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	Message: : Into the belly of the beast : First, some corrections. Cortana meant that Captain Keyes has a control : gland, not the covenant ship captain. That's a weird alien thing I didn't : expect humans to do, but whatever. The covenant captured everyone on the : pillar of autumn; they weren't killed. Why? The pfhor captured Bobs : because they wanted slaves. The covenant just want everyone dead. Captain : Keyes is the only one with any value because he can lead them to Cortana : and Earth. Everyone else is worthless. I could be wrong, due to missing : information, perhaps there were some other important members onboard. : Spoilers: No, I'm not. They're just marines that should have been killed. : Let's draw some comparisons with Pfhor Your Eyes Only. This is a detail I : hadn't mentioned last time, but if you look up at the Truth and : Reconciliation (stupid name), it has a striking resemblance to what you : see outside the window on Arrival and the chapter screen before Pfhor Your : Eyes. I guess it could look just as much like the Star Trek Enterprise or : the Death Egg to some people, due to the angle, but I think Bungie was, : either consciously or unconsciously, drawing the resemblance from the : pfhor ship. : Pfhor your eyes only was really something special and unique. I wasn't : expecting to explore their ship and it just came out of nowhere, but it : did have some buildup, starting from, of course, the window, to the things : Durandal was making us do in the levels prior, and finally his "you : are about to see things that no human has ever seen" speech (of : course he was wrong, if you take it literally, but the impact of the : statement is still strong). : Belly of the Beast has no buildup. We're just thrown in here not far off from : when we started playing the game, and it's treated like just another map. : As for aesthetics, the textures and architecture look good, it's just : mundane. Not human, but not alien either, just really high tech. It didn't : make the mistake of M2's Boomer with blinding multicolor, it keeps itself : restricted to a lot of magenta, and sometimes blue. I can immediately : intuit and identify the function of everything I see here. Doors look like : doors, the force field in the docking bay opening is just an easier way to : keep atmosphere in and let ships out, the glowy hologram things are : interfaces that act as buttons. Hallways have nothing bizarre that stick : out, they're just really shiny. The pfhor ship was incomprehensible and : maddening in a really good way and it was horrific. This is not scary; : it's just really hard (if you're playing legendary). : We're introduced to a new Elite class here with swords: an unshielded minor : with an invisibility cloak (but their big giant sword is still visible, : so... oops?) and a major with a strong shield and gold armor. So... : they're like pfhor troopers? Except roles are kinda mixed and matched : because these are the ones with the melee weapons. I remember the sword : being a fun weapon in Halo 2's multiplayer, but you can't use them in this : game. They'd be much more useful than the shock staff in Eternal. : Let's talk about powerups, which I have neglected to do since Pillar of : Autumn, but that's okay because they're especially handy on this map. The : first is Invisibility, which is exactly what it says on the tin. It's best : to wait until the arena is cleared before using these so you can sneak : past everything in the hallways, which is partly why my Legendary run went : so badly. The other is the overshield, which functions as a 3x canister. : I've been told in the comments that this map was meant to be played with the : sniper rifle. That's the most counter-intuitive thing I ever heard. A : sniper rifle is useful in wide open outdoor areas where you need it's : range and accuracy. I was expecting to be in a claustrophobic alien ship : here, and that's what it is to an extent, except that most of it is built : around a large, multiple story docking bay area where things in the upper : levels will be difficult to hit without it. The 2-weapon limit is starting : to show it's dangers here. I think it's possible to get by with needlers : and plasma pistols, but more difficult nonetheless. : When we find the captain (and three other captured marines), we get : exposition on what we're going to do next. : According to the Covenant's vague and underdeveloped religion, the halo is a : weapon. Whoever controls it will control the universe, and the covenant : are looking for it's control room. Captain Keyes knows this because he : overheard the guards outside his cell talking about it. : It's time to address an elephant in the room (not Microsoft, Bungie, : Marathon, Apple and XBox, those are all meta-elephants I lightly alluded : to already. This