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Beta55

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First off I'd like to say that the gameplay, the audio (as an audiophile, I'm a big fan of what's been done in Halo 4) and the visuals are all great... the problem is the campaign. It's the worst campaign to date and it's because of the writing. There's just so many cliches, weird plot points and the story was just disconnected like a bunch of scenes hastily taped together. I've been a big follower of the Halo series (the games, not the books), but I had a difficult time following along as characters and terms were being thrown at me as if I'm just suppose to know who/what that is.

 

The Halo campaign has a lot in common with The Last Airbender.

 

Did anyone else get thrown by a mention of a Human-Forerunner war? The hell was that about? It kinda killed the Halo universe in my eyes.

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If you've been following the story of the expanded Halo Universe and have been reading the books, then the campaign would make sense. The Human-Forerunner War isn't random and has been known about for two years after it was revealed in Halo: Cryptum

As I already mentioned, I've only played the games (and I imagine that's true for the majority of Halo players). Reading the books shouldn't be a prerequisite to fully understand what's going on in Halo 4. I don't care for the books talking about an ancient human civilization, not one bit. It somehow feels contradictory to what went on between 1-3, as if we were just lied to.

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As I already mentioned, I've only played the games (and I imagine that's true for the majority of Halo players). Reading the books shouldn't be a prerequisite to fully understand what's going on in Halo 4. I don't care for the books talking about an ancient human civilization, not one bit. It somehow feels contradictory to what went on between 1-3, as if we were just lied to.

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Oh no Pony pride in the Halo verse. It's like an invasion of cute cuddly little demons. I said this before about the books and I will say it again. I don't give a rats *** about them. The books are loosely based off the original story from the game and not everything in them is canon. At least not for the original authors of the Halo trilogy. Plus I should not have to buy and read a book just to know what is going on in the game. I purchased a 360, and all the games that should be enough. Besides it's the opposite of what Bungie did. Bungie created the Halo verse, it was their idea, it was an original story, they did not borrow it or base it off some loosely based canon. You like the books and that is great, but they are not my cup of tea so why should have to read them to understand the latest Halo game, I didn't have to do that with the original trilogy. Having to read a book about the story they are trying to tell in the game, just to understand said story makes the writing that much worse. You shouldn't have to do that, that's bad writing.

 

I also shouldn't have to experience COD when I am playing Halo multi but that's another story.

 

As for the game feeling like a bunch of scenes put loosely together, well that's how most movies and game campaign stories are put together these days. It's called story boarding. A bunch of scenes stuck together on a board. But it is the writer and script editors job to connect them so they flow and make sense. It seems there in lies the problem with the game. My guess is they could of used another 6 months to a year to flush out the story they wanted to tell and connect the dots so to speak. My guess is deadline became a big problem along with a lack of original ideas. They had source material, but it seems like that's all they used, where is the creativity? You can see this on the most base level with the ship names , it used to be stuff like "The Pillar of Autumn" and "In Amber Clad." Now it's Infinity, could you be anymore generic or cliche? You see it in the highly repetitive maps, which you see in a lot of games but not usually to this extent, and not usually done in such a simple manner. The maps are very basic, most notably the last 4 maps which are the same map done 4 times in a row.

 

Speaking of being repetitive, the hammering of the campaign mode by me and many other fans is probably getting a little to repetitive. For those of us that didn't like it maybe it's time to rap it up, or at least try to by the end of the week. Nothing we can do about the campaign now. Lets try and finish getting this out of our systems ASAP, nobody likes a whiner or people whining about people whining. I am sure 343 has gotten the message and maybe they invest a little more in the campaign next time. If not well there is always something else. Lucky for me my copy of Halo 4 has a multi player bug, keeps freezing my 360. So yeah I can take it back and feel like the only thing I wasted was about 5-6 hours on the campaign and count 100 bucks back in my pocket. Believe me after playing this I would much rather have the money and that's a first for me and Halo. Thank god I finally got Portal 2, and for 19 bucks, totally cheered me up after playing this game and it was fun.

