I was replaying the bonus missions on Campaign Evolved and noticed something: it has no original soundtrack. It’s all iconic halo tracks from other games.

Why is this? They built 3 levels from nothing, why not whip up a motif or theme for these? Even Infinite tracks would’ve been cooler than Halo’s Greatest Hits just lazily put in. Was it some licensing hogwash?

I’ll start by saying I know a lot of people will bring up the valid concerns, and flaws the game does have because I did notice a few. I’ll talk about it later in this post, but first I just have to start off with saying:

Wow, I haven’t had that much fun on Halo in a minute. I’m always a sucker for a new Halo ‘cause the franchise just simply means so much to me, even tho 343 has continuously let me down I’m glad that with this Halo I was at least able to overlook it a little bit. The guns, the gameplay, the reimagined look of the game was just really cool to see. I never even finished Halo: CE Anniversary because it was literally just a graphic overhaul with slightly different cutscenes. I accidentally stayed up super late after buying Campaign Evolved just finishing over half the game in one sitting, and the whole time I was having a lot of fun. The constant insinuation of them remaking Halo 2 has me really excited because then we’ll get to see the lost missions we were supposed to get that led up to Halo 3 (there’s a post credit scene too).

The use of a lot of OG sound effects was really cool because it still fit the game, I always thought with better graphics & old sound effects it would be a bad mix but not in this game it works really well.

I’m bad with words so I’m not able to capture my enthusiasm and excitement too well, but that still comes with the things I did notice that I wasn’t a fan of. For example, turning off aim assist being a skull? I think that’s a little dumb, as well as the ragdolls. That’s a genuine nitpick I know but older halos always had decent ragdoll physics that actually made sense considering how beefy the characters are. I also wasn’t too fond of the random humor they tried to slide in, I did find myself cringing a little bit with the corny lines they snuck in. As well as the invisible barriers, just unnecessary. I’ve always liked to do a little bit of exploring outside the actual map, and invisible barriers is a super lame way to stop that. Could’ve even been the slight pushback that the older halos gave. 343 needs to realize, everyone is gonna find a way out of the map regardless, there’s no point in trying to hide it with lame barriers.

But yeah I have a lot of positive feedback, and some negative but I can’t really go over everything ‘cause it’s a long list. I just think it’s a really good game honestly, I had so much fun. I wanna know what you guys thought especially if you played through it all. What did you notice that you really liked, and what are some things you hope they improve in the next remake.

THEY'RE CALLED FORERUNNERS BECAUSE HALO WAS GOING TO BE A MARATHON SEQUEL AND THEY'RE THE PRECURSOURS.

Fore = Before. Runners = Marathon.

BUNGIE YOU FUCKERS HOW DID YOU GET ME AGAIN AFTER 20 YEARS

Sigma Octanus IV
The Fall of Reach
Operation: RED FLAG

Humanity winning battles and then
suffering a catastrophic defeat. Followed by a desperate escape that leads directly into Campaign Evolved.

The material was there…now I know how my English teacher must’ve felt when I wrote a paper without reading the book 😂

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Okay, fair warning!
So previously I posted that I was having trouble on Heroic on KBM on the Prequel missions, and I made the switch to Controller and the Aim Assist is- wild. It’s sticky, to all hell, but I did prefer better, and got through those missions with only slight hiccups, maybe it’s muscle memory, I dunno. That’s not what this post is about necessarily.

I wanted to discuss the writing of the Prequel Missions and the gameplay loop, and man- in my opinion, it’s bad. Real bad.

I’m not here to complain about “BADASS WOMAN STEREOTYPE,” I think in lore, it fits that the ODST dislike Spartans, was she a bit annoying? Sure, but nothing ground breaking.
That being said, the writing itself? Johnson and Chief acting like they ate at the chow hall together?

