Halo Wars 2 has an excuse to use the old art style in that (as far as I understand) the Spirit of Fire is over 20 years removed from the H4-onwards time period. There's a reason for them to look the way they do. The stuff in Infinite? Less so.
Thing is, I actually prefer Bungie's art style, but I'm iffy about the art style change because:
a) It's jarring in-universe to suddenly return to the original appearance of stuff after all the advances in technology the UNSC has had.
b) It's creatively bankrupt - instead of trying to do their own thing, 343 is just trying to emulate Bungie.
I mean, I am interested in Halo Infinite, but make no mistake, it's trying to press the nostalgia button. And nostalgia is like sugar - tastes nice, feels nice, but it isn't good for you in the long run.
Halo Wars 2 doesn't just simply use the old art style, they improve upon it. I'm also not only talking about the spartan armors, I'm talking about the whole look including the entire covenant.
The armor from Halo 3 went from looking something like this
To this
Halo 2/Wars elite
Halo 4/5 elite
a) From being pretty simplistic to being in 600 different bits and pieces, way too noisy. 343i's change in art style is the jarring one, have you even seen the elites for an example? They went from being slender, agile and elegant to bruteish looking and super slow. How did elites entire anatomy change between Halo 3 and 4/5? Why does the arbiter still look the same in the Halo 2 anniversary when he's talking to Locke?
b) If they wanted to do their own thing maybe they should've made a new IP instead? You can't pick up a series like Halo and go ''Fuck all of this, lets drastically change the look and feel of everything''. The change they made was bad, I don't think I've ever seen a developer receive so much negative feedback about the change in art-style and that must be saying you SOMETHING.
It's not pressing the nostalgia button, it's actually staying truthful to the original art style like pretty much every successful video game series is doing.
a) From being pretty simplistic to being in 600 different bits and pieces, way too noisy. 343i's change in art style is the jarring one, have you even seen the elites for an example? They went from being slender, agile and elegant to bruteish looking and super slow. How did elites entire anatomy change between Halo 3 and 4/5? Why does the arbiter still look the same in the Halo 2 anniversary when he's talking to Locke?
Before you say anything, not quoting the pictures because they'd take up far too much room.
But obviously, yes, I have seen the sangheili. However, it never really bothered me too much - they're obviously the same species, and any changes in anatomy I could attribute to existing variances in sangheili biology (even under Bungie we saw that with the kig-yar). After all, variation exists in the human phenotype, but do we expect all aliens to look the same? While I prefer the look of the old sangheili, I'm not opposed to a new take on them.
b) If they wanted to do their own thing maybe they should've made a new IP instead?
That's hyperbole, but it touches on a subject that's far too wide-reaching to deal with in a single post here. All I can say is that visually, Halo is still recognizably Halo. Has a different art style to an extent, but that's the least of my gripes with 343. If I had to summarize those gripes, it would be:
1) Halo really didn't need a continuation post-Reach
2) The continuation we did get didn't feel like a natural one in the post-H3 context, and arguably even undermines previous lore (that's a whole bag of worms in of itself, so I won't go there)
3) Halo 4, garbage fire that it is aside, feels systemic of having a lack of confidence in one's ability to do something with an IP.
4) Halo 5 finally introduces something new to the series (thematically at least), but is blasted (for reasons I don't get, but given the next point, is academic)
5) Halo Infinite comes along, and every indication is that we've gone full on emulation, trying to capture the feeling of Combat Evolved.
343 isn't the only one guilty of this (looking at this thread, Doom is just as guilty for instance), but while I'm still interested in Halo Infinite, everything about it feels reactionary. A reversal in art style, as jarring as it is (least for the UNSC), is systemic of what appears to be a wider issue.
The change they made was bad, I don't think I've ever seen a developer receive so much negative feedback about the change in art-style and that must be saying you SOMETHING.
-Advance Wars: Days of Ruin
-Castlevania: Judgement
-Command & Conquer: Generals 2 (not really the art style per se, but more the 'cinematic style', so to speak)
-Command & Conquer: Tiberian Twilight
-Diablo III
-The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
-Metroid Prime: Federation Force
-Spyro the Dragon (if you count Skylanders as part of the Spyro moniker)
-StarCraft II
Whether the backlashes are bigger or smaller in these examples is debatable, but negative reactions about art style are common, whether justified or not (course, what counts as "jusified" is down to personal interpretation)
It's not pressing the nostalgia button, it's actually staying truthful to the original art style like pretty much every successful video game series is doing.
