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I?m the biggest Halo fan I?ve seen every Bungie halo 2 update. I even pre-ordered the limited edition Halo2, 1 year before it came out.
As much as I want to love Halo2 though, I cant. I'm finding single player to be a huge disappointment. It just wasn't intense or epic.
Here's why:
/\E3 2003 demo made you feel like Earth was really under siege. Explosions and gunfire everywhere. It was fantastic. In Halo 2 the Earth missions are really closed off and the battles only occur when you reach an area. I was hoping to travel around the city and help marines already fighting battles.
/\On heroic your shields go down to fast. You can barely stand in the open.
/\The boss battles are stupid.
/\Most of the game is indoor corridor crawls instead of large outdoor battles.
/\What happened to the destructive environments that I heard about? The only thing that I see that's destructible is the cars
/\They took out lots of cool features like the grouping melee attacks together, sprinting and shooting out lights
/\I reckon the AI isn't as good as Halo. The amount of times I've seen enemies just standing right in front of me, Or brutes running into crates
Allies are no better. I wish you could tell them to stop sometimes when driving, or get them to drive the vehicles you want them to drive.
/\They spent 3 years and they could only add two new drivable vehicles.
/\The ending movies disappointing (I hope Bungie?s gonna make a Halo3)
/\There are less grunts phrases
/\Rubbish graphic?s (e.g. lower resolution, just zoom in on any texture with 10X and tell me that it looks better than halo CE zoomed in on 10X)
Go watch the E3 2003 vid and tell me you don't feel cheated. They didn't even have the cutscenes! I was looking forward to seeing the Elite pods drop down all around you and the Brutes falling on the warthog. I was looking forward to the city looking like a metropolis and not a colourless mid-east kind of environment. I want an INVASION of Earth that I have to repel like we was promised not this "Oops the Covies made a mistake in invading... " So we'll have to wait for Halo 3 on the Xbox 2 or something.
Make of this what you will, but maybe I said something a little too close to the truth and someone nervous. My original post on the Bungie forums got 48 replies within 50 minutes and then the topic was locked. Shortly after that I was banned from the forums. Keep in mind the Bungie forums are automatically censored, so swear words appear as "-blam-", so I know I wasn't banned for language. I'll try to restate this word for word as best as possible, but I can't reference my original post because it has since been removed.
The game of Halo 2 as it exists now is not what Bungie initially intended for it to be, nor is this close to the final product they worked four years on to complete. Lets start with the Halo 2 cinematic trailer (released in September of 2002). MC is on a ship and you can hear random chatter over his comm as he walks down a corridor: notice you'll hear things like "that's not enough to stop an assault carrier" and "it?s like the god damn apocalypse". They have called for reinforcements and the reinforcements are MC alone -- one man, exciting enough that it still gives me Goosebumps. So then master chief ejects from the ships air lock and makes his dive towards earth. What do you see? A whole continent saturated with fire and nuclear explosions. That does seem pretty apocalyptic!
Now lets move on to the E3 demo (released in may 2003). MC flies into New Mombassa on a pelican with the sarge and a few ODST?s. When he exits the pelican, yes, it would appear to be a full-scale invasion of earth. Wounded soldiers all around, huge covenant artillery blasting buildings, etc... Exciting! He makes his run through the city and then mans the gun on the back of the gauss hog. He rolls through New Mombassa with a couple marines, you see a few other hogs rolling around, streets intersecting in and out of one another, passages that lead to other areas... its a battle on a pretty large scale. A covenant invasion of earth.
Compare these situations to the actual game of Halo 2. Where is the "god damn apocalypse"? Earth isn?t even being invaded. A few small covenant platoons go to earth for one reason or another and that?s it. There isn?t even a hint of earth being invaded in halo 2 until the ending movie. You can see earth from space station Cairo in the beginning and its untouched. When it comes to all this missing storyline, what went wrong? What changed? Who intervened?
