Halo Infinite (XB/PC/Cloud/Game Pass) - Big Update out now.

Is there a story recap in the menu anywhere? I feel like I've missed massive story chunks, as last game I played (4) he was trying to save Cortana, and now has saying she's evil :lol:

Last edited by Photek on Wed Jan 12, 2022 10:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yep Cortana is now a baddie...

If you have 15mins watch this:

Confusingly, The Banished are from Halo Wars 2!

Thank you, I'll look at that later

Ah, so we're on enemy ranking:

1. Elites (wort wort wort)
2. Grunts (the chat)
3. Promethian Knights (inoffensive)
4. Jackals (excluding the one-shot strawberry floaters in Halo 2)
5. Brutes (what steroids there were on in Halo 2 I don't know)
6. Promethian Watchers (buzzing flying bastards getting in the way)
7. The Flood (in general just ... not a fan)
8. Some of the Halo Infinite bosses

The fact that The Covenant chat wasn't translated to English in Halo 4 was part of the reason I didn't like it.

But to be fair - my understanding is that this game starts effectively "mid-story" so even if you've played everything up to now I think you're supposed to be a little bit out of the loop.

Jenuall wrote:But to be fair - my understanding is that this game starts effectively "mid-story" so even if you've played everything up to now I think you're supposed to be a little bit out of the loop.

Kind of, I mean I've not finished it yet but Chief knows more than the player does. There is no link between Halo 5 and why you're on Halo Zeta as far as I can tell.

As for the enemies:

1. Elites (Arby :wub:

)
2. Grunts (the chat)
3. The Flood (in MCC, I was surprised how much I enjoyed Flood encounters, I even like the Library
4. Jackals (excluding the one-shot strawberry floaters in Halo 2)
5. Brutes (I'm a fan)
6. Some of the Halo Infinite bosses
7. Promethian Watchers (buzzing flying bastards getting in the way)
8. Promethian Knights (Shite to fight)

twitter.com/Halo/status/1481400902217080837

I'm enjoying this now I'm out in the open, although I keep finding it doesnt want you to traverse to other sections which are easily within reach. Finding little abandoned gorrila camps and evidence of fights is nice, and also appreciated in that you can just imagine what's happend rather than have yet another convenient audio log to spell it out.

I've rescued a few squads, found some shards and taken out a high value target so far.

Yeah it's pretty cheap at killing you off when you go somewhere it doesn't want you yet which is a shame - feels like they could have come up with a more "in universe" way of controlling it rather than just god killing the player

Jenuall wrote:Yeah it's pretty cheap at killing you off when you go somewhere it doesn't want you yet which is a shame - feels like they could have come up with a more "in universe" way of controlling it rather than just god killing the player

What situations have you come across where that happened? I only ask because I didn't come across a single situation like that. The only situations I came across that would be similar to what Victor mentioned would be having to take long walks to find a bridge to cross a gully. Or there was a point I could reach with the grapple hook, so had to take a long route up a mountain and descend down instead. Those were very similar to Breath of the Wild though, so nothing out of the ordinary for an open-world game these days.

JT986M2 wrote:
Jenuall wrote:Yeah it's pretty cheap at killing you off when you go somewhere it doesn't want you yet which is a shame - feels like they could have come up with a more "in universe" way of controlling it rather than just god killing the player

What situations have you come across where that happened? I only ask because I didn't come across a single situation like that. The only situations I came across that would be similar to what Victor mentioned would be having to take long walks to find a bridge to cross a gully. Or there was a point I could reach with the grapple hook, so had to take a long route up a mountain and descend down instead. Those were very similar to Breath of the Wild though, so nothing out of the ordinary for an open-world game these days.

Loads of times - there are plenty of points at the start where you can grapple across to a later island that it doesn't want you on and you just get a "RETURN TO THE BATTLEFIELD" message with a counter that kills you if you don't. Similarly climbing on certain structures like the giant crashed ship at the start of the open world section yields the same response.

It's just a bit disappointing rather than anything else - either place something that genuinely blocks the player in a way that can be explained in universe or accommodate the fact that players can get there.

