Poll of the Day > Just finished Halo 3... umm.... does everyone else think it's bad?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I mean, it's very much not as good as Halo 2 or CE... not by a loooooong margin, and half the plot doesn't make sense in context, and they turned Brutes into the Goombas from the Super Mario Bros. Movie...

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5/10?

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Honestly the only Halo games that are anything special are 1, 2, and Reach

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I'm not fond of it, but the only one of the main games I ever liked was the original.

Isnt it the only one of the first three with 4P story?

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Mead posted...

Honestly the only Halo games that are anything special are 1, 2, and Reach

I can kind of agree with this, though I also kind of liked ODST.

I know I definitely had a feeling of "Ehh, this isn't as good as Halo 2" when Halo 3 came out, but it's still fun in its own way. And it's definitely leagues better than Halo 4 and 5.

Though I actually kind of liked the idea of Spartan Ops in Halo 4, even if I kind of hated the way they implemented it. It was kind of fun going through missions that actually felt like tactical operations rather than just improvising your way through a completely FUBAR'd situation the way Master Chief always is, and if you've got friends to play with it's cool to be able to function as a cohesive unit with actual objectives and skill sets (when I played I was usually in a three-man group where one person always hung back and sniped, one would move in close with CQC and shotguns, and I'd generally play midfield with a DMR and assault rifle). Plus, in Spartan Ops you're technically playing as "you" (the same way you are as Noble Six in Reach), and I honestly enjoy that more than being Master Chief.
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I've always liked Halo 3 and thought it was a decent conclusion to the original trilogy.
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It was pretty solid, probably the second best in the series. 2 is trash compared to 1 or 3. 1 is by far the best.
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Mead posted...

Honestly the only Halo games that are anything special are 1, 2, and Reach

I didn't think 1 was even that good. Think of what you know from the game alone, not the sequels or supplemental media.

The ring is made by the Forerunners. Okay, who are they? Do the main characters know who this is? Have they discovered other forerunner constructs prior to this?

Encountering the Flood. Does this mean anything to the characters or is this the first time fighting them?

343 Guilty Spark mentions a previous conversation apparently mistaking Master Chief for someone else. Who?

The Flood can't killed or contained, thus the need to destroy their food source and hope that... I'm not really sure, were they expected to die out naturally or just hold a static population while someone figures out how to properly kill them? Except the game mechanics have them fall to conventional weapons just fine and plot wise they were contained for however long before the Covenant interfered. Are they even that prevalent in the galaxy?

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SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Think of what you know from the game alone, not the sequels or supplemental media.

The answer to almost every question you asked is either "The answer is heavily implied" or "The answer doesn't really matter."

Knowing who the Forerunners are and where they came from/went really isn't necessary to tell a strong story based around the Halo. They existed, they built this thing, they're gone now, the end. That's all that really matters. And the game even hints at who they were anyway, even if 343 later changed the answer. The same applies to the Flood - you don't need to know the entire origin story of the monsters for them to fulfill their purpose as monsters. In some ways, NOT knowing anything about the monsters actually makes the monsters scarier.

If anything, the more you learn about any given setting, the worse the setting/story can become. Especially if the answers wind up being stupid (Lost, Mass Effect), or if they start feeling more like a nerd's geeky info-dump than something that actually matters to anything that's happening (a lot of the lore in The Elder Scrolls).

I'd argue Halo 1 has the best story of the entire franchise, mainly because it DOESN'T answer those things. It hints, it creates mystery, and then you murder the fuck out of monsters and blow the whole damned thing up. Most of the later games just add unncessary or stupid details that make things lamer (especially once 343 takes over).
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Knowing who the Forerunners are and where they came from/went
The same applies to the Flood - you don't need to know the entire origin story

I think you misunderstand what I was asking about. I wasn't saying everything needed to be spelled out. In my experience playing the first game I was left confused about how much information the characters had. Whether everything was new to them or if they had prior dealings with these things.

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SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

In my experience playing the first game I was left confused about how much information the characters had. Whether everything was new <u>to them</u> or if <u>they</u> had prior dealings with these things.

Which falls under the "heavily implied" part. As presented, it's pretty blatantly obvious that they've never seen anything like the Halo before, have never encountered the Flood before, and that everything is very much new and unknown.

(To THEM, at least - whether or not humans in general have ever found another Halo and kept it mostly secret, or encounted something like the Flood on some other world or other, is still up in the air. But NO ONE - from Cortana, to Keyes, to Master Chief - show any recognition or understanding that implies there's ever been any sort of prior discovery they could draw knowledge from.)

Sure, they could have made it clearer by going "I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF ANYTHING LIKE THIS BEFORE!" every time something new happens or occurs, but that would be kind of annoying in its own way.