Right, because no series ever changed its art style and remained successful...
Except Ace Combat. And Castlevania. And Diablo. And Doom. And Defence of the Ancients. And Final Fantasy. And Legend of Zelda. And Prince of Persia. And Quake. And Team Fortress. And Warhammer Fantasy Battle. And Warhammer 40,000. And Xenoblade. And...well, you get the idea.
Changes in art style aren't make or break in the success of a series.
But back to your claim, of Halo Infinite not pressing the nostalgia button...
...it is. It really is. Not just in art style, but in premise. Everything about it is channeling Combat Evolved - we're on a Halo ring (again), and if we equate the trailer with gameplay/narrative, we can assume that John is spending a lot of time driving around the Halo picking up marines (like CE's early mission(s). Based on reported leaks, that:
Cortana is leading the Covenant (why?!), in an apparent attempt to minimize the presence of Prometheans and Guardians (which weren't in CE), along with the theory that John's new AI is called Durandal (another Marathon reference, because if Bungie referenced Marathon liberally, why shouldn't 343?)
it's clear that (assuming this is true), Infinite is really, really, REALLY trying to channel Combat Evolved, from its setting, to its art style, to its plot.
And look, I'm not saying the game won't be good. You can drench a product in nostalgia and still make it good. But let's be honest that nostalgia is what 343 is going for - a reversion in art style is part of that. Which, under the assumption that Halo will continue beyond Infinite (which it almost certainly will), it leaves me to ask what happens next when the main games up to this point have been a combination of one step forward, two steps back.
Before you say anything, not quoting the pictures because they'd take up far too much room.
But obviously, yes, I have seen the sangheili. However, it never really bothered me too much - they're obviously the same species, and any changes in anatomy I could attribute to existing variances in sangheili biology (even under Bungie we saw that with the kig-yar). After all, variation exists in the human phenotype, but do we expect all aliens to look the same? While I prefer the look of the old sangheili, I'm not opposed to a new take on them.
See, that doesn't make sense because even Arbiter was changed to look like the monstrous nu-elites. They're not a different type of elite, they just tried to drastically change the look of the elites and failed horribly.
Hawki said:
343 was explicitly founded to make Halo games, so that isn't an option.
Then maybe they shouldn't exist at all ?\_(ツ_/?
Hawki said:
That's hyperbole, but it touches on a subject that's far too wide-reaching to deal with in a single post here. All I can say is that visually, Halo is still recognizably Halo. Has a different art style to an extent, but that's the least of my gripes with 343. If I had to summarize those gripes, it would be:
1) Halo really didn't need a continuation post-Reach
2) The continuation we did get didn't feel like a natural one in the post-H3 context, and arguably even undermines previous lore (that's a whole bag of worms in of itself, so I won't go there)
3) Halo 4, garbage fire that it is aside, feels systemic of having a lack of confidence in one's ability to do something with an IP.
4) Halo 5 finally introduces something new to the series (thematically at least), but is blasted (for reasons I don't get, but given the next point, is academic)
5) Halo Infinite comes along, and every indication is that we've gone full on emulation, trying to capture the feeling of Combat Evolved.
343 isn't the only one guilty of this (looking at this thread, Doom is just as guilty for instance), but while I'm still interested in Halo Infinite, everything about it feels reactionary. A reversal in art style, as jarring as it is (least for the UNSC), is systemic of what appears to be a wider issue.
It's hardly recognizable as Halo anymore, not to me anyway and it makes me sad. Yes Halo 5 tried to bring something new but failed miserably because how awful it was. We've barely seen anything of Halo Infinite, what we've seen looks familiar to the Bungie games but not identical. People will easily and happily block out the art style in 4/5 from their memories so it won't be jarring for most people, just like 4 and 5 wasn't jarring for you but for pretty much everyone else.
Hawki said:
Off the top of my head:
-Advance Wars: Days of Ruin
-Castlevania: Judgement
-Command & Conquer: Generals 2 (not really the art style per se, but more the 'cinematic style', so to speak)
-Command & Conquer: Tiberian Twilight
-Diablo III
-The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
-Metroid Prime: Federation Force
-Spyro the Dragon (if you count Skylanders as part of the Spyro moniker)
-StarCraft II
Whether the backlashes are bigger or smaller in these examples is debatable, but negative reactions about art style are common, whether justified or not (course, what counts as "jusified" is down to personal interpretation)
Of course there have been complains about other games change of art style but I think Halo is on a whole other level, there are tons of videos on Youtube with hundreds of thousands of views that are discussing the change of art-style.
