Ask a Halo fanboy anything! Removing common misconceptions.

[Rayne870]

why is the "gravity" the same on all the planets?

 

[Tupolev]

why is the "gravity" the same on all the planets?

Gameplay reasons mostly.

The only planets you visit in the FPS games are Earth, Reach, and Threshold, though. Earth and Reach are fairly similar and thus have fairly similar gravity. Hard to tell with Threshold, though you're on a Forerunner installation there, and so it's possibly controlled to have the same artificial gravity levels as the Halo installations the Forerunner used. As for Forerunner artificial gravity levels, I suppose perhaps their civilization adopted a standard that wasn't all that different from Earth or Reach levels, which isn't too improbable considering that many terrestrial planets, which are often thought to be more likely to host life than gas giants, sometimes fall into size ranges not too dissimilar from Earth, or something, I guess.

 

[Netrigan]

That's possibly the case because the first Halo game makes incredibly extensive use of similar techniques. The rhythm of The Library's gameplay and aesthetics, the unovert promptings to just go and look around in some areas and the effect of that exploration, etc. It has more resonance between its many components than just about any other game I've ever touched. Heck, even time-of-day is used to symbolically flow with the narrative, very visibly in acts 2 and 3 (levels 4 through 10) (ODST applies a similar approach with great success).

It's why when people say that Halo 1 has shallow storytelling on account of shallow characters and simple plot, I argue that they're missing everything except for the outermost shell of the structure.

Unless I'm missing something major in the Halo games, I don't see this. Half-Life tells a lot of its story through set-dressing and character designs. There's a lot of busy work in the background of levels, while Halo is pretty barren. The Fallout games are great about this, as you'll be walking through a subway and you'll find a ramp, a wrecked bike... then you look up and there's a skeleton hanging from the lights. Wonderful little story told without a single line of dialogue or a written word.

I know Reach has some data files hidden around the game, but I haven't stumbled across one of them yet (have not clue what's in them). Mind you, I'm only about level 3. Still, hiding the story seems an odd thing to do. The logs in Unreal & Bioshock were absolutely everywhere, so you'd catch these little human dramas no matter how little you looked for them.

 

[Rayne870]

why is the "gravity" the same on all the planets?

Gameplay reasons mostly.

The only planets you visit in the FPS games are Earth, Reach, and Threshold, though. Earth and Reach are fairly similar and thus have fairly similar gravity. Hard to tell with Threshold, though you're on a Forerunner installation there, and so it's possibly controlled to have the same artificial gravity levels as the Halo installations the Forerunner used. As for Forerunner artificial gravity levels, I suppose perhaps their civilization adopted a standard that wasn't all that different from Earth or Reach levels, which isn't too improbable considering that many terrestrial planets, which are often thought to be more likely to host life than gas giants, sometimes fall into size ranges not too dissimilar from Earth, or something, I guess.

Earth's gravity is very floaty when jumping then. It's just something that bothered me a bit in the series, I can accept it on other worlds that they would have less gravity but Earth just seemed a little low. Oh well lol there's much more important things than something as small as that, and I do agree it works for the game-play.

 

[KapnKerfuffle]

1) Why does everyone seem to like Halo 1 more than 2? Halo 2 was much better in many ways.
2) Why did everyone bemoan the loss of the zoom-able magnum from 1 in 2? A pistol as a sniper weapon is dumb.

 

[Tupolev]

Unless I'm missing something major in the Halo games, I don't see this. Half-Life tells a lot of its story through set-dressing and character designs. There's a lot of busy work in the background of levels, while Halo is pretty barren. The Fallout games are great about this, as you'll be walking through a subway and you'll find a ramp, a wrecked bike... then you look up and there's a skeleton hanging from the lights. Wonderful little story told without a single line of dialogue or a written word.

I know Reach has some data files hidden around the game, but I haven't stumbled across one of them yet (have not clue what's in them). Mind you, I'm only about level 3. Still, hiding the story seems an odd thing to do. The logs in Unreal & Bioshock were absolutely everywhere, so you'd catch these little human dramas no matter how little you looked for them.

The reason that you don't see it is that you seem to be specifically referring to overt content. I'm talking about how things like gameplay rhythm, sound design, lighting design, time-of-day, and such, all support the overarching narrative flow. In absolute contrast to the sort of things you're pointing out, I'm noting the importance of what isn't there as much as what is.

For a (very basic and simplistic example) of what I mean, on the rather shallow time-of-day example:
There's a reason that The Silent Cartographer has the sun low in the sky to serve as a morning level, and why the gameplay of that level is quaint and nonlinear (in feel, if not overtly), while Assault on the Control Room has light streaming down from almost dead overhead and linear-but-grand gameplay. Those two levels make up act 2. The main plot was introduced in level 3, and now we begin our journey with an unpointed morning adventure; the goal of the level is ultimately to find focus so that we may begin out long, hard, climactic midday (again, literally and figuratively) push.
343GS, the transition to act 3, is a literal and figurative descent into dusk, dropping us down from the high pedestal we reached in act 2 and handing us a big reveal. The Library, dark, chaotic, rhythmic, pressing, intense, and mesmerizing, is the early night. It's a wild party, so to speak. Two Betrayals, a mirror of Assault on the Control Room, serving as much of of act 3's long action, takes place at the dead of night (in contrast with the mid-day of its mirror); being, itself, the long night, its combat is chaotic but also broken and peaceful in the gaps, with relaxing cool colors. Keyes is towards the end of the night, where it is quite literally the darkest before the dawn, both literally and in terms of the fact that the level provides (and is arguably primarily for) the games' central moment of horror, pressing home the need to get out of that hell, and it also drives home that hell by having perhaps the most intense flood-attack-stuff in the game. And that's exactly what The Maw does; it's a new dawn, and with the Pillar sitting out there, a broken hull on an apocalyptic empty wasteland, it's a bittersweet climax to set things straightish.

