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Halo Infinite - Campaign Overview (October 25th - 6am PT / 9am ET / 3pm CET)
- Thread starter Akai
- Start date
One possible explanation is networking. More moving and destructible parts & props means more shit you have to sync. UDP topology means the maximum reliable size of an individual UDP packet is about ~1400 bytes (yes you can obviously send more than that, but things get complicated past that). It's a complex subject.
Yeah, theres a lot of little touches that are missing from the overall presentation that stand out. Something about the art and the tech still doesnt quite match up completely for me.
Some quick observations:
The first shot is Chief holding what appears to be a Halo 1-era Cortana hologram. That appearance, combined with the way the hologram disappears, and the foggy nothingness of the background, make it look like a dream sequence. Halo 5: Guardians had a similar one.
There's an unattended Wraith in the back of this shot and I'm mad at the player for not going straight for it. You could have laid waste to this base, you fool!
This kinda sorta looks like the area from the E3 demo last year.
There's a giant ship hovering above the ring in a bunch of shots in this trailer. It's in the right middle of the shot above and there are two in the shot below. They might be an open-world objective, either getting to something to fire on them or lifting up to them to destroy them from within.
Staying on the screen above, there are two weapons terminals just ahead of the vehicle one the player is using.
Let's talk about the map screen. The "Area Collectibles" window in the bottom right seems intimidating at first blush, but I think 343 is being quite liberal with the term "collectibles." I believe some of them are things you have to destroy, like the silos seen later in the trailer. Here's the other mission on the map:
Notice that there is a faint "Fast Travel" under both missions. In the bottom right it says "Fast Travel Offline." This is possibly indicating that the player has to unlock fast travel in some way, maybe once for the whole game or maybe once for each area. Then after that, you can fast travel to any mission you've completed. And under "Fast Travel" under the FOB Golf mission is faint text that says "Ordnance available." I wonder if that means you can call in airstrikes or if it's referring to an ability to change your loadout. The Ransom Keep mission also includes a symbol with 100 under it to the left of the name. Perhaps this is the experience you'll get for completing the mission.
Here are some of the upgradable elements. The Grappleshot, Shield Core, Threat Sensor, Drop Wall, and Thruster can all be upgraded several times. You need Spartan Cores to do so. When the player goes invisible right after this, that was an upgrade for Thruster. And when you upgrade something, there's text on the screen making it seem like a software upgrade for your suit.
The new flying enemies appear to be messing with a Monitor.
The Harbinger doesn't look like any current Halo enemies (except for maybe the Prophets) so it'll be interesting to see what she is. She certainly doesn't look Forerunner.
Not liking those spaceship designs AT ALL. They look very LEGO-ish. But the rest is looking really promising.
The thing I'm by far the most disappointed by is New Cortana. She is so incredibly lame.
So you make your entire trilogy (or whatever it ends up being) about Cortana, her fall and her relationship to master chief and how important they are for each other. And then, after she was ripped away from him and turns into a villain...you just give Master Chief a new AI that looks and sounds almost exactly like Cortana?? And you make her the most anime trope ever, the endearing, naive cute girl everyone loves? "Maybe it's a friend!". Come on.
The novels are full of interesting, fascinating AIs. Did you know that they can take whatever form they chose? Probably not, because in the game they either have to be young, hot women or, if they get really fancy, men. This could've been their change to give MC, if they have to give him one, a really different AI! One that challenges him and presents a completely new dynamic compared to what was done before.
Instead, they just make Cortana but cuter. I'm kind of dreading my expectation that she will somehow fuse with Old Cortana at the end or something along those lines, so that they can just give you Cortana back and basically reset and ignore the entire dynamic and story built so far. But even if they don't do that: It just undermines this entire storyline. Why even go through any of this if you're only idea is "Uh...just..give him another Cortana I guess?"
They make a point of presenting these AIs as infinitely complex constructs with as many different forms. And what do we get in the games?
So you make your entire trilogy (or whatever it ends up being) about Cortana, her fall and her relationship to master chief and how important they are for each other. And then, after she was ripped away from him and turns into a villain...you just give Master Chief a new AI that looks and sounds almost exactly like Cortana?? And you make her the most anime trope ever, the endearing, naive cute girl everyone loves? "Maybe it's a friend!". Come on.
The novels are full of interesting, fascinating AIs. Did you know that they can take whatever form they chose? Probably not, because in the game they either have to be young, hot women or, if they get really fancy, men. This could've been their change to give MC, if they have to give him one, a really different AI! One that challenges him and presents a completely new dynamic compared to what was done before.
