Once again UA-cam's compression messes with my pixel-art outros. I guess adjusting the bitrate doesn't help. Maybe I need a new encoder... Anyways, Part 2 will release publicly in 1 week. If you want to watch it right now, you can go sub to my patreon, but if not, no worries it'll be free on my channel on July 1st. Otherwise thanks all for the patience as it took me way too long to get this beast of a video (technically two) edited and uploaded. Seems a lot of us have strong memories and opinions of this era in Halo's life span and honestly this was mostly cathartic for me to finally be able to articulate why Halo 4 always felt off. Also, this part mainly covers plot and story. Part 2 is going to cover gameplay mechanics, don't worry, there's still another half of this review ready to be unleashed. Anyways, hope you all have a great weekend!
You so much of the video repeating yourself without giving single bit of unique insight. Acting like bungie told a coherent story is bizarre. The bungie games stories lived off of the novels. If you want to know nas bungie is at a telling stories just look the disaster of Destiny
@@Daftanemone Bruh literally didn't watch the video if he thinks I care about modern bungie, implying they are the same studio as the bungie of old. Also dude, what? Lived off the novels? Tell me you didn't play the games without telling me you didn't play the games lmao
51:27 mjolnir cannot be pierced by a dmr shot without energy shieldings actually. watch installation 00, halo guns are quite much superior to the current day if you look into the logistics. also masterchief was never just another soldier that had luck, allegorically he served as a messianic figure with great importance and was clearly much more special then just another soldier
The part that is fan-fiction is the sub-plot about converting human beings into digital beings. You KNOW that was for the sake of a master Chief - Cortana romance plot. You KNOW that's why something so bizarre was injected into the story.
@Patch Moulton maybe not hate the OG material but those people definitely feel like they can do better just out of naive narcissism. Take, for example, the recent Star Wars "Trilogy"
@@DisDatK9 Is it just me or do a lot of these modern sequels and reboots just feel as shallow as the next especially in terms of writing? Blatant social commentary with not much in terms of overall themes and inconsistent worldbuilding while following the same industry tropes.
"Not enough people are buying our cakes. We should hire people who hate baking cakes so that people who don't like our cakes will buy our cakes!" When you switch around some nouns, the insanity of Halo 4 really comes into view.
From Mendicant fucking Bias himself while talking to the Prophets after the discovery of Harvest: "For eons I have watched. Listened to you misinterpret. This is not "Reclamation". This is Reclaimer. And it represents MY MAKERS"
Aside from the whole elites being unplayable in the last 3 Halo games, Arbiter was just tossed aside completely by 343, only appearing in books and fanservice being a side character. And also as a stupid plush, he deserves better, the guy really impacted the events of the Halo trilogy.
343 doesn't want good well written characters in their games like my boy and just probably hates him as much as rookie and cortana. Also, an arbiter plush sounds sick af
@@thesamejackalsniperthatkil117 oh true, I wouldn't mind a cool arby plush irl but it's just the way he's handled in Infinite as " memba berries" moment
Arbite doesnt even appears too much in the books, and one of his few time he appears is to humilliate him. Spoilers ahead: Arbiter had to ask for help to Lord Hood, who was in the Infinity shit, to not lost the civil war in his own country. Without the humans, arbiter would be dead. And the worse part is that he was losing the civil war because humans were selling weapons to the arbiter's enemies lol. He appears in other ocassion just to give some orders to an elite to help humans in Earth to turn off the Ark. And in the last scene of halo 5 that is told in one book also. and I think those are the only times he appears.
9:18 - Update on this. Marty O'Donnell recently told the story of ODST in a comment he made on a UA-cam video about ODST. Apparently Bungie itself wanted to release it at 30 dollars as an expansion but Microsoft forced them to release it at 60 dollars and as a full game.
Odst truly was half a game so that made sense. But because of that corporate decision, every game since, including Reach, has been CONSPICUOUSLY shorter in campaign than any one of halo 1-3. I've literally counted combat encounters autistically, so i can say this with scientific precision. All the games post trilogy have been shorter, yes even infinite
@@MM-op6ti I’d argue any timeline where Chief dies after killing Regret would probably survive, as that was what kickstarted the Arbiter’s turn, and he hopefully could have taken Chief’s place.
Can you believe that the people on the /r/Halo subreddit actually PREFER the Forerunners to be a separate species from humanity, and that they think humans being Forerunner are "predictable" and "boring" Seriously, the top comments are those that don't like humanity being Forerunners every single time the topic is brought up. How can they call themselves fans of the lore and the Forerunners and whatever when they don't even like the whole point behind that lore in the first place!
Reddit is cancer. All the mods are purple haired landwhales with an agenda to suppress everything that advances "whiteness" (itself a proxy for Christian values, which stand in the way of the Marxist Long March) and guess what's included in that? Good story. Because discriminating between good and bad story implies that there are judgmental ideals which not everyone measures up to and thus not everyone or every belief gets to be validated and affirmed. That's just ONE reason that quality writing is in religious conflict with wokeness
Those same people will tell you with a straight face that "Halo is a book series with a multiplayer spin off and its better that way". It's really apparent that they're a bunch of lore nerd dweebs that should've stuck to cannibalizing Harry Potter, GoT and LoTR. But they are Redditors so that should have been apparent.
Forerunners being humanity literally ties into our own religious mythos, with the ark and the flood being explicitly featured in the bible. Even the idea of the rapture is shockingly similar to the great journey, hence the prophets mentioning humanity being “ left behind”. It was a master stroke of writing on bungie’s part. They imply that these biblical stories are misrememberings of the first firing of the halo arrays. Furthermore, it hints at how a remnant of humanity might have survived on the ark.
@@TRAMP-oline If it's false, yes, definitely. But if it's the Catholic scripture (which is basically Jewish scripture that includes everything Jesus did), it's actually awesome as hell. Not even kidding, I looked it up. It's true, and it's based.
@@theholygamer969 Even aside from personal convictions, the fact that the writers actually tried to base their game's lore in actual religious scriptures itself pretty cool and adds a lot of depth. Hell, I always found the background lore in Bungie's games to be profound because of that. Even Frankie's shitty Halo 3 terminals benefitted from the mystique and depth of the mainline canon's allusions to actual religious and mythological texts. Plus it's cooler to say that in the Halo universe, humanity's religions are misrememberings of our past as the dominant galactic power rather than popping up for some reason after nearly getting wiped out by a technologically peer race and they in turn wiped out by what is basically dementia dust now.
Because he's probably dealt with situations like the chief before which he overcame. He had no reason tp expect the things that happened. If you look at real life villains (serial killers, dictators etc.) they don't act with one single goal of victory.
He was simply delusional, he looked down on humanity and never expected the chief to have the power that he did, he'd rather take the risk of being beaten and then kill him rather than just swat him like a fly.
@@scoposteve8470 No, there’s nothing in the terminals that suggests they’re not humans. There’s a good video my C3 Sabertooth called “We WERE Forerunner” that goes through and details all of the original Bungie lore on the matter, and does so a lot better than I can.
I got abuse from fans when this came out for saying the art style had lost its identity. Years later that sentiment is acceptable now because youtubers made videos sharing them. How times change.
Rampancy is another 343 retcon. It was explained in the Fall of Reach as Cortana eventually "Thinking herself to Death." As a strategic AI this likely meant she would over-calculate possibilities, account for variables so minute they're bearing on the overall mission success would be less than negligible. Imagine your PC calculating chess positions, however after a while it starts accounting for exactly where on a square each piece could be in any given state, exponentially increasing the number of simulations until it blue screens itself. Hell it could probably even have been like in Portal where GladOs tried to kill Wheatley with Paradoxes, Cortana simply thinking herself through loops until the same outcome But 343 has to ruin everything that was beautiful in its simplicity by layering on bullshit fan fiction because screaming like a child who didn't get ice cream is "emotionally realistic".
It's hilarious because even the recent trailer for Red vs. Blue Season 19 shows that RoosterTeeth understands the Halo universe more than the actual writers do at this point. That trailer (and whole series, honestly) perfectly encapsulates what Rampancy was meant to be far more than Frankie and Chris' fanfic ever did
@@ItsReallyJCole I mean specifically what rampancy does, it's first introduced as a concept in the Fall of Reach iirc, the. 343 shat the bed and we got Halo 4's story
What you've described as the "original concept of rampancy" is the exact same as being overwhelmed by information. Do you know what being overwhelmed by something feels like, or what people do when they get overwhelmed? They lash out.
Not to mention, the entire plot about the hierarchs finding out humanity was the forerunners was literally explicitly narrated in the book Contact Harvest. Which was written by Joseph Staten.
And because of what 343 has done that scene doesn't make any sense anymore! Because now reclaimers are only special people so the entire population of harvest being reclaimers is a ridiculous coincidence I guess.
From what I remember, humanity is not the Forerunners. They were beaten by them after humanity encroached upon & glassed Forerunner worlds that have signs of The Flood infestation. Humanity was fighting a war on 2 fronts, so sadly lost & were de-evolved by the Forerunners. Humanity would have been given control of The Mantle had the Forerunners not rebelled & took out the Precursors first. The Librarian & other Forerunners set their technology to be accessed by the Reclaimers (Humanity) when they themselves were on the brink of extinction. It's been a while since I read the books & and I'm not sure what 343 have done to the lore. The hierarchs were pissed that the Oracle informed them of this, hence why they started the war on Humanity.
@@Halo-5-is-a-masterpiece Yes, in the Bungie canon, but 343 has their stupid crap where only specific people are reclaimers. Hence the entire population of harvest having the moniker makes little sense with their revised definition.
343 Industries retconning Forerunners being humans is one of the dumbest writing decisions I've ever seen in video games. I'd argue that's one of the top 5 worst, most unnecessary retcons in all of modern media.
Actually- It wasn’t 343 it was just Franky O’Conner. He was originally just a community manager who was asked to right some text logs, and fucked everything. Then, Bonnie put him in charge of the story. >-> Don’t blame all of 343 for this. Blame the people in charge.
@@B312XC Even when humans were forerunner they still fought a war with the flood and some of the details did carry over from the bungie days. Big thing was that the Forerunner and especially the Flood were meant to mostly remain up to the imagination of each player. The fact that they had to insert an even more ancient mysterious race just to fulfill that mystery element tells you how powerful the mystery element narrative hook is. Besides that it is very thematic to be facing down the same enemy your ancestors fought. That is a tried and true story trope. Also the retcon just raises so many questions. Why would the Forerunner re-seed every other race and not their own? Why give access to their sworn enemy of humanity and no one else? Also the covenant went to war with Humanity originally because Humans were Forerunner and the Prophets wanted to cover that up because it would fracture the Covenant and remove their power. Half the plot of the games was Arbiter seeing through the lies of the Prophets but if Humanity was the sworn enemy of the Forerunner the Prophets were justified in declaring Humanity as an affront to their gods instead of being so manipulative in hiding the truth. Even if you could tell a great story why would you need to retcon this detail? It is kind of like making a great Star Wars Prequel where you retcon Darth Vader being Luke's Father. Sure a great story might exist with Vader betraying and murdering Luke's real Father like Obi-Wan initially suggested but I would argue that destroys the theming of the OT star wars movies and is pointless. Same thing with the Forerunner saga. Sure it is a decent story in its own right but it is not the backstory for the original Halo Games.
@@Phillibetrus All of those supposedly missing things are still present in the story, and all of those questions are answered, in the very books that introduced the concept It's a massive problem how nobody criticizing this seems to know anything about it- but refusing to engage with the story is only natural when the very concepts themselves are rejected out of hand to begin with
@@Lazypackmule I have read the forerunner trilogy. twice actually. None of those answers were in anyway satisfactory and so yes they were rejected and I still ask why? Why not re-seed your own race? why just hand everything over?
ho ly shit. So i actually never realized that humans were literally supposed to be forerunners. I guess this whole time i interpreted all these hints in the bungie games through 343's lore. I feel sick. I want nothing more than for 343's entire lore building of the franchise since 2012 to be retconned. please god. we were robbed.
I was the same when I first played 4 and in retrospect I don't know why I accepted it so readily. For some reason hearing Spark call Chief a Forerunner made me think that he was being metaphorical or something, though I think that was because of the 2009 Encyclopedia. But yeah there was a concerted effort to absolutely erase this plotline and it's infuriating because it is legitimately good writing.
Same for me because I only got into Halo in 2011, the year before 343 killed it and my comprehension powers weren’t that great but I started to pick up the fact the prophets clearly knew that the Forerunners were human by 2014, would’ve figured it out but I made the mistake of listening to 343 fanboys on UA-cam and they convinced me to ignore it by claiming that all this Genesong etc. nonsense was actually both made by Bungie and also was good writing, of course both of these were false and I feel like an idiot for not figuring this out sooner
@@R17inator so basically you don’t want to listen to bungies lore because you don’t like that 343 expanded on it 🤨 also we’re genetically related to the forerunner in both old bungie canon and new bungie canon. Humans and forerunner are subspecies of each other. We’re dogs and they’re wolves. Or actually probably closer to Homosapians and Homo Neanderthals. While not technically the same species, we’re very much related, hell I wouldn’t be surprised if we could reproduce with them given how damn near identical our dna and genetics are.
That's what they should've been all along and would explain why the archeitecture looks human, why the Halo habitat looks like Earth, why humans are Reclaimers and can access the technology, and everything hinted by Gravemind and 343GS. Then it became contradicted by the Terminals.
"Child of my enemy why have you come? I offer no forgiveness, a father's sins passed to his son." "Your forefathers wisely set aside their compassion." "A record of all of *our* lost time. Human history is it? Fascinating." "You are the child of my maker, inheritor of all they left behind. *You are forerunner!* " Meanwhile people who defend 343's shoddy lore always use the Halo 3 terminals excuse. The terminals that were vague and unclear at best. Humanity's forerunner ancestry was never "vague" or "open to interpretation." Literally every antagonist in Halo 3 correlates humanity with the forerunners.
The Didact is oddly similar to the Engineer in “Prometheus”. Both are strangely surviving last members of a precursor species, who strangely hate humanity, and whose whole plan is to fly a ship to Earth to wipe us out and yet are easily defeated. And both are in a massive retcon of their series. They even wear fancy space armor and get in fist fights.
The Didact isn't a retcon. That part of the video is completely incorrect. He also isn't the last member of his race. As a character he is set up Halo 3 terminals and books that came out between 2007-2012.
@@halofornoobs93 Check your timeline Contact Harvest released shortly after Halo 3 and solidified humans having forerunner ancestry. Mendicant Bias even says it calling humans a representation of his creators. The Forerunner books came out a year after Halo Reach released. Bungie being more or less done with Halo at that point with 343 starting take up the reign.
@@halofornoobs93 Apart from him what forerunners are still alive? (Dont counting digital souls or shit like that). Bornstellar and the rest of the forerunners that bring life again to the galaxy, after the halo's shot, went to other solar systems far away from milky way to die because of age. They stopped using their armors to not being inmortals, and they separe themselves in small groups to not have enoulgh childs to keep the race. Or maybe you think that the forerunners in Ketona way didnt die with flood or with the halo's impact?
@@halofornoobs93 Bro, you really need to check your own facts before dismissing someone else's claims, because almost every comment you've made is filled with bullshit misinformation in some way or another. Bungie never intended for the Didact to be some pretentious douche that hated humans. In fact, the differences between the Didact in the Halo 3 terminals and the version in Halo 4 are so staggering they had to make them completely separate characters that shared the same title
How about referring to him as a *rampant Bungie "veteran"* who has gone rogue to help 343 in corrupting the _Halo_ universe? This is something that did already popped into my head once.
Same here. How could anything be worse than flood? Theyre related to the god like pre cursors, and destroyed the entire galaxy once, who knows how many galaxies out there are controlled by them. Theyre a terrifying enemy. These stupid endless are nothing.
