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AradoBalanga posted:That dialogue is one of those "changes based on your difficulty" bits that happens from time to time. Frenzy captured the Normal difficulty speech, so you might be remembering either Heroic or Legendary's version. 
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May 8, 2021 03:00
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AradoBalanga posted:That dialogue is one of those "changes based on your difficulty" bits that happens from time to time. Frenzy captured the Normal difficulty speech, so you might be remembering either Heroic or Legendary's version. Or Easy. Fun fact, the section title changes on higher difficulties too! On Heroic it's "Ladies Like Grinding Treads", and on Legendary it's "Ladies Like Superior Firepower". e:f;b
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May 8, 2021 03:03
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Kind of interesting, you don't have to wait for the scarab to "get stuck" at the end of the walkway there. You can jump onto it from any of the three bridges it passes under. Yeah, higher chance that you might actually miss, but I never even knew it stopped
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May 8, 2021 04:34
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AradoBalanga posted:That dialogue is one of those "changes based on your difficulty" bits that happens from time to time. Frenzy captured the Normal difficulty speech, so you might be remembering either Heroic or Legendary's version. Ah derp, I thought it only changed on Legendary, which I never even attempted back in the day.
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May 8, 2021 14:16
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AradoBalanga posted:So, here we have some of the new voice talent for Halo 2. If memory serves, the female marine at the start is a young Michelle Rodriguez, while Sgt. Banks is Orlando Jones. Pretty sure the guy marine in the opening cutscene is David Cross too. Although it's hard to tell since he really only has the one whiny line. Ablative posted:Metropolis always feels like one of the bigger levels, even though it's just like... the bridge, a bit of highway tunnel, a couple parks, a plaza, and the Scarab. I definitely did a double take after I recorded the level and saw the length of the video. It doesn't feel short at all when you're playing it. Cythereal posted:For as intimidating as the Scarab looked in cutscenes, it was quite the derpy little spider tank in the game proper. Yeah we really only see it take one scripted shot and then walk a path directly to its doom. It doesn't have any kind of actual AI to it. AradoBalanga posted:That dialogue is one of those "changes based on your difficulty" bits that happens from time to time. Frenzy captured the Normal difficulty speech, so you might be remembering either Heroic or Legendary's version. TheOneAndOnlyT posted:The first chapter title also changes based on the difficulty. On Normal it's "Ladies Like Armor-Plating", on Heroic it's "Ladies Like Grinding Treads", and on Legendary it's "Ladies Like Superior Firepower". Somehow managing to keep the joke funny through three playthroughs I especially like the chapter titles changing. In my head the Bungie devs just couldn't agree on exactly what about tanks ladies liked. I also want to mention that while I'm not doing "bonus content" at the end of the videos anymore, I'm planning on doing a bonus round-up at the end.
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May 8, 2021 17:45
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By the way, one thing I will note. As the Scarab passes over your head during that "Marine, did I give you permission to bitch?" segment, the Sergeant there is supposed to have two more lines of dialogue. He didn't in the video, because he got loving murdered by the tower-thing the Scarab knocks over as it passes overhead. It is very possible and all too easy to get killed by this thing yourself, because it is a large object, and it gets knocked aside at alarming speeds. In my recent screwing around with this level, I find that whether you or him or both get smacked by that tower is a bit of a crapshoot. The two missing lines in question: 1) As the thing knocks over said tower, assuming it doesn't kill the Sergeant: "That thing is really starting to PISS ME OFF!" 2) And then immediately afterward, over the radio as everyone's moving to chase down the Scarab: "Marines, time to kill us a Scarab." BlazetheInferno fucked around with this message at 09:34 on May 9, 2021 |
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May 9, 2021 09:08
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I remember being kind of disappointed that the game left Earth so quickly. Obviously we gotta go do the space stuff but it's a really strong opening that leaves you wanting more.
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May 9, 2021 19:21
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Kibayasu posted:I remember being kind of disappointed that the game left Earth so quickly. Obviously we gotta go do the space stuff but it's a really strong opening that leaves you wanting more. Boy do I have a game for you!
