Why Halo is called innovative?

[Kirosilence]

Halo (The original, not it's bastard children) was called innovative because before Halo, there were not many First Person Shooters on consoles. Halo marked the ends of the platformer age (N64) , and the beginning of the FPS age. (xBox and beyond). It was with the original Halo that FPS games, although present, REALLY caught on in the console market, making the big jump from the PC.

Edit: I find it ironic that I was attacked by Helghast while posting this..

 

[AgentNein]

halo 1 started all this space marine stuff

wrong, Doom did that way back in 1993.

Wrong, Battlestar Galactica did. And something before it, if I recall. And before Doom there was Warhammer.

Actually, Aliens started the Space Marine thing. (Not the superhuman space marine thing though)

Wrong. Starship Troopers. Recognize.

 

[Jennacide]

Halo is to innovation as LittleBigPlanet is to innovation as well. It's "innovative" for the console players that haven't had the real experience PC gamers have lived with for over a decade.

 

[crepesack]

I guess it was innovative in that it had a good budget behind it otherwise meh...same old same old.

 

[Clashero]

halo 1 started all this space marine stuff

Isn't the Doom guy a space marine? That surely was released BEFORE Halo, right?

 

[RAKais]

halo 1 started all this space marine stuff

wrong, Doom did that way back in 1993.

Wrong, Battlestar Galactica did. And something before it, if I recall. And before Doom there was Warhammer.

Actually, Aliens started the Space Marine thing. (Not the superhuman space marine thing though)

Wrong. Starship Troopers. Recognize.

Ok, 1, if you are referring to the book, the book brough about idea of the space marine.

Aliens (which came out before the film Starships Troopers) brought the visualisation and the image of 'space marines'

Probably doesnt really counteract your point but there you go lol

 

[Beacon]

If there was this question, report it for deletion. Thanks!

I go over the internet, and people keep talking about Halo being innovative [like in the other Innovative FPS thread]. I think it is worth a seperate thread to talk about it.

Was I the only one who saw the standard "Here's is your weapon, go kill bad guys" scheme? I really don't have a clue why it is innovative!

I'm pretty sure it was the first one to have regenerating health and instead of you being a walking armory, you were limited to two guns.

It was also the first console FPS that didn't feel awkward playing.

I had a fourth amazing point that I completely forgot cause I'm typing this while watching House and he made me laugh uncontrollably....sorry...

Edit: Not my fourth point but still good stuff...

Halo is to video games what Jimi Hendrix is to guitars. Jimi Hendrix is constantly being called the greatest guitarist of all time and...guess what? He isn't.

But he'll always be called the greatest because he changed thing even though he's not. Halo did change things but...it's not the best FPS. I preferred Unreal Tournament for the Xbox and now I prefer Gears of War 2 =D

 

[jebussaves88]

I can't believe this thread is still going.

I realise that by now, this thread has become far too large for my comment to be read by pretty much anyone, but still, this is what made the first game innovative and the sequels equally supurb examples of the genre:

Vehicles: Halo was the first game to seamlessly switch from free range roaming on foot to free range roaming in a vehicle. The vehicle controls remain some of the best in an FPS game, where most games tend to give vehicles a backseat.

Weapons: Halo was the first game (or near as might as been) to limit you to only two weapons at a time. Combining this with the remarkably wide range of inventive, carefully balanced weapons, each with its own feel, made weapon choice part of the strategy.

Regenerating Health: Well, I know that technically it's shields (making it more realistic than the games that mimiced it) but merely the fact you had recharging health made a world of difference to the game. This is where the true innovation comes in, because can you think of an FPS before Halo that had recharging health, or a game after it that didn't?

Storyline: Although the first course was a little small (although certainly confidently executed), the second and third games delivered a depth of storyline that very few games, let alone FPSes, have equaled.