It doesn't even make any sense. The Endless were clearly beaten by the Forerunners. The Flood caused the Forerunners to build galaxy cleansing weapons and essentially committed suicide in order to preserve life itself. No matter how bad the war with the Endless was, there's no way it tops LITERALLY EVERYTHING DYING!!! Wtf were they thinking? I could create a better backstory for a new enemy drunk off my ass! I fucking hate 343's writing team and their incompetence
@@ottovonbismarck7646 its even worse if u read the books. In some parts you can even reach the conclusion that the flood AKA precursors dont stop the halo activation because they wanted that. They wanted the forerruners doing suicide as a punish for their signs. And in the books you can see the flood/precursor tecnology and It can basically change reality, its far superior than Forerunner tecnology. And we are suppose to belive that the endless are more dangerous. Dude... The gravemind is basically a Lovecraft's kind of god lmao
I do think humanity being the forerunners makes the forerunners far more interesting than being orange robots, Also it doesn’t complicate things like a metal gear solid does
You were half right on the Covenant. The actual reason they hated humanity was because of their belief in the Great Journey, "With this sacrament of blood we will journey into the divine beyond" and all that. So the secret that the Prophets discovered was that a foundational text in the Forerunner keyship was a mistranslation, instead of "reclamation", it actually said "reclaimer", obviously meaning humanity. This blew a hole right into the center of their theology, because if humanity was explicitly connected to the Forerunners, that would mean it was possible to be left behind during the Great Journey, meaning the entire foundation of the Covenant religion was a lie. The Prophets felt they needed to hide this fact at all costs to preserve their own power, and so sought to exterminate humanity to destroy all remaining evidence. "This time, none of you will be left behind" is a direct nod to this. Basically, it's like a modern Evangelical preacher finding out that the Rapture is a lie. And they were quite right to foresee this destroying the Covenant, as the Arbiter funding out about it was one of the primary causes of the Great Schism shattering the unity of the Covenant itself beyond repair.
I always interpreted the “this time none of you will be left behind” as a reference to Reach. I’m pretty sure they didn’t know what the rings did, otherwise Truth was about to blow himself to kingdom come.
I really liked your idea about the San'Shyuum being the antagonists for a hypothetical trilogy after Halo 3. That would open up a bunch of opportunities to explore new things. It would make sense for the UNSC to mostly take a backseat, with Chief helping Arbiter and the Elites fight for control over several alien worlds. You could learn more about the different Covenant species, find the Forerunner ruins and artifacts that made the Covenant so fervent in their beliefs, and explore how the ex-Covenant soldiers would react to the knowledge that the Forerunners and Humans are really one and the same. With the man who called they called demon fighting alongside them with brutal efficiency, how would they react? Might some come to carry the religion onward, directing their worship toward humanity? Or maybe they'd come to distrust everything Forerunner related, and view the humans as an existential threat? After all, could they trust the species who created such technology as Halo? Would the Prophets, now faced with the truth being widespread, completely switch gears and begin deifying the Flood? Cortana's rampancy would be really hard to deal with. The whole process as I understand it is effectively the AI reaching true sentience, but it already feels like Cortana has that. So it'd have to be subtle changes. She could question her own usefulness in this particular war, or begin to doubt herself in other ways. This could be kept relatively hidden from the player. At the start of certain missions where she'd usually make a remark or give helpful advice she might instead simply say that she can't be of much help. As the player uncovers various atrocities committed by their enemies, she might express vaguely nihilistic thoughts. Then, as she enters the anger stage, she might begin to resent Chief's inability to recognize her early stages of rampancy. She might encourage increasingly risky strategies, living vicariously through thee violence Chief enacts. She might try to make use of Forerunner technology to gain a degree of independence, maybe staying behind to control sentinels from an old Forerunner facility on one of the alien worlds so she can fight on her own. Cortana, now entering the jealousy stage and literally expanding, would need a more powerful network to survive. What better place for her to go than Halo? I wouldn't have any of this happen in such a manner that she becomes outright hostile to Chief or his allies, of course. I don't think she'd ever stop thinking of Chief as her friend, and she'd certainly see the value in ending the conflict. So it would be best if her need for a larger installation coincides with the overall plot and Chief's goals. To this end, I think it would be really interesting if the series were concluded with the Flood once again released on the galaxy. How? The San'shyuum, now convinced that becoming one with the Flood will help them defeat their former gods, find another contained strain of the Flood aboard a newfound Halo installation. Omega Halo, since it'll be the definitive end. The San'shyuum get there first, destroying the installation's monitor and using brute force (pun intended) to release the contained Flood that are present there. By the time the protagonists arrive, things are too late. The Flood have been allowed to consume the San'shyuum presence there and are actively being aided in spreading across the galaxy. There's a discussion amongst the protagonists about what is to be done now. Chief and Arbiter, understanding the magnitude of the Flood threat, make the hard decision to activate the ring. It's a hard fight to the control room and many of the newer characters, maybe even Arbiter himself, die along the way. I'm not sure about specific dialogue, but I'd imagine Cortana would struggle with the notion of letting Chief go. Regardless, Chief would detonate the ring in the end, leaving Cortana behind as the installation monitor. Over very long periods of time she would use her knowledge to repeat the reseeding process and the galaxy would begin anew once more. Maybe it's a little cheesy, I don't know. Regardless, thinking about it was much more enjoyable than playing the games that we actually got.
The Chosen One cutscene gets EVEN worse when you factor in the Librarian also physically enhanced the Chief to godlike levels. She rushed his evolution on a genetic level. And then you see the fight with Locke in halo 5. Makes you think
I'm genuinely surprised there wasn't some shit that 343 came out with in the lore to explain that God Awful fight. Like I expexted some 343 shill to say "the new book actually says that it was because Master Chief had literally just lived out an entire different story and showed up to the fight tired"
I always thought that Forerunners were human, it was all but confirmed in half of 343 Guilty Sparks dialogue. The whole name of reclaimer, we are reclaiming what we once claimed and lost. HOW DO PEOPLE JUST IGNORE THAT!?
I have a theory that people didn't pick up on it because alot of the audience were kids, we were too illiterate to pick up on this stuff. Alot of the people sticking around with Halo now and defend 343s forerunners were kids growing up with the franchise
Dude seriously. It grinds my gears to the core that people pay no mind to when Guilty Spark was basically like “hey bro chill out you’ve already done this before just do it again”
@@Lauren-si1fcThat's definitely part of it, I think another decent contribution is the fact a lot of Halo fans grew up with the newer games and lore, so when they see all the hints throughout the original games they just think "Oh yeah, Halo 4 explained that." and don't question it any further. Because most people would naturally assume this is a cohesive story and universe lol. Basically, if you don't know any better, it's genuinely hard to tell where Bungie's story ended and where 343's retcons begin. It especially doesn't help when you look up lore videos that tell you stuff like "Yeah, in the first game Guilty Spark confused Chief with the Didact." like that's supposed to make any sense. I mean, come on now, what the fuck? Guys, Spark just assumed Chief knew more about the Forerunners and Halo than he actually did, it's not that complicated.
@@noddy1973 I know, I only brought up Guilty Spark because his dialogue is the most blatant. Every other sentence he spews is an implication that the people who built the ring were OUR Forerunners, and not just an alien species that came before us.
Oh yeah, the gravemind also refers to chief as a forerunner when he says "Child of my enemy why have you come? I offer no forgiveness for a father's sins past down to his son" basically implying Humanity are the ancestors of the forerunners he fought before the firing of the halo array
Don't forget the Gravemind calling Chief the child of his enemy, and how a father's sins cast to his son. Goddamn, i hate we got stolen of an eerie and obscure part of the lore to be replaced with super bionicles and a mediocre villain in villanous power armor, 343i just wanted to do their own stuff from the beginning.
@@bruhgod123That sounds just as stupid. If anything the Didact should be a noble figure that slowly descends into racism and hatred the more he learns about the Covenant and what they did to humanity, with his main motivation to get revenge on the Covenant's species for the billions they killed. Basically a complete inverse of his motivations in Halo 4, he wants to protect humanity, but takes it one step too far. Chief's motivation for stopping him would be that the war is already over, the peace he fought for was achieved and there's no reason to continue the fighting, and that even some people like the Arbiter and the Elites are remorseful and are now humanity's allies.
343 Had this mania of making these "uuh so scawy super strong undefeatable enemy" that just wont fucking kill anyone and instead will just toss around chief like a toy (Didact, Warden, Atriox)
Heck in the bungie era books written by Joseph Staten before Halo 3. The Forerunners were pretty much confirmed to be ancient humans. And it makes the whole Covenant human war that much more dark. The Covenant sought to eradicate the very species their religion was built upon, humanity. Which the Prophet of Truth opted to wage war upon humanity to hide that fact. The forerunners being an entirely different species cheapens the whole conflict.
Yeah it has been a thing for a long time. I think I personally noticed when looking at the Halo 2 art book and saw how similar human buildings specific the skyscrapers looked like Forerunner obelisk but just primitive. I think it really clicked when I finished reading Ghost of Onyx and reading both at the same time. I told some friends to the lead up of Halo 3 that I think I cracked a big code of the Halo games.
The whole point of Halsey cloning herself to create Cortana is to avoid the limitations that would cause "rampancy". So there's one more piece of Bungie lore ignored for 343's fanfiction.
As a pretty big Marathon fan myself, rampancy is much more complex then simply "going crazy", like 343 seems to think. Yeah its part of it, but its far more then just that. But again, it all stems back to Frank O Connor being a creative hack.
Holy shit thank you. Halo 4 onwards has entirely dumbed down the concept of rampancy when Marathon and even the Halo 3 terminals show that it isn't just an AI going crazy and deteriorating into a hostile state. Durandal going rampant wasn't him becoming "lol quirky crazy murderous AI", but acting on a longtime contempt of humanity and hinted at acting to preserve his life and escape the heat death of the universe.
I'm so ready for the new Marathon game to completely style on everything 343 has ever touched with their creativity famished hands. The Nar got 3 terminals about them and are cooler than any of the Guardian/Endless/ Nu-Forerunner shit combined
@@junioraltamontent.7582 Its honestly kinda embarassing when 90's Bungie is able to create a backstory with substance for guys that honestly were designed to either be shot at or basically acting as optional fluff, while 343 spends so much time writing comics and making terminals on an entire race that gets even more boring the more they try to contrive bullshit explanations.
Imagine if this _was_ a "Reclaimer" saga, but it was humanity - with just one major world and a handful of small warships left - trying to find and secure Forerunner technology before anyone else did. The enemies are the San'Shyuum Prelates and a small number of Grunts, Jackals, and Brutes who are still fanatically dedicated to eradicating humanity.
That sounds actually perfect. It doesn’t retcon anything from the previous games and in a way it still kinda makes sense to the story and doesn’t give a fuck you to the ending continuity to Halo 3’s ending
@@idkanameimnotthatcreative7456Plus it would be a perfect opportunity to let us play as a new spartan, give cheif a break. New trilogy, New protag. A fresh start in a new world, cheifs done his mission, and now the sangheili and the humans can coexist and help each other expand. The new spartan helping the human remnants secure forerunner tech, heck maybe even switch back and forth between this new spartan and cheif, on different ends of the galaxy, helping different bands of humans.
You could probably do an interesting 4-way war between the Human-Elite alliance, the San'shyuum (maybe call them Crusaders or something as a nod to the Prophets), the Brutes, and maybe even a resurgence of the Flood, since they by all accounts are still around following 3 (as far as I can tell they were never destroyed anyway). Plus having these more chaotic multi-faction wars would be a really interesting way to spice things up as shifting interstellar politics, truces, alliances, atrocities, and other factors keep changing the whole balance of power in the galaxy
That is basically post war humanity in a nut shell. Humanity was searching the galaxy for forerunner artifacts, hell the infinity’s job was to track down the remaining halo rings. The only difference is there is no unified covenant, they’re fighting themselves more then they’re fighting the UNSC. You need to realize the covenant’s hatred of each other usurps their hatred of humanity. To them the question was who do you hate more a mosquito or Hitler
@@tamezzodiac2862 I played reach and said, "yes" I played halo 4 and said, "no" If you'd like to file a complaint, please, submit it to the box right under that gruesome log trap in the corner.
Bungie's Halo had those incredibly written subtle moments. Like the fact that the first prophet to die was Regret. Then Mercy. And then Truth. In order to win the war they left behind Regret, sacraficed their Mercy and only The Truth was left. No one ever says that explicitly but it says so much about the dogma of The Covenant through nothing but "show don't tell". Or that scene at the beginning of Halo 2, when both factions deal with the aftermath of The Halo Event. While Master Chief and Sargeant Major Johnson are rewarded among their peers, The Soon-To-Be Arbiter is chastised, ridiculed in front of an angry mob and literally branded by a red-hot poker as a heretic. They cut between thoae scenes as they progress to show that while one of them celebrates victory another has to cope with loss, yet as we know both of them lost nearly everyone they served with on that ring. Name ONE SCENE in any of the sequels that went THIS HARD.
Not to mention the deaths of the prophets are ironic Regret gets killed in a regrettable situation Mercy gets mercy killed by John Truth gets killed by someone that knows the truth.
Did the librarian account for that fact that master chief could have at any point choked on a ravioli in the mess hall and asphyxiated and died right then and there
That's why she encoded the fact that Master Chief never takes off his helmet. He probably eats through a straw that way, hence no choking hazards. *AIR-TIGHT 343 L O R E*
Halo 4, now that I think about it, really is The Force Awakens of the Halo franchise. And I had the same feelings about both initially, I thought they were decent enough at a first sight, but both of them are fanfiction level of writing, both of them had no reason to exist since the original story was already finished in a satisfying way, both of them were created for the same reason: to keep the franchise going because it was so succesful but we have no idea what to do with it anymore.
Halo really is the Star Wars of video games. A series initially made by a studio that had a passion for their craft and wanted to tell a cool story, now cynically kept alive as a shell of it’s former self by a massive corporation for the sole purpose of squeezing any remaining money out of the nostalgic value and brand recognizability that the series originally represented. The lesson here is don’t buy their products any more. Don’t spend money to experience the newest adventures of John Halo. Look for something you haven’t experienced before, made by people who care about games.
Halo 4: Force awakens - Nostalgia bait with some decent bits to drag us back into the world of chief. Halo 5: The Last Jedi - Pulls rug under us over and over and flips things on their head to confuse the fuck out of us. Halo 6 Infinite: The Rise of My Asswalker - Makes a massive joke out of everything after promising a great end to the entire disjointed trilogy. I'm amazed with how similar these two franchises are with their latest gen iterations. 😑
@daenackdranils5624 yeah it is his opinion spme pf the train of thought has some merit. I had research and interviews and statements from the devs that i had to go on. Also looking at things mor efor whay they are looking last just what im told sometimes :)
@@YnossZaperator I agree. I also think that if a reboot or a spin-off with Chief is ever made, the studio responsible for the game should go the ID Software route and just simply call the game HALO.
I'll never forget how during the cutscene where Cortana is questioning what it feels like to be real, master chief *cocks his assault rifle on the wrong side. They don't even try to hide it bro. They show the other side of the gun and there's nothing to pull. Who missed that.*
Holy shit this is pulling my heart strin-wait Chief, what are you doing!? THAT’S NOT HOW YOU COCK THE RIFLE! NO! DON’T GO! YOU HAVEN’T EVEN LOADED A ROUND!
@@chilbiyito bullpups aren’t ambidextrous, at least not without some minor modification, and why would Chief have his rifle in a left handed configuration in the first place? Does he have his Mjolnir controls set to southpaw?
@@decentlylazy7419Yes multiple bungie devs have come out and said so. Even Marty o Donnell There’s a halo 1 commentary where Joseph staten confirms it. And if you just listen to the dialogue of halo 3, it’s pretty obvious. “My creators, makers of all I hold dear. You are Forerunner, but this ring is mine” - Guilty spark “Child of my enemy, I offer no forgiveness” as well as “A father’s sins passed down to the child” -The grave mind “Your forefathers wisely steeled themselves for what had to be done” -Prophet of Truth None of this dialogue even makes sense if they aren’t the same species. And these are only some often quoted in halo 3. There’s even more in halo 2. I mean there’s literally cut concept art of the arbiter opening a forerunner casket and being shocked to find a human skeleton. Anyone who denies them being the same species is just coping
@@decentlylazy7419 It really was and it made the whole halo universe more cohesive. The covenant hated humanity because the humans were the rightful owners of the Forerunner legacy. And the grave mind is what remains of the precursors after the Forerunner (humanity) betrayed them and now this fallen god wants vengeance. That’s why they’re called the flood. A biblical reference. The wrath of god meant to destroy humanity. But this very obvious parallel to the Bible is ruined in 343’s lore
Cortana going rampant wasn't a bad idea in concept. It was 343's god awful interpretation of what Rampancy is that made her so out of character. Bungie's idea of Rampancy was that an AI has developed so many pathways and grown as a self-thinking machine that it actually starts to develop sentience. It starts with melancholy, then goes into anger, then jealousy, and then finally the AI reaches Meta-Stability, becoming effectively immortal and indistinguishable from a real human being in thought and behavior. Then you have 343's idea of AI Rampancy, which is basically just robot schizophrenia that ends with the AI's eventual death.
