The loneliness of empty Halo maps
Вставка
- Опубліковано 30 чер 2024
- #haloce #halo #bloodgulch #liminal #nostalgia #gaming #xbox
patreon- / any_austin
discord- / discord
twitch- / any_austin
For my music, search “The Excellent Man from Minneapolis” on your favorite streaming service, or click here for Spotify- open.spotify.com/artist/49RPy...
twitter- / any_austin
TikTok- / any_austin
My instagram is largely personal or used for music, but you can also go there- / excellentmanfromminnea... - Ігри
the song at the end isn't out until tomorrow. That is my mistake. But when it's out you can find it under either my profile The Excellent Man from Minneapolis or under my friend Luke's profile LUKDLX. tomorrow. He and I put out a lofi house song about every 6 weeks.
wait what is the thing you heard the other day
why did u change the title & thumbnail
You never finished your thought at the beginning of the video about making new memories. You said you'd let us know more later in the video but you never brought it up again.
really finding your groove austin, love it!
We want "Unremarkable and odd places" (Counter-Strike 1.6) edition
The feeling of going back into old games and reminiscing about all that you have done in the past is really powerful, but one thing I don’t think I’ve heard you mention is that the spaces in games do not change over time. For example, going back to my hometown feels weird because so many things are different from when I was growing up there. The elementary school is now abandoned, the house I grew up in has been demolished, even the tree line around my parent’s property looks different. People come and go and the whole feel of the place shifts and in some cases fades out of memory. But when I boot up Bob-omb battlefield in Super Mario 64 it is always Bob-omb battlefield, and the little pink dude is always going to welcome me to hop into the cannon. The fact that these are preserved in time keeps me coming back.
I have the exact same feeling. Place I grew up is now occupied by someone else, shops I used to visit closed down, with new ones opened on their place, old playgrounds demolished, new playgrounds built.
But whenever I return to Castle Wolfenstein, it always greets me with gloomy gray sky, cozy rooms with hot food and fireplaces, far away snowy mountains and howling wind. Nothing has changed ever since I saw my dad playing it. Weird window into the past.
It's weird how much smaller both games and real-world spaces end up feeling when you revisit them. A lot of games from my childhood that felt like these sprawling epics, are actually really short games.
It's not even exclusive to childhood in my experience. The first time I played Elden Ring, I was blown away by the size of the map. After playing through the game a few times it feels a lot more digestible and easy to navigate.
Good point! On the other hand one could argue that since WE have changed, it can never be the same experience. When I go back to old games from my past, I'm often disappointed, like something doesn't feel right. I guess because it's not really the games themselves I miss, but rather the feeling I had playing them as a kid. And that cannot be recreated.
@@8Kazuja8 " I do wonder if people like that say "you've got to have played that" but actually mean "you've had to have been there" I think a lot of it wasn't just the games themselves but the time's you had, memories you made, and the people you made them with (more so with multiplayer). It wasn't just the game it self in a vacuum so to speak. I can play Halo CE co-op with my brother anytime, like we did 19 years ago. I still love it and play it often still but it's not going to have the same wonder and mystery and the new experience of it. Sometimes if it's a person coming to a older game they haven't played before it can be a "Seinfeld" Is Unfunny trope kind of thing where a game (or whatever) was so influential that has been copied in various aspects so much that to new eyes it isn't unique in the grand scheme of things as it was when new
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/SeinfeldIsUnfunny/VideoGames
Meanwhile I'm 30 and live on the same farm I have lived on my entire life.. lol. Nothing changes in western KY
The original Halo had some liminal space vibes that I didn't feel in subsequent Halos.
oh my gosh exactly
Playing Halo CE when I was 13 made me feel inside the game like only a few others did. It felt surreal and a little uncanny, almost like a dream. The old graphics lacked on details, shadow, lighting and reflections, and the campaign on npcs, but it still felt believable enough, thus the uncanny valley.
I got a lot of liminal space vibes from a lot of the halo 2 mp maps. Mainly because i spent a lot of time wandering them alone (and with friends doing custom cooperative glitch escapades) as well as the CE maps
It had a very creepy vibe to it, like someone was watching, almost like 343 guilty spark was watching chief since he first landed on halo
@@asggerpatton7169 100% spot on.
