Frequently Asked Forum Questions
Search the HBO News Archives Any All Exact		Search the Halo Updates DBs Halo Halo2		Bungie Webcam HBO XBL Gamertags *Ar's Simple HTML Guide Shishka's Guide for Newcomers The Lowdown on Download Accelerators Red Loser's Anti-Spamming Guide Egg FAQ | More Egg Stuff c0ld's Movie Starter Guide Shishka's HaloPC Pre-Release FAQ 3.1 AutoMagic 117 StripzMaker
Search Older Posts on This Forum: Posts on Current Forum | Archived Posts

Re: Why I Hate Glasslands
Posted By: Gravemind <kuukan_no_kage@yahoo.com>	Date: 9/20/12 2:17 p.m.
In Response To: Re: Why I Hate Glasslands (Train Dodger) : And as I've said before, I've always hated it when video game developers : prioritize gameplay over narrative accuracy. What if they gave us a glue : grenade that caused enemies to stick to the floor, walls, vehicles, or : each other? What if they equipped Spartans with a grappling hook and an : infinite supply of parachutes like in Just Cause ? Just because something : is "fun", or "balanced", or "for gameplay", : that doesn't mean that it isn't absolutely preposterous for the setting. : That's a horrible excuse. : If I ever make a video game, I'm not going to pretend that a handgun is more : powerful than a main battle rifle, or that rocket launchers fire : slowly-moving golden orbs of doom , or that grenade launchers poop out : bouncy projectiles, just for the sake of "balance". : The weapons will be 100% realistic , even if it means that someone who : charges into the fray with a rinky-dink 9mm automatic ALWAYS gets : slaughtered by someone with a .308 , or that rockets cross three : football fields in the blink of an eye , making them faster than you can : dodge. : If I ever needed to take on the Covenant, there's only one weapon I'd ever : need. AA-12 with Frag-12 explosive ammunition . Look at those thumb-sized : holes it's making in that steel plate. It's like an M6D, but more than : twice as powerful. 20-round drum, three-shot kill against any Elite. See, : that's the kind of technology we have today . Right now. And the UNSC, : over 500 years in the future, has next to nothing that can match that kind : of firepower. : As dumb as some UNSC weapons are, some of the Covenant's are even dumber. : Like the Wraith tank for example. It's a mortar carrier with the armor and : unwieldiness of a tank, and yet it can barely lob a round more than a : couple football fields? Mankind already has weapons that outstrip the : effectiveness of the Wraith many times over . And let's not even get : started on the silly plasma weapons. They don't even have fixed sights, : for one thing. The plasma projectiles are so slow, I can simply walk out : of their way. No. Just... no. I've liked reading your thoughts on Glasslands, but this is where I'm going to have to disagree with you. Halo never claimed to be realistic, and it isn't supposed to be realistic. It's supposed to be an arcade-y sci-fi shooter with ray guns and deflector shields and FTL travel and parasitic space zombies and weapons of galactic destruction. Just because it has a detailed fictional universe doesn't mean that the game mechanics have to conform either to the books or to real-world physics. There's a reason why tropes like Gameplay & Story Segregation and Acceptable Breaks from Reality exist. The efficacy of weapons have often been described in the Halo fiction much differently than they are portrayed in gameplay. A single plasma bolt has been described as capable of inflicting horrific, gruesome, often fatal injuries. UNSC small arms have sometimes been portrayed in the novels as being largely impotent against Elite shields (though conversely the Zealot's shields in the mid-level cutscene in Winter Contingency was shown as being quite weak, as though enemy shield strength as depicted on Easy difficulty was canonical). But some things, like the oddness of certain Covie weapons, does have an excuse, as they really didn't know the full ins & outs of their own Forerunner-derived technology. They're imitative (and arguably quite poor at being so), not innovative, and that's largely for religious reasons. Even shooters that are ostensibly more "realistic" — your CODs and Battlefields and so on — are often not all that realistic, either in terms of tactics shown or efficacy of weapons (i.e., a 7.62 NATO rifle doing almost the same per-shot damage as a 9 mm SMG). The reason this is is because if you shoehorn every shooter into being totally completely 100% realistic, they'll get boring real fast, and a lot of people probably won't have fun. I grew up in the era of the Excuse Plot, where Mario and Sonic and Mega Man ruled the day and the story was often the last thing on our minds. We cared about fun back then, not realism or deep narratives. An FPS developer shouldn't have to hobble themselves by some idealistic notion of "realism" when they could instead make a fun gameplay experience. "Gameplay > everything else," as I always say.

