Great retrospective! I'm currently watching The Salt Factory's trilogy retrospective and its great to see such an old series get so much love all these years later.
Thanks for checking out the video! I agree, always awesome when old classics get some love. It’s cool that he made a Halo trilogy retrospective, I didn’t know that, I’ll have to check it out!
As a huge Halo fan it was great to watch such a great video treat the series with such deference. One thing I would say that is never mentioned is the Arbitors first and final words to Master Chief in Halo 3. "Were it so easy." The first time, when he lets chief shove a pistol up his jaw, and saying it with venom. But the end, when Hood is lamenting at how he still cant believe he's gone. The Arbitor says it with such respect. I absolutely love it! Just wanted to mention one of my personal favorite things about Halo 3
What is one of Halo’s biggest missed opportunities in your opinion? I’ve already went on a few rambles about why I think the lack of human enemies could’ve really enhanced the gameplay and added a different change of pace (like fighting alongside Brutes and against humans as the Arbiter prior to the Great Schism. I also might’ve said something about how there should’ve been human enemies in Infinite since the Banished will let anyone regardless of species join, but I’m not entirely sure. I’ve said that last one in several other places). As far as story goes the biggest missed opportunity is not getting Halo 2’s original ending. If my dumb questions and LONG comments ever get annoying just say so and I’ll stop.
I think gameplay wise I always wanted to fight other spartans in some context, like multiplayer! I don’t know if there would have been a good story opportunity but I think it could have been cool gameplay wise. Your questions aren’t dumb!
Interestingly, if Infinite took advantage of the fact that the Banished have a radically different ideology from the Covenant and will let anyone regardless of species join their ranks you would’ve gotten your wish to fight other Spartans (unfortunately, none of that lore is presented through the actual game. You’ll either have to read the external media or binge watch the Halo lore channels like I did). They should’ve had Banished spies (maybe Insurrectionists/pirates who threw in with the Banished) sabotage the Infinity and used that to explain how humanity’s best ship was so quickly overwhelmed. Then for the rest of the game (set during and after the Infinity gets overrun in my ideal version of the game) we’d have to deal with turncoats and plants as we regrouped with the rest of the UNSC (2 would never rebel due to indoctrination and the 3s would probably be too anti alien to even consider joining a faction who’s member species are responsible for glassing their home worlds. The Spartan 4s who are normal people given augmentations would be able to switch sides). That would’ve been a lot cooler. Infinite has the same problem as BOTW where most of the interesting stuff in the story happens in the past and it makes you wish you were playing that game instead. I’m sure it also would’ve made sense for you to have a few Spartan enemies in 5 as Chief (too bad the game was basically nothing like the marketing. A lot of people forgot just how good 5’s marketing was and how it advertised a COMPLETELY different game from what we’d eventually get). Another way they could’ve had human enemies would be for there to be a short dlc campaign for Reach. It would’ve been AWESOME if we got to play as an Elite (maybe with customizable armor) who’s sent on this loosely connected series of missions during Reach’s campaign. As a way to make fighting humans less repetitive I’d want them to throw in stuff like attack dogs where appropriate (really enjoyed fighting those in other games), make it so the lower ranks are more likely to make bad decisions and have the higher ranks be smart like FEAR’s soldiers, maybe have a mission set in the wilderness where there’s wild animals causing problems for you and the UNSC (the Gutas were severely underutilized), riot police with swat shields who are trying to help civilians escape (that mission would be like the Covenant doing No Russian from MW2), and maybe have some automatic turrets you either need to destroy or disable elsewhere to progress. It would be a great way to show that we (humanity) were largely able to hold our own in ground engagements fighting against an enemy that was tactically inflexible and imitated rather than innovated. Since Reach reverted the Covenant back to speaking their own languages, I think it would be appropriate to have the Covenant speak English and reverse/distort humans. Player Elites in Reach should’ve had the ability to dual wield, and that would work really well in this. Same goes for giving the play an active camo armor ability from time to time. The way I’d want it to end is have a space battle similar to the Saber missions, but it would end with you and others boarding a human craft (can’t remember if it was a ship or a station). Then after a certain point you’d hear about a Demon who’s just arrived and has been butchering his way through the craft. This Demon isn’t like the 3s who are cannon fodder. No, this Demon is well equipped and has something he needs to destroy before his group can leave. Eventually, you’d meet and that’s the end (if you’ve read Fall of Reach you’ll see where I’m going). There’s this fun Reach mod called Hand of the Prophets’ and one of the ways the modder balanced human enemies is to give the ones with power weapons a visible laser sight. Realistically speaking it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but nore does giving Jackal snipers/marksmen a helmet with a bright light on it. Both are there for balancing so your deaths don’t feel nearly as cheap. You can also swap weapons with the Noble Team counterparts, and that dramatically improves the game (some of the weapons your squad used were pretty much useless, like Emile’s shotgun that might as well have been a spear because that has about the same range). When there’s a bunch of cover and flanking routs it’s a lot of fun. When you’re out in the open and have an entire group of enemies with accurate weapons it sucks. The level design really makes or breaks human encounters (those are also better in 2 because the Arbiter can cloak to get out of rough spots).
