Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: terran_emperor on June 06, 2011, 07:24:28 pm
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343 industries have just made 2 massive announcements:
1) Halo CE Anniversary - A remaster of the origial legendary game
Trailer on Halo Waypoint. Due out November 15th 2011
2) Halo 4 - The first in a new trilogy. Trailer on Halo Waypoint. Due out Summer or Christmas next year.
This news has appears to have crashed the Halo gaming servers.
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1) TO GAMING DISCUSSION WITH THEE!
2) No it hasn't, they've been working fine during and since the announcement.
EDIT: oh, and I suppose I should mention how AWESOME these announcements are.
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1) I agree - I only realised I'd posted in the wrong place after the fact.
2) The UK server(s?) that I use is unavailable at the moment.
I am so there at mid-night for Halo CEA
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US servers have been fine all day.
CEA looks like it uses the same engine as Reach, which was honestly the best part of Reach. Totally psyched.
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Who's writing? Same guy as Reach?
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Who's writing? Same guy as Reach?
**** no
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I'm actually not sure.
It's 343, not Bungie, so unless he jumped ship with them, I doubt it. I have no idea what I'm talking about. More research necessary.
EDIT: Thank you Battuta.
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**** no
I shall hold out cautious hope.
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Interesting. I hope they go back to the "classic" Halo-pattern game. Reach was ok, but I just could never get the feel for the multiplayer like I could with any of the originals.
On another note, I'm kinda torn. There's a strong possibility that this should be a good game (seeing as what it's based on- one of the most successful shooter models known to man), and yet, I kinda wish Bungie, excuse me, 343 studios, would break some new ground. But, all that said, I'll hold off on any sort of binding judgments for a good long while.
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Bungie is breaking new ground, that's why 343 exists.
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Bungie is breaking new ground, that's why 343 exists.
Ever the wit, I see. :lol:
In seriousness, I kinda meant along the lines of maybe moving on from Master Chief as the main PC. There's plenty of stories that could be told in the Haloverse, why should one grizzled Spartan get to rampage through them all?
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Bungie is breaking new ground, that's why 343 exists.
Ever the wit, I see. :lol:
In seriousness, I kinda meant along the lines of maybe moving on from Master Chief as the main PC. There's plenty of stories that could be told in the Haloverse, why should one grizzled Spartan get to rampage through them all?
Depending on how long he and Cortana have been floating in the ether, they could do some really groovy stuff. I mean imagine if its been a couple thousand or a million years?
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Hey, it's just my knee-jerk reaction. Beyond that, I'm keeping my mind open.
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The thing that ate them looked like Unicron. I'm hoping for a Tranformers OG crossover.
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Bungie is breaking new ground, that's why 343 exists.
Ever the wit, I see. :lol:
In seriousness, I kinda meant along the lines of maybe moving on from Master Chief as the main PC. There's plenty of stories that could be told in the Haloverse, why should one grizzled Spartan get to rampage through them all?
The last three(?) games to come out haven't featured the Chief at all.
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In seriousness, I kinda meant along the lines of maybe moving on from Master Chief as the main PC. There's plenty of stories that could be told in the Haloverse, why should one grizzled Spartan get to rampage through them all?
As soon as you pull the plug on the Chief, thousands will lose their source of synthetic testosterone, and Wambulances shall be forever in limbo.
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And thus hundreds of thousands of fratboys cried out in joy.
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And thus hundreds of thousands of fratboys cried out in joy.
Could you please just stop being a tool for ten seconds in Hard Light Productions Gaming Discussion? **** I don't even like Halo that much and haven't since Halo 2, I greeted this trailer with a colossal shrug, but stop this thing where it's okay for you to wax rhapsodic about your favorite games but if you like something outside of Stuff Mongoose Enjoys you're in the frat boy taste leagues or you're a drone who enjoys brown military shooters, wrap it all up with a tongue emote and call it done.
You're better than that.
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From what I can tell from the trailer + interview vids on waypoint, Halo CEA looks tobe somewhere between FS Port and ST:R.
Campaign will be virtually untouched Gameplay-wise, on a heavily improved version of the origial engine. It will feature Reach level graphics and various other additions , including hidden terminals (like in Halo 3) Don't know if storyline will be expanded.
Multiplayer will be on the Reach engine and possibly on a second disc as it was with ODST
@General Batuta
I think Rikki-Tikki-Tavi meant 'fanboys' and I agree with him. I know I did...shout in joy, that is
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And thus hundreds of thousands of fratboys cried out in joy.
Could you please just stop being a tool for ten seconds in Hard Light Productions Gaming Discussion? **** I don't even like Halo that much and haven't since Halo 2, I greeted this trailer with a colossal shrug, but stop this thing where it's okay for you to wax rhapsodic about your favorite games but if you like something outside of Stuff Mongoose Enjoys you're in the frat boy taste leagues or you're a drone who enjoys brown military shooters, wrap it all up with a tongue emote and call it done.
