A great thing about ODST was also that the cities AI constantly tried to help the Rookie with Neon signs, engaging police sirens to get the Rookies attention and stuff like that. As far as I remember the cutscenes by the cities surveillence cameras was also the AI monitoring the team. It is essentially one more character with personality established in the story.
Also the lights and police sirens are all pointing towards the audio logs. When an audio log is found, a set of these lights will turn off in the city. Once you find all the audio logs, the city is much more lifeless and eerie than before.
29:97 funnily enough, folks from Bungie have talked about Halo 3 being quite soul crushing for a lot of people. Not as bad as H2 but still quite hard on the devs
A couple million times better then the dumb as bricks ai that mostly stand in one open spot or sticking in cover. Like till this day most companies still haven’t had ai’s as clever as the og halo games
@@SqualidsargeStudios call of duty campaigns are unplayable because of this. They just stand there and to increase difficulty they just throw more grenades
It wasnt just Elite's self preservation, it was the way enemies would suppress your last known location, the way the AI reacts to surprises, losses, their contextual chatter, their reaction to taking damage, and so on. I'm disappointing we never got an RTS that runs with CE NPC AI
Oddly enough, in higher difficulties the dynamic of plasma weapons shredding shields and ballistics weapons shredding health becomes much more apparent, and hence brute weapons become the absolute worst weapons in the game.
The Brute Spiker isn't terrible honestly, it's just kind of underwhelming normally, functioning sorta like a middle ground between the SMG and Plasma Rifle. That being said, Brute Spikers shred the Flood so they put in mad work on Cortana and Floodgate. Because it's superheated needles it melts them so easily.
Yeah I kinda wish they just used Plasma weapons like in Halo 2. You could have reworked them to make them more unique for the Brutes. But a lot of their weapons were kinda dumb considering they're still part of the Covenant and have access to advanced technology.
I never really found the Guilty Spark fight to be a "boss" fight in the traditional sense, it always felt more like a moment of catharsis as you finally get to kill the little bastard.
@@oddgbmo3036 eh, I get that, but it wasn’t “useless” Guily spark would’ve killed master chief, Cortona, and The arbiter. “Killing him” definitely wasn’t useless
@@kevinnigins9488 obviously not. It's useless In the impact the scene would have carried if you actually did destroy 343 just as bungie intended. It's the same as didact not even dying by the players hands in halo 4 and he still lives.
I was in 5th grade when Halo Reach released and I played it religiously until 9th or 10th grade. One of my top 5 favorite games of all times and genuinely makes me emotional. The other thing about Noble 6 is that in the novelization, I think it is stated that Noble 6 was fighting for 9 straight days in their Lone Wolf Mission. The fact that 6 refused to die for more than a week and just kept taking out the Covenant who felled the rest of Noble team is amazing and so incredibly badass. Truly the only Spartan who can rival Master Chief and 6 is a Spartan 3 so even more impressive
Usually the good Lord works in mysterious ways. But not today! This here is 66 tons of straight up HE spewing dee-vine intervention! If God is love, then you can call me Cupid
That specific Red Elite from the 1st mission is indeed the same Red Elite that shoots Kat and appears several other times in the game. You have the ability to kill every other Red Elite throughout the game EXCEPT him until the end of the game. It was Bungies final Halo boss fight.
If any new fans decide to play MCC, don’t play it in the chronological order that the devs intend, play it in the initial release order. Your expectations would be heavily hampered by starting with Reach and then suddenly going back 10 years in gameplay design.
The story will have much less weight as well. The tragedy of reach is knowing that they will lose and yet keep on fighting until they do. But in continuing to fight, and sacrificing everything, the rest of the halo saga is allowed happen... which they will never get to know.
Half agree. I’ve played all the Halo games (except 5 as I don’t have an Xbox One) and while I agree that the clash between Reach gameplay and CE gameplay is there it’s not that bad. It’s dated but it holds up remarkably well. It’s more the level design that’s lacking as CE has quite a few levels that are just featureless hallways, though the Anniversary edition looks a lot better and makes it less dull looking (and this coming from someone who has memories of playing CE on the original Xbox!) The main thing I noticed was I missed the sprint and you can barely survive any fall damage in CE compared with later Halo games.
One of my personal favorite theories is that Jun was assigned to Halsey because he's most likely going to be the one to put a bullet in her to make sure the enemy can't extract information from her.
1:12:55 You'll noticed that the one that escaped is wearing Field Marshal armor, which is the same one that shot Kat and the same one you fight at the end of the game when you're about to board the Mass Driver. The rest are just Zealot class, which makes the theory even more credible.
This is a nice retrospective despite disagreeing with you quite a bit with Reach and 4. There are two things that I wanted to point out: -In Halo CE, you can one-shot the Hunters with the Pistol or the Sniper with a shot in the back. -In Halo 3, in the last Scarab encounter, they fly in two hornets that you can use to easily dispatch both scarabs.
@@Gingy there is a large panel with a big cluster of red lights at the back of the Scarab model which protects the shielded core. With the Hornet, you can blow that section conpletely off to get a clean shot at the core. You can destroy each Scarab this way in about a minute without ever leaving your Hornet
@@ryanparker4996 I never realized you could blow up that section. I always attacked the legs with the hornet and got inside it to blow up the core, and then got back to the hornet. If I knew that you could blow up the cover, it would've prevented quite a few deaths I had in that mission.
@@MarceloZ2 shoot the legs to immobilise it, go to the rear, shoot until its dead! I cant remember the last time I died during that fight, the game gives you everything!
It's also worth mentioning that this level is supposed to also give you a tank and a gauss hog to use when pushing through the canyon on the approach to the boss fight. Maybe the creator just encountered a very unusual bug at the fight (especially as the footage included a gauss hog?), but it's definitely much easier than having nothing more than a mongoose.
He probably doesn't know like he didn't know u don't gotta get out of the tank to kill the scarabs in halo 3 or that there are hornets and a tank for u to use of the final fight
What makes Cortana’s plan in 5 even worse is how in 4 the Composer was a device that turned organic beings into digital ones(if it worked properly) it was literally the same form of immortality that Cortana was offering to AI; everyone could be one of the Created. This was literally the Didact’s original plan and none of this is addressed or even mentioned by anyone in 5…
Well most personalities that were composed were corrupted or turned into animalistic automatons. If the composer just turned you into an AI it would be understandable but it doesnt it moreso takes your essense and then forces that into an AI with the side effects. Plus cortana was likely traumatised by watching an entire station of people be composed and watch chief nearly die from it. She turned megalomaniacal as is a trait of rampancy but she still had her principals even if shes completely deluded and doesnt see that the alternatives are just as horrible.
Apparently there's cut dialogue in halo 4 which foreshadows this in that she sees the humans there were composed on ivanoff station as still living as they were only digitized. It was addressed in halo 4 but it was cut for some reason. Alot of the cut dialogue really ties the story together, very sadly it was cut
Doesn’t Cortana repeat one of the Didact’s quotes in the final cutscene of 5 to convey this parallel though? “The mantle of responsibility for the galaxy shelters all, human. But only the Forerunners are its masters.” “The Mantle of Responsibility for the galaxy shelters all. But only the Created are its masters.”
Except the composer doesn’t work properly. It is extremely painful and the personalities lose their minds essentially. The Didact wanted to use the composer on humanity to imprison them how he was imprisoned on Requiem. Cortana wanted everyone to live in peace.
Fun story from my last reach playthrough. I was doing it with a couple friends, one a Halo veteran and another completely new to the games. When we got to the scene of Kat's death, his words just moments before it happened were "well at least no one died"
“The last Halo made by Bungie” *starring confused at ODST and Reach* Also not sure if this was just a mistake you forgot to edit out but in that scene you mentioned where the arbiter shook hands with lord hood you said “a truce between the covenant and the UNSC” but it was just a truce between the elites and humanity, the elites stopped being apart of the covenant towards the end of Halo 2
I know this reply comes super late, but I think the reason that he said that line is because of whatever recap there was at the start of the Halo 4 section that he explicitly quotes from about the Humans and the Covenant coming together to fight a mutual enemy. The Covenant never did that, it was really just the Elites and those who followed them. Those who did help the humans were certainly not part of "The Covenant" after leaving it.
On the map where you find the 2 scarabs, you can drive a tank and a hornet.. not sure why he said "you only have a mongoose"... That mission is awesome...
The main problem with 4 and 5 is that 343 was great at making really cool concepts but often failed to execute or executed them well but the way it was executed left different elements of the game feeling disconnected in their emphasis or importance. Plus 4 and 5 are alternates in gameplay, 4 had a great story even though only half of it was effective but fairly clunky combat and 5 had a terrible story structure full of awesome concepts and incredible gameplay. Another thing 343 would do is start story archs, they would get a ton of negative feedback, improve whatever it was then right when they started to get something enjoyable they would kill off the plot, characters and storyline usually in a comic or book due to the prior negative feedback. Plus the covenant never made peace with the unsc, the elites did, then after they left the ark they returned to sanghelios to see what had happened to it I will say blue team had slightly better writing in 5 than osiris but you almost never hear any of it unless you wait around for the dialogue to kick in. Fred makes jokes and is the counter to johns ideas, playing devils advocate but also supporting him. Linda is always asking about John and reassuring him and kelly is kelly
Honestly the only one they got right was Fred. I think they moxed Linda and Kelly up, cuz Kelly is John's oldest friend so she would be the one who is more protective of him. And Linda would be the one who is chill and hardly talks. Idk.... Also Travis played an amazing Fred. 343 just fucked up a bunch.
Cortana’s rampancy was inspired by a developer’s mother, specifically how they delt with dementia. It makes the interaction feel more realistic. Also, there was a scannable that explains the mantle of responsibility in detail...
@@fawkyou2001 No, of course not. Nothing replaces putting actual time and effort into crafting a coherent story. But, it should not be ignored. To be honest, 343 was honestly flailing about with halo. They should have just picked one concept and gone right into it in depth instead of flipping every game.
Rampancy was a concept in both Marathon and then was seeded in Halo 3 in the Forerunner terminals and Cortana's torture at the hands of the Gravemind. The Forerunner AI Mendicant Bias went rogue after being tortured by the Gravemind and became Rampant by turning on the Forerunners and helping the Gravemind to the point where the Halo Array became the only option left to save the universe.
Dude I was 6 when it came out and I remember the terror I felt seeing those Elites storm the cryo-control room on the Pillar of Autumn. Halo CE was scary af lol
BRO THAT IS A CORE MEMORY OF MINE HAHAHA. I literally had to go and hide after playing it for the exact same thing. Whoever let 5/6 year olds play that was not thinking straight 😂
CE is still my favorite. It still kicks so much ass. The music. The mystique of the story. The guns are balanced with everything being viable. That shotgun though is favorite video game shotgun of all time. I like fighting all the enemies in different combinations. Even the Flood. You can make the argument that it reuses assets way too much and even makes you replay levels you already have just a different way but I don't care. The gameplay makes up for it.
@@ctylsh1214 the gameplay is top notch, weapons are just perfectly balanced and virtually every single one is good to use, it has an amazing combat loop
@@ctylsh1214 ??? You basically had the same argument, you just said the gameplay is garbage without explaining, no need to be a dickhead if you can't defend your opinion
I remember opening up my first Xbox on Christmas Day and playing Halo CE for 8 hours that day. I was about 9 years old when this released. Such good memories.
Halo 1-3 will always be a masterpiece of a trilogy. The OG 3 games still hold up to this day in terms of storytelling and gameplay, halo also holds a special place in my heart and I will always adore these games and how much passion was put into the first trilogy
38:17 I'm pretty sure right before the scarab section you get to pick between a Mongoose with a rocket marine, a gauss hog, and a scorpion, plus you have the choice to use a hornet later. So I would say the game gives you a lot of options.
