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Ablative posted:You know, I used to like libraries as a kid. That said, I want to say this is the first time in Halo 1 you can find plasma weapons with a full 100% battery charge. All of the other ones dropped by the Covenant up to this point have been anywhere between 60% and 90% battery on average. I always assumed that the battery drain scaled with how much enemies shot at you, but nope, it looks like a Combat form can unload several shots and somehow not drain the battery on plasma weapons.
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Feb 27, 2021 04:59
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For the longest time, I did not know this was the same Covenant ship from earlier in the game. I took Cortana's statement at the start of the level to mean that this ship was a second Covenant ship that got left behind in the chaos of the Flood appearing, and all of the Covenant troops in the level were launched from the Truth and Reconciliation in a desperate bid to scuttle it before the Flood took over. Also, I completely forgot the first part of the level. I remember Cortana warping you in upside down, but after that, everything else is a blur until you get back onto the ship. I genuinely do not remember the whole "jump into the pool of coolant from a warship reactor" section.
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Mar 20, 2021 00:50
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FrenzyTheKillbot posted:I totally forgot this detail. I actually am wrong in the commentary where I say the spec ops elites are there to destroy the ship. Cortana says in the opening cutscene that they are trying to repair it for some reason, although maybe they'd destroy it out in space to avoid damaging the ring. Granted, I've never touched the Halo novels, so it's entirely possible the novels explain this part of the game better than what's in the main game.
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Mar 20, 2021 21:08
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McTimmy posted:The novel reveals there's a minor Prophet aboard the ship.
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Mar 21, 2021 01:23
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ModernMajorGeneral posted:I know it probably goes into some external slot that has no direct communication with his body, but I was always uncomfortable about how Chief is fine with the chip covered in infectious space zombie goo being jammed straight into his head, as long as he gives it a bit of shake first.
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Mar 21, 2021 21:15
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The talk about LAN parties at the end made me age 5000 years in an instant. Thank you for making me feel that old. I am looking forward to Halo 2 and the surge of big name talent that came in to do the voice work/soundtrack.
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Mar 27, 2021 03:05
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FrenzyTheKillbot posted:Halo 2 - TV Commercial - And this is the regular old TV commercial also shown in late 2004. This trailer is mostly made up of actual gameplay clips and dialogue from the final game, which can give you an idea of what to expect. There is actually a minute-long version of this commercial out there, but I didn't include it because the best original resolution I could find was 180 vertical pixels (!) after removing black bars and my upscaling efforts looked awful.
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Apr 9, 2021 22:32
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I love that the vice admiral is so insignificant that he's represented with a Lego figure in the recap.
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Apr 16, 2021 20:28
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Mr. Fortitude posted:I also hear that Bungie are trying to cram in ties to the Marathon trilogy in Destiny as well. That'll create an even bigger clusterfuck.
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Apr 22, 2021 22:08
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Ah yes, Halo 2. This is the one I spent the most time with, especially since it came out during my freshman year in college and everyone was all over it. I absolutely love the dumb bomb delivery cutscene, simply because it is pure action movie nonsense and I love it. And out of the new weapons, like many, I fell in love with the battle rifle and tried to use it as far as I could before needing something else. But yeah, Drones are really loving annoying. I appreciate the decision to add a flying enemy to spice things up, but did they really have to make one that refuses to hold still for more than 2 minutes? I honestly lost track how much ammo I burned through just trying to hit one drat Drone.
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Apr 24, 2021 01:18
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Ah yes, good old Jackal Alley. I've honestly lost track of how many times that section kicked my rear end on the higher difficulties. There is a special place in hell for whoever at Bungie came up with the idea for Jackal snipers. Although, it seems that the MCC lost the instrumental version of Blow Me Away for when the Hunters appear. I'm going to guess dumb stupid licensing issues?
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Apr 30, 2021 21:17
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Ablative posted:They did lose the license, but it didn't play there to begin with. You're thinking of something pretty far down the line.
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Apr 30, 2021 22:18
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Ablative posted:Those fuckers don't even need to be looking at you to kill you on Legendary. They will shoot behind themselves, full 180 to their facing angle. The updated graphics do seem to change the lighting a bit to make them slightly more visible, but even then, the ones on the upper floors in Jackal Alley are still far enough back/obstructed by other objects that they're hard to see.
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May 2, 2021 00:56
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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. Although, I am saddened that the MCC removed one of the sillier things from the Scarab destruction cutscene. In the original, you'd walk out of the wreckage with whatever weapon you had equipped when you finish the level, so you could walk out while holding the rocket launcher or the sniper rifle. And in the case of the latter, it'd clip through the ground since Master Chief's model is (presumably) designed around him holding the much shorter battle rifle or SMG.