You're better than that.
Regardless of any statements I've made in the past, you can't sit there and tell me that the original Halo wasn't a fairly-unremarkable game that somehow managed to create millions of rabid fanboys that treated it as the Grand High Franchise. Hell, it spawned an entire culture of a specific type of gamer, which sees its continuation today in the teeming masses of CoD fans. I played the original Halo, and I found the singleplayer to be repetitive and often tiresome, while the multiplayer was a plodding annoying affair; from everything I've heard and seen, the various sequels didn't exactly display any massive improvements. The news of an entire new trilogy in the series feels for all the world like the lame cash-grab it really is.
Also, don't try to pin any sort of negative behavior in here on me alone. I've seen utterly absurd amounts of hyper-critical nit-picking from people in here aimed at titles barely deserving of any of it. I hardly think that a few snide one-liners are a bigger problem than elitist groupthink.
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I never thought I'd have to say this to moderators, but don't argue here.
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Mongoose, the reason the original Halo comes off as being so run-of-the-mill now is because it essentially established the formulae that modern shooters operate on today. It changed quite a bit about the FPS genre in its time, and calling it "fairly unremarkable" shows a blatant disregard for history. Remember that Halo 1 came out in a time when first-person shooters were still considered impossible to implement well on a console and when the genre was moving towards multiplayer-only on PC. If nothing else, Halo 1 is a big part of the reason why FPS's to this day ship on consoles and with singleplayer campaigns.
You can certainly criticize the sequels all you like for failing to innovate or not refining the formula, and I'll agree that the new trilogy is naught but milking the franchise, but the original deserved all of the fanfare it received and most certainly shouldn't be written off as "fairly unremarkable."
[edit] Also, I feel it necessary to point out that you've been defending the Duke Nukem Forever demo. You're not in the best position to be attacking a shooter for being a formulaic cash grab, while defending another formulaic cash grab of a shooter, fifteen years in the making. [/edit]
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Prior to Halo
Regenerating health was rare and 2-4 weapon limit, was about but still uncommon. Walking, driving and flying being equally enjoyable in one game was rare. Console to PC port that was worth playing on either system anyone?
I would have to disagree with BlueFlames on the dwindling single player in FPS focus as although there were some dire games at the time there were also some good ones as well. But on the rest of BlueFlame's post I have to whole heartedly agree.
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I would have to disagree with BlueFlames on the dwindling single player in FPS focus as although there were some dire games at the time there were also some good ones as well.
The big franchises were definately moving in the direction of multiplayer-only. Quake 3, Unreal Tournament, and the commercial release of Counterstrike really laid the groundwork. They proved to publishers that they needn't have their developers spend the time or money on tremendous AI or a lengthy singleplayer campaign, as long as they could make content for a pretty graphics engine and build solid netcode. There were certainly a few singleplayer FPS's available, like Red Faction, but the number of releases was diminishing, up to the point of Halo's release, and had it not been for Halo, I think it's safe to say that the trend would have continued.
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Regardless of any statements I've made in the past, you can't sit there and tell me that the original Halo wasn't a fairly-unremarkable game that somehow managed to create millions of rabid fanboys that treated it as the Grand High Franchise
Jesus Christ are you serious. Yes I can, I can say that, I can absolutely assert it was a remarkable game. Furthermore, I would never say the same thing about 'fairly unremarkable' console trash like Zelda or Final Fantasy, because even though I don't see the slightest bit of value in those games, I understand there is value for many people, and I respect that my perspective isn't everything. Those games are meaningful and important even if I don't enjoy them.
Hell, it spawned an entire culture of a specific type of gamer, which sees its continuation today in the teeming masses of CoD fans. I played the original Halo, and I found the singleplayer to be repetitive and often tiresome, while the multiplayer was a plodding annoying affair; from everything I've heard and seen, the various sequels didn't exactly display any massive improvements. The news of an entire new trilogy in the series feels for all the world like the lame cash-grab it really is.
I respect that my perspective isn't everything, and wow, dude, apparently you don't. Mongoose judges, and thus, I quote, that's how 'it really is'.
If Mongoose doesn't like it, it's a lame cash grab and its fans are frat bros. Get on the Mongoose wagon or get out. There's no room here for people to wish well for franchises they themselves don't enjoy.
What is with this forum? I spend pages defending console gamers from PC gamers, then turn around and find the console gamers being just as toolhardy to each other. Pages defending empiricism from the uninformed, then turn around to find atheists being ****heads.
Also, don't try to pin any sort of negative behavior in here on me alone. I've seen utterly absurd amounts of hyper-critical nit-picking from people in here aimed at titles barely deserving of any of it. I hardly think that a few snide one-liners are a bigger problem than elitist groupthink.
Brother, I just said that you were better than that. Go on, then; prove I'm right. Believe it or not, gaming isn't a zero-sum affair, and the fact that people are having fun with something you don't enjoy isn't cause to tear it down or to make those people out to be idiots.