I am going to offer a bit of a defense to the Cortona/Gravemind interrupts. 1st they never actually interrupt action, they always occur between action and taking breaks from action is something every halo has done, sometimes you need to wait for the pelican, sometimes the next wave, sometimes you take a walk in the woods. Here I always felt like it was a nice way to show Chief breaking down and we had to wait not for some external even to happen but for Chief to quiet an internal event. He feels guilty over leaving Cortana behind, and with some echo of Cortana remaining in his head it was a way to show the connection these two had. Chief being the stoic type pushes through these interrupts and keeps going, but the cracks are beginning to show. Later with the Gravemind in High Charity I got the sense that the flood is just as big on psychological attacks as well as physical. If he cannot break Chief's body he will at least attempt to break Chief's spirit by manipulating whatever he can, usually taunting him with Cortana, sometimes taunting him over firing the Halo array. If the Gravemind can affect someone like Chief with Psychological attacks it makes him far more terrifying.
This is completely unrelated, but if you ever do movie review you NEED to cover the live action Mario movie from the 90s. It would be funny seeing you talk about how it fails as a narrative. I both ironically and unironically LOVE that terrible movie. It’s one of those things where it’s so atrociously bad that it does a complete 180 and becomes an unintentional masterpiece! It’s funny just how bizarre that film is. I really like how aside from a few names and concepts it has almost nothing to do with Mario (too be fair there wasn’t much for them to build on when the movie was made, but they could’ve at least made something that remotely resembles Mario). I’m so sad the Back to the Future style sequel bait at the end never panned out. I’d pay good money to see part 2 electric boogaloo of that train wreck. Such an AMAZING mashup of weird ideas that do not mesh. The new animated one was entertaining and did a good job of translating Mario into film, but it cannot hope to surpass the original because you can’t exactly improve upon perfection😂. I’m honestly shocked there’s people who don’t like that fever dream🤣. My thoughts on the new one are that it was entertaining for the most part, but the story lacked depth and was kind of dumb (yes, I’m aware expecting deep storytelling from Mario of all things is pretty ridiculous. At least when you talk about everything that isn’t the early Mario rpg spinoffs. Some of those had genuinely phenomenal stories like the narrative in Super Paper Mario). I really liked the visuals, Easter eggs, and how it felt like Mario. Although, Luigi should’ve had more screen time (I liked how Mario went after Luigi because that version of him just barely met Peach and wouldn’t have the same investment in going after her as he would for his own brother), some of the cast didn’t really work, that blue Toad with the glasses should’ve been replaced with Toadsworth since he fills the same role (that’s a character that’s sadly been shelved. They could’ve had him be Peach’s father figure in her flashbacks to better tie in with the games), and I want the trend of cramming 80s music into everything to just end (a lot of the songs were good, but there’s plenty of authentic Mario music to use and the licensed songs didn’t fit). Fortunately, these were mostly minor issues that didn’t really detract much form the experience. Could’ve been better, but it also did a decent job of what it was supposed to do. Hopefully, a sequel fixes a lot of these issues.
