Is Halo 3 a Worthy Conclusion? A Story Analysis
Vložit
- čas přidán 2. 06. 2024
- There was never more riding on the conclusion of a game than Halo 3. Halo Combat Evolved modernized first-person shooters on consoles, causing an entire generation of players to fall in love with its world and lore. Halo 2 evolved the storytelling of the franchise.
However, Halo 2 also ended the series on an infamous cliffhanger. It’s a brilliantly told story, but one that felt abrupt in its conclusion.
Halo 3 needed to finish the story that Halo 2 started. If Halo 3 failed to deliver, it would not only make Halo 3 an unsatisfying game, but it would retroactively make Halo 2 a worse game.
So, today I’m going to take a look back at the story of Halo 3 and see if it ended the series on the high note it deserved. Join me in this retrospective analysis of Halo 3.
Check out the third novel in the Northfield Saga, along with my other content, via my link tree:
linktr.ee/calvinfishermedia
#gaming #gamingreview #halo #halo3 #halomcc #retrogaming
Chapter breaks:
0:00 Intro
1:43 Halo 2 Story Recap
3:43 Main Story Part 1
22:53 Main Story Part 2
46:35 Conclusion - Hry
Thanks for watching everyone! I'm grateful for your continued support, and taking the time out of your day to check out my video!
You said by 21:29 that Halo 3 rings hollow by barely any world building like it's "coasting off the first 2 games", that's because not every entry in a series needs new groundbreaking world building, for a game series with multiple entries like Halo and Gears of War it's best to look at them as a bigger picture, it's why I still love Destiny's story despite the misteps they make like sunsetting a bunch of content. Gears Of War and Halo follow a similar story structure, the prequel game Reach/ GOW Judgement can serve as a good first game for a new player, it shows the sides of themain conflict and gives us a group of fun likable characters to follow, and even has some characters from the first game either referenced, minor involvement, or directly involved, but none are the MAIN series character of Marcus and Chief, then the first game if you want to play it first introduces us to the main conflict, and either hints at for GOW or directly involves a 3rd more powerful enemy to both sides, simply put intoduces the main character and side characters, and gives us a good enough look into the main enemy group, the COvenant/ Locust and has a major overall objective to accomplish that could turn the tide of the war, the 2nd game expands on the first and prequel and shows us more of the Human and bad guy's homes, in the end the bad guys suffer a critical defeat but are still standing, and the 3rd parasite faction grows in size, the 2nd world builds the most for all sides of the conlict, yet causes a major shift in the world state setting up for the 3rd game, in the srd game there can be some world building but it's either little or not really needed as we know enoug about this universe, the 3rd game is about wrapping up the war, wrapping up character arcs, ending the conflict to show a brighter future for the heroes after all the hardship they've been through. TO keep it simple, just remember Halo 3's tag line for it and GOW, "finish the fight." THat's what's awmazing about the 3rd game in both series, is a sense of finality to the main conflict. Oddly bith series still follow similar pathes in the 4th game. in GOW Marcus takes a back seat as no longe the lead and it's fine, while CHief still is the lead, but both games nicely reintroduce us to a time skip after the 3rd game, where our main leads JD and his friends for GOW and CHief for Halo are introduced to the old min seies enemy resurgent in some way, Halo for Jul Mdama's Covenant, and GOW with the Locust evolved intot he slightly different but similar enough Swarm. the 4th game introduces us to a new generation of heroes in a new conflict starting during a time of relative peace as the resurgent enemy begins some kind of new conflict. Bth games are also very emotional for the main chaaracters, Cief dealing with completing the mission while Cortana slowly loses it, and JD watches as Kait Diaz and him deal with emotions about potentially losing their family to the Locust, eventually both games end with someone close to a main character "dying", Cortana for Cheif and Kate's mother Reyna in GOW. THe 5th games arn't as narrativally similar but do have a few things, the new conflict is in full swing somehow and the loved one who "died" at the end of 4 returns somehow as an enemy, thus causing emotional baggage for the main hero. I'm really hoping for GOW 6 that somehow Reyna will return to her old self and try to help end the threat of the Locust, at least have some parralel to Halo Infinite where Cortana realized her mistake in time and though she died, she left messages for Chief and The Weapon, essentially as a way for them to to start over as The Weapon is basically Cortana factory reset, but learning about what the real COrtana had gone through and deciding not to make the same mistakes. Sorry this is a bit long but wanted to share my experiance with Halo with you. You should do a video on the Gears Of War series, if you want a gameplay partner I'd be happy to join you if you play on Xbox.