 

By the way and just a heads up for 343, 3 of my friends, have not even finished playing the campaign they got board with it. They watched the Cortana end clip on you tube and that was it. Not big fans of thee Call of Halo multi either. Well it's a heads up if they actually read this stuff. If not they had a nice fat release date but I would not count on it being that big next time. The brand name made famous by another developer will not carry that far.

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I've only played the games and read fall of reach, also googling halo timeline (wiki search), and finding the terminals in the game would help.This is my theory to the plot regarding halo4. Here goes:

 

Precursors create all sentient life in the galaxy, including forerunners, humans, and flood. Forerunners have war with Precursors to claim the mantle(protectors of the galaxy) and drive precursors out of the galaxy.

 

Precursors unleash flood in the galaxy as a test to humans and revenge to Forerunners. Humans decide to take it upon themselves to try and destroy the flood but in doing so destroy forerunner colonies. Didact, leader of the military caste presumes humans are too violent and want to claim the mantle for themselves. So begins human/forerunner war. Humans lose and as a result are genetically altered to Neanderthals and put on a halo installation.

 

Forerunners are now facing a war with the flood and are losing and as a last resort before firing the rings, Didact composes most humans on halo installation blaming them for bringing the flood and turning them into promethians to combat the flood which still fails. As a result he is accused of his actions by the librarian (his wife) and locked away on requiem. Rest of humans are put on earth(I think) by the mantle and librarian.

 

Forerunners have no choice but to activate the halos and eradicate all sentient life in the galaxy, but not before the librarian stores all said sentient life DNA into seed ships in requiem and repopulate the galaxy once again after rings fired. Time of forerunners passes.

 

Fast forward to halo saga. Humans halt flood infestation. Have a cease fire with Covenant even though theres still factions out there that are still delusional(storm for example), and must claim the mantle of responsibility and find a way to have a cure/eradicate the flood which was the librarians(and precursors) plan all this time. While didact still wants to compose humans as a form of eradication but also obedience(promethians).

 

Whoof, please don't troll. This is just my theory.

 

Basically didact wants to do things things his way and thinks humans are too aggressive to have responsibility over the galaxy, while the librarian and precursors know humans are next in line to be the caretakers of the galaxy, and the only way It's going to get proven is by once and for all destroying the flood and bringing peace to the galaxy.

 

Master chief being genetically enhanced plays a big role along with Cortana being almost human and no mention of the Arbiter or Halfjaw putting a stop to storm. Which leads me to believe that will all be fleshed out for the sequels along with introduction of next gen flood.

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I've only played the games and read fall of reach, also googling halo timeline (wiki search), and finding the terminals would help.This is my theory to the plot regarding halo4. Here goes:

 

Precursors create all sentient life in the galaxy, including forerunners, humans, and flood. Forerunners have war with Precursors to claim the mantle(protectors of the galaxy) and drive precursors out of the galaxy.

 

Precursors unleash flood in the galaxy as a test to humans and revenge to Forerunners. Humans decide to take it upon themselves too try and destroy the flood but in doing so destroy forerunner colonies. Didact, leader of the military caste presumes humans are too violent and want to claim the mantle for themselves. So begins human/forerunner war. Humans lose and as a result are genetically altered to Neanderthals and put on a halo installation.

 

Forerunners are now facing a war with the flood and are losing and as a last resort before firing the rings, Didact composes most humans on halo installation blaming them for bringing the flood and turning them into promethians to combat the flood which still fails. As a result he is accused of his actions by the librarian (his wife) and locked away on requiem. Rest of humans are put on earth(I think) by the mantle and librarian.

 

Forerunners have no choice but to activate the halos and eradicate all sentient life in the galaxy, but not before the librarian stores all said sentient life DNA into seed ships in requiem and repopulate the galaxy once again after rings fired. Time of forerunners passes.

 

Fast forward to halo saga. Humans halt flood infestation. Have a cease fire with Covenant even though theres still factions out there that are still delusional(storm for example), and must claim the mantle of responsibility and find a way to have a cure/eradicate the flood which was the librarians(and precursors) plan all this time. While didact still wants too compose humans as a form of eradication but also obedience(promethians).

