Thoughts on halo reach campaign

[CPO mendez]

The reach campaign was great, but very controversial what do you think?

 

[DogWizard]

This opinion is only about the storyline/characterizations, not the gameplay. I think that much of the gameplay was truly inspired and some of the larger battles were epic.


I think that it was "not great", thus adding to the controversy...


I very rarely felt like I was doing something important and meaningful as a Spartan. Go turn on a generator and get the comms back online - really? Babysit a handful of civilians during the evacuation? It just seemed like almost everything before "The Package" was random "go here, do this" filler, signifying nothing. How many different kinds of turrents can I activate/deactivate (destroy), it felt like that was half the -BLAM- game!


The orbital assault was great because you were DOING SOMETHING SPARTAN-LIKE!


I was initially afraid that Reach would be a disappointment but I succumbed to the pre-release hype and started hoping that it would really be something special. I really wish that it had been...


They have so diluted the "Spartan" brand that it's hard to care about anyone anymore. "Halo" was about the Master Chief - the lone (apparently) survivor of the Spartan II program and his epic struggle to save humanity in the face of overwhelming odds. Now we have Spartans all over the place - scattered survivors from the S-II program, Kurt's S-III Spartans, Halo Wars Spartans - and now these S-II.5 Spartans show up - ha ha, fooled you! Plenty of Spartans to go around...and guess what, kids? They all have random armor designed to sell action figure permutations... Bleah...


I can't help but feel that the iconic figure of the Master Chief, Spartan 117 is greatly diminished by this motley collection of bargain-bin wanna-be's.


The character development was sorely lacking and everyone but Jorge was a shallow, archetypal cardboard placeholder (and even he barely registered on the care-o-meter). I didn't care if any of the rest of the team died, they never really "lived" in the first place. They made the team from ODST look interesting...


Overall, while I'm glad I played it it was not at all what I had hoped it would be - sorry, Bungie. You had a great run but as far as "the big sendoff, the closing chapter" it was a disappointment from a storyline perspective, at least for me. The game looks great and plays well, it just didn't have any "hooks" that made me care. I got more "ooomph" out of Dr. Halsey's journal than I did the game itself and that's not a good thing. The lack of a "Legendary Ending" was a huge mistake as that could have potentially redeemed some of the storyline shortfalls, in my opinion. Oh well...


What do YOU think?

 

[Garland]

DogWizard, while I get what you're saying, I disagree with a number of things about the Spartans. Chief was the last Spartan-II from the beginning of Halo onwards, which was mostly true. The only other Spartan-IIs were trapped on the Onyx shield world, and nobody but them knows they're alive. How do the Spartans in Halo Wars ruin anything? Halo Wars covered the beginning of the war with the Covenant. They just didn't show them dying. And in the book, all remaining Spartan-IIs (except Chief) die on Reach (not counting that chick who was mortally wounded and placed in cryo on PoA). How can the Chief be the last Spartan if there wasn't other Spartans at some point?

Spartan-IIIs are just the bridge between ODSTs and Spartan-IIs. The only thing I complain about is that the Spartan-IIIs in Reach are wearing Mjolnir armour, even though they didn't have the bone enhancements necessary to wear them.

 

[DogWizard]

DogWizard, while I get what you're saying, I disagree with a number of things about the Spartans. Chief was the last Spartan-II from the beginning of Halo onwards, which was mostly true. The only other Spartan-IIs were trapped on the Onyx shield world, and nobody but them knows they're alive. How do the Spartans in Halo Wars ruin anything? Halo Wars covered the beginning of the war with the Covenant. They just didn't show them dying. And in the book, all remaining Spartan-IIs (except Chief) die on Reach (not counting that chick who was mortally wounded and placed in cryo on PoA). How can the Chief be the last Spartan if there wasn't other Spartans at some point?

Spartan-IIIs are just the bridge between ODSTs and Spartan-IIs. The only thing I complain about is that the Spartan-IIIs in Reach are wearing Mjolnir armour, even though they didn't have the bone enhancements necessary to wear them.

Please don't get me started on continuity issues/problems. I've read all the books and I'm well aware that the Chief wasn't the "Last Spartan" (that's why I said "apparently" in my post). Of course there were other Spartans in the S-II program...


