Help me understand the hype of Halo Lore and Story

Okay, I'm a PC gamer so I should point that out straight away that I haven't played any mainline Halo games so I'm unaware of the larger picture here. Yes, I know there are two Halo games on PC but I somehow never found Halo to be of my interest so I never played them.

Now I have played Halo Wars since it was the last Ensemble studio games and I just don't get all the hype about the story and the lore. To me as a PC player it looks like they just copied the theme from Starcraft with Flood being copied from Zerg, Covenants from Protoss and well Humans from Humans. What was the really big deal?

Go read about it and figure it out yourself. There are books, a web series, games etc.

@pc_rocks:

Everything copied something. It's impossible to be 100% original. But in Halo's case, it's the universe I fell in love with. The whole concept of Spartan supersoldiers is badass! Probably one of the coolest things to ever come out of the videogame industry in decades! Call it fangirl logic or whatever but that's just my 2 cents.

If you don't get Halo's appeal then you'll never get into it. If you wanna find out for yourself, you must try the fps games. See it firsthand.

Get yourself a Mighty X1X Monsterbox MasterRace and MCC and never look back. The finest gaming on planet earth. lol :P

It was never nothing special, probably because I mainly played on PC when it came out on Xbox.

Think it's unfair to base your Halo story from Halo Wars (even though i am never a fanboy of the franchise)

Ensemble studios had a hard time working with Bungie at that time for a number of reasons:

• Bungie didn't want another developer dip into their IP at that time
• This idea was somewhat forced into creating Halo as an RTS game
• This game takes places decades before the main triliogy so no spoilers would be spilt

Play HALO: CE on PC.

The game came out in 2001 during an era where FPS dominated the PC space and we had great games like Half-Life with Half-Life 2 still years away, it was revolutionary when it came out.

It set the standard for console FPS, which would later be improved by other companies and then there was a massive boom due to COD.

Halo came out just at the right time.

Someone finally slowed down PC quality FPS just right for controllers. Halo was headed to Mac/PC b4 MS scooped up Bungie.

Rather than just 1:1 ports like Q3 arena on dreamcast and the likes. (not to mention when they had DC / PC crossplay, lol)

@pc_rocks: I think you have to take into account when it started. And, there are a lot of books (and even a movie "Halo: Forward Unto Dawn") about the universe. I'd agree that if you *just* play the games, and starting out in 2018, there isn't that much of a story over other games by today's standards.

I always thought halo was B tier science fiction.

I don't really get the "hype" either but I will say that it is one of the very few FPS games with a great story and storyline. So many shooters take story for granted I always found playing Halo like reading a really good book.

I never got it either and I played Halo 1-3. I didn't recon much to Halo CE when it released, it was pretty good and then in the second half of the game it turned bad. The second and third game seemed to follow this same trend and I never finished either of those.

I think that was the last time I got myself hyped up. It was on the verge of releasing. Then.....news blackout followed by shock. I thought it was kind of funny. ;) But, I never got hyped about a game again.

Right about the same time, MS quit supporting their own PC gaming peripherals (Sidewinder gamepad, joystick, etc).

Halo 1-3 were pretty special for their time. I remember playing Halo CE on PC back in the day and enjoying it.

Newer Halos are meh though. Not bad games just not anything special IMO.

As for the story and lore in Halo, I think it's a B-tier sci-fi territory.

It's boring. That's why. People like Master Chief for some reason, even though he's gotta be the most generic space marine you'll ever find; they probably just adore the name or something. It's a meme in its own right.

I think master cheif is a good character (badass at least and a good design) but Halos story is well...horrible. The first get hints at something epic but never gets anywhere close to delivering on it. There's actually almost zero story in the game, and the flood was LAME as hell. Halo 2 actually had a story...but it was good awful and had a 2000 year old talking plant...yes you heard that right, it was a bad as it sounds. I have 3 but never got around to playing it.

You really need to play Halo 1-3 (also ODST & Reach) to understand why the story is so good it it's own right made by Bungie before they went stupid.

Halo: Combat Evolve demonstrated that not only could FPS be done on console when Xbox was totally new to the gaming world, but they could be done extremely well which set the bare by other FPS games later on like Call of Duty Modern Warfare, Killzone, and more. Halo: CE was also the first big exclusive that helped establish the Xbox as a contender in the games industry which is known for and Halo also introduced some key innovations that many other games have come to utilize. Things like having the ammo counter on the gun, minimal HUD, regenerating shield (Which many games converted to regenerating health), and limited weapon carrying capacity to name a few. Halo is a very special franchise that helped shape modern gaming and Halo 2 introduce XBL.