@@TheZamaron thanks for sharing your detailed and considerate opinion! I agree, viewing Halo 3 in the broader scope of the trilogy makes sense. Halo 3 didn't need to do the same level of worldbuilding as the prior two games, as they had already laid the world's foundations. However, I think there was still room to grow and flesh out some of the characters past concluding their arcs. For instance, I think the Arbiter deserved a bit more attention for his character arc, given his importance of halo 2. The parallels you bring up between GOW and Halo are definitely interesting. I hope to retro the Gears of War games eventually, but not quite sure when that will happen. I appreciate your offer!
@@calvinfishermedia Do remember there's extra media to flesh out other character story details, Arbiter gets a lot of it there, but I'd say for the most part what was important was wrapped up in Halo 3, plus Arbiter despite not being as prominant as Chief does get his special moments, and bits of dialogue. Hey you plan to do videos on the 343 Halo games?
To me, Halo 3 was always more of a graphical and gameplay improvement than one of story. Multiplayer and forge and co-op were such an incredible improvement, and the campaign story sort of lacked (the levels were good too though)
That is definitely fair! Unfortunately I grew up with Playstation, so I didn’t get to play Halo until long after 3’s prime. Because of that, it has always been a campaign series for me. From what I’ve seen about the multiplayer and forge, it seems like it was a revolutionary experience
@calvinfishermedia Since you said you grew up with PlayStation maybe you could cover games like Killzone and Resistance. I saw several reviews/retrospectives on those games and they actually have a lot of interesting lore. One thing I like about Killzone is how at first glance it just looks like a pretty clear cut conflict between teams “good guys” and team “bad guys”. But, when you actually look into the lore you start to realize that the Hellgast actually have plenty of legitimate grievances with them being the descendants of miners who settled a truly undesirable borderline uninhabitable world, and experienced a war where Earth’s empire took a bunch of resources from them. Because of this it allowed various bad actors to take over and radicalize the populace. As the games go on the lines between good and evil start to blur with the ISA also doing plenty of truly terrible things, like how at one point in 2 the enemies are actually a bunch of civilians defending their homes from an invasion, and at the end you end up wiping out a good chunk of the population and making the planet uninhabitable. In Resistance you get to see how different groups have been dealing with the Chimera with some groups being military groups, others are just survivors, one group turned to religion to cope with their horrible circumstances, and another group turned to raiding other survivors. Too bad Sony has abandoned both franchises. Instead of crying to the governments of the world to help preserve their market dominance they should’ve made a game plan to resurrect a lot of their old IPs in response to the Activision Blizzard purchase. Just make a bunch of MCC style collections with remastered graphics, or have full on Dead Space/Resident Evil type remakes of said games. Both of those would do a good job of bringing in old and new players. Although, a lot of those games are probably in licensing hell, and a good chunk of what made PlayStation great wasn’t even made by Sony and most of those guys have moved onto do something new. Even with those issues you’d think they’d make a better plan than gutting a good chunk of their devs, putting live service games on ice/cancelling them (one of the few genuinely good ideas they’ve had in recent years since most die and are money pits), refusing to put the game people want onto pc, and doing all these anti consumer practices. Hopefully they can get back on track since you need competition. It will be interesting to see what they do. Same goes for Microsoft now that they have a bunch of new franchises and studios under their control.
@@shreksnow1918 You read my mind, I actually am planning on making a Killzone video at some point! I want to do a single big video on the whole series, so I'm just waiting for the right time to play through all the games and do that big video. I agree, I think the killzone lore and world are super interesting. I haven't played Resistance but it's on my list to play at some point. I wish Sony would bring both of them back too.
@@calvinfishermedia Compared to other xbox games at the time, halo 2 & 3 were most definitely revolutionary (by halo 3 there was more of a consensus among games of how to do it, but halo 2's model of matchmaking and everything was the first, i believe). The custom games scene in halo 3 was amazing, and players had forge glitches down to a science.
@@rienstien1 I played some halo 2 a few months ago on the MCC - for being one of the first big online shooters, it's pretty impressive how much the game design still holds up to this day.