The -single- level that does take place on earth is -BLATANTLTY- a last minute change. Notice some similarities between this earth level and the new Mombassa level from the E3 demo. MC still flies in on a pelican with the sarge and some marines, not ODSTs this time. If you really pay attention you can see the marines in the pelican doing the -EXACTLY- same movements as the ODSTs in the E3 demo. One marine shoves a clip into his rifle while another puts on his helmet, the same as the ODSTs in the E3 demo. Sarge even says the same stuff except this time he has a little monologue about 'regret'. Also notice at the start of this level, there is no text on screen telling you where you are headed. No mention of the city name, date or location (looks more like Iraq than new Mombassa). How odd is that? When the game starts and you see the opening cinematic, you get a date and you are told exactly what you are seeing; the covenant high charity. Even in the new Mombassa level on the E3 demo, you are given the same information. Strangely enough this information is missing in the actual game. Minor inconsistencies like this can only mean a handful of things. This level was added at the last minute to replace the new Mombassa level because the direction of the game had taken a serious change in direction because of something or someone. Load up the outskirts level and point your view to the rooftops and tell me what you see. You might not be looking for them but you'll see power lines. You have got to be kidding me. It?s the year 2552... Power lines?! Things like this, the inconsistencies and missing -important- cinematic information just do not happen when you spend three years developing a game. It simply does not happen. You do not "hype" a game up to be an awesome showdown on earth between the humans and covenant and then make the -single- earth level in the game complete garbage. My god is that level ever so linear and boring. From point A to point B. it?s not the "god damn apocalypse" it?s a goddamn conspiracy.
To simply put, Microsoft is greedy. Microsoft made Bungie change the direction of the game and gave it that awful cliff-hanger ending. They ran out of time because they had to take out a lot of the content that was already in the game and replace it with whatever they could. Probably why you end up playing as the Arbiter so much. It?s all a filler for the missing content. Watch the limited edition DVD and check out the segment on the mongoose (the human atv). They say it was buggy and didn?t handle properly, watch the video and decide for yourself it was perfectly fine. There are a few misleading statements from Bungie employees in this DVD. Its not their fault, they are just covering for Microsoft. Like when they say that the new Mombassa E3 level was the first thing they worked on. That is utter Bollocks. All the vehicles had their physics and mass properties already. The character models and animations were finished. There were cinematic?s and scripted dialogue from all the real voice actors. There was an entire level designed. Don't tell me they spent the next year and a half to design the 6 other awful levels we got. Even with the entire bug testing and all that is not reasonable. 60+ people were working on the campaign mode while 4 people worked on the multiplayer. Too many things just don?t add up. Nothing about it makes any sense at all. If there is truth in the fact that the E3 new Mombassa level was the first thing they worked on... which already had so many features already implemented, what in the hell did they do with all that time in between may 2003 and November 9th?
Read any publication online or in real life dealing with halo 2 before its release. Whenever someone from Bungie spoke about the game, the focus was earth. The cinematic trailer, focus: earth. The E3 demo, focus: earth. It was all supposed to be about earth. Would Bungie intentionally mislead us to think that is was going to be all about earth and then smack us in the face with an awful game like this? I don?t think so. You can?t say that what I expected halo 2 to be was just what I had in my head. It is what we were -lead- to believe and what we were told it would be. This isn?t me being disappointed because I believed too much hype -- this is me being disappointed because for one reason or another, "we" didn?t think the game of halo 2 that was "promised" to us.
Think about it... the E3 game play demo was released in May of 2003, almost a full year and a half before the release of the game. The new Mombassa level was brilliant. They didn?t have to keep the scripting for the level, just the level itself. Why take it out? Why not put as much as you can into halo 2 including that level, because it definitely had a place in the game. Oh, I?m sorry. It had a place in the game as it was originally conceived, but not the greedy stripped down Microsoft half-assed version that we got.
