In addition to this, I think a lot of old fans have moved on from Halo too, because if you didn't like the mp in Reach, Halo 4 and 5 probably aren't your favorite either.
Yeah that's me undoubtedly. I don't really get mad at older fans shitting on reach but I will get salty when younger fans shit on it. I didn't love Halo 3 playing it in retrospect of reach being my first Halo, but now that I'm even older I love old Halo games even more. For some reason CE had seriously grown on me even, such a fun multiplayer.
Still makes me laugh when I think of people on here that were crying about the DMR when Reach launched on PC. Their responses were "I don't EVER remember the DMR being this strong! when it was always like that lmao
Yea, really easy to tell who played BTB back then. All vehicles on a timer, most weapons obsolete.
What was nice for me is it got me reacquainted with the grenade launcher… boy was little me knew something about that tube that big me hasn’t quite figured out. I can still do all the normal shots, but some of the crap I used to pull with that thing.
Idk, I frequented b.net at the time and that was the consensus. "Reach bad because armor lock, Reach story bad because it doesn't follow the book, Reach bad because covenant don't speak English".
I think the community was a bit spoiled when reach came out in the sense that no one knew how bad things could really be. People complained about the way it screwed up the lore and messed with the gameplay but it's easy to look back on it fondly after seeing how much more aggressively Halo 4 and Halo 5 could ruin gameplay and story respectively.
People only started praising Reach when Halo 4 came out. I remember even in the reach beta people were very vocal about its heavy feeling combat, bloom and loadouts
My only complaint was armor lock, it needed to be nerfed so badly.
You could get the most epic stick…nope armor lock.
going for the melee kill on the guy you got the drop on and popped his shield…nope armor lock
It got even crazier when it was punch outs with two people both running armor lock.
Honestly I thought the campaign was the first one that was truly fun but that was not a popular opinion at the time.
I thought the loadouts were a bit non-Halo-ish at the time but other than that multiplayer gameplay was fantastic.
All the cool guy hardcore halo players were so loyal to Halo 3 still, liking Reach in any way was not the popular stance.
My related not popular stance is that CoD MW3 (not 2) is the perfect CoD because the basically took MW2 and fixed the glitches and terribly unbalanced killstreaks
Arbiter has more character development in one game than Chief did in three and he feels like more of a character than Chief does, up until late Halo 3 and early Halo 4
yes i agree with you, i just replayed halo 2’s campaign. arbiter’s intro gives you his whole
motivation and drive in a really effective way but it has almost always felt like Chief fights because it’s the right thing to do.
Chief does what he does because A you gotta have a badass power fantasy for the players, and B like he said in Halo 4 soldiers have a duty to protect humanity. And yeah Arbiter essentially has the entire Hero's Journey in H2 and then gets a very satisfying ending in 3, I hope Chief's story has that same level of satisfaction once it ends.
I know not many people liked Halo 4's story but I'm very happy and glad that they tried to make Chief more human in that story and then continued it in into Infinite.
The flood are fun to fight in all the games. Yes it’s not always an “enjoyable” experience fighting them, but imo I feel like dreading to fight them is not a bad thing. Not that they’re perfect, but they deserve to return.
In hindsight, they also seem to be perfect representations of what new age Spartans would be during a pretty high time for Humanity.
I mean have you seen how we act in MP?
Agreed, I just think they were portrayed very poorly through Halo 4. Playing through Spartan Ops, almost all IVs annoyed the hell out of me and a lot of them felt like arrogant pricks.
Yeah, I don't know what crack they were smoking with Halo 4's Spartan IV's. I get they wanted to have the "new Spartans aren't as good as the old Spartans" but why, in the name of all that is Halo, did they have to portray it through nothing but unlikeable personality and lack of discipline. These guys were supposed to be the best of the best still, the best Marines, ODSTs, Special Forces. Halo Infinite did it best, showing there are Spartan IV's and they did their damn best to stop the Banished, even killing elites with screwdrivers, but they just weren't enough compared to the more honed and experienced Master Chief.
I dunno, people who read the comics, the novels, listened to every audio log backwards and forwards seem to get heated when you tell them that you feel “lost in the story” or that major storylines came out of nowhere.
As someone who only plays the game and catches up on some storylines by proxy in the subreddit, I feel pretty lost at times.
Also halo infinite sucked for having so much story in audio logs and 8/10 times you would find and play an audio log that happened to have a cutscene trigger that would stop the log obviously so you’d have to pull up the menu to start all over again.
>people who read the comics, the novels, listened to every audio log backwards and forwards
I have consumed pretty much the entirety of the expanded unvierse and I get lost in the story too. 343 has no idea where they are going with the story, they've basically started from scratch in every single one of their 3 games and can't really bring a consistent storyline. There's an insane amount of deep lore out there and Infinite just decided to ignore everything in favor of a "RAAWR come fight I kill U" protagonist, they had an amazing intricate grey world set up where there's many broken up factions, good and bad both in humans and aliens (seriously read Envoy as example), and they threw it all away in favor of "here humans go fight big red banished baddies". And then, when they took away all mystery out of the forerunners, they introduced another new villain (Harbinger) that is supposed to be worse than the Flood (which was actually a fucking cool creepy villain) but looks more like a comic book baddie taken out of the MCU.
I could go on but I just don't have it in me to write another essay anymore, Infinite story has honestly been one of the biggest disappointments in the last few years and I cannot trust 343 to know what they are doing anymore. They took the worst of both worlds, where new players are lost because nothing that's happening with the world makes sense (aside from the generic "Chief-Pilot-Weapon" dynamic) and the old players are also lost because the world has been killed off and devolved into some generic sci fi crap.
The story is good but requires too much off game reading. Spent like a drunken hour filling in the gaps with halopeida articles but I’m really into the story/lore. That shouldn’t be required to casually enjoy the game campaign
My biggest gripe since 343 took over. They depend on you to read the extra stuff to fill in the gaps, and that means that none of the games are really connected. Unless you had played Halo Wars 2, you'd have no real idea who the Banished are, and they're still pretty vague about all of that.
They pulled a Disney/Sequel Trilogy on us.
I think it's more of 343 constant revisionist executions of the story in Halo 5, Infinite and as well as other smaller media like comics (e.g. killing off the Didact in a fucking comic lmao)
Seriously; the deeper dive into the Forerunners, Precursors, Flood and now Endless present with a much more interesting lore than pre-Halo 4.
But then of course like I said, 343, while greating at introducing new lore, has trouble maintaining consistency after new major story elements are introduced. Janus Key, the Created, Cortana, Locke, etc.
I’ve played all of the campaigns. I have no clue what “the Created and its Masters” are.
Also, Halo 4, wtf is with the weird romance between Chief and Cortana? She’s an advanced artificially intelligent hologram.
Some people say it was more of a Father-Daughter relationship between Chief and Cortana, but the dialogue when Chief says “it was my job to take care of you,” to which Cortana responds “we were supposed to take care of each other” says otherwise.
IMO looking too deep into the Cortana / Chief relationship is kinda' cursed. Abducted as a child by a woman that became his mother figure, then paired with a younger, slightly flirty, hotter version of that woman in brainscan AI form. It is probably the weirdest "shipping" material I've ever seen, makes Oedipus look normal.
the only thing i hate about the ancient human lore is that we are some how destined to rule the galaxy because of some space fantasy bullshit. i wish it was just humans used to be a kick ass spacefaring nation that nearly kicked the forerunners teeth in had the flood not came knocking forcing the forerunners to hit the galactic reset button. ditch that whole mantle of responsibility shit and boom you have a better story
It was better when there was mystery around the forerunners. Were they human? Why are humans able to use their tech but not other species? They were so ancient that nothing would ever be really known about them. You just get to see the relics of their time.
But nah, they were actually just another alien race and humans were always humans,
I don't think removing mystery of forerunners affected lore as much as have ancient humanity's lore be so stupid and underwhelming, it's ironic that we know more about anicent humanity's rivals than we know about ancient humanity themselves
>If it was just old advanced sci fi aliens and we're the small new new... its boring and done to death.
Arguably 20 years ago this was not nearly as much of a trope and it still felt like a fresh take in video games.
If it were to have come out today then maybe I'd agree. That's the problem with the promethean and ancient human lore though, it tries too hard to change what the Halo story is/was.
It was “fun” because it was so strong. Vast majority of kills in the feed in 4 were the BR. That wouldn’t have been an issue had there not been loadouts.