When I was younger I would often explore Halo 2 maps alone, mostly out of boredom, but the feelings you described were exactly what I felt back then exploring those maps alone. It almost felt as if the map was watching you the same way you were watching it.
It's the complete lack of music once you're off the main menu. PvP and music are both such identifiable parts of these games but 1-Reach didn't mix them together.
Valve games have a similar feel
Utterly empty, yet somehow occupied by something other than you
Id do the same thing at late hours of the night. I would try to find ghosts or go out of bounds
Thought I was the only one that did this lol
Dude YES. THIS comment is IT. I did the same exact shit.
When I was a kid for some reason we never could get my Xbox connected to live, I used to watch multiplayer gameplay online & wander around these maps alone imagining what it would be like, looking for vantage points & best routes to power weapon spawns. safe to say once I did get online my virginity was safe for a few years & social life became a distant memory
Same brotha; except I couldn’t afford internet.
“Halo released in two thousand something. One? Two? It’s impossible to say.” 😂😂😂
Its nostalgia but also sadness at what has been lost. You remember all the great memories and fun times you had there. But you also know that you will never be able to do that again. Its over now and its over forever
True, but maybe, some of us could be inspired to bring it back for the rest of us.
At least in some small way.
You can still go back and play with the same old friends. Recreate some of the memories. It doesn't have to be in the past forever.
It's only lost forever if Bungie or 343 pulls a Ubisoft and turns Halo into lost media, hopefully they don't 🤞
Nostalgia is scarily addictive. I've been so fixated on nostalgia that I forgot to live my own life, here and now. It's gotten to the point where I feel nostalgic about the time I felt nostalgic, reminiscing about that one time I was reminiscing.
Time flies too fast. I can't keep up, yo!
For me, nostalgia is a way of coping with the feeling of anticipation and uncertainty that comes with modern life. When you're a young adult and so much is changing and new experiences are coming, you feel overwhelmed. My response to that has been to retreat to my memories, those warm and familiar and comforting memories.
And that's a problem. I've been doing this for so long that I've robbed myself of those new experiences I could've had. Now I find myself getting nostalgic about the times I got nostalgic, yearning for the times in my young adulthood when I just sat down and reminisced because I was too nervous and excited and overwhelmed to actually go out there and do anything. It's a self-defeating cycle.
Take it from me people. Don't spend too much time reminiscing. It's good to remember, but get out there and gain new experiences. Live for the here and now.
"sci-fi camping trip" is a brilliant way to describe the aesthetic. Just perfect. Great video.
I agree
Oh man I have such good memories of loading up maps and just wandering around them without the chaos going on. You can really appreciate the isolated beauty of halo when you're not being shot at
That’s literally me, every time I wanna go into halo maps and just chill nobody is down 🤣🤣🤣
I did that with a lot of COD maps too. Just looking around, without the fast pace of warfare.
A couple of decades ago I used to do this with cs:source. I didn't have a good internet connection, so I played offline with bots. I learned all commands like adding, killing, kicking bots and my favorite maps were de_peranesi and de_cbble. Spent hours either just running around or killing bots. I feels lonely just thinking about it.
When Halo released my little brother was old enough that he was beginning to get interested in video games and wanted to play everything I was playing, but also too young to be able to play them competently. It resulted in us mostly going into Blood Gulch, Sidewinder, and a handful of other maps with a bunch of nooks and crannies and either playing hide and seek or just exploring and noticing the details. It gave me a deep appreciation for the design of some of Halo 1 and 2s multiplayer and single player maps and for the art of level design in general. It caused me to develop a habit of taking my time with games and appreciating the small details that most people probably miss. This video brought back a lot of memories.
Oh my god. I have searched so many years for a phrase to sum up HALO's aesthetic and you fucking nailed it.
"Sci-Fi Camping trip"
At least the first one.
With a splash of Frutiger Aero
@@HydratedBeans you're absolutely right! In fact, you nailed it there. Halo 1 honestly looks like a trapper keeper cover haha
@@novelezra god I miss that aesthetic. It was so optimistic
Stargate did that before Halo.