Wow the whole Zealot Elite Team hunting down Noble Team theory just blew my mind 😂 Also Jorge's death has a better Ironic Point to it, he loved Reach and knew he would spend his whole life and die there, yet he is the only member of Noble Team to die off of Reach
In Halo 3 the 2 Scarab fight does not just give you a mongoose(assuming you meant gauss warthog seeing you drive it in the video). They give you a tank and two hornets to pick from. Guessing you missed how and where to get them.
After watching this I feel like you some how played halo 3 wrong. You have a tank to fight the two scarabs, also have the option to use the hornets that show up before you get to the valley. To use a mongoose and use heavy weapons or use a ghost to fight the scarabs is silly. Only reason to do that is for shits and gigs
Yeah he dropped the ball with the halo 3 section. His criticism of the ai can be fixed by turning on a skull AND is only an issue with the mcc. he complains about weapon convenience Like complaining that cortana gives you energy swords to fight the flood. The weapon that was every 5 feet in halo 2 on high charity and gravemind which is where cortana takes place. And complaining about Johnson using a spartan lazer against the flood when he was fighting them from like 500 feet away if not more. And complaining about miranda crashing into the same area truth was in. When all the remaining forces would probably have been deployed at the ark and she didnt have time to wait around for backup. She could have used the pelicans weapons sure, But that would almost certainly kill Johnson. My complaint with that scene is how tf she was able to take out a brute chieftain and with ONE shotgun blast. Not to mention how the brutes acted in that scene, and the statement that the brute shot feels really powerful when used by the player and is a joke when used by the enemies better be sarcasm because it is nearly the opposite of the truth. The scarab battle I personally really enjoy grabbing a mongoose with a rocket launcher marine. it makes it way harder than it needs to be. But it also makes the fight look way grander and more epic than flying a hornet and the tank is to restrictive for me
That part of the video threw me for a loop since I have never in my dozens of playthroughs of Halo 3, EVER use the Mongoose or Ghost for the two scarab fight. I only used the hornets since they were obviously placed at the cliff edge.
Yeah you go into that fight with those vehicles. All of them. You get a fleet. The marines take what you don't and blubber around picking covenant off the scarabs.
One thing on halo 4: It definitely did explain that the covenant was a splinter group. I never read any books and I can definitely remember there being points where it explains this. Doesn't go into much detail, but it is there.
Halo CE's plasma pistol has a rather unusual damage over time effect with overcharge shots. The shield drain and EMP would come later Tartarus (and by extension Brute Chieftains) are invincible while the white shield effect is active. Tartarus just has the shield up for a ridiculously long time with a tiny damage window before it recharges The double Scarab fight is intended to be done with a Hornet, teaching you its final weak point, the cap on the back that it would normally turn to never expose. Good job doing it without them, though
The halo CE plasma pistol most definitely drained shields, they simply scrapped the damage over time effect in Halo 2, but the shield drain is still very present.
Halo CE: Made me a gamer. Halo 2: First great sequel I ever played. Halo 3: The best game I ever played. Halo Wars: Got me into strategy games. Halo 3 ODST: Underrated Halo Game. Halo Reach: Halo game so good star wars copied it. Halo 4: Would have been a great ending to the story. Halo 5: One of the worse games I ever played. Halo Wars 2: Better than the first game. Halo Infinite: Great multiplayer but praying I love the campaign.
Damn, that was incredibly in depth. I appreciate your time an commitment to this project as well as your insight and perspective into the story and adaptations between studio changes. Well done Gingy.
I think the Library is one of those missions that’s so bad it’s actually good and fun. The challenge the library gives is what makes it hold weight today. I think having a couple of those insanely hard levels in the halo franchise is actually a good thing.
I was 6 when Halo CE came out and I played it at launch, before it had any of the name recognition that it ended up having. Pretty crazy how far it and we as fans have come!
I just wanna say I can’t believe I first played Halo when I was just 6. Now I’m 25 going on 26 next month and just finished Infinite and I was just as much in awe stepping onto Zeta Halo as I was stepping onto installation 04 all those years ago. If there is one thing I remember doing, it was admiring the skybox immediately after stepping out of the escape pod, and I literally did the same thing with Zeta. It’s those little things that really make this journey so special. Cheers people🥂
CE was also my first game back in 01 when I was 5. Still my favorite game to this day. I think it holds up so well and was my favorite Halo on legendary as 3 is too easy and 2 is way too hard, 4 is just a bullet sponge haven, and 5 is irritating with AI teammates (although seeing Buck is always great but its just too bad it's soured by Locke being terrible). 2s cliff hanger just had me hunger for more and gave me assurance that H3 would be made. For me CE is the perfect start and manages to stay mysterious. 2 built upon that and gave us so much lore. 3 was the perfect wrap up to the trilogy. I always loved that the flood felt so different to the Covenant as they had no self preservation and just charged in hordes. Reach would have been amazing had the DMR been a map weapon instead of a spawn weapon because it just dominated the meta in the MP. 3 still has my favorite MP as the maps are the best the series has ever had and the vehicles are so much fun. 3 also has the best way to unlock armor which is through achievements and not just given to you or having to just grind for points (Recon was legendary and Hayabusa will always be my favorite). 4 and 5 make Chief feel like a totally different person. The prometheans don't look that cool (I think the concept art for the Knights and watchers is just way cooler than what they ended up with) and aren't fun to fight against because they are just too tanky. I also prefer the art style from CE, 2, and 3. Their MPs while fun aren't the classic Halo I wanted and this is partly on Reach for having pseudo loadouts and taking the first steps away from classic Halo. Infinite MP is the MP I have waited for since 3. All we need is more of it, more maps, more modes, and forge and better customization.
38:11 ... Did... did you not know about the hornets you can use in this fight which can make it last a total of like 5 minutes? And you START that section with a Scorpion!
May I say that I have been a subscriber now for quite some time to this channel. And what I enjoy the most is, the narrator's voice, calm and in depth on explaining the videos proper. Just an enjoyment to listen to and filled with incredible information on games and series that we all love and played. At this rate this could possibly be on of the best channels here on YT. Oh and I just love the end credit song/track that is used these days.
This video earned you a subscriber. I don’t agree with everything you said, but you definitely hyped me up to play Halo Infinite tomorrow and I love hearing fresh takes on the Halo series. Halo is my favorite franchise and I love all its aspects. Even the poopy ones. Also, ODST is my personal favorite Halo game, so I’m glad to see you give it some love. You also gave me a new appreciation for Halo: Reach’s storytelling which I disliked for years, and gave me a new perspective on Noble Team, who I always saw as cardboard cutouts.
The cutscenes, cinematography, and skyboxes in Halo 3 to Reach are amazing. I’ve taken almost 2,000 screenshots between those games, thanks to MCC’s theater mode.
I never get the criticism around Miranda's choice in Halo 3. In 2 she chases after a Covenant capital ship that slip space jumping to a place that they don't know, and she goes with Johnson to try and secure the index alone while the rest of the UNSC, Flood, and Covenant are occupied. She's always made brash decisions and with the Chief and Arby not being able to make it to Johnson in time, I think it makes perfect sense that she'd hop in a pelican and spend over there. All other troops would've been deployed on the Ark to fight. She was the only one that could've gotten there in time.
Because is was a stupid death for the sake of having am emotional moment A Pelican is full of weapons and missiles. Instead of using the machine gun of the Pelican, she decided to crash it inside of a building full of Brutes that can overpower her easily Essentially the devs maked her dumb
@@jesussilva201 she wasn't exactly gonna use the rear-facing machine gun _and_ fly the pelican. as for the missiles... that's more an issue with giving pelicans missiles tbh. in the original trilogy the only time we see pelicans with missiles is exactly once on the first level of halo 3. pelicans blowing up a phantom with missiles made for good spectacle, but it creates an issue for the miranda scene (and plenty of others, even retroactively. why doesn't foehammer use missiles to defend herself in the final level of Halo CE? maybe she'd still die, but ya'd think she'd fight back)
The only problem is that it's telegraphed too much. If she showed up to get Johnson but was shot down and forced into a last stand it would've been better.
Hearing your break down of Reach and the irony of their deaths almost had me in tears, I played it for the first time since its release recently and it hit hard, but it's very easy to gloss over the details and this video is just such a great show case of the character and story writing finesse on display. Great Video.
I find it HILARIOUS that little lore applying to Halo 4 can be found in a single book yet Halo 5 required you to: Read various books and web series Watch movies and shows Listen to podcasts Etc
I havent played 5, but it seems like the writers were confused. Like, the last 3 halo games have had different villains each time and yet are supposed to be the same story?
Halo 4 used a wealth of lore built up by Bungie themselves over years of books, animations and little easter eggs here and there. A lot of that leads into Halo 5. 343 loved the idea of exploring the Forerunner history but really didn't give a shit to those that don't have access to the other media outside of the games
@Whiteythereaper sometimes fluff lore should stay fluff lore. Some people might think master chief eating mres is cool... but for me, it's tonally inconsistent with the games he's in and sounds silly as shit. Forerunners dont have to make an appearance, and if they do, they should do more than just give us really unsatisfying and ugly weapons.
No really? It applies but it's almost all irrelevant to the plot itself. Most of those stories get into the characters, but the game does so little with said characters that going through those stories won't gain you much.
I know this is an older video and you probably won't see this but seriously appreciate the work you put into this, one of the best I've seen on the series
halo 3 was my favourite campaign and the combat !!! It was the first game I ever played that made me love the characters. I loved how each mission felt so different the atmosphere in this game is unmatched. My heart is forever with this game best in the series
When a Crawler faces you, its entire head is visible - you have to TRY to miss it. And Watchers are PAINFULLY easy to dispose of, you just have to pay attention - like with Jackals. Funnily, jackals go back to teh Crawlers, too - the easiest way to kill a shield Jackal is not to melt its shield, but to put a precision round into its hand and then its head. Sniper jackals will ALSO leap and run, at extreme range, making similarly efficient disposal challenging in the same ways as the Crawlers but THAT is never mentioned. Also, the Plasma weapons do SOLID work against Prometheans of all types - I routinely look for a Storm Rifle when against them precisely because if well used it eviscerates Knights. And lastly, why is it that earlier instances regarding the Brutes' and their weapons being so superior are brushed off, but the Prometheans don't get that same charity? Hell, you call them one note when they are FAR from that - the Light Rifle, for example, functions dually as a DMR and BR, toggling when you aim between burst and single fire, making them excellent against Crawlers and Watchers - along with the pistol, carbine, sniper rifle and beam rifle. The Bolt Pistol can also be charged - like the Plasma pistol - and used as a sort of snub shotgun that can one tap Knights. And then there's the scattershot which, while a bit more chaotic than the Human shotgun, can DELETE an enemy at point blank, making them Knight Killers. Like, are you sure there 'is no counter play' with the Prometheans, or did you just never bother to learn it? Because I can keep going by naming, for example, that hurling a grenade at a Watcher to's Knight to get the Watcher to lower the Hardlight shield and attach to the grenade lets you kill it, thus disableing the Knights defense AND if timed well killing or wounding it. Like, i joted that out while the vid was paused and playing Stellaris. And it feels like my earlier 'Bungie purist' vibe was correct.
Crawlers really lacked any personality and felt like all they did was run around randomly while shooting at you (which is objectively inferior to how Covenant fodder behaves). I remember Watchers being kind of annoying as they would frequently fly behind obstacles just before I managed to put enough bullets into them to kill them, but yeah they ultimately were not too terrible if you had a scoped weapon to deal with them. On Heroic+ I agree with the sense of a lack of counterplay when it comes to the knights. They were Halo 2 Brute-esque bullet sponges made even more frustrating to fight due to increased mobility/teleporting. And all of the prometheans suffer from a terrible lack of visual clarity. They're overdesigned blobs of chrome and light on top of a background that is often overdesigned chrome and light. Their weapons often felt like slightly modified reskins of UNSC weapons with the only standout being the Light Rifle. They lacked the level of distinction that UNSC/Covenant weapons have. It's not "Bungie purism" to point out the numerous glaring issues with the new enemy types that 343 introduced. It's just common sense.