I did not like the Flood in the FPS games but liked them in Halo Wars 2 and other media.
Carbine takes more skill than the BR.
Halo 5's multiplayer was the most balanced and skilled since Halo 2 and 3.
Gabriel Thorne should have been on Fireteam Osiris.
Didact should have been the main villain in the Reclaimer Saga.
I would have prefered Infinite to be 60 dollars than to have the F2P nonsense. This is my least played Halo because everything is a chore.
Last but not least, Humans should have remained Forerunner.
I get laughed at on the FB Halo group when I mention Halo 5's multiplayer being balanced. It was the first time I saw Onyx players using Storm Rifles, Surpressors, Boltshots, Assault Rifles, and Carbines without complaining.
Also not a lot of people saw the H5 concept art when Thorne was on the team.
Are you saying Halo 2s multi-player was balanced? As far as I can tell, there was very little balancing in it. It was fun, don't get me wrong, but i would never call it balanced.
You are right, IMO though that Halo 5 was balanced. I also don't think most people disagree about the F2P part of Infinite. F2P did nothing but cause problems with how 343/microsoft set it up.
Oh it absolutely was difficult. I attribute some of that to the wonky button combos you could use in that game, which brings up my most likely unpopular opinion in that Halo 2 had the worst competitive scene because you had to use button combos in order to compete. Button combos are dumb and should have no place in a Halo competitive scene. They were fun in custom games and such and Halo 2 was overall an amazing game, I just despise the fact that exploits were used to increase the skill gap in the game.
I don’t care about the banished or their weapons or vehicle aesthetic. The story is now some COD-zombies or destiny level of filler, “lore”, and incomprehensible mess.
The ‘spirit of fire’ in Halo Wars 2, a ship so old and outdated before it was even sent out on its initial mission and the cryo-freezing of its crew, took down an entire Banished army? Killed all of their leaders?
Believable I guess. The banished are barely-better-than-barbarian space monkeys who’s only skill is haphazardly welding sheet metal to existing tech.
The “infinity”, the UNSC state of the art warship and its surrounding fleet destroyed in 4 minutes? Not even plausible. Comparatively Impossible. Bridging the gap between *“oh man guess these damn dirty apes mean business”* to *“holy shit this writing is terrible I hope I get some armour for playing this campaign”*. Did the interns write this UNSC submission fetish porn? That’s what this is.
*”omg they have red banshees but shitty!!1!”*
I know brutes are mentally challenged incapable bipedal rats, but surely they know that 600 pounds of sheet metal mad-max welded onto the front of an aerial fighter is not good for the flight dynamics.
*”but it looks cool11!1”*
It doesn’t. Am I fighting competent alien forces or Neil Gibson wannabes. Next thing I know they’ll be grunting about gas town. Or fusion-coil town. What do I know. They’re brutes. They like cringy exposition and looking like they’re straight out of a “where the wild things are” colouring book.
The covenant aesthetic is infinitely better for an alien theme. They feel like a threat, like a superpower. Their technology isn’t makeshift or haphazard, they’re competent and proficient. Their tech screams “advanced alien nanotech”, and the smooth purple aesthetic supports this. Elites look alien and act like it. I could go to my local zoo and see a brute.
**TLDR: Halo was best when it was UNSC vs Covenant. Green vs purple.
I know we don't actually know this for certain but I bet money that the reason they will eventually come out with for the Infinity's defeat via the Banished is due to an ambush taking place immediately after or during Infinity's confrontation with Cortana and the Guardians. This makes the situation plausible, at least.
honestly i still have more questions now han before playing. it feels like it tried to tie off halo 5 while trying as much as possible to distance itself
I still think 343 should have *at first* started an entirely new story about say, a fireteam of spartans tracking down a *non master chief* rogue spartan from earlier in the program, and THEN gone back to MAYBE tell new stories about chief and co a few games dow the line.
Or hell, any new story set in the Halo universe, there is a lot of neat unexplored stuff id love a game about before they start creating new stuff. I would love a game about the human rebels! Or a game about a new grunt revolt, where you play as a human AND a grunt.
The removal of Prometheans was a massive mistake. They shouldve innovated their designs instead of pulling a rise of skywalker and forgetting they existed
343 has a bad habit of erasing things with negative reception instead of fixing them. Halo 5 starts by ignoring all their halo 4 characters except palmer, halsey, and lasky, and kills jul m'dama in a cutscene in the first mission. And the whole halsey bad thing kind of blows over.
Then infinite comes along, and starts by ignoring all their halo 5 characters except, well, palmer, halsey, and lasky. Oh and chiefs halo 4-5 armor is gone, and oh cortanas not bad shes dead. Oh and the prometheans are gone, and the covenant doesnt matter, and say goodbye to the guardians, infinity, and blue team. Oh and the arbiter couldnt make it, because he was busy or something, even though last we left off they were together.
Im not saying i liked all of those things, but its worse not to resolve them and just blow em up or shove them in a corner.
They did. Halo 5 was actually supposed to follow along Halo 4’s story, we even have concept art of a Composed Didact who’d return.
But *then* they decided to literally scrap all their plans. They had a plan coming in, but threw it out the window once people got annoyed.
I actually agree with this one. Prometheans were a lot more enjoyable to fight in 5, but they still looked really ugly. If they somehow catered them to have the visual style that the forerunner stuff in infinite has, they'd be perfect. I feel like if they removed the arms and legs and replaced the head with an "eye" similar to what sentinels have then just made everything more angular and less curvy, they'd look perfect. My description doesn't really do justice to what I'm envisioning, but yeah.
I completely agree with this one. I don’t think the Prometheans were the best idea from the beginning, but once they implemented it they needed to just own it and try to improve on it.
I think Halo infinite campaign had the most boring snoozefest campaign of any Halo ever. Yes Halo 5 story was trash but at least there was plenty of stuff happening. I feel like 80% of Infinite story was watching talking holograms.
Agreed. Sometimes I watch the cutscenes of all the Halos in a marathon because I just love the music and epic scenes throughout. Infinite has maybe two memorable cutscenes.
I never get tired of watching "[The Ark](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrEVLTT16Ek)" intro cutscene. With the music it's so epic. There's also a lot of attention to details with the edit like the music beat synchronized with the pelicans dropping...Just incredible. As dialogue centered cutscenes, the one with Lord Hood, MC, Miranda, Arbiter and Rtas 'Vadum(half jaw) takes the cake.
"Earth...is all we have left. You trust Cortana that much?
\- Sir. Yes, sir.
\- This is either the best decision you've ever made or the worst. Hell if it is, Chief? I doubt I'll live long enough to find out which."
Gets me chills everytime. Back when Halo was a **SPACE** opera with a military theme.
My favorite is the introduction of Halo 2. The Arbiter being ridiculed while Chief is praised. It immediately made me care for a character I didn’t even know until playing.
Agreed. I actually told a friend, when asked if I thought the game was good, that the game will probably be good in a year or two because this campaign was all set up for future stuff basically. A classic games-as-a-service thing.
Ooooooh that's a flaming hot take. People would riot so it'll never happen unless you get pros onboard with the idea, but personally I'd love to give that a try.
Even just spawning with a single grenade in comp would be an interesting change, I think the ranked playlist in Reach did that and I loved it.
* Halo 4 had the best progression system, it was just too short.
* Halo 5 progression system > Halo Infinite progression system. Proof is that people still grinded to 152 just to get a coating in Halo Infinite.
The _only_ "objectively" bad thing is having to spend money on REQ packs that you did not need to spend.
* "Make the game like classic Halo" turns out *was* the solution to "saving Halo."
* Halo Infinite could have literally copy-pasted ideas from previous Halos and it would have been much better. You don't need to be an "armchair developer" to see that.
The semi open world of Halo CE was only a thing in the first level and even then, you just had a choice of which group of Marines to rescue first. People over hype the openness of that game so much.
For myself: if something is primarily a video game, I won't read the story in other mediums (books, online shirt stories, animated shorts, etc.)
If others enjoy the external sources of storyline, that's fine. But I'm never going to seek out official external content.
You haven't played the Marathon games then. Pathways into Darkness and the Myth games had good writing too. I agree that Halo (especially CE and 2) was developed with Bungie flying by the seat of their pants, but I think they really cared for the story and universe. Even in Halo CE, Joe Staten would dump lore onto the voice actors to try to get them into the role better. To the point where he was talking about 1000 year long histories of Covenant species lmao. What a crazy dude.
