Halo MCC/Infinite/general Griefing thread - Six months, two maps, no refunds

[ThatOneLurker]

Spoiler: the Mark VII armor is basically the Gray Team's Mark IV armor, just to note the continuity

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The design for Mark VII has changed quite a bit from when it was first introduced (Glasslands).

Originally when it was introduced, it was stated and depicted as being visually similar to Mark V(B) aka Noble Six's armor.

Mark VII technically is depicted in Halo 5 through the Decimator armor varient, which is basically a Gen II adapted version of Mark VII.

 

[Spamton]

Halo 3's 'Cortana' is annoying on Legendary but not *that* hard if you take advantage of the cover that is there. For me the worst parts are tanker forms bum rushing.

I remember playing Cortana after acrophobia skull was introduced and the level became a joke so long as i didn't hit any damn walls and die.
truly understandable why it's not a scoring skull, still wish the games with less invisible walls got it.


On that note, though, acrophobia skull makes it super easy to accidentally sequence break in ways i didn't think were possible. One time in Sierra 117 I managed to softlock(?) my game because when you're supposed to rescue johnson, he wasn't there. ends up this was since i flew into the next area too soon.

 

[Miller]

On that note, though, acrophobia skull makes it super easy to accidentally sequence break in ways i didn't think were possible. One time in Sierra 117 I managed to softlock(?) my game because when you're supposed to rescue johnson, he wasn't there. ends up this was since i flew into the next area too soon.

That happened to me. I wonder if there are other levels where you can ruin the progression if you go too fast.

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

That happened to me. I wonder if there are other levels where you can ruin the progression if you go too fast.

Halo has a history of sequence breaking rendering missions unwinnable. I had to knock Johnson into a kill zone, or water, to get past whenever I made the same mistake with Acrophobia. If you skipped activating the hard light bridge from the mission Halo and manage to cross over you won't be able to complete it. I think if the heretic leader from Arbiter gets killed or overloaded you can't progress. Might be wrong though.

Delta Halo, despite its exploitable terrain, doesn't just let you succeed if you skip critical load zones.

 

[Spamton]

That happened to me. I wonder if there are other levels where you can ruin the progression if you go too fast.

I know that I managed to break The Covenant once by flying too far ahead / too high and not hitting the loading zones, ended up getting to the first tower without any enemies but the thing to deactivate the tower wouldn't activate so we had to go back and trigger the load zones to continue.

And once I got out of bounds by mistake in The Ark because I used acrophobia to fly onto the scarab earlier than i should have. Couldn't kill it like i thought, but somehow i got past the invisible wall with it and... then got launched into the air because the scarab proceeded to sink into the ground. Goodbye scarab.

Halo has a history of sequence breaking rendering missions unwinnable. I had to knock Johnson into a kill zone, or water, to get past whenever I made the same mistake with Acrophobia. If you skipped activating the hard light bridge from the mission Halo and manage to cross over you won't be able to complete it. I think if the heretic leader from Arbiter gets killed or overloaded you can't progress. Might be wrong though.

Delta Halo, despite its exploitable terrain, doesn't just let you succeed if you skip critical load zones.

I know a lot of the skips from Halo 2 in particular bc me and my partner speedrun the levels all the time. Did you know about the glitch in The Oracle where if you cause the elevator to go down on you you become invincible for the rest of the level? It's rad ngl.

 

[HeyYou]

We might see 'em at some point, hard to say. The latest MCC dev blog went over some of the new stuff coming down the pipe soon:

Halo: The Master Chief Collection - MCC Development Update - August 2020

We're back at it again talking about Forge contests, Halo 3: ODST, game design, HCS, and everything in between. Catch up on the latest development news for Halo: The Master Chief Collection for August 2020.

www.halowaypoint.com

Spoiler: bulletpoint version

• ODST flight is going well, though apparently less people have been participating in this flight after being invited. Reminder to update your Insider profile if you want to be picked.
• Season 3 (Recon) will have only 50 tiers as opposed to the 100 from seasons 1 and 2. Unlocks include the ODST characters for Firefight (with helmets on and off, and apparently including new variants too), weapon skins and visor colors for Halo 3, and nameplates. Like Halo 1, you can turn off the new skins/visors in your settings if you don't want to see them. Halo 2 Anniversary multiplayer armor will be more customizable, letting you swap between helmets, shoulders, and chest pieces freely.
• Season 4 will add more customization options to Halo 3 and Reach, including more Elite customization in Reach, along with some more surprises they'll reveal later.
• Custom game browser and PC file share development is coming along nicely, they hope to have them flighted soon. You'll also soon be able to choose which servers you wish to connect to.
• Longer discussion of how they intend on handling KB+M/controller players when crossplay goes live. Short version: most playlists won't restrict matchmaking based on input, but competitive playlists will. You'll be able to see what inputs other players are using, and you can't change mid-match.
• ODST Firefight will have considerably more customization options, taking inspiration from Reach's Firefight. ODST Firefight matchmaking will be limited to a single set so that you don't end up sucked into a two hour game that you weren't expecting. Custom games can last as long as you want still. They tried to get the Elephant to work in ODST Firefight, but alas, technical limitations.
• ODST weapons are also going to be ported into Halo 3. The Brute Plasma Rifle will be similar to the Halo 2 version, as opposed to the ODST version which is identical to the regular Plasma Rifle. The Silenced SMG has similar damage output to the regular SMG, but recoils a little faster to offset the ability to aim down sights. The Automag has had its recoil from ODST removed, making it more of a precision killing weapon.
• There will be more challenge variety in season 3, and quality-of-life improvements to the challenge system. You'll be able to view challenges from any game's pause menu, and challenge notifications will be color-coded blue or gold in-game. You can also disable notifications if you want.
• Some talk about competitive Halo, as well as the status of bug fixes and development items.