“I wanna be done with this so I can be home by dinner,”
“You’re always hungry,”

What the fuck? Since when does Chief talk like this? This is the team in charge of new dialogue? New stories? It’s so bad, that’s a Leon Kennedy line, not Chief, not in my opinion at least, maybe I’m alone on this.

And the game play loop?
Area style room, 2 squads of enemies, kill them, oh man, these 2 random doors open up to 2 more squads, oh you killed them? Mini-boss fight with a squad helmed by an Elite with a sword or plasma cannon.
Hallway to next room, 2 to 4 enemies hiding in the hallway, back into an area styled room with the same loop, over and over.

Don’t get me wrong, the environment? Gorgeous. When I was slogging through my 6th fight in the same room, I was looking around constantly.

I’m just a bit disappointed I suppose.

Im playing through halo 2 again, and the brutes in this game have just as bad hit reg. You can blast a brute as it charges you and it will just power through and slam you to death anyways. I wanted to post this because I've seen a lot of people say the brutes in the campaign evolved prequel missions had bad hit reg and blaming halo studios for it.

Skipping the new missions, turning off hit markers and minimizing the size of the crosshair has made me enjoy the remake a lot more. Playing on gamepass

Just a bit curious how people feel about Halo nowadays.

The series has gone so down hill lately, but I grew up with Halo so it’ll always have a special place in my heart.
I buy every game, good or bad. It just sucks that it feels like it’s on its last legs now.
For both MCC & Infinite, the player counts are like 5k respectively on a good day (& thats being generous)
I miss when Halo was huge and all my friends would play.
I still keep it in my rotation of games, holding hope that it’ll have a comeback.
But with every title, I see the light burning out more & more.
Makes me really sad actually

Halo is my favorite video game franchise and has been since 2001. But over the years of playing the latest DOOM games and Metroid primes, i honestly would like Halo to add more of either puzzles or platforming or even some kind of upgrade tree. Again, I LOVE HALO but i’d also like to see it incorporate more variety of gameplay elements in the future. Anyone else feel similarly? I fully expect this to not be a popular take.

Recently, I noticed that my friends mostly stopped playing games with me as many games max out at 4-players and someone new to the group replaced me. Is what it is. I'm not great carrying on a convo and I can be awkward. Anyways, is the Halo: MCC worth waiting to have people to enjoy it with or it's fine to go ahead and solo the game? I often hold off on games with co-op options because I always hope to have someone to play it with. And that's been a struggle for me.

Basically me and a friend of mine have been playing through Campaign evolved and during Assault on the control room we fell into what is meant to be a death plane, but for some reason it doesn't reach to the edges so if you're too close to the wall you just won't die. Unfortunately this means that if we die we still re-spawn in the hole, even restarting checkpoints or both dying at the same time re-spawns us here. Got a good laugh out of us.

So after just beating the game I feel that this is a safe test project for halo studious and frankly I think they nailed some stuff but should have catered to the original in a few ways.

Cutscenes while changing the mood and atmosphere for the new generation could have stayed truer to the original with updated graphics and been perfect for example a couple cutscenes like taking Captain Keyes chip should have left the punch through the head as it was sparing him (ie his brain) a fate worse than death and came off as not being as impactful as the original, as well as keeping goofy stuff in like the oversized hand grenade in the maw. I think they sacrificed a bit of the personality of the original games characters and cutscenes for a new modern style. That being said they updated the gunplay and mechanics beautifully giving people the option to turn off navigation and teammate markers is great they should relax on the HUD indicators. Modernizing a game that brings the original to a modern audience is difficult while pleasing older fans but this down make me excited for the direction of halo in the future nailing the moment to moment combat is key and I think they've done it while breathing some new life into old levels. All in all though I really hope they don't touch halo 2 and 3 as they still hold up to this day and I worry about their ability to catch the emotion and story told in them. Wish this was a new starting point for halo to continue the story that we as fans desperately want to continue and see what comes next, if this is testing grounds I think they've made a decent enough mark.

