Would Gaming be better off without Halo?

[hudsonzero]

i dont mind halo 3 was the first xbox i played and the reson i started playing games on the 360

 

[The Kangaroo]

I really don't care about games as an art form. As long as the game is polished and fun, I don't give a damn what artistic value it has. Halo is both very polished and very fun, so it's doing almost everything right as far as I'm concerned. Nobody (or at least nobody with a fully functioning frontal lobe) is going to say that Halo is a perfect game. It is, however, a very good game and has done a lot for the FPS genre, especially on consoles.

Whether or not the "mainstream crowd" is ruining the industry is an entirely separate topic from Halo. Yea, Halo did play a large part in creating that "mainstream crowd", but it definitely didn't go it alone in that regard.

And you are the exact kind of person who is ruining gaming, I want games to be more than fun

 

[The Kangaroo]

No, because Microsoft would have pumped a shitload of money into some other company and it would have been similar. If not, then I doubt the xbox would have been as successful as it was, and I would not be happy.

The point I'm making is, what if that company had been Ice Peak Lodge?

I honestly don't know if that's a made-up company or if you're referring the Russian company of Ice Pick Lodge, but that's Russian, so I doubt microsoft would have picked them. If you're trying to say that an rpg could replace halo, I do not agree. So yeah I'm a little confused, and I probably should have read more of the thread.

Ice Pick Lodge don't make RPG's

snip

I'm am not decrying Halo, I am decrying what it did to the gaming world. My post could also be titled "Would gaming be better if Halo had poor sales"

 

[DeviousCrypto]

I can say neither yay or nay. At one point in time I loved Halo, and then moved onto what I think to be more mature franchises. I may go back to it, I really hope Halo: Reach redeems the series in my eyes.

 

[MetallicaRulez0]

I really don't care about games as an art form. As long as the game is polished and fun, I don't give a damn what artistic value it has. Halo is both very polished and very fun, so it's doing almost everything right as far as I'm concerned. Nobody (or at least nobody with a fully functioning frontal lobe) is going to say that Halo is a perfect game. It is, however, a very good game and has done a lot for the FPS genre, especially on consoles.

Whether or not the "mainstream crowd" is ruining the industry is an entirely separate topic from Halo. Yea, Halo did play a large part in creating that "mainstream crowd", but it definitely didn't go it alone in that regard.

And you are the exact kind of person who is ruining gaming, I want games to be more than fun

And you are the exact kind of person whose opinion I don't care about at all. I want games to be fun. I thought that's what everyone wanted. If you want art, there are plenty of movies and paintings that do it well.

Go ahead and ridicule me for being simple-minded, I honestly don't care. At least I know what gaming is all about.

 

[NotCompliant]

Yes, it would be. If it just stopped with Combat Evolved and then moved onto bigger an better things, instead of selling out and riding its own popularity, then probably not.

Oh, and yes, Halo does have a very flimsy story.
The halo trilogy in 8 words: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Not exactly the most original storytelling here.

 

[Trivun]

No, because Microsoft would have pumped a shitload of money into some other company and it would have been similar. If not, then I doubt the xbox would have been as successful as it was, and I would not be happy.

The point I'm making is, what if that company had been Ice Peak Lodge?

I honestly don't know if that's a made-up company or if you're referring the Russian company of Ice Pick Lodge, but that's Russian, so I doubt microsoft would have picked them. If you're trying to say that an rpg could replace halo, I do not agree. So yeah I'm a little confused, and I probably should have read more of the thread.

Ice Pick Lodge don't make RPG's

snip

I'm am not decrying Halo, I am decrying what it did to the gaming world. My post could also be titled "Would gaming be better if Halo had poor sales"

Fair enough, but at the same time, I adressed that at the end of my comment. I'll elaborate, though. You referred to Halo as being a catalyst, shall we say, for companies not moving towards art in games any more. And I rebutted that by giving a brief, incomplete list of games that have been released in the past few years that are arguably games as art, most notably The Path. However, I can also make a brief statement regarding Halo's contributions to the gaming industry. Halo was a leading innovator for several major game features, especially regarding FPSs, which would otherwise have either not been thought of or developed only later and thus not been as well recieved if they'd ended up in other, less successful (commercially) games. Here's just a single example of how Halo paved the way for future FPSs:

The game has been praised for giving each weapon a unique purpose, thus making them useful in different scenarios. For example, plasma weapons need time to cool if fired too rapidly, but require no reloading. Instead, players are forced to discard them after depleting their batteries. In contrast, conventional firearms cannot overheat, but require reloading and ammunition. All weapons may be used to bludgeon enemies, which allows a player to silently kill opponents without alerting other nearby enemies. Players may carry only two weapons at once; thus, a strategy is required when using and selecting firearms.