I think chief's first line upon seeing the first enemy of the game has been the funniest plothole i've ever seen in gaming "I thought we had a truce with the covenant" What covenant? The covenant are gone, all their leaders who could have negotiated any truce are dead, what forces remain are miniscule at most because truth put all his eggs in one basket with everyone going to the ark, which mind you, got vaporized by a halo ring. You were THERE FOR THAT WHEN IT HAPPENED. YOU DID THAT.
No, the Covenant was vastly larger than what we ever saw in the games. We just defeated their leaders and shattered their morale, the Covenant itself was still around. I do still think they shouldn't have shown up again in Halo 4, but Humanity and the Separatist forces alone didn't destroy the ENTIRE galactic empire the Covenant was
Sure because a massive galactic confederacy of different aliens would all have the same beliefs and motivations after just having a civil war with each other. They'd all just give up all territory and ambitions once their leader died. Yep, thats definitely how real empires work...
@slaternatlivedotcom They called it the Ark because it made the Halos and stored most of the genetic samples for reseeding the universe. It seems YOU can't process that the Covenant were vastly more numerous than Humanity and the Separatists combined.
something I never see mentioned about halo 3 forge was how some of the most popular maps used a bug of some type on almost every object in the map. you needed to use some strange tricks to get props to clip through each other and create continuous structures and were limited to things like shipping containers and blast doors to create structures. truly insane levels of creativity and dedication for some of these maps.
I remember when if you wanted an object to float in the air, you had to place objects underneath it, add what you wanted, and then delete everything under it lol. How far we've come
I tried to use some of those tricks back in the day and sucked terribly at it, made me even more impressed with the incredible work people pulled off, some of those builds are still awesome
9:30 I wouldn’t call Reach “story-less”. The game has an incredible story! It’s smaller and more contained than the others, but I feel more emotion from the cutscenes than I do from most other Bungie Halos. I love them all, but Reach is one of my favorites. Calling it a plot-less run and gun is doing it a huge disservice.
@@CranberryyyyHe's probably one of those fanboys that writes off the entire story as trash just because the dates don't line up with a book Bungie had nothing to do with. Oh well, his loss
Reach was my first but objectively looking at it the plot really sucks, it makes no sense, most of everyone feels like they’re just doing nothing most of the time, the book version is simply better and the game was mostly written by Frank O’Connor who explicitly made sure that Eric Nylund has as little influence on Halo as possible (stuff like Spartan 3s and ODSTs were his idea not Bungie’s) and the story was only kept from Halo 5 tier because the Bungie writers were there also if the Bungie writers had their way it would’ve lined up with the books almost perfectly
@@daegnaxqelil2733 gatekeeping is an essential tool to preserving the integrity of our favorite things. If they wanna enjoy what we enjoy, by all means. If they wanna shit up the place and change everything until theseus ship now resembles a rowboat then they can GTFO.
You’ve verbalized so many of my criticisms with Halo 4 and 343’s Halo games and lore that I just can’t put into words… They’ve totally ruined Halo and to be honest, we should consider all of their material non canon garbage
@@alessandro348 what I’m wondering is how did neither Steve Downes or Jen Taylor raise an eyebrow at that? Like, I get that it's probably just a job to them, but if I were an actor, I'd question such a blatantly awful story decision.
I distinctly remember feeling very sick after the first few missions of the campaign. Everything looked wrong, felt wrong, and contradicted one of the most airtight conclusions to a story ever made.
This! That second mission Requiem I literally put the controller down halfway through and just thought wtf is this? Where is that magical Halo feeling? It just wasn’t fun.
you people are weird. halo 4s areas looked like halo ce, but clearly a different forerunner structure. much different enemy design and graphical style but they made everything look artificial just like halo ce.
That Librarian scene is the worse cutscene I ever witnessed. That fucking cutscene is reason enough to debunk anyone who has the audacity to claim Halo 4 has a great story. Turning the Master Cheif into a destined hero is so not Halo. 343 and Microsoft never understood or cared about Halo. Bungie were the only ones to give a damn.
Even as a casual fan who really only plays the campaigns, I was honestly shocked just how bad it felt to play when I played it for the first time as part of the MCC. Everything just felt so off about it.
@@NGRevenant Yeah man. It was pretty miserable. When I got far enough to see what the Marines looked like in the game, I switched it off and didn’t ever finish. I was so sour about the art style, and the Prometheans were egregiously annoying to fight on Legendary…
@@NGRevenant wait until you play halo 5, aka escort mission the game. It's literally unplayable on anything harder than normal. Your AI teammates will make you wanna claw your eyes out. I couldn't get past the first mission. Not out of spite. But because the AI kept getting me killed trying to revive them
God, shitting on a well deserved shitting on 343 is giving me such a raging clue. This video is giving me the same joy as crowbcat’s video of bungie vs 343
I dont mean to be dramatic, but how dare 343? Im a huge fan of the lore, and humanity being forerunners tied EVERYTHING together. Bungie either didnt know, didnt care, or honestly thougt "hmmmm nah thats lame, how about this instead" and thought they could do better and change established CORE lore. Its literally why the coveneant were so bent on anhillating humanity! I always wondered what humanity did to offend them, as they never offered humanity a place in the covenant, and as the series progresses and you learn WHY they seemed so determined to wipe us out, it blew my mind. 343 came along and made halo into the avengers. AND made humanity just another ancient species, also at war with the covenant!? As the video mentions, this actually kind of justifies the covenant wiping out humanity!!!
The forerunner part made me sad... So much set up for an amazing twist... Besides it solves a simple issue. Why would the Forerunners wipe themselves out and not reseed themselves along the other species? Well if they were humans then they actually did save their own species like every other...
“I’m personally glad the humans aren’t forerunners Not because bungie wanted it or not but because it would’ve been extremely fucking contrived” - Some UA-cam commenter who’s influence is making me rapidly lose faith in humanity
343 doesn't know shit about rampancy, it is supposed to be a super self-awareness for AI making them more inteligent and more agressive but that agression it's caused when they feel threatened or harassed Frank O'connor wished he could make something as good as Marathon's lore
I literally have zero clue how the fact that humanity are forerunner went over my head so fucking hard. Im a diehard halo fan played literally everything, shit its half my life. That makes every thing 343 did lore wise a million times worse holy hell.
In the original cut legendary ending of Halo 2 made this crystal clear. As the Arbiter finds a Forerunner skeleton that is human. I really wish the final act of Halo 2 at least made it to Halo 3 which narrativly is easily the weakest of the Bungie era.
"Why can't things just happen? What happened to circumstance? What happened to chance or luck?" Simple. Those things have been demonised as "plot convenience" and "lazy writing" because people think everything in a story must be as complicated, planned out and preordained as possible or else it's automatically bad.
To be fair, the interpretation isn't correct. She isn't saying that they literally planned for the Chief and Cortana to arrive at that exact moment for that reason. She is saying that they planned for humanity to develop AI and reach the point that they are now. This isn't even a retcon. The idea that the forerunners shaped human evolution and advancement existed before Halo 3 even came out.
@@halofornoobs93 True, but the original concept was meant to explore the morally grey implications of that. Instead of having some benevolent angel-esque figure of perfection decend from the heavens and tell us this and assume everything's a-okay with that, it was supposed to show how the entire course of human history has been manipulated the entire time, not entirely dissimilar to the Prophets' manipulation of the Covenant.
Halo 4 was the last Halo game I ever played, after the art style change, the forerunner retcon and Karen Travis butchering the books I lost any love I had for Halo and now I treat it like Star Wars its a zombie franchise where the best years are behind it and never coming back.
Unlike starwars, the halo franchise has at a least a little bit of hope. Halo infinite was universally praised when it came out, the gameplay was fun and we thought 343 was going in the right direction but then every one realized that the game was released with almost no content. And 343 hasnt added much to the game since its release Halo wars 2 was good, halo 5 campaign was bad and they made the biggest mistake by removing the splitscreen feature, but the gameplay was fun. Basically for everything 343 gets right they get like 100 things wrong. Meanwhile starwars has got nothing right at all ever since ep 7 came out
Please explain karen travis, because glasslands was the first book i read. I went all the way up to Contact Harvest. I'd like to have a reason to exclude glasslands beyond personal suspicion
After rewatching this for the gajillionth time, I just realised something: "How is the Didact alone in the galaxy after the Halo's activated?" Ignoring the 343 Forerunners existence as a plot hole to the Bungie games and sticking to 343 canon, how is he alone? The Halos take samples of the known existing life in the galaxy and then after firing, reseed the galaxy with said lifeforms. Why did the Halo's not do this for the 343 Forerunners? It can't be the whole "Forerunners are actually Human" answer bcuz 343 and their fans are hellbent on making sure that isn't the case due to Humans and the 343 Forerunners existing at the same time. And it can't be because of the Librarian's altering of our DNA to use Forerunner tech because it didn't alter our appearance in any way. Also good to know that in 343 canon, the Forerunner's nuked Humanity into the stone age twice. 1st with the HvF war, and 2nd with the rings(literal factory reset). So why aren't they more present in the 343 games? The Didact is the only one of his kind that is actually alive and the Librarian is basically a hologram with SOME physical abilities. The rest are not present. Did the Flood just kick their Voldemort looking asses so badly the Halo's didn't even bother reviving them? Is it that stupid and complex "Mantle of Responsibility" shit? So my only plausible answer(as of this post) is that the Halo's delete the race that activates them after they go off and revives everyone else. But even that is a weird answer due to the Didact's existence. So that plausible answer is that his prison ship is like Bungie's version of a shield world, a thing that protects people from the Halo rings activation, just on a smaller scale. But that doesn't make sense because 343 retconned the shield worlds. It's all so stupid and needlessly complicated. I'll admit, I could be wrong in my thinking and that it was explained in 343 lore, but I can't be bothered to check due to how bad it all is. Feel free to give me some info if you have any.
Silentium bent over backwards to explain it, but basically the remaining Forerunners felt so shameful that they didn't even want to reseed their race for repopulation. So the survivors on the Ark just kinda fucked off to a smaller satellite galaxy that orbits the Milky Way while completely forgetting about the Didact.
Wow. I didn't realize the Halo 4 villain was supposed to be a Forerunner. The writers for Halo 4 were so clueless, it's embarrassing. Actually it's almost like they wanted to ruin Halo. Why else would they make the Forerunners look so ugly?
Microsoft didn’t choose 343, they made 343. That’s why most of their games are shit, because even if genuine fans made their way into the development, they were overshadowed by shitty management and corporate decision making.
Your point about Bungie's Halo being military sci-fi hits home so hard. 343i is just SO obsessed with this high-concept sci-fantasy nonsense it feels unrecognizable as Halo. They're borderline physically attracted to "space magic" nonsense and retconning stuff that made sense into weird sci-fantasy high-concept tropey garbage. Like the Prometheans needing human "life force" to make...robots? Sentinels don't need "life force"? Neither do the monitors (until 343i retconned that to fit their "life force" plot). And 343i just KEEP introducing some garbage "big bad" into their stories, instead of having factions; first it was the Didact, then their next disjointed game it was "Somehow Cortana returned" (due to aformentioned "space magic"), and NOW it's "Da endless" who are EVEN more super cool and stronker dan de flood! (It seriously feels like a Satam cartoon villain-of-the-week power creep issue.)
It's gotta be. I mean come on, after he goes into cryosleep he drifts to a place called "Requiem"? That can definitely be interpreted as a metaphor for him drifting to sleep and into a dream like world.
Something else to support all this is that 343 Guilty Spark never, not once, lied. He was deceptive, but he never lied. Everything he said was 100% true. When he says "you ARE Forerunner," he's not suggesting, he's not suspecting," he's affirming; he's telling the Chief, "You are my maker, but this is my ring". Everything 343i did is mediocre fanfiction, at best.
Another way to approach the stuff about melodrama and characters screaming and crying is the interesting observation that the idea of professionalism has kind of vanished over time from culture and media. In real life, tons of people still carry themselves professionally, but in our media, characters behave more and more unprofessionally, and there's probably lots of reasons behind it. But the thing is, being professional, being buttoned-down and focused on the mission, being part of a larger organization, means not centering yourself all the time. It's the recognition that sometimes, it's just not about you. I think there's something really deep here that I'm only getting at the edges at, but hey.
It reminds me of the film Contagion (no spoilers). There was a global outbreak and ordinary people from all walks of life are trying to survive (the movie has multiple protagonists across unrelated arcs). One character was an everyman just trying to protect his family as they pass away. At the end when the cure is made, this character finally breaks down and cries for the first time after a reminder of how it all began. He stayed strong because what else could he do? But in a moment to himself, just cried. It's shocking. No melodrama, just a man who has been strong for too long after a historic moment that reshaped society.
it's funny because one argument that people make is that Guilty Spark was "rampant" or insane when he attacked Master Chief, so what Guilty Spark says is invalid. So if the remaster is like that, they basically admit humans are Forerunners
56:45 - I'm basically nodding along throughout this entire video, but yeah. From just this title I already immediately agree. I've thought about this many, many times. Halo was always extremely understated. But "Halo 4" had a ton of melodrama. Like to just give an example. When Chief leaves Cortana behind in "Halo 2" what do we get? It's a highly emotional moment but all we get is Chief reaching for her, her saying "I don't want to chance a remote detonation. I need to stay here." But we all know what that meant. And then at the end of the game "After I'm through with Truth..." "Don't make a girl a promise, if you know you can't keep it." A great line. Emotional but without veering off into melodrama. If that scene had been written by 343 it would've been a 3 minute cutscene of Chief yelling at Cortana "BUT I LOVE YOU! I CAN'T LEAVE YOU BEHIND!" "But Joh, you have to! Else the universe will end!" And them just crying and going back and forth like that for an entire scene. Halo doesn't need that shit. It's understated. And it works. The melodrama and the melodramatic dialogue just feels cheap and cliché and doesn't fit.
58:00 - I do disagree here though. Like the Arbiter's journey has a TON of personal drama. This guy who's loyal to the covenant gets disgraced. Then has to redeem his honour. And then has to come to terms with changing his religious beliefs. That's a lot of personal drama, not just about big rings and alien species. I think the difference you're feeling here isn't WHERE the drama was (personal vs. societal) but HOW it was delivered. The Arbiter's journey was understated. You don't have a cutscene of the Arbiter crying in a room about how disgraced he is. You see him stand before a giant crowd and get burned with a mark. You get Rtas Vadumee telling him that the armour hides that mark and the Arbiter replying "Nothing ever will." You can feel his deep shame here. But its, as I said, understated. Every personal conflict in "Halo 4" is overstated. It's crying and yelling at each other and long speeches. That's not what Halo is. Edit: Later you pretty much go into this in what you say about the Arbiter, so I imagine we don't actually disagree then. I'm making these comments as I'm watching the video, so I didn't know that when I wrote this.
guilty spark: And I don't mean it metaphorically, or rhetorically, or poetically, or theoretically, or any other fancy way. You are forerunner. STRAIGHT. UP. 343 dev: its like its trying to speak to me, I know it!
Man I can't believe I completely forgot that 343i just straight up reintroduced the Covenant as it was in CE with barely an handwave of an explanation.
