Halo 3 - 10 Year Anniversary

[Arnoxthe1]

Halo 3 is and has always been one of if not my favorite console game of all time. It SOLD me on the 360 as my first choice for a seventh gen console hands down and I've been kinda sucking it's big SPARTAN cock since then. lol

And it's not just my opinion either. It's objectively amazing. It revolutionized console FPS' and Theater was a MASSIVE improvement over UT's own demo system. Many other games have started to include Theater functionality because of Halo 3.

Halo 3 Introduced:
Theater
Forge
File Share
Equipment
2 More Types of Grenades
5 New Weapons + 4 New "Mounted" Weapons
6 New Drivable Vehicles
Veto System for Matchmaking
11 New Maps (Some of which are the best for Halo I've seen in, well, ever.)
2 New Gametypes
Much More Custom Game Options
Customizable Armor
New Enemies

All in one damn game. And that's why to this day I still kinda believe in AAA development. Halo 3 showed us that with the right budgement, team, guidance, and time, you can make something truly spectacular and utterly ground-breaking.

Campaign was pretty meh though.

-

Mind you, I actually quite like Halo 5, so there is that.

-

i have bad memories of ODST.

from what i remember of it, ODST just felt like a walking simulator for the most part walking from point A to point B in a city having 5 minutes of action and story, then rinse and repeat.

it was a short game and if it were $20AUD DLC that would have been fine since the game was basically just an expansion DLC pack Halo 3, but bungie charged people including myself full retail price for that game on a 360 disc rather just having it be $20 DLC which just felt outrageous for what didn't feel like a full and complete game.


the story of ODST was fine, but because the gameplay was short, average and felt like it shouldve been a $20AUD DLC pack rather than a full price, $100AUD game that they charged ($100 because Australia Tax), it just ended up feeling like a complete and total rip off and i will always despise ODST because of that.

Well to be quite fair, regardless of what you think of it, ODST did include the "Mythic Disc" which was Halo 3 and ALL of the map packs for it right on the disc. So it wasn't just story DLC and nothing else. Also, Firefight was pretty fun. *shrugs*

 

[Yoshi178]

Well to be quite fair, regardless of what you think of it, ODST did include the "Mythic Disc" which was Halo 3 and ALL of the map packs for it right on the disc. So it wasn't just story DLC and nothing else. Also, Firefight was pretty fun. *shrugs*

actually the mythic disc was just the multiplayer standard maps and all of the DLC maps, Halo 3 forge and theater. it didn't have the full Halo 3 game on it with the campaign and everything else.


it was more than just story DLC but i already owned Halo and all of those DLC map packs and Halo 3 of course had forge and the theater as well.

so if you were someone that already owned halo 3 and all of those DLC maps, the ODST story campaign and Firefight were really the only new things you were getting with the ODST game, so ODST ended up feeling like a complete and utter rip off for someone who already owed Halo 3 like myself

 

[Arnoxthe1]

actually the mythic disc was just the multiplayer standard maps and all of the DLC maps, Halo 3 forge and theater. it didn't have the full Halo 3 game on it with the campaign and everything else.


it was more than just story DLC but i already owned Halo and all of those DLC map packs and Halo 3 of course had forge and the theater as well.

so if you were someone that already owned halo 3 and all of those DLC maps, the ODST story campaign and Firefight were really the only new things you were getting with the ODST game, so ODST ended up feeling like a complete and utter rip off for someone who already owed Halo 3 like myself

It's true that the Mythic Disc was missing the Halo 3 campaign but honestly now. Halo 3's campaign was nothing to really write home about. Most people just played the game purely for the multiplayer. I will admit that Halo 3's superb gameplay does carry the campaign some, absolutely, but not enough for me to place it anywhere near in the same bracket as it's multiplayer, quality wise. And furthermore, the campaign was quite literally impossible to squeeze onto the disc anyway. I heard they had to compress the hell out of all the multiplayer maps alone just to get them all in.

 

[Zetatrain]

And truthfully until I read the fluff behind the Spartan project I was really fond of the game, a sort of melding of various bits of sci-fi with a nice look about it. After reading that fluff though, it can go fuck itself.

Interesting.

Mind me asking what it was about that particular piece of lore that ruined it for you?