 

Whoof, please don't troll. This is just my theory.

 

Basically didact wants to do things things his way and thinks humans are too aggressive to have responsibility over the galaxy, while the librarian and precursors know humans are next in line to be the caretakers of the galaxy, and the only way It's going to get proven is by once and for all destroying the flood and bringing peace to the galaxy.

 

So basically Didact is an over aggressive moron. And the story still makes no sense. Hey stop being so aggressive, cause I am trying to destroy or enslave your entire race that wass already totally destroyed once while trying to beat by the Halo rings we built. A race that built a weapon that destroys all life in the galaxy, is harping on the humans for fighting the flood, the very reason they built the rings? So basically the villiaan has gone full retarrd, and librarian went full retard when she married him. Gosh would joining forces be to obvious a choice if you wanted to stop the flood? No lets fight eachother then we can make Halo 4 and retcon as much out of the original triliogy as we can.

 

That's not writing, that''s fan fiction. That's like Twilight level fan fiction, Shinny sparkle Vampires who love the sun and zero personality plain faced emo chicks. Whoever created the Didact needs to introduce him to the pot and the kettle. I would rather watch River Song do a strip tease tahn have anymore of that. And that my friends is saying a whole lot.

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So basically Didact is an over aggressive moron. And the story still makes no sense. Hey stop being so aggressive, cause I am trying to destroy or enslave your entire race that wass already totally destroyed once while trying to beat by the Halo rings we built. A race that built a weapon that destroys all life in the galaxy, is harping on the humans for fighting the flood, the very reason they built the rings? So basically the villiaan has gone full retarrd, and librarian went full retard when she married him. Gosh would joining forces be to obvious a choice if you wanted to stop the flood? No lets fight eachother then we can make Halo 4 and retcon as much out of the original triliogy as we can.

 

That's not writing, that''s fan fiction. That's like Twilight level fan fiction, Shinny sparkle Vampires who love the sun and zero personality plain faced emo chicks. Whoever created the Didact needs to introduce him to the pot and the kettle. I would rather watch River Song do a strip tease tahn have anymore of that. And that my friends is saying a whole lot.

 

Wrong. Didact is just as delusional as the storm covenant. He is angry that humans destroyed forerunner colonies while eradicating the flood. So he started a war, beat them , made them stupid and used them to fight the flood his way(while halo rings were being built as a last ditch effort to destroy the flood). The librarian was his wife for centuries, before this started with the flood, and when she and the mantle(forerunners) found out of his actions they locked him away in requiem and fired the halo rings, no choice. It's not the entire forerunner race, its just that he has problems with humans.

 

I don't know if you have found all terminals in the game, which explains most of what I'm saying, but from what I'm getting is you ran through this on easy not even bothering looking for collectibles just so you can get through it and hop on to MP. Your speaking jibberish replying to my post and not understanding this dam essay I just wrote you to explain the plot, and you still don't get it? Maybe its not bad writing but bad reading...

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As I already mentioned, I've only played the games (and I imagine that's true for the majority of Halo players). Reading the books shouldn't be a prerequisite to fully understand what's going on in Halo 4. I don't care for the books talking about an ancient human civilization, not one bit. It somehow feels contradictory to what went on between 1-3, as if we were just lied to.

Im not saying you have to read the books, I'm saying that when they mention something you didn't now about in the game, don't act so ignorant and think it was just a retcon.

Wrong. Didact is just as delusional as the storm covenant. He is angry that humans destroyed forerunner colonies while eradicating the flood. So he started a war, beat them , made them stupid and used them to fight the flood his way(while halo rings were being built as a last ditch effort to destroy the flood). The librarian was his wife for centuries, before this started with the flood, and when she and the mantle(forerunners) found out of his actions they locked him away in requiem and fired the halo rings, no choice. It's not the entire forerunner race, its just that he has problems with humans.

 

I don't know if you have found all terminals in the game, which explains most of what I'm saying, but from what I'm getting is you ran through this on easy not even bothering looking for collectibles just so you can get through it and hop on to MP. Your speaking jibberish replying to my post and not understanding this dam essay I just wrote you to explain the plot, and you still don't get it? Maybe its not bad writing but bad reading...

