Site Poll 104: Obligatory E3 Poll

[Maestro]

 

Hello everybody! It's Maestro here with Site Poll 104!

 

To recap the previous poll, not the one and only sight pole, everyone concluded that hype reached critical mass when 343 said the MCC would be ported to PC.

 

Now that E3 is upon us once again and Microsoft finished the Xbox presentation, we got a new teaser for Halo Infinite showing off the new engine and setting the tone for the game, which can be watched here. It looks like it picks up a little while after the point Halo 5 left off, but I'm not supposed to theory craft in the opening post.

 

 

So my questions for you are:

What did you think of the teaser? What do you think will happen in Halo Infinite? And where do you think the series will go from here?

I'm looking forward to seeing your thoughts on this!

You can also answer on our Twitter page.

 

Maestro out! ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[I_Make_Big_Boom]

I really like the scaled back and down to earth approach (relatively speaking).

 

I didn't expect at all for them to focus so much on some regular ass dude, that was out of left field. I've seen other people say the whole family aspect of his didn't hit for them, and honestly it fell flat for me too... at first. 

 

When the timeskip happened I was actually surprised, him being out in space seemingly for a while. That made the family aspect click for me despite still not caring about his family. Simply because of his apparently simple role in relation to the Chief. Whether or not he's actually a real character, and not a nameless NPC remains to be seen, but the narrative potential for Chief to this random guy is pretty immense.

 

The Chief on the other hand is more of the same, sans armor. I like this more broad version of the skinnier "classic" suit he had in the OG trilogy. Gives me Gears vibes which I like a lot, but there's not much else to say about it. Also, on Waypoint they describe the story as "Chief's story" and that it's supposed to be a good starting point for new players. I really hope his character development is similar to the Halo 4 Chief way rather than the "traditional" and EASY way, please and thank you.

 

Anyway, with that out of the way we now head onto corporate bull**** prominent in 343's Halo thus far. I walked in with extremely low expectations, and came out generally approving of Halo: Infinite. But not much else. Actually, I'm only left with telltale signs already.

 

First being the title. Halo: Infinite. It's dumb. Not sorry, because you can't one-up that to me. That's the kind of title you have for a freaking MMO or game with no forseeable sequel, at least within the majority of a decade. If this is a scaled-back Halo yet still called Halo: Infinite, then that's poor decision making. It's just bad vibes to me, here's to hoping the story really calls for it.

 

Second, the nostalgia bait for a game releasing simultaneous with a new console. Halo CE can be forgiven because Xbox was new, and CE is one of the greats. But if Infinite is bad or mediocre, then they knew full well. Kinda like how they knew when they sent the severely nostalgic MCC out to die to sell Xboxes in 2014 after having sold everyone their broken promises at E3. You can call it "traditional" or "classic" art style all you want, but that's only a crutch for a supposed inability to make something new that's iconic and worth caring about, which I refuse to believe is impossible with all their millions. Thankfully, the rhinos, scenery, and focus on some Hispanic guy are good signs to me.

 

Which leads me to my final point. The benefit of the doubt. I gave it for Halo 4. And MCC. Then Halo 5 happened. It might seem like the end of the world happened for a stupid game, but imagine what happened to Star Wars fans when The Phantom Menace happened.

 

I'm honestly though at a point where I just don't care as much as I used to. I know better. Call me when it's good, otherwise I'm just waiting still saying "Told you so" while enjoying better content somewhere else. Not like they need me since I'm clearly not the target audience, and I only seem to be critical of everything they do. But it's because I care.

 

And I certainly care that they finally decided to bring Halo to PC in a big way, MCC for PC. If only we knew when it's freaking releasing...? Why didn't they do it at E3...? Another stupid 343 or Microsoft decision...?

 

Still hyped for it though, the pizza does NOT lie.

 

 

 

[Drizzy_Dan]

The trailer did not hit the spots I think they intended to hit with the messages from family and the time lapse showing the pilot's beard growing out. I didn't sense danger or hopelessness in this trailer so I didn't "discover hope" . 