Now, that isn't exactly an exhaustive description, nor does it imply all that much complexity in and of itself alone, but it's the sort of stuff I'm referring to, and everything in the game works together to suppose those narrative flowings that I described. For a slightly different example, in the level Halo, the very fact that the player is often inclined to stare out in the distance is arguably used as a storytelling mechanism; there's a reason those cliffs over that view are in that level and not the very much focused Assault on the Control Room.

//=====

I'm certainly not arguing that Halo 1 is a pinnacle of complicated exposition. I'm arguing practically the opposite, that it sacrifices that complicated exposition in order to use that aspect of storytelling as merely a framework to hold together a whole that is very well-constructed out of everything else.

 

[Waffle_Man]

snip

I do agree that Bungie did have a lot of background information that informed the basic story... although very little of that made it into the actual game.

I think I've already mentioned that this isn't a necessarily a bad thing, but I hardly think it's fair to not include information present in the manual. The only difference between that and an info dump is that having it in the manual is less intrusive.

Obviously the Dark Forces game operated under the same circumstances, as did the Half-Life games, and Deus Ex, and a few others. When I call Halo pulp sci-fi, I'm not using that as an insult. I'd consider all of those games to be part of the pulp sci-fi tradition.

Dark Forces has a bit of an advantage: it takes place in an established universe. I would consider Deus Ex to be one of the exceptions, as it did have a developed story.

On the other hand, until I'm convinced otherwise, everything that has happened in Half-life has been made up on the fly.

Incidentally, when I say Star Wars, I mean Star Wars, not any of the sequels. The original is a story of clear-cut good and bad guys, although Han's morality is a bit scuffed up... and in the end, he does the right thing. It's just a simple story, well-told... and then Campbell started talking up the archtype thing and suddenly everyone starts discussing the plot in intellectual terms.

That doesn't change the fact that the original star wars still has character development, which helps it avoid being X, then Y, then Z. Would the story have been as interesting if Luke Skywalker started the story with all of the skills and knowledge that he has at the end? I sure wouldn't have enjoyed it as much. A big part of the charm is watching him overcome his fears and problems.

Again, I agree that in 2001 Halo was one of the better examples of FPS story telling. It's plot has a good narrative structure and all the elements of the story slot together extremely well. As you say, it's simplicity is at the heart of that strength. It told us who the good guys were, who the bad guys where, set up something they were both fighting over, then had a solid twist halfway through with The Flood. I'm sure for a lot of players it was the first time they had ever experienced a good narrative in a FPS. Said narrative structure still holds up today, whereas the story of Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight is a bit of a relic of its time, although I think it's more emotionally involving.

Again, Dark Forces II has the same strengths as Halo precisely because it has a reestablished universe to build off of. They didn't think up the game play, then build the world around it. They took the world and built the game in it. Halo did the same thing, the difference being that the universe hadn't been used before (though it's very likely that Halo started as an off shoot or successor of Marathon, it definitely exists in it's own universe now.)

Yes, Halo does have a simplistic plot, which is an asset, but the reasoning behind everything is really extensive. The plot twist could have come out of nowhere, but it had a reason behind it beyond being something else to shoot.. It fit. It's a strength, a strength that few other shooters had up until that point.

One thing I do find a bit funny in reading yours posts is that it sounds like you're talking about Half-Life, a game that doesn't really have much of a plot or any characters at all, but uses exploration and action to tell a story. It even has a bit of a twist a third of the way through (spoiled by all the advance marketing) in which your would-be saviors are being sent in to contain the situation and are out to kill you... the marines aren't evil, but looking at the bigger picture (badly, as the case may be). To this day, I don't have the slightest clue what's going on in that franchise, but I always enjoy visiting it because the world tells a story. I'm not the hugest fan of the franchise, but it does utilize some of the most sophisticated narrative techniques in video games... while being deep as a puddle.

That's why I cited it as being a good example of plot. A lot of stuff happens in it. A lot of good stuff. However, the original half-life had the same goal throughout the pretty much the entire game. The problem is the same, your motivation is the same. All the twist does is add another obstacle. It doesn't make me think about the facility any differently. It would have been big twist if it turned out that the government was doing this for some further end, but no, the marines are there to kill you as a standard response.

The later games do tell a much more developed story, but it's primarily through characterization. What is actually happening in the world right now is anyone's guess. Hell, I don't even know if Valve knows what they're doing.

Aside from that, interesting narrative techniques help tell a story, they don't make a story.

It's becoming pretty clear at this point that we have a fundamental disagreement over the definition of story and plot. I would be interested in continuing the conversation (the nature of narrative), but I think that as far as the justification for why halo fans like halo and why some think it's exceptional, I've given one. You may disagree with the reason, but it's because you disagree with the premises, not the internal logic.

I'll be honest, I don't think Halo did anything new, it just did a lot of stuff right. I can accept that games had developed stories before Halo, but I won't accept that it was the norm until the post halo CE period. You disagree, but we also disagree on what a story is.