In conclusion... what do you think went wrong? You're a fool if you think they just couldn?t fit one more level into the game, they could have put the game on two discs and added 20 (we wish) more levels very easily, and Microsoft has the money for that after all it is worth 250 billion dollars. Don't tell me it was because of hardware issues, because it?s only a map. And don?t tell me that you cant include a rocket hog or a personnel transport hog in the game because of hardware issues either, if you can support one vehicle, you can support another. You're being misled in a number of ways to hide the fact that you've been shafted out of 35 quid for a game that is shorter than the original and far less enjoyable (aside form the multiplayer which is spectacular). Bungie wanted to give us everything we had hoped for, its just a shame we'll never get to see the godliness of what they had in store for us.
Go to www.bungie.net and look at the title for the halo 2 forums. They are called new Mombassa. A level that doesn?t even exist in the game (now). What kind of reasoning is there for that? Should that be reserved for halo 3 *cough* when you -might- actually get a chance to catch a glimpse of the city. Rubbish. Bungie said many times halo 2 would Bungie closure and there would be no halo 3. Bungie also said they would "never specify a release date for halo 2 until we are certain we could release a finished product." That statement was on their main website the day that halo2 was announced. So why would they set a date for themselves where they knew they wouldn?t finish in time and be forced to take out all kinds of content? They wouldn't.
Bungie has a lot to answer. We still need to find out:
1. If humanity is the Forerunner's ancestors.
2. If that is why Earth is the "Ark." (Assuming Earth is the Ark)
3. Why the Prophets don't know what the Halo's really do.
4. If Gravemind is part of the flood and What he discusses with Cortana.
5. What he means by "I am a monument to all your sins."
6. Why the Forerunners wiped out themselves and all life in the galaxy, but kept the Flood safe on the Halo's.
7. What happens to earth.
ATV's: Left out
Sprinting: Left out
Leaning around corners: Left out
Troop transport warthog: Left out
Snow terrain warthog: Left out
Jungle camouflage warthog: Left out
Advanced covenant moves (climbing and ducking): Left out /PS mentioned in the Bungie update 2 months before the release date!
Destructible Environments: Partially left out (not very noticeable)
But enough of my complaining wot r ur views::?
--
Message posted via http://www.xboxjunkies.com
I?m the biggest Halo fan I?ve seen every Bungie halo 2 update. I even pre-ordered the limited edition Halo2, 1 year before it came out.
As much as I want to love Halo2 though, I cant. I'm finding single player to be a huge disappointment. It just wasn't intense or epic.
Here's why:
/\E3 2003 demo made you feel like Earth was really under siege. Explosions and gunfire everywhere. It was fantastic. In Halo 2 the Earth missions are really closed off and the battles only occur when you reach an area. I was hoping to travel around the city and help marines already fighting battles.
/\On heroic your shields go down to fast. You can barely stand in the open.
/\The boss battles are stupid.
/\Most of the game is indoor corridor crawls instead of large outdoor battles.
/\What happened to the destructive environments that I heard about? The only thing that I see that's destructible is the cars
/\They took out lots of cool features like the grouping melee attacks together, sprinting and shooting out lights
/\I reckon the AI isn't as good as Halo. The amount of times I've seen enemies just standing right in front of me, Or brutes running into crates
Allies are no better. I wish you could tell them to stop sometimes when driving, or get them to drive the vehicles you want them to drive.
/\They spent 3 years and they could only add two new drivable vehicles.
/\The ending movies disappointing (I hope Bungie?s gonna make a Halo3)
/\There are less grunts phrases
/\Rubbish graphic?s (e.g. lower resolution, just zoom in on any texture with 10X and tell me that it looks better than halo CE zoomed in on 10X)
Go watch the E3 2003 vid and tell me you don't feel cheated. They didn't even have the cutscenes! I was looking forward to seeing the Elite pods drop down all around you and the Brutes falling on the warthog. I was looking forward to the city looking like a metropolis and not a colourless mid-east kind of environment. I want an INVASION of Earth that I have to repel like we was promised not this "Oops the Covies made a mistake in invading... " So we'll have to wait for Halo 3 on the Xbox 2 or something.