Thanks for watching and sharing! This comment is funny timing, since I just watched the Mario movie for the first time this week! I have heard a lot about the original and it sounds like a memorable experience haha. If I end up doing any movie reviews I will definitely keep it in mind!
What did you think of the new Mario movie? It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on it. When you get the chance definitely watch the original. It’s super entertaining and utterly bizarre. It’s such a shame it didn’t get a sequel. That film’s development history is also interesting. I’m sure by now you’ve heard about how they’re going to make a live action Legend of Zelda movie being made by Sony Pictures. Not sure what my thoughts on this are because Sony doesn’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to films. In fact if you look up any worst movie list you’re bound to see a few Sony movies on it😂 (things like the Emoji Movie, a Slenderman film made however many years after he’s no longer relevant, and Morbius. It’s SO FUNNY how since the marketing team and people running their social media are a bunch of incompetent out of touch Boomers who were gaslit into thinking the movie was really popular, despite the fact there was no correlation between ticket sales and online discussion of the movie. They released it back into theaters where it flopped a second time🤣). Whenever there’s something genuinely good like Spiderverse it’s a fluke. Let’s just say I’m VERY skeptical about a Zelda film made by them. Then again NOBODY thought the new Mario movie would be good because Illumination doesn’t have a good track record either, and the casting list was really weird. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Do you think you’ll do any videos on Halo Wars 1/2, or probably not? I liked how those games showed a different side of the Halo universe. Although, they’re super bare bones because they were specifically designed for consoles. If you have experience with other era games there isn’t much for you. I had a lot of fun with the games, but I now realize that they could’ve been so much better. Something that’s really interesting about Halo Wars 1 is how Bungie were openly hostile towards Ensemble, were super difficult to work with and everything Ensemble did needed to be approved by Bungie, and they tried to get it shutdown several times. If we were talking about Ensemble’s weird Halo MMO that thankfully never got made the reaction would’ve been perfectly understandable (Half of Ensemble worked on said MMO because they were completely burnt out from working on rts games and wanted to do ANYTHING ELSE that wasn’t an rts). But, we aren’t talking about that, so the way they treated Ensemble is completely unreasonable. Bungie also mandated that all the original characters in CE’s novelization die because they didn’t want them to persist in their universe. I prefer a lot of Bungie’s stuff, but they were complete cancer towards everyone not them who touched Halo. Halo Canon has an interesting video talking about the scrapped HW1 campaign dlc and sequel pitch. The channel Eckstoo has a cool video talking about the HW3 pitch that never went anywhere. Too bad the series is basically dead. If they were to port HW2 to Steam, fix various balancing and bug issues with HW1/2, and give both mod support I’m sure more people would play them. Something I’d LOVE to see but know will sadly NEVER happen is for us to get remakes of both that combine the best aspects of both, add free building like in the e3 demo, is designed for the ground up with keyboard and mouse in mind, cut content to be added, and for there to be multiple campaigns with each faction being radically different instead of slight variations of each other. Lets hope some crazy guy make that. People have modded Halo Wars content into other games and they work pretty well.
Hey! I don’t have any plans to cover Halo Wars at the moment. I’m not too much of an RTS player, so I’m not sure if it’s something I would enjoy covering. It sounds like a really interesting game and behind the scenes development story though!
