Learning to Love Halo 4 - A Retrospective
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- čas přidán 28. 06. 2024
- When Halo 4 was originally released in 2012, there was a distinctly mixed response among longtime fans. But what about it was so polarizing? Why do some fans praise it while others loathe it? I decided to meet the game on its own terms, and came out of it with a new appreciation for 343 Industries' inaugural entry in the franchise they inherited.
Chapters:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:05:35 - Let's Put Things in Perspective...
00:11:33 - It Is a Game, After All...
00:16:54 - What Measure is a Non-Human?
00:26:37 - Captain On Deck!
00:39:09 - Dr. Strange-Lore (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Expanded Universe)
00:48:26 - To the End
00:58:35 - Full Circle
Twitter: / lorddrubie
Patreon: / andrewbluett - Hry
Had me hooked and it gave me a better idea of this story. Had the feels for Master Chief and Cortana in the end. Way to go honey, keep up the amazing work. I'm so proud of you love!
Awwww :>
Drubie!! What incredible work! I really have to give it to you for putting all these thoughts into words and giving things another look with a more understanding eye, a recent replay really helped me see Halo 4 for more than what I initially did when it melted my Reach edition 360 haha! Technically and emotionally incredible!
I'm amazed this doesn't have more views.
The way you reframed Halo 4 for me can't be overstated - I was definitely in the "it's not great" camp but I'm looking back at it now wondering what exactly it is that I was supposed to dislike so massively about it, especially considering how much I didn't enjoy the narrative of both 5 and Infinite.
I really hope you keep this up dude - it's a fantastic bit of work
Thanks so much dude! I have more in the pipeline--including a full series retrospective of Final Fantasy as someone who never finished any of them until last year--but I highly encourage you to share this video with friends.
I also encourage you to go back to Halo 4 with this new perspective and see if it holds up to you personally. I aim to try and take a positive approach to analysis, since there's so much negativity and harsh scrutiny out there as it is, but I don't want to be uncritical. That's why I also discuss the sore points of Halo 4, e.g. incongruent macro and micro plots and the flawed gameplay loop. I certainly hope that came across well.
If you go back to Halo 4 and find yourself still not totally jiving with it, even with this renewed perspective, that's totally fine. It's not a perfect game; it has its flaws. But I hardly see people, even fans, digging deeply into the merits of Halo 4's characters and themes like this. And I wanted to show just how high this game's highs are.
By the prophets. My dude. I've been a lore nut who consumes video essays daily for a long time. This is easily the best long-form video essay on Halo I've seen. Especially for Halo 4.
The editing, audio balancing, pacing, analysis, commentary, and that bit towards the end playing Chief's theme over the Chief and Cortana montage even brought me to tears.
Utterly *phenomenal* work, dude. Bravo.
Wow, this is incredilbly well put together and thought out. Kind of puts into words my own feelings on Halo 4's story in a more eloquent way than I ever could!
I found your channel a few days ago and I've absolutely fallen in love. The quality of videos you are producing made me do a double-take when I saw the sub count and views you had. Thanks for all of your efforts. It's getting harder and harder to find long-form content that interests me these days that I haven't already seen or isn't some kind of compilation.
This really amazing for a first video! Keep up the amazing work and I hope you gain more subs man!
WTF YOU ONLY HAVE 40 SUBS??
LITERALLY HOW THIS VIDEO IS FANTASTIC
Halo 4 is my first and so far only halo game, i remember playing it so much as a kid, both with friends and by myself with the single player, still come back to that campaign now and then, really cool that you can do it co-op as well
This is the second of your videos I watch(after the ff1 retrospective)
I'm glad to subscribe and I'm eager to gobble each of your future ff retros!
And now we have the same number of subscribers! Great video!
maybe its because i only played on mcc but halo 4 only gave me fun and at this point in time its hard to see how people could just hate it so much
It was the start of a new chapter under a new dev team and the multiplayer design (cod load outs with kill streaks) gave many the impression that they didn't honor the series. I think Halo 4s bad reception was mostly an emotianal reaction. The game design is not perfect, but every halo has its problems.