I've argued for tolerance in your defense before. Now you're on the other side of that argument, and that saddens me.
jesus **** I can't believe I have to do this in a thread about Halo 4, a game I do not even give a **** about.
ed: I mean come on man, it boils down to this: is it hurting you? No. Why do you need to come in here and call the people who enjoy it dumb frat bros? What gives you the privilege to describe every single Halo player? Why is your opinion automatically worth more than those of every one of those players?
If you don't like it, that's fine, why do you have to piss on those who do? Even by playground sandbox rules that's pretty small.
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It's not like I'm saying you're the worst person since Hitler, but come on man, these petty franchise wars are the kind of things I expect to see on Kotaku comments or GameFAQs.
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The thing I hate about these Halo discussions is that people use the same arguments that have been refuted over and over again. Halo didn't innovate weapons limits or regenerating health (Let's say... Battlezone 2 in 1999 had these and I'd wager it wasn't the first).
It wasn't even the first good implementation of an FPS on a console (GoldenEye seems to have had pretty good press about it).
What Halo did achieve was popularizing FPS on consoles and in doing so, making FPS more mainstream. It was an above average FPS, but not the crown jewel of gaming people make it up to be.
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God I don't even ****ing care, I give no ****s about Halo, I just want people to stop being tools.
(Marathon was better than Doom)
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(Let's say... Battlezone 2 in 1999 had these and I'd wager it wasn't the first).
Hardly. Only the morphable Scion vehicles and some heavy ISDF vehicles had health regeneration, otherwise you only regenerated ammo, and in both cases it was so slow so as to be negligible. I mean, the ISDF scout could remanufacture a minigun round about once a second, maybe a bit slower. Ships were still pretty much dependent on outside support.
Pariah had limited health regeneration- your health bar was broken into a few segments, and you could regenerate up to the top of your highest remaining segment. But, I think Pariah came after Halo (wiki check: most certainly).
****, Freespace has a shielding system not entirely different than Halo's- shields go first, then you take hull (health) damage. Just no medkits (unless we're playing WiH or something along those lines).
What Halo did achieve was popularizing FPS on consoles and in doing so, making FPS more mainstream. It was an above average FPS, but not the crown jewel of gaming people make it up to be.
It may not be the best game of all time, but in most gamers' minds, it was really good. Moreover, it came out at a good time: the Xbox was suffering from weakish launch titles just prior to Halo's release. People loved it for the simple reason that it was fun. I fondly recall plenty of occasions where me and my buddies would drag our Xbox crap over to each other's houses, and have epic 4-on-4 and larger CTF wars.
To the matter at hand:
Now that I've had a chance to sleep on it, I've come back with a more defined opinion. I'm excited to see what 343 is going to do with the multiplayer, and I'm also interested in the single player. The core Halo games, to me, have always had a pretty good story, so the inclusion of Master Chief, while understandable (seeing as we're picking up after 3), perhaps struck me initially as a little uninspired. Though if that trailer has any bearing on what we can expect from gameplay (which it very well might not), I for one would be very interested in the prospect of real zero-g combat.
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The thing I hate about these Halo discussions is that people use the same arguments that have been refuted over and over again. Halo didn't innovate weapons limits or regenerating health (Let's say... Battlezone 2 in 1999 had these and I'd wager it wasn't the first).
Regenerating health was rare and 2-4 weapon limit, was about but still uncommon.
It wasn't even the first good implementation of an FPS on a console (GoldenEye seems to have had pretty good press about it).
I would have to agree there but it was the exception and not the rule, Halo strongly influenced it becoming the norm
What Halo did achieve was popularizing FPS on consoles and in doing so, making FPS more mainstream. It was an above average FPS, but not the crown jewel of gaming people make it up to be.
I am sorry but at the time it was the crown jewel, find the noteworthy console fps games prior to that and count them, it is a small number especially compared to now.
What Halo did was not new from an innovation standpoint, what it did was to round up all the little bits out there already and apply a good coat of polish making the genre accessible to the masses, then Microsoft did it's usual ohhh that worked lets do it again thus making the Halo template the baseline for arcade fps games. Again i am not saying that is always a good thing but it was an influential moment in gaming history and did for consoles what ID's Wolfenstine and Doom games did for the PC a decade earlier
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I never played Halo, and wasn't aware of its historical "importance" at all. Nice to learn it.
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It wasn't even the first good implementation of an FPS on a console (GoldenEye seems to have had pretty good press about it).
Goldeneye was a whole generation of consoles before, and though my N64 still worked when I got an Xbox (and still works now), whatever mark it had made was long since erased. Goldeneye's genius lay in different areas, as well, in variety. As a storytelling medium it was pretty much ****.