I used to frequently do this, especially with Halo maps. There is something unspokenly special and eerie about empty Halo multiplayer maps. Those feelings are only exasperated when it's real late at night. Even though I was alone in those maps, it felt like thousands of eyes were on me in those moments. Incredibly hard to describe but please do more of these videos I love this type of thing
You make a great point about the good ole days not having to be gone. You can always make good ole days, even when change is inevitable, and I've struggled with those thoughts for a long time.
-
"It's impossible to say"
-Any Austin on the release date of Halo
-
I have a feeling I will end up in Blood Gulch when I die... and I hope to see you all there...
Used to love wandering around Sidewinder as a kid. Still love that eerie whistling wind sound to this day.
Was hoping to see sidewinder featured in the video. A definite favorite of mine, what with the slippery driving physics and wide open winter wonderland vibe.
It surprised me when I learned that Sidewinder hadn't become one of the "Classics" like even some Halo 2 maps had become.
The tunnel fights got intense
yeahh the whistling sounds..
Of the four maps on the free trial version, Sidewinder had to be my favorite.
surprised you didn't mention the ambient sound. especially blood gulch just sounds like a hot summer's vacation day somewhere in southern europe and it is glorious
Why Europe specifically? Lmao
@Utonian21 my man closed his eyes and just spoke how he felt. Don't question him lol
@@zachg427 bro took me back to the sicily and i aint ever been there
I have been playing this 20 yr old game called Indiana Jones and the Emperors Tomb, and it is filled with empty oddites and really uncanny areas. I think you would have a field day with it, or find it fascinating at least. Big fan !
Dude that game is fucking sick, I found it recently on steam and couldn't stop playing and looking around. Austin should def check it out
I've owned that on GOG for years but never fired it up, I'm installing it right now because of your comment, thanks!
@@philly_osophy it’s clunky, but if you appreciate it for its oldness, it’s quite charming and strangely impressive!
That giant crocodile scared me so much
The mp40 was awesome in that game.
"You should be embarrassed to be having joy as an adult" is a painfully good line that perfectly describes the mindset so many people seem to actually have (especially subconsciously, I could never be a "quidditch guy" and this is the only reason that makes sense to avoid things like that). Loving this recent trend of picking a non-serialized topic and just rambling for 10 minutes over videogame footage, they're probably tougher to come up with than the unremarkable and odd places videos but I hope you keep them coming.
Coming to this video a bit late but that line got a chuckle out of me. Many adults become so fixated on this notion of life being "serious business" that they truly do lose sight of simple joy, something that comes so natural to children. It's a strange sort of commiseration where anyone who steps outside of the "being super serious and unhappy like us" boundaries gets shamed and told to grow up. I'll pass!
The tree in the middle of the map has always given me that odd and unremarkable feeling. Even in the middle of a match I would drive to it and just think why did they put this here and nothing else. Iconic and I love blood gultch
I remember back in 2006-2007 when i found out Halo Custom Edition was a thing, I had all these custom maps and stuff but I didn't really know to use them. I spent so much time just exploring the barren landscape. Truly an interesting time... was very lonely though.
Me and my two sisters used to wander around Halo maps for fun. We often did this in the early hours of the morning and we'd see creepy faces in the textures all the time. Then one day on Sidewinder we found an ACTUAL FACE. Somewhere in the ring texture overhead, there's a dev's face in the clouds. Creeped us out HARD! We were used to seeing things that looked like faces if you squinted at the CRT display, not actual faces.
no way.. id do this too with my brother. I still do it today!!
It’s an actual Easter egg. The main map creator of Sidewinder put his face on the ring.
9:40 this is when the discussion gets to another level of real, that’s really awesome and there’s a lot of truth to it. It’s true, there is something so familiar and comforting about revisiting childhood gaming spots
I noticed every time you got to the water, you jumped over it instead of wading through. Make sure to leave time in your own life to wade in and experience the vibe as if it was water flowing around you.
There is something quite nice about staring at the Halo rings in the skyboxes of some of these maps.
