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kag3man3 posted:I never got into Halo games, as I never really had an xbox. Same. I played 3 in college when a dorm mate had one, but otherwise the series has passed me by. I enjoyed the first video of this LP, though.
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Jan 9, 2021 00:32
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FrenzyTheKillbot posted:So there is actually a whole lore "issue" with Halo: Reach, but that's a topic for another time. Bit of a shame, as far as I know Reach is the only game in the series that lets you play as a woman, from what I've heard through online osmosis.
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Jan 14, 2021 19:46
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Simply Simon posted:
From what little I know of Halo's setting, I wouldn't be surprised if there's also a lot of "Oh they're religious, of course they're stupid and we're smarter than them."
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Jan 20, 2021 19:45
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That is one weird looking tank. Reminds me of the mammoth tanks from Command & Conquer 3 with a dorky turret.
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Feb 5, 2021 21:51
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Knowing jack poo poo about the Halo setting, everything I've seen about the Flood screams "This is an artificially created bioweapon that got loose and wiped out the Forerunners."
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Feb 27, 2021 04:06
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I will always be amused when video game protagonists know perfectly how to operate ancient alien UIs to operate everything in ruins older than the human race. I take it from the 'standard procedure is to purge the galaxy of sentient life' thing that the Forerunners were either mechanical or had casual intergalactic travel. The Flood's giving me pretty severe Beast vibes (as in Homeworld: Cataclysm).
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Mar 5, 2021 23:56
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Guilty Spark did mention that the Flood were working to repair the ships that had crashed on Halo, so I was expecting something like this. Presumably there's similar infestation in the ship's engine rooms. What surprises me from a story perspective is that the Covenant isn't simply commencing orbital bombardment of Halo and this ship. Even if they could get this cruiser flying again, all it takes is a single missed Flood spore and this mess starts all over again.
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Mar 20, 2021 01:00
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Neat LP so far, and I liked the ending. Seems like a surprisingly good game, even if I don't care for Master Chief.
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Mar 27, 2021 03:37
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It's Bungie so I don't know why I'm surprised it wound up being so convoluted.
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Apr 17, 2021 03:05
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Out of curiosity, I found that my local library had the first Halo book and checked it out. It's... a very dark book, fair warning. The Covenant are portrayed as absolutely horrific to the point that it's pretty jarring how easily you wipe them out in the game and how comedic they sometimes are in the game, and the first Elite that John meets (the first Elite ever encountered by humanity, at least according to this book) is portrayed as his complete equal and drat near kills him in a fair fight. They got a legit good sci-fi author to do the book, too.
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Apr 20, 2021 14:12
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Judge Tesla posted:the entire Destiny universe has turned into a never-ending trainwreck of 3D chessmasters constantly fighting each other. This was my impression when I played Destiny 2 in free mode and tried looking up who the hell these people were and why they were fighting. Just an endless procession of 536th dimensional chess played between godlike beings and the actual player characters and what they're doing are barely a footnote.
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Apr 23, 2021 15:10
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The Covenant commander surviving doesn't surprise me, they had a whole fleet at Halo and I gather they skipped out when Halo blew. An alarming lack of point defense on the battle stations, I must note.
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Apr 24, 2021 02:25
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Hungary is another nation that gets mentioned a lot in Halo, from what I've gathered. One of the books notes that the planet Reach was mainly settled by Hungarians. Halo in general seems to go with the idea that most colonies were established by one particular nation or other, which I've noticed is an increasingly common thing in sci-fi settings. I do think this game (or at least this level) being set in Africa is an interesting touch. You don't see future Africa much in sci-fi stuff. I have my suspicious as to why, between reading The Fall of Reach and the LP of Halo 1, but I'll hold off on my speculation for the moment. Even if this game is a clear case of the trend for games in the 90s and early 00s towards a washed out brown and grey palette. Also, regarding the needler and beam rifle - Fall of Reach mentions the largest Covenant capital ships having a naval version of the needler that can take out multiple ships in one shot. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Apr 30, 2021 |
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Apr 30, 2021 21:15
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For as intimidating as the Scarab looked in cutscenes, it was quite the derpy little spider tank in the game proper.
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May 8, 2021 00:52
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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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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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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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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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I get that the game is called Halo, but I can't help but feel disappointed that the game is now back to the setting of the first game.
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Jun 4, 2021 23:09
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Speaking as a highly religious person versed in religious history, the Covenant do seem like a reasonably realistic (given what you have to work with, and with those caveats) depiction of a multi-ethnic nation held together in large part by religious faith and politics. The comparison that comes to mind for me, from what we've seen so far in the LP, is something on the order of the Holy Roman Empire: a dysfunctional, divided mess whose unity is more theoretical than real, but shared religion gives all the different ethnic groups something of a common ground to work with. Or, for a fantastical example, the Covenant remind me of nothing so much as a budget version of the Imperium of Man from Warhammer 40k: a pack of howling idiots worshiping a false religion created simply to unite them against an outside threat who use scavenged precursor technology they don't understand.
