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S2 Ep134: Halo 1-2
71 Plays5 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they revisit Halo 1 and 2 via the Anniversary edition. Do they hold up, or were our childhood memories nothing but lies and dust?
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Unusual Brunch and Podcast Etiquette
00:01:02
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going, right, Dave? Going pretty fucking swell, my dude. How are you? Oh, dang. That's a lot of enthusiasm. I'm doing pretty well. I've been awake for about an hour and a half, had some food, drank some coffee. Good to record. What is a man's breakfast at that time of day?
00:01:27
Speaker
So I actually combined basically like lunch and breakfast. And if I wasn't as hungry, I don't think it would work. Well, so brunch is when you eat, when you combine the time.
00:01:38
Speaker
And whatever I did is when you combine the food, because I had hot dogs, which was the lunch portion. And I had a bagel, which was the breakfast portion. I'm eating a lot of grains. The question is, for efficiency, I feel like you could combine those in a really obvious way. No, I didn't. I ate them separately. Yeah.
00:02:02
Speaker
You could have made like a dumbbell of food and eaten it that way. Yeah, already I'm not sure if it was the best idea just for the purpose of digestion because there's like it was a cream cheese bagel like then I've got like the hot dog stuff like some ketchup and whatnot and I can understand if our listeners are a little bit uncomfortable.
00:02:23
Speaker
hearing this description of all of this food being eaten together. We'll edit in some sound effects of Jake eating. He recorded it separately for a year. I am not going to do that. This is where I draw the line. I wouldn't say I have standards. Just not going to do that. I like some gross stuff to a degree, but I do not like hearing mouth or weird squish sounds. That's not ASMR to me.
Halo's Musical Evolution
00:02:53
Speaker
You know, what is ASMR though? What? The Halo music. That's actually how it goes. Yeah, that's actually, that's the full thing. Not too confused with Legend of Zelda. Right. Legend of Zelda has pretty good music too. Let's talk about Legend of Zelda. Doesn't have a lot to do with Halo. Halo is a different game.
00:03:22
Speaker
What do you like about the Halo music outside of obviously the iconic theme? I think like, um.
00:03:33
Speaker
So yeah, I guess I brought it up. So this is my fault. But for the early Halo, the music was always accompanied with a level transition or text popping up in the corner or a dramatic moment or something like that.
00:03:52
Speaker
And I think this is the way like other shooters did it as well. Like Half-Life also had like similar beats where they would have just moments of silence. This is kind of funny actually because it reminds me of what I do for our Tuesday RPG. Like when I was running D&D and when I was running City of Mist. Like I have a set of my sound board of all this music and I can play a track.
00:04:18
Speaker
Or I can loop a track. And I started off almost always, I forget to loop it. So it's like, oh, here's the suspenseful music. And then it stops. And there's just silence.
00:04:31
Speaker
Yeah. I'm like, oh, right. I mean, to loop that. So it wasn't just this awkward silence. Halo figured that out, too. No, it's it's definitely gotten better because we played through pretty much Halo one and two before recording Halo one.
00:04:50
Speaker
has a lot of weird things about it. But one thing that we really noticed is there wasn't a whole lot of ambient music or sounds. And then it's like, music. And you're like, what? And it just pops in and then goes and then just stops abruptly again. I'm like, I guess that sequence or event is now done?
00:05:14
Speaker
It's like, it's like you got a new job and everybody likes half-spy. They're like, welcome, welcome. And then they all leave before telling you what you're supposed to do. You just, you just sit in there. Like, there's no, there's no part two. There's no explanation. Halo 2 did a much better job, though, than a Halo 1 with that, I feel. Mm hmm. Like, it had a lot of nice ambient, borderline Enya sounding tracks. Yeah. There's a kind of going through the level.
00:05:42
Speaker
I really use it for in between actual action sequences too. But like when it was action, it still had that and new vibes. I'm like, Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. It fit.
Halo's Game Design Innovations
00:05:53
Speaker
Yeah, it really did. It helps set the tone. Like, which is, which is the thing I probably like picked up the most, like the first time playing Halo was just
00:06:07
Speaker
It has a very novel world with like a really interesting setting and then just getting people out. So like.
00:06:17
Speaker
Halo is the first person shooter developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft. But when it came out, it was really competing against a lot of these like corridor like shooters, like Half-Life had obviously come out and that had some open spaces. But for the most part, it was still like
00:06:39
Speaker
we've progressed beyond cave, which is kind of like quake or something like that, to hallway, which was more of like half life. It was a modern version of still a room type. Yeah. And then Halo was like, here's open space. Now, to be fair, they do start you out in the hallway and the space station, but the pillar of autumn. But once you actually make it down to the ring, that's when that's when the Halo feels kicking for me.
00:07:10
Speaker
As soon as you get on a warthog and you have that open expanse and there's other NPCs that are shooting stuff too, it feels a lot more alive and not just relegated to like campaign could be the same as PvP essentially. Yeah. Go back to like the James Bond games.
00:07:31
Speaker
Yeah, actually James Bond. James Bond's an interesting compare. I didn't think about that one. James Bond was a lot more on level density and stuff, but Halo had some wide open areas that were like the beach. You know what that reminds me of actually is Crisis.
00:07:47
Speaker
But Crysis had too much space. It's like, here's all of this playground and nothing to do for this part of the level. There's very specific things you need to do and a bunch of useless space. And Halo's just like, you have some room to walk around, but it's not like, you're not going to get lost, per se. On the beach, on later levels, you will get lost. That's a hard counterpoint. There were a lot of times I'm like, what do you want me to do? Game.
00:08:17
Speaker
Cause it was better that was, I feel fleshed out as far as like indicating to a player, this is your objective. Cause a lot of times like you'd kill some stuff and you're like, do you know where to go? And you just kind of like hug a wall and try and figure it out. And then sometimes you'd walk into like a cut scene transition like, Oh, I guess that was right. Yep. Or in my case, I'm like lost somewhere else in the level because we played through on co-op.
00:08:45
Speaker
I'm lost somewhere else in the level and then I see the cutscene because Dave has found the cutscene transition. Then I kill my Master Chief so I'll respawn at him.