I'm talking "Big Picture" here - the myth surrounding an iconic character. Think back to Halo CE and Halo2 (before the books) - that was the established mythos surrounding the Spartan program and the Chief. What can you tell me about the Halo Wars Spartans - anything interesting? Didn't think so. Like so many other Spartans that keep showing up, they were added as fan-service - whether they belong or add anything to the story or not. The overall effect is the dilution of the myth surrounding the Chief. We've gone from the last survivor of an elite program of genetically screened "perfect candidates" undergoing a lifelong training/service to become the perfect supersoldier to a vast collection of psuedo-Spartans - each incarnation falling farther and farther from the tree.


Actually, you (we) have no way of knowing what (if any) enhancements the rest of Noble Team did or didn't have (with the exception of Jorge - remnant of the S-II program). My understanding is that they are a bastardization of Dr. Halsey's S-II program developed from "liberated" data and outside of her knowledge.


I believe that the Spartan Chronology goes something like this (assuming you accept the books as canon):

Project Orion (assumed to be the S-I program essentially a bridge from ODST to S-II)
Spartan II (the whole deal)
Spartan II.5 (Noble Team and it assumes others - unauthorized (by Halsey) Spartans started post the S-II program)
Spartan III (Kurt's bunch on Onyx using significantly different tech/treatments and "mass-produced" - also outside Halsey's knowledge, at least initially)

 

[phixix]

What I want to know is- WTF happened to Jun at the end? o__o

 

[Garland]

I didn't realise that the members of Noble Team were different from the Spartan-IIIs in Ghosts of Onyx. I missed that detail somewhere. So you're problem is that all of the Spartans since Chief lack his level of sophistication/development as characters? 'Cause that I can't argue with--I know the Halo Wars Spartans had names, but I can't begin to remember what any of them were.

@ phixix: Jun escorted Halsey off of Reach. Which means 343 Industries can do what they want with him. In all likelihood he'll get a short story (Evolutions, Volume II, anybody?) or he'll make an appearance in one of the new books.

Worst case scenario is that Halo becomes Microsoft's Mario or MegaMan, and Jun gets his own Splinter-Cell type game (which I find highly unlikely).

 

[Brandon McClain]

Just one cannon correction there DW, there weren't spartan 2.5s, they were still 3s. Carter was pulled early from training in alpha company, where both Kat and Noble 6 are Bravo company spartan IIIs. They just happened to survive the suicide missions they were sent on. The reason they wear mjonlir, is that they would have made the cut physically etc to be spartan 2s, and as such were armed as spartans. see here: http://www.bungie.net/projects/reach/article.aspx?ucc=personnel&cid=24040

 

[DogWizard]

Just one cannon correction there DW, there weren't spartan 2.5s, they were still 3s. Carter was pulled early from training in alpha company, where both Kat and Noble 6 are Bravo company spartan IIIs. They just happened to survive the suicide missions they were sent on. The reason they wear mjonlir, is that they would have made the cut physically etc to be spartan 2s, and as such were armed as spartans. see here: http://www.bungie.net/projects/reach/article.aspx?ucc=personnel&cid=24040

Good catch - thanks!

I just couldn't reconcile the Onyx Spartan III's with the rest of Noble Team (although that would explain some of the dysfunction if they were subjected to the same agression-enhancing treatments and accelerated training timetable as the rest of the S-III's).

 

[Peagis01]

You guys really need to read Halsey's journal that came with the limeted edition. It explains alot of back fill to bridge the books with the games. I really liked the game and really liked Jorge and Six. The rest I liked but didnt really connect with. It will be interesting to see what became of Jun. And yes the S-III's did have the enhanced bones done to them. It's in onyx when kurt is inpecting the vials that they are about to use on Holly.

And something that bugs me is that alot of people assume the alpha and beta companies had the agression enhancements done to them but in fact it was because of how they all fell apart and kurts desire to protect his spartans that he introduced it with the gamma company. Another thing where is the 300 spartans of Gamma that werent on onyx???

 

[Traghatti]

I think they all died in Operation PEGASI? Someone correct me if I'm wrong...

 

[Sepharih]

What do YOU think?

While I sympathized with the characters a bit more than you did, I concur with your feelings on their place in the lore.
The problem is this: the story for the campaign simply isn't as "epic" or "grandiose" and its characters are simply not as "heroic" as previous entries into the franchise (ODST aside). I've had time to formulate my thoughts on the matter and here's my ultimate point on why the campaign failed to resonate like previous entries did.

In the end, Reach fell. Noble team fell. What exactly did they accomplish again? Ok...they brought Cortana (or rather a piece of her) to the Autumn and helped her take off. And.....what? That's it? That is not enough to be heroic or legendary.
That is the equivalent of having Star Wars end with them dropping off the plans and R2D2 and Kyle Katarn blowing up the deathstar, or a version of Lord of the Rings where Frodo dies and hands the ring to Faramir to destroy it.

