The "Halo" in the Halo-series

[SpokkX]

So I am playing through the Halo campaigns again (played them all before, many several times)

I will not give an opinion on the quality of the games of the other than Halo: CE is by far my favorite, partly because of what i type next:

For a game called Halo, only the first game is really set on a Halo
The others are the planet/ship-hopping James Bond-type experiences (some few levels still on a Halo i guess)

What I loved about the first Halo was how Sci-fi it was and how it focused on, you know, the HALO.
You are on this weird alien construct with limitless possibilities. There are different biomes, underground areas, perhaps strange creatures. There is mystery, a sense of history and place.

With such a premise you would think you could just set every game on a Halo, because the variety would not be a problem. There is so much to build on

And what do the sequels keep?

.... with Halo 2 - the game is suddenly space opera with planethopping and military jargon the focus
... and the sequels more or less keep looking at Halo 2 instead of Halo 1 as influence..
The mystery is gone, it is military shooter set in levels wherever. Like any other shooter you are just put in a level, with a small cutscene preceeding gameplay.

The sci fi mystery and, you know, a HALO is pretty much missing in the other games
I always found this such a weird focus.

They had something really unique going with the Halo concept and instead the go military shooter (sometimes even on on Earth?!?)

Halo Infinite seems to be the first one to actually look at the first game - here is hoping they stay on a Halo this time

 

[Gundam]

It'd get old if every single game was on a Halo ring, and frankly, it would lose it's mystery over time anyway through repetition and failure to recapture the Halo 1 atmosphere if they tried. Halo 2 having a bigger narrative scope makes the most sense for a follow-up. Halo should have moments of isolation, and Halo 1 is by far my favorite as well, but it's easy to see why they went the route they did. I know it gets close, but imagine every Star Wars being about blowing up a death star

 

[Ravelle]

Halo infinite is gonna be two halo's overlapping each other forming an infinite sign.

 

[Hawkster]

Personally, the Halo rings would overstay their welcome if every Halo game was set on them

Then again, Halo 2 was my favorite campaign out of all Halo games, cliffhanger and all, so it's not like I follow nor care which Halo Halo campaign was better

 

[Combichristoffersen]

You kids don't know how lucky you are. Back in my day this was the only Halo we had, and we damn well liked it!

 

[FarSight XR-20]

Halo 3 ODST takes place in a human city and still has the best atmosphere in a Halo.

 

[NippleViking]

Disagree. A huge part of Halo's DNA is the contrast between different races, cultures, locations, and technologies. The huge diversity in atmosphere - e.g. going from austere colossal Forerunner world, to human future city, to alien Covenant mega metropolis - makes the universe feel big, varied, and interesting in a way that few other Sci-fi universes achieve.

 

[EvilBoris]

the Halo Rings are a gift for environments, they allow you to go from green valleys, to snow mountain ranges to deserts to oceans to jungles all with a reason to do so.

I guess with later games and their focus on a continuation of a narrative or a telling of a story per-halo rings , there has been a narrative and gameplay need to not be there.

Whilst there is part of me that thinks an open world game where you can travel the entirety of the Halo Ring in a circular fashion, I think I would miss those carefully controlled vistas that the linear mission areas allow for.

Destiny is very interesting as it shares so much in halo, you can see how Bungie blended those small open world planets with very linear missions.

 

[electroshockwave]

You kids don't know how lucky you are. Back in my day this was the only Halo we had, and we damn well liked it!

Click to shrink...

I prefer this Halo.

 

[EvilBoris]

I prefer this Halo.

Click to shrink...

I prefer this Halo

 

[Combichristoffersen]

I prefer this Halo.

Click to shrink...

I think this might be my personal fave Halo.

 

[DavidDesu]

Would love a Halo game that was truly set on a full scale Halo. You can traverse in either direction from your starting point and across the width of the Halo. Full on open world Halo-ing. Ooft!

