No not a good game.. a fantastic game.. at least the first 3 and reach are, I personally love infinite too but I can see why it’s not quite up there with the bungie halos
Ok you got me with the clickbait title and then I watched the whole thing because of your accent. Seriously, nice job. You’re good (and correct of course). Also, in 2001 while making Halo CE I sang a little song that went Shiny, and bumpy, and bursting with love”. You should ask me about it sometime
I'd say the real silver lining when you mentioned growing up without Halo is that you skipped out the pain of seeing your favorite franchise get absolutely dragged to the mud and mismanaged to hell and back by MS.
You don’t focus on what you have now, you focus on what you had then and you take inspiration from it. If you think it’s not that simple of a solution, it works on many different things and it’s happened to me more than once. My Gun Hobby is an example of that, even if it has nothing to do with Halo.
@@diplexnormal3353A bit of an extreme example, but I'm certain that the people confined in specific German facilities about 80 ish years ago would very much disagree with your take. We USED to not be starving unlike now, THAT'S what REALLY matters.
@ obviously he was talking about remembering the good things you had and he wasnt talking about the literal worst part of your life and maybe even modern history?
@@diplexnormal3353 I agree, my dream is to become a gamedev and I’d like to make a Halo-like game. If we can have a whole boomer shooter category why not a Halo-like one?
Bless you for also mentioning Michael Salvatori... he's left out far too often. His percussion is fire, and he came up with more bangers than you'd imagine - pretty sure A Walk in the Woods, for example, was his baby.
I was in 10th grade when Halo 3 came out. Seems like half the school, including myself, skipped that day. I remember the day after one if the girls in my class said,"hey look, all the boys are back from their video game." Great times
Never touched a halo game until 2021. Just moved, living in a new place alone had no family or friends. It blew. I got heavy into drinking and I was generally depressed. Then I went and got an xbox and bought MCC within that same day. And for me, Halo was like the friend that was there for me when there was no one else. I was so engrossed with its campaigns and wanting to see what happens next that I kinda fell out of my rutt a bit and gave me the inspiration to start changing my life. I know to a lot of people Halo was their childhood, but to me it was a literal saviour. Thanks for the times bungie. Awesome video.
This brought me back. I was homeless, living in a car when Halo came out. I had an X-box hooked up to a portable monitor playing off a deep cycle battery and played through the campaign in every way imaginable. That game kept me sane.
@@ShovelFighterAC I feel like in those cases it might be unnaturally accelerated because of how violently short term that stuff is. Inaccessible (and maybe even superior) versions of the game paired with the initial excitement of their release and where people haven't become sweaty yet has gotta be some kind of 7x combo heavy attack nostalgia generation
without nostalgia, halo is: -well thought out and well balanced singleplayer campaign that offers fair challenges on all difficulty levels -creatively written and performed music that enhances the experience -epic story that leaves you wanting more from the universe you've come to know -locations that simply ooze character and artistic intent to be explored I can't really speak to the multiplayer because I didn't experience any of it originally so yeah.
This may sound weird, but I really appreciate you mentioning that it offers a fair challenge on all difficulty levels. I had been gas lit by some ideas within the community into thinking that only heroic or legendary were the most legitimate difficulties. in other words, if you played on normal or easy you are not having a genuine halo experience. for the first time I was able to play through the entire original trilogy, and I did so uneasy and normal. And it felt very fair and enjoyable.
@CT-316 The reason for that is because in the games the unsc are hopelessly outmatched by the covenant so picking a harder difficulty helps the feeling of the games. For me, the ideal difficulty is heroic as on some halo campaigns legendary can be annoying aka jackal snipers or ultra elites.
Halo 3's multiplayer definitely feels a little bit outdated but it's still better built than most modern multiplayer games today. Same with 2, Reach, and yes, even 4.
@@CT-316 The higher difficulties in Halo are less about fairness and more about them being a rite of passage. When you pick a harder difficulty, you're doing a self skill check that shows whether you're able to live up to the difficulty's title or not. You can enjoy mowing down your foes in lower difficulties _as you rightfully should,_ but it won't be as satisfying as finishing a level in Legendary.
@@Will-fr9hg Yep. tbh it's less necessary in MCC since you can just crank your FOV to 90+ even on console and get the best of both words, but in the original releases with ~70 FOV it was a smart compromise.
Not specifically the skybox, but just so the player can see more above them. This was a good decision because first person games limit your vision, and gamers do not look up. Which is important in a game like Halo with verticality to its map design. It's not just the crosshairs and weapon model that's lower, it's the camera being raised up.
@@BalthasarGelt-x2d those two things aren't the reason for each other. Your first person POV doesn't correlate with where the bullets come out of. I can set the weapon offset models to be completely off screen to the bottom right and it'll still come out of the same place wherever Bungie wants it exactly.
best multiplayer worst campaign. outside of halo 2/3 custom games which were a product of the times which were actually the best multiplayer experience, but cannot and will not exist ever again so i cant count it
@@EggsOverSteezy to be fair with mcc we can have custom games with the old maps. The issue is the community/ most people are older and got jobs or drifted apart or other shit, so like getting a proper party of homies is hard. then you have the server browser which is decent, but barely anyone mics up which kills the party-chat aspect and you're limited to the maps/gametypes because of the "variants" instead of just having the game end and then having host switch the map and gametype. point being you can still kind of experience it, but it's definitely far from its prime especially with a large part of it being the community around it but that community has largely moved on.
To be fair, Keyes was already dead by the time Chief and Cortana came around to take his implants. He was part of the Gravemind at that point, no coming back from that.
If you ever want to experience some of that old Halo era nostalgia, you should watch some machinimas from back in the day. The early Red vs Blue seasons, "Gameplay may change during online play" by Obie Brown, and "HMV Hell" by imSuck. It might seem weird, but these videos and others like them are just as much apart of the Halo era as the games were. Its like opening up a timecapsule and seeing what the Halo community was like back then.
Also, thank for seeing the beauty in CE’s original graphics and shunning the Anniversary edition like everyone should. Too many first timers make videos where they only play the new graphics by default, not realizing they are robbing themselves of the intended experience
I was playing through CE recently, and I was blown away by the visuals, especially now that they've been mostly fixed on MCC. Switching to Anniversary graphics is such a stark contrast, you have so many levels that are dark and foreboding, forcing you to use your torch and then you change to CEA graphics and the entire room is lit up like with pulsating neon lights, it's incredibly jarring. I do think a genuine remaster like we go with Halo 2 Anniversary could work, but you really need to maintain the aesthetics and colour palate.
My girlfriend is not a gamer. Never played an fps in her life. I got her to play Halo CE on my pc. I helped her get used to the controls, and how each gun shoots. By the time she got done with pillar of Autumn, she loved it so much that she got disappointed that we didn't have time to play anything else
Unfortunately I haven’t played any of the halo games yet so I have to click off but watching the first few minutes I can tell I’ll have to come back to this video once I beat them
It's really good. I'd recommend making sure to play in release order though. MCC lists Reach first since its a prequel, but that was actually the final Bungie game. imo the story of Reach is a lot more impactful when you've got the full context of the previous games behind it.
@@yewtewbstew547 I actually did play the games but it was well over 10 years ago so I forget everything and I've been meaning to replay them. Unfortunately the only thing I remember was the ending to reach, it was so good and yet so sad.
I love when youtube actually shows me something relevant to my interests. Great video, it's cool to hear a different perspective on the series, because I know mine is absolutely rife with nostalgia.
I wasn't nostalgic for Halo, I started playing it near the middle of last year from my friend who gave me a copy of the old PC port of Halo 1 OG. That game was stupidly fun for something so old, I was blown by all the small touches in there, like, can you believe when I got lost in the cliffs from my Marines, I found them by seeing the BULLET SHELLS rolling between the rocks? I followed them and boom, found em.
14:38 Marty (one of the two dudes behind OG Halo music) famously said how Microsoft gave Bungie pushback when they wanted to create Forge and Theater mode for Halo 3. They failed to see how it would generate revenue. Ended up being the most innovative form of replayability for Halo, a means of revenue growth that shareholders and number crunchers simply cannot understand. Nowadays, it doesn't seem like there's any pushback on Microsoft's sentiment, and we saw definitive proof of that when the Halo Digsite members had a meeting with Microsoft and were directly told that when they got all that coverage for their H2 E3 demo recreation, it wasn't really all that impressive, despite the fact that it was *objectively a sign that there is still a massive sleeper audience of Bungie Halo fans waiting for Bungie Halo content.* Could've been a way to do MCC DLC, a truly healthy way to monetize that game and continue its production, but because it isn't GTA microtransaction money, they will never even bother.
I saw this title and thumbnail and was ready to put my trusty "Halo Defender" cap on, then I noticed you using the Halo Chapter titles per section and I was like: "Oh, hold on, this guy loved the games"
This is how I felt playing Zelda for the first time in ~2017 “why do I feel so much nostalgia for a game and series I’ve literally never played before?”
I found that kind of Zelda boring and tedious AF. I miss how Zelda was before Breath Of The Wild came out and replaced actual game variety with the same repetitive and monotone nonsense. Same reason why i dislike Halo Infinite so much and i miss Halo games like Halo 3.
I grew up playing Halo, so it's been interesting watching younger people pick up the old games. For me, Halo is now just a collection of fond memories from a bygone era of gaming. The novelty of XBOX multiplayer, LAN parties, and massive midnight releases are gone, but the games themselves remain (mostly). So it's bittersweet to see that the Bungie games still hold up - even without the hype, 2000s culture, or nostalgia. Maybe someday a group of passionate, creative people will make Halo cool again, but it won't be from Microsoft.
