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Sir, permission to start the Halo thread.

LBD_Nytetrayn

..and his little cat, too
(He/him)
Sword and grav will recharge when enemies drop others. I thing sword takes energy ammo and grav considered power ammo.

Awesome, just one thing: What's a grav?

The reality is, especially if you are far from FOB, is you have to switch weapons to what is available and adapt to the situation. Like you run out of ammo and pick up what's on a gun rack or what an enemy dropped. This sounds annoying, but I actually think it's a strength of the game.

Yeah, I do that, but only when necessary. I find dropping some guns leads to them getting lost, and I hate it when that happens to favorites, especially if they're still usable.

Here are some useful weapons if you ask me:
Ravager: this lights the ground on fire. Useless in multiplayer, but devastating in campaign. You can fire from long ways away and clear out groups, or weaken boss type

Hm, I'll have to bear this in mind. I think I've only come across it once.

Shock rifle: a few shots will stun a vehicle. This has affect itf crashing airborne vehicles. And very dece for stunning enemies

Good to know. Saw a carrier before, but my Mangler was no good for it.

Battle rifle: shoots 3 round bursts, has a scope for dece range sniping. This is my go to weapon

Hm, I'll need to try that out.

Skewer: this is a one hit kill anywhere on body. It travels a bit slower than bullets. It can also one hit (mostly) any vehicle.

Haven't seen this yet (that I recall, unless it was in the opening stuff). I'll keep an eye out.

Cindershot: bouncy grenade launcher. Clears out clustered enemies

Ooh, fun.

Another thing about grapple: you can grapple plasma coils to yourself so you can toss at enemies. And! You can grapple on to vehicles to highjack them. Including airborne!

I need to learn how to do this. I had some trouble remembering how to throw them (weapon switch, right?) early on, so they became more of an impediment at the time.

Another other thing: high value targets have a unique weapon pick up nearby. These can be generated later at FOBs. And as you get more valour your other standard options become available too, so you can make power weapons to your heart's content

Ah, I see. Good to know! That explains how I got the sword.

Oh, something else I was curious about: I seem to recall hearing a lot about "dual wielding" and that being a huge thing when Halo 2 came around, even showing Master Chief doing that on the cover. Is that a thing still? Or did they drop it?
 

Violentvixen

(She/Her)
Yeah, dual wield was gone as of Halo 4 or 5 I think.

You'll be familiar with grav hammers soon, one of the early bosses is tough and uses one.

I think my most used weapon in the game was the pulse carbine. Three shot bursts with homing? Hard to turn down.

And yeah, Master Chief is just constantly throwing empty weapons over his shoulder. In one skirmish I'll often burn through 4-5 unique ones. Use the marines to store extra weapons you get at FOBs, and enjoy their dialogue when you trade them a dumb weapon for their good one.
Edit: One other thing: I helped some troops out, and they were following me around briefly, all "Lead the way, Chief!" and "Wow, it's the Chief!" and such, but I didn't get too far before I turned around and they were gone. Do I do anything with these guys?
Yep, they're great. But you walk much faster than they do since you're enhanced or whatever. Either slow down for them (they're the blue dots on your reticle) or take a vehicle. They also can't jump over or off much of anything so they won't be able to go everywhere, I plan my next move based on if I currently have a squad or if I'm solo.
 
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LBD_Nytetrayn

..and his little cat, too
(He/him)
Grav - gravity hammer!
I don't think you can dual wield?

Ah, doy! I can't believe I didn't think of that.

Yeah, dual wield was gone as of Halo 4 or 5 I think.

You'll be familiar with grav hammers soon, one of the early bosses is tough and uses one.

I think my most used weapon in the game was the pulse carbine. Three shot bursts with homing? Hard to turn down.

And yeah, Master Chief is just constantly throwing empty weapons over his shoulder. In one skirmish I'll often burn through 4-5 unique ones. Use the marines to store extra weapons you get at FOBs, and enjoy their dialogue when you trade them a dumb weapon for their good one.

Yep, they're great. But you walk much faster than they do since you're enhanced or whatever. Either slow down for them (they're the blue dots on your reticle) or take a vehicle. They also can't jump over or off much of anything so they won't be able to go everywhere, I plan my next move based on if I currently have a squad or if I'm solo.
Ah, gotcha. I'll keep that in mind later.