@@WhimCh Remember children, if someone ever responds to you about art with any word like 'objective' stop listening to them at all. They have told you, flatly, that they have zero place to even pretend to discuss any form of art. Also 'they just run around randomly while shooting at you' actually, no, they try and swarm you from all sides and distract from the larger Prometheans. But even if they DID... You mean like Buggers? Which do not speak in any way and just fly around you shooting randomly? The rest of your comment follows teh same vein - it's either not true, I play on Heroic and Legendary mainly and use the same plays I mentioned above to counter Prometheans, or the exact same allegations can be made regarding Bungie designs. But BUNGIE doesn't get flak for it, while 343 does. So yes, it's Bungie purism.
@@Sparten7F4 Christ that might be one of the most pretentious and obnoxious first paragraphs I've ever read. The only thing you said that I agree with is that Buggers are similarly annoying to fight, though I remember them being far less omnipresent in Halo 2/3/Reach than crawlers are in Halo 4. They were more of an occasional mix-up. I've just started replaying the series on MCC for achievement hunting, so I'll make a mental note to observe Crawler ai and Knight stuff once I get to H4 in case it's different from how I remember it. I'll try to remember to come back here and either admit that you're right or confirm that you're wrong.
@@WhimCh No, what is pretentious is pretending your opinions can be objective - they can't. Art is subjective in every lens. What you SHOULD say is that YOU DISLIKE narrative, art, or whatever decisions made. But like so many caught up in the hater wave, you don't do that - instead, you pretend or asser that your personal take is the objective, factual analysis. Also, i didn't call buggers ANNOYING - I said they were similar. They require their own tactics to combat. This exists as a direct counter point to the vide's claim that they 'have no conuter-play' since both the Buggers and the Crawlers require methodically watching your tracker and using precision weapons like the DMR, BR or Light Rifle to kill easily. On legendary, this tactical change is a must against both enemies because you WILL get swarmed and over-run otherwise. The best place to observe AI behavior is in the missions where the Covenant fight the Prometheans. Try to avoid detection and observe, as I have. the Watchers will support and aid the knights, who serve as frontline combatants. Crawlers, meanwhile, will flank around and skirmish, or attempt to swarm caught out enemies. This is much like how the Brutes/Elites serve as mainline combatants while they use Grunts to pressure you with numbers and Jackals for support, both in close skirmishing and long range roles. Watchers are fragile and fly up, so they are easily killed - or you can simply damage them and they will flee, allowing you to attack the Knights. Crawlers die to a single headshot, meaning that spamming BR shots into a group will typically trim their numbers. They also rush in groups, so a Promethean grenade in their path can do a lot of damage. Knights fall easily to plasma weapons which overload their shields, or the alt-fire of the Boltshot. The Scattershot offers similar counter. Like Elites, brutes and Hunters, when damaged a Knight may roar, and that is also a good time to stick a grenade to them. In Halo 5 Soldiers take the mainline combatant role, while Knights serve as sort of Hunter analogues. Most of the rest of their behavior is the same, though, albeit there are more Crawlers so they tend to favor rushing and swarming more. I can continue, but again, the point is that the video creator is just incorrect when they talk about a lack of tactics and counter-play. It's there, they just didn't care to find it.
38:17 ur actually given 2 hornets , u mustve missed em even tho u literally drive toward em. technically u get a tank, warthogs & mongeese if u keep em on the drive down to the scarabs.
Nice retrospective!!! Man I loved how your perspectives were way more objective than any other retrospectives I have seen, bro, the way you talk about halo 4 and 5 was incredible, being extremely fair with its flaws and its shining moments, I'm all up to hear what you think about infinite, awesome quality content dude!!!!!
Coming back to this after playing through Halo Infinite, a lot of my possible positives from 5’s story just… fall away. It’s a real shame, as I’m pretty sure I’m the only person I know who was willing to defend 5, but after Infinite’s campaign I really can’t justify some, if any, of the points I had in defense of it originally.
Man, I really appreciate the amount of work that goes into all of your videos. I don't really play video games very much anymore because of life, but Halo 3 was the first one that I really got into with my friends and I will forever be nostalgic about it. I can see that you put a ton of thought into your points about the gameplay and story, and I think you really nailed it on every account. You are also an excellent speaker and it makes these a pleasure to listen to. Thank you!
I didn't have xbox live till about 2015. But I played Halo 3 since it came out, just playing the campaign, over and over and over, with my brother. We'd go into forge or FFA and fool around sometimes, yeah, but, it was usually almost always the campaign.I was little, so, I sucked at fighting actual people. But, I was entertained with just Halo 3's campaign, for 8 years. 8, years. That's gotta mean something.
Great stuff man. Just the video I was looking for. I’ve always been a fan of the series but never played it much. As a sci fan fan I just love the universe of the games. I’ve played reach, ODST, 3 and 4 but it’s been a decade +. Thanks to Infinite coming out, I caught the Halo Bug again. I got the MCC and Halo 5 and have been playing through each campaign. It’s been a blast. Halo CE really holds up but it started to drag and I was just ready to be done fighting flood at the end. I would argue Halo 1-3 has one of the best sci fi military stories in all of fiction. When I finish Halo 4 and 5 I’ll go check out Infinite and jump back into some multiplayer FPS for the first time in long time.
Halo is definitely one of my top favorite franchises. I am a very new person in the Halo community I first played CE two years ago. My favorite of the games is Reach and Halo 3 is my favorite of the trilogy / main story games. I love the story of Halo Wars 1 and 2. I liked Halo 4 but not as much as the Bungie Halos. I never played 5 but to me its not a bad game its just not a good Halo game. And Infinite was great it gave me nostalgia from CE and 3. Halo is just an amazing game and it has an incredible universe.
I would love to see the video of you playing through the covenant. How in the world, in this incredibly detailed video, did you miss the tank, the first gauss hog AND the hornets while ALSO not hijacking the wraith or any of the prowlers on your way to the 2 scarabs fight? I’m not even complaining, I’m just very surprised and I think it’s funny
It's nice that you were able to talk about Halo 5's faults without completely shitting on the game and it's story. I know it has it's faults, but I still liked Halo 5's story. I thought it had it's moments that were pretty good. And I love how it expanded on the Sangeheili more. One of my gripes with the Bungie era was that they kinda shafted the elites after Halo 2. So 343 trying to fix that was legitimately nice. This is just my opinion though. I understand if people think differently, let's all be civil here.
I really miss the feeling of playing these for the first time (up until reach at least) nothing could ever top that. Even going back recently to replay them is amazing. I might have to do it again on MCC.
I really liked halo 4 and reach . I think that if you mod them they can be improved very well. Halo reach evolved fixed a lot of the sandbox problems and many halo 4 mods add the plasma rifle back and make prothethans fun to fight
Some fun things about Noble Six if anyone who hasn't sacrificed hours on top of hours to the extended Halo Lore. First, there's a decent chunk of people who think Noble Six could have been a headhunter: a member of an elite rank of special ops spartans who preformed assasinations and general top-secret objectives behind enemy lines. Something of note is that headhunters worked in pairs, however Six most likely worked alone even then, furthering his role as a lone wolf. Second, Noble Six is one of two humans to ever have been granted the rating of "hyper lethal". The other to be given this rating was none other than the Master Chief himself with all of his exploits concerning the halo rings and the Prophets. This means that Six accomplished as the Chief did, but from the shadows. While this is most likely an afterthought unrelated to the original vision of Reach's story and an attempt to relate Six to the Chief, it moreso highlights just how powerful ONI and its operatives are- something that is built up by the extended lore and promotion for Halo 5 but, as we all know, is executed horribly and completely dropped after 343 saw how badly they screwed up the idea. Whether the failure of the exploration of ONI's questionable morals and secrecy can is to be attributed to outside meddling (my personal belief considering the juxtaposition of the promotion and final product for Halo 5) or 343's incompetence, it's sad to see such an interesting idea nearly ret-conned. Back to Noble Six, he brings up the question of why Noble doesn't try to escape at the end of Reach and explains the futility of attempting to do so. However, I disagree with that being the main idea of Lone Wolf. It's true that Six needed to cover the Pillar of Autumn, leaving him no way of getting off planet, but I think Six would have stayed on Reach regardless. Throughout the game, we are supposed to insert ourselves into the story via Noble Six. However, this isn't completely true, as Six isn't a truly silent protagonist which grants him character and personality for him to call his own. As the game focuses on the members of Noble team, Lone Wolf focuses on Noble Six. The entire mission is the game's way of developing Six as a character as he dies not only buying time for the Pillar of Autumn but dying on Reach as a symbol of humanity's strength. Noble Six dies on Reach because, after everything he's done up until this point, I doubt he would be able to just leave Reach without doing everything physically possible to fight back the covenant. It's nice to see that attatchment between a spartan and their home, and is comparable to halo 4's theme of humanizing the spartans. Unlike most of Bungie's Halo games, Reach and ODST focus much more on the characters as people, with much more effort being placed on tone and personality.
its kinda funny listening to how HALO CE is dated... when in fact it is the backbone of most modern FPS ... the difference is the transition from halo as the most popular fps to call of duty (which modern warfare is the thing that drag it back up to relevance when call of duty 3 failed to do anything but that due to the lackluster story)
Crazy to think you’re in your 20’s and were born when halo was released. Man I’m gettin old. I was one of the lucky few whose father was nerdy enough and well connected enough (he had a buddy who was high ranking developer at Microsoft) to secure an OG Xbox on launch day. I’ll never forget playing halo/xbox on launch day Nov 15 2001. It was such an insane step forward from N64. Shortly afterwards I became one of the coolest kids in my fourth grade class once people found out I had it. It was elusive back then everyone claimed to have played it with their cousins friend of a friend but not many had it themselves yet. Many people didn’t even know what an Xbox was for quite some time after launch. Eventually everyone got on the halo train as the console became more available and my middle school years were full of halo lan parties-which were required back then bc halo CE didn’t have Xbox live. Playing four v four on two tv’s split screen in nearby rooms with a bunch of your buddies really was somethin else. Those early 2000’s late 90’s video gaming days just hit different.
Hold up. The dual scarab fight you also can get hornets on the top of the ridge. Not just a mongoose or enemy vehicles. Halo 5s gameplay was also highly criticized for not feeling like halo and I’m sorry but that Locke chief fight wasn’t choreographed well. It was like 2 80 year olds fighting over the last pudding. Certainly didn’t feel like super soldiers at all.
Halo 3s mission The Covenant, during the scarab fight you are given a Scorpion and not one but two falcon’s, you just missed them cause you speedran past them (and a gauss hog)
Great video but I think you need to bring to light how revolutionary the shields in CE and the online multiplayer in 2. Halo was probably the second most influential fps in the industry(1st being doom). Also reach was very very controversial back then and its multiplayer was effected so much by the changes that the community retention looked like the end of halo. Its still regarded by much of the fanbase as the game that killed halo.
