I played the Halo series with my friend´s XBox and honestly found the series to be a bit bland and with some glaring flaws. For example, in Reach the stupid Warthog charge against the Covenant and the fact that despite humans being a space faring race, they still use ammunition that is equal or worse than modern weapons (the assault riffle is probably even a poor design when compared to modern rifles). I could go into ther details about the story, but I can wait till some people tell some points which I can debate with.

As for the characters, I honestly thought Thel Vadam should have been the main character of the series, as opposed to MC, who barely had any personality, Vadam, grew, changed and evolved with the games. His history similar to the Gladiator. From general to disposable suicide soldier, to rebellion leader. MC stays the same throughout the entire series, barely having any noticeable change.

Bear in mind this is not an attack on Halo, it´s more of a question to what you find positive about the series. Maye you can open my eyes or not.

 

For me it's these 3 things:

1. Plot: Most FPS games have a bad plot, the halo series is an exception here

2. The characters: With the exception of reach, I've grown fond of most of the characters in the series. (E.g: Sargent Johnson, Mickey, dutch, etc)

3.The music: The score of the games the series are superb and well composed. (See: the ODST skyline music)

The books on the other hand are somewhat confusing though.

 

Heh, I'm playing Halo: CEA as I type this. The reason I like the Halo series in general, is because it's unique. It has a decent story (by modern standards), and as Starfire mentioned, great characters and an epic soundtrack. It's true, each game has it's up and downs, but despite this they continue to be a fun experience every game IMO.

I'd really suggest reading some of the newer books. (The Cole Protocal, Grasslands, Primordium) Just finished Grasslands myself, and I found it to be a quite enjoyable read. It expands a little bit on the Sprtan program, as well as giving the Spartan II/III's themselves more personality than what we have seen. Plus it gives us a couple hints towards Halo 4.

 

Halo is unique by today's standards, every shooter is a boring run and gun with no characters you care for, a short campaign, a bad story and usually an entire focus on multiplayer, whereas Halo has the good quality's of a game, COD doesn't.

That was a very short way of putting it, but anyways Halo's popularity is more than a good thing, you don't get many FPS games nowadays with a decent story.

If you don't like Halo then go play Battlefield or something, but you're missing out big time.

And Master Chief didn't change because he's already had his hardening, he's roughly 42-44 ish, so his life long military serving has already changed him for better or worse.

But yes Thel Vadam does have more personality.

 

my reasons:
1. Soundtrack, pretty epic
2. Story, can be confusing if you havnt played the games in order, plus the Novels for me are always a good read, im looking forward to primordium.

 

Going with what you started with, the weapons. Most of the weapons are using NATO rounds that lots so armies use today. Like what someones said to me once, "If it hurts, It works". You can only increase rounds so much before it make them to heavy to carry. It is also cheaper to make ammo that does the best damage for its weight. That is why the Spartan Lasers are rare since they cost a lot and carry little ammo.

On to Master Chief. The idea Bungie was originally was going for was to make him a silent character to have the player feel like they are the Chief. The in universe reason is that Master Chief and his fellow 72 Spartans were taken at the age of 5 and forced into military service. The best way to understand this is to read Halo: Fall of Reach. This book will help explain why is the way he is. For the Arbiter I agree with you. He went from being a blind follower to understanding that Halo is a dangerous weapon.

 

When I played Halo: CE back in 2004, I remember being enamored by the soundtrack and scenery, especially the whole "fightin' on a ring" thing. I thought the story was just a little above average, although it seemed to have a good amount of supplemental development. I thought the actual game engine was fairly well done, if just a little sluggish compared with other games I was playing at the time, i.e., Half Life 2 and CS:S.

 

Well, the Covenant has plasma weaponry, so I would assume Earth had engineered similar weapons. I think it´s easier to build a laser/plasma gun that the highly advanced AIs they use like Cortana. Their weapons also lack some of the advances we have today like laser sightings, under slug accessories, targets, optics, they´re fairly simple for a future space faring race. I just feel that when future weapons are barely more advanced than the ones we have today, it kinda breaks my suspension of desblief. Things like the Spartan laser should be more common and less clunky.

As for MC, I understand. I´m very familiar with Halo Expanded Universe and there are some really good stories there like the new Forerunner books.

 

The Covenant are massively ahead of humanity in terms of technology. Which is why they have plasma/energy weapons. I guess they mut be harder to make than AIs (Cortana is something of a special case as she's smarter than most AIs but that's largely due to her being created from Halsey's brain.)

As for why I like Halo. Good story, good characters (Although I agree with everything you say about the Chief, there's a lot of other decent characters) and it's fun to play with your mates once you're done with the campaign.

there's also mosre customisation. When you go online, you're a Spartan you've created that doesn't look like everyone else. You can also create maps. No other console FPS game lets you do that IIRC.

 

Doesn´t explain why Covenant warships don´t have AIs, since pretty much every UNSC ship has one.

As for the rest, yeah, I prefer Vadam to MC to be honest. Felt his story made me care more about him.

