Is it really bad for a dev to be TOO ambitious?
Is it really bad for a dev to be TOO ambitious?
Alexander Evans
Caleb Turner
yes it literally ruins games all the time
Alexander Taylor
Halo 2 wasn't ambitious, they just wasted all their money and took naps until Microsoft noticed, got furious, and they had to slap a game together in 5 minutes.
Cameron Martinez
>forerunner tank NEVER EVER
Angel Flores
the entire reason bungie had to scrap their work on 2 and start over was because they bite off more then they can chew in terms of the engine's lighting technology which the OG xbox couldn't handle; as well as having 2 many missions
Christopher Bailey
Nicholas Myers
we may still get it
a while back 343 did a community stream where they dug out old Halo 2 builds and showed off cut levels and stuff. We got a full walktrhough of the E3 build and they went out of bounds and found out that it's way more stable then they realized; and showed of beta areas of other vcut missions on earth, a prototype delta halo, etc.
If they do this sort of thing again they might show off a build with forerunner tank.
Alternatively, with the MCC release on PC, and 343 saying they wanna do mod tools, we may get it that way. Somebody actually restored a cut warthog run at the end of High Charity for example:
Isaac Bennett
>Halo 2: Remake
complete with Covenant Ship, Forerunner Tank, flood juggernauts, heretic hunters, and sprint
Joseph Cook
was the joke here that sprint was originally supposed to be in 2 also but it got cut?
Carter Russell
Logan Miller
>posts the best in the series
i'm guessing no
Connor Price
WHEN IS HAY LOW ON PEE SEE!?
Isaac Cook
I honestly don't think the halo fanbase would mind sprint had it actually been introduced that early.
Not that I like sprint or anything, but I defintely think that a lof of the whining over the new mechanics in 5 has more to do with them being introduced so late and after reach and 4 introduced armor abilities/broke even starts, so people are just jaded/skeptical towards new shit
Austin Lopez
Feature creep can ruin projects but not every time.
Jason Cruz
It's a shame because not only was Halo 2 messed up by Bungie being overly ambitious, but Halo 3 was as well.
They ended up playing it too safe with 3 because of how awful development for 2 was.
Thomas Russell
Ambition drives the industry forward, doesn't mean it always produces great results but it's a necessity.
I thought Halo 2 turned out great desu
Ryan Bennett
>middle fingers
i think they noticed how stupid it is, and just didn't want to add that garbage into Halo. too bad fucking reach added it in.
Alexander Cruz
2 and ODST are tied in my book. Halo 2 would've been the best if Bungie actually had the time to complete the game (and Halo 3 wouldn't have existed).
Christopher Anderson
Halo 3 should have launched on 7/7/07
Austin Reed
When you can't even finish your game after a delay? Yeah, it sure is.
Sebastian Smith
Not anymore because you can fix the game with patches. Halo 2 for example would get Legendary rebalanced patch to fix the botch job they did after having to cut a lot of enemies.
But instead faggot devs are making the game with patches. That's why I ignore
>"I-it's good now!"
fags, fuck off and release a finished product the first time.
Julian Cooper
CE > 2 = ODST > 3 > Reach > 4 = 5
>hurr nostalgia
I finished CE again today, I love the game's campaign
Brody Parker
If Halo 2 and 5 are anything to go by, yes.
Ryder Clark
close to my list, but ODST is a bit too high.
Dylan Perez
It's really ridiculous how different a game can be 6 months post launch these days.
Jace Gray
>5
The devs weren't ambitious with that one, they were just retarded. The great story in the marketing was all on Microsoft and 343's tertiary writers; the lead writer for the game was some 8th rate Marvel Comics guy and it showed.
Jason Morales
No, the Halo team was pissing away all their time and resources on multiplayer and not really paying attention to how campaign development was going. That was the biggest problem.
Josiah Ross
That's true but what happened to E3 2013 Halo 5?
Austin Perez
>best story in Halo
>too high
Landon Smith
This
Leo Robinson
sometimes
Austin Jones
Halo 2 was the best written of the trilogy and it played just as well if not better than CE in terms of multiplayer
Connor Phillips
Would have fit with Master Chiefs "Luck" persona
Jacob Flores
Other than budgets there's no such thing as "too ambitious"
youtube.com
Imagine if devs today put this much passion into their projects
Oliver Stewart
yes, fucking Valve fucked it all up. So many good ideas thrown away, because Valve fucking sucks at making games.
Leo Scott
Why the fuck did they release Halo 4 on the 360?
They would have known the xbone was coming by the time they started development on it.
Launching the start of a new trilogy on a new console seemed like the smart thing to do marketing wise.
