Halo 4 (SPOILERS)

Cause she's a woman Spartan who doesn't die in the game she debuts in?

That seems more like a result than a reason.

Halo 5 coming Fall 2015.

edited 16th May '14 3:27:06 AM by LordofLore

Joy!

So apparently Blueface is going to be a new character we can play as. And he has an ONI insignia on his chestpiece. Hm.

Plus there's this◊, which people reckon to be Sanghelios, which would be a pretty awesome place to visit.

Fall 2015, though... That's even worse than Halo 4's announcement-to-release window. Frickin' 3 years. Now I'm worried I'll lose interest. I'll have to find ways to play it, too; current funds won't allow me to get an Xbox One, though there's a game center in my town where I could play it, although the mall it's located in is failing and stores are constantly going out of business...

Toooooo Loooooong

edited 18th May '14 6:58:27 PM by OrKuunArQenByundis

^ Longer dev time means higher probability of high quality. Have you seen the garbage that are FPS games of 2013? COD: Ghosts and Battlefield 4 weren't exactly system sellers nor were they the quality that gets them remembered 10 years later.

Battlefield 4 especially. A mostly multiplayer game that has tons of multiplayer bugs?

Eh, I get that.

I'm still gonna whine about it, though.

I think the primary problems with Halo 4 stemmed entirely from not having a full three year development cycle. It turned out fantastic regardless, because there was no way Microsoft would release a tentpole game like Halo that was buggy, but there are quite a few details that make it not nearly as polished as previous entries. For a transitional game made by a different developer, it turned out far better than other examples.

I honestly think the worst things I can say about the game on a technical level is a sub-par render distance and a massively reduced frame rate when playing on forge maps (because of the dynamic lighting). There are other things I could criticize from a personal POV regarding some design choices and color palette, but that's far more subjective.

Sorry for the double post. In case anyone is curious, on the production side of things there is something called development cycles, which is the expected length of time needed to properly create a project. If you only have one team developing an IP, they need at least that length of time to create a new project of the same quality.

For big, blockbuster games like Halo the expected development cycle is three years, the first year alone is the writing and modifying the game engine to accomplish what they have planned. The second year is the grunt work of production with level design, character models, casting, gameplay and so forth. The third year is finalizing all the details and getting out of the Alpha Test phase and into the Beta Test.

In a two year cycle like the Call Of Duty series (the one a year pattern is due to alternating developers) or Gears Of War the engine upgrades are a smaller concern, but as a result they are less able to make broader changes to the gameplay because they don't have time to make modifications to the engine. So they can go straight into the primary production phase.

The one year cycles are strictly for small or simpler games like Madden or Forza. They basically reuse 75% of what they already did and make minor improvements.

This is all different to the Vapor Ware or Schedule Slip games that keep pushing back their release dates and pushing dates back like that can lead to more problems, because if you don't have a deadline your own work can become obsolete before you even release it.

Anyway, that's the reason I am perfectly okay with Halo 5 having a three year gap because of both the X Box One leap and having a full production cycle to polish everything to a spit shine. Gears of War 3 started at two-year and supposedly could have been released at that time but randomly got an extra year (to avoid competition with Halo: Reach), it might have been a little frustrating for games but they never became lost in development and that game ended up amazing.

edited 18th May '14 7:54:33 PM by KJMackley

So browsing You Tube for Halo videos. While listening to this I noticed that one of the recommended videos was this:

I can't believe I ever liked Mass Effect.

edited 28th May '14 2:32:21 AM by medicus

On a more on-topic note, it's been forever since we've said anything about Escalation, isn't it? Issue six just came out.

MASSIVE SPOILER: And they're apparently using the SOF as a way to bring back the Flood.

Well that can only end well

Yes, don't pay attention to the fact that a portion of Africa had to be glassed in order to prevent them from overrunning the rest of the world, and that the Forerunners died trying to stop them.

Well there's also the fact mentioned in Halo: Spartan Assault that ONI/the UNSC have devised training scenarios on how to contain/combat the Flood and that the Spartans are to be the first and possibly last line of defense.

edited 28th May '14 8:00:38 AM by MajorTom

ONI hubris yet again, ladies and gentlemen.

Seriously, they cause one of humanity's greatest minds to defect to the Covenant, they do THIS...Who the hell is running ONI these days?!

Karin Traviss.

No, she's not. No. She's not. As ever, 343 is running ONI. You notice they're just as pants-on-head retarded in Escalation, which is not written by her.

To accurately answer your question, a fanatical psychopathic womanchild with a stupendously-large hate-boner for Halsey who gives more of a shit about killing her than doing her gods-damned job no matter how stupid and shitty that job is.

edited 28th May '14 11:00:21 AM by Cganale

Well, ONI doesn't quite have anything to do with it this time (they did actually learn their lesson from what happened on the Mona Lisa).

EDIT: Of course, I say this, and 6 months later it'll be revealed that they did have something to do with it.

edited 28th May '14 12:55:10 PM by umbrellasareawesome

Actually come to think of it, I think the Flood on the Spirit of Fire might be a remnant of what they encountered in Halo Wars. Only it's doing an Alien/Aliens-esque type things. The ship itself probably was only found in recent and peeps in the NCA started salvaging hardware while leaving the crew be because they're bastards or something.

Slightly more relevant.

Very relevant.

(Basically all his artwork is badass.)

Dayum, not bad.