The first game more or less implies to me (to the best of my recollection) that the SPARTAN project was a move of desperation and made in the early days of the Human/Covenant War: a ghastly action but one intended to ensure we won against a genocidal enemy.

The first game never mentions or implies what the Spartan IIs were originally created for. Although the game's manual does seem to imply that fighting the Covenant was not their original purpose. The first mention of the Spartan IIs in the manual is as follows.

"On Reach, a secret military project to create cyborg
super-soldiers takes on newfound importance. The
soldiers of the SPARTAN-II project rack up an
impressive record against the Covenant in test
deployments, but there are too few of them to turn
the tide of the war."

While its vague, "Newfound importance" seems to imply that fighting the Covenant that is not the original purpose.

Also, the first Halo novel "The Fall of Reach" was released two weeks before the release of Halo:CE and made it very clear that Spartan II's were originally created to fight human insurrectionists.

 

[Yoshi178]

actually the mythic disc was just the multiplayer standard maps and all of the DLC maps, Halo 3 forge and theater. it didn't have the full Halo 3 game on it with the campaign and everything else.


it was more than just story DLC but i already owned Halo and all of those DLC map packs and Halo 3 of course had forge and the theater as well.

so if you were someone that already owned halo 3 and all of those DLC maps, the ODST story campaign and Firefight were really the only new things you were getting with the ODST game, so ODST ended up feeling like a complete and utter rip off for someone who already owed Halo 3 like myself

It's true that the Mythic Disc was missing the Halo 3 campaign but honestly now. Halo 3's campaign was nothing to really write home about. Most people just played the game purely for the multiplayer. I will admit that Halo 3's superb gameplay does carry the campaign some, absolutely, but not enough for me to place it anywhere near in the same bracket as it's multiplayer, quality wise. And furthermore, the campaign was quite literally impossible to squeeze onto the disc anyway. I heard they had to compress the hell out of all the multiplayer maps alone just to get them all in.

regardless for people like me that already owned halo 3, ODST was a pretty big rip off. only worth it if you literally didn't buy any of the dlc previously.

 

[votemarvel]

My memory of Halo 3 was trying to stop myself from vomiting while playing it.

I don't know what it was about the game, and I've never experienced it in the other Halo games I've played, but it just really triggered my motion sickness after just a few minutes of play time.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

Not my favourite Halo (that's probably ODST), but like 1 and 2 I have some wonderful memories of both 3's Campaign and its general gameplay, and especially the split-screen co-op.

I think 2 has my favourite lore and story elements (bar 4, perhaps, at least where the arc with Cortana's concerned), but 3 is unsurprisingly the best game, and the most complete package in the trilogy.

I remember reading a review from my favoured source who picked out the "Got an escape plan?"/"I thought I'd try shooting my way out. Mix things up a little" exchange as something corny or hackneyed, but I found that scene beautifully poignant and then perfectly, gleefully, wry (to the extent that it prompted a tear or two, as well as a very broad grin). I think only Mass Effect and, to a lesser extent, Dragon Age, have since given me those kinds of genuine connections to persistent characters and a story that I felt with the Halo trilogy (and then on across ODST, Reach, and 4).

That interaction where Chief finally links up with Cortana again is one of my favourite moments in the series, and it's those kinds of moments that - for me, at least - allowed Cortana's arc in 4 to be so satisfyingly moving.

Oh yeah, and I was in tears for most of the final scenes and the credit roll... as I found the bittersweet resolution incredibly moving. In terms of post-credit scenes, Halo 3's is a great memory across all my gaming days and gens. I never much cared for MP (splitscreen co-op aside), and I've since more or less completely abandoned conventional FPS's, but Halo was a phenomenal blend of some great sci-fi storytelling which trod the line between cheese and sincerity just right, meticulously engineered - and incredibly fun - core gameplay, and increasingly fancy production values.

The combination of art design, Marty O'Donnell's magnificent scores, and the performances of Steve Downes and Jen Taylor made for something genuinely special. And yeah, 3 was an end of an era (relatively speaking), so it deserves praise and fond retrospectives.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Not my favourite Halo (that's probably ODST), but like 1 and 2 I have some wonderful memories of both 3's Campaign and its general gameplay, and especially the split-screen co-op.

I think 2 has my favourite lore and story elements (bar 4, perhaps, at least where the arc with Cortana's concerned), but 3 is unsurprisingly the best game, and the most complete package in the trilogy.