Therefore, I'll offer a truce.

I admit that stories, being defined as the cumulative total of setting, actions, characters, and events, were commonly proliferated at high levels of sophistication by the time Halo was released.

Will you admit that stories, being defined as a developing (id est, refined in their definition rather than fundamentally altered) self consistent rational of characters and events that exist to serve themselves rather than the actions and events of the narrative, were (and to a degree, still are) not very sophisticated at the time?

 

[Tupolev]

Earth's gravity is very floaty when jumping then. It's just something that bothered me a bit in the series, I can accept it on other worlds that they would have less gravity but Earth just seemed a little low. Oh well lol there's much more important things than something as small as that, and I do agree it works for the game-play.

It's inconsistant between games anyway, lol. Jumping up and down on Earth in Halo 2 and the same in Halo 3 are very different experiences.

//==============================

1) Why does everyone seem to like Halo 1 more than 2? Halo 2 was much better in many ways.

And some people do agree with you.

Some of the arguments that people often bring against Halo 2:
-From the storytelling side, its development problems caused narrative truncation, which not only game it a nasty cliffhanger but also screwed up a 3-act narrative that would have otherwise worked much more effectively.
-On the gameplay side, several things. The much greater reticle and bullet magnetism caused shooting to become too easy. This is compounded badly with the 3-shot headshot capability of the BR and other things such as the high homing on the plasma pistol overcharge. In campaign, Bungie compensated by drastically increases enemy shot and damage output. The combination of easier instakilling and higher enemy damage combined to cause frustrating, luck-based cover/corridor shooting on higher difficulties and bland ease on lower ones.
-The textures suck, and the engine that manages the textures sucks.

2) Why did everyone bemoan the loss of the zoom-able magnum from 1 in 2? A pistol as a sniper weapon is dumb.

Many were never bothered by the pistol's high effective range, and felt that because of its powerful aesthetic it actually "felt right" in context. Furthermore, it's commonly held by Halo 1 players that the availability of an all-purpose weapon at spawn is an acceptable state of affairs; making power weapons into specializers rather than easy kill devices makes for more fair and upbeat gameplay. And finally, the effective range of the pistol isn't as obscene as people make it out to be; it's maximum range is roughly 120m, and you can't hit stuff in a very meaningful way at that range anyway. And finally, it is commonly argued that the Halo 1 pistol, particularly its visual and sound aesthetic is just plain fun to use; a similar argument is frequently brought up when comparing Halo 1's needler to the ones later in the series.

 

[Netrigan]

Therefore, I'll offer a truce.

Half the time I don't know what we're disagreeing about... obviously something, but half the times, I swear I'm saying the same things you are

I admit that stories, being defined as the cumulative total of setting, actions, characters, and events, were commonly proliferated at high levels of sophistication by the time Halo was released.

Will you admit that stories, being defined as a developing (id est, refined in their definition rather than fundamentally altered) self consistent rational of characters and events that exist to serve themselves rather than the actions and events of the narrative, were (and to a degree, still are) not very sophisticated at the time?

Since I'm not sure I understand that last paragraph... ummm, sure.

I take it to mean that Halo was the first fully realized video game narrative, the sum total of all the parts that other games were struggling toward. It has a fully worked out back-story that informs the story without being amateurishly shoved into it. It has just as much plot as it needs with no wasted movements. Characters are exactly what is needed to propel the story forward and there's not a lot of needless plot complications.

To that, I'll say I can't think of any previous game that hit all those marks at the same time. Other stories may have done elements better, but (personal taste aside) it's perhaps the most solid over-all package up until that point. Which I've been attempting to say for a few posts now.

Incidentally, this is pretty much how I describe Call Of Duty 4. I think it's the best video game narrative I've encountered. Good simple plot, a couple of good twists, no extraneous characterization that would get in the way of the game, great set-pieces that service the plot, etc. Plenty of games have done various elements better, but none have managed to put all the pieces together in a better product in my opinion.

 

[Waffle_Man]

I take it to mean that Halo was the first fully realized video game narrative, the sum total of all the parts that other games were struggling toward. It has a fully worked out back-story that informs the story without being amateurishly shoved into it. It has just as much plot as it needs with no wasted movements. Characters are exactly what is needed to propel the story forward and there's not a lot of needless plot complications.

To that, I'll say I can't think of any previous game that hit all those marks at the same time. Other stories may have done elements better, but (personal taste aside) it's perhaps the most solid over-all package up until that point. Which I've been attempting to say for a few posts now.

Incidentally, this is pretty much how I describe Call Of Duty 4. I think it's the best video game narrative I've encountered. Good simple plot, a couple of good twists, no extraneous characterization that would get in the way of the game, great set-pieces that service the plot, etc. Plenty of games have done various elements better, but none have managed to put all the pieces together in a better product in my opinion.

I guess that's close enough to my views that I can say that we're in agreement.

It's good to end a conversation as such. Now let's get drunk.

Cheers!

 

[odd function]

You're sure popularity had nothing to do with it? Wouldn't that hypothetically entail you getting mad at anyone who ever liked a game that you didn't? Well, I admit that this is hyperbole, but people only have a valid reason to complain about things that affect them. Video games, by their commercial nature, have very little likely hood of affecting any other games unless they prove popular. It is a valid reason to hate a mechanic and there are serious reasons to hate a game, but how often do you see rants about how awful an obscure and horribly made game from the 90s was? You don't, because no one would care. Notice how "video game" movies are always talked about as "video game movies," with very few actual examples given. It's because bad games are quickly forgotten. Few people actually care about bad video games because of the games themselves. Sure, people will talk about specific bad games, but it's ubiquitously because of the specific circumstances surrounding the game, not because the game necessarily stands out in anyway (though some games can fail so horribly that people remember them with a small amount of fondness, but this isn' the case here).

