Art Andrews said:
Massive real estate? Well, yes, technically we do have many worlds to explore... oh wait... no... not really. We just keep running down the exact same paths on those worlds because each world only has one small map that we play again and again and again. This is one of the crushing disappointments for me. I thought we would see vasts different worlds and actually be provided many experiences in those worlds, but that isn't really what we are being given. It is like the illusion of real estate, but as you so perfectly stated, the reality of Destiny is that each world is actually a pretty small and repetitive box.
The Temple of Crota (the actual temple itself, not the myriad of paths necessary to get to the temple) is equal in size to any single Halo mission, and it is only PART of ONE mission on ONE world. But if you want to run the "small repetitive box" routine, I have two words for you: Spartan Ops. 50 missions, maybe all of 6 maps?
Art Andrews said:
I have seen this repeated by several people. What is it that you didn't like in Halo 4? I actually liked it a lot and thought it was a great game? What was handled so poorly that we see so much hate for it?
As I, personally, have mentioned before, there's the 75% DOA rate for Halo 4. Literally half of the units sold were completely useless, neither disc did anything. Of the other half, 50% had an issue with ONE of the discs not functioning, thus the game was still entirely unplayable. 75%. Name one other game launch in the history of the industry that met so massive a launch day failure rate. And how did 343 handle it? "You'll just have to
buy another copy." Not "Oh damn, we screwed the pooch big time, let us replace that worthless garbage WE put out with something that actually works." Nope. "Buy a new one." No wonder Halo 4 was the "highest selling Halo game ever." There's more, but really, that alone was the most massive "F- you all we still got paid" I have EVER witnessed from ANY developer, so really, there doesn't need to be any more for me to say 343 blew it, and they have one hell of a mountain to climb if they want to redeem themselves.
But you know, let's go ahead and dive a little deeper. Spartan Ops: same half a dozen maps replayed ad nauseum. Matchmaking: worst lag I have ever experienced on any Halo 360 title I have ever played (and aside from Halo Wars, I've played them all). Join in progress: Great on paper, but the reality is 99 times out of 100 it will shove me into the last 8 seconds (minus 5 for the loadout selection countdown) on the losing side, will wait until one team is fully filled before adding anyone to the other team rather than filling the ranks in an even manner (leading to the majority of the match being one-sided) and there is no "opt out" option so you can spend literally hours in that quagmire and never even once get to vote on a map, gametype, or even get any indication of what is going on until...oh, wait, the match is over, what did we just play again? Doesn't matter, we lost. Campaign: walk down this hall, push a button, walk down that hall, kill a pre-set group of enemies, push another button, walk down another hall, repeat ad nauseum. No exploration, no openness in the sand box, no matter where you are you have to stick to this narrow corridor. And you want to complain about Destiny's lack of storyline? I spent all of Halo 4 asking "why are we still fighting the Covenant? We killed their top Prophets, the Brutes have made themselves universally despised, the Elites figured out just how badly they'd been played for saps the entire time and said "screw this, we're taking our bal land going home," the jackals are just mercenaries, and the grunts never wanted to be there in the first place." Then comes the Didact ("who the hell is the Didact?") and the Prometheans ("This franchise has been around for over a decade, why was there never any mention of these apparently very prolific war machines anywhere before this?"). About 6 months after release, people finally started saying "oh, if you read all these other novels things start to make sense." A slow clap to the marketing scrubs at 343, you found another way to gouge money from our pockets. "Buy these books at $10-15 a pop and you'll finally understand this game you've already spent $100+ on." And that's another thing, and I've mentioned this before. The cost of Halo 4, plus the map pass (cheaper than buying the three map packs separately), the CHampions Bundle: $105. If you sprung for the Limited Edition, $110. And for that price you get ONE retailer exclusive IF you managed to secure a preorder from a participating retailer. There were 15 retailer exclusives. 15. Name one other game, or even an entire franchise, that had that many different retailer exclusives. I'll bet you can't, because no other developer has been that big of a jerkwad (self censoring, the terms I'd choose would not be so polite). The forums quite literally exploded with outrage and complaints, and rightly so, I did the math and if you wanted to have every scrap of content you would need to spend over $400 on 6 copies of the same game (at least one of them being the Limited Edition), $900 if you wanted the console and the Fotus armor that came with it, and one of those copies would have to come from New Zealand and thus would be utterly useless here in the states. And when all this fecal matter hit the fan (or rather, was dumped all over the FANS) 343 responded like a gaggle of politicians, not a group of fan-minded video game developers, and said "we will make this content early-access only and we will release it all to the many fans who have supported us at a later time." Well, when "a later time" came around, it was not the fans who supported 343's efforts that reaped the benefits. No, everything that we spent $100+ on (and then some) was packaged up in the GOTY and marketed to those who did NOT support 343 in any way. And what was 343 doing during that year in between? Not addressing day one issues that STILL persist two years later, not addressing the numerous complaints about the many ways Halo 4 was lacking. No, they spent it marketing more books, and Master Chief snowboards, and the "comprehensive visual guide to Halo 4" which was the very picture of arrogant self-importance, as the last visual guide encompassed EVERY Halo game leading up to that point. Who the hell did 343 think they were that they needed a whole new visual guide for ONE GAME and that this was so much more important than making sure that ONE GAME actually WORKED?