This man's editing is above and fucking beyond. He doesn't just put himself in the game with a greenscreen but he goes the extra mile to try to match the lighting so it fits in even better
0:13 it’s so funny you say this because my mom used to work all the time while my dad was deployed, so needless to say, coming home from school and playing Halo was my pastime activity with my brother. My mom told me here recently that “Halo was your babysitter.” Dammit if she ain’t right about that one.
I went into this video like “man this guy is not going to understand that halo without nostalgia is still a masterpiece with a great story, soundtrack and world building” but I’m very happy how he told the story of halo and especially bungies halo.
I love ODST, but yes Mombasa Streets are padding. They did it INCREDIBLY well, but it is padding. They took a feature that would have destroyed their game and turned it into THE game. And this was Bungie's B team. Everyone else was making Reach and Destiny. That has to be a testament to what Bungie could do.
As a life-long Halo fan, who is very blinded by nostalgia, this was an amazing review. I'm always glad to see people genuinely appreciate the Bungie Halo's. You really captured what they mean to those who loved them, and love them to this day. The Bungie Halo days were lightining in a bottle that we will never see again in gaming.
I sick of all the people I encounter who say "Oh you just have nostalgia goggles those games aren't that good and only good for their time" No, they're good because they were good fucking games lmao.
17:37 back when Halo Reach released, generally, we all "knew" Chief was the last spartan so we knew what would happen. In lore there we other surviving Spartans but as far as ppl just playing the games knew, chief was it, the last hope
@@BalthasarGelt-x2d Even then it's not quite the same - MCC changed various things that can serve to make the experience worse overall, but most importantly, we aren't living in that era anymore. Maybe we could again if we could get an actually good new Halo game that caught on, but 343 have proven to be utterly incapable of that.
@@BonkIsYoGod I'll fully credit Halo 4 with doing the Chief/Cortana story right, it really says a lot that, as I recall it, they effectively killed off Cortana and fans actually accepted that outcome because it was delivered well narratively speaking.
@@ThiefofCrystals Of course followed by the absolutely baffling decision to undo that in 5 and then going down an even more ridiculous path of a rogue chief saving his now 'undead' AI lover that has gone bonkers while also becoming AI god...despite the crazy being why she chose to sacrifice herself, and in the process completely undoing the plot and emotional weight of 4... and then later on attempting to largely ignore what happened in 5 for infinite... genius storytelling.
I played Halo 1 and 2 so much back in the day as a small nerdy child, and being there in person for the Halo 3 midnight release was a once in a life time experience, that words cant describe. The countless hours, staying up all night with the boys grinding for that Hayabusa armor, watching a little RUclipsr called penguinz0 (Yes, Moist Critikal made a Halo 3 all Skull location RUclips video). These are memories I will always remember... We all went our separate ways but I will never forget their names and the countless hours we spent on Halo 3 together. Those are the Memories that will last a lifetime and some I will never forget. Thank you Halo
19:32 your point about skyboxes are true. i often find myself appreciating a lot of halo reaches skyboxses and soaking in the atmosphere laid before my eyes
The high charity sky box in halo 2 is breathtaking. I sit there for a few minutes and appreciate it every time I play. Especially paired with that mythical enchanting music. I sit and wonder what’s going on down below and try to grasp how big the city is. And that’s just an indoor city. The outside skyboxes are incredible too like the sacred icon sky in halo 2 (whichever the first of those two missions were.). I’ll start the mission and just stand there staring for a bit.
Halo with no nostalgia, now is nothing but before the absolute revolution of first person shooters and the successful introduction to those in consoles (I know goldeneye and perfect dark and medal of honor were before but those did not translate very well in the console landscape) basically there is no Cod without halo
Objectively Halo 2 has some of the best fucking dialogue in any media. I think we could absolutely just type out the entire dialogue script in the comments and you would be able to visualise what specific part in the story you are currently at.
You got me pretty good with the title and thumbnail but it's so interesting seeing the perspective of someone who never played Halo since Halo was my first FPS ever. I'm sincerely jealous of the ability to experience those games for the first time again
I've played the whole franchise back when the MCC released on Steam and i had so much fun it's insane. I really wanted to try Halo back in the 7th gen but couldn't because i didn't have the ps3 or xbox 360, so knowing this my girlfriend bought MCC as a gift. That was the last time i was the last time that i was so foccused on a game/franchise even though not experiencing it in the early days, that's the power of Halo to you.
One of the great things about Bungie Halos story is that while you can basically ignore it and have a good time, all you have to do is pay attention to see the good story and lore they put into it.
halo really is a special game to me, i remember when i was young in 2010 my dad got an xbox original and we played halo CE campaign co-op. It is a memory i wont forget and it was before my parents had split up. ive also replayed the classic halo campaigns like 5 times.
This video was me with the Mass Effect series. I can still play the trilogy and get emotional EVERY TIME even when I never grew up with the games/played it when it came out.
You’re somewhat backwards on ODST. It was originally supposed to be a DLC for Halo 3, but they ended up putting so much content into it that they ended up releasing it as a entire independent game. I know you said you don’t care but you can find videos of Marty talking about how they kinda wanted to have a noire style detective thing in a “dead” city, and that’s the reason why they have the free roam part, not for padding. Fucking heretic doubting Marty himself, the Prophets will have your head for this. Great video btw, subbed.
The halo multiplayer scene still exists, its just a lot smaller and isnt on couches but is rather hidden away in various discord servers, but it is very much alive
If you watch one of the terminals, which for CE and 2 I would suggest you do because they are so amazing, it goes into detail about whats happening to keys and essentially why we have to smash his brains. Basically so the flood doesn't get information on humanity.
Halos special feel is also the aesthetic it sets which I like to call sci-fi mysticism. The way everyone sees the Master Chief as a messiah or a demon , the covenants religious fanaticism, the choirs and orchestral tones to its music and the mystery of the forerunners. For a sci fi setting it pulls heavily on mysticism and religion.
Good video! Having played the original three, enjoying Arbiter's part a lot, ODST after, Reach being an excellent send-off... and then barely remembering what happened in Halo 4 from how it all blurred together, never even bothered with 5 or Infinite aside from some gameplay footage and AI-AI combat videos. As others mention, the mixture of space-opera, fantasy, mysticism with humanity gritting it's teeth while struggling with it's new allies, a unique aesthetic... and we have Unreal footage that barely looks like Halo aside from the mandatory Forerunner building added in to remind us it's Halo. "ODST hub area is just padding." Yes, and I still enjoyed it regardless, roving combat encounters felt different at the time, a novelty, ODST is also the first game to have Firefight which was fun but difficult.
Man, I'm so glad to hear that it isn't just rose colored glasses that shapes my view of Halo. Glad to hear it's still gripping the young'uns like it used to.
Well tbf Halo 3 came out in the last year I was ever truely happy, 2007. Ever since 08 I’ve been battling pain, loss, depression, heartbreak etc So yeah….if I could go back to that year playing Halo 3 with my friends….I would…things were simple and fun.
Halo without nostalgia is: It's an awesome and yet dark/tragic world about humans and aliens killing each other with a sprinkling of interesting sub plots and character that have made their way into the public eye as some if the most badass and horrifying characters we seen. With famous iconic dialogue that has been quoted so many times that they've become iconic memes and have birthed community that is so fracking talented that they outdo the devs themselves at crafting a more satisfying experience for us fans. Honorable mentions for creators: Sodaz animations, Badlaxe animations, halovfx, slipspace entertainment, sassy crocodile, and installation 00.
Dude it’s so cool to me that halo has had such a massive impact on the lives of millions that here we are 20 years later making functional recreations of the weapons and armors from the games like installation 00’s Spartan and ODST project
Chief did hesitate when he had to punch Keyes in the brain, Cortana had to gas him up. The way he shakes off the goo is kinda funny, but hes definitely not happy about it.
Halo 3 was my 2nd game after Command & Conquer G:ZH and to be honest, the Halo community will never be replicated. What people fail to take into account when talking about shooters from 2005-2012 is that the US military was running a psyop to increase recruitment. US military recruiters would go into xboxlive game chat and convince young people to join the armed forces. There are declassified documents on this and with the game they released called America's Army: Proving Grounds. What most people don't talk about is the clan community. Clans would recruit by sending messages to all recent players then do a military style drill course to make new recruits obey orders. Then clans would make custom maps with bases to defend and would engage in clan wars. Back in 2010, some clans had masses of over 1000 daily active members. After the psyop ended, some military stayed playing and after halo reach started losing popularity, the community that once was faded into groups of "just gamers" again
Man I freaking loved Halo 4. Sure the gameplay could've been better (especially on Legendary), but I totally understand why Steve Downes and Jen Taylor say that this game was their favorite to record for. The story, characters, the whole Forerunner aspect... The word amazing doesn't do it justice. The Chief finally becomes an actual well written character, 343i introduces Lasky which most of the fanbase loves. And then the Didact... man, the execution was flawless. But how they handled him AFTER Halo 4 is a disgrace. "Killing" him off in a crappy comic... Oh well, at least they redeemed themselves with Epitaph, which actually might be one of the best Halo books.
