?

Eric Nylund came up with the the aesthetic of the unsc, Insurrection, SPARTAN program, ODSTs, Spartan vs ODST rivalry, Dr Halsey, Blue Team, Captain Keyes and Dr Halsey romance, John-117 backstory, Keyes loop, Onyx, etc

Joe Staten came up with Captain Keyes (Captain Exposition), Cortana, Sgt Johsnon, Master Chief's one liner personality, 343 Guilty Spark, Lord Hood, Miranda Keyes, Arbiter, Prophets, Tartarus, Mendicant Bias, Gravemind, The Rookie, a lot of Halo Wars ideas, Covenant lore

Lee Wilson, Marcus Lehto and Marty O'Donnel came up with Noble Team to tell "Bungie's version" of the Fall of Reach as a swan song before moving on to Destiny

>Bungie was against the whole concept initially of the insurrectionists and just wanted humans to have these super soldiers for no sort of reason.

>The crew behind FoR felt that there needed to be some in universe reason to justify the spartans, and since there was no alien threat at that time in the story, the insurrection and human civil war was what they landed on

Also, Nylund notes that with the reprints of his books, he hasn’t been paid the royalties. 343 kiked him

>>724738809
>>Bungie was against the whole concept initially of the insurrectionists and just wanted humans to have these super soldiers for no sort of reason.
Huh, that's pretty strange. The spartans being made initially for innies before repurposed as poster children to fight against the covenant is such a great plot point for the series. Interesting.
>Also, Nylund notes that with the reprints of his books, he hasn’t been paid the royalties. 343 kiked him
Yet another reason to hate 343.

>>724739025
From Eric Nylund himself

http://halo.bungie.org/bwu/index.html?item=91

>The Master Chief was a complete mystery. In fact, many people (names omitted here, so I'm not assassinated) wanted the Master Chief to remain a blank, faceless solider. Terminator-ish as it were. They weren't convinced any writer could portray him as tough as he is in the game and make him, for lack of a better word, "human," too.

>One complaint I hear a lot is that the novels aren't canon and do not mesh with the game. From the very beginning the novels were designed to be optional, but official, material. Bungie didn't want people to have to read the novels to follow the game. That would be silly. The novels are designed to be an official companion pieces, and if you read them you experience a richer back story and understanding of the Halo universe. This strategy, however, necessitated that references to the extra material be minimized in game so as to not confuse people who hadn't read the books.

>People got the impression that the Master Chief was the only Spartan (in the Halo:CE game manual it said he was the "the last known Spartan" or words to that effect), but people wanted more of a good thing.

Writing the Fall of Reach was actually really rough for Nylund. He had around 7 weeks to write out the entire book for a deadline of two weeks before the game released - by then the story of the game was probably sealed and it was just last touches being made - and halfway through writing the book Microsoft executives wanted to cut it since they wanted Chief to be everybody's self-insert. (Thank god for Eric Trautmann otherwise the Halo EU wouldn't exist.)

Joe Staten wrote Chief as a cyborg super-soldier clint eastwood

Jason Jones, Joseph Staten, Eric Trautmann and Eric Nylund wrote the story/lore for Fall of Reach, Halo, First Strike, Halo 2, and Ghosts of Onyx.

Halo 3 and Reach were written by a committee, and Frank O'Connor was head of 343's writing team.

>>724739269
halo3 had alot of ideas that was established in halo2 development cycle. Yes its extremely different but the framework was developed.

All the books are shit. Just okay the games. What the fuck do you need to know chief’s birthplace and penis size for?

>>724738774
>will never understand why 343 did the forerunners are aliens idea; and then made humans also ancient space aliens, it sounds like alot of bs work
Because Bungie completed their universe. There was no way to continue Bungie's Halo universe because it went full circle, so they created new lore for their own universe of Halo so they could tell repeated stories and make new games.

>>724739498
>esl
>talking about cocks and balls

>>724736289
No, video games aren't meant to be books, look what kind of retards who post here actually like them. The books have been shit since 2001, nothing has changed.

>>724739575
they could've made humans forerunner and have older alien species come back somehow or flood, or covenant factions led by San'Shyuum. The halo array still exists and several covenant factions want them. Chief could've been in cryo for a few centuries; if ya want to reset the universe. (or he was in a slow teleport/slipstream whatever)

>>724739269
Neat. I've played the games and read the books but never looked into the actual behind the scenes of them, fascinating. I will say I enjoyed Staten writing Contact Harvest, pretty good read about how the covvie war started.

>>724721971 (OP)
>jeets and kikes are still mad 39 years later
good

>>724739880
Bungie said the universe was completed, Microsoft felt the universe was completed, 343/Halo Studios saw that the universe was completed so created their own lore to make new games. This is how game development works. In Bungie's universe, humanity's last war was with the Covenant and Flood, they lived through peace post-Halo 3. You want to make anymore Halo games after that ending, you reboot it either hard or soft. I may be autistic but I feel many Halo fans post-Halo 2 have a lack of brain development to not understand this.

>>724739880
Hell, they could have had what they already have in their lore: Forerunner splinter factions that broke off to other worlds. Some went on to become modern day humans, the others could've chilled on the shield worlds or some shit.
Nothing about 343 lore necessitates Humans and Forerunner being separate, literally all of their story lines could still work (Except maybe the precursor and endless but those are shit anyway).

>>724739880
oh also to add; imagine the chaos of humanity factions with access to forerunner tech and potential conflicts.

The story for halo was finished in 3 yes, but 343 had 0 imagination, and made insanely stupid lore choices.

>>724740110
>Nothing about 343 lore necessitates Humans and Forerunner being separate
Not him but shut the fuck up, Halo 4 proves this to be bullshit right in the third level. It doesn't work which is why Halo CE is getting remade. Why can't you just accept with Bungie said. Bungie has their Halo universe, Microsoft has their Halo universe. How is this hard to understand, man?

>>724740301
Because I still think it's a stupid cop out to change what has come before. It's a similar cope that Bethesda fanboys make when it comes to Fallout.

>>724722027
prove it, prove that it's slop.

>>724740447
Well too bad, you trying to force a continuation of Bungie's universe is just you becoming early 343 Industries all over again, and ex-Bungie devs would condemn you mostly and denounce your games like they do Microsoft's.

>>724736289
I only read Contact Harvest. It was just an okay sci-fi book.

>>724740094
im saying that the idiotic lore 343 made was fucking dumb and very narrow. It limited the story soo bad that 343 had to resort to AI takeover and basically rebooted 4 5 6 because they were too inept to make a good story.

They tried to turn halo into something it's not. instead of working with the constraints of the universe and develop a plot. aka 343 did lazy writing.
>>724740110
>Nothing about 343 lore necessitates Humans and Forerunner being separate,
... are you srs???? dude 343 established that forerunners and ancient humans had a war and humans became primitive. Your reaching with that statement and its ridiculously stupid.

>>724740301
343 apologists either grew up with halo4 5 6 or idk.

the zealotry that some people have with this franchise confuses me. Older fans left and newer ones inherently like a flawed story; that failed soo hard 3 games in a row; and currently said studio is resorting to rebooting the original game. 343 failed so hard that they're rebooting the franchise instead of continuing after infinite...

>>724740773
What I meant to say is that the story points that 343 wanted to tell outside of that retcon didn't require the retcon.
Hopefully I make more sense that way.

>>724729861
Food nipples have been there since day 1.

>>724741115
Which anon are you?