00:08:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's, it was nice to do in co-op that way because we kind of like branch off, kind of binary tree, the whole thing. It was also like, um, I didn't even remember that Halo 1 had co-op. Did they go back and add that or was that actually there from the get go? That was always a thing as far as I know. Interesting.
00:09:19
Speaker
What did you think of Co-op? Because I had never played it in Co-op back in the OG day on PC. Oh, your friends rassles. I didn't have a player game. No, sit down and watch. OK. I mean, I probably didn't even have friends in general when Halo came out, let alone multiplayer online friends. But no, it was a good experience for that.
00:09:45
Speaker
And I guess co-op in a first person shooter would have been not nearly as common back then. Even now, it's not really actually that common. Not so much placing it. I feel like it can always work, though. I don't know if it ever really detracts. Maybe if you had like a stealth game and your one friend was an asshole, that would be unfortunate.
00:10:09
Speaker
Right. But Splinter Cell series. Now I'm running gun in this section. We're going loud. The mission just started. Just start throwing grenades at the level. Yeah. No, it's fun though. I liked
00:10:30
Speaker
I hadn't put too much thought into the co-op gameplay because I was taking it for granted. But co-op in Halo is actually really good with the systems it uses. The regenerating shields, obviously, were one of the big ads for Halo. But having one player flank,
00:10:51
Speaker
as long as they don't flank all the way around and then they just start getting shot because they're the enemies in the middle. Like one player cover another or things like that. We played on we're not casuals, right? So we played on heroic difficulty. And I think taking a break so like I could get some covering fire from you was pretty good. Or, you know, if Jake was, you know, somewhere safe and I died, I could respawn.
00:11:19
Speaker
Yeah, another advantage of co-op you have to both side to lose Yeah Because especially with heroic and just for how the enemies are laid out. It's not easy to just go run and gun. Mm-hmm
00:11:34
Speaker
Because the enemies, they just outgun you.
Halo Remasters and Nostalgia
00:11:37
Speaker
They do. Sometimes it feels like you just walk into like three guys and they're like, kill them and then you die. Yeah. You either have to use cover or retreat and then come back or abuse grenades. You did a lot too.
00:11:52
Speaker
Yeah, or if it is like there's flood or enemies with specific weapons. The difference between being alive and dead is just like, did they have that weapon? Flood, like almost harmless, some casual backpedaling to deal with them. Flood with a shotgun. Oh, I got close. Time to reload. The Halo 1 shotgun does not fuck around. The Halo 2 shotgun, not as good, but still does not fuck around. Yeah.
00:12:20
Speaker
The flood will still kill you with it in like one shot. Surprisingly accurate. So out of the two that we played, did you enjoy Halo 1 or Halo 2 more? I'll take the free question, please. Halo 2 is like so much better as a game. I actually kind of thought I would enjoy one more than I did because I had fond memories of it.
00:12:49
Speaker
And I can kind of like, if I take myself out of the situation for a moment, I can appreciate what it did, which was like have more interesting triggers for inside of a shooter or like unique situation. So rather than always moving room by room killing enemies, they were like, hey, there's an enemy dropship coming in. You have to hold out at this location. There's some other like minor objective or whatever, but they really didn't chain those together
00:13:19
Speaker
pacing with any sort of pacing that matches what I'm used to for modern shooters. Which makes me feel like a casual, but in Halo you can literally just stand around doing nothing for a while and that's the way you beat the game.
00:13:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's I think because it was one of the four runners keyword. It definitely had some struggles that more modern games have overcome and figured out. Because like we said, part of it was like not knowing where to go. Part of it was because there was nowhere to actually go. Yeah, it was like a little defense thing.
00:13:56
Speaker
So nowadays, they always say on comms, like, hey, let's hold this point so we get reinforcement check. OK, cool. Yeah, next wave's coming in or something like that. My question to the listeners is, how long is the appropriate amount of time where nothing should be happening in the game?
00:14:19
Speaker
Because in Halo 1, sometimes that was like 20 seconds of just like, the next wave hasn't started. The previous wave is done. There's nothing to do. There's no indication that another wave's coming in. Yeah.
00:14:35
Speaker
It's not ideal. That was war back in Halo 1 days. Do you have any orders from Kai Command? Nah, I guess we'll wait. Now you can just text Kai Command like Gil, what's up?
00:14:51
Speaker
Yeah, Halo 1 was a bit of a slog. Both of them had some getting lost, obviously, as you mentioned. But it was so much worse in Halo 1, because there's like, oh, here's a switch somewhere in the level. Did we miss the switch? Is it like, hidden off to the side? Was it behind us? Like backtracking, because you're not sure what to do in games? I'm fine with that being phased out in like,
00:15:19
Speaker
Yeah, it is it is awful I think for like the first energy bridge on Halo that we found we spent like a good Five to ten minutes looking for the button Yeah, there was like a ramp that's kind of like tucked in behind something and you just walk up there It's like a straight walk to the button cool
00:15:38
Speaker
We didn't see that. And we played through the remasters of both. So graphically, you're like, oh, this looks nice. But if you press tab, you can go back to what it used to look like. Yeah. Which does not look good. No. It's like, hey, do you like flat textures? Cool. Because Halo 1 is just riddled with them.
00:16:03
Speaker
on tap. What's funny about that section? So to my recollection, we spent a lot of time talking about other stuff while we were running through here because the game is fairly slow paced. It does not match modern shooters. Yeah, Jake and I really learned a lot about ourselves while playing through this because we had the time. But I remember us talking about stuff as we're passively searching for the button. We both knew we had to find something. And then conversation stopped. And we're like,
00:16:32
Speaker
Where is this button though? That's kind of the indicator that something has gone off course. So one thing I wonder about that is if in the old version that, because the button is up on the right side and they're like glowing terminal, I wonder if it's more visible in the old version because the textures were so dark, so dark for the walls. I'm not sure, but I wonder if that was the case. Probably a little bit.