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Jun 13, 2021 14:03
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Deformed Church posted:Considering how significant it is, it's pretty disappointing how little discussion of the religion there is. Halo very much focuses on history and politics. We could talk all day about how the religion evolved, but there's just not much about what it actually is. I think the absence of any humans converted to the Covenant is a big part of it. With the Covenant, they're all aliens so the Covenant religion kind of gets conflated (so far as I've seen) with their alien psychology and history and politics. I think the big avenue to explore what the Covenant actually believe would be to have humans who are a part of it - why they've sided with the Covenant and why they oppose the UNSC.
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Jun 13, 2021 22:22
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Carbon dioxide posted:Hm, the start of human solar system colonization and the resulting war sounds quite similar to the events in The Expanse. Or Supreme Commander or Starcraft etc. It's a very standard sci-fi thing: Earth unites under an authoritarian government, starts to colonize other worlds, the colonies begin to rebel. Halo presents a common version of that where the civil war is halted by the discover of genocidal aliens.
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Jun 18, 2021 21:56
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I imagine that's what those big featureless purple boxes you see around Covenant areas are, plasma batteries. As it happens, this LP's convinced me to pick up the Master Chief Collection since it's just $20 during the Steam summer sale.
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Jun 26, 2021 03:02
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Another Halo note I've found amusing: out of curiosity I've been watching a walkthrough of Halo Wars, an obscure Halo RTS spinoff. The big thing the Spartan-II hero units are used for? Hijacking Covenant vehicles like you do in the normal Halo games, here used to bring them over to your side. Oh sure they can fight fine on foot, but it looks like most of the time a better use of their talents is stealing a Wraith or what have you for your own use. There's a variety of other human, Covenant, and Flood units in the game that haven't shown up in the LP, but I dunno how many are just things that haven't shown up yet and what's an invention of that game.
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Jun 26, 2021 20:50
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FrenzyTheKillbot posted:As a side note, I have been thinking about running some streams to play through the Halo Wars games, kind of as an experiment. I played the first one years ago on console but haven't played the second, so they'd be kind of blind runs. Would there be interest in that sort of thing? I'd be interested! Watching the LPs I found on youtube (currently in 2's DLC campaign) has been interesting, but the player is, uh, not good at these games.  One innovation of the DLC I think we can all be glad isn't in the shooters (so far): the Flood taking control of vehicles by infesting their pilots and crews.
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Jun 27, 2021 17:02
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Two for two on dramatic cliffhangers for our protagonists. The Chief and the Arbiter are not having a very good day. Quick story note here, from the Halo Wars games regarding something mentioned in this video. Putting it in spoilers just in case the Halo Wars games do get LP'd: The Flood do use vehicles in Halo Wars 2, but not by simply crewing vehicles with combat forms. Instead they learn to do it Beast style, infesting vehicles with goop and tentacles covering them. The only unit they can't infest is the Scarab (the human super unit does not appear in Awakening the Nightmare).
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Jul 2, 2021 20:40
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idhrendur posted:Finally caught up after falling behind for a few weeks. And like others, I was convinced to buy the games while on sale. Although I'm not sure playing Halo: Reach first, as the campaign order suggests, is the best idea. I've been having fun, but boy have I been dying a lot. Random Halo Wars 2 note, incidentally: that game makes an actually kinda neat note on the Covenant using both Spirit and Revenant dropships. The Covenant in Halo Wars 2 uses the Spirit for dropping in buildings and vehicles, and the Phantom for personnel transport. I find it a kinda neat little distinction you see in real life between transport helicopters and heavy lifters. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Jul 6, 2021 |
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Jul 6, 2021 00:31
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Ablative posted:I assume you mean the Phantom, because the Revenant is a small Wraith. I would not be surprised to learn otherwise. Er, yes. All these Covenant vehicle names run together.
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Jul 6, 2021 00:39
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Loxbourne posted:I get the impression Elites are intelligent, honourable, and kinda gullible - the classic "good enemy" species. Something from the EU that doesn't reach the games themselves is that the Elites are supposedly asking why the Covenant is wasting so many lives and resources on killing humans and doesn't try to recruit them; they've recruited far less militarily capable species than humanity. Something I found amusing from reading online about the books since the LP started is that the Covenant knows the human reporting names for their various races, and both the Elites and the Brutes find the humans' names for them flattering. To the Sanghelli, of course humans think they're the Covenant's best, after all: they are, and they consider it a mark of esteem from a worthy adversary. The Jiralhanae likewise consider 'Brute' a complimentary description because orks orks orks.