>>724741347
2nd one. I want to make clear that I hate the retcon and the damage it has done to Halo's universe, just that some of the storylines 343 wanted to tell did not require the retcon of humans and forerunners in the first place.

>>724741406
i guess? but we got what we got. retcons and all.

Also, the story and lore that 343 made clearly does not work. not the didactic/composer, Not the cortana being evil, ai uprising, not the whatever tf 5 tried with lock/whatever, or infinite's mess(tho thats a different story) the ancient humans thing has 0 purpose in the games. the spartan ops stuff of 4/5 goes nowhere.

Yes if you change some things around; it might work, but that hypothetical is meaningless with the reality of the choices 343 made.

>>724740773
>It limited the story soo bad that 343 had to resort to AI takeover and basically rebooted 4 5 6 because they were too inept to make a good story
They didn't really have much to work with.
>the zealotry that some people have with this franchise confuses me
They believe they have ownership of a series they didn't create so they believe they have a say in what Bungie finished and what Microsoft does with it. This why these schizos make a bunch of fan project to outdo Bungie and Microsoft instead of just liking one or the other. It gets worse on the fact that they don't use their talent to make an original IP and get a job in game development. If I wanted to out Bungie/Microsoft, Bungie/Microsoft on Halo, I would just make a new sci-fi IP inspired by Halo but go my own way with it. My game, I do what I want with it.

>>724740094
Completed as it was, there was no need reinvent the wheel and fuck with the deeper lore. No one playing post-Bungie Halo is expecting anything deeper than moar Halo. Some renegade neo-Covenant are trying to fire off one of the remaining rings. Maybe they're working directly with the local monitor so that you can have the sentinels a bit more involved. No need for any new ancient evils.
Maybe it just comes off as a dull cash grab, but that's at least a lesser evil than raping the setting. Though, as with Star Wars, that's always easy to say living in the timeline where they raped the setting instead of doing the dull cash grab.

>play Halo 1 for first time this year
>always hear about the lore and story being praised
>1 has almost no cutscenes or characters
>story is "blow up this weapon that can destroy the whole galaxy"

>>724743050
You can't fuck with Bungie's lore if that lore is part of a different Halo universe. Halo has a canon multiverse, so with that, Bungie's universe can't be touched. In terms of Microsoft's own universe "Gold Timeline", it's built on ancient evils as Master Chief is "the champion" that must always protect the galaxy/universe from some threat on the level of the Covenant and a threat on the level of the Flood to uphold and reclaim the Mantle. Gold Timeline is a Halo, a cycle built to be repeated in different ways. Don't ask me about that Silver Timeline, I don't know what the hell that was.

>>724742892
that... or i dont support and buy 343's shit products. which alot of people have done, and is why microsoft/343 fired alot of their staff.
>They didn't really have much to work with.
BULLSHIT. anyone can make up ideas and stories that fit in the constraints of the franchise that does not go against the lore established in previous games.

setting post halo3...

thousands of former covenant factions fighting each other

humanity rebuilding,

human remnants on worlds that have forerunner tech,

Forerunner technology on earth

(how about a time skip of a few centuries and chief and cortana got there somehow; slow slipstream scifi whatever)

Reseeding of reach from ex covenant factions.
Flood returning

San'Shyuum cultists (aka the prophet's species if you're too young to know that)

ONI shenanigans

odst stuff

Human civil war; aka what the spartan 2's were made for...

forerunner installations on alert throughout the galaxy cuz the fuckin HALO ARRAYS were on standby; so now you have to deal with those dormant ai,

AI of dead alien races; that survived the halo array


THERE are alot of ideas you can come up with post halo 3 that does not retcon 1-3 and are lore expandable.

what 343 did however was make a new villan of the week EVERY NEW GAME.

>>724743325
Frankie's Halo 3 terminals are why people actually like the lore of Halo, lol

>>724743536
My point is more that you can make a functional Halo game product without have to dig deeper into the setting. 343 could've contented themselves with making shallow shit or even just doing some Reach/ODST style parallel stories, rather than getting weird and fucking everything up.

>>724743583
In Bungie's universe, Master Chief's fight is finished, and he's left to rest while Cortana watches over him. The Covenant are finished with the Elites winning their war against the Brutes who nuke themselves back to the stone age again, Prophets go extinct, Humanity becomes Forerunner again but don't have a run in with the Flood this time, there is no ONI corruption, Covenant killed the rebels during the war and what's left has joined with humanity, no more wars, humanity destroy their remaining rings to keep them from being used again or take them back to be sure to have them ready if the Flood were to ever return. Bungie Halo ended and is over.

>>724738774
>I will never understand why 343 did the forerunners are aliens idea
Because that got set in the Halo 3 terminals.

>>724733004
ringworld was a nice read. the style of describing the ships and the world as a god left a pretty strong impression.

>>724743918
I feel like they may actually finally start to get it now, where if they add new lore, it's in the game for gameplay instead of making it a tell don't show story slop of old that they used to do. Those prequel levels in the remake is a preview of what the future of Halo will look like post remakes into new game territory that take place after Infinite.

>>724744247
correction, the dude who wrote the terminals worked on 4.

>>724743998
>Bungie Halo ended and is over.
ok anon...
none of your statement justifies 343's terrible ideas. why are you going with this logic?

(bungie is over, so 343 can make fucking retarded ideas)?????????

>>724744545
Microsoft's Halo was never going to be Bungie, also, Microsoft were the ones that tasked 343 to create their own universe different from Bungie's dating as far back as Halo 3's terminals. Microsoft DID NOT and DOES NOT want Bungie's lore, universe, or canon in theirs. They told 343/Halo Studios to make Halo their own and don't hire Bungie devs, that was a mandate.

>>724743325
john halo is really cool guy, he kills teh ayyliens and doesn't afraid of anything

>>724744974
holy crap you are one of them......... people who don't know the corpo bs behind 343.

Microsuck specifically hired people who disliked halo. Microsoft wanted the call of duty fanbase so they literally hired people who hated halo.

It is one of the most idiotic corporate decisions in gaming history.

The higher ups in xbox/microsfot mainly bonnie ross and phil spencer. saw the sales of cock of duty and wanted a piece of that demographic.

So they directed wokfkill/holmes/lee/frank to hire people who disliked halo and worked on call of duty; thinking that they could get those fans.

NEVER REALIZING THAT THE COD PLAYERS ALREADY HAD COD.

and that making halo into cod; pisses off the established halo fanbase and splintered it. Loosing alot to bungie's Destiny.

so when the obvious happened and halo 4 failed to get those cod sales numbers, and the drop off in players because the multiplayer mechanics of halo-cod dont mix, the execs did the whole bs again, with 5 and again with 6

each instance had less sales and quicker multiplayer dropoffs to the point that HALO REACH multiplayer counts exceeded 4 in 5months.

You are painting this mandate as if it's justified or something... in reality it was one of the dumbest financial decisions for the halo franchise; of which resorted to rebooting CE.

on top of being an idiotic mandate from out of touch execs that are only interested in raising stock prices.

>>724743325
Halo 1's more like a console successor to Marathon than it is some actual epic or anything like that. Very vibes focused. Though you also have to remember that it's 2001; at that point for scale and scope, lip sync was basically head nods and jaw bauble, and characters just stood there talking at each other in most video games that weren't JRPGs or pre-rendered cinematics. The story was a threadbare justification for everything because it shifted from RTS to shooter because the devs wanted to actually drive the Warthog, but what it was accomplishing for the year was a step above most other shooters, period.