Upgraded my grappling hook and part of my shield earlier, then went and took down the tower. Got cheap-shotted by the boss, who backstabbed and killed me in one hit. =P Got mine back on him, though. Didn't use the danger detector things, though, because I can't figure out what I'm supposed to press to reliably swap between those and the grappling hook. Sometimes it seems to switch, other times not.

As it stands, my biggest problem is knowing whether I've got all the items in an area. The map acts like it's giving you that data, but then it doesn't correspond with the guides I've looked at to be sure. Like, I only see one skull at the tower in the guides, but it says there are like two? And six Spartan cores? Is it tallying up everything I should have found so far?

Meanwhile, the guides I've looked at don't name the items by what they go by in the game, so I'm not sure which ones they're leading me to versus which ones I've got already and which ones I need. Any recommendations there?

Oh, and I'm doing the thing with grappling the plasma coils and such now and chuckin' 'em, and when I got thrown off a Ghost earlier, I just grappled it and took it back.

 

Violentvixen

(She/Her)
Didn't use the danger detector things, though, because I can't figure out what I'm supposed to press to reliably swap between those and the grappling hook. Sometimes it seems to switch, other times not.
I think a lot of it is that this is the first fight where I've had to quickly toggle between grappling (to dodge beams), location sensor (to see the Sentinels more accurately) and the Drop Wall as noted. I didn't really have those in muscle memory, I spent a few rounds just circling around the arena switching between them until I had a feel for it, and then he was honestly pretty easy. Also picking up a pulse carbine from one of the weapon racks helped a lot, my loadout upon walking into the fight was a shock rifle and a sentinel beam and trying to aim with those suuuuucked.

You will have to figure out toggling between items for a boss maybe halfway through the game FYI. It's right D-pad to access the menu to choose your item, then you'll briefly see which item is linked to which direction. Pretty sure it's right-right for grapple and right-down for loc sensor. The loc sensor is amazing because it also helps the Marines target enemies they otherwise couldn't see.

Same with left on the D-pad for choosing which grenade type although I definitely haven't memorized which type is which direction.

As it stands, my biggest problem is knowing whether I've got all the items in an area. The map acts like it's giving you that data, but then it doesn't correspond with the guides I've looked at to be sure. Like, I only see one skull at the tower in the guides, but it says there are like two? And six Spartan cores? Is it tallying up everything I should have found so far?

The only missable things (I think) are the skulls in the currently un-replayable plot missions (the first few before you get to the open world part and the last few after you enter the Command Spire). Note on the spoiler: you definitely aren't close to this at all yet, don't worry. Here's the skull guide I used, but it does have spoilers for all the missions and you'll see stuff you probably don't want to yet.

The tower skull is likely inaccessible to you at this point until you upgrade your grappling or steal a Banshee/Wasp. Once you capture a FOB cores will be labeled on your map for that area, but otherwise I used this guide as there were a couple cores that were in areas where I missed a door or something. It's nice because you can toggle specific things on and off if you only want hints for a certain type of thing and it links to the videos/pages with more details.
 

LBD_Nytetrayn

..and his little cat, too
(He/him)
You will have to figure out toggling between items for a boss maybe halfway through the game FYI. It's right D-pad to access the menu to choose your item, then you'll briefly see which item is linked to which direction. Pretty sure it's right-right for grapple and right-down for loc sensor. The loc sensor is amazing because it also helps the Marines target enemies they otherwise couldn't see.
Okay, I'll try to remember it. I find it hard to see the part of the menu indicating that clearly when it comes up. I'll try to practice a bit.
The tower skull is likely inaccessible to you at this point until you upgrade your grappling or steal a Banshee/Wasp. Once you capture a FOB cores will be labeled on your map for that area, but otherwise I used this guide as there were a couple cores that were in areas where I missed a door or something. It's nice because you can toggle specific things on and off if you only want hints for a certain type of thing and it links to the videos/pages with more details.
Oh, I got that one already. Took some doing, but I eventually made it. =D

I tried the IGN guide (or at least the Tower page from it), but that's one that doesn't label them according to how they show in my inventory.

New question: Been driving more vehicles, and it's turning into a preferred strategy out in the field to just run down enemies repeatedly. (Sort of like Fortnite.) My favorite so far is the Ghost, as I feel like it moves with the controls better than the wheeled vehicles. But that leaves me to wonder: despite the janky physics, do the vehicles have different "weights" that matter? That is to say, is running over a Brute in an armored Warthog going to do more than running them over with a Ghost? Does speed matter as far as damage output is concerned? (It having that turbo button and all.)

