Whilst FF7R may fall victim to the JRPG genre’s most egregious and cringe inducing pitfalls it also soars atop the same genre’s untouchable levels of spectacle. Everything in this game is ridiculous - the anime grunts, the gym mini games, the incoherent enemy design, the 8 disc no-miss soundtrack, the fact they stretched it into 30 hours. It’s a game that is inherently flawed by choices made before dev tools were even lifted, but it’s also a game that will live on by how memorable its merits are. For every linear corridor there’s an unforgettable boss. For every terrible dialogue line there’s a beautifully written cutscene. In the end the good is what remains and the bad fades from memory.

What do we look for in a sequel? Collectively I’m not sure we know. Sequels have been both criticised and praised for doing ‘more of the same’. Sequels have been criticised and praised for ‘moving too far from what worked’. Sequels have been criticised and praised for ‘lacking direction’. For every sequel the expectation is different, but fundamental to success is the self awareness to assess your own product. The team behind it has to understand it better than anyone. What works, what doesn’t. What can be flexed and pushed, what can’t. On paper it’s an easy task - these people made this product, who else could know it better? But as history has shown this isn’t often the case. Regardless of your thoughts on Halo 2 as a whole one thing is clear from the outset: Bungie understood their product. And they worked not only to refine, but to improve beyond expectation.

All of the core elements that made Halo: CE so distinctive remain but polished to an incredible level of shine. The presentation, the gunplay, the gameplay loop. All fat has been trimmed and here the focus is on improvement. Take what works and make it better - a seemingly simple task. There are mission sections that could only have been made through a deep understanding of the game engine. You’ll traverse through corridors and caves with the bullets of your gun lighting the way. You’ll hop between vehicle and foot combat as your manoeuvre levels at different heights. This level of game design may be all rudimentary now but it still feels so intuitive and smart here. Everything feels much more detailed and in turn much more mature too.

This maturity is echoed through the plot line and dialogue of Halo 2. If there’s one thing I bounced off in Combat Evolved it was the story. I knew the overarching plot but I couldn’t ever find a reason to really care, even less why I should hate these grunts and brutes as much as I seemed to aside from the fact they hated me too. There was lore if you searched for it, but it felt like a story in service of a game rather than a game in tandem with a story. Halo 2 takes a different turn, choosing to focus fairly heavily on lore and politics between factions, although not through a dissection of UNSC as fans might expect, but instead through a deep dive into the gears of the Covenant. While the choice to focus on the Arbiter may seem a bit baffling overall the results are nothing if not wildly entertaining. Finally we have personal motivations, a more introspective look at systems of power, a criticism of the power of faith and ability to manipulate individual’s belief in it. If CE hinted that Bungies achilles heel might be narrative storylines, 2 dispels those thoughts with immediacy and flair.

However, as much as I may have personally enjoyed Halo 2’s overarching story we have to acknowledge Bungie’s somewhat bizarre decision to bring the focus away from their fan favourite. As a player with no fandom skin in the game it’s still very intriguing that the Arbiter’s story and character should come across as more whole and complete than our actual leading man’s. We watch as Bungie very clearly demonstrate their writing capability and then somewhat fail their main character and franchise mascot. It’s a baffling decision but also one you could argue that allows the game to become what it is - a bold and exciting statement of intent from a company who recognised their shortcomings and defied expectations with the answers to them. Perhaps Halo 3 will become a homecoming and Chief focused closer to the series. If that was and is the plan then undoubtedly Halo 2 becomes something of an Empire Strikes Back, which we all know was the best one anyway, right?