It's the sequels that upped the presentation game and have an actual memorable set of scenes or characters and stuff, but at the same time 2's gameplay design suffers in various areas, and 3's writing was kind of hype moment slop with a lack of real depth.

>>724734636
People always say this shit, but Halo 4 is the Halo game that explains it's own narrative elements the most

CE doesn't explain shit (but also barely has a plot so it's fine), Halo 2 just expects you to pick up who characters are and what's going on as you go, Halo 3 outright has shit from the novels in it, as does Reach, etc. Not that any of that is a problem, but it's not as if they all go out of their way to explain stuff or are devoid of links to the novels

Meanwhile, 4 has the Didact outright lay out what his plans are, has the librarian give a giant exposition dump, and has the terminals to further explain shit on top of that. 4's writing is bad, but the problem is not it relying on the books to explain shit.

>>724736289
Most of them range from decent to pretty good, some are outright excellent.

People will tell you 343i's novels suck and to only read Bungie's, but 343i has put out like 4x the amount of books then Bungie did and honestly of the ones I have read, 343i has the higher average quality, though also more stinkers

>>724736851
The Flood is pretty meh, but still worth reading

>>724743325
Halo 2 exponentially expands on the worldbuilding

>>724746128
Halo 5 was actually an intentional attempt to undo the CoDification Halo 4 did, by going back to even starts, on map pickups, and iterating/evolving the series with new core movement mechanics instead of loadout shit, GDC talks outright mention this. But people still flipped out because Movement stuff also happened to be trendy at the time and the Halo fanbase is stuck in 2007 when there was a rivarly with CoD and see the series do anything that other shooters are doing as "giving into trends".

Infinite was even more of an overt attempt to return to Classic Halo design, and appealing to 3babies specifically with equipment.

If you try to make a Halo game even more Classic Halo then Infinite is, you'll just make Halo 3: 2.

>>724746128
Everyone knows Bungie and Microsoft had a falling out during Halo CE's and 2's development which led to what happened during Halo 3, a contract game that Bungie wanted to finish so they could leave Microsoft while Microsoft were pissed at Bungie, created a team and made them create their own lore in Halo 3 as a jumping off point. Halo 3 was the split that broke off Bungie's and Microsoft's universe into their own universe all due to a falling out. This was why 343 was/still is anti-Bungie.

>>724746128
Why are you putting every other sentence on a different line?

>>724746915
Halo 4 explains it because it's the final version of the Halo 3 Terminal. Halo CE-3 was just video games telling a simple generic story, nothing more. Everything in Bungie's games is them shoving it in there because they found it to be cool, that's it. If some book crap showed up in a Bungie Halo, it's because someone on the team thought it was cool and felt they could work with it.

>>724743325
Halo 1 itself is a simple and complete scifi story.
The lore comes more from books and terminals than anything; the games themselves keep to their own stories. As it should be.

>>724723563
>It's actually fucking real
Is this the lowest the brand could ever go?

>>724746652
>3's writing was kind of hype moment slop with a lack of real depth.
how would you add depth to it? it could be longer, sure, but i mean we were FINISHING THE FIGHT
Halo 2's great schism was the main plot twist in the overarching narrative

>>724747046
Forgot that the return button does that. reddit spacing
>>724747035
halo 3 was not contract game, halo 3odst and reach fit that contract idea. halo3odst being the prime example. to say that 3 was contract is a reach lol.
>>724746915
they tried to de-cod-ify halo in 6, 5 not so much. if it ain't broke dont fix it; is what I would tell 343...

I personally think that the 343 staff slowly realized that halo 1-3/reach mechanics work the way they do for a reason... and half-assed trying to tone down the sprint/crap.

but the game design/espcially multiplayer was abysmal, 343 clearly had no idea about game balance or overall map/arena design with weapon spawns.

that worked in 1-3 because players remembered layouts and fought accordingly. Sprint/other crap didn't really worked in 4-5-6 because the map has to be designed around them, reach had that problem as well.

>>724747693
>halo 3 was not contract game
It was a contract game, Bungie were contracted to make three games for them be able to go independent from Microsoft, Halo 3, Halo Chronicles, and Halo 4. Chronicles became Recon/ODST, Halo 4 became Halo Reach. Bungie were tapped out by Halo 2 and just wanted to finish the story and move on to Destiny.

>>724747681
>how would you add depth to it?
The characters shouldn't mostly exist to make one-liners, Truth shouldn't have lost his manipulative edge to become a zealot himself, and the events shouldn't have been what amounts to largely a bunch of random shit that happens to justify the next plot point. It borders on non-sequitur at points, and there isn't even any real logic or context for the Cortana visions that make Chief's vitals "ping KIA". I know it's a shoot first, story later situation, but they could've handled that a hell of a lot better.

The books were always dogshit anon

It’s hard to admit but read something like Shakespeare and you’ll find the exposition of “Recruit’s outfits” so incredibly mind-numbing you’ll set your collection on fire

>>724747681
plot twists
halo CE: flood
halo 2: great schism
halo 3: new halo(kinda)

>>724747895
>contracted to make three game
Uh. aren't all games contract games?

>>724743325
As another said, the lore is expanded upon in Halo 2, but even in Halo 1 there's some interesting tidbits, chiefly the way Guilty Spark talks about humans.
>Why would you hesitate to do what you've already done before?

>>724736289
Theres around 40+ Halo books, so on average for all of the books together I'd say decent/good.

>>724748072
I grew up with halo/friends who read the books, I don't get the appeal of the rated for ages-for-12-and-up kid books.

The stories really felt like slop, and often contradicted each other. and never go anywhere because they couldn't overtake the games or retcon things.

then you have 343 making the books essential reading to understand the dog shit story of the games...

>>724748112
Bungie actually wanted to make Halo CE and 2, they didn't want to make Halo after 2, thus why a committee wrote Halo 3.

>>724747681
The whole resolution for the Flood doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Everything hinges on Cortana's plan, but her plan is kinda dumb. Luring the Gravemind to the Ark so they can blow it up along with the Ark doesn't really jive with the actual nature of the Flood. Like, they clearly don't need a centralized Gravemind to still be a galactic threat, so the risk versus reward of bringing the Gravemind to the Ark doesn't add up.

>>724749225
I think part of the plan was that the gravemind knew of the arc and decided to send everything to it; otherwise he had nothing.

>>724744545
More than one Bungie writer wrote the terminals.

>>724733519
Blasphemy! The Noun-Lord will hear of this.

>>724729861
Moa

>>724724432
>>724725407
But muh lore accurate master chef needs to run and jump around at the speed of sound, otherwise it’s not canon

>>724722027
The books are better than the games.

I personally really enjoyed First Strike, but the very implication ALL that shit happened between the end of CE and Halo 2 is so fucking ridiculous, but I kind of enjoy the absurdity of that too because it reminds me of the Star Wars EU with Shadows of the Empire happening between Episodes V and VI.

