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Re: The hype didn't hurt Halo 2. The secrecy did.
Posted By: Captain Spark	Date: 12/10/04 9:08 a.m.
In Response To: The hype didn't hurt Halo 2. The secrecy did. *SP* (Sep7imus [subnova]) : I've been thinking about why Halo 2 has not been better received in this : community (HBO and Halo fans in general). While it does have some : deficiencies and it is not the same as Halo (which means that, inevitably, : some people are going to think that it's worse), it strikes me as a very : good game. So, whence the vitriol? Most of the complaints I hear, including my own, are about changes in the single player campaign. I would like to go on record to say that I don't think Halo 2 sucks and I still support Bungie. Halo 2 is a decent shooter, but it doesn't compare to the original "Halo" dynamic that made Halo 1 campaign so fun. Nearly everything about how the players interacts within the game has been dractically changed, I mean the strength of the old weapons, the weakness of the MC, the Elites Hamlet speak dialogue, the Grunts new voices and so on. I realized that in Halo 1 the player got a sense of power from the weapons, that sense of power translates directly to the personality that Bungie gave to the original Master Chief. In the original game the MC was fairly evenly matched with most of the Elites in terms of overall power. In Halo 2, Bungie weakened him so much that even a Grunt is stronger, doing that drastically changed the personality of the MC. Its been difficult to put a finger on exactly why I'm dissappointed, and I'm seeing that there are a lot of players struggling to grasp just why they feel dissappointed. : Obviously, there was a lot of hype around Halo 2. That doesn't seem to me to : be a bad thing. It was supposed to be a big game, the sequel to the most : popular games on the XBox. It makes sense that Microsoft would advertise : it like crazy. Now, the FORM of the advertising - "Earth will never : be the same." - THAT strikes me as a bit misleading, since, as many : people have said, it suggests that there's gonna be a lot of stuff : involving, well, Earth in the game. The marketing campaign couldn't hype but only a small piece of the single player campaign, that being, the battle for Earth. Halo 2 is a success mainly for the X Box live crowd. Hyping Halo 2 X Box Live is the primary focus of a majority of the reviews I have read. I don't read every Halo 2 review that hits the Internet but, of the ones I've read, the single player campaign gets very little attention. : So, why DIDN'T the advertising focus on something else (Another Halo! Play as : an Elite! The Covenant Home City!)? Obviously, : Bungie/MS/the-PR-people-at-one-or-both were trying to avoid giving away : too much. They wanted stuff to remain secret, to keep people surprised by : the game. It seems to me that the philosophy was "don't give away : anything beyond the first couple of levels." That resulted in the : focus on Earth and the secrecy about the Arbiter et al. So, was that a : good idea? Many of us that are dissappointed really were suprised!. My inital reaction after a few levels was, "something went horrible wrong with Bungie" : I think it was not. While there are certain things that SHOULD be kept secret : (plot twists like Audrey, even the existence of High Charity), other : things should not be. : For instance, I was recently asked by someone how we would have reacted if we : had been told a year ago that we would be playing as an Elite. I think : that we would have been excited by the prospect. We would have been : praising Bungie for being brave enough to show the other side of the : conflict and for making such a complex game. We would have been looking : forward to it. Instead, it was supposed to be a surprise. Why? It's not a : plot twist, really. It's more of a feature. It might have been surprising : for some when they played the game, but not as an unexpected twist in the : story. Mostly I think people found it surprising in a jarring way, an : unexpected twist in how the story is told. Imagine, on the other hand, how : you would have felt if you had known that eventually you would get to play : as an Elite. You would have been looking forward to it. You would have : been so excited when you were dropped onto that research facility on the : gas giant to go into battle alongside Elites and Grunts. : In fairness to Bungie, we had heard a while ago that we wouldn't just be on : Earth (the gas giant atmosphere was discussed quite a while ago). But the : relentless focus on saving Earth (which I think was a result of the : secrecy about any but the first few levels) definitely gave some people : the wrong idea. And the secrecy surrounding the Arbiter made it an : uncomofortable, unexpected change instead of a long-awaited feature. I'm not heavily into Halo 1 and Halo 2 multiplayer, I'm more interested in the campaign levels. The hype surrounding the battle for Earth was misleading. Whoever was in charge of the marketing the "battle for Earth" made a mistake. You were given the impression that there would be a huge Earth battle when it was more like a small skirmish. You either make good on the hype or don't hype what isn't there. : Thoughts? : -Sep7imus

Message Index

The hype didn't hurt Halo 2. The secrecy did. *SP*	Sep7imus [subnova]	12/10/04 8:06 a.m.
Re: The hype didn't hurt Halo 2. The secrecy did.	Vorpal Sword	12/10/04 8:36 a.m.
Hmm...	Ducain	12/10/04 8:54 a.m.
Agreed *NM*	Andrew Nagy	12/10/04 9:42 a.m.
Re: The hype didn't hurt Halo 2. The secrecy did.	Warbow	12/10/04 9:00 a.m.
Re: The hype didn't hurt Halo 2. The secrecy did.	Captain Spark	12/10/04 9:08 a.m.
I agree *long*	Epyon	12/10/04 9:11 a.m.
Re: I agree *long*	Zaknafein	12/10/04 11:57 a.m.
Re: I agree *long*	Sep7imus [subnova]	12/10/04 12:22 p.m.
Re: I agree *long*	Hikaru-119	12/10/04 12:16 p.m.
Re: I agree *long*	Epyon	12/10/04 2:49 p.m.
Re: The hype didn't hurt Halo 2. The secrecy did.	Ma1agate	12/10/04 9:27 a.m.
Secrecy=good, Hype=bad	Scanner Darkly	12/10/04 9:32 a.m.
Re: The hype didn't hurt Halo 2. The secrecy did.	Ross Mills [subnova]	12/10/04 9:37 a.m.
Re: The hype didn't hurt Halo 2. The secrecy did.	madcowjim	12/10/04 9:50 a.m.
Re: The hype didn't hurt Halo 2. The secrecy did.	Lakhesis	12/10/04 1:40 p.m.
Re: The hype didn't hurt Halo 2. The secrecy did.	Sep7imus [subnova]	12/10/04 1:54 p.m.
Re: The hype didn't hurt Halo 2. The secrecy did.	Lakhesis	12/10/04 3:35 p.m.
Re: The hype didn't hurt Halo 2. The secrecy did.	Clefton Twain	12/10/04 11:07 a.m.
Re: The hype didn't hurt Halo 2. The secrecy did.	Eric	12/10/04 3:51 p.m.