This was taken from Wikipedia. However, it gives one of the main examples often cited as a reason for Halo's innovation in the FPS genre, namely limited weapon capacity. There are various other reasons why Halo was innovative, but I won't go into those in any detail here. Referring to this example, though, limited weapon capacity makes the game much more realistic. I appreciate that a lot of people don't like their games too realistic, and I respect that, but in my personal opinion games should be as realistic as possible. And so I welcome the fact that Halo was a precursor for things such as limited weapon capacity, limited ammo, dual wielding, and the like. And as physics engines and techical specifications developed over time, the Halo series continued to make their games more realistic, both graphically and in terms of gameplay. And I see that as a good thing.

 

[Freshmaker]

Did we play two different games? What was flimsy about Halo's story?

For one the fact that the Covenant never tried to accept Humanity into the Covenant

You know that Humanity are the descendants of the Forerunners, right? Well, the Prophets found this out, and decided that if the rest of the Covenant knew, they would lose their "congregation". These power hungry leaders didn't like that idea, not one bit, so they decided to eliminate humanity so no one would find out. Sounds like a good enough motivation to me.

I really don't care about games as an art form. As long as the game is polished and fun, I don't give a damn what artistic value it has. Halo is both very polished and very fun, so it's doing almost everything right as far as I'm concerned. Nobody (or at least nobody with a fully functioning frontal lobe) is going to say that Halo is a perfect game. It is, however, a very good game and has done a lot for the FPS genre, especially on consoles.

Whether or not the "mainstream crowd" is ruining the industry is an entirely separate topic from Halo. Yea, Halo did play a large part in creating that "mainstream crowd", but it definitely didn't go it alone in that regard.

And you are the exact kind of person who is ruining gaming, I want games to be more than fun

I disagree. Gaming has been the way he described it (fun and polished) since the beginning, back when games didn't need a story. And it has continued that way until recently. Hideo Kojima doesn't see games as an art form, and his are some of the games that I consider art. Extremely polished controls, first and foremost, followed by interesting characters and story. Being playable and fun is the most important aspect of a game, because no one is going to give a rats ass about your fancy story if it's too tedious to advance the plot. There are plenty of games that succeed on both accounts, story and gameplay, and these are "art"

This debate is irrelevant. Games are already established as a serious medium. They are art, irregardless of whether or not people acknowledge it. Not all video games are art, much in the way that not all movies are art. Die Hard, for example. I fucking LOVE those movies. They aren't art, though. Video games are the same way. Some are, some aren't, that's all there is to it.

 

[Dizzy45]

No.

Halo can be and is a lot of fun.

 

[Freshmaker]

Gaming would NOT be better off without Halo. Gaming would be entirely UNCHANGED without Halo. After all, it's just another run-of-the-mill generic FPS. Half of those could disappear from history and it wouldn't make the slightest difference.

This is false. What makes Halo stand out from "run-of-the-mill generic FPS"'s is the fact that it makes everything work great. Controls are good, weapon choice is fantastic, AI works, etc. A generic FPS does none of these things well, only the bare minimum necessary to make some cash.

 

[DividedUnity]

Would gaming be better off without halo? Probably not

Would gaming be better off without halo fanboys who think its the holy friggin grail of all that is good and awesome in gaming? Hell yes

(btw i really like halo too, it was the first game I played on my original xbox)

 

[Jark212]

Nope, Halo set the scene for a lot of games...

And I love it...

 

[The Kangaroo]

Go ahead and ridicule me for being simple-minded, I honestly don't care. At least I know what gaming is all about.

And I know what gaming could be

 

[ModsDeleteThisAccountPlease]

Ughhhh. I could barely read that wall of text. Work on the flow, It was confusing to read. Back on topic, Halo was a success for its storytelling, game play, and ability to reach out to a normal person. Not to mention the kick ass multiplayer that all 3 games innovated. It was one of the FPS's, if not the first FPS, to ditch the black, shades of brown, white color scheme and make the world vivid as hell. It drew you into the world and made the experience so much better. Unfortunately, the excellent color plattete made the game look childish *enough* for mis-guided parents to buy for their kids. But alas, there was the magical invention of the MUTE button, saving us all from the torture of their high-pitched voices.

 

[NeutralDrow]

Did we play two different games? What was flimsy about Halo's story?

For one the fact that the Covenant never tried to accept Humanity into the Covenant.

That makes the story flimsy?

By giving the main antagonist no proper motivation? Yeah it kinda does.

No. It really doesn't. A small beans point like that (which, as someone else pointed out, is in any case flatly wrong) is not enough to weaken an entire story and the world it takes place in.

Not touching the comment on Halo meaning games aren't taken seriously. You seem to be under the assumption that games were taken seriously to begin with. If anything Halo by itself (not counting the clones) probably helped.