And the Didact lost his children in the war, so yeah, I'd say bad reading
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This is bad writing:

 

 

 

First off I'd like to say that the gameplay, the audio (as an audiophile, I'm a big fan of what's been done in Halo 4) and the visuals are all great... the problem is the campaign. It's the worst campaign to date and it's because of the writing. There's just so many cliches, weird plot points and the story was just disconnected like a bunch of scenes hastily taped together. I've been a big follower of the Halo series (the games, not the books), but I had a difficult time following along as characters and terms were being thrown at me as if I'm just suppose to know who/what that is.

 

The Halo campaign has a lot in common with The Last Airbender.

 

Did anyone else get thrown by a mention of a Human-Forerunner war? The hell was that about? It kinda killed the Halo universe in my eyes.

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First off I'd like to say that the gameplay, the audio (as an audiophile, I'm a big fan of what's been done in Halo 4) and the visuals are all great... the problem is the campaign. It's the worst campaign to date and it's because of the writing. There's just so many cliches, weird plot points and the story was just disconnected like a bunch of scenes hastily taped together. I've been a big follower of the Halo series (the games, not the books), but I had a difficult time following along as characters and terms were being thrown at me as if I'm just suppose to know who/what that is.

 

The Halo campaign has a lot in common with The Last Airbender.

 

Did anyone else get thrown by a mention of a Human-Forerunner war? The hell was that about? It kinda killed the Halo universe in my eyes.

 

O yea, that threw me... me and my friends were like waaaaaaaaa?

 

that raises a big question... if you ancient humans and the forerunner were at war, and they hated each other, then why did the forerunner leave every thing they left behinde to just the humans? why were the humans the only race that would be allowed to light the rings?

 

So basically Didact is an over aggressive moron. And the story still makes no sense. Hey stop being so aggressive, cause I am trying to destroy or enslave your entire race that wass already totally destroyed once while trying to beat by the Halo rings we built. A race that built a weapon that destroys all life in the galaxy, is harping on the humans for fighting the flood, the very reason they built the rings? So basically the villiaan has gone full retarrd, and librarian went full retard when she married him. Gosh would joining forces be to obvious a choice if you wanted to stop the flood? No lets fight eachother then we can make Halo 4 and retcon as much out of the original triliogy as we can.

 

That's not writing, that''s fan fiction. That's like Twilight level fan fiction, Shinny sparkle Vampires who love the sun and zero personality plain faced emo chicks. Whoever created the Didact needs to introduce him to the pot and the kettle. I would rather watch River Song do a strip tease tahn have anymore of that. And that my friends is saying a whole lot.

 

i dont follow, but it was bad wrighting, the other halo games explained them selves completely but this one... was all over the place...

 

characters werent explained, didact, the storm covanant- they didnt know the war was over really?

 

hasley, not being trapped in the forerunner sheild world,(i for got the name of the world, but it was in a book)

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O yea, that threw me... me and my friends were like waaaaaaaaa?

 

that raises a big question... if you ancient humans and the forerunner were at war, and they hated each other, then why did the forerunner leave every thing they left behinde to just the humans? why were the humans the only race that would be allowed to light the rings?

The Forerunner as a whole left nothing behind for the humans. Only the Librarian did. And they can activate forerunner things because the two species are really closely related because both of them were artificially made by the precursors. So chances are they made them similar on purpose.

 

i dont follow, but it was bad wrighting, the other halo games explained them selves completely but this one... was all over the place...

 

characters werent explained, didact, the storm covanant- they didnt know the war was over really?

 

hasley, not being trapped in the forerunner sheild world,(i for got the name of the world, but it was in a book)

The first Halo game hardly explained anything besides that the Covenant thought the ancient people were gods, and that the Halo ring destroyed all life in its range, and the Covenant planned on using it for their "Great Journey" (which I don't believe that term was coined yet, actually the whole Great Journey concept wasn't even made until Halo 2, upon learning this I decided that Combat Evolved is a terrible game). Why the hell were space zombies in the game? Why did the Covenant even hate the humans? But luckily Combat Evolved was further complemented by two more games. Fortunately for us two more games are expected to follow Halo 4, what a relief.