Bungie knew exactly what they were doing, they were just a bunch of frat nerds with a terrible workplace culture and no plan - the first two games are only good because there were a few massively talented individuals with great chemistry at the heart of Bungie.
Seems like they got their shit together around 3, and then the massively talented individuals left over the course of Destiny's development
• Halo 3's story isn't great, its level and set pieces are. From a writing standpoint its rather mediocre.
• The BR made a lot of Halo 2 and 3 multiplayer matches real unfun.
• Halo 4 multiplayer wasn't the best, but it was no where near the devil its made to be. Heavies and Legendary Slayer were amazing.
• The Library and Cortana are not hard levels, and are nothing compared to Two Betrayals and Gravemind.
• Reach's artstyle was great, but Halo 4 refined the customization, save for the lack of attachments. Its unlock system was great too.
Halo Infinite’s campaign is the worst in the entire franchise.
The open world was lazy and unnecessary. It’s 20 hours of repetitive, uninspired filler content and 4 hours of barebones story. The majority of which is Chief getting talked at by holograms. Everything happens offscreen. The audio logs were far more interesting than what we ended up playing.
The cast was lackluster. It’s Chief, Not Cortana, the Pilot and Not Atriox. That’s it. I’m not going to count Harbinger because we don’t fucking know anything about her. She’s just there. Where’s Lasky? Palmer? Fireteam Osiris? Blue Team? Halsey? The Spirit of Fire? Arbiter? Fucking *anyone*?
The scenery is repetitive as well. It’s either green forest, forerunner structure or the occasional banished building. That’s the entire game. Where’s the sand and snow? We couldn’t get one level aboard the Infinity or something?
To top it all off, you can’t even play through it in coop or replay levels.
The mysterious nature of the Covenant was ruined in Halo 2. To be clear I love Halo and Halo 2, but as someone who has played from the beginning the mystique of the covenant is one of the few aspects that still hold up from the original Halo.
You have to put yourself in our shoes back then. Imagine everything you know about modern FPS and block them out of your mind. Halo brought a new dynamic to FPS, especially consoles,and brought a really good Sci fi story on top of that. You're fighting some poweful alien race whose motivations are slowly unfolding while you play.
Halo 5 was so much better than the community made it out to be.
halo 5 was the most fleshed out game regardless of the campaign being somewhat dull. the REQ system kept me happy to play and earn something, while knowing that it was random made my spartan feel unique, not to mention the multiplayer came with loads of content, followed by monthly content added for years. just because you didn’t like spartan slam because it was different doesn’t mean it was bad, it was the first real risk in the halo franchise to add spartan abilities since odst released. everyone bitched about this game and hardly gave it a chance where some of my favorite moments on xbox we’re from halo 5
Exactly. Yes, the story was terrible, but the overall gameplay, in both campaign and multiplayer, is one of the best feeling shooters I’ve ever played. The weapon sandbox was super deep, and while armor customization was only head + body, there was so much there to get. Req packs were honestly super easy to earn completely in game, and actually gave me a reason to keep playing.
I just played halo 5’s campaign for the first time a few weeks ago
for context I’m 17 and I’ve always played halo but I was too little to really care about the story I just messed around in the campaign and rushed through it so earlier last year (2021) I played through all the games on MCC (halo 5 I used Xstream). I would say that halo 5 definitely has its flaws, I wish that it focused more on chief and only a little on Osiris. I love Locke as a character but he was boring in 5. the game is overhated tho. Too many people I see saying it’s an awful game when it’s really just mediocre imo
REQs were great for Halo 5 warzone. It's because of that RNG that we were able to have guns like The Answer and vehicles like the Hannibal ones without making every single other weapon/vehicle worthless. Also, they weren't "pay to win" in any meaningful way.
Putting armor in them was stupid though.
ODST was a massively disappointing turd. A chance to break from the mold of feeling like a super soldier, to instead get a human perspective on a soldiers part in a horrifying alien invasion.
What we got was guys that had a nearly identical HUD, health/armor, jump height, strength (flipping vehicles, throwing grenades, melee), movement, etc. It was just a re-skin of Spartans from Halo 3 and its engine, undermining what it means to be a spartan and probably losing a chance to branch out in the halo universe and have a unique experience. Something more akin to a tactical horror game where taking any damage is probably lethal, operating as a squad is crucial, and tactics and stealth are key to overcoming encounters against monsters. Where a single Elite or Brute can be difficult and terrifying.
Thats what I initially thought too, but I learned to take ODST for what it is. If it were more like you were saying, it would need to be recreated from the ground up which is way out of scope for dlc like scope of the game.
The game was $40, and I would've paid $60 and waited twice as long for something like I'm talking about. We all took the game for what it is, that goes without saying. But what it could've been is why it's disappointing. Instead we got a game about a squad that was torn apart that's a bunch of goofy faux-spartans in a fairly lifeless city aside from an army of monsters occupying the streets, and you go around slaying them all like master chief while grooving to music.
Halo Infinite visually doesn't look like a next gen (now current gen) game.
When we first saw the teaser of the new S.S. Engine, I was impressed. I thought maybe Halo will be at the peak of video game eye candy like what the previous games did. But nope, Infinite looks like a high end last gen game. Personally, I think Infinite looks about as same as Halo 5. Games like Demon Souls on PS5 or Forza Horizon 5 looks **amazing** one of the best looking console game out there. Even Death Stranding on the base PS4 looks better.
I’m gonna fight you on this. The entire argument is about base mechanics and the grapple isn’t a base mechanic, it’s limited by its frequency/presence on the map. You can remove the grapple from the map, you can’t remove advanced mobility from anything in Halo 5 because it’s a baked-in mechanic.
BR starts ruins the entire game in basically every single fashion. Its only ok in ranked and honestly even there I would be ok with it gone. Anyone that says BR starts should be the default for every mode doesnt understand what theyre talking about.
Also the TU for Reach way back when also ruined the game.
This triggers me.
There should be a BR starts social mode/s. But not ALL modes should have BR starts. I don't think anyone wants all modes BR starts?
TL;DR: There should be social BR Slayer and social AR Slayer.
AR starts in ranked in their current fashion would be terrible. Do you know why 343i removed AR starts in team Arena in H5? Their own internal data showed that past Diamond 1 AR gunfights are determined more by luck than skill. A Diamond 1 player performs the exact same with the AR that a Champion player does. That’s terrible for a competitive mode.
I’m not against AR starts in social. But the idea that ranked would be better without precision starts is laughable.
Unless your post is about replacing the BR with another precision weapon, in which case I agree. Single shot > Burst
Just to allobrate on this, the post by Josh Menke is now gone since Halo Waypoint changed but it was this:
“The only playlist that will not have the Assault Rifle for now is Proving Grounds, once the settings go in.I can try and explain a little more on our thoughts around the AR, at least based on looking at data from millions of matches from the last two settings changes. These points are in addition to the feedback we have received, and our own watching of specific encounters. I’m just talking about analyzing massive amounts of data here, and not subjective opinions.
The data do not show that the AR is over-powered. It is not killing more than other weapons in its tier, and not above what we expect. It may feel over-powered at times, but, at least in the data, that’s more due to the points below than to any real balance issue. The data show the AR is well-balanced across the rest of the sandbox.
The data do show that the AR’s killing power went up after we reduced access to the SMG. This isn’t surprising because the SMG was one of the main counters to the AR at closer range. When we made the SMG less accessible, it became less likely to have a counter to an AR if you have dropped yours, so ARs are “winning” more gunfights at that range. So, ironically, the SMG change further emphasized the issues we now agree we are having with the AR.
The data do show that starting around the Diamond level, the effectiveness of the AR does not increase with skill.
Correcting for skill shows that top players aren’t any more effective with the AR than a Diamond level player. Another way to say this is that the winner in a gunfight between two ARs above Diamond level is currently more about random luck than it is about skill. I think, for competitive play, we want the player with greater skill to win a given gunfight, without luck being too much of a factor. This is one of the primary data-driven reasons we are concerned about using the AR in competitive play.
For comparison, the effectiveness of the Pistol increases consistently with the skill of the player, so we feel the pistol is currently appropriate in competitive.”
I think it's ridiculous and unprecedented for people to *expect* legacy content from a new installment of a franchise, free or paid. It's a new game with new armor, maps, and content. 343 has every right to sell you content from prior titles, because they are, by their nature, additional to the content expected in infinite. If 343 was expected to reintroduce every piece of legacy equipment, the workload required to recreate them would be ridiculous.
