: I don't think the issue was with the survival story--it was that there wasn't
: anything else there. I didn't feel like the pace dragged in Nightfall, yet
: I couldn't come up with anything of consequence that happened in probably
: the middle 30 minutes besides people getting picked off.

: I don't even think the issues with Locke not growing had to do with Colter,
: although I understand why people say he maybe isn't the strongest
: actor--it's that he had no one interesting to bounce off of. The
: second-in-command had little interesting to say and we got no real sense
: of their relationship prior.

: The Icelandic terrain was beautiful but sparse, and didn't help address the
: monotony that sort of set in for me. The Lekgolo created more questions
: than answers, and I didn't feel like they introduced questions I thought
: could have satisfactory answers. Wish it was the Flood, really. Since if
: the only point of the Hunter worms was to act as a force of nature to
: screw with Locke and co., the Flood would have not opened up these weird
: questions.

: Overall it certainly wasn't bad, but it was [i]bland[/i], and that kind of
: hurts more since FUD set us up to be pleasantly surprised. I think 343 has
: learned their lesson, and hopefully the partnership with Spielberg they
: focus more on the basics of storytelling.

So far I'm pretty much agreeing with everything said...
I loved FUD. This really was more like a cheaper web-series than the level/quality of production and writing that FUD had.

I don't know if it's acting, directing, or writing, but yeah Locke's character was, I dunno, boring. His demeanor and interactions were, for the most part, straight forward, calm cool and collected, little facial emotion, nothing riveting. Compared to Randall, he seemed weak, but with the backing of rank (and shiny muscle). It seems out of character, as it were, for an ONI specialist; ONI, an organization that (to me at least) has a sort of bitterness about it, a good/evil conflict. Locke seemed like they pushed Passive Lawful Good to an extreme... :P

Randall was definitely my favourite character, although he too seemed a little reserved.

My biggest beef with the writing though was that the religious/philosophical tropes felt pushed, way too early and quite grasping. eg, people fighting for their life and suddenly it's about playing God (at least presented like it's some enormous argument winner, some huge deep profound thought). I'm sort of put off by the amount of Valhalla references, but that could be chalked up to the characters moreso than writing. I dunno, a lot of the writing just seemed too forced, trying to bigger than it was.

The story itself - lots of threads left open, dangling, not so much like a carrot on a stick but more like a frayed edge of an ugly Christmas sweater :P Ok not that bad, I just liked the analogy. Lots of stuff to be dealt with in the future, lots of potential awesomeness.

In short, Nightfall could have been so much better. I don't think there's anyone that even considers denying that :P