http://shadowofthevoid.wordpress.com

Message Index

Why I Hate Glasslands	Train Dodger	9/17/12 10:22 p.m.
I agree with Williams, but I can see your points.	Rice	9/17/12 10:41 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	General Battuta	9/17/12 10:42 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	General Battuta	9/17/12 10:44 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	Train Dodger	9/17/12 11:54 p.m.
On second thought...	Train Dodger	9/18/12 6:24 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	ZackDark	9/17/12 10:49 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	SonGoharotto	9/17/12 11:24 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	Chewbaccawakka	9/17/12 11:29 p.m.
Correction.	Quirel	9/18/12 12:10 a.m.
Got it	ZackDark	9/18/12 12:26 a.m.
Re: Correction.	Chewbaccawakka	9/18/12 1:12 a.m.
Re: Correction.	Quirel	9/18/12 1:34 a.m.
Re: Correction.	Chewbaccawakka	9/18/12 1:48 a.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	General Battuta	9/17/12 11:32 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	Beckx	9/18/12 9:40 a.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	General Vagueness	9/18/12 7:26 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	Train Dodger	9/18/12 12:28 a.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	Quirel	9/18/12 12:32 a.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	ZackDark	9/18/12 12:49 a.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	Quirel	9/18/12 12:55 a.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	bluerunner	9/18/12 9:05 a.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	ZackDark	9/18/12 9:41 p.m.
Total war	Flynn J Taggart	9/18/12 12:36 a.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	SonGoharotto	9/17/12 11:19 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	Jaydee	9/18/12 12:12 a.m.
On Halsey being demonized.	Rice	9/18/12 12:32 a.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	TDSpiral	9/18/12 12:33 a.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	Hawki	9/18/12 1:49 a.m.
Projecting guilt	scarab	9/18/12 2:44 a.m.
Re: Projecting guilt	Jaydee	9/18/12 3:01 a.m.
Re: Projecting guilt	Hawki	9/18/12 3:12 a.m.
Re: Projecting guilt	scarab	9/18/12 3:52 a.m.
Re: Projecting guilt	Train Dodger	9/18/12 4:25 a.m.
Re: Projecting guilt	Quirel	9/18/12 9:41 a.m.
Re: Projecting guilt	Harmanimus	9/18/12 3:39 a.m.
Re: Projecting guilt	scarab	9/18/12 4:07 a.m.
Re: Projecting guilt	Hawki	9/18/12 4:46 a.m.
Re: Projecting guilt	Harmanimus	9/18/12 3:00 p.m.
More like projecting Quilt	bryan newman	9/18/12 4:52 a.m.
Re: More like projecting Quilt	Hawki	9/18/12 5:23 a.m.
Re: More like projecting Quilt	bryan newman	9/18/12 5:28 a.m.
Re: More like projecting Quilt	Hawki	9/18/12 5:34 a.m.
Re: More like projecting Quilt	scarab	9/18/12 1:20 p.m.
Re: More like projecting Quilt	Hawki	9/18/12 4:36 p.m.
Best Line of the Whole Debate	Hoovaloov	9/18/12 2:09 a.m.
Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate	Hawki	9/18/12 2:12 a.m.
Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate	Quirel	9/18/12 2:16 a.m.
Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate	Hoovaloov	9/18/12 2:22 a.m.
Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate	Train Dodger	9/18/12 2:25 a.m.
Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate	Hoovaloov	9/18/12 3:01 a.m.
Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate	bluerunner	9/18/12 8:59 a.m.
Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate	Hawki	9/18/12 2:28 a.m.
Agree with all but the last sentence! *NM*	Lurono	9/18/12 2:43 a.m.
Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate	Hoovaloov	9/18/12 2:48 a.m.
Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate	Lurono	9/18/12 3:12 a.m.
Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate	Hoovaloov	9/18/12 3:29 a.m.
Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate	Lurono	9/18/12 9:35 p.m.
This: *NM*	thebruce0	9/18/12 9:01 a.m.
D'oh, attempt 2 :) This:	thebruce0	9/18/12 9:06 a.m.
Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate	Hoovaloov	9/18/12 2:18 a.m.
Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate	Train Dodger	9/18/12 2:40 a.m.
Re: Best Line of the Whole Debate	Lurono	9/18/12 2:55 a.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	scarab	9/18/12 3:22 a.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	Train Dodger	9/18/12 3:54 a.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	Archilen	9/18/12 3:38 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	Train Dodger	9/18/12 11:45 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	Archilen	9/19/12 9:14 a.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	Train Dodger	9/19/12 11:36 a.m.
Corollary	Train Dodger	9/19/12 11:52 a.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	Archilen	9/19/12 2:36 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	Train Dodger	9/19/12 4:07 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	SonGoharotto	9/19/12 5:01 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	Train Dodger	9/19/12 5:04 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	General Vagueness	9/19/12 7:15 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	ZackDark	9/19/12 7:19 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	Train Dodger	9/19/12 7:56 p.m.
This is why Gameplay/Canon Segregation exists. *NM*	Rice	9/19/12 11:56 p.m.
Nope.	uberfoop	9/20/12 12:05 a.m.
To be fair to the UNSC...	SonGoharotto	9/20/12 12:19 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	Quirel	9/20/12 1:02 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	Gravemind	9/20/12 2:17 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	Train Dodger	9/20/12 6:11 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	General Vagueness	9/20/12 9:32 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	Train Dodger	9/20/12 11:13 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	General Vagueness	9/20/12 8:36 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	General Vagueness	9/20/12 9:09 p.m.
Parangosky in GoO.	Rice	9/25/12 4:19 a.m.
Also	Rice	9/25/12 5:26 a.m.
On matters of execution	davidfuchs	9/25/12 7:07 a.m.
Re: On matters of execution	General Battuta	9/25/12 2:46 p.m.
The Halsey Jaw Punch	Rice	9/26/12 2:26 a.m.
Re: The Halsey Jaw Punch	Subtank	9/26/12 5:06 a.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	General Vagueness	9/19/12 7:41 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	SonGoharotto	9/19/12 7:48 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	Train Dodger	9/19/12 8:08 p.m.
Update To Original Thread	Train Dodger	9/18/12 9:04 p.m.
Re: Update To Original Thread	SonGoharotto	9/19/12 3:54 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	vlad3163	9/23/12 2:27 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	bryan newman	9/24/12 1:17 a.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	Archilen	9/24/12 9:04 a.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	General Vagueness	9/24/12 3:20 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	General Vagueness	9/24/12 3:04 p.m.
Re: Why I Hate Glasslands	Tsudico	10/30/12 2:22 p.m.