Great Read! Just a few things...

by Hoovaloov, Monday, March 11, 2013, 16:48 (4274 days ago) @ Xenos

Fascinating article, it's great to be able to compare their original hype for Halo with what we actually got from Bungie over 10 years of Halo.

Pursued by alien warships to a massive and ancient ring construct deep in the void,
the player must single-handedly improvise a guerilla war over land, sea and air,
using the arsenals and vehicles of three distinct cultures.

This probably should have been a bigger giveaway than it was, in retrospect. If you
count human as one distinct culture and the Covenant as the other... what was the
third? You can't exclude humanity and turn the Covenant into the source of all the
cultures, because that's too many. Of course, it may have been that the Covenant was
originally envisioned has having a tripartite structure, but if not, then the
existence of the Flood was hinted at pretty early. Of course, the problem with that is
that they don't really seem to have a culture, let alone an arsenal or any vehicles.
Still, it was a hint that there was a third party to the game's major conflict.

I'd actually argue that evidence of the three cultures are visible within the MacWorld trailer itself: Human, Covenant, and Forerunner. The Flood would technically be a fourth culture. This would explain the player being able to use the "arsenal and vehicles" of the third culture. However, Sentinel Beams weren't in use until Halo 2 (plus one weapon does not an arsenal make), and we never have driven a Forerunner vehicle. So it's still safe to say this bit from the press release changed significantly.

The epic single-player game is complemented by a role-based, cooperative
multiplayer team game. Playing the humans or the aliens, players will use entirely
different skills, strategies, vehicles and weapons to compete in a variety of game types.

Here we get a flat-out declaration of a kind of cooperative play in Halo that we
never, ever got. Competitive multiplayer is not mentioned, although it eventually
became the staple of online Halo play. You could eventually choose to play with an
Elite player model, but the difference between it and the Spartan model were
extremely slight.

Invasion is pretty darn close to that original description. Not only is it Elites vs. Humans, but there are even pre-set Loadouts to facilitate the choices of "entirely different skills (i.e. armor abilities), strategies, vehicles, and weapons." Granted it took almost 10 years for it to be in a Halo game! :p