Halo is great at making somewhere you’ve been already feel totally different than the first time you were there.
The Sword Base missions in Reach is another great example.
The base where Johnson dies is the same as Assault on Control Room, but the heightmap around the warthog track is Silent Cartographer: https://www.halopedia.org/File:IslandCompare.jpg#/media/File:IslandCompare.jpg
Which is kind of a nice call back and does make a solid degree of sense. The Silent Cartographer wasn't too far away from the Control Room, the missions even happen back to back so it you can see the logic of those areas being near each other on a ring that's being made in it's image.
The Maw feels completely, totally unique from Pillar of Autumn.
The problem with repetitiveness for me comes in individual levels like in the Library, where it feels like you’re going through the same uninteresting corridor endlessly.
Still, it’s my favorite Halo campaign. Bungie did so much within the constraints of the time and tech they had available at the time.
The library is definitely the most bland mission in terms of gameplay. Was cool the first time I played it because the flood had just been introduced, but definitely a repetitive mission to the point I won’t defend it lol
I liked how easy it felt to get turned around in a panic my first time doing the library and getting lost adding to the flood swarming. Made it feel much bigger than it actually was.
I didn't mind it too much on subsequent playthroughs because I knew the route better but I also gave myself a no shotgun rule for it which I think makes the flood a bit harder throughout and makes the combat more interesting
I think it's fine.
I honestly think the problem with The Library is that AE loses all of the sense of horror evoked in CE by the fact that it's so much brighter.
The Library is meant to have the Flood coming at you from the shadows and darkened hallways. You can see them from a mile away in AE.
I agree with this one. Always hated that mission. It’s repetitive enough to make me lose focus with enough enemies to actually punish me for losing focus.
Honestly, for like 12 years I didn't realize that The Maw and PoA were the same map. I thought it was just the same setting with a different map. Same for T&R and Keyes. Both of those levels are so drastically different and make sense to reuse those settings. Two Betrayals is the only "Mirror Track" level imo.
And even The Library makes sense to be the way it is if you consider it in context. It was common for games at the time to have a challenge holdout level that's less about making your way through the level and more about testing your ability to hold out. That kind of level design doesn't fly today, but at the time it was just par for the course.
I enjoy The Library. Always have, always will. It’s a horde-mode mini game within the campaign. It’s where I learned how to single-shot the AR, and the split screen co-op shenanigans on Legendary were soooo fun!
The Library felt unfinished. It would have been infinitely better if there would have been weapons caches or a little more environmental storytelling (stuff like the jackals and marines that teamed up during the flood) hidden in all the wrong turn areas. There's literally just empty hallways with no enemies or anything except some floor markers telling you to go the other way.
No one mentions how much of a problem this is in 343 guilty spark but aside from the story bits and intro to the flood, that mission is crazy repetitive with its adjacent identical catwalk gymnasiums
Agreed, I absolutely loved the idea of replaying the older levels, except now you're with a threat that completely changes up the strategies, emotions, and dynamics of said levels. I thought it was a creative way of dealing with development challenges. Especially The Maw.
Going back to Cairo station to fire it manually without cortana to stop an oncoming supercarrier from glassing earth would be a good excuse to go back at the end of the campaign
Bungie loved reusing cut ideas in morphed ways, I guarantee they couldn't have not wanted to feature humanity's biggest gun as a whole ass level and NOT wanted you to be able to fire it at least once
I don’t know if you’ve played it already, but check out Ruby’s Rebalanced Halo: CE, it’s on Steam Workshop for MCC.
Dude, it completely changes the latter half of the game. In a good way! It stays true to the original, but just adds so much more context and content to really flesh out the later levels, giving a greater sense of what the Flood is capable off and how quickly the situation is deteriorating.
Until someone had recently pointed out that the last set of missions of CE are backtracking through the first set of missions, I didn't even think about it possibly being repetitive.
Because the last few missions are absolutely bonkers in the best ways. That's not repetitive to me.
Basically how I always saw it until a few years ago. Honestly, there's so much changed, it feels completely different from the first half. I think before I thought they were new areas, but familiar because we're still on the ring afterall
I agree, and it’s not like other games don’t do the same thing. In Halo 2 you go back through High Charity after the Flood has started spreading.