I hate Halo 4, especially because of the Forerunner aspect. Most weapons feel useless and the ammo is so limited. They also despawn fast. The artstyle is horrendous; it doesn't look or feel like Halo. And the biggest blow: turning the forerunners into aliens. This is the change I hate the most and why 343 Industries is the thing I hate the most in the world. In the Bungie games, forerunners are humans. This was alluded to during the whole OG trilogy and confirmed at the end of Halo 3. Then 343I changed the forerunners into aliens, ruining the story and lore of Halo.
The only thing I can give halo 4 is unlike the rest of 343’s catalogue at least it was a complete game. We had all the features of the previous games (except firefight became Spartan ops, so those just kinda equal out) brought over. All my problems with 4 are purely creative decisions.
@michaelguernsey1206 Halo 4 didn't have theater mode for campaign or spartan ops. It was only added recently to the MCC but the original game still doesn't have it.
He also forgot to mention the fact that back the entire multiplayer package for the OG games were completely unplayable because you needed to buy map packs which divided the humidity into the Haves and Have Nots
I wasn't allowed to play video games until i was 11, on my own atleast. I never got to experience peak halo 3 and reach. It pains me that the halos i grew up on was made by 343 who purposely ran the series into the ground.
No sir, thank you for this video, was such a good video to watch and listen to. Everything you said about halo (except odst) was directly on point. Hit me emotionally. Thank you and take care mrcasual.
I love Halo Infinite. While it definitely has flaws, I feel guilty holding those flaws against the game. The devs wanted to do so much more than what released, but the old 343 management was so terrible that their dreams could never be achieved. Most of the time, the different dev teams didn't even have good communication with each other, and then they were forced to shove in microtransactions and live service into a game that really wasn't built for that. But all of the shitty management was on top of the basic struggles of using the Slipspace engine, which is such an old spaghetti code mess that the contractors (who 343 relied way too heavily on) would only fully understand the engine by the time their contract was almost up. Not to mention, they had to make sure all of the game worked on the ORIGINAL XBOX ONE. Halo Infinite's development was such a dumpster fire that I can only help but feel bad for the devs whenever I look at Halo Infinite's flaws.
This is what weve been talking about for years, and its reassuring to hear this perspective from someone relatively new to the series. I went through a similer stage with the series when i was growing up, a little later than most around the late halo 4- early halo 5 era. I honestly felt the same way you did with infinite back when i was playing halo 4 with my best friend in couch coop. Regardless of it being halo specfic essay as well, im happy you got to enjoy a series you found at that point in your life, and then write, record, and post this awesome video essay. lets pray that we get a new halo game headed by those who love and understand the series, and you get to go and make a video on it.
It is rare that I resonate so much with a video, so I am going to write a lot, sorry: For someone who didn't grow up with Halo, you sure did capture the Nostalgia. The editing in this video is amazing. I love your use of "Epilogue". It was definitely one of the more emotional pieces in the soundtrack and it was one of my favorites growing up. I used to beat Halo 2 just to hear it in the credits. Halo CE is my favorite video game. I honestly think it is the best video game ever made. It just *feels* so _perfect_ every time I play it. The gameplay, the art, the music. It's so beautiful. Which is why I really relate to your concern. If there is no love in this remake, no appreciation for every little detail I adore about CE, why should they even bother? I know how unrealistic that sounds, but doesn't that reinforce the point? Why bother making a remake if it will probably not hold up to the original? I hope I am wrong to feel this way, but the past decade+ have really soured my opinion of 343i/Halo studios. I appreciate the acknowledgement that 343i has not quite measured up to Bungie when making Halo. Many people like to blame the community, rather than the company, for the franchise's struggles. It's funny thinking back on it, I was Nostalgic for Halo back in 2014.
Fellow Scot here. The algorithm randomly spat this out at me during a 1am study break (probably because of all the "Halo menu music with rain on window" mixes I've been seshing). Loved it, chucked yi a subscribe. I largely found hearing yours' and, from what I can tell, the current iteration of the community's perspective on the series, which is getting into the series after its peak was long passed, fascinating. My perspective is a wee bit drenched in the nostalgia sauce. I first played Halo just after 3 launched; I'd surprisingly gotten a 360 for Christmas '07, despite nagging my parents for more PS2 games all winter. A family friend took his copy round when our parents' had a Hogmanay house party. Couldn't get into it, I preferred CoD 4 (fighting words, once upon a time, although now understandable). A few months later, a friend from academy had a spare copy of 3 and gave it to me in the autumn of '08, then it all clicked. The co-op campaign, the matchmaking, the custom games, the Forge, the theater, the soundtrack, the characters... and most significantly, the community. It breaks my heart a little whenever I see people lambast what's left of the community these days as toxic or entitled and never happy about a single new thing in modern Halo. With the exception ODST, I haven't missed a single launch since I got into the series, and... it just really isn't the same anymore. Microsoft were so focused on so much other random non-gamer-friendly practices going into the Xbox One that they couldn't see how unique a thing they already had. The heyday of Halo was more or less born out of the Doom/Quake/Unreal Tournament heyday on PC in the mid-late 90s, but on consoles. The Bungie Favourites were an absolute staple, seeing those maps, game types, screenshots and clips that people had made and submitted every week (RIP bungie.net). RedvsBlue was an irreverent blast of '00s Internet and gamer culture humour that would help change the landscape of animation by the turn of the decade (RIP RoosterTeeth). The mythical LAN parties with their sheer number of pepperoni pizzas and bottles of Dew. I remember playing full lobbies in custom games or Forge on 3 when I was 14 with people I hadn't even met or spoken to before, and we all bonded over this incredible social phenomenon that, looking back, felt like it would last forever. The 343i games all have their respective qualities amongst a plethora of flaws, but watching them never learn from what worked, instead focusing on pivoting from backlash, hiring people that were openly not into Halo, systematically gut all those features that made the games stand out, and with each new game drag the series through the mud time after time was rough. I don't think it's possible for anyone who didn't experience the heyday as a teenager and watch the decline in real time can fully relate. I almost entirely skipped modern gaming in the 2010s, due to getting older, getting a job, discovering other interests outside of my wee town, drifting apart from all the friends I'd made in the matchmaking lobbies... but I got MCC at launch and for many years it was pretty much the only thing I played on the Xbox One for most of it's lifespan, 5 and Infinite were lucky to get two months out of me before being relegated to the eternal shelf or uninstalled. I still play MCC co-op and graft some of the weekly challenges at least a half dozen times a year with my last remaining homie from primary school, who I completed all the games pre-343 on Legendary with back in the day (except 2, though we finally got it done in the run-up to Infinite) and I've got 33 achievements left to go on MCC, but they're mostly multiplayer-related plus the LASOs and I don't see myself ever getting them with how the population is these days (RIP H2A multiplayer), plus I've turned into a bit of a social hermit online in the TikTok/Fortnite era. The Bungie era titles are still utterly incredible games that have stood the test of time in terms of gameplay, style, and substance, but looking back at the state the series, and indeed the community were in around 2010, from the perspective of 2025, I fear is a wound that will never fully heal. Were it so easy... Halo really is nostalgia, but it's nostalgia for a time when the most important thing after the gameplay was the community, not just for Halo but gaming in general.
I love the perspective you bring to the table here, and I'm glad the classics lived up to the hype. What you said about the music is so important to why these games are remembered, much in the same way Ace Combat is beloved, and it's why 4 and 5 fell flat. The OST for 4 has some absolutely stunning tracks, but it lacks cohesion and, most importantly, it lacks a single theme track with the correct structure for you to loop endlessly on a workout playlist. 117 is long, meandering, and has two endings. To Galaxy takes forever to spin up and lacks punch when it gets good. Arrival plays at the climax of the game and, to my knowledge, isn't actually an intended theme track. It also doesn't pace itself well on the released recording but it still has the most memorable melody of the whole OST. I don't remember any music from 5 and I only played Infinite multiplayer for a month. I know you were joking about the whole, make it for the 360 then release your own remaster, but genuinely I think that strategy would beat the brakes off whatever is going on in the industry now. The pursuit of infinite money needs to end, and they need to learn that niche success is infinitely better than mass market failure.
Great work! As a kid I went from playing single player games like Crash Bandicoot and Ratchet & Clank to then playing Halo: CE in 1st person as a souped up super soldier gunning down religous zealot aliens and the flood coming for you in the dark, completely in co-op with my best mate. Then waging battle against eachother in multiplayer split-screen. It was such a different experience and left such an impression on me. Very glad I got to experience all the hype and community when it was happening! It's cool hearing that the original games are still getting new fans checking out those older classics and hearing your own personal journey with them.
I don't think you were far off from when you said that some people spoke about Halo as if it raised them. I was 4 when Halo 1 came out and I played it religiously. I was on Xbox Live at 8 and was fully on Halo 3 making friends online of kids my age at 10. Both my parents worked so I had hours on Halo and on Xbox Live to myself alongside friends I made online and in classes. We all played Halo and grew up with it.