00:16:59
Speaker
It would have been impossible to find the ramp, though, because it's so dark in the old version. So I don't know. It's a trade-off. Well, maybe one part of it was lit up. Just the ramp was lit up. OK, yeah. I don't know. I could maybe do it. But yeah, it was really cool you could swap between the old textures and the new textures. It's because the old textures are so small by today's standards. It's just passively keep all of that stuff loaded. That's going to cost us nothing in comparison to the remastered textures. Yeah.
00:17:30
Speaker
It was really fun to go back and forth mainly because like the Halo 1 remaster looks decent. It still looks old because it's off of Halo 1. But it looks like how you imagine Halo 1 used to look like. I feel is the way to describe it. But as soon as you press tab, it was a stark contrast.
00:17:51
Speaker
Yep. And then Halo 2 did it even more extensively because I felt like Halo 2 looked good for the time, slight improvement from one. But the Halo 2 remaster looked a lot better. If you tab back, there's just less detail. So they really added to it. And then I kept saying to you throughout the play through, the fucking cut scenes looked like PlayStation 4 level. They look good. And then you press tab and you feel physically ill.
00:18:19
Speaker
Yeah, the character models are all made out of Play-Doh at this point, watching that episode of Gumby. Yeah, it's bad. It was absolutely ridiculous. But at least the cutscenes, the cutscenes in two. You already mentioned it, but they're so ridiculously good. I have to also mention it. The quality of those cutscenes, the thing it took me to was the Starcraft expansion cutscenes.
00:18:48
Speaker
where they just like dump all of the budget at this thing with like brutalists and like ultraists and stuff like breaking out of the ground and like zerks warming all over the place. It looked like that exactly to me. It wouldn't surprise me if it was the same studio that actually like did some of these animations and things because it was just really good. Actually, it's done by Blue Point. That's fine.
00:19:19
Speaker
I mean, I imagine that the game developers are slightly different than the animators, but yeah, it was not to say that you're not a game developer if you're an animator. That's fine. I can validate you too. That was for one specific listener. I don't know the listener, but that was for you.
00:19:40
Speaker
Yeah, it was crazy and then you hit tab and it's like polygons. We had them. Yeah. But one thing that was cool about the second one, because I feel like Jenny was watching us play through some of two. She made the comment like, oh, can you switch between cut scenes? Now when we played one, once you were locked into a cut scene, you couldn't switch.
00:20:00
Speaker
And I said, no, you can't do that because this is how Halo 1 remastered did it. And we press tab and you actually can actively look at the comparison. And that's how you know it's so alarming. Yeah, but it's better than let you do that.
00:20:15
Speaker
Yeah, there was that in the music. The other thing was Halo 2 allowed you to switch between old and new music, which one didn't do when you were tabbing to switch between old and remastered versions. I don't believe so. I believe it was the same. Well, at least when I played through my observation was it was the same music when you hit tab.
00:20:38
Speaker
But I could be wrong. Definitely remastered at least added a lot of music where it might have been a little bit more ambient in the original. They actually had guitars or an orchestra. They had stuff going on to make it feel more bombastic, which is nice. That's the word for it too, because
00:21:01
Speaker
They really just added more orchestral pomp and circumstance to all the songs. There's just more density to everything happening. They increase the volume a lot, but that's because the Halo 2 background sounds with the gunfire and the music, it all feels really low coming off of the remaster because there's just fewer instruments. They're not highlighting
00:21:29
Speaker
range for instruments. And then you go to the remaster and it's like, you know, it's just completely crazy. I don't know. It was really good. I think you made a good observation, which was like the remaster is the way I felt like Halo was.
00:21:48
Speaker
I feel like I don't think you go back to something that's like several generations old. You don't realize how old it was. You do not at all. So remaster kind of like helps you relive that, but kind of keep some of your nostalgia intact. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Was there anything that stood out to you in the original and like Halo one where like you would got that either nostalgia burst or like I remember this section exactly.
Challenges in Classic Halo Levels
00:22:19
Speaker
No. At least for Halo 1, no. Just because I didn't initially start off on Xbox. So I probably joined that a little bit late. And for how grueling some of those sections were, like now I've played enough things and I have enough of like a photographic memory of like certain experiences. I'm like, oh, we just saw that. Oh, we're in the same exact same pattern. And you're going to like the identical hallway or like door pattern. I'm like, they just really padded this out.
00:22:49
Speaker
Mainly the library the library is the worst it is the fucking worst we were sitting in discord while playing through the library and Providing step we were streaming or anything and providing status updates basically like yep still in the library
00:23:05
Speaker
It's like we could start keeping a running log and it's just like our hour one and a half and we're still on the library level. We died 50 times to shotgun flood in this last section. Yeah, it just it doesn't even feel fun at a point. And we were grinding it out like we're going to get it done to say that we got it done. And that is it.
00:23:31
Speaker
Like Halo 1 did some cool things. I think in that space, I spoke of like the triggers that they use in combat and like different areas and progression and characters like, you know, 343 Guilty Spark and Cortana and all of that. But, and they inject a lot of really cool improvements in the FPS genre, but the gameplay does not hold up and nothing like indicates that as much as the library.
00:24:01
Speaker
It's just so bad. It really does feel bad. Two hours of that, 10 minutes of that would have made me like mildly uneasy and two hours of it was enough to like drive me to like stop playing entirely. Yeah, I don't know what to say about it, really. It's just I feel overall
00:24:25
Speaker
Looking back now, I do not like Halo 1. I think it sucks. At the time when it came out, did it do a whole lot? Did I enjoy playing it? Yes. But dear God, there is no reason to go back.
00:24:41
Speaker
Whereas when we were playing 2, I spent so much time in the multiplayer. Some of the campaign I had never forgotten bits and pieces. But when we were checking some of the multiplayer maps, I'm like, oh, and this gun spawns here, and this is over here, and then you can do these glitches.
00:24:57
Speaker
A surprise, a lot of those glitches were removed for the PC. It made me very sad. But that brought me back into the nostalgia space, which felt really cool. Even though we didn't do remastered maps, we went back to the old maps and gave me these hard poly guns that I know and love.