I really wish that 343 kept the original forerunner lore instead of retconning the best plot point in halo history
With you there. I’m reading Greg Bear’s forerunner books and while the new lore is cool, there is a nice clean simplicity to Bungie’s lore that I miss.
About the war line, I feel you on this. As cool as that line was, my guy was asking a genuine/important question in a time of war and it’s ignored. Now that I’m older I realize that the “to war” line is highly irresponsible more so because she’s the highest commanding officer on-site. A loose comparison mind you but that’s like in an emergency situation asking a retail manager to try to pick a new evacuation point because maybe the old ones aren’t as feasible anymore and they say “to sell”.😂
That is a very apt comparison haha! Thanks for checking out the video!
"Ma'am, half our stock is almost expired, managers are asking what they should do."
"To sale."
Dude, I watched the whole video and enjoyed it. Just now realizing how little views it has compared to what I thought it would. Great work. Super underrated, but I cant imagine that wont last too much longer 😏
Hey thanks for the encouragement man, I really appreciate it!
Hey man, big a long time halo fan and I’ve been binging all your halo videos, just wanna say you did a really good job with them, lots of subtle details that are easy to take for granted. I honestly don’t know a better videos game trilogy than the 3 ogs
Thanks man, that means a lot coming from a big halo fan! Glad you’re enjoying the videos
great video! i've gotta pick up the master chief collection one of these days haha
Thanks for tuning into the video! It was fun talking with you during the premiere! I definitely recommend it, they are a lot of fun and don’t take too long to beat
In terms of gameplay it does a really good job of building what worked with the previous games, and reworking/fixing what didn’t. Although, as far as story goes I tend to think not since there’s various inconsistencies, it’s CLEARLY made of the scraps of Halo 2 being its extended third act, the characters took a noticeable nosedive in intelligence, and the big reveal was much better in the Halo 2 storyboards. If you haven’t watched the videos C3 Sabertooth did on that game’s storyboard DEFINITELY do when you have the chance. They’re kind of long and you’ll need to pause a bunch to read all the quick notes.
I also have a few issues with the gameplay the build up. For one thing the Brutes went from being these hyper aggressive pack hunters that would rush you the second they see you to being bootleg Elites. The reason why this happened was combination of Bu give overcorrecting on their issues in 2 where Brutes were just broken bullet sponges, and they needed someone to fill the officer tank leftover vacant by the Elites. I really like the look of their armor, and the Chieftains were super fun mini bosses. But, they created an enemy that wasn’t very interesting to fight. ODST inherited a lot of the same issues since it was basically a Halo 3 expansion/asset flip. I liked how they were given shields, and felt more dangerous since the player was given slight nerfs (not nearly enough to make the gameplay truly feel different), but they missed the opportunity to fix what didn’t work. We don’t talk about them in Reach because that game took the worst aspects of 2 and 3’s Brutes to create the WORST version of the Brutes. Say what you will about Infinite’s (and I agree there’s a lot to say), but as far as gameplay is concerned that game gave us the BEST version of the Brutes in the entire series. They somehow managed to make them work as this amorphous enemy type like you’d see in FEAR and the Half-Life marines, while also giving them specialized ranks and having the Chieftains be dangerous. All they need now is a slight health increase, increased aggression, and given the ability to dual wield side arms. More on the topic of dual wielding Bungie effectively neutered the feature by having it only do 1.5 damage and having the accuracy penalty. This happened because the “pro players/competitive scene” cried loudly about how “its unbalanced/breaks the golden triangle”. Various mods have also shown that dual wielding can be well balanced. There was also a leaked Halo 3 build where if you fired the AR in bursts the gun was accurate, but in retail that feature wasn’t present. I’m confident the same people are to blame because these same idiots will cry to the devs to nerf everything that isn’t a BR because apparently having other parts of the sandbox be useful “requires no skill”, which is hilarious because if you use a keyboard and mouse the BR is literally just a line up the crosshair and click until the target falls over. Plus, if you took these same “high skill players” (who demand the sandbox bend to them instead of adapting to it) into Unreal Tournament or Quake they’d be absolutely curb stomped. They also should’ve added in bots that multiplayer.