 

There's a few things that made the Halo series stand out to me. While I've been playing FPS games since Doom 2 on my 486, I'd say that it's the only one that's really held my interest throughout it's entire run. A few reasons for this include:

1 - The story - While it's not a perfect story, I thought that it was reasonably well written and at least opened up the possibility for players to have a connection to the world around them. I found this to be truer of the ODST (possibly my favorite single player Halo game) and Reach games, but it was still far and above the connection found in any of the COD and MW games. Even from what I've seen of Killzone, Bioshock, Halflife, and Resistance, Halo has had a stronger connection for me.

2 - The enemies - The grunts, elites, and even the brutes are unmatched in terms of personality when it comes to FPS games I think. Most games you're either fighting a bunch of seemingly mindless monsters or it's a bunch of nondescript military personnel. Halo was different in that it gave character to the different enemies, and really fleshed out the differences between forms. Elites act very different from the average brute, while grunts act differently alone or in groups. Granted the jackals and the flood were pretty throw away, but I don't recall many other games where I've had fun playing with the AI the same way that I did with Halo.

3 - The humanization of the enemy - This was something related to the previous two points, but I think is worth mentioning on it's own. I've found that many FPS games seem to neglect the fact that there are two sides to each conflict. Halo on the other hand at least attempts to give some insight through cinematics, character conversations, and even some campaign missions, into how the other side exists and what their motivations for this war are.

4 - The weapon system - Up until Halo it seemed like every FPS that came out basically gave you a bottomless backpack to carry your entire arsenal around in, and as such, the game was built with that in mind. In Halo, however, you had only your grenades and 2 weapons at any time to work with, so your choices for weapons had to be a bit more thought out. It added a level of strategy that I don't really recall in previous games, and it seemed to change the way the levels were designed from just being a progression from one monster holding pen to the next (*cough Duke Nukem Forever *cough). I'm sure there were other games before it that had implemented the 2 weapon limit, but I can't really recall any specific games. Regardless, however, Halo was the first I think to do it effectively.

5 - The versatility of the engine - In addition to the incredible map editor that developed out of the past few games, the ways that people have taken the engine and utilized it beyond the game has really done a lot I think to keep Halo popular. Red vs Blue is the key example I think to mention here, but they are certainly not the only group to create machinima projects with the Halo engine. Twice in college I was able to use the Halo engine for presentations for my library classes, and to be honest it was actually surprisingly simple to use.

 

It's fun, the story, and the mystery of where each next game will take us.

Also, covenant ships do have AIs, they've only been encountered a few times and usually by Cortana. Cortana's an exception and is the AI you have the most interaction with, most UNSC AIs, as well as the few covenant encountered, in the Halo universe tend to just be dumb autonomous computers.

The extended universe makes the Covenant out to be hugely more powerfull than what we see in the games. Reach started to bring them more in line with that fiction but to make the games fun they're neutered. The schism on how to use, the reliance, and the lack adaptability beacuse of forunner tech in the covenant also holds them back.

 

the story is awesome, IMO

 

Because it's fun.

 

It's fun to play and has a lot of personality. Grunts for example can turn a serious firefight into a laughing moment at any time.

 

I'm no diehard fan but I have enjoyed each entry. Here are a couple reasons why I think it stands out as a decent console shooter:

- Aiming. Bungie created a propietary auto aim that slightly adjusts the reticle, and it helps make up for an analog stick's lack of accuracy.

- Setting. I don't think the story is particularly good, but the sci-fi futuristic setting is, to me, infinitely more interesting then a shooter in modern times or a WW setting.

- Level design. Even in the first Halo, the levels are carefully crafted to never feel to cheap and ultimately have a good balance of ammo. The first Halo had a slight issue with repetitive looking environments, but that really didn't bother me anywhere but the Library.

- Controls. They aren't the best or most innovative, but add in the other things I just mentioned and they help make the experience fun.

- Splitscreen co-op. So far they have all had it, and while I don't care for playing online, I do love playing side by side with someone.

- The soundtrack. I always appreciate well composed soundtracks in games, yet most games give very little thought to it. Halo has maintains a nice, epic score, particulalry for its genre. The odd thing is that most large and succesfull franchises DO invest in good soundtracks, and yet there are companies who don't seem to think it's important.

- The addition of Firefight mode has added some fun replay value, though I think it was executed better in ODST then in Reach.

So that's about it.

 

The covies do have shipboard AI. That was going to be Cortana's mission when they took over the covenant ship, but reach happen.
Back to the weapons, the humans were able to make the spartan laser after studying the Covenant's weapons. Laser sights are on the guns, but for whatever reason they don't turn them. In the case of the Spartans and the ODSTs they have the HUDs so it beats lasers. The under slung tools like a grenade launcher adds weight both on the gun and in ammo. Halo:Reach is spread out a full month and with how UNSC Pelicans work the normal marine or trooper will have to walk home.

 

Actually according to some back story I read, the Covenant technology is more like WH40K. Turn the crank, praise the Omnisar. They're users, but they didn't develop the technology; the found it and didn't bother reverse engineering it.

Also, check out Halo: Legends, very nice set of short stories in animated form.

Counter Strike had the two weapon limit long before Halo waltzed in to become king shit.

 

The fanbase is pretty great too.