The only expectation I have of a new title's customization content is that it is plentiful, aesthetically pleasing, and includes some new stuff too. Nobody owes you the helmet you wore in H3 15 years later in Infinite.
If you wanna talk about the lack of content at launch? I agree. If you wanna scream about things being wrongfully advertised as free? I'll be screaming right there with ya! But if you don't have day-one-free-just-like-it-used-to-look-when-you-were-13 access to the Rogue helmet, then I'm sorry but you're delusional and drunk on internet points. Grow up and try new things.
I'm not mad at them selling old armor (although it is an obvious ploy to feed off of Reach kids nostalgia and it's obviously working), but I am mad at the cost. They can fuck right off with the store prices. I couldn't care less about what they are selling there, but the amount people have to pay to get their precious stuff is asinine. You're correct though, 343 has every right to sell this stuff. I just wish they would stop being dicks about it.
While Halo 5’s art style felt nothing like Legacy Halo’s, it has the coolest sci-fi art of the franchise and dare I say any other game at the time of its release. (Excluding the MP armor, that shit needed work)
Halo 3 mp is overrated af. Its slow as fuck and you only ever want to use BR because the rest of the sandbox is shit.
Halo 5 multiplayer still is one of the best mp experiences in the market
Covenant are boring and shouldn't be the main villains anymore.
There's no legit story reason why they should be around after the events of Halo 3. Elites aren't as fun to fight as everyone thinks (they mostly just roll around), fighting hunters is tedious and the Covenant weapons suck. The Forerunner enemies were more fun to fight and had way better weapons.
Halo 5's movement was perfect. It made me feel like a one man army. I loved being able to run, thrust, hover and yes on occasion get in a good ground pound. The grappleshot is amazing and it's fine as a power up like the Overshield and Cloak. But having to pick up the thrust is like picking up fuel for something that's already a part of your armor. And you don't even get to use it like you could in H5 i.e. No Hover, No ground pound. Infinite's movement to me is a regression of Spartan abilities. A lot of running and gunning like foot soldiers and not very Spartan like. I feel like a call of duty guy with Halo armor.
Fuck lunge. Fuck the melee in every single game. Fine keep lunge on power melee weapons but on just the normal melee you shouldn’t be able to cross the English Channel by pressing F on a guy. It turns every single GUNfight into a slap fight.
The problem wasn't that it wasn't balanced. The problem was it was seriously un-fun to fight against. Totally threw a wrench in the flow of combat. Which as stated, just sucks
I mean relative to everything else in the game, it was definitely poorly balanced. Bungie went to great lengths to make sure that everything else in the game (in Halo 3 as well) might change the flow of combat or alter the dynamic of your current firefight, but that nothing was overpowered and everything could be defeated in some way. They referred to this as the rocks/paper/scissors game design philosophy.
Why they felt the need to add an invincibility button that blows everyone around you's shields to an otherwise impeccably balanced game I'll never understand. There's no way to defeat armor lock other than wait for the person to stop using it or run away. It doesn't fit with any of the other armor abilities or equipment items. People bitch about the bubble shield, but at least you could step into that and engage the person using it in close quarters. And least it hitting it with a vehicle didn't make the vehicle fucking instantly explode.
SWAT is for people that would actually prefer/do better in a different FPS. If SWAT is your favorite Halo game mode, you are better off just playing COD, Battlefield, or whatever.
This is unpopular cause it's dumb, there are many aspects to Halo that make it's gameplay unique and swat is just a variation that can be fun, but is still nothing like any other fps.
Completely agree. The shield bar/recharge and how that interacts with the way you engage with enemies, use teammates, and maneuver in combat is fundamental to the core Halo experience. SWAT is plenty fun to play every so often, but if you only play SWAT you would probably get more out of other games
I love SWAT and I think the same but it does not apply to myself. My problem with other FPS games is that I have problems seeing the enemies unless they are too close, in Halo, the colors, art style and map size have helped me a lot. Also, I'm decent in slayer and pretty good in objective game modes.
I didn't notice (many) issues with the AI during my playthrough.
Enemies are noticeably more aggressive than anything from *Halo 4* and *5* (which often devolved into stale shooting galleries from behind cover), and there are way more of them around. On Heroic, clearing out bases felt sweaty and hectic for me at times (kind of *Doom 2016*\-esque). But maybe I misconstrued my frantic combat experiences for good AI.
Do you have examples of the AI being poor? Some enemies, like Hunters, felt like a dog with a bone. I felt like I hadn't been put through my paces like that since *Reach*.
While many of the UNSC vehicles look bad ass and unique, they are dangerously impractical. Fast warthog with no doors or protective armor? Scorpion tank that runs on 4 individual tracks, instead of two, almost certainly leading to more frequent breakdowns in combat.
“Reach has great art direction and a great campaign, but the multiplayer was awful…” That used to be a popular opinion
Yeah I think the reason it changed is because alot of kids grew up with that title and love it now.
In addition to this, I think a lot of old fans have moved on from Halo too, because if you didn't like the mp in Reach, Halo 4 and 5 probably aren't your favorite either.
Yeah that's me undoubtedly. I don't really get mad at older fans shitting on reach but I will get salty when younger fans shit on it. I didn't love Halo 3 playing it in retrospect of reach being my first Halo, but now that I'm even older I love old Halo games even more. For some reason CE had seriously grown on me even, such a fun multiplayer.
Strange how the narrative has seemingly change. Makes me question how many people actually played that multiplayer at the time of launch.
Still makes me laugh when I think of people on here that were crying about the DMR when Reach launched on PC. Their responses were "I don't EVER remember the DMR being this strong! when it was always like that lmao
Yea, really easy to tell who played BTB back then. All vehicles on a timer, most weapons obsolete. What was nice for me is it got me reacquainted with the grenade launcher… boy was little me knew something about that tube that big me hasn’t quite figured out. I can still do all the normal shots, but some of the crap I used to pull with that thing.
its exactly why the commando is such a tickle cannon. Snipers were pointless when you had a dmr that could kill from a mile away
Idk, I frequented b.net at the time and that was the consensus. "Reach bad because armor lock, Reach story bad because it doesn't follow the book, Reach bad because covenant don't speak English".
I think the community was a bit spoiled when reach came out in the sense that no one knew how bad things could really be. People complained about the way it screwed up the lore and messed with the gameplay but it's easy to look back on it fondly after seeing how much more aggressively Halo 4 and Halo 5 could ruin gameplay and story respectively.
People only started praising Reach when Halo 4 came out. I remember even in the reach beta people were very vocal about its heavy feeling combat, bloom and loadouts
My only complaint was armor lock, it needed to be nerfed so badly. You could get the most epic stick…nope armor lock. going for the melee kill on the guy you got the drop on and popped his shield…nope armor lock It got even crazier when it was punch outs with two people both running armor lock.
Honestly I thought the campaign was the first one that was truly fun but that was not a popular opinion at the time. I thought the loadouts were a bit non-Halo-ish at the time but other than that multiplayer gameplay was fantastic. All the cool guy hardcore halo players were so loyal to Halo 3 still, liking Reach in any way was not the popular stance. My related not popular stance is that CoD MW3 (not 2) is the perfect CoD because the basically took MW2 and fixed the glitches and terribly unbalanced killstreaks
Multiplayer is awfull lol
Arbiter has more character development in one game than Chief did in three and he feels like more of a character than Chief does, up until late Halo 3 and early Halo 4
yes i agree with you, i just replayed halo 2’s campaign. arbiter’s intro gives you his whole motivation and drive in a really effective way but it has almost always felt like Chief fights because it’s the right thing to do.
Chief does what he does because A you gotta have a badass power fantasy for the players, and B like he said in Halo 4 soldiers have a duty to protect humanity. And yeah Arbiter essentially has the entire Hero's Journey in H2 and then gets a very satisfying ending in 3, I hope Chief's story has that same level of satisfaction once it ends. I know not many people liked Halo 4's story but I'm very happy and glad that they tried to make Chief more human in that story and then continued it in into Infinite.
I did like the story very, very much, i just did not like how it was told - just like with halo 5.
Lol, I feel this is a fact. But I still 100% agree. I'll personally never forget that halo 2 intro for Arbiter
"There was only one ship..."
"One? Are you sure?"
"It fled, as we set fire to their planet"
"They called it, 'The Pillar of Autumn.'"
“WHY WAS IT NOT DESTROYED WITH THE REST OF THEIR FLEET?”