Makes sense. Those games aren’t for everyone. Too bad they aren’t your thing because I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts on Command and Conquer’s purposely ludicrous narrative. Something else that’s interesting is the story doesn’t really connect to the rest of Halo and is mostly self contained. The reason for that is Bungie was super tight lipped since they were developing Halo 3 at the time and didn’t like other people messing with their stuff (the irony is pure gold because they’d eventually jump ship to work on Destiny, and 3’s story is a mess that doesn’t hold up to what they had planned for 2’s ending). Also, since half of Ensemble was working on things that weren’t even sanctioned by Microsoft they sadly got shut down. Which, is dumb because Microsoft would then rehire a bunch of Ensemble people to work on Age of Empires remasters/new entries. More on the topic of Bungie being hostile towards anyone not them, if you Google (regardless of what search engine you use be sure to call the action Googling because that makes their copyright into a generic term and they lose it. That’s what happened with Bandaids) “Interesting interview with Eric Trautmann” you’ll get this Reddit thread that links to an interview where the guy talked about his experience with Bungie and how they were absolute cancer. In the thread people went on a rabbit hole and expanded upon various things he talked about. Bungie was hostile towards the idea of ODSTs, including them in their games, and after they saw how popular the idea was they took credit for something they didn’t even do. Most of the interesting lore that we got from Bungie’s run was from both Erics (Nylund and Trautmann), Joseph Staten, and the people who wrote the good H3 terminals. I prefer a lot of the Bungie stuff, but when you think about all of that it becomes VERY hard to empathize with them. If ex/current Bungie devs ever talk about how 343 killed their baby I’ll usually be thinking “you mean said child you abandoned so you could sign on with Activision to make Destiny” (the first game’s story was so bad they didn’t have time to explain why they didn’t have time to explain😂). The whole situation is a dumpster fire where you fell bad for the people who got screwed over/mistreated, and have super low sympathy for the people who caused the problems. There was also a cut Falcon unit that would’ve been similar to the cut Halo 2 incarnation that was scrapped because Bungie had a different plan for the Falcon in Reach.
@@calvinfishermediaunfortunate I would like to see you cover all the Halo games to be honest I’m surprised you haven’t please give it another thought perhaps it would be worth covering even if it’s not as extensive as this or just a short overview on it..
LOL I just finished playing the trilogy like yesterday and I had the same reaction as you describe in the video about Miranda saying they are going "to War"
I have really enjoyed your halo analysis, are you going to possibly look at the 343 titles in the future? I would like to know your thoughts on 343 halo vs budgie halo!
Thanks for watching them! Yes, I plan on covering the 343 games! I’m actually really excited to cover them all, but I wanted to take a small break from Halo to recharge my passion to cover them. I also wanted to read some of the books leading to halo 4/5, to cover the story in more depth!
@calvinfishermedia very understandable, it's a big task and halo lore can be a little tricky to fully understand. Some of the books are far better than others and it is hard to know where to start, rather than wasting your time.
i also feel like the map names for CE as kid make them sound a lot more interesting than what they really are "silent cartographer?" "truth and reconciliation" these sound like parts of the bible and if "translated" literally, don't even make sense, like what the hell is a silent cartographer? and what does saving keys have to do with truth and reconciliation? it's like bungie just threw a bunch of words that aren't commonly used in a hat and then drew em and that was the map names haha
343 didn't change the forerunner lore, that change was made by bungee during halo 3, 343 spark isn't saying are literally forerunner he's saying your the child of his makers ie, you, humans, are the holder of the mantle and need to finish what the forerunner started, not that humans are literally forerunner 😊
Thanks for watching! This video is the compilation of my prior Halo retrospectives, trimmed to flow as one video. Hope you enjoy!
“We regret being alien bastards” that part always has me dying 😂😂😂
Such a great line lol! Johnson has so many iconic phrases.
Great retrospective! I'm currently watching The Salt Factory's trilogy retrospective and its great to see such an old series get so much love all these years later.
Thanks for checking out the video! I agree, always awesome when old classics get some love. It’s cool that he made a Halo trilogy retrospective, I didn’t know that, I’ll have to check it out!
As a huge Halo fan it was great to watch such a great video treat the series with such deference. One thing I would say that is never mentioned is the Arbitors first and final words to Master Chief in Halo 3. "Were it so easy." The first time, when he lets chief shove a pistol up his jaw, and saying it with venom. But the end, when Hood is lamenting at how he still cant believe he's gone. The Arbitor says it with such respect. I absolutely love it! Just wanted to mention one of my personal favorite things about Halo 3
Thanks for watching! That is a great detail to note, I appreciate you sharing it :)
In a sea of Halo commentaries, this one really stands out. Great job and thank you!