I didn't realize there was any hype for it anymore. Game is still lot of fun given its gameplay is pretty solid.

I thought given the scale of the galactic conflict, there was tons of potential to take the story in a number of directions, put players in a number of roles. But that potential seems minimized mostly by the fanbase that reacted negatively to games that didn't center around Master Chief, like Halo ODST or Reach, both good games on their own, but yeah, fans want Master Chief, this I feel limits the series quite a bit.

There isn't that much "hype" about it, is there? It just goes along at a constant level of interest and it already peaked around Halo 2 or 3...

I agree that I might have a different perspective if I have played the mainline Halo games but was just sharing my experience as the first thought that came to my mind after Halo Wars is, yeah, they took it striaght out of Starcraft.

Halo never intrigued me when it was available on PC so I probably won't try them unless MS ports MCC to PC for cheap.

Same reason everyone likes Link, or Samus, or Gordon Freeman. He's a character whose mild characterization and clearly positive goals are well designed for self insertion.

Answering the topic more broadly, up until maybe Reach, Halo stories were propelled by great setpieces, sense of scale, and decent chemistry between some of the main characters. Additionally, unlike the recent games, 1-3 feel like the story and gameplay worked in tandem, as opposed to just being randomly smushed together with messy or unsatisfying results.

If you're thinking the lore in and of itself is anything special, well the answer is no, it isn't. It's all very standard sci-fi. Generic advanced aliens, generic assimilation aliens, ancient dead race, mysterious superstructures, etc. However it is at least deeper than it seems on a surface level playthrough. There tidbits sprinkled throughout to give you things to speculate on and think about.

It felt more like once Halo Reach and the other Halo after it were very badly received by the fans.

I remember that the first Halo was a bench mark game that showed the world that a shooter could be done on a consol with a controler and be super fun. Since even some PC player use controler to play some shooter. Also the music did hit a sweet spot with a lot of fans.

Personally the mission are too damn long ... sometimes it can take more than hour just to go through.

Starsiege Tribes games have also inspired the Halo games in some ways.

The lore can be pretty deep, if you get really into it... too complicated to explain in a forum post.

The lore looks pretty interesting. Whatever you do though don't watch this film, it's like a poor man's starship troopers.

Enjoy

OP, thats probably the worst synopsis i've ever seen. covenant as protoss?

Protoss are alien religious race. Covenant were also religious with Forerunners as their higher beings.

I see it now. Many of the protoss also have two arms and legs as do many of the covenant. They are indeed both alien races, which would be a very rare thing for a game based on space and distant galaxies to incorporate, so that is most likely a rip off toop.

the pacing was a bit slower but the AI was probably significantly more interesting than anything out on the market. Most PC games that were fast were fighting lots of stupid enemies that rushed the player, while the player circle strafed to doge projectiles. Even the fabled FEAR ai I don't think could match halo since halo at least designed a sandbox with vehicles for the AI to do things in, making it far more repayable.

Halo or Bungie to be exact has a horrible way to tell their stories. They can't for the love of God tell a good story. The lore in Halo is good if you research it and has a lot of going besides the Human vs Covenant storyline but the story or how it's told is never special. I like Halo mainly because of the MP. Even that it was never that good to begin with. It was cool for it's time but I think the series has been left behind and even surpassed by modern FPS. I never got the hype besides playing with friends. Which is really good (about).

Yeah, if that's the only faction. I already outlined the three main factions with similarities to Starcraft factions and it's not like I'm picking on Halo or anything but surely I can't be the only one that thinks of the similarities by playing Halo Wars. That was genuinely the first thing that came to my mind. You people are so insecure, it's like I insulted your mother or something. I was expressing my honest opinion.

Well, to me as a Vita player, it's not my job to teach you basic skills of understanding.

yeah for me it's all about the Spartans/supersoldiers, the structure of the military, and their interplanetary campaigns. It's so damn cool. @pc_rocks Go read up on some of the Spartans, who they were, what the government did to/for them and their families, how many died during genetic modification and so forth. It's pretty neat.

Alien religious alliance stumbles on humans.