I admit that this was poorly phrased, and the fact that I brought it up in regards to Halo hints that it was poorly thought out. The idea I was trying to relate was that hype/marketing easily drown out reasoned discussion about what games are good and why (we can call it word of mouth). Offered as a starting point would be Yahtzee's writeup of the BAFTA video game awards, or some of the questionable nominees for the Smithsonian's "Videogames as Art exhibit". I actually have no horse in this particular race since I am not really an FPS fan. Half-Life and Deus Ex are the only franchises that seem to do a good job with story telling, but I've heard good things about Max Payne so maybe I'll try that.

Consider for the moment that most of the defense surrounding the storytelling and characterization and similar depends on things like the books, which reinforces the idea that the games themselves suffer from crap story-telling, but fans don't want to admit this flaw.

I would hardly call this a flaw. You know why many people who haven't read comic books for a long time don't want to get into them? Because they're complicated to the point of being impenetrable. Why are soap opera's and anime frequently criticized for their cheesy writing? Because they try to shove as much detail in as possible.

Sure, Bungie could have spent hours on cutscenes describing all of the characters' various issues and angst. They could have gone into detail about every faction and culture. They could have included the massive story bible. Why didn't they? Because most people don't care. Those people didn't read the books, and they're happy. I do care, so I read the books. I'm happy. One of the reasons the first game is almost unanimously heralded as the best is because it was truest to this principal. The other two somewhat faltered here because they started to assume that everyone did care, and the additional information just didn't fit well.

It would be a valid complaint if Bungie simply hadn't thought of the material and hadn't described things out of laziness, but they did, so the point is moot.

Actually these things that you site are all also examples of bad writing (but I wouldn't point to info dumps as the main reason people criticize the writing in anime). Some failures are more understandable than others. For example comic book writing is dominated by the fact that nothing can really change in a big way, the characters are franchises. This is why comics suffer from inconsistent writing quality since the story is shuffled between writers. This is also why things like Peter Parker's marriage get retconned, because comics are soaps and there is no actual climax that he or any character's story is building towards. Treadmill is word you want to look for in regards to story progression. Long time fans describe only reading favorite authors or well recommended story lines because they are fans of the cast, but the canon in its entirety is frequently regarded as hit or miss, and you can just stop buying when an author looses their touch.

That said the primary reason that I regard the writing for Halo as provably bad is that Master Chief creates cognitive dissonance. To remind you: You begin the game waking up in a suit of armor. When things start blowing up you crash, and throughout the game you never see anyone else in a suit of armor. Heck I don't even think I saw a flak jacket or bulletproof vest. So what kind of military creates awesome gear but only gives it to a single soldier instead of mass producing it? Why are my shipmates practically naked? Why aren't we all super-soldiers? These are the kind of questions that nagged me in the back of my mind throughout two games. You don't need cut-scenes, you just writing that meets a certain minimum standard.

Here are some options that would of course change the nature of the game, but either the writer should write a story that makes sense for the game or the programmers should make a game that makes sense for the story.

1) Wall of text. Think Star Wars. Gameplay doesn't change, but you know something about your own (Master Chief's) context.
2) You are amnesiac. Any questions about the difference between you and everyone else who is supposedly on your side is now in character and hints at the central mystery of the game. This changes the game the most. The ending to avoid is MC taking off his helmet to reveal he is actually an elite.
3) You are just another meat bag. Questions about Master Chief are now above your pay grade, but you might not be sure if he's friend or foe. This one involves only minor changes, but if you go this route I don't see any reason to keep Master Chief around at all.

These examples should establish two things. First I am not a creative genius, and second, there are many ways to tell a story that includes Master Chief so that it doesn't break huge identity crisis between the player and their in game avatar.

The only reason we know that it is unique in the first place is because of the manual...

but before the franchise there was only the game which should have cleared this one up before the end.

...which did have that material, and was released with the game. Again, additional information.

You'll have to explain yourself here. You seem to say the only reason the flaw of unique armor is know to me is the manual, but the manual explains this flaw so that without the manual the flaw doesn't appear, but with all problems are solved?

I disagree, we see a fair number of soldiers on the ground, enough so that we can infer the uniqueness of our own equipment. Also, not only are we supposedly beyond the days of "the plot's in the manual" (going out of style even in the NES days), but I only recall a description of controls and equipment/enemies. I could have missed it, but this is a post Half-Life shooter, and leaving vital bits to the manual is sloppy.

Master Chief also appears to be a bland expression of the player's wish-fulfillment, having less nuance than Doom's space marine (who has both nostalgia and facial expressions).

I guess that makes Gordon Freeman (half-life), Chell (portal), Jack (bioshock) all pretty awful too.

Only played the first two, but not being an animatronic suit of armor helps. Also they have context, especially Gordon who had the tour along with the opening act to establish it. You generally have a solid idea of who they are. Chell's a bit weaker, but her experience perfectly mirrors the players, and her past and identity become irrelevant.