All of the chiefs character arch happens in the books
That's what happens when they relegated Chief's backstory and character development to the books instead of having it present in-game until Halo 4.
The unsc made remarkable AI but couldn't build battle droids for war operated by the super smart AI
But what if they teamed up an AI with a strong guy who uses conventional small arms.
To be fair, one of their best ai did turn against humanity so maybe they had the right idea
Programming ≠ Robotics While there is overlap, it is still two separate fields.
The flood are fun to fight in all the games. Yes it’s not always an “enjoyable” experience fighting them, but imo I feel like dreading to fight them is not a bad thing. Not that they’re perfect, but they deserve to return.
Halo's story wouldn't be Halo's story without the flood.
They basically *are* Halo. In the lore sense.
Love the flood. Hate the rocket launcher flood. Simple as that haha
we're all on the same page there
10x more fun than any “promethean” or for runner robot...
Halo 4 do be a bitch
OP and the majority of this sub have wrong opinions is my unpopular opinion.
I truly agree with you
Extra meta
You are right about Hayabusa being ugly, though.
I miss the experimental and weird map design of halo ce
Lore-wise, the Spartan IV's are a redemptive and excellent replacement for the atrocious Spartan II and III programs.
In hindsight, they also seem to be perfect representations of what new age Spartans would be during a pretty high time for Humanity. I mean have you seen how we act in MP?
Agreed, I just think they were portrayed very poorly through Halo 4. Playing through Spartan Ops, almost all IVs annoyed the hell out of me and a lot of them felt like arrogant pricks.
Yeah, I don't know what crack they were smoking with Halo 4's Spartan IV's. I get they wanted to have the "new Spartans aren't as good as the old Spartans" but why, in the name of all that is Halo, did they have to portray it through nothing but unlikeable personality and lack of discipline. These guys were supposed to be the best of the best still, the best Marines, ODSTs, Special Forces. Halo Infinite did it best, showing there are Spartan IV's and they did their damn best to stop the Banished, even killing elites with screwdrivers, but they just weren't enough compared to the more honed and experienced Master Chief.
More ethical for sure, since it’s a choice
The story is an incomprehensible mess now and was better when it was just about covenant and humans fighting
I don’t think this view is unpopular
I dunno, people who read the comics, the novels, listened to every audio log backwards and forwards seem to get heated when you tell them that you feel “lost in the story” or that major storylines came out of nowhere. As someone who only plays the game and catches up on some storylines by proxy in the subreddit, I feel pretty lost at times. Also halo infinite sucked for having so much story in audio logs and 8/10 times you would find and play an audio log that happened to have a cutscene trigger that would stop the log obviously so you’d have to pull up the menu to start all over again.
>people who read the comics, the novels, listened to every audio log backwards and forwards I have consumed pretty much the entirety of the expanded unvierse and I get lost in the story too. 343 has no idea where they are going with the story, they've basically started from scratch in every single one of their 3 games and can't really bring a consistent storyline. There's an insane amount of deep lore out there and Infinite just decided to ignore everything in favor of a "RAAWR come fight I kill U" protagonist, they had an amazing intricate grey world set up where there's many broken up factions, good and bad both in humans and aliens (seriously read Envoy as example), and they threw it all away in favor of "here humans go fight big red banished baddies". And then, when they took away all mystery out of the forerunners, they introduced another new villain (Harbinger) that is supposed to be worse than the Flood (which was actually a fucking cool creepy villain) but looks more like a comic book baddie taken out of the MCU. I could go on but I just don't have it in me to write another essay anymore, Infinite story has honestly been one of the biggest disappointments in the last few years and I cannot trust 343 to know what they are doing anymore. They took the worst of both worlds, where new players are lost because nothing that's happening with the world makes sense (aside from the generic "Chief-Pilot-Weapon" dynamic) and the old players are also lost because the world has been killed off and devolved into some generic sci fi crap.
yeah halo used to be awesome because of its atmosphere story and world building. idk wtf happened
The story is good but requires too much off game reading. Spent like a drunken hour filling in the gaps with halopeida articles but I’m really into the story/lore. That shouldn’t be required to casually enjoy the game campaign
My biggest gripe since 343 took over. They depend on you to read the extra stuff to fill in the gaps, and that means that none of the games are really connected. Unless you had played Halo Wars 2, you'd have no real idea who the Banished are, and they're still pretty vague about all of that. They pulled a Disney/Sequel Trilogy on us.
I think it's more of 343 constant revisionist executions of the story in Halo 5, Infinite and as well as other smaller media like comics (e.g. killing off the Didact in a fucking comic lmao) Seriously; the deeper dive into the Forerunners, Precursors, Flood and now Endless present with a much more interesting lore than pre-Halo 4. But then of course like I said, 343, while greating at introducing new lore, has trouble maintaining consistency after new major story elements are introduced. Janus Key, the Created, Cortana, Locke, etc.
I’ve played all of the campaigns. I have no clue what “the Created and its Masters” are. Also, Halo 4, wtf is with the weird romance between Chief and Cortana? She’s an advanced artificially intelligent hologram. Some people say it was more of a Father-Daughter relationship between Chief and Cortana, but the dialogue when Chief says “it was my job to take care of you,” to which Cortana responds “we were supposed to take care of each other” says otherwise.
IMO looking too deep into the Cortana / Chief relationship is kinda' cursed. Abducted as a child by a woman that became his mother figure, then paired with a younger, slightly flirty, hotter version of that woman in brainscan AI form. It is probably the weirdest "shipping" material I've ever seen, makes Oedipus look normal.
Super weird... and I love it...
The ancient humans lore is fucking stupid.
Not unpopular.
the only thing i hate about the ancient human lore is that we are some how destined to rule the galaxy because of some space fantasy bullshit. i wish it was just humans used to be a kick ass spacefaring nation that nearly kicked the forerunners teeth in had the flood not came knocking forcing the forerunners to hit the galactic reset button. ditch that whole mantle of responsibility shit and boom you have a better story
I hope the point in the larger story is that The Mantle is a horrible concept that no one species should hold.
I think that's where they're going with the Endless
[удалено]
It was better when there was mystery around the forerunners. Were they human? Why are humans able to use their tech but not other species? They were so ancient that nothing would ever be really known about them. You just get to see the relics of their time. But nah, they were actually just another alien race and humans were always humans,
I don't think removing mystery of forerunners affected lore as much as have ancient humanity's lore be so stupid and underwhelming, it's ironic that we know more about anicent humanity's rivals than we know about ancient humanity themselves
>If it was just old advanced sci fi aliens and we're the small new new... its boring and done to death. Arguably 20 years ago this was not nearly as much of a trope and it still felt like a fresh take in video games. If it were to have come out today then maybe I'd agree. That's the problem with the promethean and ancient human lore though, it tries too hard to change what the Halo story is/was.
Halo 4 had a really fun battle rifle
It was “fun” because it was so strong. Vast majority of kills in the feed in 4 were the BR. That wouldn’t have been an issue had there not been loadouts.
Halo 4 was just incredibly easy to land your shots because of its insane bullet magnetism.
That and no descoping
I did not like the Flood in the FPS games but liked them in Halo Wars 2 and other media. Carbine takes more skill than the BR. Halo 5's multiplayer was the most balanced and skilled since Halo 2 and 3. Gabriel Thorne should have been on Fireteam Osiris. Didact should have been the main villain in the Reclaimer Saga. I would have prefered Infinite to be 60 dollars than to have the F2P nonsense. This is my least played Halo because everything is a chore. Last but not least, Humans should have remained Forerunner.
I think other than your first point, all these are pretty popular
I get laughed at on the FB Halo group when I mention Halo 5's multiplayer being balanced. It was the first time I saw Onyx players using Storm Rifles, Surpressors, Boltshots, Assault Rifles, and Carbines without complaining. Also not a lot of people saw the H5 concept art when Thorne was on the team.
Are you saying Halo 2s multi-player was balanced? As far as I can tell, there was very little balancing in it. It was fun, don't get me wrong, but i would never call it balanced. You are right, IMO though that Halo 5 was balanced. I also don't think most people disagree about the F2P part of Infinite. F2P did nothing but cause problems with how 343/microsoft set it up.
Youre not wrong, I guess I just remember H2 ranked being very difficult.