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May 9, 2021 19:32
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Kibayasu posted:I remember being kind of disappointed that the game left Earth so quickly. Obviously we gotta go do the space stuff but it's a really strong opening that leaves you wanting more. Wasn't sure if I clicked on my Mass Effect or Halo bookmarked thread
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May 9, 2021 21:48
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I guess I should post that E3 Demo Video like I said I would. I still think this would have been such a cool level.
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May 10, 2021 19:01
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Kibayasu posted:I remember being kind of disappointed that the game left Earth so quickly. Obviously we gotta go do the space stuff but it's a really strong opening that leaves you wanting more. I'm watching this blind, but... yeah. Sure, I'm here for the Covenant invasion of Earth when the Covenant don't even know it's the human homeworld and the entire thing is presumably a giant rolling clusterfuck for everyone involved.
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May 10, 2021 19:05
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Cythereal posted:I'm watching this blind, but... yeah. Sure, I'm here for the Covenant invasion of Earth when the Covenant don't even know it's the human homeworld and the entire thing is presumably a giant rolling clusterfuck for everyone involved. I must have missed something, the Covenant doesn't know they landed on Earth?
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May 10, 2021 23:50
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Outpost22 posted:I must have missed something, the Covenant doesn't know they landed on Earth? Second video said they knew they had arrived at Earth, but they didn't know it was humanity's homeworld.
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May 11, 2021 00:03
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Cythereal posted:Second video said they knew they had arrived at Earth, but they didn't know it was humanity's homeworld. Hell, they didn't know that it was a human world at all, going by Regret's message saying "no human presence was foretold." Of course an equally likely explanation is just Regret being an idiot.
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May 11, 2021 00:23
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As far as the Covenant are concerned, Humanity is a swarm of chittering vermin squatting on any number of potential Forerunner sites and they consider their conflict less a war and more an extermination. So far up until this point in the story, their higher tech level has allowed them to maintain this comfy superiority complex. Regret is genuinely freaked out to have blindly jumped right to the middle of Humanity's homeworld, hence the hasty retreat in the middle of the city, stranding a bunch of his deployed forces as per the end of the last video. Also as we saw during the opening cutscene, Halo's destruction has the Prophets as a whole incredibly on edge.
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May 11, 2021 00:51
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Outpost22 posted:I must have missed something, the Covenant doesn't know they landed on Earth? Correct. Regret went to the next planet on the list of worlds that the Covenant want to go to for (presumably) non-war purposes with his escort fleet and ended up in the heart of Human controlled space. When they dove past the defenses and sat on the surface long enough to figure out what they'd just done, they started freaking out and sending a distress call That's also why there were primarily boarding craft in the space level, not capital ships, and it's also why Regret bugged out while still in atmosphere, doing what sounded like a blind jump into space while still being in the gravity well of a planet. I don't remember how Halo's FTL works, but in sci-fi, that's always a dangerous move
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May 11, 2021 01:05
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It does raise the question of whether or not the Covenant have heard the UNSC forces mention Earth off-hand or refer to themselves as Earthlings. As mentioned in First Strike, the Covenant were still doing ground sweeps on Reach until recently, and I imagine that there had to be a stray mention of Earth somewhere in the UNSC files that either got seized by the Covenant before getting deleted or found via interrogating captured prisoners. If the Covenant haven't heard humans refer to themselves as Earthlings, then that is some extremely strict adherence to the Cole Protocol by the UNSC that has kept their home world's name a secret from the enemy. If the Covenant have heard the word "Earthling" used by now, then that makes them look extremely dumb for not piecing things together. From how Halo 2 frames it, I think the player is meant to assume that the Covenant thought Reach was the human home world. Thus, that planet's been captured and in the minds of the Prophets, humanity is on the back foot and weakened despite the destruction of Halo. Hence why Regret jumps into Earth's general vicinity with such a small fleet: he's expecting Earth to be this uninhabited backwater planet, not a major enemy stronghold.