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Jul 6, 2021 13:16
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I've also concluded that I feel really sorry for the grunts after getting the achievement in the MCC for killing a thousand of them. I know you said you weren't planning to play Reach, but in Reach you can shoot off their methane tank causing the grunt to rocket around the area on their pressurized suit gasses until they explode.
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Jul 7, 2021 13:47
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On a related note, the Halo Wars games even provide a visual explanation for the silly tuning fork design of the Spirits. In the Wars games, infantry are carried in the compartments in the fork's tines, while vehicles are hauled in the energy field in the middle. And I will note that while it's technically a prequel, Halo Wars 1 is a very self-contained story with a good explanation for why you never heard anything about the Spirit of Fire or its encounters with the Flood even though they happened well before Halo 1. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 13:44 on Jul 9, 2021 |
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Jul 9, 2021 13:40
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So sorry for the double post, but I noticed something about the MCC that you haven't mentioned in the video: the graphics toggle between original and remastered changes the music and sound effects between original and remastered, too! It's been really noticeable in Halo 2 when I've been swapping to check out how particularly scenic areas looked originally. These areas also tend to have the swelling orchestral music, and the difference in the music between original and remastered is very noticeable. Random Halo detail I found on the wiki that I find interesting: Cortana isn't kidding about the white armored ones being called 'Ultraviolets.' Turns out in the books it's revealed that Elites can in fact see ultraviolet light and the armor on that rank is painted accordingly. But to humans, who can't perceive that spectrum of light, it simply looks white. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 13:57 on Jul 15, 2021 |
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Jul 15, 2021 13:49
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The Elites in general feel extremely feudal Japan to me, space samurai, so the idea of the Arbiter as being a 'find redemption in a heroic death' position feels natural to me. It's honorable suicide.
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Aug 28, 2021 02:03
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I don't know about Halo 2, but in ODST at least you can give marines fuel rod cannons. As for the prisoners, the books provide a hint to the brutes calling the area 'holding pens': in the books, most of the Covenant straight up eat humans. Elites won't, they consider it dishonorable, but jackals, grunts, drones, and brutes do, and they won't wait for humans to be dead before they chow down. There's a scene in Fall of Reach where the Chief explicitly makes note that it's common for human civilians to commit suicide if it looks like the Covenant is going to win a ground war because it's a much faster, and less painful, death than what awaits them if the Covenant take them alive. Given that at the start of this game High Charity was at the halo from Halo 1,and presumably only just moved to Delta Halo, I assumed the marines were probably from the Pillar of Autumn who were taken alive. Regarding the hunters' side in the civil war, the books noted that the hunters are divided on who to side with. Most of their leadership side with the elites on the basis that the elites treat them better, but some hunters side with the brutes out of sincere religious conviction that they're following the prophets. Officially, this is why the grunt government sided with the elites, too: the brutes treat them as nuisances and extra rations where the elites have shown them genuine respect in the wake of their rebellions, but many grunts who happened to be around brutes when the war broke out sided with the brutes rather than be killed and eaten immediately. Supposedly there are likewise jackals and drones on both sides of the war, some choosing sides out of sincere religious beliefs and some based on opportunity and other mundane reasons. I'll avoid talking about the Forerunner trilogy beyond that I read it, and it sheds a lot more light on the Gravemind's nature and motives.
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Sep 3, 2021 19:36
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The Forerunner trilogy does answer why Forerunner AIs don't know the location of the Halos: Graveminds can hack AIs and assimilate them, as the Forerunners discovered when they tried using robotic drones to fight the Flood. The locations of the Halos were kept secret so the main Flood couldn't find and destroy them.
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Sep 18, 2021 01:43
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And here we go with, in my opinion, the best of the Halo games.
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Nov 26, 2021 20:47
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In the books, most of the Covenant races gladly eat not only humans, but each other as well. A common form of execution among the Covenant is noted in one book to be binding the arms and legs of a prisoner, and tossing them into a prison cell with the expectation that the prisoners - kept starving - will rip the victim apart and eat them. The Brutes are supposedly especially fond of this.
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Dec 3, 2021 21:53
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The chopper is my personal favorite vehicle in the series to drive. It has a very unique feel as far as video game vehicles go, and its guns are surprisingly accurate at long range letting you snipe with it.
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Dec 11, 2021 00:20
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This is one of my favorite levels in the entire Halo series, and the music is a big part of it. Halo 3 in general had far and away the best music in the series, in my opinion.
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Dec 18, 2021 21:17
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This is one of two contenders for my favorite level in the entire series.  I've also poked Halo Wars again recently, and that game's manual suggests an interesting bit of trivia: Hunters got their name because they're considered by the UNSC to be the Covenant's main anti-vehicle infantry force. And all the UNSC vehicles are named after animals. Thus, Hunters.
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Jan 7, 2022 21:52
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