I also found a Warthog with a rocket turret that I took back to a FOB for my next mission. On the way back, we stopped at one of those propaganda towers, but I couldn't get the guy manning the turret to fire at it, and ended up having to switch in to do it myself. Is there a way to get them to do it? Or to get friendlies out of the line of fire when I'm planning on doing something like that so they don't grouse at me for doing my job? (After that, then he started firing all around. Go figure.)

Speaking of the other Marines and vehicles...

 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
Marines will fire at any enemies they see but you can't make them target an inanimate object like a propaganda tower
 

LBD_Nytetrayn

..and his little cat, too
(He/him)
Doggone it.

I had a craving to play just a little earlier, so I loaded up my game, and the Rocket Hog I had at the FOB for the next big base attack was still there. I went out, grabbed an upgrade, came back, still there. Went to help a squad nearby out, and when I get back... the damn thing was gone!

Any idea why it suddenly up and disappeared?

I found it when rescuing a squad near the canyon north of the Tower, but I forget which locale that was, so I'm not sure where to go for another one. D=
 
Doggone it.

I had a craving to play just a little earlier, so I loaded up my game, and the Rocket Hog I had at the FOB for the next big base attack was still there. I went out, grabbed an upgrade, came back, still there. Went to help a squad nearby out, and when I get back... the damn thing was gone!

Any idea why it suddenly up and disappeared?

I found it when rescuing a squad near the canyon north of the Tower, but I forget which locale that was, so I'm not sure where to go for another one. D=
It's all valor to unlock stuff at FOBs
So killing high value targets, rescuing squads, destroying propaganda towers and so on

Anything parked will not be there in the future
 

LBD_Nytetrayn

..and his little cat, too
(He/him)
But... it was for a while. Between saving the other day and loading today, even.

And after going to grab a Spartan Core.

Is there a certain length of time before it just vanishes?
 
But... it was for a while. Between saving the other day and loading today, even.

And after going to grab a Spartan Core.

Is there a certain length of time before it just vanishes?
I'm surprised it stays at all. I don't spend too much time at my base, and when I am it's just to generate specific weapons/vehicle

My other point more salient: you get these options at will when you do the various side quests
 

LBD_Nytetrayn

..and his little cat, too
(He/him)
That one's literally the last one on the list, unfortunately, so being able to get it at-will won't be happening any time soon. I was hoping someone might remember where I was on the map to find it in the first place.
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
Yeah unfortunately by the time you unlock it at the FOB you'll probably be done with the game. I only remember finding one once while I was playing.
 

Violentvixen

(She/Her)
I can't seem to get the site to load but apparently a group of modders is working on restoring all the original Halo MacWorld stuff, including things like wildlife? What a cool thing to do.

Also co-op campaign beta testing is active now. Haven't had a chance to try it yet though.
 

Fyonn

did their best!
As people on the Discord are no doubt painfully aware, I've been playing the heck out of some of the Halo campaigns I missed after finally getting around to Marathon 2. Here's a quick break down of my feelings on what I've done so far. Marathon 2 doesn't have a difficulty setting, but all the Halo is being played on Heroic.

If, uh, you've been following my adventures with Jason Marathon and John Halo, you can safely just skip to the bit about Halo Infinite unless you really want to see how I've rephrased complaining about Halo 4 Cortana this time around.


Marathon 2: Incredible writing and setting, solid weapon mechanics, absurdly busted shotguns, awful encounter design focused on teleportation-based ambushes, bizarre choices regarding gravity and air control, ultimately kind of feels like my deadbeat space dad abandoned me at a laser tag arena so he could go on a roadtrip to Las Vegas. Still not quite what the hosts of Abnormal Mapping would call an "eat your vegetables"-type game, but it's real close. For Carnage, Apply Within is definitely nowhere near as bad as Colony Ship For Sale, Cheap, but I'm still never gonna forget that hallway. It does say something that the Marathon franchise is host to two levels that have such standout moments of misery that I know their names.


Halo ODST: Bounced off this the first time because I was too Halo'd out when I got to it (I had played Halo 1, 2, and 3 back-to-back). Even at the time, it was obvious that it was not ODST's fault. I don't have much to say about it other than the typical all killer, no filler pacing of Halo gains so much from the downtime segments with the Rookie, the soundtrack is incredible, and the writers recognized exactly how much dialogue and story much its cast of 80s sci-fi soldier tropes can sustain. I'm not 100% sure, but it might be my favorite Halo campaign just because its lowest points are only mildly annoying at the absolute worst.