 

However because it is Halo, I must say I loved that they showed something and props on what the team has done. I just pray to Grim that they have not sacrificed good story-telling for this classic feel they're trying to acquire with the music and art choices. 

[Twinreaper]

I'll say this, the trailer for me was a big let down.  Not just in aspects I hold in terms of quality engine development, but for the player as well.  If your going to show a trailer for a new Halo game...don't you wan't to start off by showing a kind of "last time on..." thing, rather than jump straight into some scene that clearly has no correlation to the current timeline we know as of the end of Halo 5?  The trailer is confusing timeline wise.

 

From what I know about Halo 5, it ended with Chief and the gang basically standing on an elite planet...not Chief floating around space stranded, and certaintly not near anything ressembling the first Halo ring they encounterd in CE.  Now I cans ee this thing heading one of two ways...

 

1. You will need to read or watch some sort of pre launch content to fill in the gaps between Halo 5 and Infinite.

 

2.  This is the beginning of the game, but cuts to a "24 hours earlier" type of gameplay to catch you up.

 

Either way it was a huge miss.  I'm all for character development, but the whole scenario aside from the timeline makes zero sense.  If your floating around with barely any power, no foreseeable food, direction on how to get home...how does waking up a Spartan on a flying deathtrap even begin to equate to a "We're going home" celebratory scene?!?  If you can't get home on a failing bucket of bolts, what does having a Spartan do for you?  Just made no sense at all.

 

And maybe it's just me, but from what i saw in the actual tech demo, this game looks nothing like anything on the level we saw in it.  None of the lighting was "next gen" looking, there was literally ZERO reflections at all in any of the glass, surrounding shiny metallic objects...and even Chief's visor had a generic cubemap applied and nothing real time reflection...which is severly dissapointing given the numerous other games with much older hardware that do it. Original Halo CE for Mac anyone?

 

I get the wanting to return to the nostalgia and superior art style of the classic trilogy, but if your going to continue a failed story arc and try to return to the old style, it isn't going to work very well.  They would have been better off telling Chief's story through a bunch of new missions and campaigns revolving around the journey that lead Chief to Halo 1.  There is literally 10+ fantastic Halo games just in the novels, comics and stories told before CE.

 

I just don;t think 343 get's it.  Well, not all of 343, but certainlty the likes of Frankie, Kiki, Bonnie and whoever the hell they hired to write these abysmal storyboards out.  It seems quite clear that they think the art style alone and tug on the emotional nostalgia strings is enough to get a good Halo out.  I get we don't help at all being as fractured and biased as we are.  Halo is supposed to be for everyone and it has to evolve, but I just don't like being messed with.  That's my opinion in a nut shell.

 

I don't think I'll be picking this one up on PC, and I will likely pick up and play MCC for the next 30 years instead...

 

[Guts]

It was a pretty decent trailer despite not making a whole lot of sense. Seemed to be more about giving a vague release window and getting you thinking about what "we lost" means exactly.

 

I have absolutely no idea what will happen in Infinite. I doubt anything from that trailer will even be in the game. Same with where the series is going. Only 343 know, and I bloody well hope they also know how not to make this a disaster.

[Ranger Intel]

Nothing amazed me about it, but I liked it. It's good. What I like most, is that we start in the point of view a Pelican pilot, Echo 216's pilot. We get a representation of the average serviceman's struggle in this war. It helps grounds us. Instills the fact that these are just regular people in a war. People who suffer loss. Halo is what it is because of how grounded it's been in the past. The books do some things the games have never (yet) done, and that is put you in the shoes of others. Know what they're thinking, how they're feeling. Spartans. Navy officers. Marines. Civilians. Aliens. Halo Infinite has already had a pretty decent attempt, with just a few minutes of E3 footage. I see a bright future for Infinite. I don't expect, or want the same things we had in the first three games. We need change, it's necessary. But it has to be done right, and I'm confident 343 Industries will be doing it right when Infinite drops next year.