According to First Strike, the Covenant were still trying to recover Forerunner artifacts from Reach after driving the UNSC off (only glassing portions that they knew had nothing important), and it's possible that they were still conducing excavations when the Great Schism started and everybody started shooting each other.
World Whosball Champion 1945-1991343 Industries has revealed the Halo Infinite box art ahead of a campaign reveal tomorrow.
The box art shows Master Chief standing in a field with a broken Halo installation in the background - many fans have noticed the clear resemblance between Infinite's box art and that of the first game in the series, Halo: Combat Evolved.
Well oh dear, it seems I have a Covenant energy sword poking through my chest and dragging me into buying this game.
They're definitely in Win Back the Crowd Mode with this game. Was 5 really that bad.
Halo 4 had some issues with enemy composition and level design (it's a lot more linear and the Prometheans lacked the variety in behavior the Covenant does), but most of the changes I felt were absolutely vital in order for the series to move forward. Bungie saw Master Chief as a blank slate to project yourself into, hence his status as a Heroic Mime and never speaking in cutscenes, as such he lacks any sort of character arc and is not particularly deep. Both The Rookie in ODST and Noble Six in Reach showed those limitations as the storytelling tried to be more dynamic. The underlying character arc between Chief and Cortana in 4 is immensely more personal and compelling than the broad cliff notes done in Halo 3.
Halo 5 pushed both the story and gameplay changes way too far, where it felt like it was trying to be a hybrid with Gears of War. First Person Shooter games generally focus on movement while Third Person Shooter is more about environment, and the two main problems that crippled the game was the revive teammate mechanic slowing everything down (I'd rather just restart at the next checkpoint than hear an ally in game calling for help, nevermind the mechanics make no sense in the fiction) and splitting the campaign between two teams of four, which made them feel obligated to do character development in all the slow points rather than build the atmosphere of the setting. Halo 2 was initially controversial for playing as the Arbiter, but his story proved compelling enough to justify it. Fireteam Osiris never earned that.
I had some friends who stopped playing Halo around the time that Reach came out because they wanted bigger, more epic battlefields instead of the rotation of up to maybe 30 enemies scattered around the field at the same time. Halo 5 did try to ramp up those numbers, but enemy aggression was too high and you spent more time sniping from a distance.
Halo Infinite set a particular tone by returning to the classic Mjolnir armor style, which I would imagine is 343 trying to promise us something not as radical in gameplay as what they did with Halo 5. Now I did like the Spartan abilities, at least in principle, because that felt like a logical evolution of what Spartans are able to do in the fiction.
And yet they had vastly more variety than Halo 3 Flood. Or the Flood in general. I'll take Prometheans in their current state (sans Crawlers) over a new if unaltered go at the Flood any day.
I am very worried about the story this time around >.>
Not one mention of the Created during the demo, it's all about the Banished. Plus, somehow the Banished apparently conquered the UNSC or something? Did 343 fridge the villain again? Are we going to lose Cortana and the Created in the very first chapter of the game?
I mean, the gameplay looked fine, thought the Covenant models could have used more work, but Halo's just as much about the story...
Edited by theLibrarian on Jul 23rd 2020 at 2:17:37 PM
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The official Waypoint post did mention it's supposed to be both a continuation of Halo 5's story and a spiritual reboot. Hell, if it really is a spiritual reboot of Combat Evolved, them throwing in unadvertised factions and enemies at you half-way through the game would be 100% in the spirit of the original.
Getting Metroid vibes from that in the campaign demo. In a good kind of way.
@Reveal stuff today:
Graphical tuning aside, I'm actually quite impressed. The Grunts are awesome, especially the punted Suicide Grunt going "screw you!". It seems we're getting a wider weapons sandbox instead of rehash and all the weapons seen so far operate in unique ways.
Plus, Brohammer in the trailer gets major respect props for that sass. I really hope he's in the full game and makes through to the end, he serves as a nice human foil to the Chief.
I liked the dialogue touch of that one Grunt that the Chief ran over yelling "Stop! Stop!" before impact.
Also while I do think that the graphics need improving I imagine the game still isn't fully finished yet and a lot of the more detailed textures haven't been implemented yet. Halo games are nothing if not graphically impressive and I doubt that 343 will let it out half-finished.
Doesn't the Banished leader guy specifically mention being allied with them in his speech at the end? I'd have to rewatch to be sure but I'm pretty sure he boasts about how they both "serve the same purpose" of "honoring the..." something or other.
... in case you can't tell, I haven't kept up with the story of Halo at all since Halo 4 lol
Some interesting new visuals, I don't think it's graphically underbaked or anything but we didn't get a chance to really see anything too specific to this setting besides the standard forested area and the geometric walls.
The open world implications is interesting, but I'd hope it is more that the levels are so massive they had to add a map to orient yourself. ODST had a similar thing with the Rookie's exploration of New Mombasa.
The grappling hook is interesting, but of course being a demo it made it seem almost too easy. If you can simply zipline your way everywhere it kind of hurts the desire for exploration.
The color scheme is more vibrant and the textures is more streamlined compared to prior 343 games, the Covenant has also reverted to Bungie-era designs instead of the more raw, stripped down version we saw in 4 and 5.
Going back on the Prometheans vs Flood, the Flood brought with them some horror movie aesthetics but also functioned as clearly defined enemy types: spores, combat, tank, sniper, carrier, etc where they had specific shapes and clearer movement patterns. Prometheans in 4 had only three types: Knights, Crawlers and Watchers, and while they had different weapons it was not especially clear from a distance what weapon they had, not helped at all in how Knights can switch weapons at random times. That meant your safest bet was to always keep your distance and ping headshots. Halo 5 improved on the Prometheans a little by making the Soldier class and relegating Knights to Hunter-esque mini-bosses, but the Teleport Spam of Knights and Soldiers are very chaotic movement patterns that is very hard to anticipate. I remember how difficult Hunters would be in any given game until you understood their movements, and that learning curve allowed you to dance around them once you've gotten good enough. Almost nothing in Halo 5 allowed for that kind of learning curve.

If the novel lore holds true, they mostly glassed human settlements, because they thought the sigil for "Reclaimer" meant "Forerunner artifact that those disrespectful monkeys are camping on top of".
It's been fun.