Instead, they just make Cortana but cuter. I'm kind of dreading my expectation that she will somehow fuse with Old Cortana at the end or something along those lines, so that they can just give you Cortana back and basically reset and ignore the entire dynamic and story built so far. But even if they don't do that: It just undermines this entire storyline. Why even go through any of this if you're only idea is "Uh...just..give him another Cortana I guess?"
They make a point of presenting these AIs as infinitely complex constructs with as many different forms. And what do we get in the games?
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Does that matter in a single player game? Interesting if so
Or do you perhaps mean the MP mode only?
Very similar to the Starhawk from Star Wars.
Starhawk-class battleship
The Starhawk-class battleship was a class of battleship used by the New Republic late during the Galactic Civil War and was produced at the Nadiri Dockyards. It consisted of three variants: A prototype, the Mark I Starhawk, and the Mark II. Three Mark Ones participated in the Battle of Jakku...
starwars.fandom.com
Well remember that Halo Infinite isn't just singleplayer, the campaign is slated to have co-op post launch, which will presumably run over the network much like previous titles (and likely use the competitive netcode like Halo5 did). So anything designed for the campaign has to fit both singleplayer and co-op, they aren't going to make two entirely different environment sandboxes.
Though as a fun note, it can even matter in singleplayer directly if the engine is designed around always running the netcode even with no other players (you run both the server and client always), I.e Quake. Though the limitations there are a little more lax due to not needing to run actual sockets locally. I don't think Halo is designed like this, however.
I've watched it a few times on my 77inch and I'm excited.
Im getting some real Halo, Silent cartographer, two betrayals, etc wide open level vibes from what I've seen which has been true to halo since 2001, long before Ubisoft was skinning raccoons.
Im getting some real Halo, Silent cartographer, two betrayals, etc wide open level vibes from what I've seen which has been true to halo since 2001, long before Ubisoft was skinning raccoons.
She's made of the same DNA, theoretically one of the three "smart AI's" Halsey created to counter Cortana. Her being so similar is expected, and really satisfying from a lore perspective. If they ever meet, it's gonna be very interesting, especially since her goal is... well, to end Cortana. She seems to be questioning that goal as you can see in the trailer. So good.
And for me personally, Halo w/o Cortana isn't Halo, so having her on board for the campaign is comfort food, a warm cozy fire in my ear lol
Check these out if you have time:
Halo Infinite: Who is the new Cortana-like AI companion?
My theory about the origins of "The Weapon" and what she was created to do.
www.windowscentral.com
Very interesting, shows how ignorant people yelling at old gen as a bottleneck when there are many other limitations such as this.
Destiny has this limitation, the netcode limits the amount of physics in game,.
It's weird there's no blood when the T rating card at the start of the trailer has 'blood' as one of the reasons for its rating. But yeah lack of blood is the main reason enemies don't feel as fun to shoot in the 343 Halos, there's so little feedback without it .
To me, it feels like they FINALLY have conviction that a game that goes all in on sandbox- like the classic Halo games- is the key to success.
It's been a decade... so I'm thoroughly pleased that they've finally endeavored to answer the call in this regard.
Halo 5's campaign was massively problematic so it needed massive correction. I'm not sure how Halo Infinite's "open-world-ish" campaign will play out, but it's an natural evolution of Halo CEs design goals.
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She's made of the same DNA, theoretically one of the three "smart AI's" Halsey created to counter Cortana. Her being so similar is expected, and really satisfying from a lore perspective. If they ever meet, it's gonna be very interesting, especially since her goal is... well, to end Cortana. She seems to be questioning that goal as you can see in the trailer. So good.
And for me personally, Halo w/o Cortana isn't Halo, so having her on board for the campaign is comfort food, a warm cozy fire in my ear lol
Check these out if you have time:
Halo Infinite: Who is the new Cortana-like AI companion?
My theory about the origins of "The Weapon" and what she was created to do.
Honestly, I don't really think this changes anything. It doesn't change the point of the character, it just gives an explanation for why it exists. And of course there is an explanation, my problem was never that it's a plot hole or something along those lines. It's a fictional universe, you can come up with and explain whatever you want. But just because they give an explanation for why the AI exists in universe doesn't change my fundamental disappointment with them undermining the importance and loss of Cortana to both the Master Chief and the Player by just giving you a new, cuter one. It doesn't really matter how they explain that decision in universe, the decision itself is the problem for me.
And yeah, I totally get you regarding the comfortable nostalgia that is Cortana in Halo. It's just that it really goes against the entire storyline so far. You don't build a relationship between your audience and a character and then, when something of consequence happens to that character that changes their role in the world, just replace it with a literal clone so that you don't actually have to change the audience's relation to the story in any meaningful way.