Circling back to the story, something I found very interesting is that originally you were actually supposed to destroy that infected ship on Floodgate, but they cut it short and reused the same geometry for Cortana where you’d destroy the reactors. You were also supposed to actually get Cortana from the ship instead of a message. Bungie changed that to better wrap things up. Also, the reason why the Elites just show up out of nowhere is because they intended them to arrive with Keyes and Johnson in 2’s scrapped third act, and 3 was mostly filling out a check list. I already talked about 2’s original ending in the comments of the last video so I won’t repeat myself. But, I will say that the reason why the Elites stopped their war of genocide was after the Arbiter learned that humans are the children of their gods. The quote from ship master about “things look different without the Prophet’s lies clouding my vision” also would’ve worked much better in that because there was actually a revelation instead of him just saying that for no reason. Theres was also a cut level that looked like the Guardian Forest map with these big Sentinels you’d fight, and the thing ended with a giant Sentinel flying into space and destroying the rest of Truth’s fleet instead of it happening off screen. 3 was simultaneously too short, and also too long since they stretched things out further than originally planned. 3 was really fun, but the story mostly just spun it’s wheels for a good chunk of the game without much substance. Too bad we didn’t get a deeper narrative.
Good video and good luck with your books. Hopefully they catch on.
Thanks for the well-articulated response! I really appreciate your additional background info. I didn't know a lot of this about Halo 3's development, so it's really cool to learn about. Everything you say makes total sense, and you can see the effects of its development on the game in retrospect.
I miss dual-wielding, I wish they brought it back. I definitely think they could find a way to make it balanced and still fun in the sandbox.
Your comment on the battle rifle and the sandbox is so true. I hate that these “pros” claim it requires skill to use the battle rifle but then clean up the map like a power weapon. Meanwhile the AR encourages you to use the golden triangle or look for a power weapon. The beta build of Halo 5 had a very reliable AR but BR fanboys complained about overlap. Even though I hate Reach’s AR for being the weakest, I like that the DMR didn’t make the AR completely useless and you could still compete if you’re playing smart.
I agree with this comment completely except for one note. I honestly prefer the route 343’s taken recently in terms of some certain story aspects, revisiting what was thrown out to change context of stories they’ve told already. The Forerunners aren’t human, but the appearance of the Librarian was off-putting to some Forerunners because she looked oddly human, and it’s now being muddied if Humans and Forerunners were always separate species. Truth never stopped believing in the Great Journey in practice… but it was a Great Journey the Prophets would be exempt from taking part in to reform form the galaxy to their own desires. It may not be the best uh… partial rewrites? But it seems 343 is at least attempting to incorporate those scrapped story elements back into mainline canon.
The two marines talking in part one is actually a red vs blue Easter egg depending on the difficulty the actors for grift Simmons Tucker dock sarge Church and caboose can be heard having the argument
Ah, that makes a lot of sense! Thanks for sharing.
@@calvinfishermedia yeah I just recently found about the Easter egg but I love the video keep up the good work
Amazing video man! As a huge Halo fan since late 2020 I just want to say that this series is incredible. When I first played Halo I barely knew that much about the series. I knew tidbits but that's about it. Leaving the series I was invested and wanted to learn more. And to this day I have watched thousands of videos explaining and analysing Halo. And suffice to say, your video is an incredible representation of how to analyze such an iconic game series. Keep up the good work!
Hey thanks man, this comment really made my day! I’m glad you enjoyed the video.
splendid as usual fisher
Thanks, your encouragement means a lot! Glad you enjoyed the video
i’m begging you please look at halo 3 odst please
I definitely plan on doing a video on ODST at some point! It is the only Bungie Halo I haven’t covered yet, so I want to for a sense of completeness haha
@@calvinfishermedia yes please the soundtrack and overhaul atmosphere is the strongest of any halo game when you’re playing the rookie in my opinion
love your videos man keep it up
Thanks I really appreciate it!
Watched the Halo Reach analysis and came to Halo 3. Perfect videos for when I'm eating food. The Halo series was a sci fi generational event so grateful to grow up with this on the 360.
Thanks for watching my videos! I am glad you are enjoying them!
The retcon with humans existing alongside the forerunners in Halo 4 was...odd for lack of a better word. Humanity got so brutally attacked by the Forerunners because of their method for stopping the Flood (if I recall correctly they were able to predict the Flood's path, get ahead of it and destroy the next planet, which would cause them to starve I think or something similar) that they were sent back to the pre-stone age in tech and culture. I want to say that they drew the Forerunner's ire because one of the planets they destroyed belonged to the Forerunner and Humanity didn't exactly give them any sort of warning as to what was going on...not even a "Oops had to wreck your planet to save the galaxy, lol" type messages.