@@scoposteve8470 Yeah they say that the Covenant Storm are a splinter faction but they’re presented in game exactly the same as the covenant were in the OG titles
@@scoposteve8470everyone just refers to them as "the covenant". Its not until halo 5 that they're even slightly expanded on (and then you kill their leader.... in a fucking cutscene)
@@valance10 because Chief and Cortana have no clue what has happened over the course of 4 years. They have no idea what they are, just that they’re at the very least covenant. Jul’s death was very stupid I agree
Crowbcats video on halo there was someone who says “they didn’t earn halo that’s why they don’t care” and that’s always felt right. Just shocking how much they have run this once LEGENDARY franchise into the ground
The idea of a Halo game for non-Halo fans is ridiculous, the Bungie games were among the easiest games to get into. Mechanics wise you had plenty of health, there were powerfull weapons and predictable but challemging enemies so combat wasn't difficult to get familiar with, and story wise it was so simple to understand but so intriguing and fun to follow. Then Halo 4 came around and I still don't fully understand the plot, then Halo 5 and no one understands whats going on, now with Infinite its just a mix of the two with some stolen valor from other franchises...
its also critical to remember that Halo 4 was being produced and released at the HEIGHT of Cod's genre defining juggernaut status, and trying to appeal to cod's hypercasual demographic was ultimately what kneecapped the whole gameplay loop. It wasnt JUST that there were loadouts and perks now, it was that the whole weapon and equipment roster was designed AROUND that Loadout system, meaning that the varied and unique weapon sandbox was totally absent, because each of them had to be balanced around it being a potential spawn weapon.
Never noticed it until here, but the melodrama is extremely annoying and overbearing. Not only that, but now it’s obvious that the entire Halo tv show is a giant melodrama-fest.
"Halo 4: Worse than you remember" Holy based, Batman. I've heard so many people try and say that it's well written but when replaying it with my firends who've never played the Halo games we both learned to hate the game. The only redeeming part is that it's not as bad as 5 or Infinite but that's no complement.
Of all the stupid shit they pulled, I found their attempts to sell the Forerunners as their new-and-improved 'Fiverunners' the most insulting to both the franchise and myself on a personal level.
My man, I knew the old Bungie lore was that humans were forerunner, but I simply did not understand the absolute sheer hints to that throughout the whole trilogy. The Mercy dialogue you cited, "This time... none of you will be left behind," absolutely caught me off guard- I thought he was talking about the Covenant wiping them out, e.g. their last planet. ~Oh 3433333
Did... did they try to murder the Forerunner generation of humanity because they thought they were allowed to decide if they were unworthy to possess such advanced tech?
And now 343 brought back the Didact again and guess where his story is heading? The damn books. Edit: So guess who wrote Halo 4? Chris Schlerf: the writer for Mass Effect: Andromeda. Edit 2: Marty O'Donnell just confirmed that the Humans are and will always Forerunners on Twitter! WE WON BOYS!!!
@@trazyntheinfinite9895 I find some of the books actually pretty fun and well written, I enjoy really reading them. One example is halo the broken circle, it expand a lot the lore of the covenant. Nowadays the only thing I enjoy from halo are the books lmao.
I was probably too young when I played Halo 3, so when I played Halo 4 and I saw their take on forerunner, I just accepted it I guess. But know that it's put so obviously in my face, I feel so stupid for not knowing it before.
He is incorrect about a lot of claims in this video. Most of the forerunner stuff in Halo 4 is taken from books that came out between Halo 2 and 3 and Reach. This video is wildly inaccurate.
@@halofornoobs93 no one cares about the stupid freaking books. If you write a book without following the main plot of the games (Halo is a videogame franchise, remember?) and their details, then your story is completely wrong
@@halofornoobs93 But the book doesn't determine what is canon it's the game and the game says that the forerunner are human and weren't anything that say forerunner aren't humans is because Frank O'Connor. Books are only canon if it doesn't go against the games.
The distinction between forerunner and reclaimer doesn't even mean the two are separate species. The forerunners are humans prior to the firing of the Halo Array, and reclaimers are humans after the firing.
Halo 4 is what made me give up on the series. I rewatched all of the halo cutscenes from 1-4 today, and I realized why it felt so bad. The story and the writing are cringe, and frustrating. They convoluted the storyline by introducing The Diadect & The Librarian. Then the final boss is a quick time event, instead of an actual fight. Deus ex machina everywhere, and just eye rolling dialogue. Halo 4 should have never been made.
7:10 A little thing to note with Halo 3's ending, it mirrors the beginning of Combat Evolved. Chief wakes up from cryo, then goes to sleep in cryo once his job is done. It is a clear indication that Chief is a representation for the player, a vessel we control, and that by waking up from cryo we gain control of him, and by doing the same in reverse, it's a sign that the story is over. Bungie may have made it look like a cliffhanger, but thematically, narratively and symbolically, it's a definitive sign that the journey has come to an end. No more adventures with Chief, no more missions, it's over. Now, it's time to go outside and speak to a real person, so to speak.
Thats awesome XD i love that Idea, very good "how did you sleep chief?" "Oh god it was horrible I had a terrible nightmare... there was a Vampire who had the Force, and you were crazy and there was robots with faces inside their faces..."
I mean, that isn't really contradicting anything. The idea that humanity and forerunners were 2 different races came out in the books back before Halo 3 even came out.
@@halofornoobs93 Explain why 343 Guilty Spark in Halo CE says Chief is LITERALLY Forerunner than? "You are Forerunner", remember that? He also states in the crashed Autumn that he cant wait to catch up on all 'our' lost time, referring to HUMAN history.
@@thelizard556 "You are the child of my Makers. Inheritor of all they left behind. You are Forerunner! But this ring... is mine!" I always viewed this as humanity being the inheritors of them, not literally them, that we are supposed to be the "new" Forerunners.
Halo 4 and 343 Halo at large was never Halo. Those developers openly DESPISED this series. It was only ever a glorified trend-chaser with a popular brand name slapped on the cover.
Dude, I was late to all these games, just played 4 last year. I could immediately feel a drop in quality. Most notable was the complete absence of any kind of "sandbox", it's just a hallway shooter. I couldn't move 5 steps off-script. But also the enemies, the writing, music... Say what you want about Infinite but just playing it feels way better.
@@INFILTR8US it's decent. I listen to it. 117 is good. Definitely not the lowest point of the game but, you can't really compare it to what came before
At minute 9 you talk about how they wanted it to sell for $60 to please Microsoft. According to Marty and his deleted big stage chats on discord, they wanted to sell it as an expansion earlier on the year for $30. It was MS execs who forced Bungie to delay the game till holiday season and charge full price. According to Marty and his other accounts, they wanted to surprise the fans and make them think "holy heck, I'm getting all this content for $30?". That's why it was initially called Halo 3: Recon and why it kept the Halo 3 tag. Edit: As much as I hate HR for retonning TFoR and Ghosts of Onyx, calling it a plotless run and shoot is inaccurate. It tells the fall of reach from the perspective of the Spartans on the ground.
I blame TFoR and Ghosts more for that. They simply weren't written with gameplay flow in mind. (They did however deserve rewrites to fit Reach's timeline)
@@KopperNeoman of course! They were never supposed to be adapted to games. How could they possibly account for a game that would happen 10 years in the future and no one new it would even exist? That was just Bungie's being perry about their baby. Also, Ghost's retcon is even more offensive because everything about Spartan 3s is changed but it has nothing to do with gameplay.
@@summ.3433 lol, it's a decent book. It's not the greatest, but everything in it made sense. So, it's eye-rolling to complain about a game that has an OK story, but completely disregarded 10-year-old well-established canon? To each their own I guess.
One thing I personally disliked the most was "Master Chief being human" all he did was just being sad and coping for 3 games straight.There's more to being human than just being sad and coping.
Correction for around 12:30 or so. Halo CEA was NOT 60 bucks. It was 40, and it came with a code for six Reach maps that were remake of classic maps, plus a Reach firefight map based on the second leave of CE. It was also the first time the campaign for CE had online co-op. It was not a bad deal if you loved CE. They also added terminals that unlocked new cutscenes, which added some very interesting story for Spark, and one showed the pain the flood was putting Key through.
@@lucyfromseventeenth Unfortunately I often worry when people say things that are not true. Some do it on purpose, but in this case I think it was a lack of research. I don’t think it’s the end of the world, but this UA-camr needs to learn from mistakes, and he can’t do that if we don’t tell him when he makes them.
"So fades the great harvest of my betrayal" remains, for me, the most ludicrous, meaningless, and pretentious line of dialogue ever delivered in any media, probably for all time.
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![Halo 4 is worse than you remember - Halo 4 Review [2/2]](/img/tr.png)
![Halo Infinite is a Hilarious Mess - Review [1/2]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/mjDftHRrJgs/mqdefault.jpg)
Once again UA-cam's compression messes with my pixel-art outros. I guess adjusting the bitrate doesn't help. Maybe I need a new encoder...
Anyways, Part 2 will release publicly in 1 week. If you want to watch it right now, you can go sub to my patreon, but if not, no worries it'll be free on my channel on July 1st. Otherwise thanks all for the patience as it took me way too long to get this beast of a video (technically two) edited and uploaded. Seems a lot of us have strong memories and opinions of this era in Halo's life span and honestly this was mostly cathartic for me to finally be able to articulate why Halo 4 always felt off.
Also, this part mainly covers plot and story. Part 2 is going to cover gameplay mechanics, don't worry, there's still another half of this review ready to be unleashed. Anyways, hope you all have a great weekend!
You so much of the video repeating yourself without giving single bit of unique insight. Acting like bungie told a coherent story is bizarre. The bungie games stories lived off of the novels. If you want to know nas bungie is at a telling stories just look the disaster of Destiny
@@Daftanemone Bruh literally didn't watch the video if he thinks I care about modern bungie, implying they are the same studio as the bungie of old.
Also dude, what? Lived off the novels? Tell me you didn't play the games without telling me you didn't play the games lmao
Gotta disagree with Halo Infintes combat being bad.
Wow, fuck that game. Ahuh.
Really lookin "BORDERLINE UNPLAYABLE" definately "THE WORST FPS IVE EVER SEEN"
51:27 mjolnir cannot be pierced by a dmr shot without energy shieldings actually. watch installation 00, halo guns are quite much superior to the current day if you look into the logistics. also masterchief was never just another soldier that had luck, allegorically he served as a messianic figure with great importance and was clearly much more special then just another soldier
The game’s story isn’t “fan fiction”.
For it to be fan fiction, the writers would have to actually be fans of the source material
There are a lot of fanfic writers that hate their source material. They typically make Marry Sues
The part that is fan-fiction is the sub-plot about converting human beings into digital beings. You KNOW that was for the sake of a master Chief - Cortana romance plot. You KNOW that's why something so bizarre was injected into the story.
@@patchmoulton5438 sounds like the people that bitch about there being no Female Space Marines in 40k
@Patch Moulton maybe not hate the OG material but those people definitely feel like they can do better just out of naive narcissism. Take, for example, the recent Star Wars "Trilogy"
@@DisDatK9 Is it just me or do a lot of these modern sequels and reboots just feel as shallow as the next especially in terms of writing?
Blatant social commentary with not much in terms of overall themes and inconsistent worldbuilding while following the same industry tropes.
"Not enough people are buying our cakes. We should hire people who hate baking cakes so that people who don't like our cakes will buy our cakes!"
When you switch around some nouns, the insanity of Halo 4 really comes into view.
That's the best way I've heard that subject put
343 did a good job with the lore though, like with the books.
@@twinzzlers except the general consumer of Halo doesn’t read the books
@@twinzzlersno lol
@@twinzzlers Name some of those books then. And then I'll point out all the ways they had nothing to do with 343i.
From Mendicant fucking Bias himself while talking to the Prophets after the discovery of Harvest:
"For eons I have watched. Listened to you misinterpret. This is not "Reclamation". This is Reclaimer. And it represents MY MAKERS"
And Guilty Spark constantly thinking Chief is Forerunner in Halo 1 and 3. And people still think it's foreshadowed
Aside from the whole elites being unplayable in the last 3 Halo games, Arbiter was just tossed aside completely by 343, only appearing in books and fanservice being a side character. And also as a stupid plush, he deserves better, the guy really impacted the events of the Halo trilogy.
343 doesn't want good well written characters in their games like my boy and just probably hates him as much as rookie and cortana. Also, an arbiter plush sounds sick af
@@thesamejackalsniperthatkil117 oh true, I wouldn't mind a cool arby plush irl but it's just the way he's handled in Infinite as " memba berries" moment
Arbite doesnt even appears too much in the books, and one of his few time he appears is to humilliate him.
Spoilers ahead: Arbiter had to ask for help to Lord Hood, who was in the Infinity shit, to not lost the civil war in his own country. Without the humans, arbiter would be dead. And the worse part is that he was losing the civil war because humans were selling weapons to the arbiter's enemies lol.
He appears in other ocassion just to give some orders to an elite to help humans in Earth to turn off the Ark. And in the last scene of halo 5 that is told in one book also. and I think those are the only times he appears.
343 hate Elites
Arbiter was the Luigi to MC's Mario. He deserves better.
9:18 - Update on this. Marty O'Donnell recently told the story of ODST in a comment he made on a UA-cam video about ODST. Apparently Bungie itself wanted to release it at 30 dollars as an expansion but Microsoft forced them to release it at 60 dollars and as a full game.
Marty was the realest. ❤
But tbh, as a Halo fan I would gladly pay the full $60 for ANY halo game up to O.D.S.T.'s quality.
@@TheDirvish "I'd happily pay $60 for a low effort asset flip"
Peak consumerism. Absolutely pathetic.
@@theincrediblefella7984 That's not how quotations work you oversized crustacean
@@theincrediblefella7984"I'll pay $60+ for a low effort, and terrible AAA title"
Peak consumerism, very sad
Odst truly was half a game so that made sense. But because of that corporate decision, every game since, including Reach, has been CONSPICUOUSLY shorter in campaign than any one of halo 1-3. I've literally counted combat encounters autistically, so i can say this with scientific precision. All the games post trilogy have been shorter, yes even infinite
Actually master chief does die in the halo trilogy, multiple times even. This is because I suck at the game.
Master chief was never able to get past the jackal snipers and humanity died
@@MM-op6ti I’d argue any timeline where Chief dies after killing Regret would probably survive, as that was what kickstarted the Arbiter’s turn, and he hopefully could have taken Chief’s place.
Can you believe that the people on the /r/Halo subreddit actually PREFER the Forerunners to be a separate species from humanity, and that they think humans being Forerunner are "predictable" and "boring"
Seriously, the top comments are those that don't like humanity being Forerunners every single time the topic is brought up.
How can they call themselves fans of the lore and the Forerunners and whatever when they don't even like the whole point behind that lore in the first place!
No the subreddit deletes dissenters’ comments so it seems like everyone there likes 343’s decisions.
Reddit is cancer. All the mods are purple haired landwhales with an agenda to suppress everything that advances "whiteness" (itself a proxy for Christian values, which stand in the way of the Marxist Long March) and guess what's included in that? Good story. Because discriminating between good and bad story implies that there are judgmental ideals which not everyone measures up to and thus not everyone or every belief gets to be validated and affirmed. That's just ONE reason that quality writing is in religious conflict with wokeness
every r/halo member is a 343 stan
Those same people will tell you with a straight face that "Halo is a book series with a multiplayer spin off and its better that way".
It's really apparent that they're a bunch of lore nerd dweebs that should've stuck to cannibalizing Harry Potter, GoT and LoTR. But they are Redditors so that should have been apparent.
Keyword “subreddit”
Reddit is full of trash
Forerunners being humanity literally ties into our own religious mythos, with the ark and the flood being explicitly featured in the bible. Even the idea of the rapture is shockingly similar to the great journey, hence the prophets mentioning humanity being “ left behind”. It was a master stroke of writing on bungie’s part. They imply that these biblical stories are misrememberings of the first firing of the halo arrays. Furthermore, it hints at how a remnant of humanity might have survived on the ark.
Precisely. Let's not even get into the Covenant names. Grunts are Unggoy. Un-GOY. Isra-ELITES. But it's all coincidence surely.
So in a way... 343 Industries doesn't like Jesus?
Lol, kidding. But that'd be funny as hell.
@@theholygamer969 religion is cringe
@@TRAMP-oline If it's false, yes, definitely.
But if it's the Catholic scripture (which is basically Jewish scripture that includes everything Jesus did), it's actually awesome as hell.
Not even kidding, I looked it up. It's true, and it's based.