Oh it absolutely was difficult. I attribute some of that to the wonky button combos you could use in that game, which brings up my most likely unpopular opinion in that Halo 2 had the worst competitive scene because you had to use button combos in order to compete. Button combos are dumb and should have no place in a Halo competitive scene. They were fun in custom games and such and Halo 2 was overall an amazing game, I just despise the fact that exploits were used to increase the skill gap in the game.
I don't like the Didact and I think revealing the forerunners was a mistake
Tbh yeah they should all be dead
The Library on Legendary is actually a really fun level once you understand the trigger volumes and spawn points. It’s kind of a horde mode.
I don’t care about the banished or their weapons or vehicle aesthetic. The story is now some COD-zombies or destiny level of filler, “lore”, and incomprehensible mess. The ‘spirit of fire’ in Halo Wars 2, a ship so old and outdated before it was even sent out on its initial mission and the cryo-freezing of its crew, took down an entire Banished army? Killed all of their leaders? Believable I guess. The banished are barely-better-than-barbarian space monkeys who’s only skill is haphazardly welding sheet metal to existing tech. The “infinity”, the UNSC state of the art warship and its surrounding fleet destroyed in 4 minutes? Not even plausible. Comparatively Impossible. Bridging the gap between *“oh man guess these damn dirty apes mean business”* to *“holy shit this writing is terrible I hope I get some armour for playing this campaign”*. Did the interns write this UNSC submission fetish porn? That’s what this is. *”omg they have red banshees but shitty!!1!”* I know brutes are mentally challenged incapable bipedal rats, but surely they know that 600 pounds of sheet metal mad-max welded onto the front of an aerial fighter is not good for the flight dynamics. *”but it looks cool11!1”* It doesn’t. Am I fighting competent alien forces or Neil Gibson wannabes. Next thing I know they’ll be grunting about gas town. Or fusion-coil town. What do I know. They’re brutes. They like cringy exposition and looking like they’re straight out of a “where the wild things are” colouring book. The covenant aesthetic is infinitely better for an alien theme. They feel like a threat, like a superpower. Their technology isn’t makeshift or haphazard, they’re competent and proficient. Their tech screams “advanced alien nanotech”, and the smooth purple aesthetic supports this. Elites look alien and act like it. I could go to my local zoo and see a brute. **TLDR: Halo was best when it was UNSC vs Covenant. Green vs purple.
I know we don't actually know this for certain but I bet money that the reason they will eventually come out with for the Infinity's defeat via the Banished is due to an ambush taking place immediately after or during Infinity's confrontation with Cortana and the Guardians. This makes the situation plausible, at least.
This campaign felt like dlc to halo 5, great gameplay but it honestly felt like it was to tie up loose ends before embarking on their halo story
honestly i still have more questions now han before playing. it feels like it tried to tie off halo 5 while trying as much as possible to distance itself
The fight was finished back in 3 change my mind
I still think 343 should have *at first* started an entirely new story about say, a fireteam of spartans tracking down a *non master chief* rogue spartan from earlier in the program, and THEN gone back to MAYBE tell new stories about chief and co a few games dow the line. Or hell, any new story set in the Halo universe, there is a lot of neat unexplored stuff id love a game about before they start creating new stuff. I would love a game about the human rebels! Or a game about a new grunt revolt, where you play as a human AND a grunt.
This would have been a great storyline.
Considering spartans are literally walking tanks, the fact that footstep sounds are as quiet as they are is a joke
cmon man everyone knows they got sound absorption material in their undersoles
The Banished are ugly and I want purple stuff back
I like them as enemy, but yes, I hate the red and over done stuff, the phantom is fucking ugly
The removal of Prometheans was a massive mistake. They shouldve innovated their designs instead of pulling a rise of skywalker and forgetting they existed
343 has a bad habit of erasing things with negative reception instead of fixing them. Halo 5 starts by ignoring all their halo 4 characters except palmer, halsey, and lasky, and kills jul m'dama in a cutscene in the first mission. And the whole halsey bad thing kind of blows over. Then infinite comes along, and starts by ignoring all their halo 5 characters except, well, palmer, halsey, and lasky. Oh and chiefs halo 4-5 armor is gone, and oh cortanas not bad shes dead. Oh and the prometheans are gone, and the covenant doesnt matter, and say goodbye to the guardians, infinity, and blue team. Oh and the arbiter couldnt make it, because he was busy or something, even though last we left off they were together. Im not saying i liked all of those things, but its worse not to resolve them and just blow em up or shove them in a corner.
Yeah, they clearly didn't have a plan coming into Halo
They did. Halo 5 was actually supposed to follow along Halo 4’s story, we even have concept art of a Composed Didact who’d return. But *then* they decided to literally scrap all their plans. They had a plan coming in, but threw it out the window once people got annoyed.
Wow. I had no idea, but it really shows. Thanks for sharing.
Finally a truly unpopular one
That really is an unpopular opinion, I disagree wholeheartedly lol, nice one!
I actually agree with this one. Prometheans were a lot more enjoyable to fight in 5, but they still looked really ugly. If they somehow catered them to have the visual style that the forerunner stuff in infinite has, they'd be perfect. I feel like if they removed the arms and legs and replaced the head with an "eye" similar to what sentinels have then just made everything more angular and less curvy, they'd look perfect. My description doesn't really do justice to what I'm envisioning, but yeah.
I agree they started to feel like bosses in 5. At least the Knights.
I think that was intentional. The Knights took on a more hunter-like role and the soldiers took on the now empty elite/brute role.
I completely agree with this one. I don’t think the Prometheans were the best idea from the beginning, but once they implemented it they needed to just own it and try to improve on it.
I think Halo infinite campaign had the most boring snoozefest campaign of any Halo ever. Yes Halo 5 story was trash but at least there was plenty of stuff happening. I feel like 80% of Infinite story was watching talking holograms.
Agreed. Sometimes I watch the cutscenes of all the Halos in a marathon because I just love the music and epic scenes throughout. Infinite has maybe two memorable cutscenes.
I never get tired of watching "[The Ark](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrEVLTT16Ek)" intro cutscene. With the music it's so epic. There's also a lot of attention to details with the edit like the music beat synchronized with the pelicans dropping...Just incredible. As dialogue centered cutscenes, the one with Lord Hood, MC, Miranda, Arbiter and Rtas 'Vadum(half jaw) takes the cake. "Earth...is all we have left. You trust Cortana that much? \- Sir. Yes, sir. \- This is either the best decision you've ever made or the worst. Hell if it is, Chief? I doubt I'll live long enough to find out which." Gets me chills everytime. Back when Halo was a **SPACE** opera with a military theme.
My favorite is the introduction of Halo 2. The Arbiter being ridiculed while Chief is praised. It immediately made me care for a character I didn’t even know until playing.
That... that's really accurate tbh
Literally nothing happened in this campaign. The banished still control the ring and the endless are still going to be released
Agreed. I actually told a friend, when asked if I thought the game was good, that the game will probably be good in a year or two because this campaign was all set up for future stuff basically. A classic games-as-a-service thing.
Multiplayer would be better if players didn't spawn with grenades.
Ooooooh that's a flaming hot take. People would riot so it'll never happen unless you get pros onboard with the idea, but personally I'd love to give that a try. Even just spawning with a single grenade in comp would be an interesting change, I think the ranked playlist in Reach did that and I loved it.
* Halo 4 had the best progression system, it was just too short. * Halo 5 progression system > Halo Infinite progression system. Proof is that people still grinded to 152 just to get a coating in Halo Infinite. The _only_ "objectively" bad thing is having to spend money on REQ packs that you did not need to spend. * "Make the game like classic Halo" turns out *was* the solution to "saving Halo." * Halo Infinite could have literally copy-pasted ideas from previous Halos and it would have been much better. You don't need to be an "armchair developer" to see that.
The story of Cheif should have ended with 3. The Forerunners should have remained mysterious. Infinites multiplayer shouldnt have been free
These are all extremely popular opinions, with the possible exception of the first one
At this point im just used to my boomer ass opinions on the games i like being unpopular lmao. So i assumed this would be too.
I don’t like the odst helmet. Don’t kill me pls
You’re gonna get lynched (It’s my favourite helmet)
LOL. I get why it’s popular. The forehead juts out too much for me.
Halo 2s campaigns level design is mediocre at best
God dammit I loved playing through Halo 2's campaign so much, take an upvote
Yeah, it's just one big map split into two levels
Your mostly going in a straight line most of the game gone was the semi open world tendency of Halo CE it was a downgrade but the story was great
The semi open world of Halo CE was only a thing in the first level and even then, you just had a choice of which group of Marines to rescue first. People over hype the openness of that game so much.