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May 11, 2021 01:20
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I think it's somewhere in The Flood that the Covenant talk about Earth existing just not knowing anything about it beyond being the homeworld.
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May 11, 2021 01:36
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Ablative posted:
He took one look at a planet surrounded by 300 orbital MAC guns (as apposed to reach's 20) and still though it would be a good idea to attack. Any bet that Regret was just being dumb is a safe one. It does sort of beg the question of what he was hoping would happen once he reached the surface. I guess he just sort of assumed they'd win. Ikasuhito fucked around with this message at 01:59 on May 11, 2021 |
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May 11, 2021 01:45
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The Door Frame posted:That's also why there were primarily boarding craft in the space level, not capital ships, and it's also why Regret bugged out while still in atmosphere, doing what sounded like a blind jump into space while still being in the gravity well of a planet. I don't remember how Halo's FTL works, but in sci-fi, that's always a dangerous move In-atmo slipspace jumps were thought to be entirely impossible just because of the mechanics behind them (basically ripping a dimensional hole in space, which atmosphere makes rather difficult) until... Cortana pulled one off in First Strike. Which is probably where Regret got the idea, because I swear to loving god the Covenant are incapable of any actual innovation of their own and just steal everything from people who actually know poo poo.
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May 11, 2021 02:07
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Ablative posted:In-atmo slipspace jumps were thought to be entirely impossible just because of the mechanics behind them (basically ripping a dimensional hole in space, which atmosphere makes rather difficult) until... Cortana pulled one off in First Strike. Which is probably where Regret got the idea, because I swear to loving god the Covenant are incapable of any actual innovation of their own and just steal everything from people who actually know poo poo. This is one of their core themes. The Covenant worship their technology as a gift from the gods but have little idea of how any of it works. A running plot point is that humans consistently get better results out of Forerunner artefacts and captured Covenant hardware, because humans actually try changing the settings. (Of course they still win because of Plot Contrivance, and because Babylon 5 was a hit at the time and everyone in SF really really loved the Earth-Minbari War concept for a while there).
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May 11, 2021 12:53
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The problem is that the covenant know what Earth is (and humanity must have a home world, obviously) but they had no idea where it is, or how heavily defended it is. One of the big points in CE is that they need to keep Cortana from the Covenant to stop them finding Earth. It's worth noting that at this stage the covenant have been overwhelmingly the victor. Mankind's only ever had minor successes accompanied by heavy losses, and almost entirely off the back of throwing Spartans at the problem. Reach was packed with Spartans and one of humanity's most heavily defended colonies and it lasted a little over a month. Regret had no real reason to expect that he'd run into anything he couldn't handle.
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May 11, 2021 13:36
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 04 - The Arbiter We get a new perspective, as the Covenant try and deal with some troublemaking heretics.
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May 14, 2021 20:41
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AradoBalanga posted:It does raise the question of whether or not the Covenant have heard the UNSC forces mention Earth off-hand or refer to themselves as Earthlings. As mentioned in First Strike, the Covenant were still doing ground sweeps on Reach until recently, and I imagine that there had to be a stray mention of Earth somewhere in the UNSC files that either got seized by the Covenant before getting deleted or found via interrogating captured prisoners. If the Covenant haven't heard humans refer to themselves as Earthlings, then that is some extremely strict adherence to the Cole Protocol by the UNSC that has kept their home world's name a secret from the enemy. If the Covenant have heard the word "Earthling" used by now, then that makes them look extremely dumb for not piecing things together. There are a whole bunch of human-inhabited planets, so plenty of them wouldn't necessarily identify as Earthlings. My family emigrated from Germany within living memory, but I don't think of myself as especially German and wouldn't even think to bring it up unless specifically asked. Some random marine whose family has lived on Planet Wherever for the past several generations might not think of Earth much at all. (that said, you'd think 'where did you humans come from?' would be one of the first questions an interrogator would ask. Maybe the Covenant are just really bad at that, too? To say nothing of captured data. Oh well.)