And to be clear: My problem isn't that there is a new AI. He should have an AI! It's just that i know from the novels how different and complex they can be. So seeing them using the same template over and over and over again is a bummer to me, even if it wasn't undermining the plot of the previous games.
I honestly can't understand this point. Halo 5 has the most open, sandbox-style gameplay arenas in the entire series. Halo 1 largely puts you in completely lifeless, tight, repeated corridors and only has a handful of bigger sandbox style areas. Halo 5 is chock fule of them, even going so far as to giving you several ways to progress.
Well, they are not undermining Cortana at all. The very first shot of this recent trailer shows Chief and Cortana... in a dream like sequence. Cortana is still everything to him and this series.
I also don't think they "made a reason" for her existence, she has always existed in the lore for a very long time. Same with the Palace of Pain and many other incredible Zeta Halo mysteries we hopefully see.
I get what youre saying, I guess agree to disagree. It's exciting for me! Untapped lore finally being utilized.
Halo 5 just walks you into mostly symmetrical arenas, then combat happens, then you move to the next one. Theres a route to the left and right, maybe one over and one under. Some gun racks neatly placed here and there. The level design was so lifeless and artificial. Sometimes you could bash a wall to find a secret. There was nothing organic or particularly interesting about it.
I like what I saw.
Seems like they realized that the story has gone to trash levels with their latest sequels,so fuck it,just include as much of Halo as you can in a single game without asking too many questions and call it a day. Which is fine by me
I just hope the gameplay loop doesn't fall into the cliche and boring tropes of every open world transition to date
Seems like they realized that the story has gone to trash levels with their latest sequels,so fuck it,just include as much of Halo as you can in a single game without asking too many questions and call it a day. Which is fine by me
I just hope the gameplay loop doesn't fall into the cliche and boring tropes of every open world transition to date
While Halo CE, did have some areas that were repetitious, due to hardware and time constraints- the aim was to make the player feel like they were marooned on an artificial planet and digging into their own creative toolbox in order to escape. That was the goal. Some levels were obviously more successful at that than the others.
Halo Infinite is an opportunity to bring that goal home.
Halo 5 was in no way a better realization of that. Those "several ways to progress" were just linear branches handcrafted by the developer. The player wasn't really empowered to take creative approaches- the developer just added hidden/secondary paths sometimes- Usually revealed by having the player perform a specific action on a specific area of the map.
Halo 5s vehicle sections all may as well have been on rails. Allowing for the feeling of exploration wasn't even an afterthought.
The best parts of Halo CE tried to make the player feel like they had a great deal of agency. In Halo 5 it's abundantly clear that agency doesn't exist. Halo Infinite looks to actually deliver that agency.
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Almost everything looks great and - most importantly - fun to play.
However the two pretty hefty disappointments I still have are:
However the two pretty hefty disappointments I still have are:
- The awful explosions and particle effects. I hoped these would be fixed for launch but this trailer tells me they're here to stay. Really poor.
- The lack of location/biome diversity. I'm worried the PNW/forerunner interior combo will get stale really quickly.
Agree with all of that.
The explosions look like Goldeneye, and the lack of biome diversity is particularly frustrating because there's some incredible Infinite artwork of deserts and snowy tundras that just haven't made it into the game - as far as we know.
For MP, maybe. They can still do something with the campaign mode though, no?
But that's how every Halo works. There are very, very few, very specific levels (like the Silent Cartographer) that are a little bit more open, but even then there is a very linear progression through the level. Other than that, that game and most of every game after that is exactly what you describe - combat arenas of differing sizes followed by paths to the next arena followed by combat arenas of differing sizes, vehicle section, repeat. The only real difference I noticed with Halo 5 is that those combat arenas tended to be bigger and more open ended than I was used to in previous Halo games, especially compared to something like Halo: CE and Halo 4 but that could be subjective. The only thing I'm really struggling to understand is that Halo 5 was somehow a step back compared to Halo 1 - 3 in regards to their sandbox design and how linear they were.
The biggest issue people seem to have with regards to 5's level design vs 1-3 is the larger vehicle sandbox stuff.
The more on-foot focused combat is absolutely more open ended in 5 than previous titles. However, the vehicle levels in 5 were a bit more constrained than the likes of 3 for example.
It's not just about the size of the combat arena, it's about the agency the player has in how they approach their attempt to progress through a level.
The expectation would be that with new technology the developer would remove the barriers to agency. That didn't happen with 4 or 5.