Tell me how reach killed halo and not 5 or even infinite, reach gave halo and 343 an absolute clean slate to move on from the past and carve their own destiny into halo but even now they continue to attempt to capture what Bungie had captured and even deny it to themselves
What adds to all of the lore to reach with the zealots purposely hunting noble six and other Spartans is the massive amount of lore in the books and specifically "silent storm". Essentially while John 117 is still 15 with Fred Kelly, Kurt and others has multiple instances of sneaking onto covenant ships and destroying them from the inside from a new "razor" prowler class frigate From there, long story short, insurrectionists were feeding covenant data to destroy the UNSC. At this time they had only taken harvest and a couple of other outer UNSC colonies. And none of the insurrectionist held planets. So assuming that they could broker a peace, they gave information on troop movements through a spy, as well as docs for the mjolnir Armor. Through these attempts they capture some ODSTs from the Black Dagger unit that was attached to the Spartans for this mission (this is also where Avery Johnson first meets. Chief who at the time was a petty officer, and later gets his master chief rank in this book) All of this comes to a head when they discover a nav unit on a covenant ship. Dr. Halsey the creator of the Spartan 2 program, uses this to determine where the supply station of the covenant is. They then make a suicide mission to that supply station to take it down. Upon which is the shipmaster who realizing this goes back to defend the supply station. During all of this a shadow sword (an elite bloodline feared and respected pretty much by all covenant. Essentially embodying honor even more so than the standard sangheili or elite) has essentially been pitted against politics and is hindered from doing what he thinks is the most important reason for them being there, which is to get info on the Spartans. As at this time they have never captured a body of a Spartan or even seen one die. After the destruction of the outpost station, and landing on a forerunner world, The information is then passed on from the shipmaster to the greater covenant. This essentially sparks multi issues. One being the sangheili is faced with the fact that a human has bested multiple sangheili as well as brutes. Two being this armor that is supposedly much greater than their own. From this point forward in the lore The Spartans are seen as the only threat. Especially from sangheili command. Which considering their strict adherence to honor makes sense. Finding a class of warrior that surpasses their own Even with the gifts of the prophets is more troubling, especially coupled with the fact that this was the first species that was never tried to negotiate with. (due to the lore from harvest. Where brutes land on the first planet, thinking that it was covered in forerunner artifacts due to a sensor they have that can detect them, but ultimately not understanding that the people are what was setting it off, due to humanities link to forerunners, which sets off the current three archbishops to overthrow the old age and the current leadership to hide the fact that they know the truth of what humanity is and why they have to be exterminated.) TL;DR: essentially Spartans are being hunted as a primary threat, due to sangheili culture, and political issues within the covenant. And this is really only explained in the books.
Interesting retrospective, as someone who started some of their earliest gaming memories with the beginning of this franchise and playing almost all of them except 5 (why won’t they bring it to PC already???) it was very refreshing listening to someone with a different view and experience of the series. Great editing and well thought out analysis of each entry made this very enjoyable to watch all the way through in one sitting. Sub!💚
Sorry to nitpick, but straight away you got a few things wrong. Halo originally was going to be a Sci Fi RTS inspired by their previous series Myth The Fallen Lord's, which was already an RTS game. It was not based on Marathon really. Marty was already an employee as well since he worked on the whole Myth series music and sound before this project. Also, Bungie didn't have a contract they could just terminate. They were a Microsoft studio, owned by Microsoft and not a separate company. They had to negotiate a deal and write up a contract, which was essentially that they would separate and then make 2 more games and share the profit. They finished the requirements and we're completely free after Reach, although they were doing some work on Destiny since after Halo 3.
I am so happy with your take on halo 5, you’re able to see it’s strong points while still acknowledging it’s downsides. From what I can tell most people in our age group (those of us who were born around halo ce) have similar stances on these games.
I was surprised by your explanation of where 343 industries came from, but it's true. When I was living through it, the story was spun like 343 was basically the folks at Bungie who didn't want to leave. (Frank O' Connor?) The Wikipedia article and this video don't emphasize it the same way and it really changes how one might look at what 343 studios is.
The way you talked about Halo Reach almost made me forget how much I didn't enjoy that game. In my opinion, the story of Reach felt like a quick way for Bungie to get out of their deal with Microsoft. Reach itself had an entire book written about it, so the world and scenario was already established with an ending that was both predetermined and cornered into an ending that couldn't make an impact in the universe. In other words, it's safe. I don't think they did a bad job per se, however it didn't add anything to the franchise from a story perspective. I didn't enjoy ODST either, but the perspective it provided was unique and worthwhile.
Very well done! Halo brought alot of folks together and gave us alot of memories that we can look back fondly of. Won't lie though, watching Locke trying to fight Chief was one of the funniest, if not dumbest, things to come out of this game. All in all, we all carry halo forward as a treasure. Good job on explaining everything🙏🏾💪🏾👌🏾
I played Reach for the first time earlier this year....during the Afghanistan pull out. I was watching people desperately trying to escape on TV while helping people escape on Reach. It was sobering but empowering at the same time and I nearly burst into tears at a few points as what I was playing resembled what was happening in real life. At least in the game I could kill the bad guys and protect people so it helped alleviate the frustration and horror I was seeing in real life.
I'm learning their are two trains: New school (25 years minus) who grew up on advanced movement and Old school (25 plus) who grew up when halo defined the controller. The old school grew as the capacity of consoles grew and the abilities in game grew. The old school also (for Halo), grew with the HYPE train that was halo and its progression to 2 and 3 and ODST (controversy of DLC vs full game) and Reach changing (or 'modifying') mechanics. Lore was spread wide and far by word of mouth because everyone was talking about it and internet was more bare bones/used for other things. So to play the games now, is different for new players and you get what you're given in game. This is where nostalgia can be a bit heavy for us. 343i changed what we were given further than reach did. They skipped bits and lore was left out and it hasn't really wrapped any of its stories up, least in a way we care about. Really what it did was muddied our nostalgia.
I’ve been a PlayStation fan from the jump, but even I have an admiration and appreciation of the first three Halo games. They’re absolute classics and gaming treasures.
Halo 5's Locke vs Chief fist fight was widely considered awful by fans. It's by no means reflective of the lore speed and strength of any Spartan II, let alone Master Chief himself. The fight looked like an amateur judo fight, and the way Chief stumbles makes him look like a drunk yobbo. It was fine for two regular humans fighting, but these are super soldiers, and Master Chief in particular is even more enhanced than Locke is. The fight should have looked closer to that you'd see in Marvel movie, rather than a amateur clip from two drunk guys fighting at the pub.
Wow…simply, wow. I almost never feel compelled to comment but your work here was so good I needed to make sure you heard. Absolutely, fantastic job. The effort and detail you went into for research, your commentary about storyline, and in game battle dynamics and how they changed from game to game, spot on. I’m really impressed. You’re a beast man, and a Spartan if ever there was one when it comes to your content. Bravo, dude. I’m a subscriber for life. Can’t wait for your future videos.
Feel like you were doing a good job on being pretty unbiased till you got to Reach lol, no mention of how controversial some of the gameplay additions were or how many didn't actually enjoy the story. I love Reach too but it just seemed off how you broke down what upset people in the other games but never talked about it for Reach.
I feel with certain retrospectives and players you have two types of people: Those that love the old gameplay, and those that want advanced movement. Most oldies, started with Halo as teens when it came out. The newer generation didn't start with Halo defining control setups and limited game ability due to consoles. The retrospective doesn't talk about it being a problem, because that is the system they like.
armor lock and sprint have been talked to death. Im just glad we didnt get a 30 minute talk down about how halo 4 and 5 are well writtten if you read the comics, books, and ignore the earlier games implications like most retrospectives do. some people (myself included) didnt think sprint or jetpacks or any of that was bad, it just felt like an upgrade to halo 3s deployable system. I only learned it was controversial in the last 3 years when it was being added to MCC and everyone went to do a retrospective about why they hated halo reach back in the day.
I respect your view,one thing that is very hard too experience is seeing this game in real time there was no game like it before and THE FLOOD nothing on the box art nothing on the trailers just pure twist
A great thing about ODST was also that the cities AI constantly tried to help the Rookie with Neon signs, engaging police sirens to get the Rookies attention and stuff like that. As far as I remember the cutscenes by the cities surveillence cameras was also the AI monitoring the team. It is essentially one more character with personality established in the story.
Nice
Superintendent was one of the best characters in a game who doesn't have any dialogue
Also the lights and police sirens are all pointing towards the audio logs. When an audio log is found, a set of these lights will turn off in the city. Once you find all the audio logs, the city is much more lifeless and eerie than before.
More personality than Locke
@@JoaoNascimento-uq8yg to bad that isn't saying much
29:97 funnily enough, folks from Bungie have talked about Halo 3 being quite soul crushing for a lot of people. Not as bad as H2 but still quite hard on the devs
Game development almost always is.
Game development always sucks
@@5000Seabass is my 6 number and it will happen to you when we can sleep 💤💤💤💤💤💤💤💤💤💤😴💤💤
@@Chuked development always sucks. any kind of development.... game development is just worse than most
97?
Elites taking cover when their shields are down is such a miracle of 2001 AI. So underrated
And dodging grenades. And the way they Bob & weave and duck underneath your bullets & melee attacks.
Still better feeling ai than most shooters today
A couple million times better then the dumb as bricks ai that mostly stand in one open spot or sticking in cover.
Like till this day most companies still haven’t had ai’s as clever as the og halo games
@@SqualidsargeStudios call of duty campaigns are unplayable because of this. They just stand there and to increase difficulty they just throw more grenades
It wasnt just Elite's self preservation, it was the way enemies would suppress your last known location, the way the AI reacts to surprises, losses, their contextual chatter, their reaction to taking damage, and so on. I'm disappointing we never got an RTS that runs with CE NPC AI
Oddly enough, in higher difficulties the dynamic of plasma weapons shredding shields and ballistics weapons shredding health becomes much more apparent, and hence brute weapons become the absolute worst weapons in the game.
@Mister Majestic only time I use the brute shot is on Cortana to destroy the reactors in high charity from range
The Brute Spiker isn't terrible honestly, it's just kind of underwhelming normally, functioning sorta like a middle ground between the SMG and Plasma Rifle.
That being said, Brute Spikers shred the Flood so they put in mad work on Cortana and Floodgate. Because it's superheated needles it melts them so easily.
Yeah I kinda wish they just used Plasma weapons like in Halo 2. You could have reworked them to make them more unique for the Brutes. But a lot of their weapons were kinda dumb considering they're still part of the Covenant and have access to advanced technology.
@@Robbie_Haruna plus melee on flood with brute weapons almost always destroys their body, so infection forms can’t revive them
Grav hammer?
Spiker?
Two best grenades?
I see you made sure to hit the 10 minute mark
Gottem lmao
Just barely though
Yeah, he clearly added a bunch of padding to hit that mark too 🤣
I hate ppl like this... Like put the content first 😑
@@Mandroid45 man... what if it was a joke. I guess we'll never know
ODST is just a Chefs Kiss of a video game. One of my favorite Single Player FPS experiences ever.
No one like this comment it has 117 likes
@@roguemum4888 I literally liked it… then unliked the comment for this very reason… and then Found your comment not to like it lmao
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I never really found the Guilty Spark fight to be a "boss" fight in the traditional sense, it always felt more like a moment of catharsis as you finally get to kill the little bastard.
And later 343 ruined by keeping him alive making it COMPLETELY useless...
Bungie talks about this. They don’t show you a cutscene of it happening, they want the player to do it
@@oddgbmo3036 eh, I get that, but it wasn’t “useless” Guily spark would’ve killed master chief, Cortona, and The arbiter. “Killing him” definitely wasn’t useless
This is exactly what I think too, if u look at it as a boss fight it would seem pretty underwhelming
@@kevinnigins9488 obviously not. It's useless In the impact the scene would have carried if you actually did destroy 343 just as bungie intended. It's the same as didact not even dying by the players hands in halo 4 and he still lives.