So regarding the ODST hub world/Padding thing. I'm not going to say you're WRONG exactly... But I WILL defend it as a brilliant use of limited resources full of amazing ideas that were... arguably a bit TOO subtle. For example, a few things that you're not likely to notice unless you're a turbo nerd who spends more than a healthy amount of time in the Rookie sections: Virgil is AMAZING. If you were collecting and listening to the audio logs (which incidentally tell an awesome story and have a bunch of hidden mechanics tied to them) you'll be familiar with the city Commandant AI, Virgil. Virgil is actually guiding the Rookie around really subtly. If you turn off the waypoints or just ignore them, Virgil is actually telling you where to go. Those roadblocks that pop up when you walk past? That's Virgil telling you you're going the wrong way. Ever see a billboard suddenly change to the Virgil symbol? Virgil is telling you something. Virgil will even guide you to groups of Engineers (those floating aliens that explode) to try to get you to rescue them. But it's so subtle and you have to learn what all the different signals mean, and people will struggle with that even if they don't just go "Fuck it I don't get it. I'm just following the waypoint." The other one is the audio logs. There's a few cool mechanics tied to them. For example, as you collect them, Virgil rewards you by unlocking hidden military caches throughout the city. If you ever walked past what looked like a garage door and it suddenly opened to reveal a mongoose and some weapon caches? That was Virgil saying thank you because you collected enough of the audio logs. There's honestly a bunch more but you get the point. So yeah, like... Unless you're going to be the kind of super invested, "i'm going to inspect every pixel of this game" type nerd for ODST, a lot of the stuff that makes it really cool is just not going to be noticed which is a shame. For me, the city sections are some of the best because of that borderline ARG level shit, but for the average person who just wants to play a fun game... Oh yeah, I ABSOLUTELY understand how those feel like (and functionally are) just filler padding.
12:05 every youtuber lets me down when they do this. They know the bad symptoms of current gaming but never acknowledge the root cause, dancing around it and pulling the gooner card. Other than that, nice commentary
There's a bit from another youtuber I feel nails the vibe for long time Halo fans. It's a line from DJ Peach Cobbler, he's a total whackjob, 9/10 would recommend. But he had similar experience with Halo in that he didn't grow up on Halo and went back to play it, to see what it was like without the Rose tinted glasses. His main point was that yeah Halo was good, for it's time. Many of things about the game were outdated and were a result of the limitations of the engine and hardware it was released for. And that the game industry, for better or worse, has drastically changed in a way that has forced Halo to change it's identity and that change has just done nothing but hurt the franchise. In the end he said something that's stuck with me. "I mean I get it. It must suck to grow up with a franchise with such a unique identity only for what made it special to later make it irrelevant in a changing world. I Imagine that sort of thing leaves a really sour taste in your mouth but, at the end of the day. How lucky you are to have had something that makes saying goodbye so hard." I will always love Halo, I grew up on it after all. But I've learned that it's probably time to let go. I'll keep an eye out for the next game but I will not be holding my breath.
Is Halo over rated? No, the Bungie era isn't over rated. Is it over hated? The Bungie era is over hated, but the 343/Halo studios literally CANNOT be over hated. There isn't enough hatred in the world to match what level of hatred there should be for 343/Halo studios era Halo.
@@tjpprojects7192 There's definitely plenty to hate of Bungie's era Halo, though. Implying that it isn't deserving of any hate is crazy, both Bungie and Microsoft made mistakes and decisions which negatively affected Halo overall.
@Brandon-d1c1b Hate is the WRONG word. Criticize yes, but hate? 99% of people who hate Halo hate Halo to hate Halo. They don't care about Halo aside from hating it. They don't care about improving it, they don't care about properly criticizing it, they don't care about Halo beyond their ability to hate simply Halo. Also, hating BUNGIE or hating MICROSOFT is different from hating HALO. Your kind of logic for hating Halo, whether you realize it or not, is victim blaming. The Halo games have no control over how they're made or by who they're made. I simply just don't like Halo 4, but I HATE 343/Halo studios. Hate the graper, not the grapee.
Thank you for making this video. It’s the community that keeps Halo alive now. I check on Halo every now and then and see what the community is up to. I’m happy to see people still talking about and appreciating halo for what it is.
I'm not sure what you're opinion is on strategy games, but the Halo Wars games are pretty good, very fun. It was the one of the three first halo games I got as a kid, the other two being 4 and Reach. Those gales have the most nostalgia for me, I know people don't like 4 much, and as you said it has its issues, but man playing it with my siblings was so fun. I especially enjoyed it's multi-player some of the most fun I ever had playing a multiplayer game ever. Reach of course gave me my first ever *emotion* in a game, to see the spartan I granded gear for and customize go through the story and eventually fall. It just works. And Wars is just a damn fun game, maybe it's becuase I like Command & Conquer but I really enjoy Halo in the strategy genre.
My favourite is Halo:Reach: I just find it infinitely replayable. The campaign has, in my opinion, the best representation of the covenant, especially the Elites which actually feel like equals (if not superiors) to the Spartans. It also has the best firefight mode too.
Honestly, it’s just nice to hear that it’s not just nostalgia. That the games were good not because I grew up with them but because the people making it cared. Looking forward to what you make next, be safe.
20:33 One of the many, many, issues with the Halo show was the fact it had generic music. I guess its a good thing considering how bad it was its better to not be associated with that dumpster fire.
yo i listened to this video on airpods, and i thoroughly enjoyed it without any visuals. your commentary was high quality enough to keep me invested without them. when i did look at my phone, i thought i clicked on a NakeyJakey video by accident. i obviously dont mind, but don’t be surprised if you get comments accusing you of ripping off NakeyJakey with the sitting-green-screen format. i think your style is unique enough to set you apart, but i recommend treading lightly on this path. excellent video. i enjoyed the fuck out of it while i smoked marlboro reds on a parking garage in -2°F temperatures (i know you are irish, trust me thats cock freezing temperatures). best of luck fella
So sorry to hear about your wife
She dead?
@@tommasocaccia9778hit by a Nissan Micra 😢
@@tommasocaccia9778brooo
What are you doing?
I'm gonna boot up Halo and finish the fight in her honour.
@@davedavidson8892 Gotta do a Warthog run in remembrance.
What is halo without nostalgia?
A good fucking game, that's what.
facts
No not a good game.. a fantastic game.. at least the first 3 and reach are, I personally love infinite too but I can see why it’s not quite up there with the bungie halos
@@bodacious117 Gameplay wise? Infinites a better game and a better halo then reach. As infinite basically plays like an evolved version of 3
Reach is… average
@@demo0831 no it doesn't. What the fuck?
Ok you got me with the clickbait title and then I watched the whole thing because of your accent.
Seriously, nice job. You’re good (and correct of course). Also, in 2001 while making Halo CE I sang a little song that went Shiny, and bumpy, and bursting with love”.
You should ask me about it sometime
Are you flirting with me Marty??
Based Marty himself.
I did the same thing with the accent lmao
Hi Marty
ya know a video is good if Marty appears from his slumber.
Marty comment makes any halo vid i find
I'd say the real silver lining when you mentioned growing up without Halo is that you skipped out the pain of seeing your favorite franchise get absolutely dragged to the mud and mismanaged to hell and back by MS.
You don’t focus on what you have now, you focus on what you had then and you take inspiration from it. If you think it’s not that simple of a solution, it works on many different things and it’s happened to me more than once. My Gun Hobby is an example of that, even if it has nothing to do with Halo.
@@diplexnormal3353A bit of an extreme example, but I'm certain that the people confined in specific German facilities about 80 ish years ago would very much disagree with your take. We USED to not be starving unlike now, THAT'S what REALLY matters.
@ obviously he was talking about remembering the good things you had and he wasnt talking about the literal worst part of your life and maybe even modern history?
@@diplexnormal3353 I agree, my dream is to become a gamedev and I’d like to make a Halo-like game. If we can have a whole boomer shooter category why not a Halo-like one?
very true chief
Bless you for also mentioning Michael Salvatori... he's left out far too often. His percussion is fire, and he came up with more bangers than you'd imagine - pretty sure A Walk in the Woods, for example, was his baby.
he crushed it
I was in 10th grade when Halo 3 came out.
Seems like half the school, including myself, skipped that day. I remember the day after one if the girls in my class said,"hey look, all the boys are back from their video game."
Great times
Never touched a halo game until 2021. Just moved, living in a new place alone had no family or friends. It blew. I got heavy into drinking and I was generally depressed. Then I went and got an xbox and bought MCC within that same day. And for me, Halo was like the friend that was there for me when there was no one else. I was so engrossed with its campaigns and wanting to see what happens next that I kinda fell out of my rutt a bit and gave me the inspiration to start changing my life. I know to a lot of people Halo was their childhood, but to me it was a literal saviour. Thanks for the times bungie. Awesome video.
Based af
I hope you played CE in the original graphics bro, that’s all I gotta say 🤷🏾♂️
Glad you are doing well man ❤
This brought me back. I was homeless, living in a car when Halo came out. I had an X-box hooked up to a portable monitor playing off a deep cycle battery and played through the campaign in every way imaginable. That game kept me sane.
"one day you'll be nostalgic for right now"
boy I hope you're wrong but I know you're absolutely right
nobody will be nostalgic for this hell
Honestly people are already nostalgic for Launch Fortnite, Apex and Warzone. OG PUBG, Vanilla Destiny etc.
@@ShovelFighterAC I feel like in those cases it might be unnaturally accelerated because of how violently short term that stuff is.
Inaccessible (and maybe even superior) versions of the game paired with the initial excitement of their release and where people haven't become sweaty yet has gotta be some kind of 7x combo heavy attack nostalgia generation
@@ShovelFighterACFeel like that’s because of how bad FPS games have gotten since 2019
without nostalgia, halo is:
-well thought out and well balanced singleplayer campaign that offers fair challenges on all difficulty levels
-creatively written and performed music that enhances the experience
-epic story that leaves you wanting more from the universe you've come to know
-locations that simply ooze character and artistic intent to be explored
I can't really speak to the multiplayer because I didn't experience any of it originally so yeah.