I remember as a kid playing level 2 of CE, just stopping and being amazed about what kind of a structure I was standing on. Staring at the ring, looking from one side of it to the other hanging in the air above you. Its a shame they didn't have more of a focus on that element in the later halo games.
I used to walk through empty maps too, and just take a look around.
Awesome to do in the recent port of Tinesplitters 2 and Future Perfect on Xbox.
Remove the bots and go for a stroll
It was like a game in of itself. Like exploring ruins or a dig site.
Joint Operations, a military shooter from the early 2000s, had absolutly massive multiplayer maps. Something like 20x20 miles. Whether you can find a server with some people or none at all, it doesn't take long to feel absolutely isolated in that game. It's a trip. I had joined a server last year with maybe 12 people in it. I got in a vehicle and drove in one direction for the extent of the match (about 30 minutes). Just endlessly driving and reflecting on my history with the game.
It wasn't the same feeling of loneliness you get on an empty halo map but once you're a mile or two away from anyone, who knows what you'll go through. It evokes the wildest feeling. The area of the map outside the main play area was never meant to be played in. Even during the hayday with 250 person servers, you could never fill all 20x20 miles of the map (although, you'd sometimes get a few insane people spending 15 minutes making the biggest flank in online shooter history just to get behind the enemy spawn). You'd think it would be a massive waste of resources to render such a large map while only populating maybe 10% of it. I'm glad they did.
really enjoyed your whole battle creek realization, and i think i agree, these spaces offering timeless "playgrounds" no matter who you are, or have changed over the years, is quite special
"You should be embarrassed to be having joy as an adult"
I got one of those metaphysical chills just now.
Not an actual chill, because you know, you should be embarrassed to actually feel feelings, as an adult.
Hey Austin, austin here. I'm glad you made this video because it conveys what I've felt coming back to the older games over the years. For me, those golden years on those maps had a lot of excitement, still felt new. But life today is so very different, both on my end and in the gaming industry. It just makes me depressed. When all of your friends have either died or moved on, you realize that the soul of Halo was not the epic soundtrack, or the story of a badass soldier defending humanity, but the people we met along the way. I can't even play on Halo Reach's forge world anymore because it's like re-visiting your childhood home and finding it in ruins, rather than just letting that one good image of it live in your mind.
I used to wander around empty COD (and Halo 3 to a lesser extent) maps with my friends. We'd just talk about whatever instead of focusing on the game. It was a good way for us to still hang out after I moved away from them (it was only like a 20 minute drive, but it feels like a huge distance when you're 14). Because of that, the nostalgia/weirdness of empty multi-player maps hits me in two different ways.
Running around empty maps doing whatever is exactly what I did as a child. It wasn't until my preteens when I actually got internet that I started to play online, but even then, we couldn't always afford to buy gold so that I actually play online, so I ended up running around empty maps doing whatever a lot anyways.
Your family could barely even afford gold?
The ringworld background aesthetic is probably the absolute best in Halo 1. You don't see the "edges", since there are hundreds of miles of land between you and them. You won't have any idea that you aren't on a planet until you look upon the horizon.
Another reason these maps feel so lonely is because you previously shared some of the funnest moments of your life with your friends in the them. But now you’ve all grown up and maybe lost contact. Walking alone through these maps gives a reminder of your time together that’s now ended. It gives a sense of nostalgia of good times past that you wish you could feel again…
This but with Unreal Tournament 99, love the look of old Unreal Engine. UT has bots (really smart bots god damn) but you can turn em off and walk around enjoying the solitude. Maps downloaded from the internet are so much fun to explore around in because it's just regular ol' people making them so you get such a wild variety of glimpses into peoples' headspaces. Plus, of course, the melancholy of multiplayer maps with nobody in them is always nice to wallow in for a while.
The thing that MCC gave me that I NEVER thought I’d see again, was blood gulch, fully populated with players, on the Xbox. I really thought playing system link way back in the day was the last of that multiplayer game, but you can hop on MCC today and play these amazing maps, just like 20+ years ago.
There was something uncanny about this until I realized that this kind of video is the way UA-cam USED to be. These kinds of videos is what made UA-cam a place you wanted to be, back in the day, and only after pondering how much things have changed did I realize that this kind of video is what made UA-cam worth being around for. Thank you for reviving, for the briefest of moments, what UA-cam used to be all about.