Samuel Scott
The ending is garbage and for competitive play Halo CE is by far the better game, but overall you're right. The story is pretty strong and the multiplayer has the best map selection of the series.
Here's what you don't want to hear: the core gunplay is worse than CE and the campaign gameplay in general is relatively weak among the series.
Robert Morgan
The fuck plays Halo for the story? ODST sucked in gameplay.
CE > 2 = 3 > > ODST = Reach > > > 4 = 5
agree or fuck off
Mason James
I think the audio mixing was bad. A lot of the times you cannot hear the characters over the music and iirc there are no subtitles.
Robert Richardson
>he core gunplay is worse than CE
Absolutely not.
>nd the campaign gameplay in general is relatively weak among the series.
Define what you mean by campaign gameplay. If you mean the overall mission quality, then no.
People suck CE's campaign off for being "nonlinear", but The only actual non-linear mission in CE is Mission 2, and the non-linearity hardly matters because all it amounts to ois changing the order in which you tackle each combat playspace, without it impacting how the mission plays out. ANd each combat playspace isn't particularly large either, it's just that there's a gigantic, empty, waste of space field between them for padding. This is the issue I have with CE's campaign as a whole: All of the "openess" people talk about is really just empty space due to technical limits at the time and for padding, and as a result of how open the outdoor spaces are, most enemy encounters in outdoor envoirments in CE play the exact same since it's all just open fields. In terms of interior spaces, CE is stupidly linear and repetitive with copy-pasted hallways and coordoors with the same visuals and layouts; not to mention thetre's hardly any variety ibn enemy types of weapons
in 2, the outdoor spaces may be less open, but they aren't any smaller: They are just filled with more structures, rocks, trees, and terrain variation which gives them structure, cover, etc; and by extrension varies up how you handle enemy encounters. Similatly, while 2 still suffers from repetuitive hallway mazes to an extent in some missions, for the most part 2's indoor areas look different, with different layouts, and have more decroatives to help them feel less sterile. Having unique setpieces in each mission also further helps variety, as does the large quanitity of weapons and enemy types.
See above for CE
>ODST sucked in gameplay.
How so?:
Connor Peterson
The campaign level design for 2 was absolutely weaker, I won't deny it
The ending was the one weak note to an otherwise amazing story, nothing will ever give me chills down my spine more than this scene youtu.be
The brute shot and energy sword were good additions to the arsenal, although dual wielding was a retarded meme, aside from that the gunplay seemed pretty standard
This is also unfortunately true, I'm glad the MCC remake took note of that
Owen Wilson
They should've done a cross launch like what Nintendo did with Breath of the Wild. It would of given 343 more time to make 4 a bit better - granted this is what they are doing with Infinite now
Jackson Thompson
>The campaign level design for 2 was absolutely weaker
No it fucking wasn't, 2's level design utterly BTFO's CE
see what I say in
Daniel Nguyen
I'll also add that if you anons can explain why you think CE's campaign is better i'm interested in hearing it, I just don't see it and thew reason I always see people cite is better level design which seem blatently worse then 2, and even 3, ODST, Reach, and arguably even 4 to me.
Asher Moore
too bad MCC butchered everything else
Justin Reed
SPBP!
William Sullivan
The AI in half-life 2 is the worst. Aside from shooting while strafing and tracking targets they're under utilized as well as useless. The only time they start to shine is in very rigidly made arenas, but out in the open they're just horrible. They track the player through walls, they require a very annoying stacking up swat system that does not work in an FPS like this.
Jackson Adams
S C A M
C I T I Z E N
Colton Hill
No it didn't you fucking moronl, the MCC builds of each game's campaign are the definitigve way to play the,m.
CE's got some missing shaders because so did the PC port and CEA, but that's about it, and the hgoiher resolution/framrerate make up for it
Luke Cooper
It can be if they become stubborn about it and it leads to friction or budget overruns.
Jason Peterson
Alright, part of the reason why CE's campaign was better is the fact that both the AI, weapons and maps were much more balanced. See legendary is actually MP damage models, aside from the elites getting over shields all of the weapons are basically set to their default combined with more competent AI with more animations. Then on top of this bungie did a pass on level design to ensure the player had a nice little sandbox to play. This is why there are moments in Halo 2 were enemy tanks just spawn right infront of you without warning and you die. Where as in halo ce the spawns were tailored for the players convenience such as the hunters appearing down a ramp but within motion tracker range in assault on the control room. Because of this many of these large scale battle areas do not hinder the player and allow him a fair chance at planning their routes and improvising. Where as in Halo 2 you've got jackal snipers, spawns around the corner on the player or the dreadful floating platform rides where enemies are just dumped on the player from above.