Halo was more than an unremarkable game to play. I've been with the single-player FPS from Wolfenstein 3D to now, and the games that have matched the cinematic scope and good presentation of Halo remain few and far between. Simply impugning it as average because advancing technology has skewed your views will not suffice.
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Simply impugning it as average because advancing technology has skewed your views will not suffice.
Right, because no one ever played FPS's before Halo...
This is the one thing I've never understood. Noone in these discussions brings up any game title released after Halo, and the most brought out response is "Oh, you can't appreciate modern games because Halo influenced them.". If that's a non sequitur, I don't know what is.
I've never seen Medal of Honor fans being as vocal as Halo fans, in spite of its impact being in the same ballpark.
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This is the one thing I've never understood. No one in these discussions brings up any game title released after Halo, and the most brought out response is "Oh, you can't appreciate modern games because Halo influenced them.". If that's a non sequitur, I don't know what is.
You have willfully misinterpreted this statement. I see no other way you could possibly derive something so utterly wrong from it. I am not saying this; I am saying that comparing games after Halo to Halo is unfair because of course they'll be able to do the basics like animation better; they're newer. Even a comparison of presentation and the like is fraught with peril, as the collective knowledge of mankind on the subject advances.
However very few games have ever attempted to be an FPS and present a coherent story as cleanly as Halo does. You're arguing it's not innovative in gameplay. I give no ****s about gameplay. I'm arguing it was revolutionary in telling a story, well, of great scope. It struck a very careful balance in so doing, one that most other games attempting to emulate this style have failed to meet. (CoD4 and its relatives come to mind.)
Also, this is a non-sequitor, as it has no relation to your argument.
Right, because no one ever played FPS's before Halo...
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This is the one thing I've never understood. No one in these discussions brings up any game title released after Halo, and the most brought out response is "Oh, you can't appreciate modern games because Halo influenced them.". If that's a non sequitur, I don't know what is.
You have willfully misinterpreted this statement. I see no other way you could possibly derive something so utterly wrong from it. I am not saying this; I am saying that comparing games after Halo to Halo is unfair because of course they'll be able to do the basics like animation better; they're newer. Even a comparison of presentation and the like is fraught with peril, as the collective knowledge of mankind on the subject advances.
However very few games have ever attempted to be an FPS and present a coherent story as cleanly as Halo does. You're arguing it's not innovative in gameplay. I give no ****s about gameplay. I'm arguing it was revolutionary in telling a story, well, of great scope. It struck a very careful balance in so doing, one that most other games attempting to emulate this style have failed to meet. (CoD4 and its relatives come to mind.)
And I'm not comparing modern games to it. Noone is. I'm arguing that everything Halo did had been done before.
I'm not arguing that it was a bad game, as I said before, it was a above average game, a good one. But people try to give it more importance by stating ridiculous things like it was innovative and whatnot (basically, they begin to sound like an Apple advertisement).
The previously mentioned Medal of Honor game did what Halo did, it was an award winning game that received several praises for it's story (created by Spielberg of all people), gameplay, whatnot. And it was also a console game. In 1999.
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Okay...how about we play the "Mongoose never posted in here" game, since this thread has managed to go to hell in a handbasket, and I honestly didn't want that. Thanks for the mind-reading sessions, Battuta; at this point, I don't really suppose I can respond in any sense without looking like even more of a massive douchebag than I already seem. That's really what I needed today.
So yeah, sorry for the crazy thread disruption. Forget I was here.
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Quit getting mad about video games. All of you. Halo is fun.
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I agree, Halo was very fun for me... that is up until Reach. After seeing the trailer I didn't really feel anything at all, the Halo universe, specifically a Master Chief driven universe, is dead to me. Here's hoping that it will at least have some different gameplay elements, but that sound unlikely already. :doubt:
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Wow. You've gotten one 30 second trailer that already shows something different and you're moaning about no different gameplay elements?
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I said I hoped there would be something different, but do you think there will be anything that stands out?
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Not to feed the rants, but I've been collecting Halo CEA info like crazy...
There's no Halo CE multiplayer outside of co-op... the 7 maps are made for Reach, with one of those being a campaign
map rehashed for firefight. It's like ODST's 2 disc affair... the reason 343 decided not to make CE multiplayer, they claim is
lag, and everyone would run around getting headshots with the CE pistol. So they didn't want to fracture the (already dwindling
and disappointed) community. So they're going to stick with Reach's system.
Needless to say the waypoint forums are pretty active with folks voicing their opposition against this rip of Halo CE.
We're basically getting the original CE (same engine and all, it's got another engine on top doing the graphical change) which everyone
has played already... and a Reach map pack.
Dang it 343... arrgh.
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I'm literally completely fine with that.
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As am I. CE was good, I enjoyed it then, still do now, and any serious screwing with it would annoy me.
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Now Halo CE with a graphical update does sound kinda nice... I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
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I said I hoped there would be something different, but do you think there will be anything that stands out?
From a Halo perspective? That screw on grenade launcher for the Chief's pistol stands out.
