: Sounds like it.
: It's also an attempt to prevent continuity lockout. You know how the problem
: with comics is that if you're going to buy a new comic, you have to buy
: five years of the back catalog to understand what's going on? It's a
: massive turn-off for new readers who just want to pick up a story and
: enjoy it.

: Since the biggest complaints leveled at 343i games is that Halo 4 was too
: reliant on the books, and Halo 5 was incomprehensible even if you've read
: the novels and comics and the miniseries about Locke, Halo 6 is going to
: start with a clean slate. They're going to tone down the callbacks and the
: extraneous characters as much as possible.

Encouraging but I did find the attempts to build empathy with the guy discouraging. FPSs need a story but they are not novels or movies. The writers should respect the limitations of the genre. If they would rather be writing novels then go write novels and don't waste everybody's time failing to write a novel in a FPS game.

I don't want 343 to try to humanize their characters. I want to be invested in the world. I'd like my wants to coincide with the protagonist's. I would like to like the other characters (except for enemies) but I don't want to know that they miss their families, especially if said families are so "perfect" and cute as his was. That's too Hollywood-clumsy-manipulative; pass the sick bucket.

: Bonnie and Frankie have both (IIRC) said that the media is going to stick to
: its own swimlanes from now on. That means that we're back to the good ol'
: days when the games only occasionally mention stuff from the books.
: Meanwhile, that TV show that's still in production? It's probably going to
: be kind of in its own bubble too. Maybe it'll mention characters and
: events from the extended universe, but if so, it will go to the trouble of
: introducing them proper as if the writers came up with the idea
: themselves.

: Graphics look fine to me. Some of the coloring is off, but I really couldn't
: care less that it doesn't look hyperrealistic. I've been saying for years
: that Halo ought to step off the graphics treadmill and adopt a clean,
: stylized look so that assets can be reused from one game to the next.

: Trouble is, I'm a layman when it comes to vidya game design, so I don't know
: how much work that would save compared to the sales it would cost 343i. I
: dunno, is ultra-realistic-next-gen-cutting-edge graphics that much of a
: game seller anymore?

I don't know but there is a tension between the wants of the studio and the needs of the developers. The developers can't expect to work for 343 for ever so they need to be using the latest tools and techniques. If they are not doing bleeding age then their resumes (CVs, whatever) start looking a bit dated.

This is also exacerbated by the fact that devs and employers see technical excellence as a proxy for general competence. If you are looking for devs then managers and senior devs will almost always be looking for the guys with the best technical chops. It's like the saying, nobody got fired buying IBM. It's just accepted wisdom.

I would prefer that they hired people who, consistently, made good decisions. It's true that intelligent people tend to be more consistent in the good decision department and you can argue that a dev who concentrates on his tech skills has made a good decision but it is only one decision and a rather obvious one at that.

I will give a few examples of a tension between challenging technical problem and good gameplay.

High res, detailed, graphics

You could use high res textures and a beastly engine to through a billions polygons onto the screen.

That is technically challenging but isn't fun for gameplay. Make things simple and distinct, get your high framerate and splitscreen working. If you still have lots of spare processing power then use more polys to make your simple surfaces smoother.

Reach vehicle boarding animations

If memory serves... NPCS took forever to board a warthog. They seemed to pause for a second, they moved in slow motion before they then executed a flawless, smooth, animation into the vehicle.

My impression was that the devs were getting the characters into the correct location and body position so that the limited number of boarding animations executed properly.

This made the boarding sequence take too long and you'd die often on legendary.

Perhaps a genius dev could have got the characters into position quickly but, failing that, a good decision maker would decide to cheat on legendary and get those NPCs on board even if they have to teleport through the geometry. Because few people want to checkpoint 3 times just to board a vehicle with a gunner.

h2's addition of destructible vehicles

I'm sure that it was a neat technical challenge but, for me, it caused a net drop in gameplay fun. You could leave your vehicle to kill some grunts but you return to a smoking wreck of a vehicle and might have to checkpoint to get it back or walk to the end of a large level.

I even found the addition of EMP for vehicles to be a royal PITA. It might have a place in multiplayer but it sucks for campaign.