We really did go from UA-cam to Adtube really quickly
"I need very clear emotional communication from you"
Everytime I watch a video of yours, my being is filled with a uncanny happiness equal to that you feel when you listen to a 80's song in your whole teenage years, stop listening to it in your early adult, and then remember it when you're a "adult adult". It's almost this you feel when you read adult adult.
Despite my emotions being hard to decipher from my point of view, I desperately wanted to put into words how much joy and surprise I feel leaking from my heart when I watch these videos about "unremarkable and odd places" specially in a game like Halo that I never played before in my life.
I found so interesting, strange and stupid the metaphor you used about "reading a diary with fading words" that I urinated myself and cried tears of joy, at the same time, when I heard it.
The way you read the virtual space we as early, adult or old adults interact as being the same as the physical playground we once played joyfully when we're kids was as good to understand as was good to understand that life has no meaning at all (that's why we can create one, if we want to).
Please, keep creating your content and simply... Being yourself in front of a mic/camera. I really love that.
This mans mind is just unfiltered kino. I love it.
Would love to see more of these! Such a cool idea. Team Fortress 2 might be a good one, those maps feel weirdly lonely even with a ton of people in them.
what really makes the halo 1 maps unique is the ambiance, i really enjoy hearing the background sound affect either from the running water or just hearing the winds howling(Sidewinder) for example.
Battle creek looks weird with not battle scars. Its like the playground you talked about being brand new, perfectly groomed mulch, no holes dug, no sweaters left over a bench.
ahhh I've literally done this so much since I got the Masterchief Collection. Something about the naturalistic sound design and outdoor environments makes it perfect for slow, reflective wandering long after everyone packed up and left. My current favorite map to walk around alone in is Gephyrophobia since it has such a strong night feel, especially when I look at the lights on the rock walls
Loved the conversational, playful tone. You made me laugh, bud. Especially the bit about Timberland not being lonely, it's just numbers in a word file man
I think the word you're looking for is kenopsia. I'm paraphrasing, but essentially It's the weird feeling you get from a place that used to be filled with people but is now empty. When I was a young kid, my parents would volunteer for the local PTA, which meant I stayed after school while they made copies or helped teachers in some way. Sometimes I would stay until 6 or 7 in the evening, hours after every other kid went home. I got the same feeling then that I get looking at old, empty multiplayer maps I do today.
Brings back all the Halo memories. It's weird too because even though it's a decade younger and designed completely differently, all of the remakes of Halo CE's maps in Reach give me the same feelings. You should do one of these about the Wii sports golf courses. They always gave me the same vibe of eerily mundane, and yet unreal, like they can't quite capture real life, just a child's perception of it.
I actually really liked Boarding Action. It forced a kind of asymmetrical play which challenged skills many players badly needed to improve: holding shallow angles and long distance shots/target tracking.
People hated it because it was easy to die and it was easy to die because the map forced you out of your comfort zone and into an exposed position where the only option was to shoot first, shoot better, or immediately die.
Going back and watching old empty Halo maps feels a lot like going back to when I was a kid playing multiplayer games before bots existed (Dark Forces 2) and when we still had dial-up Internet. Sometimes I could get a friend or two to bring their computer over and play with me, but for the most part, deviating from the single player story mode was a lonely experience. If you've never played the Quake multiplayer modes on totally empty maps, that is an experience. As I kid I would do that to explore and that was quite the eerie experience. I have a dream or two that I remember to this day rooted in that.
When I was young, I shared the same experience the great majority of you did: I hopped into empty multiplayer maps. And for me it was hella comforting. I played a lot of Medal of Honor Allied Assault, so I'd hop into the multiplayer maps and interact with the environment with this mentality that the war was over and now I could explore the previous site of battles alone to reminisce about that victory (I always put myself in the Allies side of things). When I hopped into small town maps, I'd interact with the map as if I was actually living there, like pretending I was taking a plate to the table to eat or going to to the toilet LOL
But with Halo it was different. Halo was just magical in so many of its levels. With Halo, I didn't pretend anything because I was too stuck in the wonder of exploring these gigantic pieces of landscape. It was genuine me trying to process that otherwordly environment, not just some fool walking around these empty spaces. So I'd hop into the multiplayer maps, drive around with the vehicles, scale the forerunner buildings and see what weapons I could find there. All of these maps were extremely mysterious, fun and relaxing to explore... except Gephyrophobia. That map terrified me. It was dark, it was ominous and that background ambience noise didn't help shit with scalling the classic liminal space from 0 to 10 real quick.