This may sound weird, but I really appreciate you mentioning that it offers a fair challenge on all difficulty levels. I had been gas lit by some ideas within the community into thinking that only heroic or legendary were the most legitimate difficulties. in other words, if you played on normal or easy you are not having a genuine halo experience. for the first time I was able to play through the entire original trilogy, and I did so uneasy and normal. And it felt very fair and enjoyable.
@CT-316 yep. Heroic and legendary are great for a workout of your understanding of the games mechanics, but all difficulty levels are fun.
@CT-316 The reason for that is because in the games the unsc are hopelessly outmatched by the covenant so picking a harder difficulty helps the feeling of the games. For me, the ideal difficulty is heroic as on some halo campaigns legendary can be annoying aka jackal snipers or ultra elites.
Halo 3's multiplayer definitely feels a little bit outdated but it's still better built than most modern multiplayer games today. Same with 2, Reach, and yes, even 4.
@@CT-316 The higher difficulties in Halo are less about fairness and more about them being a rite of passage. When you pick a harder difficulty, you're doing a self skill check that shows whether you're able to live up to the difficulty's title or not. You can enjoy mowing down your foes in lower difficulties _as you rightfully should,_ but it won't be as satisfying as finishing a level in Legendary.
In bungie games they set the crosshairs lower so you can see more of the skybox. It was the perfect decision
They also set it lower so that your bullets come out closer to your gun instead of your eyes.
The reason was more so to focus on verticality gameplay. See enemies above you and whatnot
@@Will-fr9hg Yep. tbh it's less necessary in MCC since you can just crank your FOV to 90+ even on console and get the best of both words, but in the original releases with ~70 FOV it was a smart compromise.
Not specifically the skybox, but just so the player can see more above them. This was a good decision because first person games limit your vision, and gamers do not look up. Which is important in a game like Halo with verticality to its map design. It's not just the crosshairs and weapon model that's lower, it's the camera being raised up.
@@BalthasarGelt-x2d those two things aren't the reason for each other. Your first person POV doesn't correlate with where the bullets come out of. I can set the weapon offset models to be completely off screen to the bottom right and it'll still come out of the same place wherever Bungie wants it exactly.
I appreciate not even acknowledging Halo 5.
best multiplayer worst campaign. outside of halo 2/3 custom games which were a product of the times which were actually the best multiplayer experience, but cannot and will not exist ever again so i cant count it
Yea
@@EggsOverSteezy to be fair with mcc we can have custom games with the old maps. The issue is the community/ most people are older and got jobs or drifted apart or other shit, so like getting a proper party of homies is hard.
then you have the server browser which is decent, but barely anyone mics up which kills the party-chat aspect and you're limited to the maps/gametypes because of the "variants" instead of just having the game end and then having host switch the map and gametype.
point being you can still kind of experience it, but it's definitely far from its prime especially with a large part of it being the community around it but that community has largely moved on.
Multiplayer was great and while the story sucked the campaign was one of the most fun in terms of gameplay provided you actually have friends.
@@EggsOverSteezy best 343 multiplayer second to halo 4. not that impressive
To be fair, Keyes was already dead by the time Chief and Cortana came around to take his implants. He was part of the Gravemind at that point, no coming back from that.
how does chief sleep at night
@@CasualGuyylike Batman
@@CasualGuyy Thats an answer you dont wanna know from a guy who fell from orbit and continued fighting the war after a 5 minute breather
I mean it'd still be pretty harrowing to smash your fist through your recently deceased colleagues face. well if you weren't the chief it would be.
@@CasualGuyywith a lady in his head who calls him studmuffin
If you ever want to experience some of that old Halo era nostalgia, you should watch some machinimas from back in the day. The early Red vs Blue seasons, "Gameplay may change during online play" by Obie Brown, and "HMV Hell" by imSuck.
It might seem weird, but these videos and others like them are just as much apart of the Halo era as the games were. Its like opening up a timecapsule and seeing what the Halo community was like back then.
I would sometimes watch rooster teeths "fails of the week"
real ones remember "Rise of the Spartans" by Arbiter617. Fantastic machinima series
@@reduxforerunner6664 "Lost Halo Style" by Ikproductions was also a favorite of mine. Good times.
I can also recommend a machinima being made today, by the name of crash here on YT.
Never see imSuck mentioned enough. Love HMVHell.
Also, thank for seeing the beauty in CE’s original graphics and shunning the Anniversary edition like everyone should. Too many first timers make videos where they only play the new graphics by default, not realizing they are robbing themselves of the intended experience
Its peak
I was playing through CE recently, and I was blown away by the visuals, especially now that they've been mostly fixed on MCC. Switching to Anniversary graphics is such a stark contrast, you have so many levels that are dark and foreboding, forcing you to use your torch and then you change to CEA graphics and the entire room is lit up like with pulsating neon lights, it's incredibly jarring.
I do think a genuine remaster like we go with Halo 2 Anniversary could work, but you really need to maintain the aesthetics and colour palate.
Idk if its just me but the updated CE graphics looked waaay too blue damn near every time you’re near a building
My girlfriend is not a gamer. Never played an fps in her life. I got her to play Halo CE on my pc. I helped her get used to the controls, and how each gun shoots. By the time she got done with pillar of Autumn, she loved it so much that she got disappointed that we didn't have time to play anything else
Update: we've since played up to Truth and Reconciliation. I had to help her at some points (like keeping Keyes from dying) but she loves it
Couple who play together stay together!
Unfortunately I haven’t played any of the halo games yet so I have to click off but watching the first few minutes I can tell I’ll have to come back to this video once I beat them
It's really good. I'd recommend making sure to play in release order though. MCC lists Reach first since its a prequel, but that was actually the final Bungie game. imo the story of Reach is a lot more impactful when you've got the full context of the previous games behind it.
@@yewtewbstew547 I actually did play the games but it was well over 10 years ago so I forget everything and I've been meaning to replay them. Unfortunately the only thing I remember was the ending to reach, it was so good and yet so sad.
Don't make a girl a promise if you know you cant keep it x
I love when youtube actually shows me something relevant to my interests. Great video, it's cool to hear a different perspective on the series, because I know mine is absolutely rife with nostalgia.
Glad you found it!
I wasn't nostalgic for Halo, I started playing it near the middle of last year from my friend who gave me a copy of the old PC port of Halo 1 OG.
That game was stupidly fun for something so old, I was blown by all the small touches in there, like, can you believe when I got lost in the cliffs from my Marines, I found them by seeing the BULLET SHELLS rolling between the rocks? I followed them and boom, found em.
14:38 Marty (one of the two dudes behind OG Halo music) famously said how Microsoft gave Bungie pushback when they wanted to create Forge and Theater mode for Halo 3. They failed to see how it would generate revenue. Ended up being the most innovative form of replayability for Halo, a means of revenue growth that shareholders and number crunchers simply cannot understand. Nowadays, it doesn't seem like there's any pushback on Microsoft's sentiment, and we saw definitive proof of that when the Halo Digsite members had a meeting with Microsoft and were directly told that when they got all that coverage for their H2 E3 demo recreation, it wasn't really all that impressive, despite the fact that it was *objectively a sign that there is still a massive sleeper audience of Bungie Halo fans waiting for Bungie Halo content.* Could've been a way to do MCC DLC, a truly healthy way to monetize that game and continue its production, but because it isn't GTA microtransaction money, they will never even bother.
I saw this title and thumbnail and was ready to put my trusty "Halo Defender" cap on, then I noticed you using the Halo Chapter titles per section and I was like: "Oh, hold on, this guy loved the games"
0:46 That officially licensed Pirates of the Caribbean game was the best looking game I'd ever played when I was 11
This is how I felt playing Zelda for the first time in ~2017 “why do I feel so much nostalgia for a game and series I’ve literally never played before?”
I found that kind of Zelda boring and tedious AF.
I miss how Zelda was before Breath Of The Wild came out and replaced actual game variety with the same repetitive and monotone nonsense.
Same reason why i dislike Halo Infinite so much and i miss Halo games like Halo 3.
I grew up playing Halo, so it's been interesting watching younger people pick up the old games. For me, Halo is now just a collection of fond memories from a bygone era of gaming. The novelty of XBOX multiplayer, LAN parties, and massive midnight releases are gone, but the games themselves remain (mostly). So it's bittersweet to see that the Bungie games still hold up - even without the hype, 2000s culture, or nostalgia. Maybe someday a group of passionate, creative people will make Halo cool again, but it won't be from Microsoft.
Close enough, Welcome back Nakeyjakey.
Who? This guy is Jake?
LOL. Nakeyjakey but stool instead of ball.
„We have Nakeyjakey at home“
This man's editing is above and fucking beyond.
He doesn't just put himself in the game with a greenscreen but he goes the extra mile to try to match the lighting so it fits in even better
0:13 it’s so funny you say this because my mom used to work all the time while my dad was deployed, so needless to say, coming home from school and playing Halo was my pastime activity with my brother.
My mom told me here recently that “Halo was your babysitter.” Dammit if she ain’t right about that one.
I went into this video like “man this guy is not going to understand that halo without nostalgia is still a masterpiece with a great story, soundtrack and world building” but I’m very happy how he told the story of halo and especially bungies halo.
