Halo 3 In a day

With the impending release of the soon-to-be smash-success game Halo 3: ODST, I felt it my duty to pull the old Battle Rifle/Plasma Pistol combo out of mothballs and get my "headshot" on with a little help from the Xbox 360's only addition to the franchise, Halo 3.  Now much has been lauded and much bemoaned about Bungie's third time at bat with the Master Chief, and despite having beaten the entire game on Legendary difficulty, finding all the skulls and terminals, and pwning a n00b or two online, I felt that in the scheme of things, I spent very little time with game.  Perhaps the time I'd spent merely paled by comparison to the semesters of college I spent combing the back-faced polygons of New Mombasa and sword flying into the skyboxes with Halo 2 (if you understand a lick of that, you know where I'm coming from), but I've always felt a bit remiss that I did not give Halo 2's HD brother the same kind of consideration.  So last weekend I locked the doors, ignored the shower, ordered the Domino's, and spent a lovely Saturday in the cold, dreary depths of my apartment finishing the fight...again.

I hate to make this a "review" of a game that has been out for two years.  Those who were going to purchase the game have already done so and there is very little chance that what I say will impact the games 8.8 million copy sales base, but playing through the game all at once did prove to be a more revealing experience than I would have thought.  So let's just call this a thoughtful "musing" and leave it at that. (puts on smoking jacket and lights pipe)

First and foremost, it's simply untrue to call this game anything other than "good."  Heck, "great!"  The level design is tight and drives a good sense of momentum and fun.  The AI is spectacular and still stands as one of the best in any game, period.  The visual polish and art style are crisp, colorful, and unique in a way that one can see it and immediately know it's a "Halo" game.  The story is epic, vivid, and emotional.  The multiplayer is still a standard by which all games are measured.  There's no doubt in anyone's mind that Bungie is an accomplished studio and that Halo 3 is iconic example of solid game development.  THAT SAID...

I think that I, like many, some how felt a bit disappointed by Halo 3, and playing through the game in one sitting has highlighted some of the reasons why I think that is.  Here's a few:

Halo 3 lacked a sense of scale

I think this argument could also be said about Halo 2, but where it made up for it with walls you could jump over and shortcuts you take over the geometry, Halo 3's very linear level progression seemed to highlight a negative shift from the resoundingly popular original.  In the first Halo, things seemed BIG.  REALLY BIG.  Whether it was looking up at a field of view taken up entirely by a skybox of a giant receding ringworld, or driving through a cavernous tunnel where no end could be seen save the narrowly lit path before you.  Despite Halo 3's attempt to "open things up" with several "free roaming" vehicular combat sequences, everything just seemed an order of magnitude less huge ("smaller" for lay man).  In the original Halo, I remember going over a hill and seeing a station far in the distance, only to drive up to it see that it was this tremendous piece of architecture that dwarfed my little Warthog.  Similarly, I remember walking into structures which seemed small from the outside only to be introduced to a cavernous room, with narrow, little walkways leading my way down the pit.  I appreciate close quarters combat and intensity it brings, but despite the majority of this game taken place on a Forerunner installation known as The Ark, large enough itself to build a new Halo in its center, I never got the same feeling of mind stretching scale that I remember from first game.  There were big things, but they were always far away, and remote.  Put ME in middle of that big thing, let me EXPERIENCE the scale, not observe it.  That's what I wanted and didn't get from Halo 3.

Halo 3 hid the COOL story in text that no one will ever see

I, like my brother, find story one of the most compelling parts of video games.  Games are as close as we get to living out fantasies and adventures, and I believe this medium to be the most promising canvas on which future story tellers will paint their masterpieces.  Halo's story is awesome and I applaud Joe Staten for fine work on creating a unique universe full of cybernetic super soldiers, religious alien zealots, and psychologically unstable AI.  Halo 3 does good job of continuing the main storyline of the Chief's journey and adventures, but many of the questions posed by previous Halo games remain seemingly unanswered by the games cinematics and cutscenes.  That is, until you read the terminals.  

Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for rewarding exploration and revealing more to those who seek more, but an entire history of the mysterious ringworld engineers, the Forerunners, and their battle with the ancient, parasitic enemy, The Flood, is completely hidden in screens of text that you have to read from hidden "terminals" through out the game.  First off, NO ONE WANTS TO READ TEXT WHEN THEY COULD BE SHOOTING ALIENS.  The fact that in order to hear the mysterious dialog between two Forerunners called Librarian and Didact, and learn about the creation of the rampant AI, Mendicant Bias, and the creation of the Maginot Sphere defense perimeter, and the Battle between the traitorous AI who allied with the Flood against the forerunners, and the creation of the counter AI, Offensive Bias that defeated Mendicant Bias and stored him on The Ark after the activation of the Halo array, and the fact that Mendicant Bias is now tracing your movements and perhaps even aiding you in your quest...breathe...can only be discovered if you stop the momentum of the game and read screens of text for several minutes.  Having already beaten the game, I was able to slow down and read this dramatic history and was completely blown away by the story I never knew was there!

One of things I admire most about the Myst series of games was its ability to tell a story without using words.  The mere act of walking through the worlds of Myst or Riven revealed haunting tales, made even more goosebump-inducing by the fact that you were using your mind to infer the story.  If Halo 3 had some how managed to hint at this hidden story, hint that Mendicant Bias was observing you, play at this story in the environment, people would have been encourage to seek out more, and maybe even then one could forgive the interruption in the game play to read text screens.  And it's not like Bungie hasn't done better before.  The Halo 2 alternate reallity game "I love bees" was a phenomenal example of storytelling through another means, and in the end it used what was effectively a radio drama to tell the history of the lead up to the Covenant's discovery of Earth.  Why not employ a similarly creative effort for Halo 3's hidden storyline?

Never forget the "OH SNAP" factor

I feel like Halo 2 and Halo both achieved a very high level of "OH SNAP."  We often talk about the "5 minutes of fun" in games, keeping the player rapidly moving between each micro segment of enjoyment to next.  I think that philosophy works well, but I think it only works well if it includes moments that cause gamers to audibly exclaim in amazement, or, the "OH SNAP" factor.  In Halo, everything was fresh, everything felt new and exciting, and just playing through the game was an "OH SNAP" experience.  In Halo 2, the introduction of Arbiter as a playable character and getting to see things from the eyes of Covenant, the introduction of the Scarab, boarding and hijacking, fighting in an installation plummeting into a black hole/space storm, these were all "OH SNAP" experiences that amazed and improved on the original.  Halo 3's "OH SNAPs" just seemed few and far between.  Taking down a Scarab by boarding it and busting it up from the inside was admittedly cool, especially since we had been taught by Halo 2 to believe the thing was indestructible.  Watching the Forward Unto Dawn jump in over your head was an "OH SNAP" moment.  Getting to shoot up Guilty Spark, maybe?  See, there's the problem, even with the game fresh in my head, the moments where I was floored by the awesome things I was doing or that were going on around me just aren't that apparent.  The "OH SNAP" factor, to me, is thing that separates a solid game from a memorable game, and sadly Halo 3 seemed skimpy on this point.

Summary

I feel a bit like Ricky Bobby from Taledega Nights having said "With all due respect" and then proceeding to call Halo 3 a castrated retard monkey, but the truth is, despite the game's flaws, it's still a great shooter, and probably one of the best made any "next gen" console.  However, I think if Bungie and ALL developers continue to work on staying true to what makes their franchises great, pushing great stories to the forefront, and never limiting the "OH SNAP" factor, we will continue to be blown away brilliant new games.  

So will Halo 3: ODST improve upon its predecessor, or fall victim to same pitfalls?  I'll let you know as soon as I can pry myself away from it when it drops (oh, I get it now...drops...hehe) Tuesday, September 22.