3 got a lot of things right that Halo CE did, such as multiple methods, lots of varying equipment and staging the enemies like units in an RTS. Really that is what made CE shine the most, the RTS philosophy when creating these large theaters of battle. In halo 2, they just chose what they felt was more cinematic and I'm not just making that up. On a Late life cycle xbox box you can see the halo 2 ad on the back the box of master chief on the arbiter library map.
Brody Jones
>Absolutely not.
Yes it was. This is an objective fact. Every single issue people have with the core gunplay from 3/Reach originates in Halo 2 and is in many ways even worse in that game. The bullet magnetism, auto aim, enormous hitboxes, inconsistent gunplay (before the big patch that removed spread), and BR dominance were all introduced in H2. Of course, that was to compensate for issues with online play. There is no argument here- Halo CE's gunplay is much better taken in a vacuum.
>the rest
It's a matter of opinion there. Nobody sucks CE's campaign off for being non linear (by the way, TSC is also non linear). The gigantic empty spaces seem like padding, but they allow for your engagements to prolong in much more open ways. For example, a simple duel with an Elite in Halo CE in the second mission can cover a bunch of space- you and the enemies not only move fast, but you also have a lot of room to move around in. It may seem hard to believe, but just take note of it when you play CE the next time. When you fight an elite, the engagements are usually much more dynamic than in H2/H3 (I would say an exception is H2's brutes, but they're such terribly designed enemies in other respects it's not really a great comparison).
Halo 2's gameplay is a much more funneled experience in general. The worst parts of CE's campaign- the labyrinthine segments of TSC or the copied and pasted rooms in AOTCR seem to blueprint a ton of H2's mission design. It's just with H2, there's enough variation to clear up the complaints about repetitiveness (as you've said).
I enjoy Halo CE's repetitive environments as I never once lost the context that it was meant to be a long lost Forerunner facility. Similarly, I didn't mind Halo 2's less open take because Halo era Bungie was amazing at environmental storytelling; I just preferred the way CE would prolong engagements through environment size (intentional or not).
Chase Cooper
Good post. Another point in your favor is that CE's Legendary difficulty is definitely the most balanced of the franchise too.
I'd like to say The Covenant from Halo 3 (or at least the mission right up until the Two Scarabs are destroyed) is the greatest mission in the franchise though. Despite the issues with Halo 3's core gunplay and the fact that Brutes are just boring as hell to fight the encounter design in that mission is just brilliant. Wide open spaces mixed with linear sections that don't feel repetitive, large amounts of AI on screen at once, and Marty and the art team firing on all cylinders.
Jonathan Williams
The map sizing was intentional, they did that as a mitigation so the player had more options and could improvise during play. This was because bungie had time to do some map testing and make several passes on the maps, adjusting them and making changes, tailoring the encounters.
It was all done with the thoughtfulness of RTS and really good AI that they had. The bad AI in halo 2 and lack of time meant they couldn't.
Ryder Jones
>The fuck plays Halo for the story?
This might be the wrong series for you, bud. I think COD might be more up your alley.
Jaxon Perry
The version they showed at e3 was completely fake and could barely run on an original xbox. Ambition is fine but it's like they had no grasp of the tech limitations at the time.
Jose Morales
Interesting, any source you can remember for that? Funnily enough while I'm caught up on the developmental woes of 2, 3, and Reach I don't know much about CE even though it's my favorite.
Justin Carter
Based. This is actually my least favorite sonic game because it looks and sounds ugly and theres so many shitastic levels that i never want to see again
Josiah Bell
To be honest halo wasn't known for a masterful story either, it was very dry, with facts slipping in here and there between conversations. Where as in halo 2 not only did they explain terms that should be common knowledge in the most long winded way, they also made the aliens speak english and took away all of the mystique the covenant had in one cutscene. Where as the whole point of halo originally was you are boots on the ground, information is limited and you're being exposed to an alien uniform military.
Jackson Cruz
They wasted all their money on 50% more content than Halo 2 retail had? Then scrapped that 50% of content because they were lazy for making it? user, biased and ignorant hatred makes someone look like a giant retard who doesn't know anything every time.
Asher Bell
everyone points to this demo as some kind of graphical masterpiece but in reality it looks worse than the final game. it's just rendered at a higher (impossible for OG xbox) resolution
Jackson Baker
Many sources, from videos of bungie staff playing the old rts of halo CE with crab tanks and all to talking to staff directly and I do mean that. I had a few late night evenings playing with them and discussing the game over XBL and IRC, they were big WoW fans at the time while I didn't care for it.