I can understand why people picking the game up from the third, or even second instalment might say that it's just more of the same, but if you played it when it was first released you would know that is because the genre became the same as the game.
It's my opinion that anyone who says Halo is actually a bad game is just being contrary.

This man should get The Nobel Peace prize. He's summed up a rational impartial view of the game, and I belive there isn't a damn thing in it you can argue with.

[/thread]

 

[Joeshie]

Vehicles: Halo was the first game to seamlessly switch from free range roaming on foot to free range roaming in a vehicle. The vehicle controls remain some of the best in an FPS game, where most games tend to give vehicles a backseat.

Done before, it was called Starsiege: Tribes [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starsiege_Tribes].

Weapons: Halo was the first game (or near as might as been) to limit you to only two weapons at a time. Combining this with the remarkably wide range of inventive, carefully balanced weapons, each with its own feel, made weapon choice part of the strategy.

Limitations in weaponry was not new to Halo. I know that Deus Ex limited the amount of weaponry you could carry by adding in an inventory system. Halo did it in a different way, but limitations to weaponry certainly wasn't new to Halo. Likewise, the weapons in Halo were not balanced. Any game where a pistol is better at long range killing than the sniper rifle is not balanced.

Regenerating Health: Well, I know that technically it's shields (making it more realistic than the games that mimiced it) but merely the fact you had recharging health made a world of difference to the game. This is where the true innovation comes in, because can you think of an FPS before Halo that had recharging health, or a game after it that didn't?

Regenerating health I will give you. It was pretty much the only single pure innovation that Halo brought to the genre.

Storyline: Although the first course was a little small (although certainly confidently executed), the second and third games delivered a depth of storyline that very few games, let alone FPSes, have equaled.

Deus Ex had a far more intricate and superior storyline to the Halo series.

I can understand why people picking the game up from the third, or even second instalment might say that it's just more of the same, but if you played it when it was first released you would know that is because the genre became the same as the game.
It's my opinion that anyone who says Halo is actually a bad game is just being contrary.

Let's make this perfectly clear: many of these concepts in Halo were popularized due to it's huge popularity. However, most of them, save for the regening health were not innovative. Halo borrowed these concepts (not that there is anything wrong with that) and put them on a console, which console owners mistakenly believed to be innovative. Halo introduced these concepts to the masses, but did not invent them.

Also, two more key Halo "innovations" that frequently are brought up; dedicated melee button could be found as far back as Duke Nukem 3D and dedicated grenade button could be found as far back as Team Fortress.

Star Wars and (I know I'll get alot of shit for this) the Matrix Trilogy.

Also, Halo 1 still isn't innovative and anyone who says so doesn't know shit about FPS before Halo 1.

Joshie, read the post above the one I quoted.

And then provide a counter-argument for every point.

Kudos to Gazok.[/quote]

Happy now?

 

[captain awesome 12]

If there was this question, report it for deletion. Thanks!

I go over the internet, and people keep talking about Halo being innovative [like in the other Innovative FPS thread]. I think it is worth a seperate thread to talk about it.

Was I the only one who saw the standard "Here's is your weapon, go kill bad guys" scheme? I really don't have a clue why it is innovative!

I'm pretty sure it was the first one to have regenerating health and instead of you being a walking armory, you were limited to two guns.

It was also the first console FPS that didn't feel awkward playing.

I had a fourth amazing point that I completely forgot cause I'm typing this while watching House and he made me laugh uncontrollably....sorry...

Edit: Not my fourth point but still good stuff...

Halo is to video games what Jimi Hendrix is to guitars. Jimi Hendrix is constantly being called the greatest guitarist of all time and...guess what? He isn't.