From a general FPS standpoign? That screw on grenade launcher for a pistol kinda stands out. Sure, you've got rifle grenades, but pistol is new.
Plus, we've seen nothing at all of the campaign. At all. Bit early to be so pessimistic.
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When it comes to games, I'm always pessimistic, else I'd waste so much money buying everything that looks cool. :lol:
But your right, so I digress.
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2) Halo 4 - The first in a new trilogy. Trailer on Halo Waypoint. Due out Summer or Christmas next year.
(http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQIUUBBXOpRUxotmn4o_7-ls_yOpF5xIC-ZCB4TgHha5HsuJQRhqg&t=1)
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Okay, I can't resist....
(http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQIUUBBXOpRUxotmn4o_7-ls_yOpF5xIC-ZCB4TgHha5HsuJQRhqg&t=1)
The Halo series has become the Bush administration!
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I'll just leave this here: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/video/halo (http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/video/halo)
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I'll just leave this here: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/video/halo (http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/video/halo)
old AND terrible :colbert:
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And thus hundreds of thousands of fratboys cried out in joy.
Could you please just stop being a tool for ten seconds in Hard Light Productions Gaming Discussion? **** I don't even like Halo that much and haven't since Halo 2, I greeted this trailer with a colossal shrug, but stop this thing where it's okay for you to wax rhapsodic about your favorite games but if you like something outside of Stuff Mongoose Enjoys you're in the frat boy taste leagues or you're a drone who enjoys brown military shooters, wrap it all up with a tongue emote and call it done.
You're better than that.
Asides from the rant at Mongoose, that's how I feel about the Halo franchise (Well, ODST wasn't too bad), and Reach made my feelings for the series take a nose dive. Worst sci-fi writing ever? Quite possibly.
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You've obviously never read bad Sci-Fi if you think that was the worst ever.
It was disappointing compared to what it could have been, but it falls decidedly on the mediocre portion of the scale.
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Please don't tempt me to write bad sci-fi, Ravenholme. I have enough trouble with my current projects.
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Please don't tempt me to write bad sci-fi, Ravenholme. I have enough trouble with my current projects.
Okay, it was one of the worst written sci-fi game plots to come out of the Western games industry. But it falls on the bad side of the mediocre sliding scale. It's so bland and unoriginal and blueeeughghg. And let's not talk about how flat a character Chief is, I'm sorry if I find the idea of playing a supersoldier who has no real setbacks uninviting and boring.
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Huh, you're right. It's obviously worse than Command and Conquer 4. Or Duke Nukem Forever. Or The Force Unleashed. Or any number of a hundred titles that don't get spotlights for how bad they are because nobody cares.
I can't argue that the Chief isn't flat. He is. But then that's probably why he's the player character. A game that constantly ****s on the player isn't the most fun thing to play.
Besides which, kidnapped from his parents at age 6, subjected to horrifying enhancement procedures that had a greater than 50% casualty rate, 30 years constant combat in a unit you don't get to leave until you die, jumped by horrifying parasites, stranded alone in the middle of SpaceTM in a dinky fighter, jumped again by horrifying parasites, stranded on a large hostile ship in the middle of SpaceTM, chucked out the window of said large hostile ship into Earth's atmosphere for a last-minute appointment with the ground, jumped a third time by horrifying parasites, and finally stranded in a derelict ship in the middle of SpaceTM.
And that's just the stuff you learn about in the games proper. Yeah, those aren't real setbacks. Just because we hear an unwavering voice doesn't mean nothing bad happens.
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Huh, you're right. It's obviously worse than Command and Conquer 4. Or Duke Nukem Forever. Or The Force Unleashed. Or any number of a hundred titles that don't get spotlights for how bad they are because nobody cares.
I can't argue that the Chief isn't flat. He is. But then that's probably why he's the player character. A game that constantly ****s on the player isn't the most fun thing to play.
Besides which, kidnapped from his parents at age 6, subjected to horrifying enhancement procedures that had a greater than 50% casualty rate, 30 years constant combat in a unit you don't get to leave until you die, jumped by horrifying parasites, stranded alone in the middle of SpaceTM in a dinky fighter, jumped again by horrifying parasites, stranded on a large hostile ship in the middle of SpaceTM, chucked out the window of said large hostile ship into Earth's atmosphere for a last-minute appointment with the ground, jumped a third time by horrifying parasites, and finally stranded in a derelict ship in the middle of SpaceTM.
And that's just the stuff you learn about in the games proper. Yeah, those aren't real setbacks. Just because we hear an unwavering voice doesn't mean nothing bad happens.
So he's the unstoppable flatman who has it because of a bad past. So interesting. Wait, no it's not, that's fanfiction level of writing. [Oh my OC is so powerful but he/she is such because of a dark and conflicted and edgy past~] There is no joy in playing Superman, for me, and he stinks of author avatarism (I can so see Chief being whom the guys at Bungie wanted to be).