Thank you, that really means a lot!
"Oh I know what the ladies like" - Sergeant Major Avery Johnson
Such an iconic line haha! Thanks for watching!
Large cannons and armor plating!
Currently running through the series with my girlfriend. I’m gonna surprise her when 343 Guilty spark and make her play it on her own.
Nice! I hope she enjoys it!
What is one of Halo’s biggest missed opportunities in your opinion? I’ve already went on a few rambles about why I think the lack of human enemies could’ve really enhanced the gameplay and added a different change of pace (like fighting alongside Brutes and against humans as the Arbiter prior to the Great Schism. I also might’ve said something about how there should’ve been human enemies in Infinite since the Banished will let anyone regardless of species join, but I’m not entirely sure. I’ve said that last one in several other places). As far as story goes the biggest missed opportunity is not getting Halo 2’s original ending.
If my dumb questions and LONG comments ever get annoying just say so and I’ll stop.
I think gameplay wise I always wanted to fight other spartans in some context, like multiplayer! I don’t know if there would have been a good story opportunity but I think it could have been cool gameplay wise.
Your questions aren’t dumb!
Interestingly, if Infinite took advantage of the fact that the Banished have a radically different ideology from the Covenant and will let anyone regardless of species join their ranks you would’ve gotten your wish to fight other Spartans (unfortunately, none of that lore is presented through the actual game. You’ll either have to read the external media or binge watch the Halo lore channels like I did). They should’ve had Banished spies (maybe Insurrectionists/pirates who threw in with the Banished) sabotage the Infinity and used that to explain how humanity’s best ship was so quickly overwhelmed. Then for the rest of the game (set during and after the Infinity gets overrun in my ideal version of the game) we’d have to deal with turncoats and plants as we regrouped with the rest of the UNSC (2 would never rebel due to indoctrination and the 3s would probably be too anti alien to even consider joining a faction who’s member species are responsible for glassing their home worlds. The Spartan 4s who are normal people given augmentations would be able to switch sides). That would’ve been a lot cooler. Infinite has the same problem as BOTW where most of the interesting stuff in the story happens in the past and it makes you wish you were playing that game instead. I’m sure it also would’ve made sense for you to have a few Spartan enemies in 5 as Chief (too bad the game was basically nothing like the marketing. A lot of people forgot just how good 5’s marketing was and how it advertised a COMPLETELY different game from what we’d eventually get).
Another way they could’ve had human enemies would be for there to be a short dlc campaign for Reach. It would’ve been AWESOME if we got to play as an Elite (maybe with customizable armor) who’s sent on this loosely connected series of missions during Reach’s campaign. As a way to make fighting humans less repetitive I’d want them to throw in stuff like attack dogs where appropriate (really enjoyed fighting those in other games), make it so the lower ranks are more likely to make bad decisions and have the higher ranks be smart like FEAR’s soldiers, maybe have a mission set in the wilderness where there’s wild animals causing problems for you and the UNSC (the Gutas were severely underutilized), riot police with swat shields who are trying to help civilians escape (that mission would be like the Covenant doing No Russian from MW2), and maybe have some automatic turrets you either need to destroy or disable elsewhere to progress. It would be a great way to show that we (humanity) were largely able to hold our own in ground engagements fighting against an enemy that was tactically inflexible and imitated rather than innovated. Since Reach reverted the Covenant back to speaking their own languages, I think it would be appropriate to have the Covenant speak English and reverse/distort humans. Player Elites in Reach should’ve had the ability to dual wield, and that would work really well in this. Same goes for giving the play an active camo armor ability from time to time. The way I’d want it to end is have a space battle similar to the Saber missions, but it would end with you and others boarding a human craft (can’t remember if it was a ship or a station). Then after a certain point you’d hear about a Demon who’s just arrived and has been butchering his way through the craft. This Demon isn’t like the 3s who are cannon fodder. No, this Demon is well equipped and has something he needs to destroy before his group can leave. Eventually, you’d meet and that’s the end (if you’ve read Fall of Reach you’ll see where I’m going). There’s this fun Reach mod called Hand of the Prophets’ and one of the ways the modder balanced human enemies is to give the ones with power weapons a visible laser sight. Realistically speaking it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but nore does giving Jackal snipers/marksmen a helmet with a bright light on it. Both are there for balancing so your deaths don’t feel nearly as cheap. You can also swap weapons with the Noble Team counterparts, and that dramatically improves the game (some of the weapons your squad used were pretty much useless, like Emile’s shotgun that might as well have been a spear because that has about the same range). When there’s a bunch of cover and flanking routs it’s a lot of fun. When you’re out in the open and have an entire group of enemies with accurate weapons it sucks. The level design really makes or breaks human encounters (those are also better in 2 because the Arbiter can cloak to get out of rough spots).