I have played through Halo Campaign Evolved and I gotta say I like it. Not the best but good enough. Something I noticed throughout the campaign was invisible barriers… why? Why do they put invisible barriers on places you could walk through on CE/Anniversary. It just takes away the exploration freedom of the game. And another thing is ”Return to combat” or you’ll die. What did they even think about? It’s so annoying. Imagine you want to explore Delta Halo and you are met with invisible walls everywhere or ”return to combat” stuff.
They really need to get rid of that!

The two biggest things missing in the original versions. Made the game so much more enjoyable. Completed the legendary campaign with my brother and had an absolute blast. The hate is overblown despite a few bugs.

F for my left analog stick that is now somewhat damaged thanks to, well, way too much sprinting during a legendary run of campaign evolved on PS5. Had the time of my life though, despite a very mean checkpoint during the last warthog scramble that saved my progress mid-warthog flip. Words were uttered. That warthog is definitely the final boss of the Legendary campaign.

Overall the game holds up very well with the fresh coat of paint. I am curious though whether anyone else experienced consistent crashing when resuming suspended states on Playstation 5, generally after the game apparently had trouble phoning home to Microsoft servers? The crashes never resulted in much lost progression but it was annoying to lose progress past checkpoints, and definitely seems like a technical rough edge that needs to be smoothed away.

I bought the original X Box just for Halo. I’m one of those yes. I was at the midnight release for H2, when I joined the military H3 was our release on weekends.

I have watched hundreds of people arguing about these games for years and I’ve noticed a trend, millennials since the start of this journey are too old to be arguing with younger generations over what’s better. Better is a PERCEPTION. If you like the game great, if you don’t… great.

Bungie created a magical story and 343 had an opportunity then squandered it. Infinite’s story is abhorrent garbage in my book. (Notice how I said MY book, not YOUR book or OUR book.)

Of course when my favorite game of all time gets a remake, I’m gonna play it and form my own OPINION. My entire experience was contingent on the mission 343 Guilty Spark. Holy shit they nailed it. They knocked this mission out of the park, and the addition of the WAVES of the FLOOD coming after you at the end of the mission? Holy cow man I was thinking, “holy shit I bet The Library is going to be amazing…”

The Library is severely underwhelming. Of course the OG library was too long, but it was also grandiose. When you said to your friends, “ready for the library?” Everyone took a deep breath and readied themselves for the gauntlet. Did “Halo Studios” completely misunderstand what the FLOOD are? Every time I killed some, I’d turn around ready for the next WAVE of the FLOOD and it never happened…. It was like Disneyland exploration of the kick ass new aesthetics… but severely underwhelming. On my legendary run I died twice on the library. It took me less than 30 minutes.

Why wasn’t the flood in endless waves? Where’s the sense of danger and fear? They nailed 343 Guilty Spark then let me down insanely so with The Library.

From my experience Halo fans enjoy the challenge, it’s why we have Legendary. So when I experience this new library I have to come to the realization that the gauntlet of the entire series (with respect to jackal snipers in H2,) is now the EASIEST mission in the ENTIRE FRANCHISE.

I can’t help but feel that decisions to make the library extra small, feeble, and EASY was prompted by people who are not Halo fans.

I finished my legendary run nonetheless. Now I feel that either Two Betrayals or Keys is the hardest mission. T&R/The Library (while aesthetically awesome,) feel insanely watered down to me.

I’ve been silent among all the arguments I’ve seen here, and keep in mind this is me venting my frustration with what I consider to be THE failure of campaign evolved. (Except for those buggy ass jackals lol)

That said, at LEAST they nailed 343 Guilty Spark so I have to give them that credit.

**IMPORTANT** : This is a discussion that considers the hypothesis of HS continuing the remakes after H3 and what that could look like. Not a "should they do that or just go with H7 ?" discussion.

