In Response To: ODST is bittersweet, for me (Jordan117)
Wow so Bungie retconned something from Halo 2- thats nothing new :P
Seriously though I agree, it does seem a shame that all that effort was made to create a plausible future Mombasa, and that appears to have gone to waste, some very points made :)
For me it bittersweet because on the one hand, it does look likes its going to be pretty damn good, but on the other: I really want to play as the Arbiter again :( An expansion set would have been a good opportunity to do show the alternative perspective and bridge gaps between 2 and 3, but I guess it was not meant to be
(oh sorry for piggybacking that purely opinion based thoughts on the back of a well researched point, but the thread was more or less about what I wanted to say anyway :P)
: For me, the coolest part of the Halo canon has always been New Mombasa. One
: of the earliest memories I have of the series is watching the Halo 2 E3
: trailer for the first time and seeing the metal hive of Earth City rising
: out of the smog, with the title card: NEW MOMBASA, EAST AFRICAN
: PROTECTORATE
: That image, before anything else, was what convinced me that Bungie were
: serious worldbuilders. Any other game company would have stuck their
: shooter in a generic scifi metropolis or some overused futuristic locale
: like Neo York or MegaTokyo. But to set it in an obscure African city? And
: to make that city an immense arcology? It was original and interesting,
: and got me hooked.
: I loved the way that Bungie fleshed out the city over the next two games. The
: exotic retro-futurism of Old Mombasa. The industrial yet cosmopolitan feel
: of New Mombasa. The skylines full of distinctive architecture. The space
: elevator. The Swahili PA guy. The East African Protectorate flags. The
: accurate (but subtly altered) street map in Terminal.
: [Modern Mombasa vs. New Mombasa]
:
: All these details and elements came together to make New Mombasa a cohesive
: and consistent environment. The map, especially -- it really drove home
: the feeling that the city was a real place. That every street and
: skyscraper stood on ground that existed in the real world, that you could
: hop on a plane and stand where you're standing in the game (albeit with
: slight cosmetic changes :P ). It gave the area a backstory, a social
: context, a reason to exist. It made it feel compellingly real -- like
: you were glimpsing the future.
: So naturally when ODST was first announced, I was thrilled. It was my dream
: Halo game. Set entirely within my favorite environment -- and not just as
: a series of dungeon crawls, but as a full-fledged open-world city! I could
: hardly wait.
: Unfortunately, what we've seen of the game so far has convinced me that
: Bungie has scrapped their prior vision for something very different. While
: the architecture is similar, the structure of the city has completely
: changed.
:
: The blue tactical map (which I guess is a simplified representation of the
: game world) looks nothing like the old Terminal layout. Instead of a broad
: island, New Mombasa is a crooked peninsula, with odd angular coasts built
: like terraces. The space elevator, instead of sitting in the city center
: encircled by access roads, is out on the water (?) with a floating highway
: going out to who-knows-where. There's another smaller island nearby, which
: I think is the ONI building set piece the trailer hints at.
: This is really disappointing. I mean, I know gameplay and story are more
: important than background details like geographical accuracy, and that
: sacrifices should not be made to accommodate things that few people will
: notice. But there isn't any reason for these changes. The street grid
: visible in the tactical map looks like a generally compact and generic
: chunk of urban terrain. Why couldn't that environment be placed on a
: hitherto unseen part of the island? There's no reason to completely alter
: the established large-scale geography.
: Also, the inconsistency of effort in terms of accuracy is odd. Need a
: throwaway texture for a multiplayer map? Spend considerable time
: researching Mombasa and design a detailed and realistic map of it that
: reflects 500 years of urban evolution. Need to actually recreate this
: city in an open-world format as the foundation for a major new game? Eh,
: just plop a few dozen buildings on some land somewhere, whatever. Why do
: that, when you already have a complete map of the entire city right there?
: I guess part of the letdown is that since Halo 2 I've learned a lot about the
: real city and had high expectations for the accuracy of the game, based on
: the Terminal map. I thought you'd be able to drive a Warthog down Moi
: Avenue, firefight in Kibokoni Park, and even revisit the parts of the game
: seen in Halo 2, like the monolithic towers or the half-dome amphitheater.
: Similar to the District map from Halo 2 Vista, which took an existing
: locale (the starting area from Outskirts) and expanded it beyond the old
: borders. Something like Grand Theft Auto IV: ODST, with the game
: recreating New Mombasa just like the island of Algonquin recreated
: Manhattan.
: But that was just wishful thinking. I'm sad mainly because that potent sense
: of realism is gone. Apart from the name, there isn't anything connecting
: this new New Mombasa to anything real. It's disconnected, a no-place.
: Artificial (especially when you look at those odd terraced coasts). And
: it's even more confusing when the trailer refers to specific areas of
: real-life Mombasa like Lumumba and Sidiriya. Why use these areas of the
: real city to name parts of a completely invented one? "And this here
: is Wall Street, which as you can see is a polluted industrial area just
: across the lake from Queens." It's simply wrong.
: Looking back, I guess I have Robt McLees to thank for keeping things
: consistent up till now. He drew up the Terminal transit map, maintains the
: Halo Bible, and, like me, is obsessed with the arcane details that make up
: a convincing world. For instance, from an old Weekly Update interview :
: Q: Just the other day Frank Capezzuto came up to the Writer’s pod and
: asked what year the Docks that appear in a certain level of the game were
: created, explain exactly how you go about answering a question like that.
: A: Yeah, that sort’a came out of left field—but Frank really likes to build
: history into whatever he’s working on. In this instance I went straight to
: the Bible and looked at the timeline. Knowing that the political climate
: in this particular region was pretty volatile I looked for some event that
: would predicate a level of political stability on a global scale and then
: pick a date within about 15 years of said event that is aesthetically
: pleasing. Yeah, you heard me correctly—aesthetically pleasing. When given
: a task as seemingly arbitrary as establishing the construction date of a
: fictional dockyard one might as well take into account the physical
: representation of said date.
: Heh, a man after my own heart. I guess he must be working on something else,
: because I doubt he'd have let such a messy and needless retconning go
: forward, especially when he was willing to draft a map on his own when it
: wasn't even necessary. It's too bad Frankie's gone, too, because he did
: stuff like this well.
: Crap, this is long. Uh, I just wanted to add that this is not a criticism
: of the actual level design. The screenshots so far look amazing, and I
: have no doubt that ODST will be kickass fun times. I just wish that the
: original vision of New Mombasa as a real-world place hadn't been abandoned
: for a purely invented environment. It makes the
: geography/backstory/Mombasa lover in me a sad panda.
: (FWIW, I love how the cityscape is festooned with billboards for companies
: that have been referenced elsewhere -- AMG, Traxus, Hinos, Mainz Trager,
: Sinoviet, etc.)
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