I am going to offer a bit of a defense to the Cortona/Gravemind interrupts. 1st they never actually interrupt action, they always occur between action and taking breaks from action is something every halo has done, sometimes you need to wait for the pelican, sometimes the next wave, sometimes you take a walk in the woods. Here I always felt like it was a nice way to show Chief breaking down and we had to wait not for some external even to happen but for Chief to quiet an internal event. He feels guilty over leaving Cortana behind, and with some echo of Cortana remaining in his head it was a way to show the connection these two had. Chief being the stoic type pushes through these interrupts and keeps going, but the cracks are beginning to show. Later with the Gravemind in High Charity I got the sense that the flood is just as big on psychological attacks as well as physical. If he cannot break Chief's body he will at least attempt to break Chief's spirit by manipulating whatever he can, usually taunting him with Cortana, sometimes taunting him over firing the Halo array. If the Gravemind can affect someone like Chief with Psychological attacks it makes him far more terrifying.
That interpretation makes a lot of sense! I can see how it enhances Chief’s character by highlighting the psychological impact. Thanks for sharing
1:56:00 I actually read that as weariness and homesickness.
Your videos have sparked me to get into halo!!
Thank you for watching!!
Guilty Spark???
Which games have you played?
This is completely unrelated, but if you ever do movie review you NEED to cover the live action Mario movie from the 90s. It would be funny seeing you talk about how it fails as a narrative.
I both ironically and unironically LOVE that terrible movie. It’s one of those things where it’s so atrociously bad that it does a complete 180 and becomes an unintentional masterpiece! It’s funny just how bizarre that film is. I really like how aside from a few names and concepts it has almost nothing to do with Mario (too be fair there wasn’t much for them to build on when the movie was made, but they could’ve at least made something that remotely resembles Mario). I’m so sad the Back to the Future style sequel bait at the end never panned out. I’d pay good money to see part 2 electric boogaloo of that train wreck. Such an AMAZING mashup of weird ideas that do not mesh. The new animated one was entertaining and did a good job of translating Mario into film, but it cannot hope to surpass the original because you can’t exactly improve upon perfection😂. I’m honestly shocked there’s people who don’t like that fever dream🤣.
My thoughts on the new one are that it was entertaining for the most part, but the story lacked depth and was kind of dumb (yes, I’m aware expecting deep storytelling from Mario of all things is pretty ridiculous. At least when you talk about everything that isn’t the early Mario rpg spinoffs. Some of those had genuinely phenomenal stories like the narrative in Super Paper Mario). I really liked the visuals, Easter eggs, and how it felt like Mario. Although, Luigi should’ve had more screen time (I liked how Mario went after Luigi because that version of him just barely met Peach and wouldn’t have the same investment in going after her as he would for his own brother), some of the cast didn’t really work, that blue Toad with the glasses should’ve been replaced with Toadsworth since he fills the same role (that’s a character that’s sadly been shelved. They could’ve had him be Peach’s father figure in her flashbacks to better tie in with the games), and I want the trend of cramming 80s music into everything to just end (a lot of the songs were good, but there’s plenty of authentic Mario music to use and the licensed songs didn’t fit). Fortunately, these were mostly minor issues that didn’t really detract much form the experience. Could’ve been better, but it also did a decent job of what it was supposed to do. Hopefully, a sequel fixes a lot of these issues.
