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Re: My H4 review - Campaign (Gameplay and Story) | |
Posted By: Cody Miller | Date: 1/5/13 12:47 p.m. |
In Response To: Re: My H4 review - Campaign (Gameplay and Story) (Avateur) : I even responded to that thread, but he had nothing to say in reply. I find : myself agreeing with Cody a lot over the Halo stories and a lot of other : things around here, but I absolutely disagree with his defense of H4's : story. :P I honestly think that the people who had issues with Halo 4's story are probably the ones wrapped up in the Extended Universe. When you look at it, Halo 4 is pretty much the same type of story as Halo 1 in terms of narrative and complexity. I have been browsing carnage.bungie.org/haloforum since it opened back in 1999, brought over from the Marathon story page. When Halo was released, most of the negative complaints surrounding it were from the folks who loved Marathon's story. The common complaints were that the story was not as complex as Marathon's, and that it was straightforward with a lack of subtlety and scope. These complaints aren't untrue. In retrospect, everything was figured out pretty quickly, and the human forerunner connection was realized almost immediately (You being a reclaimer, as well as 343 GS' 'All of our lost time' monologue). The things that were speculated about turned out to be either red herrings or still unanswered / unimportant - Was Cortana Lying to Foe Hammer, What did 343 mean about 'last time you asked me' during Two Betrayals? - or rendered irrelevant due to retcons - Why did the Covenant hate and seek to destroy Humanity? Marathon had a ton more going on 'behind the scenes', but I think that was because of the way it was presented through terminals. Halo 3 had some of that, but not nearly to the degree of Marathon. Despite that, I think the Halo story was well received. I think you always get bonus points for being the first, since that introduces the world the story is set in and opens your imagination. That's probably why the Marathons were so revered; most of the story happened off screen for your mind to fill in the gaps, but that's the advantage to using text. You can do that visually, but it is generally easier and more effective with text. I'm not saying Halo 4 had this perfect story, but I think people are comparing it to the complexities of the Extended Universe and finding fault, instead of enjoying the relative simplicity like Halo 1 had. When I say simplicity, all I mean is that there weren't a million threads and characters to follow, or plots and subplots and stuff. It was pretty much an adventure molded after Halo 1, and kind of a real return to where the series started. I think of it as a beginning just like Halo 1.
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