@@theholygamer969 Even aside from personal convictions, the fact that the writers actually tried to base their game's lore in actual religious scriptures itself pretty cool and adds a lot of depth. Hell, I always found the background lore in Bungie's games to be profound because of that. Even Frankie's shitty Halo 3 terminals benefitted from the mystique and depth of the mainline canon's allusions to actual religious and mythological texts.
Plus it's cooler to say that in the Halo universe, humanity's religions are misrememberings of our past as the dominant galactic power rather than popping up for some reason after nearly getting wiped out by a technologically peer race and they in turn wiped out by what is basically dementia dust now.
Every time the didact uses his force powers on chief I think, “why doesn’t he just kill him?”
Because evil monologue.
When you are locked up for millenia you have a lot of steam to let off.
Because he's probably dealt with situations like the chief before which he overcame. He had no reason tp expect the things that happened. If you look at real life villains (serial killers, dictators etc.) they don't act with one single goal of victory.
@@he.5865 Yea they stoopid
@@he.5865facts
He was simply delusional, he looked down on humanity and never expected the chief to have the power that he did, he'd rather take the risk of being beaten and then kill him rather than just swat him like a fly.
I've been saying that Bungie always meant for the Forerunners to be human, everything literally pointed to it.
Yes, they wanted to prove humans were the first foreigners in the galaxy
@@shoxx48what lol?
@@shoxx48 🤣
Bungie were literally the ones that changed them to aliens 😂 the forerunner being aliens wasn’t from 343, it was from Halo 3’s terminals
@@scoposteve8470
No, there’s nothing in the terminals that suggests they’re not humans. There’s a good video my C3 Sabertooth called “We WERE Forerunner” that goes through and details all of the original Bungie lore on the matter, and does so a lot better than I can.
I got abuse from fans when this came out for saying the art style had lost its identity. Years later that sentiment is acceptable now because youtubers made videos sharing them. How times change.
Its always been an acceptable take, you just put too much merit in your small social circle.
NPCs don’t think for themselves and just reject anything that doesn’t come from popular people
Rampancy is another 343 retcon. It was explained in the Fall of Reach as Cortana eventually "Thinking herself to Death." As a strategic AI this likely meant she would over-calculate possibilities, account for variables so minute they're bearing on the overall mission success would be less than negligible.
Imagine your PC calculating chess positions, however after a while it starts accounting for exactly where on a square each piece could be in any given state, exponentially increasing the number of simulations until it blue screens itself.
Hell it could probably even have been like in Portal where GladOs tried to kill Wheatley with Paradoxes, Cortana simply thinking herself through loops until the same outcome
But 343 has to ruin everything that was beautiful in its simplicity by layering on bullshit fan fiction because screaming like a child who didn't get ice cream is "emotionally realistic".
It's hilarious because even the recent trailer for Red vs. Blue Season 19 shows that RoosterTeeth understands the Halo universe more than the actual writers do at this point. That trailer (and whole series, honestly) perfectly encapsulates what Rampancy was meant to be far more than Frankie and Chris' fanfic ever did
I don’t totally think that’s the case. In contact Harvest they directly bring up the Ais going rampant after 7 years if I remember right.
@@ItsReallyJCole I mean specifically what rampancy does, it's first introduced as a concept in the Fall of Reach iirc, the. 343 shat the bed and we got Halo 4's story
@@Halo56782 oh word. misunderstood you sir. And agreed
What you've described as the "original concept of rampancy" is the exact same as being overwhelmed by information. Do you know what being overwhelmed by something feels like, or what people do when they get overwhelmed? They lash out.
Not to mention, the entire plot about the hierarchs finding out humanity was the forerunners was literally explicitly narrated in the book Contact Harvest. Which was written by Joseph Staten.
And because of what 343 has done that scene doesn't make any sense anymore! Because now reclaimers are only special people so the entire population of harvest being reclaimers is a ridiculous coincidence I guess.
From what I remember, humanity is not the Forerunners. They were beaten by them after humanity encroached upon & glassed Forerunner worlds that have signs of The Flood infestation. Humanity was fighting a war on 2 fronts, so sadly lost & were de-evolved by the Forerunners. Humanity would have been given control of The Mantle had the Forerunners not rebelled & took out the Precursors first. The Librarian & other Forerunners set their technology to be accessed by the Reclaimers (Humanity) when they themselves were on the brink of extinction. It's been a while since I read the books & and I'm not sure what 343 have done to the lore.
The hierarchs were pissed that the Oracle informed them of this, hence why they started the war on Humanity.
@@ImTakingYouToFlavorTown 343 can shove it
@@ImTakingYouToFlavorTown I’m pretty sure all humans are reclaimers
@@Halo-5-is-a-masterpiece Yes, in the Bungie canon, but 343 has their stupid crap where only specific people are reclaimers. Hence the entire population of harvest having the moniker makes little sense with their revised definition.
343 Industries retconning Forerunners being humans is one of the dumbest writing decisions I've ever seen in video games. I'd argue that's one of the top 5 worst, most unnecessary retcons in all of modern media.
Actually-
It wasn’t 343 it was just Franky O’Conner.
He was originally just a community manager who was asked to right some text logs, and fucked everything.
Then, Bonnie put him in charge of the story. >->
Don’t blame all of 343 for this. Blame the people in charge.
Could you explain why? I thought the Forerunner-Flood war was a decent story.
@@B312XC Even when humans were forerunner they still fought a war with the flood and some of the details did carry over from the bungie days. Big thing was that the Forerunner and especially the Flood were meant to mostly remain up to the imagination of each player. The fact that they had to insert an even more ancient mysterious race just to fulfill that mystery element tells you how powerful the mystery element narrative hook is. Besides that it is very thematic to be facing down the same enemy your ancestors fought. That is a tried and true story trope. Also the retcon just raises so many questions. Why would the Forerunner re-seed every other race and not their own? Why give access to their sworn enemy of humanity and no one else? Also the covenant went to war with Humanity originally because Humans were Forerunner and the Prophets wanted to cover that up because it would fracture the Covenant and remove their power. Half the plot of the games was Arbiter seeing through the lies of the Prophets but if Humanity was the sworn enemy of the Forerunner the Prophets were justified in declaring Humanity as an affront to their gods instead of being so manipulative in hiding the truth.
Even if you could tell a great story why would you need to retcon this detail? It is kind of like making a great Star Wars Prequel where you retcon Darth Vader being Luke's Father. Sure a great story might exist with Vader betraying and murdering Luke's real Father like Obi-Wan initially suggested but I would argue that destroys the theming of the OT star wars movies and is pointless. Same thing with the Forerunner saga. Sure it is a decent story in its own right but it is not the backstory for the original Halo Games.
@@Phillibetrus All of those supposedly missing things are still present in the story, and all of those questions are answered, in the very books that introduced the concept
It's a massive problem how nobody criticizing this seems to know anything about it- but refusing to engage with the story is only natural when the very concepts themselves are rejected out of hand to begin with
@@Lazypackmule I have read the forerunner trilogy. twice actually. None of those answers were in anyway satisfactory and so yes they were rejected and I still ask why? Why not re-seed your own race? why just hand everything over?
ho ly shit. So i actually never realized that humans were literally supposed to be forerunners. I guess this whole time i interpreted all these hints in the bungie games through 343's lore. I feel sick. I want nothing more than for 343's entire lore building of the franchise since 2012 to be retconned. please god. we were robbed.
I was the same when I first played 4 and in retrospect I don't know why I accepted it so readily. For some reason hearing Spark call Chief a Forerunner made me think that he was being metaphorical or something, though I think that was because of the 2009 Encyclopedia.
But yeah there was a concerted effort to absolutely erase this plotline and it's infuriating because it is legitimately good writing.
Same for me because I only got into Halo in 2011, the year before 343 killed it and my comprehension powers weren’t that great but I started to pick up the fact the prophets clearly knew that the Forerunners were human by 2014, would’ve figured it out but I made the mistake of listening to 343 fanboys on UA-cam and they convinced me to ignore it by claiming that all this Genesong etc. nonsense was actually both made by Bungie and also was good writing, of course both of these were false and I feel like an idiot for not figuring this out sooner
It was changed by Bungie in halo 3 not 343
@@scoposteve8470 Go re-watch 35:25 or 43:47
@@R17inator so basically you don’t want to listen to bungies lore because you don’t like that 343 expanded on it 🤨 also we’re genetically related to the forerunner in both old bungie canon and new bungie canon. Humans and forerunner are subspecies of each other. We’re dogs and they’re wolves. Or actually probably closer to Homosapians and Homo Neanderthals. While not technically the same species, we’re very much related, hell I wouldn’t be surprised if we could reproduce with them given how damn near identical our dna and genetics are.
The gravemind also says "Son of my enemy, Why have you come?" on the H3 level Cortana, also implying humans are forerunners.
That's what they should've been all along and would explain why the archeitecture looks human, why the Halo habitat looks like Earth, why humans are Reclaimers and can access the technology, and everything hinted by Gravemind and 343GS. Then it became contradicted by the Terminals.
@@theia1653 it was hinted and explained that way fro the 3 even though halo 2 was i fi sihed and rushed and halo 3
"Child of my enemy why have you come? I offer no forgiveness, a father's sins passed to his son."
"Your forefathers wisely set aside their compassion."
"A record of all of *our* lost time. Human history is it? Fascinating."
"You are the child of my maker, inheritor of all they left behind. *You are forerunner!* "
Meanwhile people who defend 343's shoddy lore always use the Halo 3 terminals excuse. The terminals that were vague and unclear at best. Humanity's forerunner ancestry was never "vague" or "open to interpretation." Literally every antagonist in Halo 3 correlates humanity with the forerunners.
Child
I guess 343 Guilty Spark literally saying "You are Forerunner" wasn't clear enough for the company named after him lol.
The Didact is oddly similar to the Engineer in “Prometheus”. Both are strangely surviving last members of a precursor species, who strangely hate humanity, and whose whole plan is to fly a ship to Earth to wipe us out and yet are easily defeated. And both are in a massive retcon of their series. They even wear fancy space armor and get in fist fights.
The sad thing is that he has actually a really interesting background in the books.
The Didact isn't a retcon. That part of the video is completely incorrect. He also isn't the last member of his race.
As a character he is set up Halo 3 terminals and books that came out between 2007-2012.
@@halofornoobs93 Check your timeline Contact Harvest released shortly after Halo 3 and solidified humans having forerunner ancestry. Mendicant Bias even says it calling humans a representation of his creators.
The Forerunner books came out a year after Halo Reach released. Bungie being more or less done with Halo at that point with 343 starting take up the reign.
@@halofornoobs93 Apart from him what forerunners are still alive? (Dont counting digital souls or shit like that).
Bornstellar and the rest of the forerunners that bring life again to the galaxy, after the halo's shot, went to other solar systems far away from milky way to die because of age. They stopped using their armors to not being inmortals, and they separe themselves in small groups to not have enoulgh childs to keep the race.
Or maybe you think that the forerunners in Ketona way didnt die with flood or with the halo's impact?
@@halofornoobs93 Bro, you really need to check your own facts before dismissing someone else's claims, because almost every comment you've made is filled with bullshit misinformation in some way or another. Bungie never intended for the Didact to be some pretentious douche that hated humans. In fact, the differences between the Didact in the Halo 3 terminals and the version in Halo 4 are so staggering they had to make them completely separate characters that shared the same title
It's all Frank O'Conor's fault that the Halo lore got all mucked up.
dude thought he could pull-off a Jason Jones but he ain't no literature geek.
@@OmegaF77 Frank’s role reminds me of the “veteran” from tropic thunder but is later revealed to be a glorified janitor
How about referring to him as a *rampant Bungie "veteran"* who has gone rogue to help 343 in corrupting the _Halo_ universe? This is something that did already popped into my head once.
what made me mad the most is how 343 is introducing "the endless" as "a bigger threat than the flood".
They have slauthered all the books and lore with halo infinite. Its really sad.
Same here. How could anything be worse than flood? Theyre related to the god like pre cursors, and destroyed the entire galaxy once, who knows how many galaxies out there are controlled by them. Theyre a terrifying enemy. These stupid endless are nothing.
I was just thinking this smh 🤦♂️ there they go again.
It doesn't even make any sense. The Endless were clearly beaten by the Forerunners. The Flood caused the Forerunners to build galaxy cleansing weapons and essentially committed suicide in order to preserve life itself. No matter how bad the war with the Endless was, there's no way it tops LITERALLY EVERYTHING DYING!!! Wtf were they thinking? I could create a better backstory for a new enemy drunk off my ass! I fucking hate 343's writing team and their incompetence
@@ottovonbismarck7646 its even worse if u read the books. In some parts you can even reach the conclusion that the flood AKA precursors dont stop the halo activation because they wanted that. They wanted the forerruners doing suicide as a punish for their signs.
And in the books you can see the flood/precursor tecnology and It can basically change reality, its far superior than Forerunner tecnology. And we are suppose to belive that the endless are more dangerous.
Dude... The gravemind is basically a Lovecraft's kind of god lmao
I do think humanity being the forerunners makes the forerunners far more interesting than being orange robots, Also it doesn’t complicate things like a metal gear solid does
You were half right on the Covenant. The actual reason they hated humanity was because of their belief in the Great Journey, "With this sacrament of blood we will journey into the divine beyond" and all that. So the secret that the Prophets discovered was that a foundational text in the Forerunner keyship was a mistranslation, instead of "reclamation", it actually said "reclaimer", obviously meaning humanity. This blew a hole right into the center of their theology, because if humanity was explicitly connected to the Forerunners, that would mean it was possible to be left behind during the Great Journey, meaning the entire foundation of the Covenant religion was a lie. The Prophets felt they needed to hide this fact at all costs to preserve their own power, and so sought to exterminate humanity to destroy all remaining evidence. "This time, none of you will be left behind" is a direct nod to this. Basically, it's like a modern Evangelical preacher finding out that the Rapture is a lie. And they were quite right to foresee this destroying the Covenant, as the Arbiter funding out about it was one of the primary causes of the Great Schism shattering the unity of the Covenant itself beyond repair.
I always interpreted the “this time none of you will be left behind” as a reference to Reach. I’m pretty sure they didn’t know what the rings did, otherwise Truth was about to blow himself to kingdom come.
I really liked your idea about the San'Shyuum being the antagonists for a hypothetical trilogy after Halo 3. That would open up a bunch of opportunities to explore new things. It would make sense for the UNSC to mostly take a backseat, with Chief helping Arbiter and the Elites fight for control over several alien worlds. You could learn more about the different Covenant species, find the Forerunner ruins and artifacts that made the Covenant so fervent in their beliefs, and explore how the ex-Covenant soldiers would react to the knowledge that the Forerunners and Humans are really one and the same. With the man who called they called demon fighting alongside them with brutal efficiency, how would they react? Might some come to carry the religion onward, directing their worship toward humanity? Or maybe they'd come to distrust everything Forerunner related, and view the humans as an existential threat? After all, could they trust the species who created such technology as Halo? Would the Prophets, now faced with the truth being widespread, completely switch gears and begin deifying the Flood?
Cortana's rampancy would be really hard to deal with. The whole process as I understand it is effectively the AI reaching true sentience, but it already feels like Cortana has that. So it'd have to be subtle changes. She could question her own usefulness in this particular war, or begin to doubt herself in other ways. This could be kept relatively hidden from the player. At the start of certain missions where she'd usually make a remark or give helpful advice she might instead simply say that she can't be of much help. As the player uncovers various atrocities committed by their enemies, she might express vaguely nihilistic thoughts. Then, as she enters the anger stage, she might begin to resent Chief's inability to recognize her early stages of rampancy. She might encourage increasingly risky strategies, living vicariously through thee violence Chief enacts. She might try to make use of Forerunner technology to gain a degree of independence, maybe staying behind to control sentinels from an old Forerunner facility on one of the alien worlds so she can fight on her own. Cortana, now entering the jealousy stage and literally expanding, would need a more powerful network to survive. What better place for her to go than Halo? I wouldn't have any of this happen in such a manner that she becomes outright hostile to Chief or his allies, of course. I don't think she'd ever stop thinking of Chief as her friend, and she'd certainly see the value in ending the conflict. So it would be best if her need for a larger installation coincides with the overall plot and Chief's goals.