EDIT:

This is me trying to island hop near the start of the game for example:

twitter.com/RussellMcIver/status/1470899828959977472

Oh, that's really bad. I clearly wasn't as adventurous as you :lol:

That's like something I came across in Life is Strange the other night. A relatively open environment, but stupid, figurative glass walls with the character saying "I don't want to go that way". That and the Halo example above seem to be relics of game design of previous decades, where better level design would improve things.

I mean in the example in your video, either a slightly longer grapple cooldown, or putting that ridge slightly further away would have done it. They obviously can't find all potential faults though, so maybe they could have something a bit more realistic than a auto-kill - maybe a large enemy patrol or something. With it being implied that you are not supposed to be there and won't survive yet since the enemy presence hasn't been reduced yet. Dunno, just a thought.

Yeah - I can absolutely accept that there needs to be some game balancing and story restrictions that might mean that they really don't want you getting to places before you're supposed to, but there are better ways to restrict it!

Even just having some kind of force field there and explain it as "Interesting, the damage caused to the ring seems to have caused these temporary fields to appear to hold things together whilst it repairs..." would have been better

^ Exactly that kind of thing. If you don't want me to try to get to other places, don't put them so close to somewhere I CAN get to, and lower, to suggest I can get there. I get they don't want to block off the vistas with walls, but you could at least have some nasty electricity arking between them to zap you for trying. I also had the exploration right at the start by the crashed ship - I thought I'd look around while I was there, finding a small camp with a room and weapon, then spotted something higher up on the cliff. Grappled a bit to look there and got the red screen count down.

Does Cortana at least finally put on some bloody clothes?

Last edited by JT986M2 on Thu Jan 13, 2022 1:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Peter Crisp wrote:Does Cortana at least finally put on some bloody clothes?

Actual proper story spoiler:

However, Halo 5 was the first version that gave Cortana a proper uniform rather than the skintight bodysuit she wore previously.

Jenuall wrote:Yeah it's pretty cheap at killing you off when you go somewhere it doesn't want you yet which is a shame - feels like they could have come up with a more "in universe" way of controlling it rather than just god killing the player

I also never had that happen, the entire world is open to me now and it's not too far in when that happens, I mean if you only do the story missions I reckon you can open it all in about 6hrs or less so not a major problem.

As I said I fly about the world in a wasp! :lol:

Playing on Heroic does present some minor difficulty spikes.

Finding it hard to travel on shuttle while a billion sentinels are lasering me, not a lot of places to hide :cry:

It's not a problem if you ignore playing the game the way It suggests you do for 6 hours!

Victor Mildew wrote:It's not a problem if you ignore playing the game the way It suggests you do for 6 hours!

Well to be fair there's two areas open at the start which is a massive area to search. An in game universe shutting out would be better though.

I've had it happen a few times, and it's a problem because you deliberately make the franchise "open world" but then it's not actually open at all.

This is especially jarring at the beginning of the game, when the world opens up to you. You get that sense of the possibility and scope opening up on front of you, after previously linear, confined surroundings. You get a the map and icons explained to you with the sense that you can pick where to go next. Then you get the grapple, a tool which essentially makes you master of the landscape behind you.

So I go for the icons and to explore. I don't really like icon-driven exploration like I said, but I head down to the south of the area that's just loaded up. I see a big chasm and a hill above it. If I scale up there with grapple, I can likely jump off and grapple across that chasm. I wonder what's there.

I fail. Hmm maybe I wasn't high enough. I get higher. I jump. I fail.

No actually, the grapple reaches the other side, it just doesn't latch on. I'm not meant to be there yet.

Then you get the "Return to battlefield" messages.

It's annoying as smart use of the grapple can get you up mountains you didn't think you'd be able to scale, especially with ther educed cooldown. You can climb structured and get to the top of them which doesn't seem possible.

So it's jarring for the game to present tools and openness, but shut the player down for certain things, without any indication. That's bad design, to present an opportunity that the player thinks should be doable, given the game rules but then that to arbitrarily be not allowed. It's more Assassin's Creed than BOTW.

This, coupled with the icon/waypoint driven focus on side content (and the side content being repeated across the whole game) means I found the open world stuff ultimately very hollow and exploration a bit dull, which is a shame given it makes a strong start when you emerge into the world. The world is dull; the combat is great.

Halo Infinite (XB/PC/Cloud/Game Pass) - Big Update out now.

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