What I really liked about ODST's story is that it showed off another story to the Human Covenant war and while it also didn't have the same grandiose sense of epic space opera...it never sold itself as such. It was simply a page out of the covenant war about a ragtag team of marines trying to get out of a warzone alive, and their adventure and discovery in the process.
This was kind of the same thing...but it sells itself as legendary heroism and it takes place in one of the richest events in Halo lore FOR epic heroism. Ultimately, I really just didn't feel like a Spartan for most of the game (by which I mean a god warrior among men), so much as I just felt like another ODST, or rather one of the "other guys" out fighting the war.
Not until the very end did I get the feeling of stepping into the Master Chief's shoes again. "Lone Wolf" is a solid ending both to the game and the character of Noble Six, and it really gives you the feeling that the whole game should have been about. You're going to fall, no matter what happens, but you're going to give those bastards hell before you do. THAT was what being a Spartan is all about.

 

[Peagis01]

I think they all died in Operation PEGASI? Someone correct me if I'm wrong...

Your thinking of Operation Torpedo which took place in the Pegasi system with Tom and Lucy's beta group

 

[Hickeydog]

I played it, and wasn't impressed. First of all, gameplay was WAY to short.

That aside, I completely agree with DogWizard. You just weren't doing enough "Spartan" worthy missions. I do disagree about babysitting the citizens. I think that would have been VERY Spartan worthy, and I wish there were a few more like that.

Also, it seemed that Bungie took a 20 hour story and smashed it into 8 hours. Particularly, they could have expanded much more on the finding of Cortana and the integration of her into the Pillar of Autumn. But that was probably better done in a book.

If I hadn't gotten it for free, I would have felt ripped off if I spent $60 on the game. It just didn't live up to Halo standards.

 

[Road Kill]

i loved the campaign, to bad that all the spartans have to die, i think because Noble6 saved so many people he should be able to live like he did so much to help humanity and he dies, my opinion between noble6 and master chief, noble 6 save many people and master chief just sits around in the broken in half spaceship saying "wake me if you need me" kinda sad about master chief and sad for noble6

 

[FoolOfATook]

I expected to do something epic during the campaign, like in the books, not guard halsey's cave while she packed up cortana... I just really wish the game was more than a prologue, I really thought that maybe the spartans' story would go past Reach, and maybe along the same timeline as the Chief's, and maybe meet up in a spectacular and completely new ending that would really let you rest assured that everything turned out alright (for the most part). I think it was welcome to have a glimpse of the Chief in his cryotube in the cutscene, and sure, you can have his voice in firefight,but he's pretty much in no way included in the story. And wasn't the Chief what Halo was all about? I sincerely hope that bungie lied to us and plans to release a sendoff that completely brings the loose ends back together.

 

[Garland]

DLC campaign missions? Maybe Bungie left the story choppy and disjointed on purpose. Assassin's Creed II did that and it seemed to work out ok. While I think that's a crappy tactic to pull, it's not out of the question in the case of Reach. Highly unlikely, maybe, but definitely possible, I think.

 

[Varsity]

jun doesnt die hes MIA he just disapears

 

[phydeoux]

Well I already knew that reach and it's Spartans to be destroyed, before buying the game, so obviously that was no surprise to me. However I wished that our Spartans would have gone out with a bigger bang. I know Reach had an overwhelming invasion to fight, but it seemed very anti-climactic. I craved to have more things to do, and I completely with DogWizard on how the missions seemed more like running errands. There might as well be a mission about washing a pelican.

What bugs me most is that if Reach is supposed to be the birthplace of Spartans, then why do we only get to see 6 of them? Seriously, I was hoping to see large epic battles between Spartans and Elites, but instead the game was filled with UNSC Marines. With Halo: CE I felt like I was at war with an alien race; but with this Halo: Reach it felt much less adventurous. (Especially when all the skulls are just given to you.) The sense of being a super-soldier was very withered. Did Reach and her Spartans seriously just bend over and serve their own asses to the Covenant on a silver platter?

 

[Peagis01]

I think what everyone is forgetting is that 1) the S-III's where from onyx and 2) not as good as a S-II

 

[DogWizard]

I think what everyone is forgetting is that 1) the S-III's where from onyx and 2) not as good as a S-II

Who is "everyone" and what makes you think they are forgetting anything? I think it's pretty obvious from their performance, missions, and personal interactions that they are clearly the "second string" Spartans...