I was in 5th grade when Halo Reach released and I played it religiously until 9th or 10th grade. One of my top 5 favorite games of all times and genuinely makes me emotional. The other thing about Noble 6 is that in the novelization, I think it is stated that Noble 6 was fighting for 9 straight days in their Lone Wolf Mission. The fact that 6 refused to die for more than a week and just kept taking out the Covenant who felled the rest of Noble team is amazing and so incredibly badass. Truly the only Spartan who can rival Master Chief and 6 is a Spartan 3 so even more impressive
There's a novelisation of Halo Reach? Everything on Google shows there's only Fall of Reach which is based around John and his team.
My z FF🎉Heart r I was was p🎉 r you ❤b❤😢z😂wc😊😢😮😂w
Ayo which book are you talking about? Halo new blood?
Your videos are auto played even though I dislike all your videos and have your channel on my DO NOT RECOMMEND list
@@strivingsmexy nobody cares
*Back in my day, we didn't have FANCY SCHMANCY tanks! We had sticks! Two stick and a ROCK! And the platoon had to SHARE THE ROCK!*
Ooh Rah!
gotta love sgt. johnson
*two sticks and a rock for the whole platoon... and we had to share the rock.*
Usually the good Lord works in mysterious ways. But not today! This here is 66 tons of straight up HE spewing dee-vine intervention! If God is love, then you can call me Cupid
dear humanity we "regret" being alien bastards, we "regret" coming to earth, and we most certainly "regret" the corp just blew-up our raggdy ass fleet
That specific Red Elite from the 1st mission is indeed the same Red Elite that shoots Kat and appears several other times in the game. You have the ability to kill every other Red Elite throughout the game EXCEPT him until the end of the game. It was Bungies final Halo boss fight.
If any new fans decide to play MCC, don’t play it in the chronological order that the devs intend, play it in the initial release order. Your expectations would be heavily hampered by starting with Reach and then suddenly going back 10 years in gameplay design.
The story will have much less weight as well. The tragedy of reach is knowing that they will lose and yet keep on fighting until they do. But in continuing to fight, and sacrificing everything, the rest of the halo saga is allowed happen... which they will never get to know.
Ya, I really hope that they change it someday.
Half agree. I’ve played all the Halo games (except 5 as I don’t have an Xbox One) and while I agree that the clash between Reach gameplay and CE gameplay is there it’s not that bad. It’s dated but it holds up remarkably well. It’s more the level design that’s lacking as CE has quite a few levels that are just featureless hallways, though the Anniversary edition looks a lot better and makes it less dull looking (and this coming from someone who has memories of playing CE on the original Xbox!)
The main thing I noticed was I missed the sprint and you can barely survive any fall damage in CE compared with later Halo games.
@@jacktorrance3522 Ya, I mean your suppose to be a super soilder, so dying from falling from 2 flight of stairs is dumb.
Yeah but the main story is definitely a step up from reach so if you ignore art style you'll be welcomed by it
One of my personal favorite theories is that Jun was assigned to Halsey because he's most likely going to be the one to put a bullet in her to make sure the enemy can't extract information from her.
“I’ll do what’s necessary sir,” is kind of a bone chilling line in hindsight
@@leomcdonnell2553 Not wrong.
I mean, Emile would have done it with a smile on his face, but yeah, it works
Exactly. That's the subtext. If she's close to getting captured, shoot her.
@@Alejandro_One_and_Only Emile is also the most likely of the team to ignore his objectives to get in close with the enemy.
1:12:55 You'll noticed that the one that escaped is wearing Field Marshal armor, which is the same one that shot Kat and the same one you fight at the end of the game when you're about to board the Mass Driver. The rest are just Zealot class, which makes the theory even more credible.
Good point, the horns on the helmet are a dead giveaway
It’s been a year but damn your right bungie was so good on those details good eye
"It's finished?"
"It's finished."
".. I'll miss you."
"Wake me, when you need me"
Those words fill me with sorrow
This is a nice retrospective despite disagreeing with you quite a bit with Reach and 4. There are two things that I wanted to point out:
-In Halo CE, you can one-shot the Hunters with the Pistol or the Sniper with a shot in the back.
-In Halo 3, in the last Scarab encounter, they fly in two hornets that you can use to easily dispatch both scarabs.
@@Gingy there is a large panel with a big cluster of red lights at the back of the Scarab model which protects the shielded core. With the Hornet, you can blow that section conpletely off to get a clean shot at the core. You can destroy each Scarab this way in about a minute without ever leaving your Hornet
@@ryanparker4996 I never realized you could blow up that section. I always attacked the legs with the hornet and got inside it to blow up the core, and then got back to the hornet. If I knew that you could blow up the cover, it would've prevented quite a few deaths I had in that mission.
@@MarceloZ2 shoot the legs to immobilise it, go to the rear, shoot until its dead! I cant remember the last time I died during that fight, the game gives you everything!
I’m actually surprised they didn’t think of that. I thought the game was pretty straightforward with wanting you to get in them.
It's also worth mentioning that this level is supposed to also give you a tank and a gauss hog to use when pushing through the canyon on the approach to the boss fight.
Maybe the creator just encountered a very unusual bug at the fight (especially as the footage included a gauss hog?), but it's definitely much easier than having nothing more than a mongoose.
You forgot to mention the hunters’ worst enemy, one CE magnum round to the back
He probably doesn't know like he didn't know u don't gotta get out of the tank to kill the scarabs in halo 3 or that there are hornets and a tank for u to use of the final fight
@@ONEIL311i’ve been a halo fan since 2007 with Halo 3 being my favorite and most played and i didn’t know about that last part
What makes Cortana’s plan in 5 even worse is how in 4 the Composer was a device that turned organic beings into digital ones(if it worked properly) it was literally the same form of immortality that Cortana was offering to AI; everyone could be one of the Created. This was literally the Didact’s original plan and none of this is addressed or even mentioned by anyone in 5…
Well most personalities that were composed were corrupted or turned into animalistic automatons. If the composer just turned you into an AI it would be understandable but it doesnt it moreso takes your essense and then forces that into an AI with the side effects. Plus cortana was likely traumatised by watching an entire station of people be composed and watch chief nearly die from it. She turned megalomaniacal as is a trait of rampancy but she still had her principals even if shes completely deluded and doesnt see that the alternatives are just as horrible.
Apparently there's cut dialogue in halo 4 which foreshadows this in that she sees the humans there were composed on ivanoff station as still living as they were only digitized. It was addressed in halo 4 but it was cut for some reason. Alot of the cut dialogue really ties the story together, very sadly it was cut
Doesn’t Cortana repeat one of the Didact’s quotes in the final cutscene of 5 to convey this parallel though?
“The mantle of responsibility for the galaxy shelters all, human. But only the Forerunners are its masters.”
“The Mantle of Responsibility for the galaxy shelters all. But only the Created are its masters.”
I hate how much of 4 was ignored in general. Too much hate for such a good game imho. Atleast infinite touched on 4 a bit. At least thematically
Except the composer doesn’t work properly. It is extremely painful and the personalities lose their minds essentially. The Didact wanted to use the composer on humanity to imprison them how he was imprisoned on Requiem. Cortana wanted everyone to live in peace.
Fun story from my last reach playthrough. I was doing it with a couple friends, one a Halo veteran and another completely new to the games. When we got to the scene of Kat's death, his words just moments before it happened were "well at least no one died"
Well that’s a real kick in the teeth! D:
“The last Halo made by Bungie”
*starring confused at ODST and Reach*
Also not sure if this was just a mistake you forgot to edit out but in that scene you mentioned where the arbiter shook hands with lord hood you said “a truce between the covenant and the UNSC” but it was just a truce between the elites and humanity, the elites stopped being apart of the covenant towards the end of Halo 2
bro theres a lot of mistakes in this video.... like a lot a lot
I mean the average fan wouldn't really remember that at that moment. They are being attacked by an Elite
I thought the same thing
@@zachedelic1293 there are a couple mistakes but overall it's a great overview of the halo series
I know this reply comes super late, but I think the reason that he said that line is because of whatever recap there was at the start of the Halo 4 section that he explicitly quotes from about the Humans and the Covenant coming together to fight a mutual enemy. The Covenant never did that, it was really just the Elites and those who followed them. Those who did help the humans were certainly not part of "The Covenant" after leaving it.
On the map where you find the 2 scarabs, you can drive a tank and a hornet.. not sure why he said "you only have a mongoose"... That mission is awesome...
he's like 20. Pretty young for someone making an indepth review
The main problem with 4 and 5 is that 343 was great at making really cool concepts but often failed to execute or executed them well but the way it was executed left different elements of the game feeling disconnected in their emphasis or importance. Plus 4 and 5 are alternates in gameplay, 4 had a great story even though only half of it was effective but fairly clunky combat and 5 had a terrible story structure full of awesome concepts and incredible gameplay. Another thing 343 would do is start story archs, they would get a ton of negative feedback, improve whatever it was then right when they started to get something enjoyable they would kill off the plot, characters and storyline usually in a comic or book due to the prior negative feedback.
Plus the covenant never made peace with the unsc, the elites did, then after they left the ark they returned to sanghelios to see what had happened to it
I will say blue team had slightly better writing in 5 than osiris but you almost never hear any of it unless you wait around for the dialogue to kick in. Fred makes jokes and is the counter to johns ideas, playing devils advocate but also supporting him. Linda is always asking about John and reassuring him and kelly is kelly
Honestly the only one they got right was Fred. I think they moxed Linda and Kelly up, cuz Kelly is John's oldest friend so she would be the one who is more protective of him. And Linda would be the one who is chill and hardly talks. Idk.... Also Travis played an amazing Fred. 343 just fucked up a bunch.
Cortana’s rampancy was inspired by a developer’s mother, specifically how they delt with dementia. It makes the interaction feel more realistic.
Also, there was a scannable that explains the mantle of responsibility in detail...
a huge and fundamental part of the universe and entire overarching story should not be explained in a collectible instead of the actual experience
@@fawkyou2001 No, of course not. Nothing replaces putting actual time and effort into crafting a coherent story. But, it should not be ignored.
To be honest, 343 was honestly flailing about with halo. They should have just picked one concept and gone right into it in depth instead of flipping every game.
Rampancy was a concept in both Marathon and then was seeded in Halo 3 in the Forerunner terminals and Cortana's torture at the hands of the Gravemind. The Forerunner AI Mendicant Bias went rogue after being tortured by the Gravemind and became Rampant by turning on the Forerunners and helping the Gravemind to the point where the Halo Array became the only option left to save the universe.
Dude I was 6 when it came out and I remember the terror I felt seeing those Elites storm the cryo-control room on the Pillar of Autumn. Halo CE was scary af lol
BRO THAT IS A CORE MEMORY OF MINE HAHAHA. I literally had to go and hide after playing it for the exact same thing. Whoever let 5/6 year olds play that was not thinking straight 😂
“Oh God, they’re trying to get through the door! Security to Cryo tu- AAAAAHHHH!”
Dude I used to hide behind the walls and slowly look out to make sure none of the covenant were there
The Flood was even scarier!
the one in the hallway on “the cartographer” for me 😂
CE is still my favorite. It still kicks so much ass. The music. The mystique of the story. The guns are balanced with everything being viable. That shotgun though is favorite video game shotgun of all time. I like fighting all the enemies in different combinations. Even the Flood. You can make the argument that it reuses assets way too much and even makes you replay levels you already have just a different way but I don't care. The gameplay makes up for it.
What gameplay??? It is a horrible outdated shooting range. The same amount of gameplay can be found today in valorants practice area.
@@ctylsh1214 the gameplay is top notch, weapons are just perfectly balanced and virtually every single one is good to use, it has an amazing combat loop
@@fulcrum7455 ah well i guess my argument just fell apart because RUclips user "Ful crum" said that the gameplay is "top notch"
@@ctylsh1214 what is your idea of a game nowadays that is leagues more fun than combat evolved
@@ctylsh1214 ??? You basically had the same argument, you just said the gameplay is garbage without explaining, no need to be a dickhead if you can't defend your opinion
I remember opening up my first Xbox on Christmas Day and playing Halo CE for 8 hours that day. I was about 9 years old when this released. Such good memories.