 

Lastly Halsey is explained in another book.

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As I already mentioned, I've only played the games (and I imagine that's true for the majority of Halo players). Reading the books shouldn't be a prerequisite to fully understand what's going on in Halo 4. I don't care for the books talking about an ancient human civilization, not one bit. It somehow feels contradictory to what went on between 1-3, as if we were just lied to.

my friends didnt read the books and figured it out quick

 

The Forerunner as a whole left nothing behind for the humans. Only the Librarian did. And they can activate forerunner things because the two species are really closely related because both of them were artificially made by the precursors. So chances are they made them similar on purpose.

 

The first Halo game hardly explained anything besides that the Covenant thought the ancient people were gods, and that the Halo ring destroyed all life in its range, and the Covenant planned on using it for their "Great Journey" (which I don't believe that term was coined yet, actually the whole Great Journey concept wasn't even made until Halo 2, upon learning this I decided that Combat Evolved is a terrible game). Why the hell were space zombies in the game? Why did the Covenant even hate the humans? But luckily Combat Evolved was further complemented by two more games. Fortunately for us two more games are expected to follow Halo 4, what a relief.

 

Lastly Halsey is explained in another book.

i now people are mad they dont have all the answers did you all really think they wouls do one game after 5 years???
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As I already mentioned, I've only played the games (and I imagine that's true for the majority of Halo players). Reading the books shouldn't be a prerequisite to fully understand what's going on in Halo 4. I don't care for the books talking about an ancient human civilization, not one bit. It somehow feels contradictory to what went on between 1-3, as if we were just lied to.

 

i agree, in halo 1 2 3, it was sade that we evolved from forerunners

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i agree with the OP 100% and the majority of casual halo fans would aswell. problem is you have posted this on a forum in the campaign section and all you get here is snobby book readers.

 

ive played halo since halo 1 and love the series and the story but have no interest in reading books on it. halo's campaign doesnt explain whats going on at all. diadect no idea what it is or what it does, the "bad guy" no idea who he is what his motives are other than he dislikes humans and wants to destroy earth?

the artifact cant remember name why is it important? why am i saving it?

 

im not looking for answers to these questions but this is the first game campiagn ever where i had no idea what was going on and just following objectives i shouldnt have to read books to understand it. the campaign should be written and presented for a mass audience not hardcore fans.

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Ok guys, answer this if you're calling us snobby book readers. How did you like it when master chief magically got from a Halo ring in Halo CE to Cairo Station in Halo 2? Hm..I don't think you guys can answer that can you? Hm... ignorant much.

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i agree with the OP 100% and the majority of casual halo fans would aswell. problem is you have posted this on a forum in the campaign section and all you get here is snobby book readers.

 

ive played halo since halo 1 and love the series and the story but have no interest in reading books on it. halo's campaign doesnt explain whats going on at all. diadect no idea what it is or what it does, the "bad guy" no idea who he is what his motives are other than he dislikes humans and wants to destroy earth?

the artifact cant remember name why is it important? why am i saving it?

 

im not looking for answers to these questions but this is the first game campiagn ever where i had no idea what was going on and just following objectives i shouldnt have to read books to understand it. the campaign should be written and presented for a mass audience not hardcore fans.

Snobby book readers? How about people who just like to read or aren't afraid of books that have words bigger then "We" and big pictures? You guys are trolling. Didact bad guy, stop bad guy, save cortana. Not a complicated story unless your IQ is your level. I'll be completely honest, I'd rather be a snob then an ass like you. At the very least I'd be smarter then you.

 

Halo 4 is like a movie. Watch it again if you don't understand, but be inquisitive and open-minded about it this time.

 

Also, this might help: http://blog.ascendan.../the-terminals/

 

Halo 3 Terminals ftw

You are asking way to much out of people who think reading books are for snobby people. Considering they probably live in their mothers basement and live on welfare like parasites, believe me, it's no use trying to convince them otherwise.
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