Thanks for watching and sharing! This comment is funny timing, since I just watched the Mario movie for the first time this week! I have heard a lot about the original and it sounds like a memorable experience haha. If I end up doing any movie reviews I will definitely keep it in mind!
What did you think of the new Mario movie? It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on it.
When you get the chance definitely watch the original. It’s super entertaining and utterly bizarre. It’s such a shame it didn’t get a sequel. That film’s development history is also interesting.
I’m sure by now you’ve heard about how they’re going to make a live action Legend of Zelda movie being made by Sony Pictures. Not sure what my thoughts on this are because Sony doesn’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to films. In fact if you look up any worst movie list you’re bound to see a few Sony movies on it😂 (things like the Emoji Movie, a Slenderman film made however many years after he’s no longer relevant, and Morbius. It’s SO FUNNY how since the marketing team and people running their social media are a bunch of incompetent out of touch Boomers who were gaslit into thinking the movie was really popular, despite the fact there was no correlation between ticket sales and online discussion of the movie. They released it back into theaters where it flopped a second time🤣). Whenever there’s something genuinely good like Spiderverse it’s a fluke. Let’s just say I’m VERY skeptical about a Zelda film made by them. Then again NOBODY thought the new Mario movie would be good because Illumination doesn’t have a good track record either, and the casting list was really weird. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Do you think you’ll do any videos on Halo Wars 1/2, or probably not? I liked how those games showed a different side of the Halo universe. Although, they’re super bare bones because they were specifically designed for consoles. If you have experience with other era games there isn’t much for you. I had a lot of fun with the games, but I now realize that they could’ve been so much better.
Something that’s really interesting about Halo Wars 1 is how Bungie were openly hostile towards Ensemble, were super difficult to work with and everything Ensemble did needed to be approved by Bungie, and they tried to get it shutdown several times. If we were talking about Ensemble’s weird Halo MMO that thankfully never got made the reaction would’ve been perfectly understandable (Half of Ensemble worked on said MMO because they were completely burnt out from working on rts games and wanted to do ANYTHING ELSE that wasn’t an rts). But, we aren’t talking about that, so the way they treated Ensemble is completely unreasonable. Bungie also mandated that all the original characters in CE’s novelization die because they didn’t want them to persist in their universe. I prefer a lot of Bungie’s stuff, but they were complete cancer towards everyone not them who touched Halo.
Halo Canon has an interesting video talking about the scrapped HW1 campaign dlc and sequel pitch. The channel Eckstoo has a cool video talking about the HW3 pitch that never went anywhere. Too bad the series is basically dead. If they were to port HW2 to Steam, fix various balancing and bug issues with HW1/2, and give both mod support I’m sure more people would play them.
Something I’d LOVE to see but know will sadly NEVER happen is for us to get remakes of both that combine the best aspects of both, add free building like in the e3 demo, is designed for the ground up with keyboard and mouse in mind, cut content to be added, and for there to be multiple campaigns with each faction being radically different instead of slight variations of each other. Lets hope some crazy guy make that. People have modded Halo Wars content into other games and they work pretty well.
Modded Halo Wars content into other games
Hey! I don’t have any plans to cover Halo Wars at the moment. I’m not too much of an RTS player, so I’m not sure if it’s something I would enjoy covering. It sounds like a really interesting game and behind the scenes development story though!
Makes sense. Those games aren’t for everyone. Too bad they aren’t your thing because I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts on Command and Conquer’s purposely ludicrous narrative.
