72 replies to this topic

[Nightshade]

 

Should I go on?

Yes, you absolutely should. Because you apparently feel that dozens of shitty design choices were justified by the logic of, "dees environments doe."

So, yeah. Other than the Master Chief's new armor and the environments. Go ahead and tell me about all these other things that feel "really Halo" in Halo 4's design aesthetic. 

Edited by Nightshade, 30 July 2014 - 03:43 PM.

[Drew]

I would argue that any environment with Forerunner architecture doesn't look like classic Halo. They took everything that made the Forerunner design motif amazing, and threw it out the goddamn window. Instead of huge, haunting installations with some long-forgotten purpose, they're now a jumbled mess of HURR CHECK OUT ALL OF THESE SWEET FLASHY COLORS AND SICK ANGLES BROS, THIS IS TOTALLY FOREBODING AND DEFINITELY CONVEYS A SINCE OF GREATER PURPOSE.

 

Let's compare, shall we?

 

 

A few things come to mind, here: Messy, incoherent, overboard. Too many lights for no fucking reason. It looks brand fucking new despite being there for thousands of years? Do the Sentinels scrub the walls, keep everything nice and tidy for Didact? It fucking sucks.

 

Now, how about some classic, Bungie Forerunner design?

 

 

Foreboding, old, mysterious. Why is it here? What purpose does it serve? Simple, but clearly incredibly advanced. Signs of age, it's obviously been around for a long time. This holds true through every Bungie-made Halo game.

 

 

 

 

So what the fuck? Halo 4 completely strips all mystery from the series, and in the process, absolutely butchers the amazing visual design language that Bungie had so painstakingly established over the years. I would've loved to be a fly on the wall when Bungie artists first saw the full extent of how violently their baby had been violated, I can only imagine their grief-stricken faces, their quiet sobs...

 

343 knows nothing of subtlety, or anything about what made the series what it once was, for that matter. Everything about Halo 4 is EXTREME and IN YOUR FACE at all fucking moments. There's no pacing, no down-time - you never really get to stop and appreciate the game. It feels like The Maw throughout the entire game, like I'm being rushed through for no reason other than they don't want me to look too closely, lest I find something that they don't want me to see.

 

Especially in the case of Forerunner reveals and levels, in previous games, they gave you a chance to just stand in awe and appreciate the world that they had built. Halo wasn't about getting in your face with overt "CHECK THIS OUT, SO COOOOL" type shit (outside of maybe the beginning of Halo 2, I still laugh every time I see that scene) that was included for no reason other than to show off their ridiculous budget. Things happened for a reason. The entire first game felt like a slow buildup to the final moments, when the ring is blown apart. Halo 2 was guilty of this at some points (m chief jumping to earth riding a bomb being primary among them), but it was reconciled by the entirety of Delta Halo, meeting the Gravemind, escaping High Charity whilst stowed away on the Keyship... All of these moments had purpose and power behind them, there was a reason for them. Halo 3 was the pinnacle of this, I think. The buildup to the activation of the Portal, the space battle over the Ark, the return to Installation 04... It was awesome. Reach had less purpose, being a prequel, but it was not without its meaningful moments.

 

Halo 4 is devoid of all that, instead replaced by flashy showmanship with no purpose but to wow the player with their (admittedly impressive) visuals purchased with millions of Microsoft spacebucks. The entire game was nothing more than a giant, self-fellating fireworks show.

Edited by Drew, 30 July 2014 - 04:46 PM.

[Blaze]

Should I go on?

You can if you'd like, but I'd like to talk about each one of those images.

Human architecture styles in Halo have always been a smorgasbord of different things. There is no established "human aesthetic" like with the Covenant and Forerunner, so it's not really possible to say that Dawn looks like Halo, since any human aesthetic could theoretically look like Halo.

The environments in Requiem and Reclaimer are pretty much just natural environments trying to mostly simulate real life, so again, it's not really a case of "looking like Halo".

As for the Forerunner environment... pretty much what Drew said. It's overdesigned. I guess the artists had a lot more polygon and texture memory to work with since they didn't need to keep weapons on the ground for more than ten seconds.

Edited by Blaze, 30 July 2014 - 05:10 PM.