We're hearing plenty about how bad DNF is, TFU was consistently slated and it's sequel was derided, C&C 4 was spat upon and buried. The reason you consistently hear about Halo is because for some reason it became a hit (Well, probably because it's a fun multiplayer game series), but for a game series that makes itself out as some sci-fi magnum opus of awesome, the writing and attention paid to the SP campaigns and their own canon is shockingly bad. Reach especially is guilty of these points, the quality of the writing was godawful and it pretty much kicked over everything else about the Fall of Reach. Halo 1 and the first novels were decent, if average sci-fi. Halo 2 was okay, ODST was a peak back up to Halo 1 levels, and then 3 and Reach were just downhill.
Of course, I *also* dislike the Halo series for eclipsing the Advent Rising series, because that was a series that had marginally more potential and that I enjoyed somewhat more than Halo 1 (Although, naturally, Halo 1's MP wins out, as AR had none).
Maybe I should point out this is the opinion of a gamer who enjoys singleplayer more than MP, because I enjoy the plots and stories of games, so it irks me when a series (Halo post 2) claims to be something other than a reason to justify their multiplayer man-shoots.
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The Chief was actually a lot more interesting (sorta) in Halo 1, where he was sort of a dryly wisecracking Clint Eastwood figure. After that they made him into a lobotomized Power Ranger.
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The Chief was actually a lot more interesting (sorta) in Halo 1, where he was sort of a dryly wisecracking Clint Eastwood figure. After that they made him into a lobotomized Power Ranger.
Yeah, I completely agree with you there.
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We're hearing plenty about how bad DNF is, TFU was consistently slated and it's sequel was derided, C&C 4 was spat upon and buried.
Probably a problem with how I said it, but the 'hundred other titles you never hear about' was not meant to include the three prominent titles I led with.
Chief is also the unstoppable flatman because that's what the player does over the course of a game. Unless you're going to say that you don't like playing Half-Life as well because Gordan Freeman is an even blockier piece of wood who never suffers any setbacks (which I highly doubt, given your username :P).
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His username isn't from Half-Life, bro.
And yeah I don't think that's any excuse for a boring protagonist. Lots of games have well-written - okay, maybe not well written, but written - protagonists and still have plenty of crazy action. Uncharted, God of War, hurr blurr
Gordon Freeman is dumb and ruins my suspension of disbelief :goonqq:
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Gordon Freeman is dumb and ruins my suspension of disbelief :goonqq:
I sort of feel like it's much more disbelief-suspending to have a main character who gabs all over the place and comes across like a massive douche than one who knows how to keep his trap shut. :p At least in the original game, though, Master Chief is fairly close to a silent protagonist himself.
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His username isn't from Half-Life, bro.
I found this out abote 30 seconds after I posted my reply. :blah:
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Gordon Freeman is dumb and ruins my suspension of disbelief :goonqq:
I sort of feel like it's much more disbelief-suspending to have a main character who gabs all over the place and comes across like a massive douche than one who knows how to keep his trap shut. :p
Feel like you're missing the joke, aaargh the tongue emotes
Chief never speaks during gameplay, that seems to be the rule they play by. Only time you get dialogue during gameplay is in ODST, which I rather liked.
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Gordon Freeman is dumb and ruins my suspension of disbelief :goonqq:
I sort of feel like it's much more disbelief-suspending to have a main character who gabs all over the place and comes across like a massive douche than one who knows how to keep his trap shut. :p
Feel like you're missing the joke, aaargh the tongue emotes
Chief never speaks during gameplay, that seems to be the rule they play by. Only time you get dialogue during gameplay is in ODST, which I rather liked.
Bam! said the l-a-d-y
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So he's the unstoppable flatman who has it because of a bad past. So interesting. Wait, no it's not, that's fanfiction level of writing. [Oh my OC is so powerful but he/she is such because of a dark and conflicted and edgy past~] There is no joy in playing Superman, for me, and he stinks of author avatarism (I can so see Chief being whom the guys at Bungie wanted to be).
You don't understand fanfiction, Superman, or author avatars. At all.
As someone who's delved much too far into the seedy underbelly of the fanfiction world, you are failing to apprehend that the dark past is something that's incidental to the character, rather than a source of power (****, I can't even think of a story that ever used a dark past that way); you are failing to apprehend that in this particular case the past is perhaps dark, but certainly isn't used as an object to make us love the Chief (if anything, the Chief's past is used to demonstrate that we'd find him more alien than we would your average Elite); you are failing to apprehend that the past isn't actually dark insofar as the character is concerned and playing it for angst is therefore damn near impossible.
And I don't even know where to start with author avatars. Every victory is bittersweet, almost no opportunities for wisecracks are taken, he doesn't get the girl (he may not even understand the impulse), he shuns the accolades people want to give him. He's basically treated like the world's greatest mechanic or technician. Sure, he's really damn good at what he does, and it happens to be vital, but very few people would recognize him.