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May 14, 2021 21:48
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So, joining Keith David in the celebrity voices group are Miguel Ferrer as our Heretic, while our Spec-Ops Leader is Robert Davi. Davi is interesting because as far as I know, this is the only video game role Robert Davi ever took in his career. And count me in the group of people who didn't realize this was a facility literally next to the Halo ring from the first game. I definitely remember the cutscene of them leaving High Charity, but I assumed they were flying off to a different planet altogether that had been occupied by the heretics.
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May 14, 2021 22:02
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The sword lunge breaks stealth, but I believe the normal B-button melee maintains it. Having it out doesn't change a drat thing when you're cloaked, either. Apparently a floating polygon of searing-hot plasma isn't that notable, even when it's moving toward you. Very quickly.
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May 14, 2021 22:57
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Deformed Church posted:The problem is that the covenant know what Earth is (and humanity must have a home world, obviously) but they had no idea where it is, or how heavily defended it is. One of the big points in CE is that they need to keep Cortana from the Covenant to stop them finding Earth. And remember, Regret wasn't expecting any resistance. They already had Earth's coordinates, but they didn't know it was Earth. They've undoubtedly heard about Earth, but Regret went to this set of coordinates for entirely unrelated reasons. Which, yes, strongly implies that the Covenant know something about Earth that humanity doesn't. Also, an interesting detail from one of the books I checked out from the library: at about this time, in-setting, the Covenant hasn't realized that the Spartans are human. They think humanity is a multi-species coalition just like the Covenant is, and that the Spartans are an entirely different species from humans. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 00:59 on May 15, 2021 |
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May 15, 2021 00:56
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Wait, the Covenant energy sword has an ammo counter?
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May 15, 2021 01:29
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:Wait, the Covenant energy sword has an ammo counter? Bungie's halfhearted attempt to balance the one-hit kill weapon by making you have to occasionally find another one.
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May 15, 2021 02:25
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Ablative posted:The sword lunge breaks stealth, but I believe the normal B-button melee maintains it. I tried the "regular" melee during a bunch of my practice runs and it didn't seem to work there either. Nissin Cup Nudist posted:Wait, the Covenant energy sword has an ammo counter? Wicked Them Beats posted:Bungie's halfhearted attempt to balance the one-hit kill weapon by making you have to occasionally find another one. Yeah, it's considered a power weapon so it has something like 10-12 attacks before it's empty. If it runs out of ammo the blade disappears and you can still punch people with the hilt, which is pretty hilarious. Cythereal posted:Also, an interesting detail from one of the books I checked out from the library: at about this time, in-setting, the Covenant hasn't realized that the Spartans are human. They think humanity is a multi-species coalition just like the Covenant is, and that the Spartans are an entirely different species from humans. I don't remember this detail, which book was that from? I'd believe it from encounters earlier in the war, but by the time of Halo it's been going on for 27 years.
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May 15, 2021 03:33
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FrenzyTheKillbot posted:I don't remember this detail, which book was that from? I'd believe it from encounters earlier in the war, but by the time of Halo it's been going on for 27 years. It's mentioned in The Flood. An Elite comments to his troops on John being of another race allied with the humans. Might just be the setting marching on, or The Flood's writer not being very good.
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May 15, 2021 03:35
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FrenzyTheKillbot posted:Yeah, it's considered a power weapon so it has something like 10-12 attacks before it's empty. If it runs out of ammo the blade disappears and you can still punch people with the hilt, which is pretty hilarious. Oddly enough, in multiplayer, y'know, where you'd think "balance" would be a major consideration... It's infinite. No energy bar.
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May 15, 2021 03:49
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The energy sword had to occupy a funny slot in the game design, so I can see why Bungie did what they did with it. The player can already perform one-hit-kill melee attacks from stealth, so the sword needs to have a "better" attack to make it worth using. So it can 1HK in a charge attack from out of stealth. That makes it absurdly good so players will use it all the time, so Bungie needed a cap...and we get the rather silly sword with an ammo meter. In practice it is fiddlier than it looks.