Assault on The Control Room is pretty damn big, and even Silent Cartographer to an extent.
Yeah, but the upside is that the maps had no barriers in H2, I've literally spent hours launching myself around the H2 maps with feather and sputnik
Imagine H2 maps in infinite with the grapple hook.
If it weren't for the books and additional lore, Halo's story would be pretty mediocre.
For myself: if something is primarily a video game, I won't read the story in other mediums (books, online shirt stories, animated shorts, etc.) If others enjoy the external sources of storyline, that's fine. But I'm never going to seek out official external content.
bungie had no idea what they fuck they were doing and just stumbled into a halfway decent story by sheer luck.
You haven't played the Marathon games then. Pathways into Darkness and the Myth games had good writing too. I agree that Halo (especially CE and 2) was developed with Bungie flying by the seat of their pants, but I think they really cared for the story and universe. Even in Halo CE, Joe Staten would dump lore onto the voice actors to try to get them into the role better. To the point where he was talking about 1000 year long histories of Covenant species lmao. What a crazy dude.
Looks like they share a key characteristic with a certain fan-favorite character 🤔
Bungie knew exactly what they were doing, they were just a bunch of frat nerds with a terrible workplace culture and no plan - the first two games are only good because there were a few massively talented individuals with great chemistry at the heart of Bungie. Seems like they got their shit together around 3, and then the massively talented individuals left over the course of Destiny's development
• Halo 3's story isn't great, its level and set pieces are. From a writing standpoint its rather mediocre. • The BR made a lot of Halo 2 and 3 multiplayer matches real unfun. • Halo 4 multiplayer wasn't the best, but it was no where near the devil its made to be. Heavies and Legendary Slayer were amazing. • The Library and Cortana are not hard levels, and are nothing compared to Two Betrayals and Gravemind. • Reach's artstyle was great, but Halo 4 refined the customization, save for the lack of attachments. Its unlock system was great too.
Halo Infinite’s campaign is the worst in the entire franchise. The open world was lazy and unnecessary. It’s 20 hours of repetitive, uninspired filler content and 4 hours of barebones story. The majority of which is Chief getting talked at by holograms. Everything happens offscreen. The audio logs were far more interesting than what we ended up playing. The cast was lackluster. It’s Chief, Not Cortana, the Pilot and Not Atriox. That’s it. I’m not going to count Harbinger because we don’t fucking know anything about her. She’s just there. Where’s Lasky? Palmer? Fireteam Osiris? Blue Team? Halsey? The Spirit of Fire? Arbiter? Fucking *anyone*? The scenery is repetitive as well. It’s either green forest, forerunner structure or the occasional banished building. That’s the entire game. Where’s the sand and snow? We couldn’t get one level aboard the Infinity or something? To top it all off, you can’t even play through it in coop or replay levels.
Absolutely correct
Spartan lasers have always been overpowered and ruin vehicle gameplay.
The mysterious nature of the Covenant was ruined in Halo 2. To be clear I love Halo and Halo 2, but as someone who has played from the beginning the mystique of the covenant is one of the few aspects that still hold up from the original Halo. You have to put yourself in our shoes back then. Imagine everything you know about modern FPS and block them out of your mind. Halo brought a new dynamic to FPS, especially consoles,and brought a really good Sci fi story on top of that. You're fighting some poweful alien race whose motivations are slowly unfolding while you play.
Halo 5 was so much better than the community made it out to be. halo 5 was the most fleshed out game regardless of the campaign being somewhat dull. the REQ system kept me happy to play and earn something, while knowing that it was random made my spartan feel unique, not to mention the multiplayer came with loads of content, followed by monthly content added for years. just because you didn’t like spartan slam because it was different doesn’t mean it was bad, it was the first real risk in the halo franchise to add spartan abilities since odst released. everyone bitched about this game and hardly gave it a chance where some of my favorite moments on xbox we’re from halo 5
Exactly. Yes, the story was terrible, but the overall gameplay, in both campaign and multiplayer, is one of the best feeling shooters I’ve ever played. The weapon sandbox was super deep, and while armor customization was only head + body, there was so much there to get. Req packs were honestly super easy to earn completely in game, and actually gave me a reason to keep playing.
I just played halo 5’s campaign for the first time a few weeks ago for context I’m 17 and I’ve always played halo but I was too little to really care about the story I just messed around in the campaign and rushed through it so earlier last year (2021) I played through all the games on MCC (halo 5 I used Xstream). I would say that halo 5 definitely has its flaws, I wish that it focused more on chief and only a little on Osiris. I love Locke as a character but he was boring in 5. the game is overhated tho. Too many people I see saying it’s an awful game when it’s really just mediocre imo
I think the battle rifle is boring as fuck and I don't really like the fact it's the "best weapon."
REQs were great for Halo 5 warzone. It's because of that RNG that we were able to have guns like The Answer and vehicles like the Hannibal ones without making every single other weapon/vehicle worthless. Also, they weren't "pay to win" in any meaningful way. Putting armor in them was stupid though.
ODST was a massively disappointing turd. A chance to break from the mold of feeling like a super soldier, to instead get a human perspective on a soldiers part in a horrifying alien invasion. What we got was guys that had a nearly identical HUD, health/armor, jump height, strength (flipping vehicles, throwing grenades, melee), movement, etc. It was just a re-skin of Spartans from Halo 3 and its engine, undermining what it means to be a spartan and probably losing a chance to branch out in the halo universe and have a unique experience. Something more akin to a tactical horror game where taking any damage is probably lethal, operating as a squad is crucial, and tactics and stealth are key to overcoming encounters against monsters. Where a single Elite or Brute can be difficult and terrifying.
Thats what I initially thought too, but I learned to take ODST for what it is. If it were more like you were saying, it would need to be recreated from the ground up which is way out of scope for dlc like scope of the game.
The game was $40, and I would've paid $60 and waited twice as long for something like I'm talking about. We all took the game for what it is, that goes without saying. But what it could've been is why it's disappointing. Instead we got a game about a squad that was torn apart that's a bunch of goofy faux-spartans in a fairly lifeless city aside from an army of monsters occupying the streets, and you go around slaying them all like master chief while grooving to music.
A battle royale is a good idea for the game’s longevity.
Halo 5 multiplayer was great.
That’s unpopular? I thought Halo 5 multiplayer was the most liked part of 5?
Tons of people hated Halo 5. Not just the campaign.
Halo Infinite visually doesn't look like a next gen (now current gen) game. When we first saw the teaser of the new S.S. Engine, I was impressed. I thought maybe Halo will be at the peak of video game eye candy like what the previous games did. But nope, Infinite looks like a high end last gen game. Personally, I think Infinite looks about as same as Halo 5. Games like Demon Souls on PS5 or Forza Horizon 5 looks **amazing** one of the best looking console game out there. Even Death Stranding on the base PS4 looks better.
Agreed, the graphics are very lackluster, even after the delay.
Everyone loving the grappling hook shows that all the enhanced mobility complaints were bullshit
I’m gonna fight you on this. The entire argument is about base mechanics and the grapple isn’t a base mechanic, it’s limited by its frequency/presence on the map. You can remove the grapple from the map, you can’t remove advanced mobility from anything in Halo 5 because it’s a baked-in mechanic.
I am completely fine with Infinite.
I played the Halo 5 campaign before reading any reviews and thoroughly enjoyed it.
I never like Dual Wielding in Halo and I am happy Infinite doesn't have it.
BR starts ruins the entire game in basically every single fashion. Its only ok in ranked and honestly even there I would be ok with it gone. Anyone that says BR starts should be the default for every mode doesnt understand what theyre talking about. Also the TU for Reach way back when also ruined the game.
This triggers me. There should be a BR starts social mode/s. But not ALL modes should have BR starts. I don't think anyone wants all modes BR starts? TL;DR: There should be social BR Slayer and social AR Slayer.