 

[Eoin]

The human-Covenant war and the story of the Covenant species was mostly there from the beginning. I think it was obvious that that was the long-term focus of the story.

For them to contrive reasons to set that story exclusively on Halo rings would have been quite strange.

I rate the first game among the best games of all time, partly for the reasons that you mention, but Halo as a series was never going to avoid the main venues of the war for humanity's continued existence.

 

[Nooblet]

The entire story is built around the rings, what their activation entails, and the reason for their existence. It doesn't need to be set on a ring for the name to be relevant.

 

[TheBaldwin]

Would love a Halo game that was truly set on a full scale Halo. You can traverse in either direction from your starting point and across the width of the Halo. Full on open world Halo-ing. Ooft!

Click to shrink...

it seems like thats what halo infinite is going for. Which means it could amazing, or dome really poorly

 

[Nooblet]

Would love a Halo game that was truly set on a full scale Halo. You can traverse in either direction from your starting point and across the width of the Halo. Full on open world Halo-ing. Ooft!

Click to shrink...

That'd mean the game world is the size of earth's diameter.
A bit unrealistic there

 

[Akai]

The series became more about the "Halo Array" instead of just the rings, which I think is a good thing.

Otherwise we probably wouldn't have interesting places like The Ark and Shield Worlds like Requiem and Etran Harborage. Shame that both Shield Worlds have been destroyed, though. Made sense in Halo Wars 1, due to the Flood infestation, but I still don't know about blowing up Requiem in Halo 4's Spartan Ops. Would have been nice to explore those further.

 

[Asbsand]

Halo 1, 2 and 3 are all about the conflict of the Halos. In 3 you find the Ark which is like a master switch to all Halos and you use it to stop the gravemind and make sure the covenant no longer threaten galactic peace.

In Reach and ODST it's literally spinoffs showing the lore of the world around the conflict of Halos. Halo 4 and 5 I can't speak to. They seem un-canon to me. Like bad fanfiction.

 

[tobes231]

Infinite is gonna take us back to the promised (ring-shaped) land.

 

[SpokkX]

The human-Covenant war and the story of the Covenant species was mostly there from the beginning. I think it was obvious that that was the long-term focus of the story.

For them to contrive reasons to set that story exclusively on Halo rings would have been quite strange.

I rate the first game among the best games of all time, partly for the reasons that you mention, but Halo as a series was never going to avoid the main venues of the war for humanity's continued existence.

Click to shrink...

yeah i get the extended universe for narrative reasons etc but for me i think the gameplay and levels/environments should have been the focus instead of the covenant war or whatever

kind of like botw treats story - ganon is there sure,but the moment to moment encounters and environment is more important

for example halo 2... playing through some boring african street combat codstyle sections just to serve the story - no thanks

i think the halos would offer more gameplay if they just dont simplify them to a few levels and a control room... and then blow them up.

Feels like such a wasted opportunity - the halos are planet since, why not expand on them and create stories and new encounters there...instead of going to a city on earth... like every military shooter ever made

 

[Hawkster]

yeah i get the extended universe for narrative reasons etc but for me i think the gameplay and levels/environments should have been the focus instead of the covenant war or whatever

kind of like botw treats story - ganon is there sure,but the moment to moment encounters and environment is more important

for example halo 2... playing through some boring african street combat codstyle sections just to serve the story - no thanks

i think the halos would offer more gameplay if they just dont simplify them to a few levels and a control room... and then blow them up.

Feels like such a wasted opportunity - the halos are planet since, why not expand on them and create stories and new encounters there...instead of going to a city on earth... like every military shooter ever made

Click to shrink...

Sorry to ruin your parade, but Halo was always a military sci-fi game since its inception.

You've been literally playing a supersoldier kidnapped who was brainwashed and trained since he was a kid, for fuck's sake

 

[Eoin]

for example halo 2... playing through some boring african street combat codstyle sections just to serve the story - no thanks

Click to shrink...

Sure. I agree. That's an abominable level, one of the worst in the series.