I get why they did it, they had to make a new big bad and give us a reason to shoot up some covies, but...meh? Gameplay was good at least.
That makes sense! On one hand I can appreciate them trying to make the lore deeper, but at the same time there is a nice simplicity to how the original games delivered their lore. There is a lot there but it feels fairly straightforward in a sense.
There are a lot of things I do enjoy about Halo 4 though.
@@calvinfishermediaI recommend the forerunner trilogy by Greg bear my goodness it's dense.
I personally like it a lot especially with the novels and stuff. And the B PlOt with Chief and Cortana is genuinely good in my opinion
@@calvinfishermediaya for me it's reach, 2, 4, 1, 3, Infinite, and 5 in terms of story
Thanks for the recommendation@@magnenoalex2, I plan on checking out the forerunner series!
I find it very admirable that what i think is the weakest Bungie Halo in story is still such a fantastic game (but of course multiplayer played a big role in its success). My main criticisms are the "humans are forerunners" twist that 343 tells you, still isnt fleshed out as well as it could have been. It has a lot of hints throughout the trilogy, but no real payoff to that reveal. That, and friendly Elites dont really get much presence in the story, something a lot of mod authors all try to remedy to make this newfound alliance more apparent. The H2 storyboards have a much clearer vision for how things could have went, though.
Those criticisms make a lot of sense! I haven’t looked into the storyboards for Halo 2 but they sound really interesting! I may have to check them out. Thanks for sharing!
I honestly agree about the execution of that reveal too, any observant reader / player would've come to the conclusion all on their own as early as the end of CE. Do I agree with 343i era "retcons" (some are debating that it isn't a blatant retcon with long lists of citations) not really, do I appreciate Greg Bear's approach to expanding the lore and adding more ambiguity? Absolutely.
nice video, subbed 😄
Thank you! I am glad you enjoyed the vid!
Yes truth needs a live human to activate the ark/halo. It's briefly spoken about near the end of halo 2
Thanks for clarifying! I was pretty sure, but I have made mistakes before lol
Great video!
You know, Truth's actions are revealed much more clearly in the Halo 2 storyboards that show what his intentions would have been if Bungie had the resources (and Halo 2-style daring bravery, perhaps?) to execute their vision. (C3Sabertooth has fantastic videos on this issue.) I've heard many from Bungie were exhausted after basically a decade of crunch, which I can definitely see and 100% empathise with, and I think explains quite well the somber and less daring tone of the game.
Regardless, Halo 3 stands tall among its peers, and especially over Halo 4 and onward. If every game were more like Halo 3 in terms of quality, I would be a very happy person!!
This is really interesting! I did hear that the crunch of halo 2 was infamous, so it is fascinating to hear how that real-life struggle manifested in game decisions. Thank you for sharing
@@calvinfishermedia You really should check out C3Sabertooth's videos! The Truth "reveal" (so to speak) was honestly mindblowing and really was the missing puzzle piece that has (or rather, would have) made Truth's plan make sense and return Truth's status as a cunning and scheming villain!
I'm the one who should be thanking you - for the videos, that is! :)
@@caramelldansen2204 Thanks for the suggestion! I am going to check their videos out!
I loved Halo 3 when it came out and I still love it, it was an event, finally the end of a long wait after Halo 1 and 2, one of the first games I bought on the Xbox 360, everything was perfect, even though it wasn't that work cousin, but I consider it the end of the work, along with odst and reach, 4 I even liked it a little but I didn't like the path that the new developer followed, exclusively in the story, but I also had fun playing it!!! Another great video, looking forward to the next ones
ps. I'm Brazilian and I translated it using Google Translate, if there are any spelling mistakes ignore it lol
Thanks for watching the video and sharing your experience with the game!
You totally nailed it, you put into words what I've felt for years, thanks for that. Probably the weakest of the 3, but still not unworthy of the other 2
Thanks so much for the kind words! Glad you enjoyed the video.
@@calvinfishermedia totally man I've been binging your vids haha, great editing too btw👌🏻 I love hearing the thoughts of a bona fide plot and story writer as you can give more thought out and legitimate opinions/analysis' than average gamers