is an in-universe elephant). The grunts all casually : speak fluent english. : If this were anime, I wouldn't question it, but western sci fi usually : doesn't do the Everyone Speaks the Same Language trope, save light sci fi : like Lilo and Stitch, and this game presents itself expecting to be taken : seriously. : I can buy that in 32 years the covenant learned human languages. It makes it : easy to gather info about them. What breaks my suspension of disbelief is : that they casually speak english in the presence of the human marines : they're fighting. The real shining example of fail is one of the prison : guards were discussing sensitive information in front of the captain of : the Pillar of Autumn in a language they know he comprehends. : In storytelling, there is an art to how you deliver information to the : characters. That right there was a breach of security so heinous it could : only be attributed to an idiot ball; the guards had to be idiots so we : could learn about the control room. : If I were to revise this to make sense, I'd have Cortana hack into their : ship's data banks to learn this. Maybe she could have done it while she : was brute forcing her way through that 128,000 bit encryptian key to open : a stupid door. (that sounds more underwhelming than it should. Durandal : owned doors, man.) : What, you think I'm being too critical of the story of an fps game? I'm : sorry, but this is supposed to be the spiritual successor of Marathon and : PID, which are acclaimed for being the exception to games with no plot. I : have high expectations. So far the premise and worldbuilding itself looks : promising, but the methods of conveying that really misses the use of : terminals as a device that accomplishes that and doesn't break the : immersion of gameplay. : Right behind you... sir : This is the proof that Bungie are a bunch of sadists. Colony Ship, Thing What : Kicks, Acme Station and G-4 Sunbathing are all fun and interesting : challenges compared to the dreaded Escort Mission, the carnal sin of : action games. All Bungie has to do is add one of those time limit : underwater levels that everyone but me hates and they'll be golden (by : what I heard from Lion O Cyborg, one of those might be coming up with the : harmless covenant equivalent of pfhor slime). Playing this part on : legendary must be horrendous. Good thing I quit while I was behind. : If Captain Keyes dies, Cortana will say "No... without Captain Keyes, : the Covenant-" and then you respawn. What was Cortana about to say? : It wouldn't let her finish. There must have been a full clip of that : monologue that got cut off, and I suspect it's only the PC port that does : the automatic respawn thing. Let's make a Finish That Sentence game! I'd : finish the sentence with "will win." For a more humorous answer, : I'll go with, "Without Captain Keyes, the Covenant will do the : mocarena in cowboy hats and ballet tutus on ice skates without an : audience!" : You can tell which one Captain Keyes is because he's the one with the : needler. Everyone else has plasma rifles. We can't get help from Foe : Hammer, so we have to steal a covenant ship to get out of here. Captain : Keyes isn't content to play it safe and hang back. Oh, no, then it : wouldn't be a proper escort mission. To his credit, he is more competent : the needlers than the grunts and elites are. : Captain Keyes takes a level up in badass because it's a great idea to ram : your only escape ship into a wall to take out two hunters whose splasma : blasts would probably just bounce off of it. : This write up may have been too critical. I won't apologize for it. : Incidentally, I tried Halo's internet multiplayer. You know how aleph one : netgames are all about ROCKETS, ROCKETS, and more ROCKETS? Guess what? : Halo is the same thing. The differences are that this time, the netgame : gatherer has the privelige to replace every weapon on the map with SPNKR : SSM launchers and force all players to spawn holding it by default with : infinite ammo. This basically amounts to two minutes of getting hit with : missiles one second after you spawn by guys camping near the spawn spots : and, if your lucky, maybe killing someone with one of the rockets you : spammed within that one second. Maybe I'm exaggerating there, but that's : pretty much what to expect. What I'm not exaggerating is in the : intermission between games, the losers say "Fuck you!" in the : chat, the winners respond with "FUCK YOU!" and I'm in 5th place : between them and the three other AFK players who have 0 kills because they : literally aren't even playing with a vote on which map to play on with : only Rockets, and a couple of choices with only shotguns, and my vote for : shotgun games has no chance of winning out over the majority. : Good times.
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