00:25:18
Speaker
Yeah, the multiplayer multiplayer holds up like we didn't play with pubs or anything like that. It was just like exploring the map, testing glitches, things like that. But as an arena style shooter, I never really played multiplayer for whole for Halo. Full disclaimer. But I could definitely see the potential there, like.
00:25:42
Speaker
comparing to the Quake, things like that, I could see Team Slayer being a lot of fun. I could see Capture the Flag being a lot of fun. And Halo had the full feature set of games like Quake, where people expected a bunch of different map modes and things like that.
00:26:03
Speaker
What do you mean by expected a whole bunch of different mount modes? So like, like compare that to some directions modern shooters have taken. So like Call of Duty has a fair number of modes, but Battlefield hasn't always had a large number of modes. Overwatch, you know, is mostly just one mode. Well, there's different types, but you don't really get to pick if you're, you know,
00:26:27
Speaker
queuing into quick play or something like that. Whereas Halo was like, they had the classical set, the capture the flag, deathmatch, king of the hill, normal, like team deathmatch. That's what Slayer and team Slayer is, I guess.
00:26:45
Speaker
I think that having all of that out of the gate, even as far back as Halo 1, helped them establish that competitive multiplayer aspect. Yeah, it was super nice. One of the old things I remember is just, if you had the flag in CTF, you could melee somebody with it. And I feel like... I remember getting all the animation where it killed them. You hit them with the pole.
00:27:11
Speaker
I thought you kind of like jutted out the bottom. Was the bottom? Okay. I'd have to watch it again to see. Yeah, I trust your memory of this more than mine because again, I didn't play a lot of multiplayer. It's just that may really enjoy multiplayer as a shooter. I think it was like an early experience with if not the first with Xbox Live for me. Right. Like setting up the game tabs. Right. Before you had a mic trying to like type out messages with an Xbox controller. Mm hmm.
00:27:39
Speaker
Which was like a really long winded way to get to tell somebody that you fucked their mother You are her space mo him It's just they had a good balance of maps there's a lot of diversity in maps Even back to halo one and the fact that they had vehicles as well Mm-hmm. I don't like you had an option for oh I'm gonna go on
00:28:06
Speaker
the Warthog with somebody and they're going to ride and be the turret guy and I'll be the driver. And you have the third guy who was just a passenger to pick up the flag type thing. Yeah. Like you had all these different approaches and the maps were laid out that way too. It was not like I love to shit on Team Fortress 2 where a lot of maps are like go here and you have like one option or two bad options. I felt like Halo really branched out a lot more in that space.
00:28:37
Speaker
Yeah, the vehicles are an important mention, I think.
Halo's Gameplay Mechanics
00:28:42
Speaker
Like Battlefield has had vehicles for a long time, but Halo brought vehicles to, as far as scale is concerned, like TF2, Call of Duty, to a slightly lesser extent, Overwatch, they're all like small map shooters. Yeah, they couldn't really facilitate vehicles. Exactly. And Battlefield was like Matt, like Battlefield scale, right?
00:29:09
Speaker
which is completely different thing. But what Halo did was take all of the interesting interactions, intricacies, the deathmatch style, and then incorporate vehicles into that. So they had slightly larger maps, but not battlefield size where you could get lost on them for the classic battlefields.
00:29:33
Speaker
And people got to play around with vehicles, shooting people out of vehicles. The idea that you could hit people while they're in the vehicles to damage shield without killing the vehicle itself was kind of interesting.
00:29:47
Speaker
Oh yeah. You'd always use a battle rifle on somebody with a ghost or in Halo 2, being able to actually kick them out of the vehicle and steal it from them. Yeah. That felt really cool too. Because sometimes you try and bait out a ghost who was going to just charge you and run you over, but maybe you fuck up your slow jump and then you land and they time it perfectly because they've baited you out. Toro, Toro. Jump to the side, kick him out.
00:30:13
Speaker
Yeah, it really gave, I mean like all shooters should. They give the individual a chance to shine. So even if you're in team Slayer, if you're the one with the most kills, you're like, okay, I respect that person and want them on my team. They know what they're doing. Yeah. Because it's not usually a whole lot of situations where you'll squad flank people. Yeah. It's like you come across somebody, you start shooting them with whatever you got and you try not to die.
00:30:40
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And we mentioned this a little bit while we were playing through, but like the having the over shield. Obviously, I think if people went back and they're like, what does Halo contribute to the first person shooter space? Over shield is what a lot of people, myself included, might think of as the first thing. Just perhaps in general.
00:31:00
Speaker
Well, you know, like power ups have been around for a while since like, you know, quake and doom and things like that. But like the overshield regenerating health, which was a shield. What was that? Overshield the power. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah, I meant shield. Thank you for the correction. Yeah, the regenerating shield.
00:31:18
Speaker
I think for a while, people were like, this is super casual. Just take me back to Half-Life while there's health packs and medical stations. But it's a much better way to play when your health just comes back. After encountered, you don't have to feel like you're going to get chipped to death.
00:31:37
Speaker
Over the course of a level but in multiplayer it slows stuff down a little bit. It's like guns don't instantly kill you You might have a reaction if somebody shoots you in the back a little bit Unless it's a shotgun the pistol or the sniper, you know, it feels good to like it feels like if somebody
00:31:55
Speaker
It's not like somebody gets the drop on you like in Call of Duty. You're just like, oh, they got me. You do have a chance to kind of get your way out of situation, maybe turn around, throw a frag and then kind of have to either step back or like push through.
00:32:11
Speaker
I think it can lend itself to duels a little bit more, where they have the advantage because they hit you first, but you both have an opportunity to respond. And if you're really good, you might be able to turn the tables. But just the same, you both got to interact with the situation a little bit.
00:32:32
Speaker
Yeah, which I think is useful in the shooter space. Also with the shield regeneration, I know a lot of shooters now have kind of like the bloody camera for like, oh, my health is low. Yeah. And as it fades, it kind of like resolved itself, but it's not the blood back into your body. It's not as good for like visual indication of like, OK, I'm good or I'm not good because you don't know what that threshold is. But it's like your shield breaks. It starts going boop.
00:33:00
Speaker
And it's blinking and you're like, oh, if I get hit in the head or get hit in the body a couple more times, I'm dead. So that was a good indicator for get out, reposition, and then go back in. You get that yellow screen flash.
