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Re: Who cares about Halo's story? Article | |
Posted By: Rockslider | Date: 12/30/06 9:13 p.m. |
In Response To: Who cares about Halo's story? Article (Conman17) I have to admit, that oversized triffid in Halo 2 had me a little mystified as well! But I was pretty fed up with the campaign by then, so I wasn't in much of a mood for figuring out what the heck was going on. As for my own position on the story business, I've enjoyed reading plenty of sci-fi in my time, but I'm just not looking for a complex storyline in an FPS. It's certainly good to have some sort of story so you know why you're fighting, but it could be pretty minimal and I'd still be happy if the combat experience is good. For me an FPS campaign is primarily about an immersive combat experience, and my appreciation of the campaign would be almost entirely down to the actual quality of combat. It's not the storyline that's going to keep me playing. Occasionally you hear people talking as if it's automatically a good and intelligent thing for a game to have a deep storyline. But games (and particularly shooters) are an entirely different medium from novels, so it doesn't follow at all. It's up to the developer to decide what sort of audience to go for, but I suspect that the majority of shooter fans are primarily looking for a great combat experience; a physical experience rather than a mental one. As for the Halo storyline specifically, it did start cheesing me off in Halo 2 with all sorts of factions playing off against each other. That was getting too involved for me, and the factions were all baddies anyway, making me even less interested in their squabbling. Being forced to play a covie for much of the time (apparently in the interests of the story) only alienated me further, and for me that was the worst aspect; my identity as a cyborg was fragmented, so I ended up not caring much about anything. Yes I know some people enjoyed playing a covie, but I suspect that those folk would tend to be the ones that are keener on the business of storyline. If the Halo series had been purely a humans vs Covenant fight (like in the first five levels of H1), I would've been far happier. Superbly engineered aliens and fantastic combat - what more did we need? The Flood were always an unwelcome twist for me. Not that I don't appreciate a bit of Flood-bashing now that it's there, but the covies are so much more fun. Ok without the Flood Bungie would've had to figure out another reason for the existence of Halo, but that wouldn't have been hard, and it could've just been left as a mysterious artifact knocked up by some long-gone race. I realize that other folk value shooter storylines higher, which is fine, but I'm just not one of them. Maybe my attitude is partly Bungie's fault. They nailed combat so well in H1 that now I'm hooked on it like a drug. Oh well. Time for another fix... |
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