Humans use super soldiers to beat the crap out of them.

Alien religion turns out that they are worshiping extinct alien race that got destroyed because they thought it was smart to create zombies to fight their wars.

Humans revealed to be the alien religion's chosen race.

Sex with artificial intelligence.

Super soldier blows up everything, including zombie spore.

Super soldier goes to sleep.

They wake him up because Microsoft needs more cash.

The Flood are remnants of the Precursors. The Covenant worship the Forerunners as Gods, not the Precursors.

Guys, why are you wasting time on this asshole?

He's a PC gamer and like most PC 'only' gamers he has no money. 'I probably won't try them unless MS ports MCC to PC for cheap'. His PC probably has a hard time running anything released in the last 10 years but WoW still runs okay and that's all that matters.

Don't feed the peasants.

OP is implying that he doesn't think the games are worth the money, not that he doesn't have the money. Big difference.

Halo was released. Was a fun game. People liked. A series was born. You're welcome.

Plus, he did ask why Halo is such a big deal and we told him it shape up Xbox brand to what it is today and that's about it.

Yeah, I'm a PC only gamer and there are two reasons for it. I grew up with the PC and in country the gaming culture is mostly based around PC's also due to the fact that we don't have official distributor of consoles. We do get them but they are quite expensive compared to the PC's and even all their games. PC gaming is actually pretty competitive in price compared to consoles in my country. It's still expensive but since it can do much more than gaming, most people opt for PCs.

You're right I don't have an uber PC, never claimed I did though I have a decent PC with 4770k and 970 with 16 gigs of RAM, enough to play pretty much all games at 1080p high/ultra at 60FPS. It was an uber build when first built it and my next build will also be top of the line once volta drops. I usually skips a GPU generation before upgrading my PC. What are you so butthurt about?

No, I have never asked why Halo was such a big deal. I knew it was console friendly shooter that established the Xbox brand. My honest opinion after playing Halo Wars was that: yeah, I have seen a similar story in Starcraft and why no one before raised it. Funsohng point still make it sounds like it's very close to starcraft. It's not like I criticized or insulted Halo or Xbox or MS.

Wasn't aware of any hype regarding Halo's story and lore.

I'll make this easy for you. Everyone here is an expert. They have all written pulitzer and Eisner award winning stuff so they will know LMAO

Help me understand the enjoyment of the combat in Persona 4 and 5.

If it doesn't strike you it just doesn't strike you. That doesn't make it bad. It means you don't like it.

It came out the same year as Tribes 2, Undying, RTCW, AvP 2, Operation Flashpoint and Max Payne.

By PC standards of the time Halo couldn't be more unremarkable, which is why it never garnered any significant following there.

Halo was only a "revolution" in a sense that it wasn't an absolute dogshit console shooter for a change.

Yup and if ya would be so kind brother.... Help me understand the greatness of the latest... Tales of Ballbagia? lololol :P

I only played Halo 1 through 3. None of the newer stuff. The storyline in these games was never all that great. The ring world idea was kind of neat, but there are several sci-fi novels that have ring worlds. I mostly enjoyed Halo CE for its balanced split screen multiplayer. Never cared much for the story. I think most people feel the same way.

PC did have good shooters at the time, but I think PC gamers get too down on Halo. It did a lot of stuff well. It had vehicles and limited the number of weapons a player could carry. Both are standard in FPSs now, but they weren't at the time. It also had very balanced weapons and multiplayer maps.

Its all just marketing hype.

people are told what they should like and many fall in step no quesiton

So... supersoldiers are a big deal to you? Have you ever seen a movie or read a book?

@nethernova:

Yes and it was awesome then and it's awesome now! But Spartans are sooo much more than that. Their armors, the intricate technology used to make them and alien technology used for the gel layer shield generators. Nothing like it! It makes for the best gameplay that combines standard military combat with superhuman abilities.

The shields give you enough time to recover from enemy fire. No one shot kills like Call of Duty. The other abilities increase your jumping and melee. And now with H5, we have thrusters for dashing abilities as well as the ability to break down walls! You're much stronger than the human soldier games but not invincible. It's just that with this, you stand a much better chance in a firefight. The shields still don't save you from explosions next to you, a shotgun blast is strong enough to kill you almost instantly and you can still be sniped. So you still need to cover behind walls. It's THE perfect fps gameplay balance!