Something else that’s interesting is the story doesn’t really connect to the rest of Halo and is mostly self contained. The reason for that is Bungie was super tight lipped since they were developing Halo 3 at the time and didn’t like other people messing with their stuff (the irony is pure gold because they’d eventually jump ship to work on Destiny, and 3’s story is a mess that doesn’t hold up to what they had planned for 2’s ending). Also, since half of Ensemble was working on things that weren’t even sanctioned by Microsoft they sadly got shut down. Which, is dumb because Microsoft would then rehire a bunch of Ensemble people to work on Age of Empires remasters/new entries.
More on the topic of Bungie being hostile towards anyone not them, if you Google (regardless of what search engine you use be sure to call the action Googling because that makes their copyright into a generic term and they lose it. That’s what happened with Bandaids) “Interesting interview with Eric Trautmann” you’ll get this Reddit thread that links to an interview where the guy talked about his experience with Bungie and how they were absolute cancer. In the thread people went on a rabbit hole and expanded upon various things he talked about. Bungie was hostile towards the idea of ODSTs, including them in their games, and after they saw how popular the idea was they took credit for something they didn’t even do. Most of the interesting lore that we got from Bungie’s run was from both Erics (Nylund and Trautmann), Joseph Staten, and the people who wrote the good H3 terminals. I prefer a lot of the Bungie stuff, but when you think about all of that it becomes VERY hard to empathize with them. If ex/current Bungie devs ever talk about how 343 killed their baby I’ll usually be thinking “you mean said child you abandoned so you could sign on with Activision to make Destiny” (the first game’s story was so bad they didn’t have time to explain why they didn’t have time to explain😂). The whole situation is a dumpster fire where you fell bad for the people who got screwed over/mistreated, and have super low sympathy for the people who caused the problems.
There was also a cut Falcon unit that would’ve been similar to the cut Halo 2 incarnation that was scrapped because Bungie had a different plan for the Falcon in Reach.
@@calvinfishermediaunfortunate I would like to see you cover all the Halo games to be honest I’m surprised you haven’t please give it another thought perhaps it would be worth covering even if it’s not as extensive as this or just a short overview on it..
2:00:04 You didn't talk about the Terminals! You need to run more Marathons.
1:48:34 It's the one thing the show translates well.
LOL I just finished playing the trilogy like yesterday and I had the same reaction as you describe in the video about Miranda saying they are going "to War"
It might be the worst line in the trilogy lol!
1:37:00 Threequels have a tendency to do that kind of coasting. That's why Return of the King is my least favorite LotR.
Definitely agree with you there. The third in a trilogy can be really hard to nail and feel fresh!
I have really enjoyed your halo analysis, are you going to possibly look at the 343 titles in the future? I would like to know your thoughts on 343 halo vs budgie halo!
Thanks for watching them! Yes, I plan on covering the 343 games! I’m actually really excited to cover them all, but I wanted to take a small break from Halo to recharge my passion to cover them. I also wanted to read some of the books leading to halo 4/5, to cover the story in more depth!
@calvinfishermedia very understandable, it's a big task and halo lore can be a little tricky to fully understand. Some of the books are far better than others and it is hard to know where to start, rather than wasting your time.
1:57:35 Based.
i also feel like the map names for CE as kid make them sound a lot more interesting than what they really are "silent cartographer?" "truth and reconciliation" these sound like parts of the bible and if "translated" literally, don't even make sense, like what the hell is a silent cartographer? and what does saving keys have to do with truth and reconciliation? it's like bungie just threw a bunch of words that aren't commonly used in a hat and then drew em and that was the map names haha
They do sound really cool! I agree, it seems like they just came up with the coolest sounding phrases lol
343 didn't change the forerunner lore, that change was made by bungee during halo 3, 343 spark isn't saying are literally forerunner he's saying your the child of his makers ie, you, humans, are the holder of the mantle and need to finish what the forerunner started, not that humans are literally forerunner 😊
That is fair, I could have misinterpreted it! Thank you for watching!
The change was made by Frank O'Conner. This line by spark was clearly meant to be the big reveal of the Forerunner.
Humans are forerunner!
It's such a cool plot detail! Bummed it got retconned in the sequels.