Make of this what you will, but maybe I said something a little too close to the truth and someone nervous. My original post on the Bungie forums got 48 replies within 50 minutes and then the topic was locked. Shortly after that I was banned from the forums. Keep in mind the Bungie forums are automatically censored, so swear words appear as "-blam-", so I know I wasn't banned for language. I'll try to restate this word for word as best as possible, but I can't reference my original post because it has since been removed.
The game of Halo 2 as it exists now is not what Bungie initially intended for it to be, nor is this close to the final product they worked four years on to complete. Lets start with the Halo 2 cinematic trailer (released in September of 2002). MC is on a ship and you can hear random chatter over his comm as he walks down a corridor: notice you'll hear things like "that's not enough to stop an assault carrier" and "it?s like the god damn apocalypse". They have called for reinforcements and the reinforcements are MC alone -- one man, exciting enough that it still gives me Goosebumps. So then master chief ejects from the ships air lock and makes his dive towards earth. What do you see? A whole continent saturated with fire and nuclear explosions. That does seem pretty apocalyptic!
Now lets move on to the E3 demo (released in may 2003). MC flies into New Mombassa on a pelican with the sarge and a few ODST?s. When he exits the pelican, yes, it would appear to be a full-scale invasion of earth. Wounded soldiers all around, huge covenant artillery blasting buildings, etc... Exciting! He makes his run through the city and then mans the gun on the back of the gauss hog. He rolls through New Mombassa with a couple marines, you see a few other hogs rolling around, streets intersecting in and out of one another, passages that lead to other areas... its a battle on a pretty large scale. A covenant invasion of earth.
Compare these situations to the actual game of Halo 2. Where is the "god damn apocalypse"? Earth isn?t even being invaded. A few small covenant platoons go to earth for one reason or another and that?s it. There isn?t even a hint of earth being invaded in halo 2 until the ending movie. You can see earth from space station Cairo in the beginning and its untouched. When it comes to all this missing storyline, what went wrong? What changed? Who intervened?
The -single- level that does take place on earth is -BLATANTLTY- a last minute change. Notice some similarities between this earth level and the new Mombassa level from the E3 demo. MC still flies in on a pelican with the sarge and some marines, not ODSTs this time. If you really pay attention you can see the marines in the pelican doing the -EXACTLY- same movements as the ODSTs in the E3 demo. One marine shoves a clip into his rifle while another puts on his helmet, the same as the ODSTs in the E3 demo. Sarge even says the same stuff except this time he has a little monologue about 'regret'. Also notice at the start of this level, there is no text on screen telling you where you are headed. No mention of the city name, date or location (looks more like Iraq than new Mombassa). How odd is that? When the game starts and you see the opening cinematic, you get a date and you are told exactly what you are seeing; the covenant high charity. Even in the new Mombassa level on the E3 demo, you are given the same information. Strangely enough this information is missing in the actual game. Minor inconsistencies like this can only mean a handful of things. This level was added at the last minute to replace the new Mombassa level because the direction of the game had taken a serious change in direction because of something or someone. Load up the outskirts level and point your view to the rooftops and tell me what you see. You might not be looking for them but you'll see power lines. You have got to be kidding me. It?s the year 2552... Power lines?! Things like this, the inconsistencies and missing -important- cinematic information just do not happen when you spend three years developing a game. It simply does not happen. You do not "hype" a game up to be an awesome showdown on earth between the humans and covenant and then make the -single- earth level in the game complete garbage. My god is that level ever so linear and boring. From point A to point B. it?s not the "god damn apocalypse" it?s a goddamn conspiracy.