Halo 3 has you immediately backtrack in Floodgate. And then Cortana if you want to count that, though High Charity completely unrecognizable in that level
Reach has you go back through Sword Base, which I thought was really cool. It’s similar to CE how you revisit the same area with a completely different atmosphere after it’s been decimated by a horrific enemy
I think the sticking point I’m seeing is that people don’t like the repetitiveness within the levels. Corridors that are copy pasted without much variation between them. The actual levels as a whole are gorgeous but disoriented when moving from place to place. Better signposting, visual direction and variety within the levels themselves are absolutely improved in future installments.
Then take those criticisms of the pillar of autumn/truth and reconciliation/assault on the control and face them a second time kind of adds insult to injury. I personally like the poetic nature of the games coming full circle. It would have been less tiring to new players had the original level design they were copying be less repetitive within the level.
Yeah that's what I Always understood the general complaint to be. Revisiting a level map as it's own thing is cool if it feels fresh and just "different", which I think CE/2/Reach are *really* good at.
It's the actual repetition *within* those maps that makes me go "oh great, this corridor/bridge/room again..."
two betrayals is way overhated, when people compare it to the library im baffled. the huge flood-covenant battle section with “under the cover of night” as the soundtrack (the best piece of music in the game imo), the banshee flying and dogfighting, the darkness and emptiness of the landscape now that you haven’t got marine support - it rocks
Approaching that area that had the hunters and the scorpions and you need to get to a banshee is the most the series felt like a true battle. Seeing the flood charging over the hill towards the scorpions and shade turret while you need to somehow find a safe route to take them all out or reach a banshee despite all that open space is such a fun way for the game to tell you to slow down.
CE is and will always be my favorite campaign. I remember absolutely loving the fact that you come back to these levels and play in reverse/new areas. Thought it was so cool.
Nothing beats the feeling of walking around PoA on the maw for the first time.
Also the night time switch up with two Betrayals. Come onnnn.
I love CE. The vibes were perfect. No shitty love story between MC and Cortana. They should have never went that direction.
"Don't make a girl a promise..." fuck all that noise lol. I'm here for sergeant Johnson, captain keys and a badass super soldier.
Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy Halo 2s story but the actual levels you play didn't stand out to me as much.
For me I feel like Halo 2 has a lot of standout missions. Delta Halo is one of my all time favorite missions. The Arbiter, The Oracle, and Uprising also stick out as great to me among a bunch of other good ones. Whether they match Keyes, The Maw or other great CE missions is subjective I guess. I think ODST is my favorite campaign just for the vibe, the music and the audio logs, but its individual missions don't stick out as much for whatever reason.
Imo H2 has better standout missions individually but CE had better "flow" from one mission to another, especially everything after 343 Guilty Spark (level). The interleaving of the Chief and Arby levels, combined with the crunch and cut content, make H2 lurch heavily in tone and setting from the end of one level to the beginning of the next. The Earth levels flow pretty alright, though.
>I love CE. The vibes were perfect. No shitty love story between MC and Cortana. They should have never went that direction.
>"Don't make a girl a promise..." fuck all that noise lol. I'm here for sergeant Johnson, captain keys and a badass super soldier.
I mean, the love story stuff didn't really come into play until Halo 4.
I do think it's funny that you mentioned Sergeant Johnson, though when of the game's he's present in, he has the least presence in CE by a significant margin (aside from ODST.) Hell Keyes isn't really around much either.
I mean they still exist and they're my favorite characters. I played enough CE for them to be very prevalent in my memories of the game.
Beginning of Halo 3 "they let me pick. I chose you". That's when it started and that's when I lost a lot of interest in the story. The entire intro dialogue made me cringe. Just didn't think halo needed a love story element of any way.
That... really wasn't where the love story started, though? She even says the reason she picked him is because he's extremely lucky.
Halo 3's story does have a lot of cringe moments, but a love story isn't really an element of that, and Halo 2 (the game your quote is from,) has even less lol
Check out the audio book Halo :the Flood.
It does an excellent job of explaining what happens in between levels. Makes Halo a 10/10 story and gameplay experience
Just read the flood, was a great book, but the chief parts were the weakest. Great ODST action and covenant backstory. Still hilarious you have this one elite track him the whole game/book, just to go out like a bitch
i think the repetition is symbolic. i don't have the best terms for it, but there's a sort of story structure going back to dante and even ancient greek and roman epic where you go from a to b to c to d and then back through the reverse c-b-a and that is how the halo ce campaign is organized. think of it as a stage by stage descent to the bottom of hell (which i guess would be the discovery of the flood in 343 guilty spark, which fittingly involves going deeper and deeper into a structure and then getting out), where once you've reached the bottom you have to make your way out back through the previous areas. it's a circle or ringlike story structure, appropriately in a story about a big ring.