I remember reading a review from my favoured source who picked out the "Got an escape plan?"/"I thought I'd try shooting my way out. Mix things up a little" exchange as something corny or hackneyed, but I found that scene beautifully poignant and then perfectly, gleefully, wry (to the extent that it prompted a tear or two, as well as a very broad grin). I think only Mass Effect and, to a lesser extent, Dragon Age, have since given me those kinds of genuine connections to persistent characters and a story that I felt with the Halo trilogy (and then on across ODST, Reach, and 4).

That interaction where Chief finally links up with Cortana again is one of my favourite moments in the series, and it's those kinds of moments that - for me, at least - allowed Cortana's arc in 4 to be so satisfyingly moving.

Oh yeah, and I was in tears for most of the final scenes and the credit roll... as I found the bittersweet resolution incredibly moving. In terms of post-credit scenes, Halo 3's is a great memory across all my gaming days and gens. I never much cared for MP (splitscreen co-op aside), and I've since more or less completely abandoned conventional FPS's, but Halo was a phenomenal blend of some great sci-fi storytelling which trod the line between cheese and sincerity just right, meticulously engineered - and incredibly fun - core gameplay, and increasingly fancy production values.

The combination of art design, Marty O'Donnell's magnificent scores, and the performances of Steve Downes and Jen Taylor made for something genuinely special. And yeah, 3 was an end of an era (relatively speaking), so it deserves praise and fond retrospectives.

My personal favorite cutscene was in Halo 4 where Master Chief is ordered to surrender a pre-Rampancy Cortana to the UNSC and his answer, in a rare moment of heated passion from the stoic Chief, is a pointed, threat-laced ?No, SIR.? Ugh, my throat knotted up a bit.

 

[NLS]

I'm kind of late to the Halo 3 nostalgia train. Since I never owned a console, all I could ever experience was Halo CE on PC many years ago, I never got around to playing Halo 2 on Vista either, since I figured I'd always miss out on the conclusion with Halo 3.
But two eyars ago, I ended up buying an Xbox One for cheap from a friend at Microsoft, and well, it was time to finish the fight. So I played through the MCC, and really enjoyed Halo 3. The controls, balancing and gameplay was just spot on. It really did fix most of the gripes I had with the first two games and felt like a solid piece of improvement in all regards. I also liked how the co-op campaign is played with Master Chief and Arbiter tagging along, which really felt like a solid duo, unlike clone 117-A and 117-B or whatever lore explanation for multiple Master Chiefs.

Btw: Halo 3 is also coming back as a backwards compatible title soon on Xbox, not just the MCC version.

 

[Mcgeezaks]

Do you have any memories of Halo 3? What is your favourite game, and do you remember the first time you played it?

I played it frequently for 2-3 years and met alot of friends online

The social and community features were amazing for the time, especially for a console.

I must've sunk a good 100 or so hours into Halo 3's custom games, meeting new people who would quickly become good friends of mine.

Of course, looking back at it, and it all seems super basic, but i'll never forget the crazy modes that people came up with.

Yeah it was great and Halo Machinima was all the craze, that's where I met a couple of my Halo buds. We tried to make some Machinima but never fully got around to releasing an episode, which was probably for the best since I was a cringey 14 year old with a 5 dollar microphone.

 

[TheSapphireKnight]

Even if I don't think it was the best Halo gameplay wise, it is still probably the Halo game I have had the most fun with. It just had such a rich feature set for the time which only got better, Forge in particular. Certainly the high point of the series in terms of community.

Getting the vidmaster achievement(you know the one) with 3 strangers after a multiplayer match is still one of my favorite gaming memories. Just 4 people getting together for an hour or so of comedic fails and eventual success. It certainly didn't hurt I was the one to finally clear the jump into the hanger.

Its just a shame that MCC was a disaster and the franchise as a whole has gone way downhill.

 

[sneakypenguin]

3 was my least favorite game of the series. The BR fired slower and with more spread so me and the crew went back to h2 after a day or two. Plus cod came out around then and killed halo for me.

 

[Squilookle]

The only thing about Halo 3 that even registers for me these days is that it was the first Halo game to finally sell more than Goldeneye, even with halo's advantages of the internet and bloated-budget marketing campaigns. And after Halo 2 I didn't even bother with them until Reach came along and redeemed it a bit.