@Trashloot no, we played it and did not enjoy it. I remember me and my brother played it once and never touched it again, yet we always replayed bungie halo. Halo 4 is only superficially a halo game
Wow. Don't know why you don't have more subs. A lovely video. I need to take a long look at my life when I can watch an hour long documentary on Halo 4, but you made it happen. I enjoyed very much. I'm such a nerd haha
Amen. Couldn’t had said it better
Really good video. Earned a sub and a like.
Jesus Christ that montage you made at 52:38 made me tear up for real
Have you ever check out the Halo 4 mods like Mythic Overhaul and Genesong Cut? These mods help us appreciate the campaign even more.
This video is so good man and phrased well too “learning to love halo 4” I would so miss it if it was gone but defo some valid criticisms
Major sub
Bruh why you gotta make me cry?
This was a masterpiece! I hope I can support your work!
Halo 2 your first FPS? jeez luoiz I'm old. Mine was Doom 2/Duke Nukem
Amazing video!
I'm so sad there wont be Halo 4 2
If the Watchers couldn't revive enemies, Promethian encounters would be more enjoyable. I love the weapons in this game- that RAILGUN! Mine Thrower is cool, too.
Awesome retrospective! It’s a shame they botched everything up in Halo 5.
Good first upload
I enjoyed fighting the Prometheans, exactly because of their synergetic nature. Way more fun to fight than The Flood or Brutes.
some times youtube recommend you weird stuff but man, other times recomend gold stuff
First! 😛 Good shit dude!
Dude the first thing you said was true to me as well probably at the same time to
Under rated story
For me Halo 4 was the game that had the hardest position to stand in.
Halo 2 had built so much hype for Halo 3 (aka the finish the fight movement back then), that H3 just had a massive launch and backup from the community. And the game itself was a frigging masterpiece, both in its campaign and in its multiplayer.
For me H3 and Halo 3 ODST (as they shared their lifespan), were the epitaph of the franchise.
People camping in front of stores for midnight launches. It was a crazy time for H3.
After that, Halo slowly lost the playerbase. And I think that this had to do a lot with the fact that H3 was considered as the ending of the main trilogy.
We then got Reach which served as a prologue to that story and i think that’s why a lot of people still bought the game.
After 2010, it just became different. A lot of people outgrew their halo phase, became older, moved on.
Halo moved from Bungie to 343industries and had expectations to match from the staying community.
With the alienation of its own identity by copying Call of Duty in terms of Multiplayer structures, people seemed hating it a lil bit more than before.
The story is better than people remember it, but it didn’t help that it felt so differently that people just didn’t seem to enjoy it.
I think that was the point, the Halo franchise ultimately started to fail its expectations, its high standard and failed to keep its fanbase.
I still play Halo regularly today (since 2004), but a lot of people got lost in action by now.
Halo 4 had a great story, but it ultimately also was part of the games’ downfall.
Really glad I waited until 2020 to play all these games on PC. I was immune to any of the community controversies lol. I love all the Bungie games, and Halo 4 was pretty decent for a follow up. It’s a shame 343 kinda lost the plot after that.
Halo 4 was the 1st I ever played back when it came out around the time of an old school friends' B-day. It isn't my fav for many of the reasons u pointed out however it's 1 I'll always hold dear for the hours I put into it once I got my own copy & for the bold & touchin yet "flawed" story. I mainly make this comment to make a small disagreement or at least a diff view of 1 thing. I actually do think the didact works "better" as a thematic foil than u give credit for. U very strongly point out wut Chief contends wit in the story here. I think the Didact works as a representation of wut Chief could become if all he did was focus tirelessly on his mission like a machine. The Prometheans R Forerunners turned into deadly machine like weapons controlled by the Didact. The Didact altered his body as well iirc to make better use of both them & the composer & deal wit the flood. This actually kinda ties into the spartan program, Y it was done & wut the overall effects were up to now. He cast his wife/lover the librarian aside to do no more than his job. Thx to Lasky & Cortana Chief didn't go down that route which prob would've inadvertently ended humanity cus nobody would've been able to stop the Didact by that point. Maybe they could've made it more pronounced but I think it works for wut it is
While Bungie accomplished the rare feat of releasing only good games I had my doubts about continuing the series, especially after the bitter-sweet but satisfying end of Halo 3. Halo 4's story proved me wrong. The only thing that bothered me was the offscreen beating of the Didact in a comic strip..Other than that, in 2012, I was convinced this new trilogy was in good hands. We all know what happened next. Luckily, Infinite mostly fixed everything.