But he'll always be called the greatest because he changed thing even though he's not. Halo did change things but...it's not the best FPS. I preferred Unreal Tournament for the Xbox and now I prefer Gears of War 2 =D

I don't mean to insult your intelligence but Gears of War 2 is not an FPS (House distracting you again?). Nice analogy to Hendrix not being the best though. =]

 

[Anton P. Nym]

Halo seems to derive most of its storyline from the older Marathon games, which play very similar. You'vve got the AI ordering you around, and revealing the story [which is MUCH deeper than Halo's storyline]. You've got the evil aliens who want to take over the universe, even going as far as trying to let out a demon that will kill everyhting in the universe by destroying a star. You've got the idiot NPCs, known as BOBs. All said and done, the story and the setting of Halo is more of a derivative work than original work, kinda like all these suprehero reboot movies we are seeing here recently.

I think I'd agree that Marathon's storyline is better than Halo's, partly because it had to be literary (due to the text-only delivery) so they wrote it whole-hog literary, but I think Halo's back-story is greatly superior. (It certainly has more room in it for new stories, anyway.)

I think it's funny that people mention Forge and the Theater capabilities of the newest Halo game. These are very similar to FRAPS and... well Forge, for the Marathon Engine. There is nothing new in either of these concepts.

I'll agree with Forge, as the name was deliberately chosen to reflect the relationship, but I don't see the similarity between Halo 3 saved films and FRAPS.

FRAPS is a pure screen-capture utility that creates an animation file playable through any media playback software, whereas saved films are recordings of the control inputs and AI decision tree results that play back through the game engine.[sup]*[/sup] That's why a twenty minute Big Team Battle saved film file is something like 9MB in size, whereas a FRAPS capture at the game's native resolution would be much larger, by a factor of 10 or 20 or perhaps more. (And probably omit the Dolby effects, come to think of it, whereas the saved film files would reconstruct those perfectly.)

-- Steve

[sup]*[/sup] This was also present in the Marathon games, by the way, so I certainly wouldn't consider the feature a Halo 3 innovation myself except maybe for how it handles the file sharing between consoles and the Internet.

 

[Luke5515]

Halo1 was very innovative at the time and it did alot for inovation. After that everyone copied them and then halo 2 was the exact same thing as everything on the market.

 

[Abedeus]

Halo1 was very innovative at the time and it did alot for inovation. After that everyone copied them and then halo 2 was the exact same thing as everything on the market.

Not on PC.



Oh, oh. About Weapon Carry Limit - Hitman series had a limit on the number of weapons you could carry. Especially if you wanted to have a sniper - you couldn't hide it. Or a rifle.

 

[thom_cat_]

I don't see how it's innovative... it has a weird health system and the guy is a space marine... that's not innovative.

 

[Chaos Marine]

WAS innovative. WAS. And that's debatable.

It WAS considered innovative because it was one of the first mainstream console FPS games that didn't absolutely suck. The recharging shield and SF setting probably didn't hurt, either.

To call Halo innovative now?... That would be nuts. It's like calling "Dynasty Warriors Xtreme Whatever 12" (not an actual name, but you get my point) innovative.

As for me, I prefer Black, Urban Chaos and Project Snowblind.

Nobody ever listens when the forge is brought up; show me another console FPS with a system similar to the forge and a theatre mode for making machinima and I will agree that Halo 3 isn't innovative. Until then the naysayers are just riding the anti-halo bandwagon.

Yes there was, it was called Gary's Mod. As the name suggests, it was originally a mod and then it turned into a game. So far, the author of the mod has raked in an impressive one million for it. Whether that's sterling, euros or dollars I'm not so sure but that's still pretty damned impressive.

And this thread is way too long for me to read through, simply don't have the time, but looking down and seeing yourself? Tribes 2 which was released half a year before Halo Combat Evolved and I'm pretty sure it was in Starsiege Tribes (Original Tribes) as well which was released in 98 or 99. Driving in an FPS was already done. Honestly, the only thing that I can think of that Halo was innovative for was the recharging shield shtick and a quick key for grenades and a melee attacks. It also had a fairly awesome score too. Other than that, the game and it's following sequels were all bland, monotonous drudges. It's not a good thing for a game when it makes a person yawn. Seriously.