There are also videos you can find for yourself discussing this, youtube.com
I remember talking to bent llama about backwash and why it was so bad compared to the other maps. It was because you don't start with grenades and because Halo 2 follows a very moba like structure you need every bit you can get to keep your options up. When we pointed this out he was honestly caught off guard.
Wyatt Edwards
yes 99% of the time it ends in disaster
Cooper Turner
asd
Blake Murphy
bump
Aiden Evans
thanks for the plug user
I sometimes like to dream up how the rest of Halo 2's campaign would have panned out
Liam Johnson
why does halo spv3 make all the levels so fucking long
Luke Brown
You made the mod? good shit dude
I'd love to see you mod it further so rather then just being playable in isolation which is how it funciions now AFAIK; it's actually stuck on the end of High Charity; so you can playu through all of High Charity and then that's the end of the mission
Brody Thompson
Why are people so against having Blue Team, and other EU/novel characters present in the game, when new Halo game introduce brand new characters to begin with anyways?
As long as they are introduced in a way that doesn't expect the player to know them, shouldn't it be fine? And it's not like Miranada, the Prophet,s hood etc in Halo 2 were given any more of a introduction to the player then Blue Team was
Joseph Gonzalez
Go back to Waypoint, no one wants Blue Team in the games, bookshit should stay out of the more canon games.
Alexander Johnson
>As long as they are introduced in a way that doesn't expect the player to know them, shouldn't it be fine?
now here's the problem, Blue Team got dropped into H5's campaign like nothing
Joseph Nguyen
I don't mind Blue Team appearing in game but I do mind them being paired alongside the Chief. A hallmark of Halo is those moments of isolated exploration.
Colton Adams
>end master chief's story at 3 instead of milking the shit out of him
>make prequels with Blue Team, ODST, and Spartan III
That's all they had to do.
Carson Thomas
How is bookshit any different from straight up new shit as far as players who aren't familar with the books are concerned?
And Miranda, the Prophets, Lord Hood; or for that matter, the Squad in ODST, Noble Team and Rreach etc weren't?
I don't see how Blue team's introduction was any more out of nowhere. Fred says "I haven't seen [MC] this worked up since boot camp", which is about as much of an intro and implies their background as much as Lord Hood saying "your (Miranda) father (Keyes) was an irreplacable asset to the UNSC" in Halo 2 does.
Grayson Murphy
Exactly, it's cool to see them (though would be better if their armor wasn't so heavily departed from stock Mjolnir), but getting paired up with allies is only fun when it's either with trash units or like, once or twice per game where your allies can hold their own.
Paired up with Hunters for a brief section of Halo 2? Fuckin sick. Paired up with them every time you play the Arbiter? Nah dude get out.
Zachary Cook
Why is the second game of a franchise always the most controversial?
Cameron Rodriguez
I've always thought it was silly and very fanficy that the games present Chief as the last Spartan but in the books there are these other guys who are always conveniently offscreen. In Halo 1 Linda is there dead/comatose but oh, her cryotube survives and she gets resuscitated. In 2 they're on another space station or whatever, and then fuck off to Onyx so they're not around for 3 either. I mean for fuck's sake I remember reading that AKSHUALLY they're canonically there at the ceremony at the end of 3 but of course they're not in the actual game, because the game treats Chief as the last one. It's stupid. Having a few survive Reach and be around for First Strike was fine I guess but they should have died there.
And of course the way 5 just drops them in nonchalantly after 4 games of presenting Chief as the last is the biggest fuckup of all.
John Collins
sorry for the lack of reply anons, been busy, will try to get to it in a bit
Levi Kelly
no one fucking cares faggot, you blogpost this autistic Halo 2 shit all the damn time
Jaxon Hill
If you can't deliver on it yeah
Daniel Gonzalez
bump
Angel Russell
Keep all book stuff in the books.
Owen Hernandez
They always try to be ambitious.
Isaiah Bailey
people actually did complain about Noble Team, crying about how it should have been Blue Team
Henry Rodriguez
Ambition, trying to be " different " from the first entry and drifting, some times money grab, some times technology had improved so the devs start experimenting.
Camden Sanders
again
how is introducing a character from the books any different from intoducing a brand new character
Nathan Hill
I Blue Team's case, the game's have stated that Chief was the last Spartan II, Brian Reed expected us to read all about Blue Team to understand them, plus they all brought along that stupid squad combat, I just want Chief and his AI Cortana along with Marines, a bunch of Chief copies aren't needed.
Nicholas Bailey
*In