Great Read! Just a few things...

by narcogen , Andover, Massachusetts, Monday, March 11, 2013, 20:44 (4273 days ago) @ Hoovaloov
edited by narcogen, Monday, March 11, 2013, 20:51

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.

I think one could make that argument. However, the Forerunner culture never really gets rounded out. We never get a playable Forerunner vehicle, and I think Forerunner weapons beyond the Sentinel Beam (rather than Covenant duplicates or derivates) don't appear until H4 (which I haven't played, I'm basing this just on what I've read and seen). Of course, the same is true for the Flood. They don't have their own vehicles or weapons. So perhaps each counts as half a culture?

Forerunners, in the form of Sentinels and variations thereof, only get used as a temporary ally against the Flood and/or Covenant, much like rebellious S'pht in Marathon, or the infighting of the Fallen Lords in Myth. (Notice that name coming back again in Destiny as well, just with out the "Lords" bit.)

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

Certainly I think that Invasion was as close as we ever got to that original vision, but somehow I think the original idea was still broader than that... perhaps something along the lines of asymmetrical play the way L4D does it.

I always thought it would be neat to take the other side during campaign play, the way the old Light vs Dark Myth mod would let you do.

Thanks for reading, glad you liked it!