The only real piece of info it would be nice to know that the game doesn't really give you is that they're fleeing from Reach (though it's implied when Keyes asks Cortana if the Covenant followed you). But that's actually explained in the manual, because the game came out at a time when they still wrote things in manuals, and expected players to read them.
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Right, ignoring any ships that mysteriously disappeared and no one knows what happened to them. To the crew of the Pillar of Autumn does the word Forerunner mean anything? Cortana just brings it up and I can't tell if Master Chief had any recognition of the name.

I think Cortana was combing though the Halo's main frame at the time to get that information. Yet it doesn't sound like something they would have called themselves. It's more like The Ancients, or The Progenitors. Something that people would call you long after you have been forgotten and only the things you built are left laying around to be discovered. Even then they don't know what to call you because there's no good reason to reference the name of your species in your quarterly budget report for the convenience of future archeologists.

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Forerunners sounds mysterious though and seeing as they dissappeared a long time ago the name fits.
Though I see where you're getting at with the name.

The Forerunners pretty much had the most advanced technology in the galaxy so I guess they being ahead of everyone else technology-wise it kinda fits.
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SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

To the crew of the Pillar of Autumn does the word Forerunner mean anything? Cortana just brings it up and I can't tell if Master Chief had any recognition of the name.

Again, the implication is pretty clear. Literally nothing is said or done in-story that implies anyone has ever heard the word/concept before, and it's pretty clearly implied they're just discovering all of this for the first time. The same applies when the squad of marines have no idea what the Flood is when they let them out and are attacked.

Moreover, in Halo 1, the only people who ever HEAR the word "Forerunner" are Master Chief and Cortana. By the time they start using it, Keyes is already gone. So arguably, "the crew of the Pillar of Autumn" never know "the Forerunner" exist at all, outside of MC and Cortana. The crew's perspective of the game is mostly "Okay, we crashed into this weird world, Covenant are trying to kill us, oh no, now monsters are trying to kill us, oops we're all dead." No one ever has a moment like "Hey, this reminds me of those ruins we found on Centauri Prime!" (the way Mass Effect does almost immediately when it introduces the concept of the Protheans).

Later games kind of retcon this, but you yourself said you wanted to view the game without the later context.



SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Yet it doesn't sound like something they would have called themselves. It's more like The Ancients, or The Progenitors. Something that people would call you long after you have been forgotten and only the things you built are left laying around to be discovered.

Pretty sure it's outright stated (or at least heavily implied) that "Forerunner" is what the COVENANT call them. And from the Covenant's perspective, everything you've said applies.

Cortana doesn't call them that until after she's hacked into the Covenant databases and starts figuring out what the Halo IS. She just uses the term because she has no other name for them. It's the same reason why they start calling the ringworld "Halo" in the first place (watch the cutscene from the mission where you rescue Keyes - he mentions the Covenant talking about "Halo"). The word "Forerunner" is actually only used about three times in the entire game - it isn't until later games that you realize it's an important term. Pretty much EVERYTHING you're told about Halo and the Forerunners either comes from the Covenant or the Halo itself.

Guilty Spark - who is the only one in the entire game who WOULD know what "The Forerunners" called themselves - never refers to them by name. He refers to YOU as "Reclaimer", but a) that sounds more like a title than a name, b) he can't see your face through the armor so could easily be mistaking you for someone else, and c) he's pretty clearly portrayed to be at least a little crazy from thousands of years of isolation.

Though 343 (the company) kind of contradicts all of that later anyway, and flat-out says that the Forerunner DID call themselves "Forerunner". Because they saw themselves as the guardians of every species that would evolve after them (which is where the concept of the Mantle comes in).

The original backstory (the one that was in place when Halo 1 was written/developed, and what all the dialogue and implications are meant to hint at) is that HUMANS ARE the Forerunner. Humans actually had a space-faring empire that spanned the galaxy before the Flood became a threat, and it was destroyed when Halo originally fired. The few survivors managed to return to Earth, but their knowledge and technology was lost and they returned to barbarism - modern human society is actually the SECOND human civilization to develop space flight and start colonizing the galaxy. Master Chief is the "Reclaimer" because he's literally reclaiming humanity's lost legacy and authority. Guilty Spark's comment about "the last time you asked me if we should do it" is directly referring to the fact that it was a HUMAN (and not any of the races of the Covenant) that fired the Halo in the first place.

The ultimate irony of the war between humans and the Covenant is that the Covenant have literally been murdering their own gods the entire time and never realized it. Or, if you read Contact: Harvest, you're told the Prophets knew it the entire time - they're terrified the other Covenant will discover the truth and they'll lose their power, so they willingly misinterpreted Forerunner lore and deliberately wanted to destroy humanity mainly out of jealousy.