Halo 4: Knights are so good to fight. I really adore how they made an enemy type that forced me to relearn how to do aggressive play correctly after prior campaigns on Heroic taught me to stop doing aggressive play wrong. Not only that, but because Knights demand so much pressure to defeat consistently, they breathe new life into shotguns and rapid-fire weapons that had been mostly only useful as defensive options against the Flood. The campaign design is solid and largely inoffensive outside of a less-than-elegant Death Star trench run-type segment, though it feels about three Halo 4-length missions too long.

So, uh, how 'bout that story, huh?

...

Halo 4 has absolutely wretched storytelling. Miserable. It's the only Halo I've ever responded to verbally during cutscenes, and it was mostly to say "please shut the fuck up." It's obsessed with the Halo lore in a way that makes the setting feel minuscule instead of massive and unfathomable. Master Chief gets to become the Number One Specialest Boy thanks to Space Wizard Grandma's Magic Spell all the while his AI Wifemom has emotional breakdowns over her decaying ability to focus and control herself. It would be heart-breakingly true-to-life and deeply human if the camera could ever stop reminding me her breasts are all the way out and have been rendered with an adoring attention to detail like someone in management was using their clearly very talented staff as a way to commission pornography they didn't have to pay for.

I cannot stress enough that Cortana's design in Halo 4 is so extremely horny. I had to go double-check in case my memory was faulty. It's well beyond even the standards of prior Cortana designs, and it's amplified so much by being completely inappropriate for the story they were trying to tell. Cortana needs hot chocolate, a blanket, and a hug in Halo 4, not to be an object of sexual desire in the most distressing moments of her life. There are good ideas in there, something tragic and inevitable about Master Chief being unequipped to offer Cortana the emotional support she's always given him, both of them ultimately unable to escape the reality that even together they are products of their creation. They are still just a gun designed to be fired, and have been unable achieve the personhood they deserve. In some ways, I'm more upset that we didn't get the time and space that character beat deserves. But all of that is actively disarmed and invalidated by Cortana's character model. I have a screenshot of a Halo 4 scene with Master Chief and Cortana framed opposite each other that I have named malegaze.txt, and I can't post it here because I don't think it's safe for work. It is completely unsurprising to me that Halo 2 Anniversary tones Cortana's design down significantly and then 343 starts giving AIs clothing as of Halo 5.


Halo Infinite: I've only only played the early parts of the game previously, and so far have only revisited the opening stages. Ammo stations are probably a good idea for the open world segments of Halo Infinite. It lets the designers assume players get to approach every encounter with a mostly blank scorecard, and that's a valuable assumption to be able to make. For more traditional, linear Halo encounter design, they're kind of... bad's not the right word. It's different from prior Halo design priorities. I suspect I'm going to gravitate towards having one of a couple proven load-outs I'm comfortable with instead of the often very improvisational tactics of prior Halo campaigns.

The map design tho? The multi-floor battleship bridge of the first mission is amaaaazing. The grappling hook affords players the ability to reposition rapidly, but not constantly*, which permits encounter design where enemies can apply diverse pressure from multiple angles without requiring perfect play to counter it. It loses something with regards to safe vs unsafe approaches, but I think that's outweighed by players getting to use the level design as often as they're coping with the level design.

So far, the writing feels much, much better than Halo 4. First off, the game isn't catapulting the first chapter of a novel at me before I get to play the game, and secondly the UNSC pilot (who I don't have a name for yet) is completely clothed during the scenes I'm intended to empathize with him in. Honestly, I feel like you could probably play Halo 3 and skip straight to the already en media res opening of Halo Infinite and lose literally nothing. I'm told Halo 5's campaign is short, but I'm waiting on someone to be able to co-op it with me since they seem invested in experiencing my reactions to it.
 
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Violentvixen

(She/Her)
I think it's pretty telling that I can walk most people through just about everything that happens in Halo 1, 2 and 3 from memory but I have only the most ridiculously vague memories of 4 and 5. Someone gets burned and you see their screaming skull
because I thought that went a bit too far for Halo and remember it, but can't tell you which game that's from or why that happened. Also I think the Forerunners came back and were mean and had glowy orbs. Yes. I think.


become the Number One Specialest Boy thanks to Space Wizard Grandma's Magic Spell
lol
There are good ideas in there, something tragic and inevitable about
Master Chief being unequipped to offer Cortana the emotional support she's always given him
Yeah, this could have been really interesting. The Rampancy stuff has a lot of really interesting implications and of course Marathon uses it well, but they didn't here. The later half (I think) of Infinite shows good signs of trying to address something like this in the future, but I'm unsure where they're going with it really (which is fine).