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May 15, 2021 10:44
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God drat I love the music in this weird series, and that replacement track was unfortunate. Pulled me right out of the moment when it played - it's not even tonally consistent with the rest of the music from the game, though I guess they're now on bad terms with Michael Salvatori, the original composer? The music that normally plays over the Banshee dogfight is an instrumental version of Follow (First Movement of the Odyssey) by Incubus. Check it out, it's a banger! Incubus was asked to contribute to the soundtrack, and did so by recording a four part post-rock/jazz/psychadelic rock opera called The Odyssey. Only the first part plays in-game, the rest is on the Halo 2 Soundtrack, part 1, which is made up of themes and licensed tracks like Halo Mjolnir Mix feat. Steve Vai, the Odyssey, Breaking Benjamin's later contribution, and the Hoobastank song that as far as I recall doesn't actually appear anywhere in game. It might play over the credits? Part 2 of the soundtrack is the game's score. These games have aged oddly, originally setting the tone for a generation of shooters before deciding to chase their competition, but the music is and was fantastic. I've still got the soundtracks for 1-3 plus ODST and Reach on heavy rotation, they're great background music for working. SageNytell fucked around with this message at 14:33 on May 15, 2021 |
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May 15, 2021 14:30
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I'm happy we got to this point because I always loved playing as the arbiter. It's not a huge departure in how master chief plays, but thematically I always enjoy switching things up. You do get the stealth camo, which mostly works, but I believe the shields are exactly the same between playable characters (take the same number of hits to 'break' and the same amount of time to recharge) I do forget, is Arbiter supposed to be the same elite that was fighting Johnson at the end of Halo 1, or was he on his ship when Halo blew up? There's other Arbiter stuff but I'll save it until we get to that point in the story.
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May 15, 2021 14:50
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To add to the little off topic discussion - definitely watch Aliens. Do not even hesitate, it is just an incredible movie in every way.
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May 15, 2021 15:04
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Alien and Aliens are both fantastic, timeless films and you should definitely watch both.
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May 15, 2021 15:17
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Cythereal posted:It's mentioned in The Flood. An Elite comments to his troops on John being of another race allied with the humans. Ah, of course it's from The Flood. Yeah I'm betting it's one of those things they thought sounded cool at the time, but ended up getting overridden later because so much poo poo is happening in the year 2552. I really like the idea though of the Covenant first encountering a Spartan and being like "bullshit, there's no way that's the same thing as these humans. It picked up a car!" CzarChasm posted:I'm happy we got to this point because I always loved playing as the arbiter. It's not a huge departure in how master chief plays, but thematically I always enjoy switching things up. You do get the stealth camo, which mostly works, but I believe the shields are exactly the same between playable characters (take the same number of hits to 'break' and the same amount of time to recharge) Yeah I'm pretty sure the Arbiter is the exact same as the Chief except with camo instead of a flashlight. And he was the Fleet Commander of all the Covenant forces at Halo. Even with a lead-from-the-front mentality, I don't think the Fleet Commanders get out on the battlefield very much.
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May 15, 2021 16:26
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Loxbourne posted:The energy sword had to occupy a funny slot in the game design, so I can see why Bungie did what they did with it. The player can already perform one-hit-kill melee attacks from stealth, so the sword needs to have a "better" attack to make it worth using. So it can 1HK in a charge attack from out of stealth. That makes it absurdly good so players will use it all the time, so Bungie needed a cap...and we get the rather silly sword with an ammo meter.
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May 15, 2021 19:58
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Broken Box posted:Alien and Aliens are both fantastic, timeless films and you should definitely watch both. I found Aliens to be derivative on first viewing because I'd spent my entire life consuming media that cribbed every single iota of Aliens, down to individual lines of dialogue Great movie though
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May 15, 2021 21:02
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