Goddamn it, I would have preferred for the characters to be unlocked like how they were in ODST, by playing through the campaign (with Dare unlocked by beating legendary). I'm still behind on Season 2 as is.

 

[Miller]

I'm still behind on Season 2 as is.

I'm still trying to unlock the stuff I want from the first season. I hate that unecessary grind.

 

[Spamton]

I'm still trying to unlock the stuff I want from the first season. I hate that unecessary grind.

Same here, I'm not really bothering too much with the seasons yet though since I personally just really would like to save up for Season 3's content.

 

[Nom Carver]

It seems like they retroactively added Chips Dubbo to the Anniversary versions of 1 and 2.

Chips was the australian, right? He was in 2. You'd usually find him as on ODST because ODSTs can only spawn as a small handful of the voice actors as opposed to the full roster.

Also for me Cortana's worst part on legendary was the ranged flood forms. Everything else was pretty easy to deal with but those ranged forms have so much fucking health that you pretty much have to stick them until you can get a needler.

 

[Vault Boy]

Goddamn it, I would have preferred for the characters to be unlocked like how they were in ODST, by playing through the campaign (with Dare unlocked by beating legendary). I'm still behind on Season 2 as is.

If it makes you feel better, you can just switch over to the Season 3 content and put your points into them.

 

[Dom Cruise]

I finished Halo 3.

That was a hell of a ride revisiting Halo 1, 2, 3 and playing Reach for the first time.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Basically, Halo for me ended with Halo 4. Halos 1, 2, 3 ODST, Wars, and Reach were all great in my eyes, as is the Eric Nylund stuff which formed the backbone of Halo's lore. Everything else after Halo 4 blew chunks and should get retconned or ignored outside of Halo Wars 2. Halo Infinite has very little promise, Halo Wars 2 was at most, OK, and Halo 5 is a mess on the level of The Last Jedi.

I found the lore in the first three games (plus ODST and Reach) to be relatively digestible (though that may be simply because I was subconsciously comparing it with the non-stop mind-fucking that comprises the plot of Bungie's earlier Marathon FPS series), but I am speaking here specifically about the games. Eric Nylund's books, which relentlessly try to beat the reader over the head with how awesome and wonderful is Nylund's personal Mary-Sue, Catherine Halsey (AKA Dr. Mengele reincarnated), are just tiresome. Actually, as a reserve member of the Glorious PC Gaming Master Race, the lore was the primary means by which I interacted with the franchise after a PC port of Halo 3 or any subsequent games failed to materialize. That and the aesthetics, although I've always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with Halo's art-design, which seems to veer wildly from mediocre to outstanding to awful in any given installment. But then my brother bought me the Master Chief Collection for Christmas and I've been steadily racking up time in Reach, to the point where I've finally been able to replicate, in-game, the appearance of my favorite McFarlane Toys Spartan figure from all those years ago.

Catherine Halsey was some civilian ONI brought over to help with the Spartan program. They would have done it with or without her, and they already had plans for supersoldiers that they were going forward with. Without Halsey's scientific expertise, you'd have more dead kids in the Spartan program, as well as the program failing horribly without her. Halsey was also one of the few people at ONI who expressed guilt over the Spartan program, treating Spartans like Jorge with an almost motherly sense of love and having extreme regret and guilt over the deaths of the children abducted into the program. The rest of ONI merely saw the Spartans as tools and had little to no guilt over what they did, to the point where they later made the Spartan-3s who were designed in purpose as suicide soldiers, taking traumatized war orphans and turning them into expendable killing machines as opposed to Halsey's Spartan-2s which she doted upon like her own kids.