>>724748335
The addition of plot elements is the most egregious and retarded error of youth fiction
>run into issue
>magic new thing fixes it in one chapter
>EVERY time

>>724721971 (OP)
I'm gonna say what we're all thinking, Halo 1 to Halo 2 clearly shows they weren't expecting it to be popular and shit themselves a bit with the sequel. The floaty guy who serenely strolls around at a casual pace feels WEIRD when you're on Earth. On Halo you can assume it's lighter gravity, it's a fucked up alien ring world, that weird floaty movement was charming when rather than something you get pissed off about you just think "Oh yeah it's a weird place" and adjusting how you play. On Earth it makes no fucking sense. And having the player be the aggressor as much as you are just doesn't feel as good as Halo 1's breakneck pace where everything's going to shit around you at all times and you eventually scramble off in a little ship and blow the whole goddamn thing up. And there I'm gonna say TO HELL WITH JOHNSON HE SHOULD BE FUCKING DEAD HE WAS FUN BUT GOD DAMN IT IT WORKS SO MUCH BETTER IF THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO GET OUT FOR THE HUMANS ARE JOHN HALO AND CORTANA

>>724750558
It cant be too complicated for ages 12 after all... I just find it so strange that people stick to the books written for children; aka the demographic that play video games.... as if its god

them elites tho

>>724736289
I liked the forerunner ones as standalone scifi but people get uppity over them being 343 lore

>>724721971 (OP)
bungie didn't give a solitary fuck about the books,

>>724750558
It's been a while since I read Fall of Reach, but I don't recall it going like that at all. It's mostly just following the development of the Spartans.

>>724750942
ok here is the thing, had all the dumb 343 stuff been its own ip. it would've helped it far better than to be tied to halo.

>>724751026
Yes it's like 75% just about the backstory of Chief and the Spartans, and then the rest is the actual fall of Reach. But the events depicted are still way more kino than the game.

>>724751337
I read it a long time ago but I remember a chunk of it was just a fight on a space station or some shit. Seemed really tame compared to Objective: Survive.

>>724751426
Chief fights on the space station to erase any record of earth but I'm referring more to the space battle with the giant orbital platforms sacrificing themselves to act as shields for the MACs

>>724751426
The ground fight of Reach is only in First Strike.

>>724751337
The books have a lot more focus on the space battles which is largely taken for granted in the games.

>>724751739
I think the games put a huge emphasis on how retardedly outmatched they were in space by the covenant, reach in particular is very notable because it pulled out SLIPSPACE RUPTURE DETECTED and all that. No need to show human ships getting even more mauled than they already are when you can just show a massive ship being destroyed before 5 more just like it drop in like nobody's business.

>>724739025
bungie was probably against it because they were literally recycling marathon's lore by doing this

>>724735350
ive reread this book many times. i think i first picked it up when i was 13 and i was glued to it

>>724751824
well, by far the dumbest thing about Reach was that they actually said the whole fleet was away from the planet on an 'exercise', not to mention the Covenant just hanging out on the planet right under everyone's noses. So the big climactic battle was just a handful of ships as we saw.

>>724739025
>that's pretty strange
It's not, it wasn't their lore. They wanted to make Halo a successor/spiritual successor to Marathon but Microsoft kept messing the lore up, it's what led to them leaving.

>>724752303
When was that mentioned? Frankly speaking even if you include the rest of the ships they were supposed to have into a larger conflict they would just be finished against the Covenant anyway. In Halo 2 a small expedition fleet basically just sails through them onto Africa.

>>724751824
Eh, when you're trying to sell that this is humanity's penultimate stand against the alien threat, it kinda behooves you to show just how fucked up they got in the space battle as well.

Halo was supposed to be an RTS until Microshaft forced Bungie to turn it into an FPS launch title for the Xbawks.

The beta leaks we got last year on /vr/ were hilarious.

>>724752723
It was supposed to be a TPS open world action game before Microshit forced Bungie to turn it into an FPS. Bungie had already dropped it being RTS before being purchased by Microsoft.

>>724722027
fpbp
ir's all pulp fiction

>>724752624
>In Halo 2 a small expedition fleet basically just sails through them onto Africa.
You mean 1 ship out of 15 makes it to the surface by sacrificing the rest of the fleet so the Prophet can poke around the surface for a few hours before fucking off. Though the fact that they broke the perimeter at all with such a small fleet still says plenty.

>>724737015
I could be misremembering this, but wasn't the Flood supposed to be from a different galaxy? Just this cosmic horror bouncing from galaxy to galaxy consuming all life.

And then after Halo 4 the lore became super gay. Space dust Precursors that created-... it actually doesn't matter. It's fucking gay. Everything lore related after Halo 3 is fucking gay.

>>724753492
The from another galaxy lore is from the same book that says they're Precursor dust.

>>724753492
I don't think the origins of the Flood were super clear in the old lore.

>>724753492
Yeah, but they were also supposed to build multiple Graveminds on multiple planets to create a new Flood form that could destroy the universe with a Big Bang.

>>724753476
Well, that's what I mean. It was a tiny fleet of a few decent ships that got there literally by accident in their search for Forerunner shit. By the time Halo 2 ends they even get more ships that come by to join in with the whole schism ongoing and humanity could do nearly fuckall about it even with insane shit like Chief jumping between ships with a massive bomb and SMACs and everything.

>>724753492
>I could be misremembering this, but wasn't the Flood supposed to be from a different galaxy? Just this cosmic horror bouncing from galaxy to galaxy consuming all life.
The later lore basically included this by saying that the Precursors "died", they basically degraded themselves into powder, then sent it into the galaxy from the outside through science fiction mumbo jumbo that made them the equivalent of the angry/dissatisfied god from the bible who then used the Flood on the earth/galaxy and yada yada.

>>724721971 (OP)
Master Chief could have been lame, but he managed to pull off some amazing stuff for the short time he inspired people.

>>724753750
For what purpose

>>724753492
originally the origin was never mentioned. First instance in game is a halo3 terminal that describes arrival but not where it was. No connection existed for flood and precursors. 343 fans like to point out a terminal about precursors "we can follow in their footsteps" but they're talking about something else.

the first ever mention of flood origins and precursors is in 2011 book cryptum of the forerunner saga by 343

>>724730450
I like Halo Wars though. Can't we split the difference and jettison 343?

>ruins the series
>gets depressed
>leaves

what the fuck was his problem?

>>724754262
he was following xbox/microsoft execs orders of making the game more cod

>>724754138
These people really don't know what it'd be like if two superhumans actually fought. It feels like they just think they're slightly stronger people instead of freaks that flip cars and shit.

>>724736289
The nylund books, contact harvest, and the cole protocol are decent scifi if you like halo
everything else is not worth

>>724754262
The lead writer of Mass Effect: Andromeda, was Chris Schlerf, worked on Halo 4 as its Senior Writer and Narrative Director.

>>724754262
HEY O'CONNOR

>>724754139
Ask ex-Bungie devs

Halo forever cemented Xbox's association with the color green.

>>724721971 (OP)
I never read a vidya book

>>724733519
the prostate rebellion?

>>724754351
If you could manipulate 900lbs elegantly, I'd imagine it'd look like the Matrix's Neo or something.

>>724722027
I read the first three and they were fantastic. I can't say anything about any of the other one since I never gave them a chance.

>>724735350
They just confirmed that the CE remake will have 3-4 prequel missions btw. Nearly guaranteed they will happen in the fall of Reach from the Chief's perspective. Likely ending when Chief gets to cryo, minutes before Noble Six delivers Cortana to the Autumn and saves it from destruction but getting left behind willingly in the process. So, they are finally connecting Reach and CE with gameplay to no longer have a narrative disconnect between both games due to Bungie not giving a fuck with lore during the development and release of Reach.

>>724754868
It's only 3 missions and it takes place before Halo Reach and won't be connected to bookshit or spin-off games, good call.

>>724754138
All of these guys got canonized but in the mainline Halo universe. Apparently they are some of the Spartans from Omega Team that you can use during the mission Arcadia Outskirts in Halo Wars. Of course, since this is a retcon for an old game, they are not named in-game.

