And now for something completely different.
I adore this game.
In the intro of this post, I mentioned that I saw similarities between Metroid Prime and Halo in the past. Playing through the trilogy now, though, made it clear that only a small number of those similarities manage to barely exist in the most surface level way, and aren’t even worth thinking about. Whatever my younger self saw to make that connection wasn’t wrong, but it certainly wasn’t truth. However… the first couple hours of this game made me feel a similar way. Exploring an empty, nearly silent city at night, all alone, outnumbered but not outgunned, exploring and investigating the environment to determine the path forward while utilizing a scan visor to identify objects of interest, and all with delectable atmospheric music playing? It’s a magical feeling.
Playing as an ODST was a very welcome change of pace. Not because Master Chief isn’t cool, but because it’s very apparent that there are plenty of other cool people in this world, and ODSTs are high on the list. They aren’t spartans, and yet they fight like spartans, and honestly, I think they look cooler than spartans. They get cooler gear too, I like the suppressed SMG and I love the suppressed pistol, or should I say, pocket sniper rifle.
The level and encounter design is very well laid out to create a much more weak and vulnerable feeling in the player, even at times encouraging you to sneak around enemies and avoid combat entirely, which is helped even further by your character actually breathing heavily and crying out in pain when they get shot, eventually taking a deep breath after taking cover before the huge red overlay on the screen fades away, which reminds you that these guys are probably the absolute peak of humanity to be able to recover their composure like that even while feeling vulnerable. That feeling of vulnerability remained persistent from start to finish, which is impressive considering that you wipe out effectively an entire small army in that time, and even if the canon isn’t what the gameplay reflects, the rookie survived all alone in a covenant occupied city for an entire night. Romeo survived the whole ordeal and continued to pull his weight as an instrumental part of the team even after getting slammed in the chest with an axe and tearing a slice out of his lung, all he needed was a bit of foam blasted in there.
And speaking of canon, the story of this game is a diamond. I don’t like Buck, and I especially don’t like his interactions with Dare, but that’s all I feel like complaining about. Characters talk a lot, there is a clear sequence of events other than simply killing your way through the game, the perspective of playing detective all night is just sublime, the sub-story told through the terminals is both compelling and actually has a connection to the gameplay… it’s not telling the kind of story that only a video game can tell, but it’s definitely telling a darn good one. I wasn’t just having fun playing a video game like before, I was genuinely enthralled by the things that were unfolding, and especially the way they were framed through flashbacks triggered by the rookie’s investigating.
The moment I got to the data center and saw an alien in there right after the system shut down, realizing that all the security camera footage I saw throughout the game along with the terminals was probably actually shown to the rookie by this guy, only to have my realization confirmed by what Dare said about him? Probably the most satisfying moment I’ve ever gotten from a linear cinematic narrative in a game of this scale. That moment instantly filled my head with tons of “what if” thoughts surrounding the prior events of the story – something none of the previous games even came close to doing – and got me invested enough to catch myself thinking it might be nice to get into the expanded universe sometime. That never happens.
The worst part of this game is that I will never be able to experience it for the first time again.
(from my web zone: https://kerosyn.link/oh-yeah-halo-exists/#halo-odst)
I adore this game.
In the intro of this post, I mentioned that I saw similarities between Metroid Prime and Halo in the past. Playing through the trilogy now, though, made it clear that only a small number of those similarities manage to barely exist in the most surface level way, and aren’t even worth thinking about. Whatever my younger self saw to make that connection wasn’t wrong, but it certainly wasn’t truth. However… the first couple hours of this game made me feel a similar way. Exploring an empty, nearly silent city at night, all alone, outnumbered but not outgunned, exploring and investigating the environment to determine the path forward while utilizing a scan visor to identify objects of interest, and all with delectable atmospheric music playing? It’s a magical feeling.
Playing as an ODST was a very welcome change of pace. Not because Master Chief isn’t cool, but because it’s very apparent that there are plenty of other cool people in this world, and ODSTs are high on the list. They aren’t spartans, and yet they fight like spartans, and honestly, I think they look cooler than spartans. They get cooler gear too, I like the suppressed SMG and I love the suppressed pistol, or should I say, pocket sniper rifle.
The level and encounter design is very well laid out to create a much more weak and vulnerable feeling in the player, even at times encouraging you to sneak around enemies and avoid combat entirely, which is helped even further by your character actually breathing heavily and crying out in pain when they get shot, eventually taking a deep breath after taking cover before the huge red overlay on the screen fades away, which reminds you that these guys are probably the absolute peak of humanity to be able to recover their composure like that even while feeling vulnerable. That feeling of vulnerability remained persistent from start to finish, which is impressive considering that you wipe out effectively an entire small army in that time, and even if the canon isn’t what the gameplay reflects, the rookie survived all alone in a covenant occupied city for an entire night. Romeo survived the whole ordeal and continued to pull his weight as an instrumental part of the team even after getting slammed in the chest with an axe and tearing a slice out of his lung, all he needed was a bit of foam blasted in there.
And speaking of canon, the story of this game is a diamond. I don’t like Buck, and I especially don’t like his interactions with Dare, but that’s all I feel like complaining about. Characters talk a lot, there is a clear sequence of events other than simply killing your way through the game, the perspective of playing detective all night is just sublime, the sub-story told through the terminals is both compelling and actually has a connection to the gameplay… it’s not telling the kind of story that only a video game can tell, but it’s definitely telling a darn good one. I wasn’t just having fun playing a video game like before, I was genuinely enthralled by the things that were unfolding, and especially the way they were framed through flashbacks triggered by the rookie’s investigating.
The moment I got to the data center and saw an alien in there right after the system shut down, realizing that all the security camera footage I saw throughout the game along with the terminals was probably actually shown to the rookie by this guy, only to have my realization confirmed by what Dare said about him? Probably the most satisfying moment I’ve ever gotten from a linear cinematic narrative in a game of this scale. That moment instantly filled my head with tons of “what if” thoughts surrounding the prior events of the story – something none of the previous games even came close to doing – and got me invested enough to catch myself thinking it might be nice to get into the expanded universe sometime. That never happens.
The worst part of this game is that I will never be able to experience it for the first time again.
(from my web zone: https://kerosyn.link/oh-yeah-halo-exists/#halo-odst)