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May 7, 2021 22:48
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SteelMentor posted:Huh, I thought I was misremembering Johnson's quippy speech from the opening cutscene but I went back and yeah, they changed everything between "Listen up" and "What about that Scarab". Did they change that for MCC or Anniversary?
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May 8, 2021 02:43
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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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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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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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Man, do I remember how annoying the elevator section was on higher difficulties. It just feels like padding to stretch the level out, and not even the good kind of padding because as you guys said, you're essentially waiting until the game tells you that you can proceed. What's worse is that design philosophy is rampant throughout Halo 2, although I think the Arbiter gets the brunt of the "stay in this zone until the game lets you move on" sections. Which, when you're trying to sell a new playable character, is maybe not the best idea to make said character appeal to players.
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May 21, 2021 22:19
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I had no idea about the hidden soccer ball. That is an interesting and weird secret to hide away in Metropolis. The hidden sniper rifle spot kind of makes me wonder if, in an earlier draft, you'd be encouraged to traverse the rooftops in order to proceed in Outskirts. Because that spot looks like it was set up as a sniper's nest where you'd either stumble across a dead marine sharpshooter + their spotter, or be the spot where you'd have a shooting gallery while you deal with waves of enemies in one of Halo 2's "stay put until the game lets you move on" zones.
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May 29, 2021 00:33
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Add me to the list of people who never stopped to listen to Regret's sermons. It is interesting that those sermons actually function as (almost certainly heavily biased) backstory to the Covenant, but you can easily miss them because it takes a while before Cortana's translation kicks in and lets the player hear the dialogue.
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Jun 4, 2021 22:05
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So, relocating large structures in their entirety is a thing that has happened in the real world. There's Abu Simbel, an ancient Egyptian temple complex that had to be moved in the 1960s because the construction of a dam in the region would have both flooded the temples and submerged them beneath the new reservoir that would result from the dam. I would not be surprised if that was some inspiration for Bungie in creating these Forerunner structures, given that it is a fusion of ancient stone and Forerunner technology. Much like how the present-day Abu Simbel is ancient stone held together by modern reinforcing. Unfortunately, now we reach the low point of Halo 2, the Library complex. I will not blame you if you take a page out of Cooked Auto's book and wedge a boulder on the fast forward button for most of the level.
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Jun 12, 2021 01:15
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I was definitely among those who never realized the burning structure you go through was the Sentinel Factory downed in the previous section. I assumed it was a section of the Library that was overrun by the Flood due to the Flood gaining control of UNSC/Covenant heavy weapons. I did note the MCC makes a tiny cosmetic change to the ending cutscene. Miranda wields one SMG in the MCC version, but in the original version, she was dual-wielding SMGs. I guess they figured the captain of a ship wouldn't realistically go full John Woo Action HeroTM on their enemies after the fact, thus made the change for the updated re-release.
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Jul 2, 2021 21:09
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Glad to hear things are working out for you now. As for the video content, I do remember the alternate booklet for Halo 2, as that was the one a lot of dormmates in college wound up getting (I think like 5 got the Covenant one and 2 got the normal human booklet). It was a very interesting twist that didn't click for us until the Arbiter's levels came up. Then we realized why there was an alternate booklet; it was a way to flesh out the world and not some silly marketing gimmick like some of us thought it was. Of course, back then it was still a paltry summation of the Covenant compared to the current amount of lore for the series.
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Aug 28, 2021 02:00
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IIRC, the Brutes using the human shotgun in Halo 2 is because Bungie didn't have enough time to give them what would become the rest of their unique weapons seen in Halo 3/ODST, so the human shotgun is a quick and dirty stand-in solution (much like the Brute Plasma Rifle) for what should be the Brute equivalent of a shotgun (the Mauler, if memory serves). Given how Halo 2 is known to have cut content like cut levels, it would not surprise me if that extended to minor details like weaponry. That said, I will agree that level is very much a filler level. There's just nothing I remember about this level, outside of the armory room with human weapons. You could start with the cutscene of the Arbiter being warped into the area and merge it with him running into Half-jaw's Wraith and not lose anything of value.