They survived the war and are doing 3-man Ops somewhere in space, like every other S-II that is still alive and in-service. The other half of Omega Team is still alive too. And it, unsurprisingly, is made of the Omega Team members seen in the Halo Wars 2 Commander Jerome DLC.

>>724736289
I read The Fall of Reach, The Flood, and First Strike and loved all three of them. The first one especially had me hooked something fierce. I got bored halfway through Ghosts of Onyx, but my life was all over the place at that point, so I plan on giving it another chance in the future.

>>724755315
Only true fans would know this, figures.

>>724752723
Was Halo Wars any good? I remember playing a demo briefly way, way back, but never followed up on it.

>>724754262
The fact that Jaime Griesemer named dropped this faggot recently is hilarious. Frank O'Connor really was the catalyst for everything that went wrong in this series after Bungie's departure. I distinctly remember an interview with Martin O'Donnell speaking about and alluding to cetain unnamed figures within Bungie and Microsoft scheming to pivot themselves into unqualified positions and I'm certain Frankie was one of the unnamed individuals while the other was Pete Parsons and by the way Pete was so butthurt over Marty recounting some of the stories that he SUED and the courts fined Martin O'Donnell a hundred thousand dollars or something like that.

>>724755784
I didn't like how it was trying to dumb down RTS like Halo did shooters.

>>724755861
Going by Jaime, Bungie didn't care all too much because they were done with Halo anyway. For them, Halo was Microsoft's problem now.

>>724754478
>Ask ex-Bungie devs
The source for that statement is a Halo Wars dev notorious for constantly lying half remembering something Bungie devs maybe possible told him during the development of Halo Wars lmao. Who do you think you're fooling?

>>724743603
Halo 2 and the surrounding media is why people like the lore of Halo dumb 343 shill.

>>724736289
For the love of God.
Anyone.
If you don't want to read the entire wiki or 40 fucking books.
Just go and read "Halo Empty Throne".
Halo: Empty Throne is your go-to if you want to understand the current state of the Halo universe WITHOUT having to digest the entire fucking Halo Wiki or a bunch of YT videos of damn nosy sounding people.

>>724748072
>It’s hard to admit but read something like Shakespeare
Dumb poser.

>>724756537
People liked Halo 2 for the multiplayer, no one liked the campaign at launch. People only liked the lore because of the ARG leading to its release, the Bestiarum that came with the special edition of the game, and because of the Terminals. You can lie all you want, but a lot of you faggots liked that shit until you found out that Bungie and 343 had different lores regarding the Human and Forerunner connections. Wouldn't even be surprised if most people thought "You are Forerunner" pertained to Master Chief specifically, lol.

>>724755784
yeah it was fun if you've never played an RTS before, had a pretty decent story, alright characters and surprisingly great looking cutscenes

honestly kinda incredibly how good the art is too, so much of it fits with Bungie era Halo despite being from another company, but I guess it makes sense as they were trying to copy it instead of add to the universe.

Is it all zoomers or bitter millennials running their mouth about the original series of books? Back when Halo 2 came out I was in high school, my friends were major normalfags mostly concerned with the multiplayer and even they read the books and we'd all discuss shit like Chief flipping over a tank or whatever. At the very least Fall of Reach informed people's view of the world of Halo at that time.

>>724756779
*leading to Halo 3's release

>>724756826
Let's be realistic here, it was the novels, and Halo 3 Terminals that made Bungie's games interesting to people. If Bungie would have axed those like they wanted to, I don't think Halo's SP would be as big and the MP would have died off killing the series entirely instead of it dragging on after the ass kicking COD gave it for many years.

Reading this thread makes me realize how irrelevant Halo is now. Never thought it would happen.

>>724739269
>From the very beginning the novels were designed to be optional, but official, material. Bungie didn't want people to have to read the novels to follow the game.

343 Industries must have missed this part

>343: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO YOU NEEEED SPRINT YOU NEED HITMARKERS YOU NEED HITMARKERS YOU NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED BLOOOOOOOOM
>WHY WONT SOMEONE THINK OF THE MODERN AUDIENCE!

>>724750942
I think the worst aspect is how 343i intended to run Halo. Like you barely know ANY of the characters because you didn't look at [x] media.
They wanted you to read and look at everything, even if it was terrible just to know who some cunty bitch was. Bungie had the right idea with the books as just being something extra or 'this is what was going on between the games' sort of things.
I didn't play 5 but I knew Locke as the literally who character in some dogshit throwaway tv show, halo 4 having a character from forward unto dawn etc.
Halo 4 soured me to this series like nothing else. I was done with it. I have to get drunk to even consider playing it. The game was so terrible it had Reach bump past it in players 2 months after release.

>>724756957

wtf are you talking about? Halo has been irrelevant since Halo 4 and that game came out in 2012 you dunce.

>>724756957
Yeah, it's pretty irrelevant now, hopefully Campaign Evolved can reinvigorate the SP especially on PC, PlayStation, and eventually Switch. MP is screwed no matter what it does though.

>>724757282
God, this is so fucking slow, god damn

lore ideas I like from the books:
>spartan-II children experiment
>original war was against human rebels
>flood-forerunner war
>Mendicant Bias
>Chief being mistaken by 343 for Didact 2
>old spartans like Naomi being repurposed for ONI black ops in nuHalo timeline

>>724757918
>Mendicant Bias

Offensive Bias was better.

>>724757918
>Chief being mistaken by 343 for Didact 2
Since this was a CE line, predating any Didact idea (and I've personally grown increasingly negative towards the Didact at all) I personally like to view Spark's lines to be veiled reincarnation reference akin to Marathon's interpretation of it, as CE in a vaccum can still comfortably fit within the wider Bungie multiverse rather than strictly the Halo canon.

>>724758092
not even close. he was just a robot who did as he was programmed without nuance
mendicant bias on the other hand
>got infected by flood (logic plague)
>goes rouge and fought against his own creators, annihilating the entire race as well as any other life in the galaxy
>felt remorse 100,000 years later and decides to help chief in halo 3 in order to atone for his past sins

>>724737682
I dunno, the metrics for each game can vary wildly, and what you actually do with that movement. Like how in Halo 5, sprinting takes longer to cross sections of Midship than it did just walking back in Halo 2, but if you do even the most basic boost maneuvers and such instead, you've move way faster than Halo 2 while having your gun available the entire time.

>>724758686
>he was just a robot who did as he was programmed without nuance

lol no, both are contender class ancillas.

>>724756552
Zealous rundown:
TLDR;
>UNSC rebuilding AGAIN since they got fucked hard at the end of Halo 5. But they are still the more organized and big of the other factions, no longer the top dog, they are mass producing Spartan-IVs and ships but lose some of each batch every battle due to aliens getting smarter with tech. Still in the green.
>Created fucked since Cortana lied and her cure just delays AI death age somewhat, better than nothing though, her robot army is not that great at strategy, Guardians have a fixed radius of EMP, factions just damage each other as much as they can, see a Guardian, leave decoy ships behind and bait the Guardian into a fake chase of it with no real or expendable tripulation. The winner is the one that either didn't get killed by the Guardian or inflicted the most damage on the other team.
>Created and UNSC avoid each-other if they can since a proper head-on war between them both would likely end up with them wearing each other down enough for the aliens to come and delete them both.
>Covenant 2.0 being formed out of Covenant Remants, under the leadership of a Prophet Illuminati group that existed since the creation of the Covenant, were pulling all the strings too. They have full control of a hidden shield world with gene forges. Implied that Prophets are mass cloning themselves and mass producing Prelates (Prophet Supersoldiers) to counter the Spartan-IV program.
>Banished have nine leaders: Atriox + 8 big leaders one step down below him, those are 6 Brutes, 1 Elite, 1 Jackal. Potential Grunt leader candidates rising too.
>Insurrectionists allied with the Banished, Banished stole Spartan Program data, all of it, now they are using their human contacts to produce knock-off Spartans. Called Jannisaries.
>Flood still contained.
>Domain got closed off. Created going into fiefdoms that go solo or stay Created. Cortana dies in INFINITE for real.
>Flood still contained.
Cont.