To this end, I think it would be really interesting if the series were concluded with the Flood once again released on the galaxy. How? The San'shyuum, now convinced that becoming one with the Flood will help them defeat their former gods, find another contained strain of the Flood aboard a newfound Halo installation. Omega Halo, since it'll be the definitive end. The San'shyuum get there first, destroying the installation's monitor and using brute force (pun intended) to release the contained Flood that are present there. By the time the protagonists arrive, things are too late. The Flood have been allowed to consume the San'shyuum presence there and are actively being aided in spreading across the galaxy. There's a discussion amongst the protagonists about what is to be done now. Chief and Arbiter, understanding the magnitude of the Flood threat, make the hard decision to activate the ring. It's a hard fight to the control room and many of the newer characters, maybe even Arbiter himself, die along the way. I'm not sure about specific dialogue, but I'd imagine Cortana would struggle with the notion of letting Chief go. Regardless, Chief would detonate the ring in the end, leaving Cortana behind as the installation monitor. Over very long periods of time she would use her knowledge to repeat the reseeding process and the galaxy would begin anew once more. Maybe it's a little cheesy, I don't know. Regardless, thinking about it was much more enjoyable than playing the games that we actually got.
The Chosen One cutscene gets EVEN worse when you factor in the Librarian also physically enhanced the Chief to godlike levels. She rushed his evolution on a genetic level.
And then you see the fight with Locke in halo 5. Makes you think
I'm genuinely surprised there wasn't some shit that 343 came out with in the lore to explain that God Awful fight. Like I expexted some 343 shill to say "the new book actually says that it was because Master Chief had literally just lived out an entire different story and showed up to the fight tired"
That isn't what the librarian did to masterchief at all. If you're gonna hate on the new lore at least get the information right 😐.
@@Xer405 She literally says she's going to speed up his evolution. You'd think an evolved Spartan wouldn't move like a drunk
@@andrewmeyer3599 "evolution" =/= stronger athletics
What the fuck is this sub-80 IQ understanding of genetics
"Black is cracked"
But for real, that was a DEI decision. Couldn't let the white guy stomp the black guy, screw the lore
I always thought that Forerunners were human, it was all but confirmed in half of 343 Guilty Sparks dialogue.
The whole name of reclaimer, we are reclaiming what we once claimed and lost.
HOW DO PEOPLE JUST IGNORE THAT!?
I have a theory that people didn't pick up on it because alot of the audience were kids, we were too illiterate to pick up on this stuff. Alot of the people sticking around with Halo now and defend 343s forerunners were kids growing up with the franchise
Dude seriously. It grinds my gears to the core that people pay no mind to when Guilty Spark was basically like “hey bro chill out you’ve already done this before just do it again”
If it was only Guilty Spark, both Truth and Gravemind spew it out for you directly
@@Lauren-si1fcThat's definitely part of it, I think another decent contribution is the fact a lot of Halo fans grew up with the newer games and lore, so when they see all the hints throughout the original games they just think "Oh yeah, Halo 4 explained that." and don't question it any further. Because most people would naturally assume this is a cohesive story and universe lol. Basically, if you don't know any better, it's genuinely hard to tell where Bungie's story ended and where 343's retcons begin. It especially doesn't help when you look up lore videos that tell you stuff like "Yeah, in the first game Guilty Spark confused Chief with the Didact." like that's supposed to make any sense. I mean, come on now, what the fuck? Guys, Spark just assumed Chief knew more about the Forerunners and Halo than he actually did, it's not that complicated.
@@noddy1973
I know, I only brought up Guilty Spark because his dialogue is the most blatant. Every other sentence he spews is an implication that the people who built the ring were OUR Forerunners, and not just an alien species that came before us.
Oh yeah, the gravemind also refers to chief as a forerunner when he says "Child of my enemy why have you come? I offer no forgiveness for a father's sins past down to his son" basically implying Humanity are the ancestors of the forerunners he fought before the firing of the halo array
We’re a subspecies of forerunner and we’re the species the forerunner passed the torch to
Don't forget the Gravemind calling Chief the child of his enemy, and how a father's sins cast to his son.
Goddamn, i hate we got stolen of an eerie and obscure part of the lore to be replaced with super bionicles and a mediocre villain in villanous power armor, 343i just wanted to do their own stuff from the beginning.
the didact should have been a mentally insane flood cultist instead of space forerunner hitler
@@bruhgod123That sounds just as stupid. If anything the Didact should be a noble figure that slowly descends into racism and hatred the more he learns about the Covenant and what they did to humanity, with his main motivation to get revenge on the Covenant's species for the billions they killed. Basically a complete inverse of his motivations in Halo 4, he wants to protect humanity, but takes it one step too far. Chief's motivation for stopping him would be that the war is already over, the peace he fought for was achieved and there's no reason to continue the fighting, and that even some people like the Arbiter and the Elites are remorseful and are now humanity's allies.
@@nagger8216 your version sounds better actually
343 Had this mania of making these "uuh so scawy super strong undefeatable enemy" that just wont fucking kill anyone and instead will just toss around chief like a toy (Didact, Warden, Atriox)
Having humanity be forerunners makes more sense than 343's entire canon ideology.
They hate humanity.
@@llamadasinrespuesta4631 Plus it's cooler than just ugly space vampires.
@@_Phen_ nah, they remind me of voldemort from Harry Potter.
Heck in the bungie era books written by Joseph Staten before Halo 3. The Forerunners were pretty much confirmed to be ancient humans.
And it makes the whole Covenant human war that much more dark. The Covenant sought to eradicate the very species their religion was built upon, humanity. Which the Prophet of Truth opted to wage war upon humanity to hide that fact.
The forerunners being an entirely different species cheapens the whole conflict.
@@SentinelEnforcer I'm against retconing in general but in this case, i would Thanos snap 343's god awful decisions with the lore any time.
Halo reach was content rich and had amazing forge and custom games. And it has my second favorite campaign.
It’s my second favorite Halo 1st Halo 2 I’m glad I got to spend all my life on these games thank God wasn’t on the 343 Trilogy
L opinion the campaign was shit
What's your fav campaign?
@@cloudedarctrooper easy Halo 2 I could write an entire giant page of why I like it it’s my favorite game of all time
@@cloudedarctrooper Halo 2
Finally someone said it... I thought it was crazy that no one else seemed to notice that humans and forerunners were one and the same... thank god 😔
I've been saying it for years. C3 Sabertooth did a video on Forerunners being human a few months back that is pretty good
Everyone knows it
Yeah it has been a thing for a long time. I think I personally noticed when looking at the Halo 2 art book and saw how similar human buildings specific the skyscrapers looked like Forerunner obelisk but just primitive. I think it really clicked when I finished reading Ghost of Onyx and reading both at the same time. I told some friends to the lead up of Halo 3 that I think I cracked a big code of the Halo games.
@@leonidasxix4200 The Arbiter founds a human skeleton in a concept art of a discarted end of Halo 2/3
343 guilty spark says it, it wasn't some line written in a terminal it was dialogue spoken by a character in a a cutscene
The whole point of Halsey cloning herself to create Cortana is to avoid the limitations that would cause "rampancy". So there's one more piece of Bungie lore ignored for 343's fanfiction.
As a pretty big Marathon fan myself, rampancy is much more complex then simply "going crazy", like 343 seems to think. Yeah its part of it, but its far more then just that. But again, it all stems back to Frank O Connor being a creative hack.
BASED fucking comment
Holy shit thank you. Halo 4 onwards has entirely dumbed down the concept of rampancy when Marathon and even the Halo 3 terminals show that it isn't just an AI going crazy and deteriorating into a hostile state.
Durandal going rampant wasn't him becoming "lol quirky crazy murderous AI", but acting on a longtime contempt of humanity and hinted at acting to preserve his life and escape the heat death of the universe.
Based fucking reply's.
I'm so ready for the new Marathon game to completely style on everything 343 has ever touched with their creativity famished hands. The Nar got 3 terminals about them and are cooler than any of the Guardian/Endless/ Nu-Forerunner shit combined
@@junioraltamontent.7582 Its honestly kinda embarassing when 90's Bungie is able to create a backstory with substance for guys that honestly were designed to either be shot at or basically acting as optional fluff, while 343 spends so much time writing comics and making terminals on an entire race that gets even more boring the more they try to contrive bullshit explanations.
Imagine if this _was_ a "Reclaimer" saga, but it was humanity - with just one major world and a handful of small warships left - trying to find and secure Forerunner technology before anyone else did. The enemies are the San'Shyuum Prelates and a small number of Grunts, Jackals, and Brutes who are still fanatically dedicated to eradicating humanity.
That sounds actually perfect. It doesn’t retcon anything from the previous games and in a way it still kinda makes sense to the story and doesn’t give a fuck you to the ending continuity to Halo 3’s ending
@@idkanameimnotthatcreative7456Plus it would be a perfect opportunity to let us play as a new spartan, give cheif a break. New trilogy, New protag.
A fresh start in a new world, cheifs done his mission, and now the sangheili and the humans can coexist and help each other expand. The new spartan helping the human remnants secure forerunner tech, heck maybe even switch back and forth between this new spartan and cheif, on different ends of the galaxy, helping different bands of humans.
You could probably do an interesting 4-way war between the Human-Elite alliance, the San'shyuum (maybe call them Crusaders or something as a nod to the Prophets), the Brutes, and maybe even a resurgence of the Flood, since they by all accounts are still around following 3 (as far as I can tell they were never destroyed anyway). Plus having these more chaotic multi-faction wars would be a really interesting way to spice things up as shifting interstellar politics, truces, alliances, atrocities, and other factors keep changing the whole balance of power in the galaxy
That is basically post war humanity in a nut shell. Humanity was searching the galaxy for forerunner artifacts, hell the infinity’s job was to track down the remaining halo rings. The only difference is there is no unified covenant, they’re fighting themselves more then they’re fighting the UNSC. You need to realize the covenant’s hatred of each other usurps their hatred of humanity. To them the question was who do you hate more a mosquito or Hitler
Halo 4 was the first "Halo killer"
Halo 4 was digging the grave Halo 5 shot it in the head and sent it down in the grave and Halo Infinite went to puppet around it's corpse.
Das RITE
this is not because you hate it it's a bad game
Halo reach was, but no one wants to admit it yet. Reach was the turning point. Crafting the iron to make the nails for the coffin that was to come.
@@tamezzodiac2862
I played reach and said, "yes"
I played halo 4 and said, "no"
If you'd like to file a complaint, please, submit it to the box right under that gruesome log trap in the corner.
Bungie's Halo had those incredibly written subtle moments.
Like the fact that the first prophet to die was Regret. Then Mercy. And then Truth. In order to win the war they left behind Regret, sacraficed their Mercy and only The Truth was left. No one ever says that explicitly but it says so much about the dogma of The Covenant through nothing but "show don't tell".
Or that scene at the beginning of Halo 2, when both factions deal with the aftermath of The Halo Event. While Master Chief and Sargeant Major Johnson are rewarded among their peers, The Soon-To-Be Arbiter is chastised, ridiculed in front of an angry mob and literally branded by a red-hot poker as a heretic. They cut between thoae scenes as they progress to show that while one of them celebrates victory another has to cope with loss, yet as we know both of them lost nearly everyone they served with on that ring.
Name ONE SCENE in any of the sequels that went THIS HARD.
Not to mention the deaths of the prophets are ironic
Regret gets killed in a regrettable situation
Mercy gets mercy killed by John
Truth gets killed by someone that knows the truth.
@@thesamejackalsniperthatkil117you could also say that truth died believing his own lies
@@thesamejackalsniperthatkil117The Prophet's deaths are like peak "show-don't-tell" and written with an intelligence you just don't see anymore.
Did the librarian account for that fact that master chief could have at any point choked on a ravioli in the mess hall and asphyxiated and died right then and there
LOL!
Yeah dude, he's got like, genes and stuff. He'll just Heimlich himself as an innate reflex... or something. She thought of everything.
That's why she encoded the fact that Master Chief never takes off his helmet.
He probably eats through a straw that way, hence no choking hazards.
*AIR-TIGHT 343 L O R E*
Halo 4, now that I think about it, really is The Force Awakens of the Halo franchise. And I had the same feelings about both initially, I thought they were decent enough at a first sight, but both of them are fanfiction level of writing, both of them had no reason to exist since the original story was already finished in a satisfying way, both of them were created for the same reason: to keep the franchise going because it was so succesful but we have no idea what to do with it anymore.
True, but at least Halo 4 wasn’t a rehash. With that said the visual design of TFA is more focused in contrast to Halo 4’s visual clutter.
Halo really is the Star Wars of video games. A series initially made by a studio that had a passion for their craft and wanted to tell a cool story, now cynically kept alive as a shell of it’s former self by a massive corporation for the sole purpose of squeezing any remaining money out of the nostalgic value and brand recognizability that the series originally represented.
The lesson here is don’t buy their products any more. Don’t spend money to experience the newest adventures of John Halo. Look for something you haven’t experienced before, made by people who care about games.
Calling it halo fanfiction is too much credit you can call it anything else and it be believable. Its not even barely halo.
Halo 4: Force awakens - Nostalgia bait with some decent bits to drag us back into the world of chief.
Halo 5: The Last Jedi - Pulls rug under us over and over and flips things on their head to confuse the fuck out of us.
Halo 6 Infinite: The Rise of My Asswalker - Makes a massive joke out of everything after promising a great end to the entire disjointed trilogy.
I'm amazed with how similar these two franchises are with their latest gen iterations. 😑
@daenackdranils5624 yeah it is his opinion spme pf the train of thought has some merit. I had research and interviews and statements from the devs that i had to go on. Also looking at things mor efor whay they are looking last just what im told sometimes :)
I hate the term "Bungie's Halo". Just as humans *ARE* forerunners, Bungie *IS* Halo.
Just call it "Halo", simply. Oh and BTW, 343 *IS* 343, not Halo (or better to say 343 is nothing).
@@YnossZaperator I agree. I also think that if a reboot or a spin-off with Chief is ever made, the studio responsible for the game should go the ID Software route and just simply call the game HALO.
@@brodieyake7735 it is halo, holy shit play destiny if you hate halo that much lol
@@the_prophet_micah93anything 343 has touched is not halo, destiny is not halo
@TaxEvader22 Correct.
43:00 seeing as Frank O'Connor can't even keep track of his own made-up lore, he probably just didn't know.
I'll never forget how during the cutscene where Cortana is questioning what it feels like to be real, master chief *cocks his assault rifle on the wrong side. They don't even try to hide it bro. They show the other side of the gun and there's nothing to pull. Who missed that.*
I really like that scene and that detail fucking annoys me since the first day I play it
One of the best lines in the entire series, and it's botched by that detail.
Holy shit this is pulling my heart strin-wait Chief, what are you doing!? THAT’S NOT HOW YOU COCK THE RIFLE! NO! DON’T GO! YOU HAVEN’T EVEN LOADED A ROUND!
prob someone left handed?
@@chilbiyito bullpups aren’t ambidextrous, at least not without some minor modification, and why would Chief have his rifle in a left handed configuration in the first place? Does he have his Mjolnir controls set to southpaw?
I love the point about humans being forerunners. I've felt like an absolute crazy person. I'm not alone
I’ve been convinced as well. I feel like I’ve been gaslit into believing otherwise
wasn't that what bungie was going for originally? if i'm being honest that would've been a cool twist
@@decentlylazy7419Yes multiple bungie devs have come out and said so.
Even Marty o Donnell
There’s a halo 1 commentary where Joseph staten confirms it.
And if you just listen to the dialogue of halo 3, it’s pretty obvious.
“My creators, makers of all I hold dear. You are Forerunner, but this ring is mine”
- Guilty spark
“Child of my enemy, I offer no forgiveness” as well as “A father’s sins passed down to the child”
-The grave mind
“Your forefathers wisely steeled themselves for what had to be done”
-Prophet of Truth
None of this dialogue even makes sense if they aren’t the same species. And these are only some often quoted in halo 3. There’s even more in halo 2.
I mean there’s literally cut concept art of the arbiter opening a forerunner casket and being shocked to find a human skeleton.