00:33:16
Speaker
You're just like, oh, shields broke. And you could see that on enemies, too, in multiplayer when their shield was down. So you had some situational awareness there, too. I would say I was playing around with the sniper rifle a little bit. And one of the downsides is you didn't actually have nearly as many visual indicators for when your shield was breaking. I think you still heard the sound, obviously. Yeah, but if you're down scope, you don't know. Yeah, there's no yellow flash or something like that.
00:33:48
Speaker
Yeah. Just to put a pro on that discussion, one of the advantages of not having health packs is like you were saying, if you're walking around with like 20 health after you killed somebody or fought with somebody, it sucks to get chipped by somebody else who just showed up. Yeah. Because they didn't really earn the kill. They just kind of got it for free.
00:34:11
Speaker
Yeah, also you don't have people kind of like squatting around. Oh, we have to wait for the health pack to spawn at one of these locations. Right? So it kind of gives players the freedom to fuck around wherever they want. It's not like having a weird focus point for something like team Slayer.
00:34:29
Speaker
If you capture the flag, obviously either base, you're like, this is where you're safest. This is where the enemy is safest. And you kind of like you have that nice push and pull. But anything in between is free range. It's not like, well, people are gonna be gravitating around here for this one reason. Right? Yeah.
00:34:48
Speaker
And also there are like weapon spawns where if you know the map, you're like, okay, rocket launchers here, usually in a more contestable position for like a power weapon. And same with sniper rifle.
00:35:01
Speaker
Yeah, that was very much inherited from the Quake games, where it was just map knowledge, weapons bonds. You got that? Your friends don't know about that? You're going to have a fun time. And you brought up the weapons. The weapons in Halo, I think, were one of the things that kind of
00:35:20
Speaker
that really stood out to me. Like shooters have had a lot of iconic weapons. Like you could go down the years like Doom has the shotgun and the BFG was probably the top, you know, iconic things. Half-Life has really weird stuff like the gravity gun.
00:35:43
Speaker
and the crowbar. What would you say would be some of the iconic standouts or things that are interesting or of note for Halo 1 or 2?
00:35:57
Speaker
So at least starting with Halo 1, I feel like a lot of the human weapons kind of made sense from a shooter standpoint. You had like pistol, assault rifle, shotgun, sniper rifle, grenades. But with the addition of the Covenant technology, you had like some shiny cool new things. Yeah. Like after everyone knows the Needler.
00:36:18
Speaker
Yeah. And how you just shoot out like this barrage of needles that would then home in on enemies if it was close enough. And then they'd explode. That was really cool. These were my favorite example. Yeah, it's just good. And then the all weapons have a melee and certain ones do more damage. But we always commented on the needle or melee. You kind of like jutted out the whole thing like you almost let go of the weapon. Yeah.
00:36:44
Speaker
to hit them with like the spikes that are coming out of the needler. And then you'd slowly like reattach it to like, oh, it's now holstered again. It's like a two phase process to go back to just using the needler as a gun. You like pivot the arm and grab it on a different spot. That's great. I think I love it because I feel like everything else plasma was it wasn't hitscan. It was more projectile. Mm hmm.
00:37:12
Speaker
So like plasma rifles are obviously better at like destroying shields because it was an energy weapon. But you kind of have to lead shots depending how far away you were. Yeah. I felt like those were kind of just not as much what I was going for usually. Yeah, I got the same impression. The Covenant weapons other than the Needler felt like pretty weak and Halo 1.
00:37:39
Speaker
And the Needler was also pretty weak. It was just weak with a gimmick and the gimmick was to make it strong. If you just got hit with needles and they didn't get enough to burst, you're just like, I don't care. This is the cheapest of chip damage. But if they did burst, it's like reloading the save.
00:38:00
Speaker
I also feel like we have to mention one of the most iconic piece of Covenant technology and weapons, the energy sword. Yes, the best one. It was like an actual it was just it was the melee option. Hitting somebody with the butt of your gun would never compare to lunging at somebody with the sword.
00:38:19
Speaker
and watch them turn around as they realize what was happening, but could do nothing to stop you because they didn't have the shotgun. Yeah. And there's the activation sound when you turn the sword on too, right? Like I heard that in multiplayer. I was like, huh, this would have impacted some interactions. I noticed when you figured that out when we were doing campaign, because you switched the sword, then I switched the sword, then we kept switching back and forth to keep spamming the sound.
00:38:44
Speaker
Yeah, because you like ignite it from like it's it's kind of just like a reimagined lightsaber. Oh, yeah, really what it is. But it's a really cool looking double bladed knife pretty much mass effect. Actually, I think like.
00:39:00
Speaker
was definitely inspired by this for their like omni tool melee, which was very much the same thing, like a hand vibro blade style weapon. I keep using Star Wars terminology. That's not going to help anybody. But yeah, it's it's so freaking cool. It like completely obliterates flood. I think it's actually just cheaper to use on flood in general. Yeah.
00:39:25
Speaker
Cause usually it's weird for a melee weapon to have like a durability or energy cost, but it does. But if you're hitting flood enemies, it costs next to nothing. I think the actual floodlings are free to use the sword on. It feels good to like go and hack and slash through when other technology is just not cutting it. And there's a lot of them. You're out of grenades.
00:39:50
Speaker
Quality pun wasn't cutting it How many are there there's a flood of I Think the sword like in equal measure got me kills and got me killed Cuz like if I saw the sword I was like I'm gonna find a way to use this The only way I can use this is this if I'm in melee range with the danger. I
00:40:17
Speaker
This is the way I have to be. This is the way. No, that's fairly funny. You did surprise me with it once in multiplayer, too, because I was like, all right, I'm going to do the standard gun duel thing. Dave switches to this sword and lunges at me. Like, OK, no, the duel's done. Oh, yeah. It was always nice. Like, if you were doing multiplayer with people, you never had the sword out.