I rarely comment on videos, but this one speaks to me. Thank you for making this.
After reading the Halo Fall of Reach novel in early High School, I would think about the training portion of the book and often thought of Timberland as that training area they wandered as kids. I would love to see Timberland ported to Halo: Reach so that the updated textures and audio could be used to convey a better sense of the outdoors. Maybe make it both a multiplayer map to see how vehicles mix with armor abilities in those trench-like passages, but also Firefight mode to experience what fighting in the wilderness of Reach might be like.
I know this is an old comment, but they actually did remake Timberland as DLC for Reach when they released CE Anniversary. It's called Ridgeline, and the atmosphere is a bit different but it's a really good looking map imo.
austin will be remembered as one of the great philosophers of our time
The halo soundtrack will live on forever, thats something ill never forget from this series.
Iconic for that era yes, it is one of the most iconic. Maybe im older but stuff like stacks, library and facility from goldeneye are most iconic to me. Also sidewinder was our jam, 16 player lan party ctf at my friend's house was legendary.
Some of my most fond gaming memories are of playing LAN Halo with 4 xboxes in a friends basement with like 15 guys and 1 girl drinking store brand dr pepper.
Will this be a new series because i’d love this 😳
Reminding Austin to tell us what he heard the other day regarding the good ol' days (0:25)
This was so nostalgic for me. Halo was a thing my Dad and I used to play A LOT. We both had Xboxs, 2 tvs in separate rooms connected by an extra long cord across the floor, playing multiplayer maps. Blood Gultch was definitely a favorite. Dad used to hate when I would camp up on the ridge with the sniper and pick him off as he spawned. Our absolute favorite though? Hang em High. I know it's very simple, but we loved that. It just meant more action for us, since we were usually the only ones playing. 1v1 was how we played 90% of our games. I will always love this game.
So many good concepts in this video. The conservation of places, which is somehow rendered uncanny without the intended social practices taking place there. The limited scope of play for adults. Flux of nostalgia. More like this!
My experience with multiplayer maps was almost exclusively playing them alone. Halo custom maps are great for it, but in particular I remember doing this with the Ratchet and Clank 3 multiplayer. I regularly tried to jump out of the hovership and get back in before it landed.
Ah great to see a video on this. Sometimes I find myself booting up the Master Chief Collection and walking around old maps for nostalgia. But then I'll download modded maps on the Steam workshop just to explore, and I realized theres a special atmosphere to the old Halo games, something outside of the nostalgia.
My internet as a kid wasn’t good enough to play online so I used to go into forge in Halo 3 and build my own maps that no one else would ever play, and then would even do the same thing in Reach sometimes even when I could play online at that point. Building bases, spawning in vehicles and weapons, it was always a weird mix of enjoyment and loneliness but now it feels kind of nostalgic thinking back on it. The ambience wandering around empty multiplayer maps is always interesting
Forge is obviously amazingly better now technically in Halo Infinite… but damn those Halo 3 and Reach Forge modes were iconic
Wonderful content as usual Austin. In high school in our school library’s Computer Lab (are those still a thing?) someone had found an admin account that didn’t have a password, and had installed Halo Custom Edition. The wicked part was that multiple people could log in to the account at the same time, so we were able to orchestrate large local Halo matches for a while. Eventually the librarian caught on and the fun was squashed. But while it was happening, the games felt like such a technological/hacking achievement. It was a lot of fun.
Boarding Action with Snipers only was awesome. Prisoner with only Rockets was my absolute favorite though, just non-stop chaos.