And I'm not going to start on the Superman crap because we'd be here all week while we try to understand the character and his evolution from the '30s to today and the odds are good my understanding of him is only slightly better than yours, which is slightly better than Kill Bill's.
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Indeed.
An author avatar is a character in a work that is used to tell the player what the author wants the player to know about life, politics, takeyourpickofsubjects in relation to the game. Kriea from KotOR II is probably the most blatant example of one*. As the Chief hardly ever talks, when he does talk he's responding to something very game related, never waxes philosophical, never questions why he's fighting this war, he can't be an author avatar. He is, as NGTM-1R said, a very efficient mechanic.
* acknowledged by her writer here (http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/feature-interview-chris-avellone-game-designer-fallout-new-vegas/) about halfway down the page.
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Kreia was not an author avatar.
Chief isn't really an author avatar either, though, he's just Bungie's Hero with a Thousand Faces but unlike with Marathon they were really lazy and never did interesting about them (the guy in Marathon is actually a very interesting character to explore, and written much better than the Chief.)
David Weber is an example of someone who writes true author avatars, though I'd have to dig to find the exact book and character.
Fanfiction is full of terrible characters who have dark and terrible pasts, this is one of the traits of bad fanfiction writing. Now that a bunch of ****ty fanfiction writers are entering true genre writing we have to deal with more of it (looking at you Sarah Monette).
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An author avatar is a character in a work that is used to tell the player what the author wants the player to know about life, politics, takeyourpickofsubjects in relation to the game.
Sometimes. Ravenholme was appealing to the more base use of one as portraying the author as the ultimate badass. However there is some truth to this; such types usually express similar opinions or tastes as the author. I doubt anyone at Bungie does so with the Master Chief, particularly since they can't lock themselves inside a Mjolnir suit every waking and sleeping moment.
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Kreia was not an author avatar.
Kriea is the subject of the quote at the top of the Author Avatar (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AuthorAvatar) page on TvTropes, with the quote explaining pretty clearly that she is.
So, unless you're using another definition, which would be wonderful to know, it sure looks like she is.
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Kreia was not an author avatar.
Kriea is the subject of the quote at the top of the Author Avatar (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AuthorAvatar) page on TvTropes, with the quote explaining pretty clearly that she is.
So, unless you're using another definition, which would be wonderful to know, it sure looks like she is.
Yes I am using a definition which does not involve idiots on a bad website long dead of circlejerking. Kreia is not an author avatar, she doesn't even remotely resemble one, the idea that anyone would classify her as one should be reason for you to cross them off your list of people worth attending to.
Given extratextual information you might argue that she's an authorial mouthpiece (which is not an author avatar at all) but honestly I don't think she qualifies as that either. There's nothing in the text that qualifies her as anything but a character.
ed: hahahah what the **** TVTropes, you didn't used to be this terrible. You can't even keep your quote straight with your definition (presumably all your editors were too busy on the fetish wiki). It is a rare sight indeed to see a quote that not only does a ****ty job of establishing something, but does a ****ty job of establishing something which has nothing to do with anything that follows
Good work, TVTropes, you are ****(tier)
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Authorial tract is not authorial avatar.
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Authorial tract is not authorial avatar.
Yeah pretty much. If you defined every character who says something the author wants to say as an author avatar, I can't think of many pieces of good writing which wouldn't have one. Or twenty. All characters by definition speak things the author intends them to speak, presumably things the author is interested in.
Look, Scotty, the key is that (as NGTM1R would be happy to explain) the author really doesn't come into a piece of fiction once they're done writing it. Unless the author writes his or herself into the fiction in an intrusive manner, one that doesn't seem to emerge from the story - then that's an authorial mouthpiece.
Kreia doesn't qualify because her beliefs and motivations are completely natural to the story. Without extratextual information there's nothing to suggest any particular motivation to Kreia beyond what's presented in the text. Authorial mouthpieces happen when there's a clear extratextual motivation for the character's beliefs which enter the text - for example, a character in a story raging against taxes on behalf of a political party that doesn't exist in the text, or a John Ringo character who was once a liberal but was converted by the harsh realities of alien invasion and now understands the weakness of liberalism.
This isn't even getting anywhere near the idea of an author avatar, which is a character who specifically represents the author in the story. David Weber writes these occasionally. Ironically that TVTropes page does a decent job of explaining what they are, which makes the stupid Kreia quote there all the more mystifying for its total unrelatedness.
Kreia was a complex character in an interesting story but only a drooling TVTropes bottomfeeder could argue she was an authorial avatar. Mouthpiece, you could make a case for (you would lose), but avatar is just silly.
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Kriea is the subject of the quote at the top of the Author Avatar (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AuthorAvatar) page on TvTropes, with the quote explaining pretty clearly that she is.