On an unrelated to Halo note I wish the spoiler tags didn't make everything a new line, bah. I know a few people have brought up this bug but it's a weird one for sure and annoying to have to correct every time.
 

Fyonn

did their best!
Someone gets burned and you see their screaming skull
because I thought that went a bit too far for Halo and remember it, but can't tell you which game that's from or why that happened.
That's Halo 4. It's what it looks like when a person gets downloaded into the Forerunner Matrix by the Composer. Presumably it was an alternate plan to indexing all the species before firing the Halos, but the Didact just uses it as a big gun and also Knight factory.

I think the biggest reason that Halo 4 is hard to remember is that it's a long string of things not happening. Master Chief and Cortana keep trying to do Halo stuff, but unforeseen complications, lack of support, Del Rio's paradoxical lack of both bravery and due caution, and Cortana's Rampancy keep stopping them from getting XYZ done successfully. They only finally manage to do something when Lasky is in command of the Infinity and Cortana ostensibly sacrifices herself for the final push.

Halo 4 could easily be framed as the story of how Master Chief always knows what's best even when he's obviously compromised, and if you don't listen to him, bad things will happen.

EDIT: Oh yeah, Halo Infinite!

So I'm finding the boss fights really frustrating. Halo's combat flow, to me, has always been dictated by both sides of a fight having to respect the threat the other presents. But bosses can just run straight at you while firing their gun and, like, what are you gonna do about it? Happened to not have a weapon that can deal with shields when you stepped into the boss cutscene? Well there isn't one in this arena, so tough luck, pal.

I don't like how the ever-present Jackal snipers means half my load out is always a Commando or a BR. I'm also a little cold on the new enemy variants. I can deal with it though, and it seems like it's not totally mix-and-matched so far. There are only a couple specialists per species, like football Brutes, shield Grunts, and less effective Jackals.

I don't think Halo Infinite open world encounters always hit. But when they do, the game really nails being some kind of terrible battlefield goblin, zipping around and taking apart positions while the base commander is on the speakers like "What do you mean he has more guys now? From where???"
 
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Fyonn

did their best!
Halo Infinite is done.
When I beat it, I learned I'm one of 6% of players who did, one of 3% who did it on Heroic.

The story is nothing to write home about, but the character writing is significantly better.
I think it's maybe my least favorite campaign in the franchise. If you asked me which I preferred, endgame Halo Infinite or endgame Marathon 2, I'd be hard-pressed to produce a definite answer.

The boss fights have too much HP and just act like regular enemies with their aggression cranked up. That starts with the first boss and it only gets worse from there. Traditionally, Halo games have had one, maybe two, sometimes zero boss fights. Infinite is slathered in them, and it never felt like I had the movement or defensive options to deal with them. Every single victory I had against a boss or the late-game enemies that have boss-scale HP felt like I got lucky or I found something to exploit. It was never fun even once. The one time the game did the Halo thing of offering climactic encounters instead, The House of Reckoning, it capped it off with the second worst boss in the game.

I really can't believe they made it open world and also gave it fifteen missions, but I'm willing to blame some of the over-escalation of challenge on the higher than normal number of missions. I don't think being open world made the Halo Infinite campaign any more fun, but the open world side missions were solid, if a bit same-y.

I'd like to see more work from this writing team, I guess, but the miserable time I had playing it means that maybe I'm okay with letting Halo just be Halos 1, 2, 3, ODST, and Reach at this point.
 

Violentvixen

(She/Her)
So Bungie announced a game called Marathon. Which is "a completely new project" even though it's called Marathon and has the logo at the end. Okay?

But according to this article there's no single player mode so that's a huge bummer for me:
Marathon is designed from the start as a PvP-focused game and won’t have a single-player campaign.

Pretty trailer though.
 

Kirin

Summon for hire
(he/him)
Oh, boo. I saw the trailer elsewhere and even though the name and logo are the only definitive callbacks so far they were hitting my nostalgia buttons super hard... but PvP only makes it not really interesting for me.
 

LBD_Nytetrayn

..and his little cat, too
(He/him)
I've heard of Marathon, and I was kind of excited for this until I heard there was no single player. Pity.
 
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