00:40:43
Speaker
Because they would have a gun and see you be like, oh, I have to keep my distance. Yes. Otherwise they might try and do like a double SMG, kind of get close to you so that after your shields were down, they just bash you, get the kill, pick up their gun. Yeah. So you shoot them, they get close, you switch out to your sword and they're like, I've made a huge mistake. Yeah. And that's actually a tangentially brought that up. But that was one of the interesting changes I think Halo made was prior to
00:41:10
Speaker
Halo, I feel most games let you do the full Doomguy arsenal instead of just like two weapons. And Halo really wanted you to focus in on switching between weapons like when going through the campaign and not having every weapon when you're playing multiplayer. Like in Quake or something like that, you could run through the level real quick because it's Quake.
00:41:34
Speaker
and pick up every gun and then just scroll through everything. Yeah, just one through nine, right? Like, let me pick the link gun or the rocket launcher or whatever. Halo focuses. You definitely felt it too. If you were running into a section where there's a lot of long range snipers and you have like an assault rifle or a pistol, you're like,
00:41:57
Speaker
It sucks. So you'd have to kill one of the enemies, take that and go. It felt more guerrilla in that way, where you kind of had to adapt to your situation based on what things you could find lying around. Sometimes you were just shit out of luck.
00:42:16
Speaker
I definitely found myself mentally doing that while going through the campaign together. So I'd be like, OK, I have this weapon, but I have no close range coverage. Or I have no long range coverage. I'm going to vary up my kit a little bit for that. And then when we died, depending on the game, I think it responds you with the pistol and a plasma pistol or something like that.
00:42:42
Speaker
usually a plasma pistol on something. And a high priority would always be running back to our corpse and re-picking up whatever more optimized loadout we had for the time.
00:42:55
Speaker
I appreciated that. I think Halo is kind of subsistence based gameplay. Like it's a survival game where you're going through like picking weapons off the ground and using what you've got. You're like, all right, this is an ideal. I wasn't, you know, planning on going and trying to think of a really terrible thing, plasma pistol and then like covenant sniper or whatever. But that's what we got.
00:43:19
Speaker
Yeah, it was fun to make do. There were points where I would just, I got mad at the game. They're like, fuck you, I'm doing double plasma pistol in Halo 2. Yeah. And you can just hear me angrily mashing. I guess nothing right clicked for the PC.
00:43:34
Speaker
It's not bad, actually. The actual projectile instead of the charge, it does a fair amount of damage at close range. It's at least quick, yeah. The double charge is hilarious, though, because it's just like round a quarter plasma balls to the face. Back in multiplayer days of Halo 2.
00:43:53
Speaker
A common dual wield combo was Plasma Pistol and Pistol. Plasma Pistol charge. Rock on a corner, remove their shields, shoot them in the head once. They're done. That was one of the noob combos. Yeah. Jeez. Another good two-handed combo is Rocket Launcher. Come around the corner, shoot them with a Rocket Launcher. Rocket Launcher is always solid. And usually if you're good with it, you weren't really going to take any damage yourself.
00:44:23
Speaker
Right. Or you could, and you're like, fuck it, we'll make this trade. Yeah. Regenerating Chilts makes up some of it, so. I do like the drawback of the rocket launcher, where it takes up half the fucking screen. Yeah. It's not like these casual games, like Doom, where you can like swap between, I think there's like this particle, and you're like, I have this gun equipped. Yeah. Yeah.
00:44:46
Speaker
There's some of the newer ones. I think there's literally an option in settings for Doom to either you have full-sized weapons or smaller-sized weapons on the screen. OK. I think it defaults to the smaller-sized weapons. I'm not 100% sure on that. But if you don't have that, the BFG is a similar deal. It's just in the center. It's the sun coming up from the bottom of the horizon of the bottom of your screen, covering a significant portion. That's what the rocket launcher is in Halo.
00:45:16
Speaker
I just, I like how obscure it makes your vision because it is insanely powerful. Like you can just hit close with the rocket launcher. They're fucked. You're sending a fucking missile at a human person. I mean, not entirely human, but even in power armor, they were kind of fucked. Yeah.
00:45:36
Speaker
It's like this guy has the rocket launcher. So I'm going to come in from his from his right side, because I know he won't see me until I'm right in front of him. What things do you remember that kind of spawned off of Halo? Did you ever look into extended universe or like, well, I want to say like books or Flash, the Machinima, Red versus Blue.
Halo's Cultural Impact
00:46:02
Speaker
I watched some Red versus Blue.
00:46:04
Speaker
Yeah, I can do, but I didn't watch like a whole lot. I saw like the occasional episode. I remember some character names like Church, which I thought was funny. And then like a couple special moments. The what's in your pants still comes up a lot. Or no, it's like what what what gender are you or whatever? Do you remember this interaction? I'm trying to remember the specifics, but I'm drawing a bit of a blank.
00:46:32
Speaker
Yeah, it was it was something like what gender are you anyways you're like like I'm evil What was okay, I'm gonna look this up by every time So one of the things I probably remember most about red versus blue is a lot of the quotable from season one Like it's not a warthog. It's a Puma
00:46:51
Speaker
But I thought it was cool that it got such traction at the time that they actually put in the first level of Halo 3 a reference. Like they put two of the characters in, kind of like a side passage, talking about that. I was like, oh, that's a really cute homage.
00:47:10
Speaker
I found it. So it is, are you a man or a woman? I am a villain. What gender are you? Evil. Yeah, but what's in your pants? Doom. Yeah. Do you remember it? It's not pink. It's light as red. I had that as a t-shirt at some point as a teenager.
00:47:32
Speaker
Yeah, there's just like a lot of good courtables at the time, but it was cool to see the series progress with the technology as newer halos kept coming out. Right. I know they had a fucking section where they put a master chief or the Spartan armor in. I think it was Dead or Alive or some type of fighting game, which is just a cool way to branch out.
00:47:59
Speaker
It was just nice to see that exist in other places outside of just Halo to show how big the reach has gone. Wasn't the reach. Yeah, it's it's it spawns all the way down in references. Was it was Master Chief in Soul Calibur or was that a different character? Or Microsoft got spawned, didn't they? Microsoft got spawned for Soul Calibur 2. I guess Master Chief probably isn't branched out much into other games.