That said, if you are an FPS only type of gamer then I can see why you might latch onto Halo during the years between HL2 and Gears of War, though there could easily have been other better FPS's that I know nothing about, it isn't really my scene.

It's funny that you listed two games that came out after the first halo, and one that came out as the same time as halo 2.

If your reference points are HL and HL2 or HL2 and Gears, it doesn't matter. A Halo game has weaker storytelling than the other two. I also remind you that this isn't my scene. I practically an exclusively PC gamers, and I inherited my XBox (primarily used as a media center), and generally play these games because friends like the multiplayer.

I find it more insulting that someone wants to rationalize why I like a game than if they simply called me an idiot for liking it. By rationalizing, they're assuming that they know everything about me, what I like, and what I think. They're assuming that they know what I'm in the mood to play at any given moment. They assume they know why I play video games.

I apologize for getting under your skin, it just irks me to know end when people even breath "story" and "halo" while think positive things for the points mentioned. I barely even bothered with the whole Ringworld vs. Halo bit while it lasted, because Master Chief's existence in the Halo story is the mother of all plot holes when playing the game. I tend to approach single-player games as story telling experiences, and so my criticism reflects my priorities. That said I've had good times playing Halo at LAN parties.

 

[Tupolev]

That said the primary reason that I regard the writing for Halo as provably bad is that Master Chief creates cognitive dissonance. To remind you: You begin the game waking up in a suit of armor. When things start blowing up you crash, and throughout the game you never see anyone else in a suit of armor. Heck I don't even think I saw a flak jacket or bulletproof vest. So what kind of military creates awesome gear but only gives it to a single soldier instead of mass producing it? Why are my shipmates practically naked? Why aren't we all super-soldiers? These are the kind of questions that nagged me in the back of my mind throughout two games. You don't need cut-scenes, you just writing that meets a certain minimum standard.

I'm not really sure where you drew these criticisms from.

In every single game of the series, most of the UNSC frontline troops are wearing armor. The only possible exception is Halo 1, where some marines are left in nothing but fatigues, explained by the fact that the Pillar of Autumn was rapidly and chaotically evacuated. It's not really hidden, either; the armour is less bulky in Halo's 2 and 3 than 1 and Reach, but in all cases it's highly visible.

And yeah, pretty much all of the plot setup is in the game manual, including the explanation for what the heck the Pillar of Autumn is doing in the middle of nowhere and who the Master Chief is. I'm a little surprised that you consider this sketchy or surprising; the manual was to an extent written in the tradition of Marathon, and game manuals arguably didn't became uninteresting and weak until the current console generation. It's actually pretty well-written, as manuals go.
If you have a problem with a 2001 game expecting that you would read the manual, consider that perhaps it's not an inherint flaw in the storytelling so much as some personal preference you have with game presentation. In my case, I'm of the opinion that games should devote any infodump that wouldn't fit smoothly into an in-game form of presentation into their manuals, if it would go better there. Halo 1 has intentionally minimal direct exposition.

 

[Netrigan]

Unless I'm missing something major in the Halo games, I don't see this. Half-Life tells a lot of its story through set-dressing and character designs. There's a lot of busy work in the background of levels, while Halo is pretty barren. The Fallout games are great about this, as you'll be walking through a subway and you'll find a ramp, a wrecked bike... then you look up and there's a skeleton hanging from the lights. Wonderful little story told without a single line of dialogue or a written word.

I know Reach has some data files hidden around the game, but I haven't stumbled across one of them yet (have not clue what's in them). Mind you, I'm only about level 3. Still, hiding the story seems an odd thing to do. The logs in Unreal & Bioshock were absolutely everywhere, so you'd catch these little human dramas no matter how little you looked for them.

The reason that you don't see it is that you seem to be specifically referring to overt content. I'm talking about how things like gameplay rhythm, sound design, lighting design, time-of-day, and such, all support the overarching narrative flow. In absolute contrast to the sort of things you're pointing out, I'm noting the importance of what isn't there as much as what is.

For a (very basic and simplistic example) of what I mean, on the rather shallow time-of-day example:
There's a reason that The Silent Cartographer has the sun low in the sky to serve as a morning level, and why the gameplay of that level is quaint and nonlinear (in feel, if not overtly), while Assault on the Control Room has light streaming down from almost dead overhead and linear-but-grand gameplay. Those two levels make up act 2. The main plot was introduced in level 3, and now we begin our journey with an unpointed morning adventure; the goal of the level is ultimately to find focus so that we may begin out long, hard, climactic midday (again, literally and figuratively) push.
343GS, the transition to act 3, is a literal and figurative descent into dusk, dropping us down from the high pedestal we reached in act 2 and handing us a big reveal. The Library, dark, chaotic, rhythmic, pressing, intense, and mesmerizing, is the early night. It's a wild party, so to speak. Two Betrayals, a mirror of Assault on the Control Room, serving as much of of act 3's long action, takes place at the dead of night (in contrast with the mid-day of its mirror); being, itself, the long night, its combat is chaotic but also broken and peaceful in the gaps, with relaxing cool colors. Keyes is towards the end of the night, where it is quite literally the darkest before the dawn, both literally and in terms of the fact that the level provides (and is arguably primarily for) the games' central moment of horror, pressing home the need to get out of that hell, and it also drives home that hell by having perhaps the most intense flood-attack-stuff in the game. And that's exactly what The Maw does; it's a new dawn, and with the Pillar sitting out there, a broken hull on an apocalyptic empty wasteland, it's a bittersweet climax to set things straightish.