343 changed all that (they kept the "ancient humanity" idea but made the Forerunners a distinct race that literally called themselves "Forerunner"), but it was Bungie's plan from start to finish (hence "The Ark" in Halo 3, and it being in Africa - the "origin place" of "modern humans"). Everything in the games and tie-in novels was meant to play into that backstory, but the backstory was never really meant to be important in and of itself, as much as it was just meant to give a little flavor to the modern setting. It wasn't really until 343 decided to release an entire novel trilogy set in the past and made Forerunners antagonists in the modern era that things get murkier.
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^ wow that sounded pretty intriguing.
Now I kinda wish we got all that instead.
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So do I. It's part of why I stopped caring about 343's version of Halo.

The other problem I have with it is that when Bungie was making the games, they had the novels mostly as a secondary source - you COULD read them and get more info, but you didn't NEED to read them to understand anything in the games. But with 343, they seem to be pushing the multimedia synergy much harder, to the point where half the shit in Halo 5 basically requires you to read about a dozen different books to have any real clue of what the fuck was going on or why you should care about half the characters.

343 is telling a worse story and wants me to do homework. The appeal is kind of gone.
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2 is my favorite but 3 had some fun parts in there. I think 3's warthog ending sequence is the highlight of all the campaigns. Me and a friend used to race each other on that and try to kill each other. It was a lot of fun.

2 is probably just my favorite cause I played it the most. Jackel snipers on legendary are straight bullshit but I feel sort of accomplished for managing to get through them anyway.

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I'm just in a tricky pickle...

The Halo franchise is hugely popular, but it's hard to believe that it all is riding on CE nostalgia... kinda like us.

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Lokarin posted...

I'm just in a tricky pickle...

The Halo franchise is hugely popular, but it's hard to believe that it all is riding on CE nostalgia... kinda like us.

It's riding on early xbox live multiplayer which I still believe was the most enjoyable online experience to date. When party chat became omnipresent, halo popularity dropped off.

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yaknow... the really bad stuff of Halo 3 like the avant garde Cortana/gravemind convos, the overall poopy level design and weirdly backtracking enemy quality in both design and AI...

...Halo 3 could have released as Halo 2 DLC and it WOULD have been better received! And you'd get to keep all the things Halo 2 had that were better than Halo 1 like homing rockets, and nothing really would have been lost - and the added multiplayer maps would have made Halo 2 an unparalleled powerhouse of options instead of splitting between 2 games.

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ParanoidObsessive posted...

343 changed all that (they kept the "ancient humanity" idea but made the Forerunners a distinct race that literally called themselves "Forerunner"), but it was Bungie's plan from start to finish (hence "The Ark" in Halo 3, and it being in Africa - the "origin place" of "modern humans").

The terminals in Halo 3 don't quite support that.

L: I've remotely destroyed our
Keyships. A security measure.
Without them I cannot reach the Ark.
But neither then can the thing.

I'm trapped. On a beautiful, empty
world. Its inhabitants have been
safely indexed, every single one
of them. They're special - well
worth the effort it took to build
one final gateway, even at this late
hour.

Did I tell you? I built a garden. The earth is so rich. A seed falls and a tree sprouts or a flower blooms. There's so much... potential. We knew this was a special place because of them, but unless you've been here, you can't know.

There's also the comic with prehistoric humans and Forerunner machines:
https://www.halopedia.org/images/1/1b/Halo_3_Comic_-2.JPG

This indicates that Forerunners and primitive humans existed simultaneously. There was some deep connection between them, but they aren't the same culture. And for whatever reason, humans became the new Reclaimers. Perhaps they inherited the proverbial "mantle" the Didact was so proud of.

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All the Halo games blend together in my memory, I literally cannot tell them apart.

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If its the 4P co-op one then its better than the others for sure.

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ParanoidObsessive posted...

The ultimate irony of the war between humans and the Covenant is that the Covenant have literally been murdering their own gods the entire time and never realized it. Or, if you read Contact: Harvest, you're told the Prophets knew it the entire time - they're terrified the other Covenant will discover the truth and they'll lose their power, so they willingly misinterpreted Forerunner lore and deliberately wanted to destroy humanity mainly out of jealousy.

IIRC, this is actually pretty heavily implied in halo 2 and 3 if not spelled out directly but its been quite some time since I played through both campaigns. Maybe I should do that again soon

In reference to the topic, many of old school halo's most hardcore fanbase think 3 is the best or, at the very least, consider 3 to be the best multiplayer of the entire franchise

I remember when Halo 2 was delayed

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Metalsonic66 posted...

I remember when Halo 2 was delayed

I remember it being the first game I had ever heard of where the special edition came in a metal case

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Mead posted...