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Sep 12, 2021 19:39
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Loxbourne posted:And there's the big cliffhanger ending that drove the internet nuts for a while. There was both excitement and anger over that - I remember a lot of sneering that Microsoft was "obviously" planning to sell the "proper ending" as an expansion pack over XBox Live. I do enjoy looking back on this game because, now that I'm older, I do see the gaps in the story more clearly that were meant to be filled in with other content as opposed to going "Okay, the next level will explain things clearly" over and over again like I did back in the day. Halo 2 has its moments, but it definitely has a lot of weak connective tissue that falls apart if you pause and look around at things, such as the Covenant civil war just crashing into the final act out of nowhere with almost no build-up outside of a few background moments in cutscenes. A sophomore slump is a perfect summary of the game: a underwhelming single-player campaign, higher difficulties being immensely merciless and unforgiving compared to the first game, all bolstered by the growing multiplayer side of the game that effectively saves Halo 2 from being a flop.
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Sep 26, 2021 22:32
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I got a chuckle at the Grunt being launched over the Pelican after it bombarded the dam.
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Nov 26, 2021 22:00
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I do not like the recasting of Truth. Yes, the late Terence Stamp is a good actor/voice actor, but Michael Wincott's smooth performance in Halo 2 was such a masterpiece, that for Halo 3 to effectively devolve Truth into "generic loud arrogant evil dude" is a major misstep. I understand that stuff like scheduling and all that probably factored into the recasting, but there's an equal amount of blame to be laid at Bungie's feet for the voice direction/script turning a very suave villain into a paint-by-numbers generic villain. Just...why? You had a solid foundation for Truth's character. You didn't need to change it, Bungie.
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Dec 4, 2021 06:10
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FrenzyTheKillbot posted:The one thing that has always stuck out to me is that none of the corpses around him show any sign of flood-ification, even though he's describing full combat forms. I still wonder whether it's supposed to be implied that he saw some of the Flood and just killed everyone around him, infected or not, and that's why he's so screwed up trying to rationalize it. The other option is that this poor sap has been fighting almost non-stop since Regret's fleet arrived on Earth's doorstep and has finally hit a breaking point with the Flood now arriving and making things worse, not helped by the fact that the Elites (essentially the "face" of the Covenant forces) are showing up and giving none of the infected any quarter or mercy. Much like the Covenant have been doing for nearly 30 years prior.
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Dec 27, 2021 22:24
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I'm more amazed you didn't take a moment to outfit the other Hornet rider with a better weapon than the pistol.
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Jan 23, 2022 02:41
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Serenity came out in 2005, so it definitely lines up with Halo 3's dev cycle timeline. And I completely agree with the "I'm a thief, but I keep what I steal." line being very important, Frenzy. When the new Halo ring appeared at the end of the level, I immediately realized what Cortana is talking about when she said that line.
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Jan 29, 2022 22:04
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The sphincter doors are their own level of  . The fact they still hold up 15 years later with outdated graphics is a testament to the effort put into making them as disturbing as gently caress.
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Feb 5, 2022 02:13
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Ablative posted:I'd be surprised if he had any control authority at all, given, again, all the engines and poo poo were in the back. He's probably just lucky he came out on the ocean side of the portal.
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Feb 13, 2022 02:42
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Grizzwold posted:The whole reason the halos worked in the first place is that the Flood need things with a central nervous system to eat and died out when they didn’t have them though?
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Feb 13, 2022 06:12
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Samovar posted:It's not his fault, obviously, but having what's -his-face being the face and voice model of the leader of the ODST team is very, very dated.
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Mar 6, 2022 04:27
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Ablative posted:Point of contention: that can't be the real Chips Dubbo because the real Chips Dubbo is on In Amber Clad. This is an impostor.
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Mar 12, 2022 22:59
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So, I take it that any debris from the space elevator once it collapses counts as a lethal projectile, right? Or does Dutch get a small reprieve in that he managed to drive down the single roadway that major debris didn't hit?
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Mar 19, 2022 02:42
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Kibayasu posted:I guess the drone is supposed to have watched that whole fight because otherwise its just a random piece of debris that somehow tells the story of that level. Plus, it creates a bridge between Buck's comment at the end of his level (Buck musing about using the drone network to find the rest of the squad) and the start of Dutch's level (Dutch seeing the drones flying overhead watching the battle unfold).
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Mar 20, 2022 20:38
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It's safe to assume that Brute Hammers are part of the list of "Things ODST cannot arbitrarily interact with, but Master Chief can", right?
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Apr 8, 2022 20:33
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FrenzyTheKillbot posted:My second thought was that it's nice to see someone involved with Halo holding a rifle properly. I've been watching the Halo TV show and actually enjoying it, but the first episode had so much shooting and basically no character either knew how, or was unable to hold a rifle correctly due to their costume. Drove me a little crazy.
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Apr 16, 2022 18:56
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