In short, Halsey expressed extreme guilt over what happened to many of the Spartan-2 candidates and treated the survivors of the program with utmost respect, even to the point where she had a twisted, motherly sense of love for them. ONI couldn't care less over all the dead kids and even made more Spartans that were designated to be suicide soldiers, taking more kids in and using them as disposable goons. I'm not saying that what Halsey did was ethical, but at least she grieved over the dead kids and treated her Spartans like they were her own children, as opposed to ONI which didn't give a flying rat's ass and even took in more kids to be used as suicide soldiers.

 

[James Roancrest]

Halsey a mary sue? Like, actually? No.

She is smart and cunning, but First Strike, Ghosts of Onyx, Glasslands, and Halo 4: Spartan Ops went out of its way to show she was neither good or perfect.

She also faced personal doubts, guilt, and self-loathing when it came to her decisions in The Fall of Reach and First Strike, as well as acting bitter and selfish in the latter books. Even Bungie managed to capture these character traits in Halo Reach.

Not sure if I can remember Nylund writing any characters in his Halo books as being perfect. Even Master Chief has a hard time emotionally connecting with his Spartans, much less his fellow UNSC personnel.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Halsey a mary sue? Like, actually? No.

She is smart and cunning, but First Strike, Ghosts of Onyx, Glasslands, and Halo 4: Spartan Ops went out of its way to show she was neither good or perfect.

She also faced personal doubts, guilt, and self-loathing when it came to her decisions in The Fall of Reach and First Strike, as well as acting bitter and selfish in the latter books. Even Bungie managed to capture these character traits in Halo Reach.

Not sure if I can remember Nylund writing any characters in his Halo books as being perfect. Even Master Chief has a hard time emotionally connecting with his Spartans, much less his fellow UNSC personnel.

Halsey's the exact opposite of a Mary Sue. She's a broken, guilt-ridden woman who has to sit on the sidelines while the children she helped raise as supersoldiers have to save the day, and most of them ended up dead. She's anything but a Mary Sue, since a Sue manages to pull on through and win the war herself. If Halsey was a Mary Sue, she'd have made herself into a Spartan-2 and she'd single-handedly win the war against the Covenant to the point where the Prophets bow before her at the end and proclaim her the Queen of the Reclaimers and surrender their entire Covenant Empire to her leadership.

 

[Drain Todger]

>Joe Staten walks in
>Everything is fucked
>Nothing makes any sense anymore
>Master Chief has a goddamn grappling hook
>Less than a year until it ships
>hfw

 

[Dom Cruise]

Basically, Halo for me ended with Halo 4. Halos 1, 2, 3 ODST, Wars, and Reach were all great in my eyes, as is the Eric Nylund stuff which formed the backbone of Halo's lore. Everything else after Halo 4 blew chunks and should get retconned or ignored outside of Halo Wars 2. Halo Infinite has very little promise, Halo Wars 2 was at most, OK, and Halo 5 is a mess on the level of The Last Jedi.

It really seems like Bungie wanted Halo 3 to be the end considering how much of the supporting cast they kill off and how for the most part finished the story seems.

Sure, things are technically left open to continue, but it also seems as close to a definitive ending as you can get in a video game series.

 

[Miller]

>Master Chief has a goddamn grappling hook

I was actually surprised that they didn't give him a bow and arrow.
I hope Joe gets full power and unfuck that mess.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

It really seems like Bungie wanted Halo 3 to be the end considering how much of the supporting cast they kill off and how for the most part finished the story seems.

Sure, things are technically left open to continue, but it also seems as close to a definitive ending as you can get in a video game series.

Basically, that's the case. Bungie created a story with a beginning, middle, and end, and the only thing they left room for is prequels. Then the Forerunner Trilogy, the Kilo-Fove books, and the Reclaimer Saga sauntered in, and what was once a concluded story with lingering mysteries became a series overburdened by its lore, which led to it losing its simple appeal. Halo 4 was nice enough, but Halo 5 killed any potential it had.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Basically, that's the case. Bungie created a story with a beginning, middle, and end, and the only thing they left room for is prequels. Then the Forerunner Trilogy, the Kilo-Fove books, and the Reclaimer Saga sauntered in, and what was once a concluded story with lingering mysteries became a series overburdened by its lore, which led to it losing its simple appeal. Halo 4 was nice enough, but Halo 5 killed any potential it had.

In your opinion can one play Halo 4 and consider things concluded or does 4 leave things too open? (without any spoilers though, please)

I want to finally play Halo 4 when it's added to the MCC but I remain highly skeptical of where the series goes from there.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

In your opinion can one play Halo 4 and consider things concluded or does 4 leave things too open? (without any spoilers though, please)

I want to finally play Halo 4 when it's added to the MCC but I remain highly skeptical of where the series goes from there.

Yes, one can play Halo 4 and have it be the conclusion for your Halo experience. At most you can add Halo Wars 2 on top as a palate cleanser to wash away John's personal tragedy in that story. As for myself however, I have my own version of Halos 4, 5, 6, and the Forerunner Trilogy.