Diablo2000 said:
Halo is a linear FPS, you get to shoot dudes. You get hints of a bigger and wider universe in the games but it's not the game's focus, nor it should be the game's focus.
Why not? I understand that you'd need to keep the gameplay and mission setting pretty simple, but what's wrong with atleast trying to add depth to the experience beyond fun gameplay?
Halo 2, I would say, did a good balance between these. While all missions could basically be summed up as "go from point A to B" with some varying degree of exprementality allowed (which was tons of fun), the cutscenes helped establish why I should care to any extent without being mandatory if it didn't interest me. I could skip the story factor without it hindering the rest of the experience.
Personally I was really immersed in the Arbiter's storyline by the end, so much so that I found Master Chief's sections to be a long bore. To the Arbiter's, and rest of the Covenant's perspective, there were a lot of things involved in terms of philospohy, character, faith and reason (with the effect of their execution being up for debate). Master Chief was just doing a routine job, the Arbiter was forced to question everything he had venerated along with so many others. It was intriguing, and I was looking forward to see how they could expand it with the sequel.
Which they didn't. The Arbiter was given a mere background role with hardly any dialouge. It could have been an opportunity to flesh out not just him and the Covenant further, but also Master Chief, having to work together with the one
personally responsible for bombarding countless colonies and their populations into glass.