>>724760112
Nearly every single major faction, since this book's ending, is investing in supersoldiers, exoskeletons or mechs, etc, or all of them tech trees.
Prophet: Implied, unconfirmed, mass cloning and mass production of Prelates + refitting their other species Covenant army.
Elites: Prosthetics and more life support, their armor had strenght enhancers since the Bungie era lore. Arbiter faction getting help and helping the UNSC with armor systems.
Brute: Same as above, but "higher risk, higher reward" mentality plagates the Banished ranks. Also gravity bayonets and jetpacks.
Created: Executors. Think Quake 4 Stroggification but to Spartan-tier, Reverse Cortana and Chief relationship in which the A.I. is the master of the Executor. Sloan's idea btw.
Jackals: Assassin's creed or Sniper Elite. Can't explain it easier than that.
Grunts: No supersoldiers, abusing Grunt Goblin mech platform. It's basically their Warthog. Insanely modular, from farm truck to to literal battle tank and more and viceversa with easy refitting.
Hunters: More colony variations as seen in Halo Wars 2. More weaponry variation too.
Buggers: Same as always, no need to change anything. They are bugs.
Engineers: Engineers.
Flood: Space zombies still convert or reuse the abovementioned things if they can. Currently, they can't. Remember how Halo 3 ended?

>>724758092
>Offensive Bias was better
Hope we eventually fight his giant ass as a boss in an indirect Infinite sequel.

>>724760112
>>724760201
Halo Infinite's multiplayer story, before ending, also hinted that the other non-human factions and species might have figured out already how to make their own smart A.Is like the ones the UNSC uses due to a human experiment on a Brute brain-based A.I. Iratus. The subsequent Spartan Program data breach exacerbated this.
It's more or less expected that we might see other species eventually carry alien-brain based A.Is too when going on missions, just like Chief carried Cortana through most of the trilogy.
Elite A:I. buddy when?

>>724760112
>>724760201
>>724760510
This shit made me lol each time as 343 was building it up through the books and games, it was really obvious what they were setting up.
All groups collectively realized the green man and her blue lady were the meta, so they are now trying to copy it, or at least the shielded super suit part first. Be it a mecha or power armor and maybe later the AI once they are safer to use again.

>>724735350
I was super disappointed when there was nothing about the Super MAC guns in Reach the game

>>724760112
>Flood still contained
>Flood: Space zombies still convert or reuse the abovementioned things if they can. Currently, they can't. Remember how Halo 3 ended?
Yeah, about that. Flood just took over an entire planet and have created Proto-Gravemind that's searching the universe for a Halo ring to take over. This happens in Halo Waypoint Chronicles: Ascension on Atropos. Endless are coming, Offensive Bias has been deployed
ALL FORCES ARE IN PLAY!

>>724761069
The Flood were also amazed by the Chief and Cortana so now they're infecting Spartan-IVs as well.

>>724735350
Can someone actually explain the hate for reach?

I played all of the halos when they came out. I played reach the most. It played exactly like 3, the most popular game types got rid of the abilities that you people bitch about. The invasion game type was 100x more fun than big team autism, especially if you were playing solo.

>>724761358
introduced sprint so it was the beginning of the end for purists back then

>>724760112
>new halos will be about shooting knock off spartans like in a bot lobby
I don't know how to feel about this

>>724756779
>no one liked the campaign at launch
citation fucking needed, if people wanted to play 2, they probably were at least familiar with 1, which only had LAN. Multiplayer fags are always insufferable fart huffers. They ruined halo with the 'multiplayer' improvements (sprint, removal of health), and have killed many other games such as TF2.

>>724761358
When Reach came out, people didn't like DMR bloom, Armor Lock was OP, and there was changes like no bleed-through on damage while shields were up that lead to a common double-melee kill mutual death scenario even if you got the jump on a guy with some bullets first. 343 patched all this stuff with the Title Update when they took over, and then there is the argument the Bloom change just made everything worse with DMR now being too accurate.

Also I absolutely loved the idea behind Invasion, but I think Boneyard and Spire are god awful maps, especially their phase 1s.
Invasion only truly shines in Custom Games with other people's Forge maps.

I enjoyed the books and games both. I used to read the books during breaks in highschool. I was excited about the forerunner saga, but the writing style just didn't capture my my attention. Later learned that 343i retconned forerunners into just another lame alien badguy to fight, and on top of that, gave them so much exposition that the mystery around them collapsed, and thus they lost anything interesting.

Also their aesthetics under 343i are horrid. Too many moving parts, too gaudy, and too clean/shiny. Makes them feel like an angular version of the covenant, instead of the advanced but practical people they were once alluded to be(once again, the reasons of similarities between human and forerunner shape language in the bungie games.)

The original bungie games and books made halo truly feel like an intricate allegory to real-world spiritual battles. Chief is basically Jesus, the Covenant are basically a mix between Romans and Jews, the other spartans are basically saints and apostles given their constant martyrdom and never being declared 'dead', the Flood and the Ark are almost self-explanatory, with the Forerunners basically being the demigod pre-flood humanity. The list goes on and on, and I found it beautiful. It was more than just a story in a vacuum. Same reason I loved Chronicles of Narnia, albeit Halo was more ambiguous and less on-the-nose most of the time, and if you knew what it was allegorical to, you'd start to find answers to the mysteries and gaps deliberately placed. You'd understand the story on your own, instead of needing it exposition-dumped onto you.

Halo's writing under 343i pissed me off so much I started writing my own setting with a lot of inspiration from bungie's halo setting, and still write it to this day.

>>724761358

I thought the campaign was good... mp on the other hand was kinda ass, at one point all I remember was playing maps made in forge.

>>724761958
Ah I get the double death thing in reach but I remember that type of shit in 3 too. Worst was turning a corner but you were already dead when you review the game.

Armor lock was shit, and wasnt even in any of the "competitive" game types. You can't even compare the dmr to how broken the pistol was in the og. Pretty sure the br took like 4 shots vs the dmrs like 5 to the head

>>724761958
The TU ruined the game, imo. The DMR bloom balanced the weapon because the DMR is hitscan with pretty much infinite range. The BR in previous games actually had projectile speed, requiring slight shot lead on fast targets, and a much more limited range. It was still a good long range weapon, but you couldn't cross-map with it, and getting full damage per trigger pull required landing all 3 rounds of each burst. The DMR has all of its damage in a single shot, making it already easier to kill with.

The problem comes down largely to the playerbase of Halo(and shooters in general) at the time who were wannabe tourney faggots/wannabe mlg tryhards, and instead of accepting the fact that a DMR has equal share in the sandbox as all other weapons, they wanted it to be THE dominant weapon overall. The TU, therefor, completely ruined Reach's weapon sandbox by making almost all the other weapons obsolete. The AR, for example, was better than the DMR at closer ranges. Not just marginally, but outright, because of DMR bloom providing inaccuracy that allowed the AR to win in its intended niche. Plasma weapons too were able to do similar things to counter DMR's and needle rifles. The DMR was just one wheel in the clock, but everyone who only played SWAT and competitive playlists instead of enjoying the whole of the game insisted it be the only weapon you ever need with the rest just being flavor/fluff.