I really liked what you said about how multiplayer maps are like playgrounds that you would just get together and do your own thing in sometimes. That's something older games like Halo allowed that newer games kinda restrict in a way. Newer games are more driven by the action and objectives, while in the older games, you could just pick whatever game mode gave you infinite time so you could check out all the cool little nooks and crannies they made that nobody ever looks at.
After watching this video, I'm totally down for booting up some old multiplayer games and just looking around in the multiplayer maps. I think that'd be a really cool livestream/online match hybrid... thing.
I go to the swingset all the time as an adult. I usually go after dark, but my old elementary school usually clears up later on in the afternoon as well. It's a relaxing experience, especially if you've been going to those places for a really long time. The day I'm too old to have fun on a swingset is the day I'm too old to make it there on my own.
I played UT2004 last year for the first time in a long time. Servers said they had 20 people but they were empty. I found myself enjoying walking and driving around remembering all the memories. Getting to places via double jump that not many people knew about. I miss it.
My bro and i used to play boarding action with snipers only and always invisible lol… leaning into the creepy element. It turned into more of a screen cheating contest usually though
4:33, really hit me. Yeah, maybe the maps miss us because I miss those maps and those times. 4:54 - “The answer is nooo” Oh well okay then….
I’m glad you did a video on this, because I have really spent so much time in Halo CE alone just wondering around - hours upon hours
I recently downloaded a mod for morrowind called “no more NPCs” by IgnatiousS.
Wandering around an early 2000’s game with absolutely nobody in it is pretty surreal. Combined with morrowind’s already odd atmosphere made it like some weird alien planet. I’d recommend it!
The map Boarding Action was excellent for sniper rifle only matches. That's how to make that map shine and what a fun time that was because of how difficult the sniper rifle was to use.
What an awesome video man! Real trip down memory lane for many I believe (I really got into Halo about 4 or 5 years ago with some new friends I made at college, and every night for a while we would play the MCC). If you’re interested in making more of these walking around old multiplayer maps I’m down for it. Also, 6:25 although yes I originally came here for halo maps… I also quite like you getting into more of that deep stuff (the analogies and the book and single player game comparison). The going back to your childhood playground and all that is a really good way to explain the feeling of walking around these old Halo maps. I was happy to see this as a notification on my phone :)
I loved this one so mucH! I love the analogy on being able to go back, that it's the only place you can return to without going back to childhood as you can go back and play the same game as an adult. For me it's like a memory or a untapped vibe I can recover and breathe life into, as if it's not artificial but a tangible and natural memory and feeling with substance that I couldn't find as an adult unless I could access a place in real life that serves as a memory point for nostalgia or inspiration. The insights are'nt borrowed and I love that this channel is original. Will keep watching, from NZ.
The videos are really great!! There's something that is eerily intriguing about sitting and listening to everything the developers put together. There are so many things that would otherwise go unnoticed during a battle. Side note, Halo CE was recently added (alongside many other games) to the no clip website. This may make it easier to explore the levels, although there is no audio.
You have a really interesting perspective that I'm glad is being shared on your channel. Great videos
I did a lot of 1 v 1 and solo multiplayer Halo and always liked exploring the maps. I think the reason they have that extra nostalgic something is because they had to respect the technological limitations of the time. No polygon or pixel could be wasted, so great care was put into the aesthetics.
Nowadays we seem to have more focus on realism over style, which is too bad. I don't play video games for reality, give me something fantastical.
I used to walk around in empty MP maps in a lot of games alone because we didn’t have internet and I didn’t have any friends to play with.
same
That was comforting at first but on the last map you made me sad thinking about how I wouldn’t be welcome at the playground I grew up playing at and I shouldn’t swing on a swing set because I miss that a lot
Damn, I wasnt ready for the mortality anxiety that this video made me experience
Halo is filled with nostalgia and beauty. And odd places. I still love wondering halo 3 maps alone. Gives me so much peace. And that's a really interesting point about mp maos being the last places adults can play. I think everyone secretly feels it's a big shame adults can't play without judgement. We need to create these spaces. I know I certainly wouldn't judge adults having fun.
Hope you do more halo maps!!
when I was around 10-12, I explored the crap out of multiplayer maps by myself, and put myself in scenarios and played them out by myself. (We didn’t have internet)
This really makes a little movie play in my head as if it were yesterday.
sci-fi camping trip is probably the best description I could imagine for early Halo.