So, unless you're using another definition, which would be wonderful to know, it sure looks like she is.
Are you actually reading the things you're linking? Did you actually play KotOR2?
A fictionalized version of an author who appears as a character in the events of the story is often called upon to comment upon the situation, deliver the author's verdict, and possibly break the Fourth Wall in a self-deprecating fashion. The author character will usually not influence the plot and may be only loosely tied to the goings-on, their appearances being quite random. The high-falutin' literary term for a character designed to express the author's preferred opinions is the raisonneur — here at TV Tropes the preferred term is Author Avatar.
That is not Kreia. At all. It sure as hell isn't what Chris was talking about in the interview you linked, either.
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Fanfiction is full of terrible characters who have dark and terrible pasts, this is one of the traits of bad fanfiction writing. Now that a bunch of ****ty fanfiction writers are entering true genre writing we have to deal with more of it (looking at you Sarah Monette).
This is what I was alluding to when I was referring to Chief as a fanfiction-esque character. Made more poignant if you've ever had Halo fanfiction OR Halo forum RP inflicted upon you - every second person's character is a knock off of the chief with a similar dark and edgy past. I prefer a few guys I know who did forum RP who's characters were usually UNSC naval captains with proper well written characters and normal pasts. It's why I think ODST in terms of writing is the best Halo since 1, since it was a bunch of normal Marines (Well, so much as ODSTs can be called normal) doing their job.
And on the Kreia note: No, Kreia is not an Author Avatar, YOU are misunderstanding what an Author Avatar is. She was used to convey the writers views on what was wrong with the Force, and that's something that nearly every author does (Write a character or even a story that conveys the message that she wants), she was just a very specific mouthpiece for it. Chief is not an Author Avatar in terms of true Authorial insertion, but rather in what I think the Bungie guys WANT to be, a calm ass-kicking wise-cracking badass.
Maybe Author Avatarism is not the correct term for that, but that's how I've always viewed it as such (possibly due to my long association with gaming), because I view Avatars (RPGs, MMOs etc) as the character you would want to be if you were in that universe, and in my opinion, that's what Chief is to the Bungie writers, at least.
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This is what I was alluding to when I was referring to Chief as a fanfiction-esque character.
You're still not getting that dark pasts are used a certain way in bad fanfiction, and that's not the case here.
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This is what I was alluding to when I was referring to Chief as a fanfiction-esque character.
You're still not getting that dark pasts are used a certain way in bad fanfiction, and that's not the case here.
Usually to justify the badassery of the character in the present. Chief's past does just that.
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Usually to justify the badassery of the character in the present. Chief's past does just that.
lolno, as noted already.
It's usually to make us feel sorry for them, or simply to make them sound cool to the person who did it. It rarely has any sort of justification in their current abilities.
Or you've decided experienced means dark, which is actually a somewhat sustainable proposition for modern combat, but then you're simply complaining about something that actually makes sense...
In fact if we take the commentary on what the Covenant war was like at face value, to be standing at the end of it would mean you would have great difficulty not having a dark past, which is once again complaining about something that makes sense.
You cannot simply disallow a form of past simply because it's often misused. This is straight bull****. The measure is in to what use it is put. In this case, it is to demonstrate that the savior of humanity could only become such by being utterly inhuman themselves.
...or are you now going to start crapping on Ender's Game?
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Usually to justify the badassery of the character in the present. Chief's past does just that.
lolno, as noted already.
It's usually to make us feel sorry for them, or simply to make them sound cool to the person who did it. It rarely has any sort of justification in their current abilities.
Or you've decided experienced means dark, which is actually a somewhat sustainable proposition for modern combat, but then you're simply complaining about something that actually makes sense...
In fact if we take the commentary on what the Covenant war was like at face value, to be standing at the end of it would mean you would have great difficulty not having a dark past, which is once again complaining about something that makes sense.
You cannot simply disallow a form of past simply because it's often misused. This is straight bull****. The measure is in to what use it is put. In this case, it is to demonstrate that the savior of humanity could only become such by being utterly inhuman themselves.
...or are you now going to start crapping on Ender's Game?
I don't know what fanfiction you've been reading, but in both fanfiction and RP, a dark past is generally used to justify the superhuman capabilities of the OC in question. Chief's past in the Spartan project does that (Albeit with slightly more sense.) My problem with Chief is that he is, essentially, an ultimate Marty Stu (or a Lobotomised Power Ranger as Battuta put it).
And your references to the Covenant War make me want to start whaling on the nonsensical reasons given in Reach for the Covenant's attack being a surprise one - Which ties back to my "Bungie can't keep their Canon straight" as that is not how it happened in TFoR.
No, I won't start crapping on Ender's Game (Although the following novels...), but maybe that's also part of my problem with Chief, his past is utterly derivative (Again, a feature of bad fanfiction writing) of Ender. Worth noting is that Halo killed off the better game (Advent Rising), which was actually co-written by Orson S Card