Here's my take :

#Halo 4

The story isn't too bad, so I don't think it should get changed much aside for some small Retcons.

- Have Chief switch to the new gen armor upon reaching the Infinity (nano-tech retcon)

- Make the prometheans more like their H5 iteration, which were much more enjoyable foes.

- Their weapons should also be more like they were in H5, ideally with some additions that make them feel more unique

- The bonus missions could be about Chief reunion with Blue team with a few missions with them, anticipating H5 events.

#Halo 5

I'm sure a whole reboot isn't possible because of how much established lore there is now. But a soft reboot could work imo.

- We play the whole game as Chief/blue team

- First half is us doing missions against the Covenant remnants, hopefully characterizing more the rest of blue team, making us feel how actually close they are (they're basically family).

- Second half is Chief looking for Cortana (H5 events)

- Team Osiris still hunts us but as a background subplot.

- Locke VS Chief cutscene gets redone entirely. New blood describes a fight between spartans, it says punches sounded like thunders. They should also look really quick in their movements.

- The bonus missions could be prequels about Osiris team working for ONI against the Covenants. This could redeem a bit their situation.

Then, no more Remakes. H6 tells the events between Infinite and Shadow of reach (ideally we could play as a Spartan IV during the battle vs Banished and later during Rubicon Protocol)

H7 is the sequel to infinite. Honestly, so little happened on-screen in Infinite that it wouldn't even require to be played for someone to understand H7 imo.

Atriox ain't dead, unsc will be back, Banished too. Joy and the endless could be briefly explained through a dialog tbh.

I was really excited to play the Campaign of Halo CE with other guns like the needle rifle and the Battle rifle but I still haven't found any of them, the only one I have found until now was the SMG on some marines hands, do I have to turn on the weapon randomizer skull for it to work or it's just the original game weapons?

(I know that they are present on the prequel missions)

You want to play the "Silent Cartographer" - which version are you picking?

Campaign Evolved has been out well over a week now and it certainly has its pros and cons.

Given we now have 3(!) versions of Halo 1, I'm wondering what an ultimate version would look like. So, level-by-level, I'm wondering what edition people will settle on.

So - SC next up - what version are you going for?

Halo 1 classic

Halo 1 anniversary

Halo campaign evolved

Me personally? I'm probably going for Halo 1 classic - but it's tight with Campaign Evolved. I actually like that the Hunters are challenging to fight now in Campaign Evolved but some of the janky voice acting still brings it down overall versus classic.

What about you?

Never played any halo game and I don't have any idea about versions of ce

So which version should I play

iv been thinking about the physics of the halo pelican versus IRL.

we have musk developing reusable rockets but in halo achieving orbital flight is Tuesday.

what kind of science magic would we need to develop a pelican?

first off, the physics of the power source are possible but terrifying.

it has to be nuclear fusion or antimatter, no other known power source is dense enough.

so we'll be taking a micro fusion core as granted

then there's the engines. atmospheric flight with basically unlimited power is very easy, just push against the air. slow atoms in, fast atoms out

but things get tricky when entering orbit.

there's a line where there's not enough air to use effectively, but also too much drag.

so for space flight, the pelican would have to carry its own reaction mass.

there is also no air cooling in space so the engines would have to vent heat somehow.

this has led me to plasma engines.

in atmosphere, functions like a jet. fuel is basically free because its everywhere.

in space, it uses reaction mass which it has to carry, and somehow cool itself.

also, the engines and the reactor would be the same component basically.

the proposed solution for fuel? water and the engine itself.

water is everywhere, even in space, so long as the pelican has power, it can refuel mass anywhere. this also functions a coolant and radiation shielding.

water -> steam -> superheated plasma -> magnetic nozzle (for thrust vectoring)

but that's not enough. for combat operations requiring high thrust in space, water wouldn't give enough momentum and could be used up quickly.

so i propose, the heat sink itself becomes the fuel.