I think you're right on about multiplayer games like these being like digital playgrounds. Just another reason games are amazing!
Real life playgrounds are still fun too but I get not wanting to be seen. I love climbing on trees and stuff out in the woods for that reason~
Sad, abandoned playground.
I love these philosophical musings.
i think thats actually exactly what i miss in multiplayer particularly fps is that halo was the only series where it felt like a playground, often you would just be playing around doing things that the game didnt really intend making up little games to play with friends or complete strangers, ive gotten into other multplayer games here and there and theyre still engaging but it tends to just feel like competition, like splatoon gives off the vibe of a bright fun casual experience initially but theres not much way to interact with other people outside of just the objective and your weapon and exercising personal and cooperative skill. it never felt toxic even when people were trying to insult you in halo case it was really kindof a silly game, it had a bit more simulation elements where chaotic things could happen. closest i got was with robocraft before they kinda evened out the weapons playstyles and made sleds less viable to make but even then it was more just how the individual played with things not things you could cooperatively screw around with like with vehicles and physics in halo. plus even the game modes were very playgroundy like capture the flag and oddball. i feel like most multiplayer fps have just leaned more and more into being purely competitive, which makes sense but i do miss the sandbox/playground of halo, i havent played the newest ones idk if they still have that feel or not.
It felt so lonely exploring the map becuase when you glitched out the map its like an infinite galaxy in space you can explore forever it is so lonely
would love to see you explore some of the more sci-fi leaning maps like hang-em-high, boarding action, feel like they had some interesting vibes
Blood gulch was my all time favorite. Played with high school buddies 16 years ago. Good times.
I loved boarding action for its sheer creativeness and headcanon goody story potential
I like this content. Thank you.
This reminds me of playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skaters 1 and 2 and later feeling weird at how alone you were in those levels. There was a time where I could only play Pro Skater 3 because at least that had NPC's around to make it feel so lonely.
A very relatable rumination. Haven't thought of the old halo/cod days in a while, got the same feelings of nostalgia!
This was an absolutely fucking phenomenal video. I love what you're doing with this kind of stuff.
Me and my friends had a lot of fun playing slayer on boarding action. Sniping each other from across the way and sneaking up behind my friends when they got tunnel vision looking for me on the other ship.
COD 3's (2006) multiplayer maps have a fascinating liminality. The game has ambient battle sounds playing on certain maps, but there's no one in the match with you.
I still play CE a lot on Master Chief Collection. Still can be a lot of fun, usually a couple lobbies on the custom game browser.
..it's not the same without all your high school friends though. Man, I miss those guys...
When I was in college, everyone in the dorms was playing one of two games: Halo, or Smash Melee. It was incredible, you could just walk down the hallway of the dorms to find a big group of people in a room rotating in and out of a game, and even if you didn't know the people that well, you'd get handed a controller at some point and get to play.
The nostalgia is deep with this one, definitely had a ton of fun on these maps. I vote for more of this!
Bro that last statement of these places being a playground for adults made me cry. I go back to games to try and experience that wonder. Even if I would bave played it for the first time at my age it still wouldn't hit like when I was younger. I never thought of how these spaces were my escape and a place I could be creative since play stuff is not aimed at adults. Makes me emotional
Yup. It felt the same way playing mw2 10 years after I had stopped. Such a surreal feeling. First map just messed about on was my favorite map; estate. That map comes to mind for all my most memorable times, favela a close second.
the "arena" shooter maps played oh so perfect on split screen and LAN!
especially console games like halo, the cost of entry was so much nicer and you could run split on two consoles. it was such a great time getting everyone together hanging out and passing controllers every match or setting up a tournament while the waiting teams played drinking games.
i go to playgrounds at like 7pm when all the kids are gone and swing on the swings
The bit about using video game maps as playgrounds really describes something I would do as a kid. I first played Kingdom Hearts, Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask as like, a seven or eight year old. I couldn't do most of the stuff the game was asking me to so instead I just invented things to do. I moved boxes and rocks around, I made up conversations with characters. Like playing dollhouse, but in a video game.