This one ranks right up there with Halo 2 for having the most bullshit action level designs in the whole saga. Having enemy types that can just spontaneously respawn more enemies (or even THEMSELVES) is easily one of the most dickish developer moves ever. You spend most of the campaign activating or deactivating multi control points to accomplish something....literally right up to the end (the final multi-step button pushing mission being easily the worst offender).
I also effin hated how much buffing they gave to grunts and jackals in this game. Having to unload a whole AR mag into a single grunt to bring him down (and this is on normal) is just 7 shades of f%$ked. These enemy types are supposed to be fodder, yet i sometimes spent nearly as much time trying to kill them as elites. And the jackals "invincibility " frames after a shield-bypassing hit were at their most egregious in this game. Awful
All this just makes the campaigns a slog rather than fun for a casual playthrough. I did enjoy the vehicle based levels, but the rest of the nonsense just cancels it all out.
Just as with Halo 2....i loved 4s story, but the journey thru the campaign was more headache than fun. At least there was no Flood this time. Shrug
Yeah, all of the enemy behaviors and level design choices are what make Halo 4 hard to go back to for me. I love its story (if you couldn't already tell), but the experience of actually playing it is dull and repetitive at best most of the time.
At least its difficulty on Legendary isn't as bad as Halo 2. Halo 4 on Legendary wasn't really any harder than Heroic IMO, whereas Halo 2 Legendary was...well, you know.
@@AndrewBluett yea. I just finished working my way through the first 5 games on the MCC, and CE and Reach are the only two i enjoyed playing solo. 3 was fine, but i remember it being way more fun with friends. Ive never really enjoyed playing 2 or 4 all that much...solo or co-op.
The years have apparently not changed my mind any.
Still loved the story for all of them, though 💘
The only Halos that ive ever attempted Legendary on were CE, 2, and Reach. I eventually gave up on CE when i got to the Library....and i only got about 10 minutes into 2 lol. Only one i managed to finish on Leg was Reach.
I just read fall of reach good book
Im a halo fanboy just like you but i never had any major issues with Halo 4. Sure the enemies are a bit annoying (especially the flyers) but im used to playing halo on higher difficulties where you are often not able to use all of the gameplay options because the enemies are to tough. (Vehicles often become death traps and Melee is really risky against Elites, Brutes and the Flood). And Halo 2 and 3 had annoying flyers as well and Halo 2 had the nastiest snipers of the whole series.
I really enjoyed the continuation of the relationship of cortana and chief and i was really sad at the end.
Halo 4 is not my Favorite Halo but i have really enjoyed. (Not the multiplayer though. The loadout system threw me off)
worst part of halo 4 for me (as a campaign only player) was the didact and Prometheans. They were clunky, uninteresting, and worst of all both boring and upsetting. The Forerunners were extremely mysterious, and I liked the ambiguity of what humanity was to them (our ancestors? a friendly race who saw us as inheritors?) yet with the reveal of the didact made them seem real, and as we know reality is oft disappointing.
Other than that the covenant redesigns were unappealing (famously the look of the elites) and some others (fat bubble pelican for one).
But otherwise, the death of Cortana hurt and still hurts (I don't consider 5 cannon at all) and to see Chief deal with humans who didn't respect him was interesting, especially seeing him talk more as Cortana couldn't.
Hey, listen!