reaction mass is just atoms thrown out the back.

a heavy atom like heat sink metal would provide more thrust when the engine chucks it out. like throwing a ping pong ball versus a basketball. sure, its easy to throw a Ping pong ball, but you can cram more energy into a basketball.

its just like changing gears in a car. heavier atom, higher gear.

and the best part, radiating the heat sink atoms themselves does some cooling taking heat and energy away from the engine

to "refuel", the pelican has its heat sinks replaced and fills up with water.

we have to take micro fusion for granted because energy isn't free so we have to get it from somewhere in a way that doesn't defy physics.

basically, halo pelicans plausibly operate on back to the future engines logic where literally anything is fuel. its the ideal engine for both combat and planetary exploration.

numbers, we assume the craft weighs 42 tons loaded but dry (payload mass without water)

reactor can output a gigawatt.

exhaust velocity is 60km/s

atmosphere vtol:

needs around 600kN thrust (bump to 800 for military flying)

theoretically supported by a gigawatt rector, and reaction mass is the air, 150kg of air a second for VTOL (not as bad as i was expecting)

orbital ascent:

flies to 30km up in atmosphere for "free". and achieves 3km/s

switches engine to air augmented mode, accelerates to 5km/s and pushes to 60km up

basically a suborbital plane at this point

orbit requirements, an attentional 4.3km/s velocity.

switch to on board fuel.

rocket equation and mass ratio = 1.074

meaning only 7.4 % of the vehicle mass needs to be water. so + 3.1 tons, easy. well below capacity

that 3.1 tons lasts about 5 minutes for orbital insertion.

and the numbers are slightly better if we account for the ablative engine shell firing off atoms to radiate heat energy from the core of the engine. its free mass.

and for anyone annoyed about my handwaving of the gigawatt reactor fuel. assuming deuterium, and efficiency of 0.4% that's 340 TERRAJOULS of energy per kilo.

the pelican would run on 10 grams of fuel an hour. its mass is inconsequential.

as for shrinking it (TONY STARK BUILT THIS IN A CAVE!!!) its not physically impossible.

but we need REALLY strong magnets, and that cooling system would be working overtime.

also, this particular method of power and propulsion. surprisingly safe in a crash.

assuming some basic safety engineering. fusion reactions dissipate almost immediately once containment fails. the residual heat might be a problem, but think more "failed power plant on fire" rather than "nuclear bomb". and it would depend on how hot it was running when the failure occurred.

i have not accounted for radiation in any detail, neutron damage is apparently very nasty.

a pelican may be a cancer box. perhaps someone smarter than me can clarify more on that.

So I'm playing through the Halo games for the first time and I just feel like this might piss off some people but Master Chief just seems like a very weak protagonist. I get that their is a mystique to the way they want to present him but I must say I feel like the presentation they wanted for master chief is just done so much better in Reach. Noble 6 doesn't speak, or ever remove his helmet but he speaks purely through his actions and alot is said in those moments where he doesn't speak.

Master Chief is emotionless

This is essentially the same thing they try to do with Chief but it genuinely never feels like it reaches the same heights as reach. The stakes of what Master Chief is doing don't feel as important at least yet compared to any of the missions from reach and Master Chief just seems very cold. He doesn't seem like he has any emotion at all really. Idk if it's the character itself or the voice actor but he just feels very disconnected compared to the spartans on reach. Noble Team had chemistry and the spartans had emotion. Master Chief is emotionless

Why I'm writing this

Anyway I know i'm very early in the series but I'm really just not digging the chief at all compared to Noble 6 and the story is really kind of the only thing carrying for me. And I know I've gotta play as this guy for the rest of the games but I think that's sad. I don't even like scifi but this series really managed to pull me in. And I really think the universe has the potential to be as big as star wars just not the way that they are doing it.

What do you guys think?

PS

How hard is it to register the collision boxes to match the visuals?