Now, that isn't exactly an exhaustive description, nor does it imply all that much complexity in and of itself alone, but it's the sort of stuff I'm referring to, and everything in the game works together to suppose those narrative flowings that I described. For a slightly different example, in the level Halo, the very fact that the player is often inclined to stare out in the distance is arguably used as a storytelling mechanism; there's a reason those cliffs over that view are in that level and not the very much focused Assault on the Control Room.

//=====

I'm certainly not arguing that Halo 1 is a pinnacle of complicated exposition. I'm arguing practically the opposite, that it sacrifices that complicated exposition in order to use that aspect of storytelling as merely a framework to hold together a whole that is very well-constructed out of everything else.

Ah, the common trick of having the outward environment reflect the inner emotion... or the reason why every movie break-up happens in the pouring rain. Also can be used ironically, as when a new war widow gets the news of her husband's death on a bright sunny day with kids out playing, their easily-heard happiness a counterpart to her sadness.

 

[Netrigan]

That said the primary reason that I regard the writing for Halo as provably bad is that Master Chief creates cognitive dissonance. To remind you: You begin the game waking up in a suit of armor. When things start blowing up you crash, and throughout the game you never see anyone else in a suit of armor. Heck I don't even think I saw a flak jacket or bulletproof vest. So what kind of military creates awesome gear but only gives it to a single soldier instead of mass producing it? Why are my shipmates practically naked? Why aren't we all super-soldiers? These are the kind of questions that nagged me in the back of my mind throughout two games. You don't need cut-scenes, you just writing that meets a certain minimum standard.

I'm not really sure where you drew these criticisms from.

In every single game of the series, most of the UNSC frontline troops are wearing armor. The only possible exception is Halo 1, where some marines are left in nothing but fatigues, explained by the fact that the Pillar of Autumn was rapidly and chaotically evacuated. It's not really hidden, either; the armour is less bulky in Halo's 2 and 3 than 1 and Reach, but in all cases it's highly visible.

And yeah, pretty much all of the plot setup is in the game manual, including the explanation for what the heck the Pillar of Autumn is doing in the middle of nowhere and who the Master Chief is. I'm a little surprised that you consider this sketchy or surprising; the manual was to an extent written in the tradition of Marathon, and game manuals arguably didn't became uninteresting and weak until the current console generation. It's actually pretty well-written, as manuals go.
If you have a problem with a 2001 game expecting that you would read the manual, consider that perhaps it's not an inherint flaw in the storytelling so much as some personal preference you have with game presentation. In my case, I'm of the opinion that games should devote any infodump that wouldn't fit smoothly into an in-game form of presentation into their manuals, if it would go better there. Halo 1 has intentionally minimal direct exposition.

I had borrowed the game from a friend, so I never saw a manual... but in a way, the entire war with the Covenant wasn't important to the plot of Halo, as the Covenant aren't the antagonists of Combat Evolved. The real plot is about The Flood. The Covenant are a red herring and generally used as a plot complication, keeping you away from the mystery of Halo for a good chunk of the story.

Sort of like how a WWII movie doesn't have to explain why you're fighting the Nazis. The entire drama works even if you're completely ignorant of the history leading up to that particular story. Lot of stuff is pretty universal and don't need explained.

 

[Waffle_Man]

I admit that this was poorly phrased, and the fact that I brought it up in regards to Halo hints that it was poorly thought out. The idea I was trying to relate was that hype/marketing easily drown out reasoned discussion about what games are good and why (we can call it word of mouth). Offered as a starting point would be Yahtzee's writeup of the BAFTA video game awards, or some of the questionable nominees for the Smithsonian's "Videogames as Art exhibit". I actually have no horse in this particular race since I am not really an FPS fan. Half-Life and Deus Ex are the only franchises that seem to do a good job with story telling, but I've heard good things about Max Payne so maybe I'll try that.

I will very readily admit that hype and popularity can skew conversations into a way that isn't honest. There were first person shooters prior to Halo that told a good story. Aside from that, it's fairly clear that what is remembered as a classic isn't necessarily the most sophisticated or high concept. As such, I empathize.

However, don't take this as a license to get angry at "fans" of a series. There is a general tendency to hate a game's "fans" based on the worst of those "fans." The ultimate prejudice is thinking yourself to be above prejudice.

That said the primary reason that I regard the writing for Halo as provably bad is that Master Chief creates cognitive dissonance. To remind you: You begin the game waking up in a suit of armor. When things start blowing up you crash, and throughout the game you never see anyone else in a suit of armor. Heck I don't even think I saw a flak jacket or bulletproof vest. So what kind of military creates awesome gear but only gives it to a single soldier instead of mass producing it? Why are my shipmates practically naked? Why aren't we all super-soldiers? These are the kind of questions that nagged me in the back of my mind throughout two games. You don't need cut-scenes, you just writing that meets a certain minimum standard.

The reason that we aren't all super soldiers is detailed fairly well, and while the information is present in the manual, it could be reasonably inferred from, say, the cryo chamber. Notice all of those empty chambers? Why are you the only person left in the room? This is reenforced by the opening conversation, which hints at the Autumn having just been through a hellish fight of some kind, so it would be a stretch to assume that the ship is at full operational capacity.

Here are some options that would of course change the nature of the game, but either the writer should write a story that makes sense for the game or the programmers should make a game that makes sense for the story.