However, it is no worse than 343 Guilty Spark, which is a level in the original Halo game which is also there purely to serve the story. It's got an awful layout (almost twenty years later there are people who have played through that level multiple times and think that they're backtracking for most of it, because the second half looks so similar to the first half), it presents essentially no challenge (it and The Library are the only levels in the game with no Elites, and The Library offers more challenging scenarios - for a half-decent Halo player there isn't a single threat during the entirety of 343 Guilty Spark), and there isn't even any Cortana. The only good things about that whole level are that it's the level where you get the shotgun, and that there's a glitch at the start that lets you stay in the Pelican and skip the first section of it.

If all the levels in Halo: Combat Evolved were great and all the non-Halo-based levels in the other games were poor, you'd have a good argument. However, that's not the case. We have bad levels through the series, whether they're on a Halo or not. We have good (or great) levels throughout the series, including on Earth or elsewhere. If you did a poll of Halo fans, you'd probably find that the Halo 3 campaign is more popular than the first game despite half of it being set on Earth. (If you're curious to see how that kind of poll would work on Resetera, here's a previous one where the original game is behind both Halo 3 and Halo Reach).

i think the halos would offer more gameplay if they just dont simplify them to a few levels and a control room... and then blow them up.

Click to shrink...

What would you want done with them that you couldn't get elsewhere, in a galaxy full of planets that offer a whole lot more possibility for variation than a Halo?

I mean, you talk in your original post about different biomes, underground areas and strange creatures. Reach has all of that. is it important to you that the varied levels that you want take place on a Halo ring, rather than having varied levels that take place elsewhere but still do include visits to the rings and other Forerunner installations?

I also never really felt that there was a huge mystery about the Halo rings other than what we learned in the first game. Their purpose is explosively clear.

 

[Deleted member 17402]

You know, Ellie, we're really not the last of us.

 

[shoemasta]

Metal Gear isn't really about Metal Gears!

 

[GringoSuave89]

Halo is less of a locale and more of a MacGuffin. While it is also a physical location the games treat Halos more as weapons than places.

 

[nekkid]

the Halo Rings are a gift for environments, they allow you to go from green valleys, to snow mountain ranges to deserts to oceans to jungles all with a reason to do so.

I guess with later games and their focus on a continuation of a narrative or a telling of a story per-halo rings , there has been a narrative and gameplay need to not be there.

Whilst there is part of me that thinks an open world game where you can travel the entirety of the Halo Ring in a circular fashion, I think I would miss those carefully controlled vistas that the linear mission areas allow for.

Destiny is very interesting as it shares so much in halo, you can see how Bungie blended those small open world planets with very linear missions.

Click to shrink...

That's unrealistic, but keeps cropping up from time to time. The scale is too big - it would be like having an open world game the size of the world.

 

[funky]

There sure are a lot of maps in Uncharted

 

[Mad_Rhetoric]

One of the reason im excited for Infinite is itll actually take place on a Halo ring again.

I expect to be blinded by it's majesty.

 

[banter]

Halo infinite is gonna be two halo's overlapping each other forming an infinite sign.

Click to shrink...

Underrated post. 😂🤣

 

[dodo]

even if you're not literally on a halo every moment of the halo games, literally every event in the story is tied to them (at least in the original games). this is like complaining that they're not always singing the song of ice and fire in a song of ice and fire

 

[Snake Eater]

I agree, another reason why Halo CE is still by far the best in the series, felt unique being on that halo world

 

[Waaghals]

I agree with this in principle, but the feel we got from Halo CE only works as long as there is a mystery. By the end of CE we know what the Halos are for, who built them and what happened to them. We also know what dark secret was hiding beneath the surface.

I still hope Halo Infinite is more of an FPS-adventure game.

 

[Crossing Eden]

That sense of mystery wouldn't be the same if literally every Halo game had Halo 1's structure. Hell, Halo Infinite will most likely feel fresh by default specifically because it's seemingly going back to a heavier focus on exploration and big environments.