[Jironimo]

Yes, you absolutely should. Because you apparently feel that dozens of shitty design choices were justified by the logic of, "dees environments doe."

So, yeah. Other than the Master Chief's new armor and the environments. Go ahead and tell me about all these other things that feel "really Halo" in Halo 4's design aesthetic. 

 

Again, go back and look at Halo Reach and how divergent it is and tell me that it looks so Halo compared to Halo 3. You keep using your crutch of "dozens of shitty design choices" without explaining what those are and how they're any worse than the huge differences with Halo Reach.

[Syracuse022]

You can if you'd like, but I'd like to talk about each one of those images.

Human architecture styles in Halo have always been a smorgasbord of different things. There is no established "human aesthetic" like with the Covenant and Forerunner, so it's not really possible to say that Dawn looks like Halo, since any human aesthetic could theoretically look like Halo.

The environments in Requiem and Reclaimer are pretty much just natural environments trying to mostly simulate real life, so again, it's not really a case of "looking like Halo".

As for the Forerunner environment... pretty much what Drew said. It's overdesigned. I guess the artists had a lot more polygon and texture memory to work with since they didn't need to keep weapons on the ground for more than ten seconds.

I fucking lol'd. Can I just say how much nicer it is here now that people are yelling at each other about Halo again? Deeelightful.

[Blaze]

Again, go back and look at Halo Reach and how divergent it is and tell me that it looks so Halo compared to Halo 3. You keep using your crutch of "dozens of shitty design choices" without explaining what those are and how they're any worse than the huge differences with Halo Reach.

Halo Reach had almost no Forerunner environments and only one Covenant environment (that looked pretty Covenanty), so it's hard to compare its environments to Halo 4's. Maybe you could also provide some visual references that show how divergent Halo Reach was from the previous Halos.

As a Halo game, I don't really like Reach, but the Covenant weapon, vehicle, and enemy designs were top notch if you ask me. Elites were finally lanky again like they were in Halo 1. New human weapons and vehicles looked Haloy (Falcon, Grenade Launcher, DMR, etc.). The vast majority of the environments in Reach were boring as fuck though.

[Drew]

Ivan, I literally just posted an example from Halo Reach.

 

???????

[Nightshade]

 

Again, go back and look at Halo Reach and how divergent it is and tell me that it looks so Halo compared to Halo 3. You keep using your crutch of "dozens of shitty design choices" without explaining what those are and how they're any worse than the huge differences with Halo Reach.

Shitty (Halo 4):

Good (Halo: Reach):


Shitty (Halo: 4):


Good (Halo: Reach):


Shitty (Halo 4):


Good (Halo: Reach):


Shitty (Halo 4):


Good (Halo: Reach):

Shitty (Halo 4):

Good (Halo: Reach):


Shitty (Halo 4):


Good (Halo: Reach):

...

Every example I posted is from Reach to 4. If you're going to sit there and tell me that Halo: Reach was either less aesthetically pleasing or less like Halo than 4? You're completely blind, or you don't remember what Halo looked like. Feel free to post more environments though.

[Drew]

It's like 343 sat down and said "Alright, how can we make this shit as cheesy as possible?" and someone chimed in "ROUND and CARTOONY" and that was the end of the meeting, and then all of Halo 4 was designed with that one philosophy in mind. Reach still had attitude, 4 is all generic SHIT. Round, ugly, overdesigned, generic shit.
 

P.S.: I'm several drinks in at this point, so I'm down to fucking go at it. Come at me, Ivan.

Edited by Drew, 30 July 2014 - 10:17 PM.

[Kinetic]

The worst change from Reach to 4 is that the Warthogs no longer say "STEP" right above the little lip used for climbing into the seat. How the fuck did anyone know where to put their feet in Halo 4?

[Blaze]

The worst change from Reach to 4 is that the Warthogs no longer say "STEP" right above the little lip used for climbing into the seat. How the fuck did anyone know where to put their feet in Halo 4?

You had to have the STEP perk in your loadout for it to appear.

[DualX]

I fucking lol'd. Can I just say how much nicer it is here now that people are yelling at each other about Halo again? Deeelightful.

I concur with this post. lol

[JCTucker]

I fucking lol'd. Can I just say how much nicer it is here now that people are yelling at each other about Halo again? Deeelightful.