Just to tell you of my experience, my friend, who loves movies as an art form, had just argued with me for about 10 minutes about the validity of games as an art form walked into the room where my other friend was playing Halo and saw him shoot aliens in the head with a bright blue plasma rifle going "pew pew pew" and you say that that helped people take games seriously.

An anecdote! That proves everything.

For games to be taken seriously, the other artistic forms of media have to take it seriously

I notice you conveniently ignored my counterpoint in favor of offering a vague and random statement.

So...if there was a market for games like The Void, developers would see there is a market for them.

If the void sold well then developers would realise that there is a market for good games and make good games.

And since The Void didn't sell well, developers realized there was no market for them. You sound like you're offering a circular argument.

The Void didn't sell well mainly because it got no publicity.

So wait. The Void didn't sell well because it got no publicity, and I'm assuming you mean "because they didn't market it" rather than "because no one cared" (this game has been out for one month in downloadable English form). Who's fault is that, exactly, and how does it have anything to do with your point?

<url=http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/5862/001batmandarkknightretu.jpg>Not films. <url=http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/4499/watchmenav.jpg>Comics. Those were a pair of unbelievable masterpieces of characterization and dark storytelling, and are remembered to this day as such.

Which is merciful, because almost everything they inspired was crap. The Dark Age of comics was a bad time. That was my point. Just because something is artistic and medium-defining doesn't mean it inspires greatness.

That is exactly my point and yes it kind of would as it proves just what you can do within that medium.

It was the exact opposite of your point.

You: "If awesome games like this one sold well, the games they inspired would be improved!"
Me: "These comics were awesome and sold well, and the comics inspired by them were shite."

The point is that those comics pushed the profitable market into a bad place

I have no idea what you're saying, and I'm starting to suspect that you don't either.

Go ahead and ridicule me for being simple-minded, I honestly don't care. At least I know what gaming is all about.

And I know what gaming could be

It could sacrifice fun and attractive game design in favor of making totally irrelevant artistic points.

 

[The Kangaroo]

and I see that as a good thing

and that is where we disagree

You know that Humanity are the descendants of the Forerunners, right? Well, the Prophets found this out, and decided that if the rest of the Covenant knew, they would lose their "congregation". These power hungry leaders didn't like that idea, not one bit, so they decided to eliminate humanity so no one would find out. Sounds like a good enough motivation to me.

Where did you get that because that is not mentioned in the games and if you say the books those are authors filling in those gaps in story so they don't count

I disagree. Gaming has been the way he described it (fun and polished) since the beginning, back when games didn't need a story. And it has continued that way until recently. Hideo Kojima doesn't see games as an art form, and his are some of the games that I consider art. Extremely polished controls, first and foremost, followed by interesting characters and story. Being playable and fun is the most important aspect of a game, because no one is going to give a rats ass about your fancy story if it's too tedious to advance the plot. There are plenty of games that succeed on both accounts, story and gameplay, and these are "art"

Hideo Kojima makes movies wrapped in cliche and slaps game elements onto them who's games are not art because they deny you the things that make gaming unique; Exploration and you can tell your own story.

This debate is irrelevant. Games are already established as a serious medium. They are art, regardless of whether or not people acknowledge it. Not all video games are art, much in the way that not all movies are art. Die Hard, for example. I fucking LOVE those movies. They aren't art, though. Video games are the same way. Some are, some aren't, that's all there is to it.

Games have never been established as a serious medium, we have some arty games but so did movies before Citizen Kane.

 

[The Kangaroo]

I notice you conveniently ignored my counterpoint in favor of offering a vague and random statement.

I was explaining my point because apparently you didn't get it

So wait. The Void didn't sell well because it got no publicity, and I'm assuming you mean "because they didn't market it" rather than "because no one cared" (this game has been out for one month in downloadable English form). Who's fault is that, exactly, and how does it have anything to do with your point?

It did have publicity, In Russia and Atari made the english one so it is their fault

I have no idea what you're saying, and I'm starting to suspect that you don't either.

I'm saying that even though those comics were good (like Halo) they proved that it was profitable and so the shit copies pushed it into a bad place

It could sacrifice fun and attractive game design in favor of making totally irrelevant artistic points.

Is the Dark Knight fun? Is The Godfather? Transformers is and so is Halo. So to answer your question, yes I would sacrifice fun for a truly good games because I love games and I want to see a truly good one.

 

[aarontg]

I don't know, halo came up with some of the machanics that are still being used today, though I woulden't say that it's still good today.

 

[QuickDEMOL1SHER]

Would we be better of without Halo?
That's like asking if we would be better of without electricity, in some ways yes, but it's not worth it.