George

cool gamer

[George @longearedfox]

I’ve just put together the introduction section of my Halo Infinite retrospective (yes this is something I’ve been working on for months secretly) and it’s brilliant. There’s a long way to go, but so far so good.

Feels so good to be actively working on a video again :)

[George @longearedfox]

I love the World Cup so much, it’s such a wonderful time. Whereas regular domestic football doesn’t really interest me that much, I love international tournaments. I’ll be so sad when it’s over. Waiting until 2028 for the next Euros feels so far away.

[George @longearedfox]

“Devotion inspires bravery, bravery inspires sacrifice, sacrifice leads to death. So… feel free to kill yourself”

The Speaker was a fucking menace.

[JellybackJoe @JellybackJoe]

The people that need to know what this means won't get it because they didn't play the game.

[George @longearedfox]

It’s so over. I hope these incubation projects go smoothly, whether there’s a new Destiny being worked on or not. For the sake of the industry I hope Bungie survives the difficult years ahead of them.

[George @longearedfox]

@ItsLazBoi Excellent garphics

This is the parameter……

[George @longearedfox]

Jason Schreier’s YouTube channel might be the single most informative videogame-related channel out there. He has so much insight into the industry and is so well-spoken. He’s just releasing banger after banger.

[George @longearedfox]

@ItsLazBoi Yeah they use the same technique. Covering an object in greebles to give an object more complexity. In the case of the Death Star and Alpha Halo, it provides a sense of scale that wouldn’t be achievable with flatter surfaces. It’s such a common practice in sci-fi.

[George @longearedfox]

Is it just me who thinks the scale of the ring feels off here? If we look at Installation 04 from the original CE, it looks much larger in comparison.

I think it’s the broad patterns and lines in the remake version, they actually make the ring look smaller somehow.

[Mint Blitz @MintBlitz]

HALO JUST DROPPED 6 HOURS OF THE CAMPAIGN EVOLVED MENU???

[George @longearedfox]

@Tyrannicswine97 Genuinely super interested in seeing those prequel missions :) it’ll give us an idea where the studio is at with original stuff. I’m looking forward to it, despite my hangups with the visual changes in the remake.

[George @longearedfox]

Just finished a replay of Halo 4. Despite the amount of shite in this game I genuinely like some aspects of it. Mission structure and environment variety in Halo 4 absolutely mogs Halo Infinite. Yes the story is ass but it actually FEELS like a Halo campaign in terms of scope.

[George @longearedfox]

@Tyrannicswine97 Yeah like, I love Foundation and Conservatory. But that stretch towards the end of the game with Nexus, The Command Spire, and Repository one after the other; it’s rough honestly. The storytelling in those missions is good, but the environments get so fatiguing unfortunately.

[George @longearedfox]

@Tyrannicswine97 Hopefully working on Campaign Evolved, the devs have been studying Bungie-era level design and have a better understanding of what makes Halo level design remarkable in those early games. Call me crazy but I have faith that the next mainline game could be really good.

[George @longearedfox]

@Tyrannicswine97 Yeah for sure I’ve done lots of reading about the development cycle and the problems they ran into with the Slipspace engine, the revolving door of contract workers trying to learn the engine. I still think what they were able to do was admirable, but man it’s still disappointing

[George @longearedfox]

@Tyrannicswine97 Personally I think The Tower might just be the worst mission in the game. The fight in the base outside is good, then it just loses all steam for me with the same repeated corridor over and over again until you reach the boss at the end. Pelican Down can be fun to be fair.

[George @longearedfox]

@Tyrannicswine97 Definitely could be more open, I quite enjoyed some of the combat arenas in my most recent playthrough. But yeah it’s got nothing on Halo 1 - Reach levels. In its linear missions Infinite struggles with the same stuff Halo 4 does imo, but with even less variety. Which is a shame.

[George @longearedfox]

@Tyrannicswine97 Yeah I know, I just finished writing a 58,000 word script for a Halo Infinite retrospective video and I gave it more than a fair shake throughout. However, I think the open world is undeniably static, even if they tried to give it some life here and there. It’s just unfinished.

[George @longearedfox]

@Tyrannicswine97 I want to clarify I also like Infinite despite its flaws. But man it really dropped the ball with level design. Some missions like Warship Gbraakon and Conservatory are brilliant. Then you have The Tower, Pelican Down & The Sequence, which are… yikes.

[George @longearedfox]

@Tyrannicswine97 That’s fair, definitely nowhere near as interesting as the vehicle missions in the original trilogy and I would never try to argue that. I love the original trilogy. I just think the campaign is more engaging than Infinite from a level design and environment perspective.

[George @longearedfox]

@Tyrannicswine97 CE gives you more options when it comes to exploration, and 3 does a little bit too, especially with different routes to reach the same objective. Yeah I can see that, I would definitely prefer that for sure. My comparison with 4 was mainly with Infinite, which is just empty.

[George @longearedfox]

@Tyrannicswine97 When I refer to mission structure I mean the various states of combat the game has us engage with. Infantry, ground vehicle, aerial. Indoors, close range, outside, long range. There’s a nice variety of combat states in Halo 4, more in line with the original trilogy than Infinite.

[George @longearedfox]

@Tyrannicswine97 As for level design I’ve replayed all of the Halo games from CE all the way to 4 over the last few weeks and I think you may be misremembering how open-ended the missions are in the original trilogy. They are very linear, which isn’t a bad thing at all. But they are linear.