Except for Halo 3 that story is the most God awful thing I've ever witnessed when it comes to writing
i havent got a drop of nostalgia for halo, i started playing 2 years ago but its still my favourite game franchise
I love ODST, but yes Mombasa Streets are padding. They did it INCREDIBLY well, but it is padding. They took a feature that would have destroyed their game and turned it into THE game. And this was Bungie's B team. Everyone else was making Reach and Destiny. That has to be a testament to what Bungie could do.
but the story of halo is actually really tight, arguably better than a lot of playstation exclusive titles of the same era
Reach is so fucking good
Halo 3 is still better IMO, but Reach is a strong contender.
As a life-long Halo fan, who is very blinded by nostalgia, this was an amazing review. I'm always glad to see people genuinely appreciate the Bungie Halo's. You really captured what they mean to those who loved them, and love them to this day. The Bungie Halo days were lightining in a bottle that we will never see again in gaming.
I sick of all the people I encounter who say "Oh you just have nostalgia goggles those games aren't that good and only good for their time" No, they're good because they were good fucking games lmao.
That means alot truly, thank you
17:37 back when Halo Reach released, generally, we all "knew" Chief was the last spartan so we knew what would happen. In lore there we other surviving Spartans but as far as ppl just playing the games knew, chief was it, the last hope
I feel like nowadays, Halo is like a cryptid. You never get to see it, you will only ever get to hear about it.
But you can just like play the older Halo games.
@@BalthasarGelt-x2d Even then it's not quite the same - MCC changed various things that can serve to make the experience worse overall, but most importantly, we aren't living in that era anymore. Maybe we could again if we could get an actually good new Halo game that caught on, but 343 have proven to be utterly incapable of that.
@@ThiefofCrystals not gonna lie halo 4 was heat
@@BonkIsYoGod I'll fully credit Halo 4 with doing the Chief/Cortana story right, it really says a lot that, as I recall it, they effectively killed off Cortana and fans actually accepted that outcome because it was delivered well narratively speaking.
@@ThiefofCrystals Of course followed by the absolutely baffling decision to undo that in 5 and then going down an even more ridiculous path of a rogue chief saving his now 'undead' AI lover that has gone bonkers while also becoming AI god...despite the crazy being why she chose to sacrifice herself, and in the process completely undoing the plot and emotional weight of 4... and then later on attempting to largely ignore what happened in 5 for infinite... genius storytelling.
I played Halo 1 and 2 so much back in the day as a small nerdy child, and being there in person for the Halo 3 midnight release was a once in a life time experience, that words cant describe. The countless hours, staying up all night with the boys grinding for that Hayabusa armor, watching a little RUclipsr called penguinz0 (Yes, Moist Critikal made a Halo 3 all Skull location RUclips video). These are memories I will always remember... We all went our separate ways but I will never forget their names and the countless hours we spent on Halo 3 together. Those are the Memories that will last a lifetime and some I will never forget. Thank you Halo
my bagel is now ready, and im happy, i thank you my man
enjoy king
Cream cheese? Butter? Eggs? Salt n pepper? Everything? We NEED to know! What was on the bagel?
bud. i used everything, and i mean everything. i had to make a bagel for gods to this video. great entertainment + great food = perfect night
@furashi_and_oreo That's what i like to hear!
"It lets me kill the boss". Wait until you play the Half Life series.
19:32 your point about skyboxes are true. i often find myself appreciating a lot of halo reaches skyboxses and soaking in the atmosphere laid before my eyes
The high charity sky box in halo 2 is breathtaking. I sit there for a few minutes and appreciate it every time I play. Especially paired with that mythical enchanting music. I sit and wonder what’s going on down below and try to grasp how big the city is. And that’s just an indoor city. The outside skyboxes are incredible too like the sacred icon sky in halo 2 (whichever the first of those two missions were.). I’ll start the mission and just stand there staring for a bit.
im so happy you saw the "halo was a graphical showcase" as a warning. Glad i wasnt the only one who saw it as a red flag. XD
I still host Halo LAN parties a couple times a year. Halo multiplayer will forever be the party king
Halo with no nostalgia, now is nothing but before the absolute revolution of first person shooters and the successful introduction to those in consoles (I know goldeneye and perfect dark and medal of honor were before but those did not translate very well in the console landscape) basically there is no Cod without halo
For me, halo without nostalgia is an INCREDIBLY gripping story and world with phenomenal music.
It's only revolutionary if you're not a PC player
@KoylTrane Duh
Objectively Halo 2 has some of the best fucking dialogue in any media. I think we could absolutely just type out the entire dialogue script in the comments and you would be able to visualise what specific part in the story you are currently at.
Arbiter is also such a great character! So much love for that guy. Chief is shallow in comparison.
"There was only one ship."
"Dear Humanity, we Regret being alien bastards!"
"What would you have your Arbiter do?"
@dudeduderson4077 Dear humanity we regret the marine Corp that blew up our raggedy ass ship.
if it's wrong let me know
I was here before Marty left his obligatory "dont you guys miss when i was there" comment
You got me pretty good with the title and thumbnail but it's so interesting seeing the perspective of someone who never played Halo since Halo was my first FPS ever. I'm sincerely jealous of the ability to experience those games for the first time again
I've played the whole franchise back when the MCC released on Steam and i had so much fun it's insane. I really wanted to try Halo back in the 7th gen but couldn't because i didn't have the ps3 or xbox 360, so knowing this my girlfriend bought MCC as a gift. That was the last time i was the last time that i was so foccused on a game/franchise even though not experiencing it in the early days, that's the power of Halo to you.
One of the great things about Bungie Halos story is that while you can basically ignore it and have a good time, all you have to do is pay attention to see the good story and lore they put into it.
The Bungie Halo era was HYPE
halo really is a special game to me, i remember when i was young in 2010 my dad got an xbox original and we played halo CE campaign co-op. It is a memory i wont forget and it was before my parents had split up. ive also replayed the classic halo campaigns like 5 times.
Fuck yeah I love Doom
This video was me with the Mass Effect series. I can still play the trilogy and get emotional EVERY TIME even when I never grew up with the games/played it when it came out.
You’re somewhat backwards on ODST. It was originally supposed to be a DLC for Halo 3, but they ended up putting so much content into it that they ended up releasing it as a entire independent game.
I know you said you don’t care but you can find videos of Marty talking about how they kinda wanted to have a noire style detective thing in a “dead” city, and that’s the reason why they have the free roam part, not for padding. Fucking heretic doubting Marty himself, the Prophets will have your head for this.
Great video btw, subbed.
The halo multiplayer scene still exists, its just a lot smaller and isnt on couches but is rather hidden away in various discord servers, but it is very much alive
Your in-game brightness is cooked (this video was so good)
Yea RUclips’s compression seems to have really messed with my colour grading aswell 💀
If you watch one of the terminals, which for CE and 2 I would suggest you do because they are so amazing, it goes into detail about whats happening to keys and essentially why we have to smash his brains. Basically so the flood doesn't get information on humanity.
Halos special feel is also the aesthetic it sets which I like to call sci-fi mysticism. The way everyone sees the Master Chief as a messiah or a demon , the covenants religious fanaticism, the choirs and orchestral tones to its music and the mystery of the forerunners. For a sci fi setting it pulls heavily on mysticism and religion.
Good video! Having played the original three, enjoying Arbiter's part a lot, ODST after, Reach being an excellent send-off... and then barely remembering what happened in Halo 4 from how it all blurred together, never even bothered with 5 or Infinite aside from some gameplay footage and AI-AI combat videos. As others mention, the mixture of space-opera, fantasy, mysticism with humanity gritting it's teeth while struggling with it's new allies, a unique aesthetic... and we have Unreal footage that barely looks like Halo aside from the mandatory Forerunner building added in to remind us it's Halo.
"ODST hub area is just padding." Yes, and I still enjoyed it regardless, roving combat encounters felt different at the time, a novelty, ODST is also the first game to have Firefight which was fun but difficult.
Man, I'm so glad to hear that it isn't just rose colored glasses that shapes my view of Halo. Glad to hear it's still gripping the young'uns like it used to.
Well tbf Halo 3 came out in the last year I was ever truely happy, 2007.
Ever since 08 I’ve been battling pain, loss, depression, heartbreak etc
So yeah….if I could go back to that year playing Halo 3 with my friends….I would…things were simple and fun.
Just realized, Chief has no face, but has a well-known voice. Gordon Freeman has no voice, but a very well-known face.
Comparisons to NakeyJakey should be taken as compliments. Subscribed.
Halo without nostalgia is:
It's an awesome and yet dark/tragic world about humans and aliens killing each other with a sprinkling of interesting sub plots and character that have made their way into the public eye as some if the most badass and horrifying characters we seen. With famous iconic dialogue that has been quoted so many times that they've become iconic memes and have birthed community that is so fracking talented that they outdo the devs themselves at crafting a more satisfying experience for us fans.
Honorable mentions for creators: Sodaz animations, Badlaxe animations, halovfx, slipspace entertainment, sassy crocodile, and installation 00.
Dude it’s so cool to me that halo has had such a massive impact on the lives of millions that here we are 20 years later making functional recreations of the weapons and armors from the games like installation 00’s Spartan and ODST project
Chief did hesitate when he had to punch Keyes in the brain, Cortana had to gas him up. The way he shakes off the goo is kinda funny, but hes definitely not happy about it.
I’m sorry about your wife but in my defense, that 7th Guinness wasn’t gonna drink itself and I wasn’t gonna walk home
exceptional work once again master chef
It's alright she wrote me a letter saying she's in this town we used to visit
@ that’s sick I love that town, everyone tries to hug you, I think they’re welsh
@@CasualGuyy In her restless dreams...