Hawki said:
Right, because no series ever changed its art style and remained successful...
Except Ace Combat. And Castlevania. And Diablo. And Doom. And Defence of the Ancients. And Final Fantasy. And Legend of Zelda. And Prince of Persia. And Quake. And Team Fortress. And Warhammer Fantasy Battle. And Warhammer 40,000. And Xenoblade. And...well, you get the idea.
Changes in art style aren't make or break in the success of a series.
But back to your claim, of Halo Infinite not pressing the nostalgia button...
...it is. It really is. Not just in art style, but in premise. Everything about it is channeling Combat Evolved - we're on a Halo ring (again), and if we equate the trailer with gameplay/narrative, we can assume that John is spending a lot of time driving around the Halo picking up marines (like CE's early mission(s). Based on reported leaks, that:
Cortana is leading the Covenant (why?!), in an apparent attempt to minimize the presence of Prometheans and Guardians (which weren't in CE), along with the theory that John's new AI is called Durandal (another Marathon reference, because if Bungie referenced Marathon liberally, why shouldn't 343?)
it's clear that (assuming this is true), Infinite is really, really, REALLY trying to channel Combat Evolved, from its setting, to its art style, to its plot.
And look, I'm not saying the game won't be good. You can drench a product in nostalgia and still make it good. But let's be honest that nostalgia is what 343 is going for - a reversion in art style is part of that. Which, under the assumption that Halo will continue beyond Infinite (which it almost certainly will), it leaves me to ask what happens next when the main games up to this point have been a combination of one step forward, two steps back.
They aren't a make or break but they play a big role to a lot of people, especially if they keep screwing it up over and over again.
It's almost like Halo games used to be about Halos...geez that's almost as bad as having a Metal Gear in the new MGS game. Eh, from what we've seen the art style isn't like CE (Which was heavily influenced by the Aliens movies) but rather from 2 and 3 judging from the armors. Now the Halo itself looks like the Halo in CE minus all the wildlife and yuge lakes, so I guess you could say it's trying to channel all 3 original games. Like Halo Wars 2 I think they're going to combine the new art style with the old art style, just like it always should've been.
With that said, neither of us knows yet to what extent it will look familiar or different.
Also
Thank fucking God they're removing prometheans, easily the worst enemy design in a Halo game. Who thought that enemies that can phase in at any time, any place and teleport all over the place with space magic would be extremely annoying?
I've already stated that there was no need to continue the series post-Reach. But either way, Microsoft was going to. Whoever they handed the IP off to, they could only just hope to make the most of it.
It's hardly recognizable as Halo anymore, not to me anyway and it makes me sad. Yes Halo 5 tried to bring something new but failed miserably because how awful it was. We've barely seen anything of Halo Infinite, what we've seen looks familiar to the Bungie games but not identical. People will easily and happily block out the art style in 4/5 from their memories so it won't be jarring for most people, just like 4 and 5 wasn't jarring for you but for pretty much everyone else.
Of course there have been complains about other games change of art style but I think Halo is on a whole other level,
Both chains of thoughts can (and arguably have) lead to rediculous outcomes.
On the front of Halo, the Covenant spends thousands of years looking for any of these rings scattered across the galaxy, then finally find Installation 04. Then, immediately after, we have Installation 05. By Halo 4, we know the UNSC has a presence at Installation 03, and apparently discovered it back in 2552. Now, we're on what people are theorizing is Installation 07. These rings are meant to be insanely hard to find, since they're scattered across the galaxy (need I remind you that the Milky Way has a diameter of 100,000 light years), but nup, apparently any person can get to a ring at any point in time. Just because it's called "Halo," it doesn't mean you're obliged to put a ring in every instalment. And while I haven't played Metal Gear since Snake Eater, it strikes me as pretty silly that the Outer Haven Metal Gear apparently wasn't the first, that there's always got to be a Metal Gear (or Shagohod) in each instalment, even if these walkers have to keep popping up every time. Again, there's no obligation to put a Metal Gear in every game.
Thank fucking God they're removing prometheans, easily the worst enemy design in a Halo game. Who thought that enemies that can phase in at any time, any place and teleport all over the place with space magic would be extremely annoying?
As much as I disliked the Prometheans in Halo 4, I enjoyed them in Halo 5. But even then, what's far worse (in my mind) is making the Covenant enemies AGAIN. It's creatively bankrupt in terms of both lore and gameplay.
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