Hunters were awesome

by SonofMacPhisto , Sunday, June 16, 2013, 15:10 (4196 days ago) @ Reconcilliation

In regards to your comments about Hunters, I'm honestly puzzled by how much you think they sucked. They were always one of my favourite enemies in Halo; yes they had telegraphed attacks - that's a good thing, it helped make them different and engaging. They had a certain way of being dealt with: Heavy weapons, or close range combat dodging their melee attacks. Just because they could be easily eliminated with the pistol has no bearing on how interesting they were to fight, and frankly even the inclusion of the pistol backshot instakill made them interesting in their own way. You don't fight anything else like you fight a Hunter.

Hunters were great. They didn't suck. What I'm taking issue with is why you're putting them up there as an example, stating that they're behaviors were the most interesting part, and somehow you can already tell their better than Destiny's tank thing. As you'll see, a lot of those behaviors got boiled down pretty hard to where they really weren't behaviors at all, and, there's a lot that goes into making encounters interesting, some of which we saw in that Destiny video.

Story time!

Halo CE hunters are pretty intimidating, but with a rocket launcher or the pistol trick, they are easily handled. Esspecially the pistol trick. How does that not play into how fun they are to fight? After a while, it gets boring, because it takes two seconds to dispatch them. Anyway, there's no fight there, at all, after a time. Heck, how many times did you run into a rocket launcher right before a Hunter showed up? It's shameful, really. Haha.

Halo 2's introduction of Hunters sucked. You had a machine gun that dispatched them easily. Yippee. Some later encounters were interesting, because the pistol trick was gone, but once you learned they could backhand you, it was all solved relatively quickly. I don't remember weapon placement as well as Halo CE, but I bet it was generous. Someone feel free to correct or affirm that.

Halo 3 turned Hunters into jokes. There's always plenty of firepower around to shoot them until they died, and there's that part with the tank, 'Tank beats hunter!' where two hunters are literally there to get shot with a tank. They're part of a punchline (a hilarious punchline at the time, but for Hunter lovers, eventually sad face :( ). The couple Hunters you fight with Arbiter are kind of tough, but there's so many Elites and weapons around, but it's essentially the same dance we've had since Halo 2.

Then comes ODST.

Remember when we first had Hunters in ODST? We. Shat. Bricks. It was amazing. It was awesome. 'Holy shitballs, Hunters are scary again!' How many of us ran in a building, and the gorram thing followed us? More shat bricking! Ecstasy and omgomgomgomgrunawayyyy! If you spend any significant time away from Halo games, this Hunter encounter will likely be the most challenging and rewarding one of all (I should know, I just did this recently, and it was grrrrreat, but don't take my word for it).

Now why is this?

I think ODST struck the perfect chord with Hunters. You had an interesting environment (exploding cars, woo!), limited weapons, the chance to get better weapons via luck/exploring (but not overpowering, and you could miss easily with the fire grenades), the reduced abilites of ODSTs (this might be the most important part, Chief was a real Ubermensch by Halo 3), and that you had two different kinds of Hunter to deal with. They were also bullet sponges, which played into the hands of the other design decisions around that encounter.

Story time over.

I guess after all that ranting what I'm trying to get at is that, yeah, we saw a Destiny enemy that can take a lot of punishment and wasn't really dancing around a lot, but we also saw an interesting enviornment, various weapons and powers to deal with it, random players hoping in to help, and probably a ton of other stuff they're just not ready to reveal yet or we were unable to notice, which is fine, cause it's early yet and few, if any of us, have played the game. It's good to point out what we've seen, but don't lose the forest for the trees, either. Bungie's got a track record of building on what's come before, so, they deserve at least a little benefiting of doubt.