Related note- Goldeneye just turned 20. People are still playing it to this day. Can't say that for most Halos.

​

 

[Saulkar]

Man, where has the time gone? So many fond memories of that game I just cannot come up with any meaningful way to summarise my experience. Let me just say I spent more time in multiplayer and acing Legendary than I did homework.

 

[Xprimentyl]

3 was my least favorite game of the series. The BR fired slower and with more spread so me and the crew went back to h2 after a day or two. Plus cod came out around then and killed halo for me.

This post reeks of troll shit?

 

[laggyteabag]

3 was my least favorite game of the series. The BR fired slower and with more spread so me and the crew went back to h2 after a day or two. Plus cod came out around then and killed halo for me.

This post reeks of troll shit?

Actually, he is right. The BR in Halo 3, whilst looking mostly the same, was actually wildly different in use. Bungie found that in Halo 2, the weapon was far too good for almost all engagements - especially when coupled with the button exploits like the BXR - so it needed to be tuned.

Here are some of the changes:
The BR changed from hitscan to projectile - so bullets took time to travel.
Bungie introduced a lot of weapon spread to the gun.
Button exploits were removed.
There was less aim assist.
The weapon did shoot a little slower.

What this meant for the BR in Halo 3, was that it became a lot less consistent versus its Halo 2 counterpart.

Case in point: Whilst statistically, the Halo 2 BR and the Halo 3 BR both took 12 shots to the head to kill (4 pulls of the trigger), the added bloom and bullet travel speed made the weapon much less effective at longer ranges, and a lot more RNG in terms of the fact that it could take - usually - between 4 and 7 shots to kill a stationary target, at a range where the H2 BR would consistently kill in 4. This was made worse when they were moving, and you started adding network latency into the mix.

I can't speak for him going back to Halo 2, but the changes to the BR were very real, and quite controversial, if I remember correctly.

 

[Xprimentyl]

3 was my least favorite game of the series. The BR fired slower and with more spread so me and the crew went back to h2 after a day or two. Plus cod came out around then and killed halo for me.

This post reeks of troll shit?

Actually, he is right. The BR in Halo 3, whilst looking mostly the same, was actually wildly different in use. Bungie found that in Halo 2, the weapon was far too good for almost all engagements - especially when coupled with the button exploits like the BXR - so it needed to be tuned.

Here are some of the changes:
The BR changed from hitscan to projectile - so bullets took time to travel.
Bungie introduced a lot of weapon spread to the gun.
Button exploits were removed.
There was less aim assist.
The weapon did shoot a little slower.

What this meant for the BR in Halo 3, was that it became a lot less consistent versus its Halo 2 counterpart.

Case in point: Whilst statistically, the Halo 2 BR and the Halo 3 BR both took 12 shots to the head to kill (4 pulls of the trigger), the added bloom and bullet travel speed made the weapon much less effective at longer ranges, and a lot more RNG in terms of the fact that it could take - usually - between 4 and 7 shots to kill a stationary target, at a range where the H2 BR would consistently kill in 4. This was made worse when they were moving, and you started adding network latency into the mix.

I can't speak for him going back to Halo 2, but the changes to the BR were very real, and quite controversial, if I remember correctly.

Lol, that?s a lot of detail and research when I was simply commenting on how contrary his post was to everything everyone else has been saying in the thread, but thanks!

 

[Pseudonym]

Halo 3 was neat. Not as good as CE, 2, Reach or ODST in my opinion but that still makes it my fifth favourite shooter, which is nice. It had a lot of content. Only reach had more, as far as I remember. It introduced forge (though reach's forge was vastly superior) and theater mode allongside a new campaign and a fun multiplayer mode. Also, if anyone knows how to get this video to start at timestamp 5:00, please tell me.

​

 

[Xprimentyl]

Here's how you start the vid at 5:00m

vids url[/i] start=300]

 

[laggyteabag]

Lol, that?s a lot of detail and research when I was simply commenting on how contrary his post was to everything everyone else has been saying in the thread, but thanks!

Im kind of a Halo nut.

I also did a paper on Halo precision weapons at college in a game design class, about iteration, innovation, and imitation. Did a lot of research for that. Burned into my mind forever.