Weird, I could have written this post almost word for word, but the major difference would have been that I swapped Halo 5 and CE.
5 felt far more restricted to me than any Halo game that came before except maybe 4. It was mostly corridors with ledges and tunnels at the side. I missed the wide, open battlefields of the earlier games.
It is structured more like Metro Exodus, so you will visit multiple, open areas of the game.
Got u. I much rather them enrich the single player experience though...
HCE has a few levels with larger open environments; Halo and Two Betrayals for example. However, for the most part CE does consist of repeated corridor sections and smallish arena type rooms.
Most of Halo 5's levels will contain several large arena sections and even the most linear levels (such as the very first level) have much more complex design than the linear sections in CE.
I am sure the game will have it. I feel we kinda see something in the first part of the trailer also. When they talk about Cortana and Chief is looking at her in his hand. Seems some sort of flashback
At least half of the levels in CE have large areas which are much more open than the busy, geometry-heavy areas in 5.
Even the remaining levels often have some reasonably large spaces, think of the hangars in Truth and Reconciliation, for instance.
I found Halo 5 to be far too dense to give a real sense of scale and openness.
The thing I'm by far the most disappointed by is New Cortana. She is so incredibly lame.
So you make your entire trilogy (or whatever it ends up being) about Cortana, her fall and her relationship to master chief and how important they are for each other. And then, after she was ripped away from him and turns into a villain...you just give Master Chief a new AI that looks and sounds almost exactly like Cortana?? And you make her the most anime trope ever, the endearing, naive cute girl everyone loves? "Maybe it's a friend!". Come on.
The novels are full of interesting, fascinating AIs. Did you know that they can take whatever form they chose? Probably not, because in the game they either have to be young, hot women or, if they get really fancy, men. This could've been their change to give MC, if they have to give him one, a really different AI! One that challenges him and presents a completely new dynamic compared to what was done before.
Instead, they just make Cortana but cuter. I'm kind of dreading my expectation that she will somehow fuse with Old Cortana at the end or something along those lines, so that they can just give you Cortana back and basically reset and ignore the entire dynamic and story built so far. But even if they don't do that: It just undermines this entire storyline. Why even go through any of this if you're only idea is "Uh...just..give him another Cortana I guess?"
They make a point of presenting these AIs as infinitely complex constructs with as many different forms. And what do we get in the games?
343 gave us a really thoughtful narrative centered around Master Chief and Cortanas relationship. People hated it and screamed and kicked like babies until 343 made it go away. This new direction is what people want and you have the fans to thank for it.
IMO there are no spaces in Halo 5 like the Hydro Dam from Sierra 117, the final Part of the mission Exodus from Reach, barrelling down the mountainside to take on 2 Scarabs in The Covenant. Lauching off a ramp onto the nose of one and trying to get your marines off before it blows up. Even the 3 different rescue areas from the CE level Halo and the different approaches you can take.
I know there are multiple routes in the arenas and options and It all set up to play to the Spartan abilities. But you are never loading out of a bus full of marines with rocket launchers for utter carnage. Or setting up a Warthog gunner for cover and flanking as drop ships arrive.
It was very focussed on the individual, and fast paced infantry combat. And that never felt very Halo to me. It felt restrictive in its sandbox and therefore more linear.
Thats why I think people consider Infinite to be a 'correction' in someways.
To be fair I only played 5 once because it didnt vibe with me at all. But thats how it felt to me.
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I think of it for all of them. Masterchief is going to have to deal with a rookie now, when he's used to having a competent professional at his side. He'll probably subconsciously want to treat her like Cortana, but not be able to. It'd be really cool if he had to sort of learn to treat her as her own person, as she obtains more awareness (she seems perfectly content to just do her job and deactivate at first), maybe she'll become more her own person as well. What if Masterchief finds cortana after holding onto the idea that he can save her only to find that she really has truly split from him. There's a lot of things that this situation could drive character development for everyone involved.
I don't know if I think it'll be just a literal clone. I think the fact that she ISN'T Cortana could be interesting. They could fuck it up and make it boring but they could also have something interesting to do with it too. I think the topic has a lot of possibilities.
I mean they clearly want the other types of AI at the forefront, they're providing not one but a small bunch and probably more in future for players to choose from in PvP. They coulda been more inventive with the shapes but ehh, probably a multiplayer readability thing.
Good, I liked Metro Exodus structure a lot
Halo doesn't need a huge open-world map, having multiple open areas will surely help the pacing of the game and avoid it being too dispersive
Probably the blowing up of silos and use of the grappleshot (hook), I'd say.