Anyone who denies them being the same species is just coping
@@EggEnjoyer yeah i figured that was the original intention, it really sucks that 343 changed that. could've been a bigger twist than the flood even
@@decentlylazy7419 It really was and it made the whole halo universe more cohesive.
The covenant hated humanity because the humans were the rightful owners of the Forerunner legacy.
And the grave mind is what remains of the precursors after the Forerunner (humanity) betrayed them and now this fallen god wants vengeance. That’s why they’re called the flood. A biblical reference. The wrath of god meant to destroy humanity.
But this very obvious parallel to the Bible is ruined in 343’s lore
Cortana going rampant wasn't a bad idea in concept. It was 343's god awful interpretation of what Rampancy is that made her so out of character. Bungie's idea of Rampancy was that an AI has developed so many pathways and grown as a self-thinking machine that it actually starts to develop sentience. It starts with melancholy, then goes into anger, then jealousy, and then finally the AI reaches Meta-Stability, becoming effectively immortal and indistinguishable from a real human being in thought and behavior.
Then you have 343's idea of AI Rampancy, which is basically just robot schizophrenia that ends with the AI's eventual death.
It would have been great to see Cortana become self-aware, capable of understanding the world around her.
I think chief's first line upon seeing the first enemy of the game has been the funniest plothole i've ever seen in gaming
"I thought we had a truce with the covenant"
What covenant? The covenant are gone, all their leaders who could have negotiated any truce are dead, what forces remain are miniscule at most because truth put all his eggs in one basket with everyone going to the ark, which mind you, got vaporized by a halo ring.
You were THERE FOR THAT WHEN IT HAPPENED. YOU DID THAT.
No, the Covenant was vastly larger than what we ever saw in the games. We just defeated their leaders and shattered their morale, the Covenant itself was still around. I do still think they shouldn't have shown up again in Halo 4, but Humanity and the Separatist forces alone didn't destroy the ENTIRE galactic empire the Covenant was
Sure because a massive galactic confederacy of different aliens would all have the same beliefs and motivations after just having a civil war with each other. They'd all just give up all territory and ambitions once their leader died. Yep, thats definitely how real empires work...
@slaternatlivedotcom They called it the Ark because it made the Halos and stored most of the genetic samples for reseeding the universe. It seems YOU can't process that the Covenant were vastly more numerous than Humanity and the Separatists combined.
"Somehow Palpatine is back"
That wasn't the whole Covenant at the Ark....
something I never see mentioned about halo 3 forge was how some of the most popular maps used a bug of some type on almost every object in the map. you needed to use some strange tricks to get props to clip through each other and create continuous structures and were limited to things like shipping containers and blast doors to create structures. truly insane levels of creativity and dedication for some of these maps.
Yep, and Bungie saw that and build it as a feature in Reach.
@@wolf7115 yeah, that absolutely blew my mind when it came out, I remember being like 15 and losing my marbles
I remember when if you wanted an object to float in the air, you had to place objects underneath it, add what you wanted, and then delete everything under it lol.
How far we've come
I tried to use some of those tricks back in the day and sucked terribly at it, made me even more impressed with the incredible work people pulled off, some of those builds are still awesome
9:30 I wouldn’t call Reach “story-less”. The game has an incredible story! It’s smaller and more contained than the others, but I feel more emotion from the cutscenes than I do from most other Bungie Halos. I love them all, but Reach is one of my favorites. Calling it a plot-less run and gun is doing it a huge disservice.
Yea I blurted out “huh?!?” When he said that about reach. Like bro must’ve barely played it.
@@CranberryyyyHe's probably one of those fanboys that writes off the entire story as trash just because the dates don't line up with a book Bungie had nothing to do with. Oh well, his loss
@@nagger8216 that or because reach wasn’t the best competitive multiplayer halo game.
Reach was my first but objectively looking at it the plot really sucks, it makes no sense, most of everyone feels like they’re just doing nothing most of the time, the book version is simply better and the game was mostly written by Frank O’Connor who explicitly made sure that Eric Nylund has as little influence on Halo as possible (stuff like Spartan 3s and ODSTs were his idea not Bungie’s) and the story was only kept from Halo 5 tier because the Bungie writers were there also if the Bungie writers had their way it would’ve lined up with the books almost perfectly
"The most emotional campaign" well, it did make me cry, just not for the reason Reach did lol
It actually did make me feel emotion. It made be bored, angry and confused. It's usually the former
Agreed. One of the few games that can make me seethe with rage.
@Riorozen i would agree on some extents , but your biased views just worsen the things. fanboyism and conservationnism can be crazy things too.
@@daegnaxqelil2733 gatekeeping is an essential tool to preserving the integrity of our favorite things. If they wanna enjoy what we enjoy, by all means. If they wanna shit up the place and change everything until theseus ship now resembles a rowboat then they can GTFO.
@@warrantyV0IDED another pathetic speech of pro-bungie fanboy. gatekeeping isnt always a good thing.
Nah guys, the Covenant being back makes total sense. Just have a character say "Somehow the Covenant returned."
Plot solved.
"Somehow... the Prophet of Truth has returned"
@@BunkerDweller I mean it happened in Star Wars so why not here?
@@BunkerDweller "Somehow... the Flood returned"
"Somehow... 343 Guilty Spark returned"
"Somehow... High Charity returned"
@@BunkerDweller "somehow, the didact had returned."
"Some how... *_Sergeant Johnson_* had returned."
You’ve verbalized so many of my criticisms with Halo 4 and 343’s Halo games and lore that I just can’t put into words… They’ve totally ruined Halo and to be honest, we should consider all of their material non canon garbage
Chief saying "I thought we had a truce with the Covenant" is all you need to know about Halo 4s writers.
I'm confident they didn't bother doing any research like playing the fucking games!
@@alessandro348 what I’m wondering is how did neither Steve Downes or Jen Taylor raise an eyebrow at that?
Like, I get that it's probably just a job to them, but if I were an actor, I'd question such a blatantly awful story decision.
I distinctly remember feeling very sick after the first few missions of the campaign. Everything looked wrong, felt wrong, and contradicted one of the most airtight conclusions to a story ever made.
This! That second mission Requiem I literally put the controller down halfway through and just thought wtf is this? Where is that magical Halo feeling? It just wasn’t fun.
I never like the game.
Went to the midnight launch, and went home to play... What a disappointment
@@mrx2817 bought the limited edition on release and soon regretted.
you people are weird. halo 4s areas looked like halo ce, but clearly a different forerunner structure. much different enemy design and graphical style but they made everything look artificial just like halo ce.
@@clydecraft5642 Let me guess you support a deliberate artstyle change regarding to the Forerunner architectecture becuase of "Muh Lore" right?
That Librarian scene is the worse cutscene I ever witnessed. That fucking cutscene is reason enough to debunk anyone who has the audacity to claim Halo 4 has a great story. Turning the Master Cheif into a destined hero is so not Halo. 343 and Microsoft never understood or cared about Halo. Bungie were the only ones to give a damn.
Even as a casual fan who really only plays the campaigns, I was honestly shocked just how bad it felt to play when I played it for the first time as part of the MCC. Everything just felt so off about it.
Agreed. Doesn’t feel right at ALL.
the halo 4 campaign was one of the most miserable experiences I've ever had with a game. it didn't help that I played it right after reach.
@@NGRevenant Yeah man. It was pretty miserable.
When I got far enough to see what the Marines looked like in the game, I switched it off and didn’t ever finish. I was so sour about the art style, and the Prometheans were egregiously annoying to fight on Legendary…
@@NGRevenant wait until you play halo 5, aka escort mission the game. It's literally unplayable on anything harder than normal. Your AI teammates will make you wanna claw your eyes out. I couldn't get past the first mission. Not out of spite. But because the AI kept getting me killed trying to revive them
@@NGRevenant dude, same. I was in awe the entire playthrough at how much of a downgrade every molecule of that game was compared to the previous ones.
God, shitting on a well deserved shitting on 343 is giving me such a raging clue. This video is giving me the same joy as crowbcat’s video of bungie vs 343
Your first sentence made my brain hurt. Lmao
@@Nonx47 my brain is small enough to not hurt when reading my own stuff
@@SinsofKuroi makes sense
@End Illiteracy no it's not an universal trurh, it's your your vision of things which are "dogshit"
@@daegnaxqelil2733 actual cope. I'm sorry man, but this is the copist coping copium cope I've ever read.
I dont mean to be dramatic, but how dare 343? Im a huge fan of the lore, and humanity being forerunners tied EVERYTHING together. Bungie either didnt know, didnt care, or honestly thougt "hmmmm nah thats lame, how about this instead" and thought they could do better and change established CORE lore. Its literally why the coveneant were so bent on anhillating humanity! I always wondered what humanity did to offend them, as they never offered humanity a place in the covenant, and as the series progresses and you learn WHY they seemed so determined to wipe us out, it blew my mind.
343 came along and made halo into the avengers. AND made humanity just another ancient species, also at war with the covenant!? As the video mentions, this actually kind of justifies the covenant wiping out humanity!!!
The forerunner part made me sad... So much set up for an amazing twist...
Besides it solves a simple issue. Why would the Forerunners wipe themselves out and not reseed themselves along the other species? Well if they were humans then they actually did save their own species like every other...
“I’m personally glad the humans aren’t forerunners
Not because bungie wanted it or not but because it would’ve been extremely fucking contrived”
- Some UA-cam commenter who’s influence is making me rapidly lose faith in humanity
Well... at least we, beings with a brain, can appreciate Bungie and its writing. 343i or Halo Studio is an absolute nothing, and so are the fans.
343 doesn't know shit about rampancy, it is supposed to be a super self-awareness for AI making them more inteligent and more agressive but that agression it's caused when they feel threatened or harassed
Frank O'connor wished he could make something as good as Marathon's lore
Oh, man, he couldn't even do THAT right?! That's hilarious! UNSC AI constructs probably don't even die in Halo. He just pulled that out of his ass!
I literally have zero clue how the fact that humanity are forerunner went over my head so fucking hard. Im a diehard halo fan played literally everything, shit its half my life. That makes every thing 343 did lore wise a million times worse holy hell.
In the original cut legendary ending of Halo 2 made this crystal clear. As the Arbiter finds a Forerunner skeleton that is human. I really wish the final act of Halo 2 at least made it to Halo 3 which narrativly is easily the weakest of the Bungie era.
"Why can't things just happen? What happened to circumstance? What happened to chance or luck?"
Simple. Those things have been demonised as "plot convenience" and "lazy writing" because people think everything in a story must be as complicated, planned out and preordained as possible or else it's automatically bad.
To be fair, the interpretation isn't correct. She isn't saying that they literally planned for the Chief and Cortana to arrive at that exact moment for that reason. She is saying that they planned for humanity to develop AI and reach the point that they are now. This isn't even a retcon. The idea that the forerunners shaped human evolution and advancement existed before Halo 3 even came out.
@@halofornoobs93 True, but the original concept was meant to explore the morally grey implications of that. Instead of having some benevolent angel-esque figure of perfection decend from the heavens and tell us this and assume everything's a-okay with that, it was supposed to show how the entire course of human history has been manipulated the entire time, not entirely dissimilar to the Prophets' manipulation of the Covenant.
Some writers really are blatant with it though
millennial writing
You're mediocre
Halo 4 was the last Halo game I ever played, after the art style change, the forerunner retcon and Karen Travis butchering the books I lost any love I had for Halo and now I treat it like Star Wars its a zombie franchise where the best years are behind it and never coming back.
You have seen capatalism and what happens to franchises that turn corporate first hand now.
Unlike starwars, the halo franchise has at a least a little bit of hope.
Halo infinite was universally praised when it came out, the gameplay was fun and we thought 343 was going in the right direction but then every one realized that the game was released with almost no content. And 343 hasnt added much to the game since its release
Halo wars 2 was good, halo 5 campaign was bad and they made the biggest mistake by removing the splitscreen feature, but the gameplay was fun.
Basically for everything 343 gets right they get like 100 things wrong.
Meanwhile starwars has got nothing right at all ever since ep 7 came out
Please explain karen travis, because glasslands was the first book i read. I went all the way up to Contact Harvest. I'd like to have a reason to exclude glasslands beyond personal suspicion
After rewatching this for the gajillionth time, I just realised something:
"How is the Didact alone in the galaxy after the Halo's activated?"
Ignoring the 343 Forerunners existence as a plot hole to the Bungie games and sticking to 343 canon, how is he alone?
The Halos take samples of the known existing life in the galaxy and then after firing, reseed the galaxy with said lifeforms. Why did the Halo's not do this for the 343 Forerunners?
It can't be the whole "Forerunners are actually Human" answer bcuz 343 and their fans are hellbent on making sure that isn't the case due to Humans and the 343 Forerunners existing at the same time. And it can't be because of the Librarian's altering of our DNA to use Forerunner tech because it didn't alter our appearance in any way. Also good to know that in 343 canon, the Forerunner's nuked Humanity into the stone age twice. 1st with the HvF war, and 2nd with the rings(literal factory reset).
So why aren't they more present in the 343 games? The Didact is the only one of his kind that is actually alive and the Librarian is basically a hologram with SOME physical abilities. The rest are not present. Did the Flood just kick their Voldemort looking asses so badly the Halo's didn't even bother reviving them? Is it that stupid and complex "Mantle of Responsibility" shit?
So my only plausible answer(as of this post) is that the Halo's delete the race that activates them after they go off and revives everyone else. But even that is a weird answer due to the Didact's existence. So that plausible answer is that his prison ship is like Bungie's version of a shield world, a thing that protects people from the Halo rings activation, just on a smaller scale. But that doesn't make sense because 343 retconned the shield worlds.
It's all so stupid and needlessly complicated. I'll admit, I could be wrong in my thinking and that it was explained in 343 lore, but I can't be bothered to check due to how bad it all is. Feel free to give me some info if you have any.
Silentium bent over backwards to explain it, but basically the remaining Forerunners felt so shameful that they didn't even want to reseed their race for repopulation. So the survivors on the Ark just kinda fucked off to a smaller satellite galaxy that orbits the Milky Way while completely forgetting about the Didact.
Wow. I didn't realize the Halo 4 villain was supposed to be a Forerunner. The writers for Halo 4 were so clueless, it's embarrassing. Actually it's almost like they wanted to ruin Halo. Why else would they make the Forerunners look so ugly?
Microsoft didn’t choose 343, they made 343. That’s why most of their games are shit, because even if genuine fans made their way into the development, they were overshadowed by shitty management and corporate decision making.
Your point about Bungie's Halo being military sci-fi hits home so hard. 343i is just SO obsessed with this high-concept sci-fantasy nonsense it feels unrecognizable as Halo. They're borderline physically attracted to "space magic" nonsense and retconning stuff that made sense into weird sci-fantasy high-concept tropey garbage. Like the Prometheans needing human "life force" to make...robots? Sentinels don't need "life force"? Neither do the monitors (until 343i retconned that to fit their "life force" plot).
And 343i just KEEP introducing some garbage "big bad" into their stories, instead of having factions; first it was the Didact, then their next disjointed game it was "Somehow Cortana returned" (due to aformentioned "space magic"), and NOW it's "Da endless" who are EVEN more super cool and stronker dan de flood! (It seriously feels like a Satam cartoon villain-of-the-week power creep issue.)
My headcannon is after halo 3 john had a dream and that was 4 5 and infinite
Bro are you me? Lol I’ve been saying the same thing! Chief is still floating around space and he’s just in dream mode
It's gotta be. I mean come on, after he goes into cryosleep he drifts to a place called "Requiem"? That can definitely be interpreted as a metaphor for him drifting to sleep and into a dream like world.
Something else to support all this is that 343 Guilty Spark never, not once, lied. He was deceptive, but he never lied. Everything he said was 100% true. When he says "you ARE Forerunner," he's not suggesting, he's not suspecting," he's affirming; he's telling the Chief, "You are my maker, but this is my ring".
Everything 343i did is mediocre fanfiction, at best.
Another way to approach the stuff about melodrama and characters screaming and crying is the interesting observation that the idea of professionalism has kind of vanished over time from culture and media. In real life, tons of people still carry themselves professionally, but in our media, characters behave more and more unprofessionally, and there's probably lots of reasons behind it. But the thing is, being professional, being buttoned-down and focused on the mission, being part of a larger organization, means not centering yourself all the time. It's the recognition that sometimes, it's just not about you. I think there's something really deep here that I'm only getting at the edges at, but hey.
