Tupolev said:
See, personally I've come to believe that the architectural consistancy is one of the things the game does extremely well. It may prove to be a little confusing on an initial playthrough (though, I would argue, for all the crap it takes it's still far less confusing than many of the levels of FPS games of the mid 90's), but it holds up beautifully over time, creating a fantastic yet believable setting.
And slight differences in combat layout, when combined with Halo CE's dynamic AI and enemy system, keeps those areas largely fresh on a gameplay level.
Can't argue with that. It's been a while since I've played the game, and I'm sure that if I played it now, it would be FAR less confusing for me. But some people playing might be playing for the first time, and it may be a little confusing to them. Although they probably aren't as stupid as I am.
I actually like The Library, though admitedly it took years for it to grow on me. It's quite mesmerizing on legendary, you just have to play it right; don't approach the flood as you would approach the Covenant, approach it as a dance.
And the thing is, even back when I hated it, I still thought it was brilliant from the standpoint of pacing.
Again, I can't really argue with that. On Legendary you're probably going to be too busy worrying about not dying against the Flood to worry about the level design, and it does have to be slightly repetitive to work up that feeling of "JESUS, WHEN DOES IT END?" desperation. But it can be potentially more interesting from a level design standpoint.
That could admittedly work, and it might be interesting to see a survival horror interpretation of the level.
The thing to consider, though, is that there has to be SOMETHING long and grueling in some way or another between 343GS and Two Betrayals in the grand scheme of things. A horror section would have to be built extremely well to stretch it out long enough for it to work. And there's replayability to consider; horror sections in such games are often one-trick ponies, and you don't necessarily want both 343GS (the reversal) and the thing immediately following it to be 1-shot levels.
I understand the appeal of replaying the Library, as it really is just an endurance test against the Flood. Perhaps the horror section would start halfway through, or could be worked into the middle; that way it wouldn't get repetitive and the rest of the level would not be spoiled on subsequent playthoughs.
I very disagree, actually. The design for Halo had substantial similarities from Halo 2 through ODST and to a lesser extent Reach. But Halo CE is a vastly different game from any of the others on almost all levels.
That's also true, mostly from little things about how the engine worked/mechanics worked. And the single player design was rather different (in some ways, less complicated, but other ways better)
And, as per my response above, I would personally imagine that a remake would much more likely follow the Halo 2 and onward style line, and would likely be quite different from the original. My fear isn't that they'll be too similar, but that they'll be different and simultaneously try to be similar and that they'll wind up with a gigantic pile of half-baked weirdness that doesn't know what it wants to be.
It's even worse if it follows the standard of those games...nothing against any Halo game released since Halo 1, but I've been playing those for quite a while now. For some reason I would like it if they just balls-out completely reinvented everything you knew about Halo, follow the same story but redesign most everything about it. I'm not saying they need to make it a tactical shooter or have it play like Call of Duty or some bullshit like that, but this developer is being given one hell of an opportunity. Given that basically the entire Halo story has been told (yes, I know they could do another story in the same universe, but I don't really want Halo to become the equivalent of the Star Wars expanded universe), why not just completely reinvent the thing? Bungie has moved on to hopefully better things, their version of the Halo story/games has been told/done. This could potentially convert many people who hate Halo to being fans...it could potentially alienate the current fans too, but when you remake something like this you have to be careful anyway. This game is going to piss many people off no matter how it is just simply by existing.
There are just so many ideas...you could pull a Half-Life and have no levels and just have everything be seamless. That would be incredibly hard to pull off, but just imagine if they did...in fact, fuck it, there's no need to change the original game. They just need to completely redo the thing from the ground up, keeping only the concept. I loved the cinematic feel of the original games, the atmosphere was perfect, but if I want those games, I will play them. I want something new out of this concept.
But again, this will never happen, because what I'm describing would likely have a much longer dev cycle than whatever this remake has, and also doesn't really qualify as a remake, more a "reimagining". I'm sure that this Halo remake isn't the only thing 343 has in the pipeline Halo-wise anyway, just the only thing that we know about.