Halo 4 isnt a great halo game but it is a good game on its own merits
Storytelling wise this game was mediocre. So much of the story is confusing. To even know what is going on you need to go to out of game sources and I necer liked that in games. The story itself isn't interesting. All it is, is that Cheif and Cortona are stranded on a remote planet meet the Diadacet and Infinity. With the latter's help you manage to stop him from doing whatever he was doing. That is basically it. It is the character writing that saves this game. Everything from the previous Master Cheif Halo games culminated into this game. However I feel the changes are too suden. The game needed another mission or two to give it more breathing room. Cortona degrading and Master Cheif trying to ascertain if he's man or machine is all good. However instead of making up rampancy from out of nowhere the reason for it should been because of her torture from the Gravemind. (Who should have been a boss fight or at least have a physical presence in Halo 3.) That way Cortona's degradation makes more sense and ties back to the original trailer. It would also give Master Cheif a dilemma with him blaming himself for taking so long to save her from him. Gameplay wise this is a mess. Its a worse Halo Reach and difficulty wise its either too easy or to frustrating. There is no in between. The ai is really bad and all enemies are not fun to fight. Halo 1 achieved all of that flawlessly and honestly it still hasn't been topped in those regards. The art style is the complete opposite of Reach and doesn't make any sense for the UNSC,Cheif and Cortona. It really should have just been the Covenant and all the new environments and enemies to receive a different art style. The multiplayer is so not Halo. Despite this Halo 4 still has the best story of all 343 Halo and that is sad. At least this game has a story that goes somewhere unlike Halo 5 and Infinite.
Great Video, but no Halo 4 is not a good halo game, since as you said there were major issues with the gameplay, and as good of a defense as you gave the story is still broken. Between the A plot with the Didact and the B plot with Chief-Cortona, the B plot is the more defensible and to that end you did a great job but still not the best direction to drag halo in. The Chief as a suit of armor for the player was pretty important and should not have been tossed aside so easily. In the previous halo games players were the Master Chief, and now the Master Chief is his own character that the players step into. A transition can certainly be done to this new take, but has to be done carefully and not just because this is the story you want to tell. If you were to go through that ark I think that it would have taken 2 games or at least a few more levels at the beginning to flesh it out better. People had their expectations for Chief's and Cortona's personalities and shifting them in this direction while possible needed more time and more explanation. Also you really glossed over the problems with the B-plot in that these well acted scenes are just haphazardly drop into the story, or as you said the A-plot does not really service the B plot. Just as one example, that ending scene with Master-Chief and Cortona, yes well acted, yes fits with intended theming of the game, but how am I supposed to take any of that seriously when chief just detonated a nuke in his hand? Using the excuse that the light bridge saved him is just some BS. sure you can come up with any Sci-Fi BS in your story but you have to set up these plot critical mechanics early. To introduce a new rule at the last second to have Cortana save the chief and reduce a boss fight down to a button press then save him from a nuke is just a dues ex Machina. I laughed out loud throughout that whole scene first time I played it for how stakes and tension were just tossed out to have that moment. Granted I was already very out of the narrative due to how incomprehensible the A plot was, and no that is not explained away by reading the books because I did read the books and rejected the new lore from 343i.
The A plot with the Didact is fundamentally broken and separated from the previous games and even the books written up to Contact Harvest because until Frank O'Conner got his hands on the series the Forerunner's were Humans. This is in the games CE, 2, 3, and hinted at in the books and expressly stated in Contact Harvest. You can't just say "it's explained in the books" and point to the Greg Bear series, because that series also has this same problem of ignoring what has been established before. Also by over explaining the Forerunner you remove an air of mystery that was integral to the first games success. Even if nothing was contradicted those novels should not have been written and 343i's attempts to replace that mystery with precursors, gradians, warden eternal, and now the endless shows you just how important that mystery element was.
Even if you get over that retcon, that Librarian cutscene mid-game just shatters worldbuilding. The Master Chief is now just some pre-planned tool of the Librarian? In fact all of humanity seems to have been played with like her plaything for the past 100k years? That is some undermining of the original story on a scale rarely seen. I can see how this might have been drawn from the original ending to Halo 2 but that ending was scrapped (I am glad it was scrapped) and the context here is completely different. So no Halo 4 has problems and should be ignored and the francize rebooted at least from where chief went into cryo at the end of 3. A few well acted scenes doesn't make up for this stories problems.
Oh hell no this game doesn’t deserve any love it’s not a good game let alone a good halo game. If you like overly complicated marvel movie “chosen one” generic stories than this game is for you! The campaign is so dreadfully boring it’s just “pick up a light rifle and hide behind cover and fight these stupid robots that don’t belong
God 343 fans really hate OG halo. 4 is genuinely one if the worst games ive played within the context of the series that proceeded it. Its like the ultimste litmus test as to whetherbor nit someone is just a dumb consoomer who'll eat shit as long as its on a halo thened plate.
You're too young to have opinions kid
This video is fucking awesome