[360] Halo 3: ODST

jb said:
see this is exactly why I dont understand why some people say the story of halo sucks. If you take the time to follow it and read the books its pretty darn good. At least I thought so!

Playing now on Heroic and my goodness those hunters are tough! I never gave them much of a thought when I was the MC...but now...whole new level of respect for those guys :p
Click to expand...

Except Bungie doesn't bother to follow it's own "canon" in the books.

They shoehorn in plot when it's convenient and constantly retcon history. The brutes are a prime example in contact harvest. The Spartans had absolutely no knowledge about them when fighting the covenant for years- their appearance in the second book made, First Strike (bridge between Halo 1 and 2) was unexpected and took everybody by surprise.

If the humans had fought them on Harvest, as the FIRST Covenant race encountered save for the Jackals- why was nobody briefed about it by Sgt. Johnson* or his militia?

In Halo Fall of Reach when they board the Covenant vessel the Spartans were completely clueless as to what the "aliens" would look like, and even speculated why the ship had such huge doors. "Do you think they need the space?" (paraphrase). They then encounter jackals.

They have excellent writers (Staten and Eric Nylund).. But between the sad plot of Halo 3 (and arguably Halo 2) and horrible IQ problems in the game. I just question what went wrong.

I love Halo, and grew up with it. I read the book (Fall of Reach) before playing the first game- it's what got me into it. But Bungie leaves alot of "???" regarding their plot, and they don't seem to much care about it.

Like Miranda Keyes. It was never stated that Captain Jacob Keyes ever had a daughter, in fact it was the primary reason he was picked to help participate in the Spartan II candidate program by Dr. Halsey. He had no real family or connections and could "Keep a secret". Granted, this was when he was a young man, but when the plot gets fast forwarded in Halo Reach and he's a grey old man he never mentions family or a daughter as far as I'm aware of. Certainly not a 20 something year old daughter who is ALSO in the UNSC.

And then like her father they just randomly kill her off. Atleast Jacob Keyes had a meaningful death.

Also, the plot of Halo 3 was abysmally bad. I'm fairly sure an autistic monkey could have created something more pallatable.


* Yes. Sgt Johnson was there and was the first UNSC NCO to combat the covenant extensively. He was also there to see Tartarus (The Supreme Brute Chieftain in Halo 2) long before he helped the Arbiter kill him years later on Delta halo.

I don't hate Halo. I'm just an "Angry fan" because of how much I do enjoy it.
 
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Finally got my copy, played some campaign on Heroic, it's definitely harder than Halo 3. The stamina/ health system makes a surprising difference to how you play.

I find i'm playing it much more like COD4 on the harder difficulties; peeking around corners, crouching behind cars and barriers and trying to sneak up on Brutes from behind for an assasination kill (hard because the grunts accompanying them almost always spot u).

I'm finding my usual kill the brute then melee the grunts and jackals strategy useless too, as the ODSTs can't close distance as fast as the 'Chief, their melee is much weaker (found out the hard way with a Brute) and Grunts and Jackals are no pushover in ODST, they seem more agressive and less likely to run away. Even 2 or 3 Grunts can kill you very quickly with their plasma pistol fire, before you get into melee range, unlike in Halo 3.

The story and dialogue also seem like a step up from Halo 3, and I love the game's overall atmosphere it really helps differentiate it from Halo 3.
 
I just copy my copy today too. Not sure if I'll ever wait to the last minute to preorder a game on Amazon again. Probably wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't went with the free postal shipping. The only great thing was the $19 in incentives. Anyway, off to play... good thing I'm home from a major sprang/torn ligament. ;)

Tommy McClain
 
:D I got around to the second mystery event, but I didn't know what to do at the end there? That's when I quit and slept. :p Maybe I just didn't listen.
 
I've just found a brute on the street with a flipped Ghost. I have no idea where he came from, but this driving fault was the last one he's made. Now I have a - not so - shiny Ghost ;)

So... any chance for a Scorpion? :D
 
Probably one of the funnier things I've seen in this game is during firefight with brutes on their Choppers.

Consistently I've seen them simply run over grunts (and half the time their friendlies don't bother to move out of the way) and even other Brutes. It's hilarious to watch.
 
I'm almost done with the game on normal. I'm on the last level I believe. What I had forgotten up till then was that almost all the levels can be played in any order. I had thought I was playing them in order, but I missed an earlier one and ended up playing it next to last. No big deal, it's still quite entertaining. The side story is intriguing, much better than the logs in Doom 3 or Bioshock. The Superintendent is definitely cute. When I first seen him before the game was announced I thought it was going to be a Live Arcade game. :) That doesn't sound like a bad idea still. Would have been neat to see Bungie do it where it linked with the full game like Fable 2 Pub Games. Anyway, I love the open-worldness(if that's a word) of the city. Just wished it wasn't all at night. Sometimes, the visor mode isn't quite bright enough & I feel like I'm missing nice parts of the city. I understand why they went that route(eg recon/stealth), which I completely love. Never would have thought to put stealth in a Halo game, definitely makes sense from an ODST prespective. Hopefully they'll do it again, it has a lot more potential. Personally I'm not having a problem with this game like others. For $50 it's a great game. I ended up getting it for $40 though & I haven't even put in the Halo3 multiplayer disk in! Personally I think they should have put firefight in with Halo3 multiplayer too. I think more people would have tried it out more. All in all I'm enjoying this way more than Halo Wars(they should have made that a FPS/RTS game like Battlezone instead). Well that's about it for my thoughts. Can't wait to play more firefight and definitely looking forward to the Reach beta. Hopefully they have more Halo game ideas. I'm not ready to move on to a different series.

Tommy McClain
 
You could do some level of stealth even in Halo 1. Sleeping Grunts and basically any Covenant not looking at your way could have been ambushed, and hit on the head from behind for an instant kill. The AI has a limited knowledge of the world and can be tricked, that's always been an important part of the game's design.

Then again, after the first shot they'll always know where you are, so there isn't much use for the silencer on the default ODST weapons...
 
Actually, I've found that in some cases you can kill Grunts and Jackals (snipers especially) from distance with the automag, yet the Brute pack may not know where you are, even though they know something is wrong. You do have to be stealthy though.

Personally, I don't like stealth. I like to charge in without thinking, get totally overwhelmed, then try figure out how to survive. :)
 
Kinda neat how sniper jackals hide behind the jackals with shields... never saw that in the games so far. :)

Argh... 28/30 audio files. ARGH.

Legendary is fun with co-op. :)
 
AlStrong said:
Argh... 28/30 audio files. ARGH.
Click to expand...

The last audio file is in the
Data-Hive level
. For it to show up, you need to be at 29 of 30 before you start the level.
 
I just wish they marked the locations of the ones that you did get on your in-game map. :p That'd make it a lot easier because I tend to forget which place I've been or have explored on the side.
 
The best thing is to be methodologist, cm by cm… no I'm jocking! ;)
But with a good squaring of the map, you're sure to not past side one of them… But in your case you probably have to redo all the city.
 
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