1) Wall of text. Think Star Wars. Gameplay doesn't change, but you know something about your own (Master Chief's) context.

I've said this before (in this thread, not to you), but there is a wall of text. It exists in the manual. Bungie could have easily just stuck it in as a huge wall of text in the game, but it would have killed the mood.

The only reason we know that it is unique in the first place is because of the manual...

but before the franchise there was only the game which should have cleared this one up before the end.

...which did have that material, and was released with the game. Again, additional information.

You'll have to explain yourself here. You seem to say the only reason the flaw of unique armor is know to me is the manual, but the manual explains this flaw so that without the manual the flaw doesn't appear, but with all problems are solved?

The fact that we're on a ship that has been under attack and is implied to have come from a heavy battle, it's more reasonable to assume that everything simply isn't at full operational capacity.

I disagree, we see a fair number of soldiers on the ground, enough so that we can infer the uniqueness of our own equipment. Also, not only are we supposedly beyond the days of "the plot's in the manual" (going out of style even in the NES days),

The plot isn't in the manual, the premise is. Halo could have gone into large amounts of detail about the premise, but that wasn't the point of the story. It would have been distracting.

but I only recall a description of controls and equipment/enemies. I could have missed it, but this is a post Half-Life shooter, and leaving vital bits to the manual is sloppy.

Go to pages 4,5,8, and 9 [http://www.bungie.net/images/games/halo/about/xbox_manual.pdf]

Master Chief also appears to be a bland expression of the player's wish-fulfillment, having less nuance than Doom's space marine (who has both nostalgia and facial expressions).

I guess that makes Gordon Freeman (half-life), Chell (portal), Jack (bioshock) all pretty awful too.

Only played the first two, but not being an animatronic suit of armor helps. Also they have context, especially Gordon who had the tour along with the opening act to establish it. You generally have a solid idea of who they are. Chell's a bit weaker, but her experience perfectly mirrors the players, and her past and identity become irrelevant.

You never see yourself in Half-life. You never learn anything about yourself beyond a few sentences. You're a non-entity. That's the point. Gordon Freeman and Master Chief are both supposed to serve the same purpose. They are the player. Both Gordon and Chell could have just been unnamed characters and it wouldn't have made a bit of difference. "Not being an animatronic suit of armor" "helping" is subjective. While there are stories where the character being a non-entity would detract, a game like halo or half-life benefits from it.

That said, if you are an FPS only type of gamer then I can see why you might latch onto Halo during the years between HL2 and Gears of War, though there could easily have been other better FPS's that I know nothing about, it isn't really my scene.

It's funny that you listed two games that came out after the first halo, and one that came out as the same time as halo 2.

If your reference points are HL and HL2 or HL2 and Gears, it doesn't matter. A Halo game has weaker storytelling than the other two. I also remind you that this isn't my scene. I practically an exclusively PC gamers, and I inherited my XBox (primarily used as a media center), and generally play these games because friends like the multiplayer.

Actually, it does matter. The original half-life has fairly undeveloped story. While there are great number of ways to find it subjectively better or worse, nothing about Gears of War is objectively better than Halo.

I don't want to type it up again, so I'll just copy-past something I've said earlier in this thread... (spoiled because it's lengthy to the point of cumbersome.

Spoiler

By the time Halo came out, FPS with stories were pretty much the rule. After Half-Life, everyone jumped on the story band wagon. When I can site a Wolfenstein game released in 2001 that has an involved plot, the worm had pretty much officially turned. If I named every major shooter from 1998-2001, I'd imagine the vast majority of them had stories about on par with Halo, often with loads of supporting characters running around. Yeah, Duke Nukem, Doom, Quake, Shadow Warrior, etc. are map-based premises, but by 1998 the FPS world had changed a lot.

People didn't jump on the story bandwagon, they jumped on the plot bandwagon. There is a difference between having a well developed story and a well developed plot.

A plot is a logical progression of events. Read the return to wolfenstine synopsis again. 90% of it is "Blazkowicz does this" or "Blazkowicz does that." Plot is the what.

Compare that to the story, the logic and circumstances that control the plot. Return to castle wolfenstine can literally be sumed up as "there is a nazi a plan to resurrect Heinrich I, a legendary and powerful Saxon warlock-king. Stop them!" Story is the Why.

What separates a game like Halo from a game like return to castle Wolfenstein is that the story doesn't exist solely for the player to do stuff in a given context. What do I know about the nazis that I already didn't? That they're a bunch of boogey men? Fine. And there was some uber boogey man from way back? I'll give you that. Do I know anything else about him? Does the game tell me where all of this uber magic stuff came from? Well, sure, it might say "the past," but what about that past? How did people live? How did the civilization operate? If they're so badass, why don't they rule the world now? The game essentially runs on the answer "Cuz them nahzees is evil." Just because "X does Y because Z" is clearer than plain "X does Y" doesn't mean that it's any more worthwhile. One of the reasons I'm skeptical when video games try to use Nazis (or any other historical group) as a comic book style villain is that it's so easy to justify anything that they do. Want demons? The nazis did it. Want a zombie apocalypse? The nazis did it. Want a bunch of cyborgs? The nazis did it. The problem with this is that it completely destroys the reasoning for Germany going to war in the first place. People don't just start wars for the Evulz. As a rule of thumb, if a plan sounds like something the underpants gnomes from south park would come up with, maybe it's time to rethink the plan.