>>724762304
The Forge World map fatigue was real.

>>724762484
The DMR was already the best gun in the game, and any weapon that it beats post-patch was beaten pre-patch.

>>724762304
I can't speak to too much that happened later, but for the launch maps I can't believe Bungie actually put The Cage and Paradiso in matchmaking playlists.

>>724762832
I can't believe they showed off that Wizard remake in the Forge vidoc and just didn't include it in the first wave of matchmaking at least.

>>724762787
Nah, Reach was pretty much the only game I played at that time, had about a 3-4.0 k/d overall. I only used the DMR if I was at range, and made it work well there because of pacing shots. Closer up I mostly used plasma and melee weapons, AR if I wanted to kite/bait. Even in the DMR's realm, the needle rifle felt better half the time because of its supercombine, making it great for picking off unaware people with their shields down(if you learned to long range with plasma, it could be hilarious). DMR was only 'best' in SWAT or Asymmetrical games like invasion maps that favored UNSC.

The only truly useless weapon was the plasma repeater. It's a plasma weapon, but lacks the damage bonus to shields - the projectile damage data is literally the same as the AR's, only it's worse because its fire rate is on an impractical curve and loses accuracy faster.

Basically, on anything outside of larger range BTB maps, I tossed the DMR not long after spawning and went aggressive. Post TU it beats everything except shotguns at mid/close range, on top of everything but snipers at long ranges.

>>724763327
I don't understand why they made the Plasma Repeater, I'd prefer to use the Plasma Rifle over it everytime because at least it didn't lose accuracy.

>>724763327
The AR was objectively worse than the DMR as far as damage output went. While you cite bloom for the DMR being worse up close(which makes no sense), the AR had even more aggressive bloom.

>>724761941
Most people jump on multiplayer because the campaign was shit. While CE had its issues, it was still enjoyable. With all the money Microsoft were putting in the hype train for Halo 2, everyone expected the campaign to be amazing, it was a disappointment. I honestly feel like Microsoft screwed Halo up when they messed up Bungie's lore at very start with the Fall of Reach. Halo's lore under Bungie was never able to reach the heights of Marathon's because of that. I can honestly see why Bungie was very pissed about that.

>>724763441
Every strange Reach decision can be attributed to Invasion. Bungie wanted the Elites to have a gun that is close enough to the humans' AR.

as a kid I liked the Repeater cool down effect

>Jannisaries.
You forgot to mention that they have to pay the training and initial augmentation costs to the rebel or banished dudes who they got sold to.

>>724761636
Don't worry.
This is why the majority of "Jannies" look like a mismatched cosplay of an "Evil ODST or Marine" with imitation Spartan stuff and also wearing a bunch of dumb dangerous dubious shit, be it alien hardware they got from Jackal merchants or makeshift in-house innie solutions from workshops to "even out the scales" if they run into something really dangerous. Most will die at this stage if they meet the average above minimal rank enemy we have faced in other games though. Which is why the majority wait until they got something on the level of SPI.
The Banished """"Spartans"""" you might have seen in renders, infinite armor and fanart are like the outliers that have managed to survive enough missions to have funded themselves an armor that is like an offshot of Gen 1 with retrofitted stuff from Gen 2 and 3 and tons of alien components to fill in gaps. Which is why they get offed by Spartan-IVs and experienced aliens or Forerunner constructs or, as hinted a couple times, by themselves if they try to field test in a hurry "something" that they didn't use before bringing it on mission.
Can you imagine the amount of rookie Jannies that fried themselves when trying to use armor lock, shields or camo with a poor installation?, or what about the ones that liqueified their own organs if they used thrusters, evasion or some other sort of mobility tool without a gel layer?, these guys are being mass produced for a reason. The majority won't, don't, make it to "Evil Spartan" tier.

>>724721971 (OP)
make halo great again

>>724763906
It's a cool mechanic, but rather pointless when the weapon cools down on its own. Infinite does it better by having weapons that either don't cool down on their own or do so extremely slowly.

there is no way halo can actually be good again. it's totally fucked

>>724763963
Enemy Spartans could have been interesting, but as with anything 343 does, they didn't make it interesting. It makes no sense why a Spartan would just defect to the aliens' faction.

halo 1 & 2 used to be so good reach was the last good game. 343 can go fuck themselves

>>724756779
>People only liked the lore because of the Terminals!
>O-okay people only liked the lore because of the ARG leading to its release, the Bestiarum that came with the special edition of the game, and because of the Terminals.

Lol backpedaling already. Not a good look. Can't even keep your own story straight.

Either way, I'm not super interested in "a-actually NOBODY cared about the lore until Frank Connor came along" so you can pretend that's the case if you really, really want to. Everyone knows that's not remotely true but it's not like anything will ever change your mind and you will continue to refuse to engage in discussion in good faith, so why would I bother?

>>724756045
I think anyone that isn't just married to the job would've agreed after Halo 2.
>too ambitious for a tight deadline
>wanted stencil shadow shaders but then found out the Xbox couldn't actually run them worth a damn outside of scripted cutscenes, forcing them to near-completely reboot the project besides assets left over
>wanted at least a good half or third more of game overall but had to cut all of it due to time, including substantial plot developments and an actual ending, even if one not everyone agreed on internally
>didn't even have the time to run a proper balance pass on the game, resulting in the infamous Jackal Sniper spam and requirement to corner-poke with the BR on higher difficulties, plus the low player health because regenerating health/shields wasn't quite balanced yet
>weeks of crunch time just to even get what managed to come through out the door in the first place
That's the kind of game development that destroys a man's soul. Even if it was one of the biggest game successes ever made for the time, you're not gonna probably ever feel good about a video game again after how fucked up and compromised it became.

Why is there a bunch of autistic Halo fans acting like any of this stuff matters? MOVE ON FAGGOTS. Why is it hard for people here to understand that companies like Microsoft DON'T CARE about you guys? All this screaming about Bungie and 343 means nothing! Microsoft doesn't need you people anymore. thanks to the popularity and the cultural success of this franchise in the early 2000s. You gave them a reason to pump Halo games forever, regardless of the quality.

It's the same broken circle you people are on. Opinions like these on /V/are the reason why no company respects people like you. None of you people can make good opinions.

>>724746652
This

MC being the revival of the security officer makes everything work. Cortana being the Leela companion you never had in real time is supposed to be huge. The Flood are a (badly nerfed) version of what the Wr’kncancter were supposed to be that you never got to see.

Halo 3 needed to take the series into an adult direction à la Marathon: Infinity and it just fucking didn’t. Rampancy, a morally grey-black AI buddy, dream levels, and a truly unbeatable mythical foe should have been wholesale stolen from M: I. Instead we got another ad for the armed forces because we were at the height of the Iraq war.

>>724764420
halo 3 was gay. it was only fun playing online with friends

>>724764420
>Instead we got another ad for the armed forces because we were at the height of the Iraq war.
this is why marathon will ALWAYS mog halo.
BoBs > marines

>>724764502
you're a mtf faggot

>>724764579
go back to drinking mountain dew

>>724764596
marathon is gay as fuck

>>724764596
nah I'd rather stick with green tea and combat evolved

>>724763993
The pulse carbine is cool.