It reminds me of the film Contagion (no spoilers). There was a global outbreak and ordinary people from all walks of life are trying to survive (the movie has multiple protagonists across unrelated arcs). One character was an everyman just trying to protect his family as they pass away. At the end when the cure is made, this character finally breaks down and cries for the first time after a reminder of how it all began. He stayed strong because what else could he do? But in a moment to himself, just cried. It's shocking.
No melodrama, just a man who has been strong for too long after a historic moment that reshaped society.
Imagine that in Halo 3 Anniversary sparks gonna go like: "You are NOT forerunner..."
YOU ARE NOT FORERUNNER THIS RING IS MINE! honestly just sounds like greedy child instead of big reveal 😅
it's funny because one argument that people make is that Guilty Spark was "rampant" or insane when he attacked Master Chief, so what Guilty Spark says is invalid. So if the remaster is like that, they basically admit humans are Forerunners
56:45 - I'm basically nodding along throughout this entire video, but yeah. From just this title I already immediately agree. I've thought about this many, many times. Halo was always extremely understated. But "Halo 4" had a ton of melodrama.
Like to just give an example. When Chief leaves Cortana behind in "Halo 2" what do we get? It's a highly emotional moment but all we get is Chief reaching for her, her saying "I don't want to chance a remote detonation. I need to stay here." But we all know what that meant. And then at the end of the game "After I'm through with Truth..." "Don't make a girl a promise, if you know you can't keep it." A great line. Emotional but without veering off into melodrama.
If that scene had been written by 343 it would've been a 3 minute cutscene of Chief yelling at Cortana "BUT I LOVE YOU! I CAN'T LEAVE YOU BEHIND!" "But Joh, you have to! Else the universe will end!" And them just crying and going back and forth like that for an entire scene.
Halo doesn't need that shit. It's understated. And it works. The melodrama and the melodramatic dialogue just feels cheap and cliché and doesn't fit.
58:00 - I do disagree here though. Like the Arbiter's journey has a TON of personal drama. This guy who's loyal to the covenant gets disgraced. Then has to redeem his honour. And then has to come to terms with changing his religious beliefs. That's a lot of personal drama, not just about big rings and alien species.
I think the difference you're feeling here isn't WHERE the drama was (personal vs. societal) but HOW it was delivered.
The Arbiter's journey was understated. You don't have a cutscene of the Arbiter crying in a room about how disgraced he is. You see him stand before a giant crowd and get burned with a mark. You get Rtas Vadumee telling him that the armour hides that mark and the Arbiter replying "Nothing ever will." You can feel his deep shame here. But its, as I said, understated.
Every personal conflict in "Halo 4" is overstated. It's crying and yelling at each other and long speeches. That's not what Halo is.
Edit: Later you pretty much go into this in what you say about the Arbiter, so I imagine we don't actually disagree then. I'm making these comments as I'm watching the video, so I didn't know that when I wrote this.
Agreed, Bungie always had a "less is more" style of approach to storytelling, 343 wanted to turn Halo into the Last of Us or some shit
guilty spark: And I don't mean it metaphorically, or rhetorically, or poetically, or theoretically, or any other fancy way. You are forerunner. STRAIGHT. UP.
343 dev: its like its trying to speak to me, I know it!
I noticed that reference you made there.
25:55 fan fiction would be written more respectfully towards the source material than this
Man I can't believe I completely forgot that 343i just straight up reintroduced the Covenant as it was in CE with barely an handwave of an explanation.
It’s a splinter faction
@@scoposteve8470 Yeah they say that the Covenant Storm are a splinter faction but they’re presented in game exactly the same as the covenant were in the OG titles
@@tristanlee8495 not really, they are noticably smaller
@@scoposteve8470everyone just refers to them as "the covenant". Its not until halo 5 that they're even slightly expanded on (and then you kill their leader.... in a fucking cutscene)
@@valance10 because Chief and Cortana have no clue what has happened over the course of 4 years. They have no idea what they are, just that they’re at the very least covenant. Jul’s death was very stupid I agree
Just gonna continue life with the notion that Halo died with Reach.
343 don't deserve the franchise.
Crowbcats video on halo there was someone who says “they didn’t earn halo that’s why they don’t care” and that’s always felt right. Just shocking how much they have run this once LEGENDARY franchise into the ground
Yes, you alright, reach killed halo
Game garbage
1-3/3ODST were the only good ones. Reach isn’t good.
“I thought we had a truce with the Covenant!”
-Master Chief with severe cryosleep-induced amnesia, completely misremembering the plot of Halo 2 and 3
The idea of a Halo game for non-Halo fans is ridiculous, the Bungie games were among the easiest games to get into.
Mechanics wise you had plenty of health, there were powerfull weapons and predictable but challemging enemies so combat wasn't difficult to get familiar with, and story wise it was so simple to understand but so intriguing and fun to follow.
Then Halo 4 came around and I still don't fully understand the plot, then Halo 5 and no one understands whats going on, now with Infinite its just a mix of the two with some stolen valor from other franchises...
I’ve been saying that halo 4 was a multi million dollar fanfiction since 2012, thank you so much for making this
@slaternatlivedotcom I was spamming this on Twitter like a madman while pissing the Halo 4 fanboys off lol
No you havent.
@slaternatlivedotcom no you didn't
@@Prehistoeif no you weren't.
@classydeathclaw2101 no you dont.
its also critical to remember that Halo 4 was being produced and released at the HEIGHT of Cod's genre defining juggernaut status, and trying to appeal to cod's hypercasual demographic was ultimately what kneecapped the whole gameplay loop. It wasnt JUST that there were loadouts and perks now, it was that the whole weapon and equipment roster was designed AROUND that Loadout system, meaning that the varied and unique weapon sandbox was totally absent, because each of them had to be balanced around it being a potential spawn weapon.
Never noticed it until here, but the melodrama is extremely annoying and overbearing. Not only that, but now it’s obvious that the entire Halo tv show is a giant melodrama-fest.
"Halo 4: Worse than you remember" Holy based, Batman. I've heard so many people try and say that it's well written but when replaying it with my firends who've never played the Halo games we both learned to hate the game. The only redeeming part is that it's not as bad as 5 or Infinite but that's no complement.
@Jason Flake are those Halo 4 vidocs still around by any chance?
Damn. I think Halo Infinites campaign is pretty solid, considering they will be building off that for the next ten years. I enjoyed it.
@@nicholas.alan85 You obviously a bot if you think 343 and that shitty Halo Finite is gonna get better lmao.
@@nicholas.alan85 agreed Infinite's campaign, art style and the gameplay is pretty solid.
@@boydlateef1282 Halo 4 Rehash
Of all the stupid shit they pulled, I found their attempts to sell the Forerunners as their new-and-improved 'Fiverunners' the most insulting to both the franchise and myself on a personal level.
'Fiverunners' lmao That's honestly the perfect way to describe them.
My man, I knew the old Bungie lore was that humans were forerunner, but I simply did not understand the absolute sheer hints to that throughout the whole trilogy.
The Mercy dialogue you cited, "This time... none of you will be left behind," absolutely caught me off guard- I thought he was talking about the Covenant wiping them out, e.g. their last planet.
~Oh 3433333
Did... did they try to murder the Forerunner generation of humanity because they thought they were allowed to decide if they were unworthy to possess such advanced tech?
I thought that for the longest time too.
And now 343 brought back the Didact again and guess where his story is heading? The damn books. Edit: So guess who wrote Halo 4? Chris Schlerf: the writer for Mass Effect: Andromeda. Edit 2: Marty O'Donnell just confirmed that the Humans are and will always Forerunners on Twitter! WE WON BOYS!!!
Didnt they kill him off?
Yay…. More homework for us to understand the full story
Yeah but why do you even care at this point? Morbid curiosity?
@@trazyntheinfinite9895 I find some of the books actually pretty fun and well written, I enjoy really reading them. One example is halo the broken circle, it expand a lot the lore of the covenant. Nowadays the only thing I enjoy from halo are the books lmao.
I mean, anyone who reads 343's books is reading fanfiction. I read all the novels with Bungie's logo and, when 343 showed up, touched none of theirs.
After watching this, I think the biggest disappointment in the gaming industry besides the state of gaming itself is the handling and state of Halo
I’m so glad someone hates halo 4 as much as me. I hate it more than any game and you nailed everything
I was probably too young when I played Halo 3, so when I played Halo 4 and I saw their take on forerunner, I just accepted it I guess. But know that it's put so obviously in my face, I feel so stupid for not knowing it before.
He is incorrect about a lot of claims in this video. Most of the forerunner stuff in Halo 4 is taken from books that came out between Halo 2 and 3 and Reach. This video is wildly inaccurate.
@@halofornoobs93 no one cares about the stupid freaking books. If you write a book without following the main plot of the games (Halo is a videogame franchise, remember?) and their details, then your story is completely wrong
You were groomed, but now you see the truth lol
@@halofornoobs93 But the book doesn't determine what is canon it's the game and the game says that the forerunner are human and weren't anything that say forerunner aren't humans is because Frank O'Connor. Books are only canon if it doesn't go against the games.
@Daenack Dranils You the one who is doing the name calling because God forbid someone actually pointed out how bad the game.
The distinction between forerunner and reclaimer doesn't even mean the two are separate species. The forerunners are humans prior to the firing of the Halo Array, and reclaimers are humans after the firing.
Halo 4 is what made me give up on the series. I rewatched all of the halo cutscenes from 1-4 today, and I realized why it felt so bad. The story and the writing are cringe, and frustrating. They convoluted the storyline by introducing The Diadect & The Librarian. Then the final boss is a quick time event, instead of an actual fight. Deus ex machina everywhere, and just eye rolling dialogue. Halo 4 should have never been made.
7:10
A little thing to note with Halo 3's ending, it mirrors the beginning of Combat Evolved. Chief wakes up from cryo, then goes to sleep in cryo once his job is done. It is a clear indication that Chief is a representation for the player, a vessel we control, and that by waking up from cryo we gain control of him, and by doing the same in reverse, it's a sign that the story is over. Bungie may have made it look like a cliffhanger, but thematically, narratively and symbolically, it's a definitive sign that the journey has come to an end. No more adventures with Chief, no more missions, it's over. Now, it's time to go outside and speak to a real person, so to speak.
Also remember that even the books like Contact Harvest specified humans were Forerunner by specifying what Reclaimer was
I like to pretend that the 343 games are a coma dream the chief is having while adrift in cryosleep. That’s why everything is so different
Now that the franchise is being rebooted, that would be a fucking hilarious retcon to restart the game.
Thats awesome XD i love that Idea, very good
"how did you sleep chief?" "Oh god it was horrible I had a terrible nightmare... there was a Vampire who had the Force, and you were crazy and there was robots with faces inside their faces..."
Bruuh, the next game will be called Halo: Chief's Awakening
Don't forget the Gravemind's statements to Chief: "Child of my enemy, why have you come?"
I mean, that isn't really contradicting anything. The idea that humanity and forerunners were 2 different races came out in the books back before Halo 3 even came out.
@@halofornoobs93 Explain why 343 Guilty Spark in Halo CE says Chief is LITERALLY Forerunner than? "You are Forerunner", remember that? He also states in the crashed Autumn that he cant wait to catch up on all 'our' lost time, referring to HUMAN history.
@@thelizard556 "You are the child of my Makers. Inheritor of all they left behind. You are Forerunner! But this ring... is mine!"
I always viewed this as humanity being the inheritors of them, not literally them, that we are supposed to be the "new" Forerunners.
@@ano_nym Guilty Spark: "You are Forerunner"
You: "I think he means they aren't Forerunners"
It makes no sense man
@@halofornoobs93 Find me something that shows humans aren't forerunners that wasn't written by or alongside Frankie.
Halo 4 and 343 Halo at large was never Halo. Those developers openly DESPISED this series.
It was only ever a glorified trend-chaser with a popular brand name slapped on the cover.
Dude, I was late to all these games, just played 4 last year. I could immediately feel a drop in quality. Most notable was the complete absence of any kind of "sandbox", it's just a hallway shooter. I couldn't move 5 steps off-script. But also the enemies, the writing, music... Say what you want about Infinite but just playing it feels way better.
you're nuts, the soundtrack in 4 was great!
"Arrival" is pretty epic though. Thats about all I'll give the game credit for
@@INFILTR8US the music gets good at certain times, but it's pretty subdued overall, I was often missing it.
@@Jetiko27 For some reason the soundtrack in Halo 4 is muffled in some areas.
@@INFILTR8US it's decent. I listen to it. 117 is good. Definitely not the lowest point of the game but, you can't really compare it to what came before
At minute 9 you talk about how they wanted it to sell for $60 to please Microsoft. According to Marty and his deleted big stage chats on discord, they wanted to sell it as an expansion earlier on the year for $30. It was MS execs who forced Bungie to delay the game till holiday season and charge full price. According to Marty and his other accounts, they wanted to surprise the fans and make them think "holy heck, I'm getting all this content for $30?". That's why it was initially called Halo 3: Recon and why it kept the Halo 3 tag.
Edit: As much as I hate HR for retonning TFoR and Ghosts of Onyx, calling it a plotless run and shoot is inaccurate. It tells the fall of reach from the perspective of the Spartans on the ground.
I blame TFoR and Ghosts more for that. They simply weren't written with gameplay flow in mind. (They did however deserve rewrites to fit Reach's timeline)
@@KopperNeoman of course! They were never supposed to be adapted to games. How could they possibly account for a game that would happen 10 years in the future and no one new it would even exist? That was just Bungie's being perry about their baby.
Also, Ghost's retcon is even more offensive because everything about Spartan 3s is changed but it has nothing to do with gameplay.
Nah. I'm sticking to Bungie's original story. There were zero Spartan III's on Reach.
TFoR is a shit book and it's eye rolling to see fans complain about the games story on it despite it working well.
@@summ.3433 lol, it's a decent book. It's not the greatest, but everything in it made sense. So, it's eye-rolling to complain about a game that has an OK story, but completely disregarded 10-year-old well-established canon? To each their own I guess.
One thing I personally disliked the most was "Master Chief being human" all he did was just being sad and coping for 3 games straight.There's more to being human than just being sad and coping.
Correction for around 12:30 or so.
Halo CEA was NOT 60 bucks.
It was 40, and it came with a code for six Reach maps that were remake of classic maps, plus a Reach firefight map based on the second leave of CE.
It was also the first time the campaign for CE had online co-op.
It was not a bad deal if you loved CE.
They also added terminals that unlocked new cutscenes, which added some very interesting story for Spark, and one showed the pain the flood was putting Key through.
Don’t worry, bro is just a hater
Well for me was 40 Euros, which at the time was around 60 US dollars, obviously it costs different around the world. Anyway point is it wasn't cheap.
@@lucyfromseventeenth Don't worry bro, 343 deserves the hate.
I don’t get the hate for ce a I mean I play on classic graphics anyway but I like the option of switching between the 2
@@lucyfromseventeenth Unfortunately I often worry when people say things that are not true. Some do it on purpose, but in this case I think it was a lack of research. I don’t think it’s the end of the world, but this UA-camr needs to learn from mistakes, and he can’t do that if we don’t tell him when he makes them.
This is why my head-cannon ends at halo 3. Chief is still out there; frozen; waiting until we need him...
I just don't acknowledge anything after Halo 3 chronologically to be canon. In my mind Chief and Cortana are still drifting out there, somewhere....
requiem existed in halo 3 its seen briefly in the legendary ending
@@bruhgod123I think that was originally going to be Onyx.
@@bruhgod123that shit wasn't "requiem", it was 100% Onyx as the book ghosts of Onyx came out in 06 just before Halo 3 dropped
@@Wuunderboy Ok so 343 just did another pointless retcon.
@Wuunderboy just one problem, the realspace part of Onyx broke apart into a swarm of tens of billions of sentinels at the end of Ghosts of Onyx
"So fades the great harvest of my betrayal" remains, for me, the most ludicrous, meaningless, and pretentious line of dialogue ever delivered in any media, probably for all time.