Halo 1-3 will always be a masterpiece of a trilogy. The OG 3 games still hold up to this day in terms of storytelling and gameplay, halo also holds a special place in my heart and I will always adore these games and how much passion was put into the first trilogy
I will say halo infinite was pretty fkn awesome
38:17 I'm pretty sure right before the scarab section you get to pick between a Mongoose with a rocket marine, a gauss hog, and a scorpion, plus you have the choice to use a hornet later. So I would say the game gives you a lot of options.
I killed both scarabs with my hornet just by shooting it from the back by blowing off the first panel.
@@restant8845 thats what i always did, even my first time with the game, i was quite confused
Wow the whole Zealot Elite Team hunting down Noble Team theory just blew my mind 😂 Also Jorge's death has a better Ironic Point to it, he loved Reach and knew he would spend his whole life and die there, yet he is the only member of Noble Team to die off of Reach
In Halo 3 the 2 Scarab fight does not just give you a mongoose(assuming you meant gauss warthog seeing you drive it in the video). They give you a tank and two hornets to pick from. Guessing you missed how and where to get them.
Ikr how did he miss this? XD
One of the hornets even has a driver who will drop you off on top of the scarabs if you get on
Thank you my guy
@@saltygamer1019 I have no idea. There is literally dialogue saying "hornets inbound."
Yeah I was confused because I remember going into that with a small fleet of troops and vehicles every time.thanks for clearing that up for me.
Ah yes I love the "beamshot" and the "brute plasma pistol" some of my favorite weapons from halo 2😐
😢
:'(
For sure for sure
After watching this I feel like you some how played halo 3 wrong. You have a tank to fight the two scarabs, also have the option to use the hornets that show up before you get to the valley. To use a mongoose and use heavy weapons or use a ghost to fight the scarabs is silly. Only reason to do that is for shits and gigs
Yeah he dropped the ball with the halo 3 section. His criticism of the ai can be fixed by turning on a skull AND is only an issue with the mcc. he complains about weapon convenience Like complaining that cortana gives you energy swords to fight the flood. The weapon that was every 5 feet in halo 2 on high charity and gravemind which is where cortana takes place. And complaining about Johnson using a spartan lazer against the flood when he was fighting them from like 500 feet away if not more. And complaining about miranda crashing into the same area truth was in. When all the remaining forces would probably have been deployed at the ark and she didnt have time to wait around for backup. She could have used the pelicans weapons sure, But that would almost certainly kill Johnson. My complaint with that scene is how tf she was able to take out a brute chieftain and with ONE shotgun blast. Not to mention how the brutes acted in that scene, and the statement that the brute shot feels really powerful when used by the player and is a joke when used by the enemies better be sarcasm because it is nearly the opposite of the truth. The scarab battle I personally really enjoy grabbing a mongoose with a rocket launcher marine. it makes it way harder than it needs to be. But it also makes the fight look way grander and more epic than flying a hornet and the tank is to restrictive for me
Only for shit and gigs or the scarab/ wraith just landed a couple lucky shots on your vehicles when you weren’t paying attention 😂
That part of the video threw me for a loop since I have never in my dozens of playthroughs of Halo 3, EVER use the Mongoose or Ghost for the two scarab fight. I only used the hornets since they were obviously placed at the cliff edge.
Yeah you go into that fight with those vehicles.
All of them. You get a fleet.
The marines take what you don't and blubber around picking covenant off the scarabs.
One thing on halo 4: It definitely did explain that the covenant was a splinter group. I never read any books and I can definitely remember there being points where it explains this. Doesn't go into much detail, but it is there.
I mean there was the entirety of spartan ops
Halo CE's plasma pistol has a rather unusual damage over time effect with overcharge shots. The shield drain and EMP would come later
Tartarus (and by extension Brute Chieftains) are invincible while the white shield effect is active. Tartarus just has the shield up for a ridiculously long time with a tiny damage window before it recharges
The double Scarab fight is intended to be done with a Hornet, teaching you its final weak point, the cap on the back that it would normally turn to never expose. Good job doing it without them, though
The halo CE plasma pistol most definitely drained shields, they simply scrapped the damage over time effect in Halo 2, but the shield drain is still very present.
1:02:38 A grunt gains the ability of flight. Thanks gingy for another hood classic to fall asleep to and watch multipletimes
Reach will always be my favorite. It’s timing, story and multiplayer were all perfect.
Completely agree. My fav game of all time
Nah, the multiplayer was a massive step back from 3 and 2.
Halo CE: Made me a gamer.
Halo 2: First great sequel I ever played.
Halo 3: The best game I ever played.
Halo Wars: Got me into strategy games.
Halo 3 ODST: Underrated Halo Game.
Halo Reach: Halo game so good star wars copied it.
Halo 4: Would have been a great ending to the story.
Halo 5: One of the worse games I ever played.
Halo Wars 2: Better than the first game.
Halo Infinite: Great multiplayer but praying I love the campaign.
I’m not saying you’re wrong at all, but which Star Wars game copied Reach? I can’t think of any and I feel like I should be able to figure it out haha
@@gravewlkr_ rogue one
Damn, that was incredibly in depth. I appreciate your time an commitment to this project as well as your insight and perspective into the story and adaptations between studio changes. Well done Gingy.
he got the story wrong though
@@zachedelic1293he got a LOT wrong tbh
I think the Library is one of those missions that’s so bad it’s actually good and fun. The challenge the library gives is what makes it hold weight today. I think having a couple of those insanely hard levels in the halo franchise is actually a good thing.
I was 6 when Halo CE came out and I played it at launch, before it had any of the name recognition that it ended up having. Pretty crazy how far it and we as fans have come!
I just wanna say I can’t believe I first played Halo when I was just 6. Now I’m 25 going on 26 next month and just finished Infinite and I was just as much in awe stepping onto Zeta Halo as I was stepping onto installation 04 all those years ago. If there is one thing I remember doing, it was admiring the skybox immediately after stepping out of the escape pod, and I literally did the same thing with Zeta.
It’s those little things that really make this journey so special. Cheers people🥂
CE was also my first game back in 01 when I was 5. Still my favorite game to this day. I think it holds up so well and was my favorite Halo on legendary as 3 is too easy and 2 is way too hard, 4 is just a bullet sponge haven, and 5 is irritating with AI teammates (although seeing Buck is always great but its just too bad it's soured by Locke being terrible).
2s cliff hanger just had me hunger for more and gave me assurance that H3 would be made. For me CE is the perfect start and manages to stay mysterious. 2 built upon that and gave us so much lore. 3 was the perfect wrap up to the trilogy. I always loved that the flood felt so different to the Covenant as they had no self preservation and just charged in hordes.
Reach would have been amazing had the DMR been a map weapon instead of a spawn weapon because it just dominated the meta in the MP. 3 still has my favorite MP as the maps are the best the series has ever had and the vehicles are so much fun. 3 also has the best way to unlock armor which is through achievements and not just given to you or having to just grind for points (Recon was legendary and Hayabusa will always be my favorite).
4 and 5 make Chief feel like a totally different person. The prometheans don't look that cool (I think the concept art for the Knights and watchers is just way cooler than what they ended up with) and aren't fun to fight against because they are just too tanky. I also prefer the art style from CE, 2, and 3. Their MPs while fun aren't the classic Halo I wanted and this is partly on Reach for having pseudo loadouts and taking the first steps away from classic Halo.
Infinite MP is the MP I have waited for since 3. All we need is more of it, more maps, more modes, and forge and better customization.
Il take the prometheans over shotgun flood any day
38:11 ... Did... did you not know about the hornets you can use in this fight which can make it last a total of like 5 minutes?
And you START that section with a Scorpion!
May I say that I have been a subscriber now for quite some time to this channel.
And what I enjoy the most is, the narrator's voice, calm and in depth on explaining the videos proper.
Just an enjoyment to listen to and filled with incredible information on games and series that we all love and played.
At this rate this could possibly be on of the best channels here on YT.
Oh and I just love the end credit song/track that is used these days.
@@Gingy Your very welcome.
This channel is becoming the best and most honest in my opinion.
This video earned you a subscriber. I don’t agree with everything you said, but you definitely hyped me up to play Halo Infinite tomorrow and I love hearing fresh takes on the Halo series. Halo is my favorite franchise and I love all its aspects. Even the poopy ones.
Also, ODST is my personal favorite Halo game, so I’m glad to see you give it some love. You also gave me a new appreciation for Halo: Reach’s storytelling which I disliked for years, and gave me a new perspective on Noble Team, who I always saw as cardboard cutouts.
Halo 2 first game I ever played
Halo 3 odst first game I ever pre ordered
Thanks uncle you will be missed introduced to a good game and childhood
The cutscenes, cinematography, and skyboxes in Halo 3 to Reach are amazing. I’ve taken almost 2,000 screenshots between those games, thanks to MCC’s theater mode.
I never get the criticism around Miranda's choice in Halo 3. In 2 she chases after a Covenant capital ship that slip space jumping to a place that they don't know, and she goes with Johnson to try and secure the index alone while the rest of the UNSC, Flood, and Covenant are occupied. She's always made brash decisions and with the Chief and Arby not being able to make it to Johnson in time, I think it makes perfect sense that she'd hop in a pelican and spend over there. All other troops would've been deployed on the Ark to fight. She was the only one that could've gotten there in time.
"All other troops would've been deployed on the Ark to fight."
exactly, notice that the forward unto dawn is seemingly empty when we return to it
Because is was a stupid death for the sake of having am emotional moment
A Pelican is full of weapons and missiles. Instead of using the machine gun of the Pelican, she decided to crash it inside of a building full of Brutes that can overpower her easily
Essentially the devs maked her dumb
@@jesussilva201 she wasn't exactly gonna use the rear-facing machine gun _and_ fly the pelican. as for the missiles... that's more an issue with giving pelicans missiles tbh. in the original trilogy the only time we see pelicans with missiles is exactly once on the first level of halo 3.
pelicans blowing up a phantom with missiles made for good spectacle, but it creates an issue for the miranda scene (and plenty of others, even retroactively. why doesn't foehammer use missiles to defend herself in the final level of Halo CE? maybe she'd still die, but ya'd think she'd fight back)
The only problem is that it's telegraphed too much. If she showed up to get Johnson but was shot down and forced into a last stand it would've been better.
Hearing your break down of Reach and the irony of their deaths almost had me in tears, I played it for the first time since its release recently and it hit hard, but it's very easy to gloss over the details and this video is just such a great show case of the character and story writing finesse on display. Great Video.
Scarab boss fights in Halo 3 are my most favorite moments throughout the entire series.
I find it HILARIOUS that little lore applying to Halo 4 can be found in a single book yet Halo 5 required you to:
Read various books and web series
Watch movies and shows
Listen to podcasts
Etc
I havent played 5, but it seems like the writers were confused. Like, the last 3 halo games have had different villains each time and yet are supposed to be the same story?
Halo 4 used a wealth of lore built up by Bungie themselves over years of books, animations and little easter eggs here and there. A lot of that leads into Halo 5. 343 loved the idea of exploring the Forerunner history but really didn't give a shit to those that don't have access to the other media outside of the games
@Whiteythereaper sometimes fluff lore should stay fluff lore. Some people might think master chief eating mres is cool... but for me, it's tonally inconsistent with the games he's in and sounds silly as shit.
Forerunners dont have to make an appearance, and if they do, they should do more than just give us really unsatisfying and ugly weapons.
No really? It applies but it's almost all irrelevant to the plot itself. Most of those stories get into the characters, but the game does so little with said characters that going through those stories won't gain you much.