00:48:27
Speaker
No, I think it was just that Dead or Alive type game. Yeah. Okay. No, that's fair. I mean, even without literally being in other games, it's very impactful in the FPS space. Arbiter is actually in killer instincts, come to think of it. Arbiter is? Yep. That is a weird character to cross over. That one I understand a little bit less.
00:48:55
Speaker
I mean, he's a better character than Master Chief. I was claiming this while we were going through the campaign. I mean, I'll still agree with you, but please make your point for the audience. Yeah. Because like we were saying, he actually has a story arc. You know, he's got his betrayal. He has his resurgence, his alliance through grave mind with the chief. Like.
00:49:19
Speaker
Um, no, he's just he's just a really cool character. He has something to do and has something to prove versus chief who Occasionally has like a witty voice line like boo But really doesn't do too much. He's much more in the realm of the silent protagonist And just a guy who's following orders from cortana. It's like, okay Yeah, badass cute boring guy
00:49:46
Speaker
Chief is kind of like the Superman or like the standard trope of the protagonist where they don't really have character development or growth for the most part. They just kind of assumed he's already been through a lot before you even get to play as him. Whereas Arbiter, you actually get to see his development and changes to his character and what his goals are throughout the series. Yeah, that was nice. Yeah.
00:50:12
Speaker
where his chief is just like, I'm going after Kirtan. They're like, sure, I guess. She's been there for a while. Makes sense. For any of the copy paste, Control V. Yeah, it's pretty much the same throughout all the games. Did any levels stand out to you or anything as far as design between Halo 1 and 2?
00:50:36
Speaker
So other than the mental scarring of reliving the library in Halo 1, Halo 1 standout was the beach where you land for the first time on the Halo. And it's not even for the level itself. I think the level's fine for the most part, if not a little bit confusing at a couple of places. But it's just for the background, seeing the Halo from the perspective of being on the ground, on the beach, on the Halo itself.
The Legacy of Halo in Gaming History
00:51:06
Speaker
Like I remember as a kid, I just stared at that for a second. I was just like, this is awesome. This is such a cool sci-fi concept, like space beyond and land right here.
00:51:21
Speaker
And it was it was really great. Like I remember when I played like the first time I was like, oh, this is kind of cool. And then the Marines came in and they didn't have full visors. I was like, oh, there's a breathable atmosphere on this, too. Like this is a terraformed ring in space. Like I'm a sucker for sci-fi concepts. And that stood out.
00:51:44
Speaker
like as an impression in me. I think it was really cool. I never even thought about breathable atmosphere. I was just so much focused on all the action. I replayed the demo a lot. That was the demo level on PC. Yeah, I feel like Halo 1 did a good job as far as conveying scale.
00:52:08
Speaker
Like it felt like there was this whole fleshed out universe, even though you didn't necessarily get to access all of it, you could kind of see it in the distance. And then Halo 2, obviously there's a lot of that as well, but they also did a good job as far as diversity and level design.
00:52:25
Speaker
Yeah. Like if you're on like an alien station, it didn't feel like, Jesus, fuck the hallways. It felt cool. And like it made you curious about, OK, like if this is their technology, I wonder what this type of ship would look like. Yeah. And then maybe you had some tighter levels in the city. Maybe you were underground doing some shit. Like it always felt cool and new. Yeah.
00:52:50
Speaker
Yeah, it was kind of like some of the later perfect dark levels that were more alien in their design and literally alien ships and stuff like that. It like evoking questions. I think Halo 1 set up the universe and Halo 2 set up the gameplay. Halo 2 really actually delivered on some of those promises of
00:53:14
Speaker
Like I get one was good for its time. Halo two is where it's not as much of a thog to go back and play. There's actually enjoyable, really fun novel sections still. And I'm still excited every time I see a scorpion tank and then like open road. Oh my gosh. Scorpion tank was awesome. Jumping on the scarab was fucking awesome. Oh my gosh. Yeah.
00:53:37
Speaker
I still had that moment of hesitation. I knew there was a scarab writing section. I was still like, is this the spot where I'm supposed to jump? Because it's just coming off of a corridor or level-based shooter into this dynamic nonsense. I wasn't ready for it. Let's just
00:54:01
Speaker
So many things about it felt cool. I know it's like a really shitty, shitty description. Well, it's better than interesting. It was interesting, right?
00:54:17
Speaker
A lot of my experience with this was as a young teenager who was first starting to get into first person shooters. So like you play through the campaign and then you get your Xbox together with somebody else and you play with your friends and you play it for fucking hours. Like it did have good gameplay to keep you engaged. It's just
00:54:47
Speaker
I guess I haven't touched it in such a long time. I'm having trouble, like, recalling good tidbits. Right. But even like playing through it now, it was nice to relive a lot of those experiences and Halo 2. Again, fuck Halo 1. Yeah, Halo 1's a little rough.
00:55:03
Speaker
I think Halo 1 plus speed hacks in god mode, you'd probably be fine. And then just skip the library. There you go. It's hard to overstate how impactful it was for Xbox also.
00:55:19
Speaker
with like you mentioned getting Xbox Live and playing Halo, like Xbox Live would have had a much lower adoption rate if Halo wasn't if it wasn't necessary for Halo Online. Now, I'm not saying Xbox Live is good. I think for the industry is that this may actually be one of the darker timelines. Well, true. But like without Xbox Live, what other
00:55:45
Speaker
game platforms would have really had online. Well, that was just a good demonstration of like, it can be successful and people do want this. So the thing was that, not to turn this just an argument against Xbox Live, but what Xbox Live did was previous to Xbox Live, there actually were adapters like PlayStation had an Ethernet adapter, but there was no convention that online cost money.
00:56:08
Speaker
So Xbox Live came out and they were like, hey, yeah, you can get the online experience for your games, but you got to pay us like 15 bucks a month, 10 bucks a month, whatever it is, five bucks a month. No, that's an intent. It's at least 10. And they established that as a norm for themselves. And then once PlayStation saw that people would pay for the Xbox membership, they're like, hey, PSN,
00:56:33
Speaker
And that became normal. But prior to its inclusion on Xbox, a membership wasn't required for online. I guess I'm just struggling to remember.