>>724763963
The mental image of some barely augmented retard wearing stolen painted red and black ODST gear full of oddly placed wires, handling a fuel rod cannon, high on ego, who sees a Spartan-IV turn a corner around his post, stop dead on its tracks at the sight of whatever the fuck he is seeing since he didn't expect a human, then the delusional dude mistakes this as him getting challenged to a duel, and then he activates an invincibility and active camo with the press of a button, only to literally lit himself up in fire, shock and a lethal dose of radiation due to not testing anything beforehand and drop dead instantly or flat-out explode, is really funny.

>>724764675
The Pulse Carbine feels like a worse Plasma Pistol. I like the Stalker Rifle for having a pseudo backpack reload with its venting.

>>724724432
>>724737015
>>724738774
>>724739880
FUCK OFF Halo reatards. Go back to /Hg/where you belong. Stay in your containment board and leave.

>>724764828
you'll never be a woman

>>724756957
only 2 main games in 10 years which were totally disappointing and the MP died out quickly.
Spartan Ops should have been its own odst like short campaign and Locke's team (already forgot its name) could have been a Reach's parallel instead of taking up 80% of H5

>>724764290
They are not Spartans joining the Banished.
The Banished are making "Spartans at home".
Of course, since the rebels and banished are making them. They came off dubious quality, so the strat is make as many as they can and hopefully some survive long enough.
Oddly enough, this is the Halsey method of "A Spartan is not made, it is born" but taken to a different type of extreme. Not genetic testing to find out candidates but rather continous trials by fire.

>>724764881
I guess that's not too bad, then.

>>724764394
>one of the most fucked development cycles of all time
>Still makes one of the best games ever created

A complete, polished Halo 2 would have been history-altering, we simply weren't meant to receive that kind of greatness

>>724764828
343 fag detected

>>724737015
Yes and no.
343 changed the lore and the humans and forerunners come from the same species. The precursors use the same species as a base for the two.
So, humans are not forerunners.
But forerunners and humans are, well, whatever the fuck that unnamed species was, some kind of primate we can guess.

death to 343

>>724764926
It gets worse with the Digsite stuff of Alpha Moon and the Ark, since it highlights that there WAS work being done on that last portion, but it simply never met the time and life it really needed for extra acts altogether.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lL6RYrYc4U
A cutscene and background skybox element in Halo 3 was planned to be a 100% modeled and animated asset in 2.

>>724743583
>>724757482
>>724744545
>>724742892

Where are the janitors when you need them? This place is filled with gamefags that ironically believe one piece of the franchise is better than the other. Does anyone have good opinions anymore? leave every single one of you. I would rather fill this discussion with MLP and spam horses to get these people to stop at this point.

>>724739025
I never bought that insurrectionist idea, creating a giga nigger enhanced cyborg killing machine just to combat irregular militias seems like an overkill. in real life it's delegated to specialized units that are not suited for combined arms warfare or just a regular army if it's not enough

>>724764881
That was just Spartan-IIIs.

>>724729861
>Take a recipe for chili
>Say it's "sangheili trail stew"
>Take a recipe for buckeyes
>Say it's "kig-yar bites"
>Take a recipe for a burger
>Say it's the "Master Beef 1.17 oz, finish the bite"
etc

>>724764391
That isn't backpedaling though, people liked the lore of Halo for reasons outside of the campaigns. I honestly blame Microsoft because if they didn't create the novels, Bungie would have went crazy like they did with Marathon before Halo. When Microsoft went against Bungie and created an origin story in a novel. It killed Bungie's drive to expand Halo's lore to the level of Marathon themselves. Halo 3's Terminals was the 343 teams attempt to bring back those Marathon elements but Bungie didn't care enough about it because it wasn't their lore anyways. The lore elements would have always brought people to Halo's campaigns but unfortunately, Bungie wasn't the reason for that, outsiders were because of Microsoft.

>>724764420
The novels and Halo 2's development really hurt the Halo series and its potential, damn

>>724764926
Halo 2 was clearly inferior to Halo CE with only the MP saving it.

>>724731815
You're always sprinting and jumping in all directions with Chief. You can easily kill bigger and stronger aliens with melees, and you're literally gunning down thousands of them single handedly throughout the campaigns. You're also hijacking all vehicles and taking down scarabs. 343's nuHalos give retards the illusion that "now you're actually doing all these things", when you always were. Yet before it was simple and required less buttons and shitty map design

>>724737771
it's really closer to HL2's base walk speed and even then i think it's actually slower at the same FOV.

>>724765872
>Master Beef 1.17 oz, finish the bite
kek

It was a fun thread.
See you all in Halo 7 when the Jannisary (Banished Supersoldiers) bosses and Executor (Stroggificated Created-made Supersoldiers) threads come.
Going to be interesting fighting a buffed up, unlimited equipment, special abilities and animations Spartan bot in campaign. Hell, if we are lucky, perhaps we get to fight human rebels too. One can dream.
Goodbye anons.

>Literally no way to play golden age Halo MP reliably
>MCC full of 4/Reach shitters

>>724766871
Does the custom network thing for Halo 2 not work well?

>>724766871
I'll give you people are playing Reach but who the fuck is playing 4

>>724767026
There's just people playing BTB of every title over and over.
If i'm not wrong, the biggest pop in-game is still people playing Halo 3 and Reach BTB all-day.

Outside of the gameplay changes and the existence of the prequel missions, they are being very coy on what they are going to change in the remake in terms of the actual missions.

Is it just me or are enemy reaction times unbearably fast on MCC? Playing CE on Legendary is a hellish slog and the enemies are almost as bad as the Marines in Black Mesa.

>>724767432
They said they'll rework the Library, and that levels have to have accommodations for 4 player co-op, but besides claims of Flood changes and a video moment of the Flood Pure Form, we really got jackshit. My hope from the concept art going around is that the back half of the game has significant designs and reworks to make it a lot more unique instead of just repeating assets and things from the first half.

>>724767470
That definitely happened on 2, not sure about CE.

>>724767192
that makes sense, I'm more horrified people have H4 installed

>>724761358
>it played exactly like 3
It didn't
>the most popular game types got rid of the abilities that you people bitch about
They didn't
>The invasion game type was 100x more fun than big team autism
It wasn't

I'm so tired of soilennials spamming threads about this dead series
>duuuuude halo was so epic when i was 13 which was 30 years ago btw

>>724767432
My guess is the levels that aren't repetitive, they won't change them much but may add some life in them to make Halo feel more alive while the repetitive levels are getting some redesigns to get rid the repetitive rooms and hallways while adding new and unique encounters to levels that didn't exist in the original game.

>>724764872
>>724764940
>>724766871
>>724768023

Go Fucking Back to /Hg/ and rot on your dead series. You've been bitching and moaning about a dead seresis that no one here cares about. Do not think for one moment that anyone on this board cares about Halo. Keep your nonexistent conflict with the million dollar company out of here. It's your problem, and you are going to deal with it.

You samefags are only here because you have no fucking life outside of this place. If only this site changed its rules of how people engage in posts. Remove all braindead zoomers and millennials. Force them to speak properly in conversation, instead of opinions and feelings of series that matter!

Why are all the 343 gun sounds so weak? There used to be at least a bit of "oomph" behind the sounds, especially with the assault rifle.

>>724765872
>>Take a recipe for buckeyes
>>Say it's "kig-yar bites"
>not "Buck's Buckeyes"

>>724769920
Who cares about 343 weapon's sound like? What are these irrelevant topics that keep being brought up?

>>724770137
>Discussion about an aspect of Halo is irrelevant in a Halo thread that has been talking about the entire franchise
?