Nice.

by Leviathan , Hotel Zanzibar, Wednesday, August 28, 2013, 23:53 (3887 days ago) @ Ragashingo

I'm not quite as optimistic as you about Truth's end game, but no need to quibble over that when the greater point you made deserves to be emphasized. Halo 3 was a good game with some really good story points. And it and the other Bungie Halos, and unlike Halo 4, told a solid story with very few plot holes or strange character reversals, like Mr. Didact's. They're not the best video game stories ever told, but individually and especially when taken as a whole, they are very good.

I definitely don't view the Halo stories in the same way as say a Hironobu Sakaguchi tale (the classic Final Fantasies). I judge stories usually by what they're meant to do. For Halo: make me feel like a badass saving the world when all hell is breaking loose, or at times, to make me curious and explorative in a mysterious world and culture. Halo 3 added in a perfect amount of touching, emotional connection, that especially worked because we had been with these characters for three games now and were saying goodbye.

I also don't just see Bungie's 'story' in the script - I see it in their art direction, audio, and gameplay. When Halo is at its best, it's when all those things, plus the story, are aligned to create that magic Halo experience. When I've finished shooting an alien in its face, and I look up at some human architecture and think "Wait a minute - I think this might mirror a Forerunner structure I've been in. Wow, That's a nice little nod to the story."

For their intents, I think Bungie usually tells great stories - but that's because those stories are only starting points inside the actual game, the rest is in our imagination, our observations, our speculation, and the choices we make when we ramp a Warthog onto a Scarab and go flying off on fire thinking 'this is so cool'.

Sometimes I think my one complaint with Bungie stories is also my greatest compliment: "I WANTED MORE, DAMNIT!"