Halo 3 was my 2nd game after Command & Conquer G:ZH and to be honest, the Halo community will never be replicated. What people fail to take into account when talking about shooters from 2005-2012 is that the US military was running a psyop to increase recruitment. US military recruiters would go into xboxlive game chat and convince young people to join the armed forces. There are declassified documents on this and with the game they released called America's Army: Proving Grounds.
What most people don't talk about is the clan community.
Clans would recruit by sending messages to all recent players then do a military style drill course to make new recruits obey orders. Then clans would make custom maps with bases to defend and would engage in clan wars.
Back in 2010, some clans had masses of over 1000 daily active members. After the psyop ended, some military stayed playing and after halo reach started losing popularity, the community that once was faded into groups of "just gamers" again
You can still find fragments of the old halo community on Arma3, battlefield, tarkov, i.e realistic shooters
Man I freaking loved Halo 4. Sure the gameplay could've been better (especially on Legendary), but I totally understand why Steve Downes and Jen Taylor say that this game was their favorite to record for. The story, characters, the whole Forerunner aspect... The word amazing doesn't do it justice.
The Chief finally becomes an actual well written character, 343i introduces Lasky which most of the fanbase loves. And then the Didact... man, the execution was flawless. But how they handled him AFTER Halo 4 is a disgrace. "Killing" him off in a crappy comic... Oh well, at least they redeemed themselves with Epitaph, which actually might be one of the best Halo books.
I hate Halo 4, especially because of the Forerunner aspect. Most weapons feel useless and the ammo is so limited. They also despawn fast. The artstyle is horrendous; it doesn't look or feel like Halo.
And the biggest blow: turning the forerunners into aliens. This is the change I hate the most and why 343 Industries is the thing I hate the most in the world. In the Bungie games, forerunners are humans. This was alluded to during the whole OG trilogy and confirmed at the end of Halo 3. Then 343I changed the forerunners into aliens, ruining the story and lore of Halo.
Halo without nostalgic is a linear storyline based game that still holds up (halo reach’s ending was my favorite tbh)
ODST was a DLC that for some reason was sold as a full priced game. Everything makes more sense if you see it for what it is.
For some reason = Microsoft being Microsoft
Executive greed is the reason you seek
@@janusprime5693 a fully fleshed out campaign and an extra multiplayer/singeplayer mode is greed?
what do you mean see it for what it is, it does not warrant a full price
some reason = less than 20% of people buying DLC in 2009
earned my sub for being so spot on
You didn't mention how each Halo game under Bungie came out with more features.
Forge, Theater Mode, Firefight. We got complete games back then.
Funny how 343 has not been able to make a functional Theater mode in Halo 6.
The only thing I can give halo 4 is unlike the rest of 343’s catalogue at least it was a complete game. We had all the features of the previous games (except firefight became Spartan ops, so those just kinda equal out) brought over. All my problems with 4 are purely creative decisions.
@michaelguernsey1206 Halo 4 didn't have theater mode for campaign or spartan ops. It was only added recently to the MCC but the original game still doesn't have it.
@ ah ok. I knew something was wrong with 4’s theater. While that does suck. Well a MOSTLY complete game.
He also forgot to mention the fact that back the entire multiplayer package for the OG games were completely unplayable because you needed to buy map packs which divided the humidity into the Haves and Have Nots
truly amazing video. thank you for blessing my feed
no thank you
I wasn't allowed to play video games until i was 11, on my own atleast. I never got to experience peak halo 3 and reach. It pains me that the halos i grew up on was made by 343 who purposely ran the series into the ground.
It’s been ten years looking for a good Halo game and this is the best video I’ve seen while waiting it. Halo will be back, because we need him
No sir, thank you for this video, was such a good video to watch and listen to. Everything you said about halo (except odst) was directly on point. Hit me emotionally. Thank you and take care mrcasual.
thanks (its padded though ;) )
I love Halo Infinite. While it definitely has flaws, I feel guilty holding those flaws against the game. The devs wanted to do so much more than what released, but the old 343 management was so terrible that their dreams could never be achieved. Most of the time, the different dev teams didn't even have good communication with each other, and then they were forced to shove in microtransactions and live service into a game that really wasn't built for that. But all of the shitty management was on top of the basic struggles of using the Slipspace engine, which is such an old spaghetti code mess that the contractors (who 343 relied way too heavily on) would only fully understand the engine by the time their contract was almost up. Not to mention, they had to make sure all of the game worked on the ORIGINAL XBOX ONE. Halo Infinite's development was such a dumpster fire that I can only help but feel bad for the devs whenever I look at Halo Infinite's flaws.
Also, I hate Martin O'Donnell. He is a vile man
@@comedicidiot what did he do?? 😭
@@oysteregg2537 not only is he generally an ass towards the Halo community, he's also a politician
So YOU were that guy saying halo sucked back in the day!
Halo’s combat ai has stood the test of time better than almost every other game
This is what weve been talking about for years, and its reassuring to hear this perspective from someone relatively new to the series. I went through a similer stage with the series when i was growing up, a little later than most around the late halo 4- early halo 5 era. I honestly felt the same way you did with infinite back when i was playing halo 4 with my best friend in couch coop.
Regardless of it being halo specfic essay as well, im happy you got to enjoy a series you found at that point in your life, and then write, record, and post this awesome video essay.
lets pray that we get a new halo game headed by those who love and understand the series, and you get to go and make a video on it.
i'd love nothing more than to gush about a new halo game but i'm not holding my breath
Dude, you are hilarious, subbed.
It is rare that I resonate so much with a video, so I am going to write a lot, sorry:
For someone who didn't grow up with Halo, you sure did capture the Nostalgia. The editing in this video is amazing. I love your use of "Epilogue". It was definitely one of the more emotional pieces in the soundtrack and it was one of my favorites growing up. I used to beat Halo 2 just to hear it in the credits.
Halo CE is my favorite video game. I honestly think it is the best video game ever made. It just *feels* so _perfect_ every time I play it. The gameplay, the art, the music. It's so beautiful.
Which is why I really relate to your concern. If there is no love in this remake, no appreciation for every little detail I adore about CE, why should they even bother?
I know how unrealistic that sounds, but doesn't that reinforce the point? Why bother making a remake if it will probably not hold up to the original? I hope I am wrong to feel this way, but the past decade+ have really soured my opinion of 343i/Halo studios.
I appreciate the acknowledgement that 343i has not quite measured up to Bungie when making Halo. Many people like to blame the community, rather than the company, for the franchise's struggles.
It's funny thinking back on it, I was Nostalgic for Halo back in 2014.
Fellow Scot here. The algorithm randomly spat this out at me during a 1am study break (probably because of all the "Halo menu music with rain on window" mixes I've been seshing). Loved it, chucked yi a subscribe. I largely found hearing yours' and, from what I can tell, the current iteration of the community's perspective on the series, which is getting into the series after its peak was long passed, fascinating. My perspective is a wee bit drenched in the nostalgia sauce.
I first played Halo just after 3 launched; I'd surprisingly gotten a 360 for Christmas '07, despite nagging my parents for more PS2 games all winter. A family friend took his copy round when our parents' had a Hogmanay house party. Couldn't get into it, I preferred CoD 4 (fighting words, once upon a time, although now understandable). A few months later, a friend from academy had a spare copy of 3 and gave it to me in the autumn of '08, then it all clicked. The co-op campaign, the matchmaking, the custom games, the Forge, the theater, the soundtrack, the characters... and most significantly, the community. It breaks my heart a little whenever I see people lambast what's left of the community these days as toxic or entitled and never happy about a single new thing in modern Halo. With the exception ODST, I haven't missed a single launch since I got into the series, and... it just really isn't the same anymore. Microsoft were so focused on so much other random non-gamer-friendly practices going into the Xbox One that they couldn't see how unique a thing they already had. The heyday of Halo was more or less born out of the Doom/Quake/Unreal Tournament heyday on PC in the mid-late 90s, but on consoles. The Bungie Favourites were an absolute staple, seeing those maps, game types, screenshots and clips that people had made and submitted every week (RIP bungie.net). RedvsBlue was an irreverent blast of '00s Internet and gamer culture humour that would help change the landscape of animation by the turn of the decade (RIP RoosterTeeth). The mythical LAN parties with their sheer number of pepperoni pizzas and bottles of Dew. I remember playing full lobbies in custom games or Forge on 3 when I was 14 with people I hadn't even met or spoken to before, and we all bonded over this incredible social phenomenon that, looking back, felt like it would last forever. The 343i games all have their respective qualities amongst a plethora of flaws, but watching them never learn from what worked, instead focusing on pivoting from backlash, hiring people that were openly not into Halo, systematically gut all those features that made the games stand out, and with each new game drag the series through the mud time after time was rough. I don't think it's possible for anyone who didn't experience the heyday as a teenager and watch the decline in real time can fully relate. I almost entirely skipped modern gaming in the 2010s, due to getting older, getting a job, discovering other interests outside of my wee town, drifting apart from all the friends I'd made in the matchmaking lobbies... but I got MCC at launch and for many years it was pretty much the only thing I played on the Xbox One for most of it's lifespan, 5 and Infinite were lucky to get two months out of me before being relegated to the eternal shelf or uninstalled. I still play MCC co-op and graft some of the weekly challenges at least a half dozen times a year with my last remaining homie from primary school, who I completed all the games pre-343 on Legendary with back in the day (except 2, though we finally got it done in the run-up to Infinite) and I've got 33 achievements left to go on MCC, but they're mostly multiplayer-related plus the LASOs and I don't see myself ever getting them with how the population is these days (RIP H2A multiplayer), plus I've turned into a bit of a social hermit online in the TikTok/Fortnite era. The Bungie era titles are still utterly incredible games that have stood the test of time in terms of gameplay, style, and substance, but looking back at the state the series, and indeed the community were in around 2010, from the perspective of 2025, I fear is a wound that will never fully heal. Were it so easy...