To simply put, Microsoft is greedy. Microsoft made Bungie change the direction of the game and gave it that awful cliff-hanger ending. They ran out of time because they had to take out a lot of the content that was already in the game and replace it with whatever they could. Probably why you end up playing as the Arbiter so much. It?s all a filler for the missing content. Watch the limited edition DVD and check out the segment on the mongoose (the human atv). They say it was buggy and didn?t handle properly, watch the video and decide for yourself it was perfectly fine. There are a few misleading statements from Bungie employees in this DVD. Its not their fault, they are just covering for Microsoft. Like when they say that the new Mombassa E3 level was the first thing they worked on. That is utter Bollocks. All the vehicles had their physics and mass properties already. The character models and animations were finished. There were cinematic?s and scripted dialogue from all the real voice actors. There was an entire level designed. Don't tell me they spent the next year and a half to design the 6 other awful levels we got. Even with the entire bug testing and all that is not reasonable. 60+ people were working on the campaign mode while 4 people worked on the multiplayer. Too many things just don?t add up. Nothing about it makes any sense at all. If there is truth in the fact that the E3 new Mombassa level was the first thing they worked on... which already had so many features already implemented, what in the hell did they do with all that time in between may 2003 and November 9th?
Read any publication online or in real life dealing with halo 2 before its release. Whenever someone from Bungie spoke about the game, the focus was earth. The cinematic trailer, focus: earth. The E3 demo, focus: earth. It was all supposed to be about earth. Would Bungie intentionally mislead us to think that is was going to be all about earth and then smack us in the face with an awful game like this? I don?t think so. You can?t say that what I expected halo 2 to be was just what I had in my head. It is what we were -lead- to believe and what we were told it would be. This isn?t me being disappointed because I believed too much hype -- this is me being disappointed because for one reason or another, "we" didn?t think the game of halo 2 that was "promised" to us.
Think about it... the E3 game play demo was released in May of 2003, almost a full year and a half before the release of the game. The new Mombassa level was brilliant. They didn?t have to keep the scripting for the level, just the level itself. Why take it out? Why not put as much as you can into halo 2 including that level, because it definitely had a place in the game. Oh, I?m sorry. It had a place in the game as it was originally conceived, but not the greedy stripped down Microsoft half-assed version that we got.
In conclusion... what do you think went wrong? You're a fool if you think they just couldn?t fit one more level into the game, they could have put the game on two discs and added 20 (we wish) more levels very easily, and Microsoft has the money for that after all it is worth 250 billion dollars. Don't tell me it was because of hardware issues, because it?s only a map. And don?t tell me that you cant include a rocket hog or a personnel transport hog in the game because of hardware issues either, if you can support one vehicle, you can support another. You're being misled in a number of ways to hide the fact that you've been shafted out of 35 quid for a game that is shorter than the original and far less enjoyable (aside form the multiplayer which is spectacular). Bungie wanted to give us everything we had hoped for, its just a shame we'll never get to see the godliness of what they had in store for us.
Go to www.bungie.net and look at the title for the halo 2 forums. They are called new Mombassa. A level that doesn?t even exist in the game (now). What kind of reasoning is there for that? Should that be reserved for halo 3 *cough* when you -might- actually get a chance to catch a glimpse of the city. Rubbish. Bungie said many times halo 2 would Bungie closure and there would be no halo 3. Bungie also said they would "never specify a release date for halo 2 until we are certain we could release a finished product." That statement was on their main website the day that halo2 was announced. So why would they set a date for themselves where they knew they wouldn?t finish in time and be forced to take out all kinds of content? They wouldn't.
Bungie has a lot to answer. We still need to find out:
1. If humanity is the Forerunner's ancestors.
2. If that is why Earth is the "Ark." (Assuming Earth is the Ark)
3. Why the Prophets don't know what the Halo's really do.
4. If Gravemind is part of the flood and What he discusses with Cortana.
5. What he means by "I am a monument to all your sins."
6. Why the Forerunners wiped out themselves and all life in the galaxy, but kept the Flood safe on the Halo's.
7. What happens to earth.
ATV's: Left out
Sprinting: Left out
Leaning around corners: Left out
Troop transport warthog: Left out
Snow terrain warthog: Left out
Jungle camouflage warthog: Left out
Advanced covenant moves (climbing and ducking): Left out /PS mentioned in the Bungie update 2 months before the release date!
Destructible Environments: Partially left out (not very noticeable)
But enough of my complaining wot r ur views::?
--
Message posted via http://www.xboxjunkies.com
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