I remember it being the first game I had ever heard of where the special edition came in a metal case

ooo. I still love my FF12 metal case special edition.

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As an aside, I was goofing off on The Ark mission and I broke the scripting and can't continue the level... lulz

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Lokarin posted...

As an aside, I was goofing off on The Ark mission and I broke the scripting and can't continue the level... lulz

Lol I've managed to do that in halo 2 multiple times but not 3 unless I just don't remember which impossible. Half my campaign time in the first 3 games is escaping maps and other tricks and glitches. I used to be kinda hardcore into that and I would frequent a site dedicated to it called highimpacthalo

Was it 2 or 3 where you could like super launch a warhog with you in it? I think you just played co-op and kept suiciding to create a huge pile of grenades or something. I remember trying to reach the scarab gun or something that way (and failing but getting surprisingly close).

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YoukaiSlayer posted...

Was it 2 or 3 where you could like super launch a warhog with you in it? I think you just played co-op and kept suiciding to create a huge pile of grenades or something. I remember trying to reach the scarab gun that way (and failing but getting surprisingly close).

1 and 2 definitely had the craziest launches

I remember spending hours mastering all the various super bounces in halo 2. Some of those map escapes were so specific and random that I really wonder how anyone figured em out. I know on headlong there was like a triple super bounce to escape the map and then the common one on burial mounds where you have to look and run at the right spot after bouncing to get out of the map.

Oh but then halo 3 had all those crazy wall jumps where you manage to jump off like a 1 pixel texture difference to get on top of stuff.

Man I really miss early halo 2-3 multiplayer. I don't think it'd be the same if I played it again but back then I could sit on those games all day every day and have a blast the whole time.

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YoukaiSlayer posted...

I remember spending hours mastering all the various super bounces in halo 2. Some of those map escapes were so specific and random that I really wonder how anyone figured em out. I know on headlong there was like a triple super bounce to escape the map and then the common one on burial mounds where you have to look and run at the right spot after bouncing to get out of the map.

Oh but then halo 3 had all those crazy wall jumps where you manage to jump off like a 1 pixel texture difference to get on top of stuff.

Man I really miss early halo 2-3 multiplayer. I don't think it'd be the same if I played it again but back then I could sit on those games all day every day and have a blast the whole time.

Lol yeah I mastered most of the super bounces in halo 2 but I remember there was a code of honor online not to do it so I would only do it if someone on the other team did it first. The burial mounds one by the sniper was one of my favorites though. The zanzibar one was probably the most practical as far as cheating went

https://youtu.be/hNnIG_t-TE0

Never did get enough into tricking to do this stuff but always liked watching these

Mead posted...

I remember it being the first game I had ever heard of where the special edition came in a metal case

I still have a sealed street dated metal case Halo 2 copy somewhere.
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OhhhJa posted...

Lol yeah I mastered most of the super bounces in halo 2 but I remember there was a code of honor online not to do it so I would only do it if someone on the other team did it first. The burial mounds one by the sniper was one of my favorites though. The zanzibar one was probably the most practical as far as cheating went

The only code of honor I remember was if someone used the noob combo (charged plasma pistol into BR headshot) you'd use it back and made them hate the game. I spent long enough practicing the super bounces that I could use em in game on the fly. I think the lockout one was probably most useful. Being up there with a sniper is OP but maybe I'm biased since I played so much on lockout.

I also remember one time successfully doing the banshee roll launch to get out of bounds on ascension with the flag in one game. That round went on for 3 hours. Me and the friend I did it with just swapped the other controller off every 30 or so minutes. I was really surprised how long everyone stayed in the match. It wasn't ranked or anything so I guess everyone was just having a good time playing makeshift team slayer.

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YoukaiSlayer posted...

The only code of honor I remember was if someone used the noob combo (charged plasma pistol into BR headshot) you'd use it back and made them hate the game. I spent long enough practicing the super bounces that I could use em in game on the fly. I think the lockout one was probably most useful. Being up there with a sniper is OP but maybe I'm biased since I played so much on lockout.

Maybe there wasn't so much but I just remember people would always complain when someone used the superbounce and I'm pretty sure the word cheater was sometimes thrown at people who did it. But yeah, the noon combo was pretty strict. I remember tea bagging the hell out of people that I killed using it

YoukaiSlayer posted...

I also remember one time successfully doing the banshee roll launch to get out of bounds on ascension with the flag in one game. That round went on for 3 hours. Me and the friend I did it with just swapped the other controller off every 30 or so minutes. I was really surprised how long everyone stayed in the match. It wasn't ranked or anything so I guess everyone was just having a good time playing makeshift team slayer.

Lol yeah I used to do that in custom games against my buddies. Actually, speaking of which, there was a really useful superbounce sniping spot in that map too