Halo really is nostalgia, but it's nostalgia for a time when the most important thing after the gameplay was the community, not just for Halo but gaming in general.
thank you for watching it, and good luck with your studies chief
Life long halo fan here, you nailed it buddy (especially the take on halo 4)
fuck halo 4 all my homes hate halo 4
cheers swaggy!
one of my favorite games so it’s …like perfect with little to no flaws 😊
Halo without nostalgia is a based generic sifi shooter that ends up surprising you with its twists and deeper lore.
I love the perspective you bring to the table here, and I'm glad the classics lived up to the hype.
What you said about the music is so important to why these games are remembered, much in the same way Ace Combat is beloved, and it's why 4 and 5 fell flat. The OST for 4 has some absolutely stunning tracks, but it lacks cohesion and, most importantly, it lacks a single theme track with the correct structure for you to loop endlessly on a workout playlist. 117 is long, meandering, and has two endings. To Galaxy takes forever to spin up and lacks punch when it gets good. Arrival plays at the climax of the game and, to my knowledge, isn't actually an intended theme track. It also doesn't pace itself well on the released recording but it still has the most memorable melody of the whole OST. I don't remember any music from 5 and I only played Infinite multiplayer for a month.
I know you were joking about the whole, make it for the 360 then release your own remaster, but genuinely I think that strategy would beat the brakes off whatever is going on in the industry now. The pursuit of infinite money needs to end, and they need to learn that niche success is infinitely better than mass market failure.
Man this has like less than 1000 views this video at least deserves 500,000
Glad you enjoyed it
Great work! As a kid I went from playing single player games like Crash Bandicoot and Ratchet & Clank to then playing Halo: CE in 1st person as a souped up super soldier gunning down religous zealot aliens and the flood coming for you in the dark, completely in co-op with my best mate. Then waging battle against eachother in multiplayer split-screen.
It was such a different experience and left such an impression on me. Very glad I got to experience all the hype and community when it was happening! It's cool hearing that the original games are still getting new fans checking out those older classics and hearing your own personal journey with them.
I don't think you were far off from when you said that some people spoke about Halo as if it raised them. I was 4 when Halo 1 came out and I played it religiously. I was on Xbox Live at 8 and was fully on Halo 3 making friends online of kids my age at 10. Both my parents worked so I had hours on Halo and on Xbox Live to myself alongside friends I made online and in classes. We all played Halo and grew up with it.
It litterly did that for me, i played 2 online when it came out
So regarding the ODST hub world/Padding thing. I'm not going to say you're WRONG exactly... But I WILL defend it as a brilliant use of limited resources full of amazing ideas that were... arguably a bit TOO subtle.
For example, a few things that you're not likely to notice unless you're a turbo nerd who spends more than a healthy amount of time in the Rookie sections:
Virgil is AMAZING. If you were collecting and listening to the audio logs (which incidentally tell an awesome story and have a bunch of hidden mechanics tied to them) you'll be familiar with the city Commandant AI, Virgil. Virgil is actually guiding the Rookie around really subtly. If you turn off the waypoints or just ignore them, Virgil is actually telling you where to go. Those roadblocks that pop up when you walk past? That's Virgil telling you you're going the wrong way. Ever see a billboard suddenly change to the Virgil symbol? Virgil is telling you something. Virgil will even guide you to groups of Engineers (those floating aliens that explode) to try to get you to rescue them.
But it's so subtle and you have to learn what all the different signals mean, and people will struggle with that even if they don't just go "Fuck it I don't get it. I'm just following the waypoint."
The other one is the audio logs. There's a few cool mechanics tied to them. For example, as you collect them, Virgil rewards you by unlocking hidden military caches throughout the city. If you ever walked past what looked like a garage door and it suddenly opened to reveal a mongoose and some weapon caches? That was Virgil saying thank you because you collected enough of the audio logs.
There's honestly a bunch more but you get the point. So yeah, like... Unless you're going to be the kind of super invested, "i'm going to inspect every pixel of this game" type nerd for ODST, a lot of the stuff that makes it really cool is just not going to be noticed which is a shame. For me, the city sections are some of the best because of that borderline ARG level shit, but for the average person who just wants to play a fun game... Oh yeah, I ABSOLUTELY understand how those feel like (and functionally are) just filler padding.
12:05 every youtuber lets me down when they do this.
They know the bad symptoms of current gaming but never acknowledge the root cause, dancing around it and pulling the gooner card.
Other than that, nice commentary
There's a bit from another youtuber I feel nails the vibe for long time Halo fans. It's a line from DJ Peach Cobbler, he's a total whackjob, 9/10 would recommend. But he had similar experience with Halo in that he didn't grow up on Halo and went back to play it, to see what it was like without the Rose tinted glasses. His main point was that yeah Halo was good, for it's time. Many of things about the game were outdated and were a result of the limitations of the engine and hardware it was released for. And that the game industry, for better or worse, has drastically changed in a way that has forced Halo to change it's identity and that change has just done nothing but hurt the franchise. In the end he said something that's stuck with me.
"I mean I get it. It must suck to grow up with a franchise with such a unique identity only for what made it special to later make it irrelevant in a changing world. I Imagine that sort of thing leaves a really sour taste in your mouth but, at the end of the day. How lucky you are to have had something that makes saying goodbye so hard."
I will always love Halo, I grew up on it after all. But I've learned that it's probably time to let go. I'll keep an eye out for the next game but I will not be holding my breath.
Is Halo over rated? No, the Bungie era isn't over rated. Is it over hated? The Bungie era is over hated, but the 343/Halo studios literally CANNOT be over hated. There isn't enough hatred in the world to match what level of hatred there should be for 343/Halo studios era Halo.
Who the hell over hates Bungie era?
@michaelguernsey1206 If hate was on a scale of 0 to 100, anything over like a 1 would be over hate. That's what I mean.
@ ah I get it
@@tjpprojects7192 There's definitely plenty to hate of Bungie's era Halo, though. Implying that it isn't deserving of any hate is crazy, both Bungie and Microsoft made mistakes and decisions which negatively affected Halo overall.
@Brandon-d1c1b Hate is the WRONG word. Criticize yes, but hate? 99% of people who hate Halo hate Halo to hate Halo. They don't care about Halo aside from hating it. They don't care about improving it, they don't care about properly criticizing it, they don't care about Halo beyond their ability to hate simply Halo. Also, hating BUNGIE or hating MICROSOFT is different from hating HALO. Your kind of logic for hating Halo, whether you realize it or not, is victim blaming. The Halo games have no control over how they're made or by who they're made. I simply just don't like Halo 4, but I HATE 343/Halo studios. Hate the graper, not the grapee.
Thank you for making this video. It’s the community that keeps Halo alive now. I check on Halo every now and then and see what the community is up to. I’m happy to see people still talking about and appreciating halo for what it is.
Never had nostalgia for halo but I do for your videos after 4 months
I'm not sure what you're opinion is on strategy games, but the Halo Wars games are pretty good, very fun.
It was the one of the three first halo games I got as a kid, the other two being 4 and Reach. Those gales have the most nostalgia for me, I know people don't like 4 much, and as you said it has its issues, but man playing it with my siblings was so fun. I especially enjoyed it's multi-player some of the most fun I ever had playing a multiplayer game ever.
Reach of course gave me my first ever *emotion* in a game, to see the spartan I granded gear for and customize go through the story and eventually fall. It just works. And Wars is just a damn fun game, maybe it's becuase I like Command & Conquer but I really enjoy Halo in the strategy genre.
The olde ball and chain eh thank god
My favourite is Halo:Reach: I just find it infinitely replayable. The campaign has, in my opinion, the best representation of the covenant, especially the Elites which actually feel like equals (if not superiors) to the Spartans. It also has the best firefight mode too.
Honestly, it’s just nice to hear that it’s not just nostalgia. That the games were good not because I grew up with them but because the people making it cared. Looking forward to what you make next, be safe.
This reminded me that Sunset Overdrive was a thing and it's $5 on steam
20:33 One of the many, many, issues with the Halo show was the fact it had generic music. I guess its a good thing considering how bad it was its better to not be associated with that dumpster fire.
I love that you adjusted the color on you to your environment. Really sells the illusion of you being there with the master chief. ^^
my pc doesnt love it
yo i listened to this video on airpods, and i thoroughly enjoyed it without any visuals. your commentary was high quality enough to keep me invested without them. when i did look at my phone, i thought i clicked on a NakeyJakey video by accident.
i obviously dont mind, but don’t be surprised if you get comments accusing you of ripping off NakeyJakey with the sitting-green-screen format. i think your style is unique enough to set you apart, but i recommend treading lightly on this path.
excellent video. i enjoyed the fuck out of it while i smoked marlboro reds on a parking garage in -2°F temperatures (i know you are irish, trust me thats cock freezing temperatures). best of luck fella
would never have thought just listening would be entertaining but cheers. (scottish btw)
@@CasualGuyy fuck i didnt mean to besmirch you like that
@@CasualGuyyNo you’re Irish
/s