I know this is an older video and you probably won't see this but seriously appreciate the work you put into this, one of the best I've seen on the series
halo 3 was my favourite campaign and the combat !!! It was the first game I ever played that made me love the characters. I loved how each mission felt so different the atmosphere in this game is unmatched. My heart is forever with this game best in the series
Halo 3 is the only Halo where reloading the sniper rifle finishes with a beautiful metallic "clack'..
When a Crawler faces you, its entire head is visible - you have to TRY to miss it. And Watchers are PAINFULLY easy to dispose of, you just have to pay attention - like with Jackals. Funnily, jackals go back to teh Crawlers, too - the easiest way to kill a shield Jackal is not to melt its shield, but to put a precision round into its hand and then its head. Sniper jackals will ALSO leap and run, at extreme range, making similarly efficient disposal challenging in the same ways as the Crawlers but THAT is never mentioned.
Also, the Plasma weapons do SOLID work against Prometheans of all types - I routinely look for a Storm Rifle when against them precisely because if well used it eviscerates Knights.
And lastly, why is it that earlier instances regarding the Brutes' and their weapons being so superior are brushed off, but the Prometheans don't get that same charity? Hell, you call them one note when they are FAR from that - the Light Rifle, for example, functions dually as a DMR and BR, toggling when you aim between burst and single fire, making them excellent against Crawlers and Watchers - along with the pistol, carbine, sniper rifle and beam rifle. The Bolt Pistol can also be charged - like the Plasma pistol - and used as a sort of snub shotgun that can one tap Knights. And then there's the scattershot which, while a bit more chaotic than the Human shotgun, can DELETE an enemy at point blank, making them Knight Killers.
Like, are you sure there 'is no counter play' with the Prometheans, or did you just never bother to learn it?
Because I can keep going by naming, for example, that hurling a grenade at a Watcher to's Knight to get the Watcher to lower the Hardlight shield and attach to the grenade lets you kill it, thus disableing the Knights defense AND if timed well killing or wounding it.
Like, i joted that out while the vid was paused and playing Stellaris. And it feels like my earlier 'Bungie purist' vibe was correct.
Th prometheanes look like poop and are boring to fight
Crawlers really lacked any personality and felt like all they did was run around randomly while shooting at you (which is objectively inferior to how Covenant fodder behaves). I remember Watchers being kind of annoying as they would frequently fly behind obstacles just before I managed to put enough bullets into them to kill them, but yeah they ultimately were not too terrible if you had a scoped weapon to deal with them. On Heroic+ I agree with the sense of a lack of counterplay when it comes to the knights. They were Halo 2 Brute-esque bullet sponges made even more frustrating to fight due to increased mobility/teleporting. And all of the prometheans suffer from a terrible lack of visual clarity. They're overdesigned blobs of chrome and light on top of a background that is often overdesigned chrome and light. Their weapons often felt like slightly modified reskins of UNSC weapons with the only standout being the Light Rifle. They lacked the level of distinction that UNSC/Covenant weapons have. It's not "Bungie purism" to point out the numerous glaring issues with the new enemy types that 343 introduced. It's just common sense.
@@WhimCh Remember children, if someone ever responds to you about art with any word like 'objective' stop listening to them at all. They have told you, flatly, that they have zero place to even pretend to discuss any form of art.
Also 'they just run around randomly while shooting at you' actually, no, they try and swarm you from all sides and distract from the larger Prometheans.
But even if they DID... You mean like Buggers? Which do not speak in any way and just fly around you shooting randomly?
The rest of your comment follows teh same vein - it's either not true, I play on Heroic and Legendary mainly and use the same plays I mentioned above to counter Prometheans, or the exact same allegations can be made regarding Bungie designs. But BUNGIE doesn't get flak for it, while 343 does.
So yes, it's Bungie purism.
@@Sparten7F4 Christ that might be one of the most pretentious and obnoxious first paragraphs I've ever read. The only thing you said that I agree with is that Buggers are similarly annoying to fight, though I remember them being far less omnipresent in Halo 2/3/Reach than crawlers are in Halo 4. They were more of an occasional mix-up.
I've just started replaying the series on MCC for achievement hunting, so I'll make a mental note to observe Crawler ai and Knight stuff once I get to H4 in case it's different from how I remember it. I'll try to remember to come back here and either admit that you're right or confirm that you're wrong.
@@WhimCh No, what is pretentious is pretending your opinions can be objective - they can't. Art is subjective in every lens. What you SHOULD say is that YOU DISLIKE narrative, art, or whatever decisions made. But like so many caught up in the hater wave, you don't do that - instead, you pretend or asser that your personal take is the objective, factual analysis.
Also, i didn't call buggers ANNOYING - I said they were similar. They require their own tactics to combat. This exists as a direct counter point to the vide's claim that they 'have no conuter-play' since both the Buggers and the Crawlers require methodically watching your tracker and using precision weapons like the DMR, BR or Light Rifle to kill easily. On legendary, this tactical change is a must against both enemies because you WILL get swarmed and over-run otherwise.
The best place to observe AI behavior is in the missions where the Covenant fight the Prometheans. Try to avoid detection and observe, as I have. the Watchers will support and aid the knights, who serve as frontline combatants. Crawlers, meanwhile, will flank around and skirmish, or attempt to swarm caught out enemies.
This is much like how the Brutes/Elites serve as mainline combatants while they use Grunts to pressure you with numbers and Jackals for support, both in close skirmishing and long range roles.
Watchers are fragile and fly up, so they are easily killed - or you can simply damage them and they will flee, allowing you to attack the Knights.
Crawlers die to a single headshot, meaning that spamming BR shots into a group will typically trim their numbers. They also rush in groups, so a Promethean grenade in their path can do a lot of damage.
Knights fall easily to plasma weapons which overload their shields, or the alt-fire of the Boltshot. The Scattershot offers similar counter. Like Elites, brutes and Hunters, when damaged a Knight may roar, and that is also a good time to stick a grenade to them.
In Halo 5 Soldiers take the mainline combatant role, while Knights serve as sort of Hunter analogues. Most of the rest of their behavior is the same, though, albeit there are more Crawlers so they tend to favor rushing and swarming more.
I can continue, but again, the point is that the video creator is just incorrect when they talk about a lack of tactics and counter-play. It's there, they just didn't care to find it.
38:17 ur actually given 2 hornets , u mustve missed em even tho u literally drive toward em. technically u get a tank, warthogs & mongeese if u keep em on the drive down to the scarabs.
Nice retrospective!!! Man I loved how your perspectives were way more objective than any other retrospectives I have seen, bro, the way you talk about halo 4 and 5 was incredible, being extremely fair with its flaws and its shining moments, I'm all up to hear what you think about infinite, awesome quality content dude!!!!!
I agree. Great work.
ODST's soundtrack is literally angelic, god damn
Coming back to this after playing through Halo Infinite, a lot of my possible positives from 5’s story just… fall away. It’s a real shame, as I’m pretty sure I’m the only person I know who was willing to defend 5, but after Infinite’s campaign I really can’t justify some, if any, of the points I had in defense of it originally.
Man, I really appreciate the amount of work that goes into all of your videos. I don't really play video games very much anymore because of life, but Halo 3 was the first one that I really got into with my friends and I will forever be nostalgic about it. I can see that you put a ton of thought into your points about the gameplay and story, and I think you really nailed it on every account. You are also an excellent speaker and it makes these a pleasure to listen to. Thank you!
Great video. At first I balked at the length, but I actually really enjoyed it a few minutes in. More like this please. ❤️
I didn't have xbox live till about 2015. But I played Halo 3 since it came out, just playing the campaign, over and over and over, with my brother. We'd go into forge or FFA and fool around sometimes, yeah, but, it was usually almost always the campaign.I was little, so, I sucked at fighting actual people.
But, I was entertained with just Halo 3's campaign, for 8 years. 8, years.
That's gotta mean something.
This video made me love Halo even more.
Never played a halo game in my life (playstation guy) but I definitely respect it as a top tier game franchise.
Great stuff man. Just the video I was looking for. I’ve always been a fan of the series but never played it much. As a sci fan fan I just love the universe of the games. I’ve played reach, ODST, 3 and 4 but it’s been a decade +. Thanks to Infinite coming out, I caught the Halo Bug again. I got the MCC and Halo 5 and have been playing through each campaign. It’s been a blast. Halo CE really holds up but it started to drag and I was just ready to be done fighting flood at the end. I would argue Halo 1-3 has one of the best sci fi military stories in all of fiction. When I finish Halo 4 and 5 I’ll go check out Infinite and jump back into some multiplayer FPS for the first time in long time.
Halo is definitely one of my top favorite franchises. I am a very new person in the Halo community I first played CE two years ago. My favorite of the games is Reach and Halo 3 is my favorite of the trilogy / main story games. I love the story of Halo Wars 1 and 2. I liked Halo 4 but not as much as the Bungie Halos. I never played 5 but to me its not a bad game its just not a good Halo game. And Infinite was great it gave me nostalgia from CE and 3. Halo is just an amazing game and it has an incredible universe.
I for one am so glad the modding community is keeping Halo alive!
One of best halo summary on YT. Got exactly saame thoughts on plot cuts, fight ,weapon and figt feelings etc. Amzing job !
I would love to see the video of you playing through the covenant. How in the world, in this incredibly detailed video, did you miss the tank, the first gauss hog AND the hornets while ALSO not hijacking the wraith or any of the prowlers on your way to the 2 scarabs fight? I’m not even complaining, I’m just very surprised and I think it’s funny
It's nice that you were able to talk about Halo 5's faults without completely shitting on the game and it's story. I know it has it's faults, but I still liked Halo 5's story. I thought it had it's moments that were pretty good. And I love how it expanded on the Sangeheili more. One of my gripes with the Bungie era was that they kinda shafted the elites after Halo 2. So 343 trying to fix that was legitimately nice.
This is just my opinion though. I understand if people think differently, let's all be civil here.
call me old fashioned or nostalgic, but in my eyes every Halo game Bungie made was perfect, not just the gameplay but also the story and the music
I really miss the feeling of playing these for the first time (up until reach at least) nothing could ever top that. Even going back recently to replay them is amazing. I might have to do it again on MCC.
I really liked halo 4 and reach . I think that if you mod them they can be improved very well. Halo reach evolved fixed a lot of the sandbox problems and many halo 4 mods add the plasma rifle back and make prothethans fun to fight
Some fun things about Noble Six if anyone who hasn't sacrificed hours on top of hours to the extended Halo Lore.
First, there's a decent chunk of people who think Noble Six could have been a headhunter: a member of an elite rank of special ops spartans who preformed assasinations and general top-secret objectives behind enemy lines. Something of note is that headhunters worked in pairs, however Six most likely worked alone even then, furthering his role as a lone wolf.
Second, Noble Six is one of two humans to ever have been granted the rating of "hyper lethal". The other to be given this rating was none other than the Master Chief himself with all of his exploits concerning the halo rings and the Prophets. This means that Six accomplished as the Chief did, but from the shadows. While this is most likely an afterthought unrelated to the original vision of Reach's story and an attempt to relate Six to the Chief, it moreso highlights just how powerful ONI and its operatives are- something that is built up by the extended lore and promotion for Halo 5 but, as we all know, is executed horribly and completely dropped after 343 saw how badly they screwed up the idea. Whether the failure of the exploration of ONI's questionable morals and secrecy can is to be attributed to outside meddling (my personal belief considering the juxtaposition of the promotion and final product for Halo 5) or 343's incompetence, it's sad to see such an interesting idea nearly ret-conned.