00:56:48
Speaker
utilizing anything for Nintendo or PlayStation online before they were there were adapters beforehand. So you had to buy like a hardware adapter for PlayStation two. Okay, I guess just nobody my age did. Yeah, that was a huge thing. And I mean, like many most people weren't developing online games for
00:57:09
Speaker
like playstation 2 i think like fantasy star online was one of them there's some other stuff i would hope the online yeah um but given that it was like an optional adapter um it would be weird to make a game that required it right you know that was pretty niche
00:57:28
Speaker
You're like, already, only people that have a PlayStation can play our game. Now only people that have this adapter can play. It was like making games exclusively for the PlayStation I toy or something like that, right? Big oof. Yeah.
00:57:43
Speaker
But regardless of my thoughts on Xbox Live, Halo definitely defined and continues, I think, to define Xbox as their flagship property. One million percent. Anytime they've released a new console, they're like, hey, are you somebody who likes the newest version of Halo? Here it is.
00:58:05
Speaker
And like they do have things coming out on PC now. Obviously they're not going to have Halo infinite on PC for some time. Right. But I mean, that is the launch that other people are going to give a shit about if they're looking to get the newest Xbox. Exactly. Like again, bringing up Alex again. I know he's always been a Halo fan, but he's really enjoyed the series. So like for him, that is a selling point. Yeah. But for a lot of other people, if you're not on board with Halo, you're kind of like, what else does Xbox have? The other console have it as exclusive.
00:58:36
Speaker
I was talking to Shane recently, we were talking about PS5, and I agree with his approach to the situation, he picked up a PS5.
00:58:52
Speaker
There's some good games. You can play Demon's Souls, you can play Spider-Man, whatever. But for people that haven't played PS5, it's because they know good PlayStation games will come out at some point. And I'm doing the opposite, like I'm waiting because I literally have plenty of games in the backlog right now.
00:59:10
Speaker
But I can agree with that logic, right? Like good games will come out for the PlayStation, regardless. But on the Xbox side, like you can buy an Xbox because you know Halo will come out, right? Like, you know, you're going to play Halo Infinite, you know, it's going to be on the new one. Does Xbox exclusively own Call of Duty as well? No, Call of Duty goes to all of them, all platforms. Activision, too big.
00:59:38
Speaker
I'm trying to think of other Xbox exclusives that people really are gung-ho for. Gears was the other one. Gears of War. I also don't like Gears. Yeah, those were the two really big standouts. There might be... I think sports games are for all of them. Struggling. Knack, maybe? I don't know. I don't know what Xbox has. But those are definitely the standouts.
01:00:05
Speaker
for exclusives. PlayStation actually doesn't have much in the way of, I was going to say, they don't have much in the way of exclusives. And then I started like thinking of exclusives as I was saying, like, yeah, yeah. I'm curious to see where the Xbox series X, is that what it's called now? I don't even know anymore. There's going to be two for the next box. I'm curious to see like how that goes just because a lot of the people who I know and talk to,
01:00:35
Speaker
don't necessarily have an interest, and I don't think we'll be picking it up for what options they have. Yeah. I mean, our friend group tends to sway slightly to PlayStation, I think, in general. But yeah.
01:00:57
Speaker
I feel like PS4 was the better console of the last generation. Whoa, hot take. I haven't tracked Xbox, so I don't really know what the comparison was, but there's a lot of great PS4 games. I'm getting off to the point, I think a little bit on the Halo episode. But Halo is so iconic, it basically supports the Xbox.
01:01:19
Speaker
the entire ecosystem. It would just collapse, obviously. I feel like everybody does remember going to GameStop, seeing Master Chief kind of kneeling up on a boulder with two SMGs. That's the shit. It was. It held up for many, many years. And I still feel like it is enjoyable to go back.
01:01:40
Speaker
If nobody has the Master Chief Collection, wants to fuck around some multiplayer, let me know because I would be willing to kind of delve back into that a little bit because I just remember having good time with friends. Very enjoyable shooter, had cool space technology along with human guns. And I just like sticking people with blue grenades, I don't know.
01:02:02
Speaker
Yeah. I think it's, it's a, it's a touchstone in gaming. It came out like in the formative years of Dave and myself, but I think of what Dave would be like without Halo. No. Um,
01:02:22
Speaker
So anyways, Halo is the inspiration for the podcast, obviously. But maybe we wouldn't cover the type of games you did if you didn't play Halo when you were younger. Who knows? It's true. Maybe you would have been a writer or like a doctor or something.
01:02:38
Speaker
I could be saving lives, but here I am. We have the Master Chief Collection. We might check out Halo 3, Halo 4, ODST, one of the other 17 ones. I'm not sure how much it changed for gameplay outside of graphics. I know Halo 3 added some options for different types of grenades that had the hammer. Different color Spartan armor.
01:03:04
Speaker
Ooh. Yeah, it's pretty big. Just green or like red and blue and two, I think. Or were they always green? They were always green and two. But then the names were red or blue, right? What? I can't remember. In multiplayer. This is a weird note. So to note which team you're on. Right. The armor itself was red or blue.
01:03:31
Speaker
If you did team Slayer, yes. Okay. If you did like a free-for-all, I feel like you had a distinct color. Well, I don't remember Halo 2 having a bunch of different Spartan armor colors, but again, I didn't play the multiplayer, so I wouldn't remember. Anyways, that's Halo. That is Halo. Any final parting words, life advice for the people, the Halo adherents out there?
01:04:02
Speaker
Probably not as much for advice, but I am curious to see what other people remember or what they really enjoyed about Halo 1 or Halo 2 as far as campaign or multiplayer. It was kind of like a standout memory. And if that memory was shattered by pressing tab, it just falls to pieces immediately. Well,
01:04:27
Speaker
If anybody else have some games that you guys remember fondly, but you'd like us to, so you'd like to suggest us go back, revisit, and then we'll tear them apart, realize that they were never, they were never good. You can send those ideas in to soapstonepodcast.gmail.com or you can join the discussion on Facebook at facebook.com slash soapstonepodcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.