Oh, and did I mention this monstrosity sucks up a whopping 15+ Gigs of hard drive space for what little it actually delivers? What does all that go to? Graphics, which Destiny delivers in spades for less than half the hard drive space.
Art Andrews said:
Based on this game? Never going to happen.
Minor correction: based on the first WEEK of the release of the FIRST game in a NEW franchise which already has at least TWO expansions providing MORE missions MORE maps, MORE equipment, MORE events/strikes/raids and MORE content overall and quite possibly may only be the first of several updates/expansions and we've only had the very first taste of Bungie's announced plans for the upcoming month, much less what they plan to do over the course of the DECADE LONG commitment they have made to this franchise. Who predicted Halo's success in the first week of CE's release? Nobody. Even Bungie felt they were on thin ice and didn't expect to see even a fraction of the success that their franchise has enjoyed.
Art Andrews said:
So... is the issue here more about Bungie and 343 than the Halo franchise itself? Why do you care so much about who the producer is or who made what? I wouldn't call MCC meaningless by a long shot. It is going to introduce the legacy Halo world to a whole new generation of gamers. Sure... it won't be as big as a brand new release, but this is about Halo as a franchise, not 343 vs Bungie. Why are you so stuck on that point?
The reason I said MCC counts for nothing is because it is NOT 343's handiwork. If I want to prove that I can create a successful NEW chapter or expand a concept and take it to NEW heights, rehashing and "prettying up" the OLD does not prove anything. We already KNOW Halo 1, 2, and 3 are massive successes. Ergo the MCC can not be used as any measure of how well 343 will handle the franchise
moving forward, because there is no forward motion. "Bringing the classics to a new generation" is nice, but again, it is nothing that THEY did. The "Special Editions" didn't make Star Wars a huge hit, it was already a huge hit.
Art Andrews said:
I am only at level 17 but right now, the progression seems to be simply one of "move up so you can get bigger guns so you can fight the same enemies that we have now made more difficult." Doesn't seem to be much beyond that.
New weapons, new armor, new abilities, new perks to tweak your character to suit your playing style, new missions, new game types, new features, new public/social playlists and events. Yea, sure, "nothing beyond a bigger gun to shoot the same enemies with." I reached level 22 before I even finished the Earth missions. Was there a bit of "repetition" in there? Sure. I spent hours on patrol. Did I expect something more? No. Why? Hello! RPG! Ever play one of those before? Grinding is as much a part of every RPG element as.. well, as much as shooting is a part of shooters. But I tell you what, I'd rather spend the next two months patrolling the Cosmodrome then, say spending the next SIX months trying to rack up 1500 kills with a freaking plasma pistol just to be 7% close to unlocking ONE piece of purely aesthetic armor or worse yet, a logo that I would never use!
*cough* Halo 4 *cough cough* You want to complain about grinding repetition, at least Destiny gives some kind of purpose behind it that actually affects gameplay rather than having to spend countless days, weeks, even months doing the
exact same thing hundreds if not thousands of times for what amounts to absolutely nothing and serves absolutely no purpose.
I will not stand here and say that Destiny right now is better than the sum total of Halo, but I will firmly state that Destiny put bullet between the eyes of the lame duck that was Halo 4, so in essence when it comes to Halo, what Bungie's latest did not defeat was Bungie's classic. Bungie did not destroy its own legacy, but it most certainly laid waste to the tattered remains of what 343 has made of it.