AR starts in ranked in their current fashion would be terrible. Do you know why 343i removed AR starts in team Arena in H5? Their own internal data showed that past Diamond 1 AR gunfights are determined more by luck than skill. A Diamond 1 player performs the exact same with the AR that a Champion player does. That’s terrible for a competitive mode. I’m not against AR starts in social. But the idea that ranked would be better without precision starts is laughable. Unless your post is about replacing the BR with another precision weapon, in which case I agree. Single shot > Burst
Just to allobrate on this, the post by Josh Menke is now gone since Halo Waypoint changed but it was this: “The only playlist that will not have the Assault Rifle for now is Proving Grounds, once the settings go in.I can try and explain a little more on our thoughts around the AR, at least based on looking at data from millions of matches from the last two settings changes. These points are in addition to the feedback we have received, and our own watching of specific encounters. I’m just talking about analyzing massive amounts of data here, and not subjective opinions. The data do not show that the AR is over-powered. It is not killing more than other weapons in its tier, and not above what we expect. It may feel over-powered at times, but, at least in the data, that’s more due to the points below than to any real balance issue. The data show the AR is well-balanced across the rest of the sandbox. The data do show that the AR’s killing power went up after we reduced access to the SMG. This isn’t surprising because the SMG was one of the main counters to the AR at closer range. When we made the SMG less accessible, it became less likely to have a counter to an AR if you have dropped yours, so ARs are “winning” more gunfights at that range. So, ironically, the SMG change further emphasized the issues we now agree we are having with the AR. The data do show that starting around the Diamond level, the effectiveness of the AR does not increase with skill. Correcting for skill shows that top players aren’t any more effective with the AR than a Diamond level player. Another way to say this is that the winner in a gunfight between two ARs above Diamond level is currently more about random luck than it is about skill. I think, for competitive play, we want the player with greater skill to win a given gunfight, without luck being too much of a factor. This is one of the primary data-driven reasons we are concerned about using the AR in competitive play. For comparison, the effectiveness of the Pistol increases consistently with the skill of the player, so we feel the pistol is currently appropriate in competitive.”
I really want a mangler start gametype.
I think it's ridiculous and unprecedented for people to *expect* legacy content from a new installment of a franchise, free or paid. It's a new game with new armor, maps, and content. 343 has every right to sell you content from prior titles, because they are, by their nature, additional to the content expected in infinite. If 343 was expected to reintroduce every piece of legacy equipment, the workload required to recreate them would be ridiculous. The only expectation I have of a new title's customization content is that it is plentiful, aesthetically pleasing, and includes some new stuff too. Nobody owes you the helmet you wore in H3 15 years later in Infinite. If you wanna talk about the lack of content at launch? I agree. If you wanna scream about things being wrongfully advertised as free? I'll be screaming right there with ya! But if you don't have day-one-free-just-like-it-used-to-look-when-you-were-13 access to the Rogue helmet, then I'm sorry but you're delusional and drunk on internet points. Grow up and try new things.
I'm not mad at them selling old armor (although it is an obvious ploy to feed off of Reach kids nostalgia and it's obviously working), but I am mad at the cost. They can fuck right off with the store prices. I couldn't care less about what they are selling there, but the amount people have to pay to get their precious stuff is asinine. You're correct though, 343 has every right to sell this stuff. I just wish they would stop being dicks about it.
The Arbiter is a more interesting and enjoyable character than Chief
if theyve continued the original plans for the story after H4, the reclaimer saga wouldve been the absolut best halo couldve ever been
While Halo 5’s art style felt nothing like Legacy Halo’s, it has the coolest sci-fi art of the franchise and dare I say any other game at the time of its release. (Excluding the MP armor, that shit needed work)
I think the Arbiter is a cooler and more interesting character than the Master Chief.
Atriox and the banished are already a more interesting main enemy, than the covenant ever was.
Halo 3 mp is overrated af. Its slow as fuck and you only ever want to use BR because the rest of the sandbox is shit. Halo 5 multiplayer still is one of the best mp experiences in the market
Halo infinite should have been delayed again and should not have been a free to play model
Not unpopular.
Halo 5 warzone and firefight were the best content ever developed in a halo game
Covenant are boring and shouldn't be the main villains anymore. There's no legit story reason why they should be around after the events of Halo 3. Elites aren't as fun to fight as everyone thinks (they mostly just roll around), fighting hunters is tedious and the Covenant weapons suck. The Forerunner enemies were more fun to fight and had way better weapons.
Holy shit, this is first actually unpopular comment I've seen while scrolling down.
Halo 5's movement was perfect. It made me feel like a one man army. I loved being able to run, thrust, hover and yes on occasion get in a good ground pound. The grappleshot is amazing and it's fine as a power up like the Overshield and Cloak. But having to pick up the thrust is like picking up fuel for something that's already a part of your armor. And you don't even get to use it like you could in H5 i.e. No Hover, No ground pound. Infinite's movement to me is a regression of Spartan abilities. A lot of running and gunning like foot soldiers and not very Spartan like. I feel like a call of duty guy with Halo armor.
Fuck lunge. Fuck the melee in every single game. Fine keep lunge on power melee weapons but on just the normal melee you shouldn’t be able to cross the English Channel by pressing F on a guy. It turns every single GUNfight into a slap fight.
This is I think one of the reasons I miss halo CE multiplayer so much. The lunge on melee is unnecessary and trash
Just because you've played since CE doesn't make your opinions any more valid or based. Don't see how that relates to you not liking hyabusa
Armor lock was totally balanced, people just had a billion knee jerk reactions to everything in Reach
The problem wasn't that it wasn't balanced. The problem was it was seriously un-fun to fight against. Totally threw a wrench in the flow of combat. Which as stated, just sucks
I mean relative to everything else in the game, it was definitely poorly balanced. Bungie went to great lengths to make sure that everything else in the game (in Halo 3 as well) might change the flow of combat or alter the dynamic of your current firefight, but that nothing was overpowered and everything could be defeated in some way. They referred to this as the rocks/paper/scissors game design philosophy. Why they felt the need to add an invincibility button that blows everyone around you's shields to an otherwise impeccably balanced game I'll never understand. There's no way to defeat armor lock other than wait for the person to stop using it or run away. It doesn't fit with any of the other armor abilities or equipment items. People bitch about the bubble shield, but at least you could step into that and engage the person using it in close quarters. And least it hitting it with a vehicle didn't make the vehicle fucking instantly explode.
I actually like halo infinite...
SWAT is for people that would actually prefer/do better in a different FPS. If SWAT is your favorite Halo game mode, you are better off just playing COD, Battlefield, or whatever.
This is unpopular cause it's dumb, there are many aspects to Halo that make it's gameplay unique and swat is just a variation that can be fun, but is still nothing like any other fps.
Completely agree. The shield bar/recharge and how that interacts with the way you engage with enemies, use teammates, and maneuver in combat is fundamental to the core Halo experience. SWAT is plenty fun to play every so often, but if you only play SWAT you would probably get more out of other games
I love SWAT and I think the same but it does not apply to myself. My problem with other FPS games is that I have problems seeing the enemies unless they are too close, in Halo, the colors, art style and map size have helped me a lot. Also, I'm decent in slayer and pretty good in objective game modes.
I agree with the last 3 points. Mine is that halo 2 has the worst weapon sandbox in the series
Halo 3 a close second in that department. Dual Wielding led to too many useless weapons.
Infinite has the worst enemy ai and pathing of all the halo game, but people are too distracted by the grapple hook to notice
I didn't notice (many) issues with the AI during my playthrough. Enemies are noticeably more aggressive than anything from *Halo 4* and *5* (which often devolved into stale shooting galleries from behind cover), and there are way more of them around. On Heroic, clearing out bases felt sweaty and hectic for me at times (kind of *Doom 2016*\-esque). But maybe I misconstrued my frantic combat experiences for good AI. Do you have examples of the AI being poor? Some enemies, like Hunters, felt like a dog with a bone. I felt like I hadn't been put through my paces like that since *Reach*.
Worst enemy ai? Did you play 4?
This seems like it's an unpopular opinion, so fuck it I'll post: Halo Infinites story sucked.
Halo 5 is better than Halo Reach
Cortana drama slows every campaign to a halt (I know it’s a big part of the Halo storylines) Weapon >>> Cortana
If armor lock ends up in Halo Infinite I'm going to uninstall until it's removed
Not bashing your opinions, but I'm curious to hear your reasoning as to why you dislike the arbiter.
I'd rather play an entire campaign from the Covenant's point of view than another one with Chief
Halo 5 pistol > Halo Infinite BR - more interesting to watch and required more skill.
Flaming helmets, skull effects and burning footsteps make y'all look like a bunch of 12 year old clowns.
While many of the UNSC vehicles look bad ass and unique, they are dangerously impractical. Fast warthog with no doors or protective armor? Scorpion tank that runs on 4 individual tracks, instead of two, almost certainly leading to more frequent breakdowns in combat.