Hey, more power to you! Once some shmuck posts them on youtube my interest in finding them on my own wanes. Damn internet. Convenient mistress that it is.

: Yes, those terminals were great, as a standalone product. The one about
: Captain Keyes was absolutely great. But you can't tell me that you don't
: remember the discussions this forum had about the flawed design of the
: HCEA terminals?

I remember, but I didn't think there was anything wrong with them other than I wanted more (which is good)

: I called the first one a mistake because it basically broke the narrative of
: the others. Are the HCEA terminals something that's actually discovered by
: the Chief? Then why doesn't he or Cortana alert the bridge crew to the
: fact that "Hey, we're being contacted by someone friendly!" And
: if 343 Guilty Spark learns that the Pillar of Autumn is crewed by humans
: by logging on and browsing through their history, why does he muse
: "Human history, is it? Fascinating." in the later levels?

This didn't cross my mind at all because the way I interpreted it was from 343GS as an internal monologue, or diary of sorts. I didn't interpret it as the Chief finding the terminals, as if the chief were reading the terminals- I consumed them as directly to me, the player. Like a narrator in a play. I'm the omnipotent party in that I get to see the Human side, the Covenant side (which was also a great terminal btw) and the newly added 343GS side and thinking, but those factions don't get to know what I know.

For the first terminal specifically, my head canon processed that as a one way message- 343GS tried to reach out to the Pillar of Autumn but was unsuccessful. Why? Who knows. Maybe the humans were too busy with the problem at hand, the Covenant. Shouldn't have Cortana have seen something? Maybe? I dunno. 343GS said he was capable of blocking the s.o.s signal of the previous alien ship, maybe something similar here occurred (to his error I guess) and for whatever reason, the warning was not received. The Covenant didn't seem to get anything either. That we know of, at least.

: As for the rest, I hope you don't mind if I let Kermit do the talking for
: me.

: True. Then they would have only been sophomoric and poorly conceived.

:P

I hate the way the Librarian and Didact look. Happy?

: I never said that they were pointless. In fact, given how integral they were
: to the original story, they shouldn't have been hidden terminals at all.

: 0.o
THAT WAS THE BEST AUTO-CORRECT I'VE EVER HAD. The LOL at my desk right now was a sight to behold!

: Yes, precisely!

: I never grew up with Transformers, so I really can't see what Micheal Bay
: ruined.

: You want to hear lazy? Listen to Dan Ayoub talk about how boring it is to
: read text in a game.

: You're not advancing the story, you're butchering it to harvest the organs.
: Nothing about Halo's story dictated that we'd need to meet the Forerunners
: next. Nothing dictated that we'd need to meet them in the flesh.

Of course it did. Pre 343 industries it did. Ghosts of Onyx, man! That shield world opened up a can of worms. If the Forerunner were able to make sanctuaries that were resistant to the effects of the Halo firing than it's possible someone survived. I know people like you and the Levi's of the world were comfortable not knowing anything about them, and that's fine- to an extent I was too, but it's a logical direction to take the story, post war Halo 3. The reclamation of Forerunner tech and know-how by humanity to prevent the Covenant from happening again. Frankie said early on that was a direction he wanted to explore.

But I digress- You don't like that direction- fine. Whaddaya gonna do aboot it??

: Don't excuse 343i's half-assed attempt at showing the Forerunners with
: "This is how it had to be."

Do you mean in terms of look? Because I greatly dislike the way they look in Halo 4. I was OK with the way they were shown in the Origins (Legends) video.

: I'm talking about feel here. I'm not saying that the Halo 3 terminals were as
: well-written and important as the Iliad, I'm saying that they had that
: timeless feel, something that drove home how ancient the Forerunner's war
: with the Flood was.

The text part was good- anywhere you can encourage someone to read is great. But the parts where it would say "I see you reclaimer" I had just as much struggle thinking "Is this to me, the player? Or is it to the Chief directly?" that you had with CEA's first terminal.

So, to each their own.

: I'm not salivating over them. I'm holding them up as a good way to do what
: 343i failed at.

See, I disagree. I was so damned pissed off when I found them in Halo 3 and I couldn't read the text at MY pace and the screen would change before I had a chance digest anything!

"But Rev, just revert to the last check point or play the level over again and access it agai"

No. Fuck that. I don't have time for that. You think pausing a video and starting from the beginning is bad- how is the above not worse!?

: The terminals are not there for them, no more than Mass Effect's Codex was,
: or the audio journals in Bioshock.

Audio and video logs are now so common place in gaming that the mystery and excitement they once held are now getting tedious.

Not to be all "Cody Miller" about it, but in games like Doom 3 and Bioshock where you NEED some of the audio logs to advance the game is kinda lame. Halo 3 and HCEA did it right because they were just icing on the cupcake- if you didn't get them they didn't take anything away from the main plot of the game, only enhance it.

Personally, the first run through, I like that stuff. The second time I run through the game its a pain in the ass to find that one damn log with the code I need to open a lock or door. Bah!

: I felt like Reach's data pads were a good mix of difficulty. It just took me
: a long time to find some of them because my initial assumptions were
: incorrect (And because New Alexandria is frickin' huge).

: Not yet. I'll get around to it one of these years.

: That's awesome! Tragic, really, but still awesome.

: Like the Pelican and Falcon on New Alexandria.

: To be honest, hiding things too well rarely happens. I mean, Hell, have you
: seen some of the radio clues Valve gave out about Portal 2? The fan
: community, working together, decoded the clues with some obscure recording
: instrumentation and cryptoanalysis.

Maybe their fans are smarter than Halo fans... I dunno. The cult of Valve is pretty strong these days.

: Man, that crap was ugly.

: If this was the only thing 343i was doing wrong, it wouldn't even come close
: to turning me off the Haloverse.

: Because I'm an engineer.
: I'm an engineer who hopes to be a published author one day, and you can learn
: much more from a failure than you can from a success.

: It's like I've said before, I can't help picking apart the media I consume. I
: can't help but adjust the pacing or rewrite the dialog in my head. When
: something comes along where I am too entertained to do that, I enjoy it
: thoroughly. Halo 4 was pretty much the opposite.

: I still come around here because I enjoy reading what others have to say,
: even if I disagree with it.

Engineers: I had fun once and here's why it's broken!

: And here's the other side of the coin. I don't think there's a science
: fiction franchise out there for me, not in television or video games.
: StarCraft is a joke, Mass Effect capsized, Destiny has yet to sink its
: hooks into me, and Titanfall seems to be bereft of narrative. Halo comes
: close, and I can still talk about some of the good stuff 343i manages to
: pull off.

I'm just giving you shit. If you have not though, you really should read the Christopher Rowley.

: Thank you. I enjoyed reading and replying to it.

: I'm not a Star Wars fan either. I just really like the original movies and a
: handful of the books.

I just laugh at how fired up people get over little things sometimes. I'm guilty of it too!

I'm not an optimist. But, I do approach things from the point of view that "things could be worse"

343 is leaps and bounds above the COD curators. EA too. There really are some shitty games out there, and I've played them, and I've raged that I bought them and wasted my money. But I have yet to do that with a 343 product.

That doesn't mean I'm happy with everything (READ: Avateur :3), and it doesn't mean I give them a blank check. Same with Bungie. I love their Halo. But I'm not in love with their Destiny or staff shakeups.

Once again, what makes ALL of this enjoyable, is you guys.

Also, not having these discussions on B.net or Waypoint's forums.

Ew!