Even half-life, a game praised for it's story, can be summed up as "Teleportation experiments open a portal to a bad place with bad monsters. Close the hole. Also, watch out because the government wants to kill everyone. Ok, now you need to kill a big monster on the other side because it's keeping the hole open." However, it still has to potential to end up with a good story because it implied a lot. Whether or not valve will follow through is another question. I enjoyed the original half-life way more than any of the halo games, but I'm not under the impression that it has a more sophisticated story. And before you say g-man, remember that there isn't any reason to assume that his presence is anything more profound than the combine, or that the combine have any more profound truth about them than what has been revealed. I haven't played portal 2 yet, so I don't know it's been touched on, so maybe valve already addressed all of my concerns.

In the halo series, there is a reason I'm fighting a war. I learn why halo exists and I learn what it does. There is a reason why the covenant hate humanity. I learn why the forerunners are all gone. The covenant aren't in it for the Evulz. The flood isn't just in it for the Evulz. The forerunners didn't just make a giant weapon thing for the Evulz. Ask any question and there is either an explicit or implicit why. Halo isn't Bioshock (and don't mention system shock, it falls under the same category as half-life), it isn't Deus Ex, and it isn't Marathon, a game Bungie made back in 1994, but I'm not going to consider it at the same league as Quake or Duke Nukem.

I find it more insulting that someone wants to rationalize why I like a game than if they simply called me an idiot for liking it. By rationalizing, they're assuming that they know everything about me, what I like, and what I think. They're assuming that they know what I'm in the mood to play at any given moment. They assume they know why I play video games.

I apologize for getting under your skin, it just irks me to know end when people even breath "story" and "halo" while think positive things for the points mentioned. I barely even bothered with the whole Ringworld vs. Halo bit while it lasted, because Master Chief's existence in the Halo story is the mother of all plot holes when playing the game. I tend to approach single-player games as story telling experiences, and so my criticism reflects my priorities. That said I've had good times playing Halo at LAN parties.

Why would it irk you? There is a fair amount of substance to the Halo story. [http://halostory.bungie.org/] It may not have the sophisticated philosophical content of some of bungie's earlier games, but it definitely has meat on it's bones.

As for the Master Chief's existence, I do think that it stands out oddly at times, but it never becomes anymore absurd than the ramifications of wondering how Barney was able to join civil defense in Half-life. I'm pretty sure that the combine overwatch would have checked into that kind of thing. And before you say that it's not a big plot hole, remember that HL2 likely wouldn't have happened if Barney hadn't been where he was when he was. Oh well, I didn't let that bother me from enjoying the game. Maybe there is a lesson to be had.

 

[Jabberwock xeno]

why is the "gravity" the same on all the planets?

Because all the places you visit are either human colonized, so they would need to be so, or forerunner, which shares most of our environmental needs.

Most of the covies share the same gravity for the same reason, forerunner meddling.

why is the "gravity" the same on all the planets?

Gameplay reasons mostly.

The only planets you visit in the FPS games are Earth, Reach, and Threshold, though. Earth and Reach are fairly similar and thus have fairly similar gravity. Hard to tell with Threshold, though you're on a Forerunner installation there, and so it's possibly controlled to have the same artificial gravity levels as the Halo installations the Forerunner used. As for Forerunner artificial gravity levels, I suppose perhaps their civilization adopted a standard that wasn't all that different from Earth or Reach levels, which isn't too improbable considering that many terrestrial planets, which are often thought to be more likely to host life than gas giants, sometimes fall into size ranges not too dissimilar from Earth, or something, I guess.

Earth's gravity is very floaty when jumping then. It's just something that bothered me a bit in the series, I can accept it on other worlds that they would have less gravity but Earth just seemed a little low. Oh well lol there's much more important things than something as small as that, and I do agree it works for the game-play.

That floaty feel has to do with sheer height you are jumping. You have to realize that A SPARTAN is already superhuman, plus the MJONLER armor, (I don't recall a exact height for jumps mentioned in canon), they can most likely jump 5-10+ feet into the air.

1) Why does everyone seem to like Halo 1 more than 2? Halo 2 was much better in many ways.
2) Why did everyone bemoan the loss of the zoom-able magnum from 1 in 2? A pistol as a sniper weapon is dumb.

1. I'm not the best person to answer that, actually, probably not even a good one.

2. Because it was just that awesome. It wasn't really overpowered in the first game because it had a good niche: Halo didn't have a marksman rifle other than the sniper rifle, and the assault rifle was... not the best weapon for mid to long range, even in bursts.

Of course, once the BR filled that niche in Halo 2, people loved it, then moaned when it was removed in reach... etc.

I suppose that's one criticsim of us fans that is unforantlty at the time accurate: the fourms at Bungie are full of people complaining. It wasn't always this way, and i'm not even sure if they are halo fans so much as poeple who made an account to post about a few things.

 

[Jabberwock xeno]

EDIT: ack, didn't mean to post.

 

[Netrigan]

What's Master Chief's favorite dish when he's Master Chef?

 

[Jabberwock xeno]

What's Master Chief's favorite dish when he's Master Chef?

Lol'd.

I actually think his favorite food was mentioned somehwere in one of the books, I don't remember where.

 

[Netrigan]

What's Master Chief's favorite dish when he's Master Chef?

Lol'd.

I actually think his favorite food was mentioned somehwere in one of the books, I don't remember where.

There's a "make sweet, sweet love by the fire" joke in here somewhere, but only if they get a young Isaac Hayes to play him in the movie.