Back to Noble Six, he brings up the question of why Noble doesn't try to escape at the end of Reach and explains the futility of attempting to do so. However, I disagree with that being the main idea of Lone Wolf. It's true that Six needed to cover the Pillar of Autumn, leaving him no way of getting off planet, but I think Six would have stayed on Reach regardless. Throughout the game, we are supposed to insert ourselves into the story via Noble Six. However, this isn't completely true, as Six isn't a truly silent protagonist which grants him character and personality for him to call his own. As the game focuses on the members of Noble team, Lone Wolf focuses on Noble Six. The entire mission is the game's way of developing Six as a character as he dies not only buying time for the Pillar of Autumn but dying on Reach as a symbol of humanity's strength. Noble Six dies on Reach because, after everything he's done up until this point, I doubt he would be able to just leave Reach without doing everything physically possible to fight back the covenant. It's nice to see that attatchment between a spartan and their home, and is comparable to halo 4's theme of humanizing the spartans.
Unlike most of Bungie's Halo games, Reach and ODST focus much more on the characters as people, with much more effort being placed on tone and personality.
its kinda funny listening to how HALO CE is dated... when in fact it is the backbone of most modern FPS ... the difference is the transition from halo as the most popular fps to call of duty (which modern warfare is the thing that drag it back up to relevance when call of duty 3 failed to do anything but that due to the lackluster story)
Crazy to think you’re in your 20’s and were born when halo was released. Man I’m gettin old. I was one of the lucky few whose father was nerdy enough and well connected enough (he had a buddy who was high ranking developer at Microsoft) to secure an OG Xbox on launch day. I’ll never forget playing halo/xbox on launch day Nov 15 2001. It was such an insane step forward from N64. Shortly afterwards I became one of the coolest kids in my fourth grade class once people found out I had it. It was elusive back then everyone claimed to have played it with their cousins friend of a friend but not many had it themselves yet. Many people didn’t even know what an Xbox was for quite some time after launch. Eventually everyone got on the halo train as the console became more available and my middle school years were full of halo lan parties-which were required back then bc halo CE didn’t have Xbox live. Playing four v four on two tv’s split screen in nearby rooms with a bunch of your buddies really was somethin else. Those early 2000’s late 90’s video gaming days just hit different.
Hold up. The dual scarab fight you also can get hornets on the top of the ridge. Not just a mongoose or enemy vehicles.
Halo 5s gameplay was also highly criticized for not feeling like halo and I’m sorry but that Locke chief fight wasn’t choreographed well. It was like 2 80 year olds fighting over the last pudding. Certainly didn’t feel like super soldiers at all.
Halo 3s mission The Covenant, during the scarab fight you are given a Scorpion and not one but two falcon’s, you just missed them cause you speedran past them (and a gauss hog)
I’d like to think the rest of Osiris didn’t want to capture chief if they didn’t have to. Unlike Locke
Watching this brought me ptsd of beating all of these on legendary I spent a whole day on the halo 2 mission 1
Great video but I think you need to bring to light how revolutionary the shields in CE and the online multiplayer in 2. Halo was probably the second most influential fps in the industry(1st being doom). Also reach was very very controversial back then and its multiplayer was effected so much by the changes that the community retention looked like the end of halo. Its still regarded by much of the fanbase as the game that killed halo.
Tell me how reach killed halo and not 5 or even infinite, reach gave halo and 343 an absolute clean slate to move on from the past and carve their own destiny into halo but even now they continue to attempt to capture what Bungie had captured and even deny it to themselves
What adds to all of the lore to reach with the zealots purposely hunting noble six and other Spartans is the massive amount of lore in the books and specifically "silent storm".
Essentially while John 117 is still 15 with Fred Kelly, Kurt and others has multiple instances of sneaking onto covenant ships and destroying them from the inside from a new "razor" prowler class frigate
From there, long story short, insurrectionists were feeding covenant data to destroy the UNSC. At this time they had only taken harvest and a couple of other outer UNSC colonies. And none of the insurrectionist held planets.
So assuming that they could broker a peace, they gave information on troop movements through a spy, as well as docs for the mjolnir Armor.
Through these attempts they capture some ODSTs from the Black Dagger unit that was attached to the Spartans for this mission (this is also where Avery Johnson first meets. Chief who at the time was a petty officer, and later gets his master chief rank in this book)
All of this comes to a head when they discover a nav unit on a covenant ship. Dr. Halsey the creator of the Spartan 2 program, uses this to determine where the supply station of the covenant is.
They then make a suicide mission to that supply station to take it down. Upon which is the shipmaster who realizing this goes back to defend the supply station.
During all of this a shadow sword (an elite bloodline feared and respected pretty much by all covenant. Essentially embodying honor even more so than the standard sangheili or elite) has essentially been pitted against politics and is hindered from doing what he thinks is the most important reason for them being there, which is to get info on the Spartans. As at this time they have never captured a body of a Spartan or even seen one die.
After the destruction of the outpost station, and landing on a forerunner world, The information is then passed on from the shipmaster to the greater covenant.
This essentially sparks multi issues. One being the sangheili is faced with the fact that a human has bested multiple sangheili as well as brutes. Two being this armor that is supposedly much greater than their own.
From this point forward in the lore The Spartans are seen as the only threat. Especially from sangheili command. Which considering their strict adherence to honor makes sense.
Finding a class of warrior that surpasses their own Even with the gifts of the prophets is more troubling, especially coupled with the fact that this was the first species that was never tried to negotiate with. (due to the lore from harvest. Where brutes land on the first planet, thinking that it was covered in forerunner artifacts due to a sensor they have that can detect them, but ultimately not understanding that the people are what was setting it off, due to humanities link to forerunners, which sets off the current three archbishops to overthrow the old age and the current leadership to hide the fact that they know the truth of what humanity is and why they have to be exterminated.)
TL;DR: essentially Spartans are being hunted as a primary threat, due to sangheili culture, and political issues within the covenant. And this is really only explained in the books.
Interesting retrospective, as someone who started some of their earliest gaming memories with the beginning of this franchise and playing almost all of them except 5 (why won’t they bring it to PC already???) it was very refreshing listening to someone with a different view and experience of the series. Great editing and well thought out analysis of each entry made this very enjoyable to watch all the way through in one sitting. Sub!💚
Sorry to nitpick, but straight away you got a few things wrong. Halo originally was going to be a Sci Fi RTS inspired by their previous series Myth The Fallen Lord's, which was already an RTS game. It was not based on Marathon really. Marty was already an employee as well since he worked on the whole Myth series music and sound before this project.
Also, Bungie didn't have a contract they could just terminate. They were a Microsoft studio, owned by Microsoft and not a separate company. They had to negotiate a deal and write up a contract, which was essentially that they would separate and then make 2 more games and share the profit. They finished the requirements and we're completely free after Reach, although they were doing some work on Destiny since after Halo 3.
343 are the worst thing to ever happen to halo, they’re the real heretics. I will never forgive them for what they did to my favorite series
I am so happy with your take on halo 5, you’re able to see it’s strong points while still acknowledging it’s downsides. From what I can tell most people in our age group (those of us who were born around halo ce) have similar stances on these games.
I was surprised by your explanation of where 343 industries came from, but it's true. When I was living through it, the story was spun like 343 was basically the folks at Bungie who didn't want to leave. (Frank O' Connor?) The Wikipedia article and this video don't emphasize it the same way and it really changes how one might look at what 343 studios is.
This was a beautiful video. It feels great knowing there are people who care just as much about halo as I do.
The way you talked about Halo Reach almost made me forget how much I didn't enjoy that game. In my opinion, the story of Reach felt like a quick way for Bungie to get out of their deal with Microsoft. Reach itself had an entire book written about it, so the world and scenario was already established with an ending that was both predetermined and cornered into an ending that couldn't make an impact in the universe. In other words, it's safe. I don't think they did a bad job per se, however it didn't add anything to the franchise from a story perspective. I didn't enjoy ODST either, but the perspective it provided was unique and worthwhile.
I've been replaying all the games in the MCC and man I love Reach's story.
This seems more a recap than a retrospective.
Very well done! Halo brought alot of folks together and gave us alot of memories that we can look back fondly of. Won't lie though, watching Locke trying to fight Chief was one of the funniest, if not dumbest, things to come out of this game. All in all, we all carry halo forward as a treasure. Good job on explaining everything🙏🏾💪🏾👌🏾
I played Reach for the first time earlier this year....during the Afghanistan pull out. I was watching people desperately trying to escape on TV while helping people escape on Reach. It was sobering but empowering at the same time and I nearly burst into tears at a few points as what I was playing resembled what was happening in real life. At least in the game I could kill the bad guys and protect people so it helped alleviate the frustration and horror I was seeing in real life.
Let's Go Brandon.
holy shit the soy in this comment
I'm learning their are two trains: New school (25 years minus) who grew up on advanced movement and Old school (25 plus) who grew up when halo defined the controller. The old school grew as the capacity of consoles grew and the abilities in game grew. The old school also (for Halo), grew with the HYPE train that was halo and its progression to 2 and 3 and ODST (controversy of DLC vs full game) and Reach changing (or 'modifying') mechanics. Lore was spread wide and far by word of mouth because everyone was talking about it and internet was more bare bones/used for other things. So to play the games now, is different for new players and you get what you're given in game. This is where nostalgia can be a bit heavy for us. 343i changed what we were given further than reach did. They skipped bits and lore was left out and it hasn't really wrapped any of its stories up, least in a way we care about. Really what it did was muddied our nostalgia.
Im 17 and hate the newer games. Its not all of us XD
Infinite was AWESOME though
"I hope halo infinite will continue this storyline..." They in fact would not continue this storyline
I’ve been a PlayStation fan from the jump, but even I have an admiration and appreciation of the first three Halo games. They’re absolute classics and gaming treasures.
Halo 5's Locke vs Chief fist fight was widely considered awful by fans. It's by no means reflective of the lore speed and strength of any Spartan II, let alone Master Chief himself. The fight looked like an amateur judo fight, and the way Chief stumbles makes him look like a drunk yobbo. It was fine for two regular humans fighting, but these are super soldiers, and Master Chief in particular is even more enhanced than Locke is. The fight should have looked closer to that you'd see in Marvel movie, rather than a amateur clip from two drunk guys fighting at the pub.
Wow…simply, wow. I almost never feel compelled to comment but your work here was so good I needed to make sure you heard. Absolutely, fantastic job. The effort and detail you went into for research, your commentary about storyline, and in game battle dynamics and how they changed from game to game, spot on. I’m really impressed. You’re a beast man, and a Spartan if ever there was one when it comes to your content. Bravo, dude. I’m a subscriber for life. Can’t wait for your future videos.
Feel like you were doing a good job on being pretty unbiased till you got to Reach lol, no mention of how controversial some of the gameplay additions were or how many didn't actually enjoy the story. I love Reach too but it just seemed off how you broke down what upset people in the other games but never talked about it for Reach.
I feel with certain retrospectives and players you have two types of people: Those that love the old gameplay, and those that want advanced movement. Most oldies, started with Halo as teens when it came out. The newer generation didn't start with Halo defining control setups and limited game ability due to consoles.
The retrospective doesn't talk about it being a problem, because that is the system they like.
armor lock and sprint have been talked to death. Im just glad we didnt get a 30 minute talk down about how halo 4 and 5 are well writtten if you read the comics, books, and ignore the earlier games implications like most retrospectives do.
some people (myself included) didnt think sprint or jetpacks or any of that was bad, it just felt like an upgrade to halo 3s deployable system. I only learned it was controversial in the last 3 years when it was being added to MCC and everyone went to do a retrospective about why they hated halo reach back in the day.
I respect your view,one thing that is very hard too experience is seeing this game in real time there was no game like it before and THE FLOOD nothing on the box art nothing on the trailers just pure twist
Halo 4 was a chore on Legendary
It was a chore in general
It was music I think that made it unforgettable. Like the music playing during the missions made it feel like you were doing something heroic