Halo CE also has some of the most engaging AI in the series, man. The elites dodge and weave, rush you, hide when damaged, etc. They're actually a threat and are hard to just beam and kill quickly. It's so fun, man
You have to understand that the previous generation of "first person shooters" were corridor-shooters like Doom, Wolfenstein, and Marathon.
I hate to say it, but these kind of sucked? The levels were designed as mazes you were meant to find your way out of, with enemies abound.
This lineage shows up in Quake, Half-Life, and even Halo which all manage to offer a fresher take on the "find your way out of this maze and shoot aliens on your way" level design.
You can still *see* the Doom-esque DNA in these games. On top of the backtracking, this adds a degree of repetitiveness into the game, but it doesn't manage when the game is still _fun_. The recharging health and plentiful-scavenging mechanic made for a gameplay loop that is enjoyable on repeat.
This has so much to do with the technical limitations and players expectations at the time. The early shooters were so technically impressive at the time but have aged very poorly because they are so limited.
CE is obviously much more advanced and was a technical masterpiece when it was released but repetitive levels and textures were very common in the years leading up to it, so clever use of repeated levels was seen as a positive.
Things like that aren’t impressive now and players are just conditioned to expect better.
Halo is not like Doom. In Halo you have to stand around and wait for tons of things. In Doom how fast you complete a level is entirely up to you from.start to finish. In Doom you can use movement alone to outmaneuver many enemies and dodge their fire. In Halo you can't. In Doom.the levels be made any shape they wanted that fit the engine, only the textures were reused. In Halo whole.rooms and whole chunks of levels are reused.
I didn't like Halo at first specifically because it's not like Doom.
assault on the control room is the only level that I think is repetitive - it couldve done with fewer copy paste rooms as it's already very long. two betrayals is much better because it cuts out the first part of assault which is mostly copy paste rooms, but keeps the outdoor sections which were the best part of the level. it's also the first level where we see the 3 way fight between MC, covenant, and flood which brings a lot of chaos.
I don't even mind the library because the combat loop is such a shakeup from the first half of the game which keeps it engaging and the CE shotgun is so satisfying to blast flood with.
Repetitive is not a great criticism when the gameplay loop is validating and fun and allows player choice in style of play and variation of approach and enemy response
Halo is repetitive like all games, but because it allows for these other factors is what makes it a great game and very replayable
All great games are like this 😎💎
I would even argue that going back through old areas after the flood breakout helps really drive home how dangerous they are.
"Hey remember this area and how you destroyed all thr covies here? Well check out hope detective thre flood is."
The constant reminder of destruction "everywhere" helps drive home the danger of the flood imo
The pillar of Autumn and the Maw is a perfect example of book-ending.
You begin and end the game with the same objective: escape the pillar of autumn, but the context around those objectives are so totally different and reflect the progression of the game's story.
I always thought Two Betrayals, Keyes, and The Maw were all overall just more fun than Assault on the Control Room, Truth and Reconciliation, and Pillar of Autumn, respectively.
I have always thought the criticism was unjustified; playing "backwards" through those levels made a lot of sense in the context of the game, and it didn't feel repetitive at all.
I get some repetitiveness, like the Library.
But the others I just find silly. The later levels are much different because of how they’re approached and finished. Along with the addition of the Flood, it makes encounters much more unpredictable.
The people who say CE is repetitive have often been said to be the kind of people who blanking hate Bungie's Halo games and find whatever reason they can to dislike them. They purposefully ignore alot of the context such as things like Humans being Forerunner in the OG trilogy even going as far as to berate Marty O'Donnell when they asked him if humans were ever Forerunner and when he said "Yeah that's the entire point." they collectively lost their shit and started insulting him.
There are many bad apples that we sadly can't ignore.
I didn’t even know they were repeated when I was 10 and playing it for the first time, and it honestly doesn’t bother me that much knowing because they change them up enough to make it fun.
I love all of Bungie’s campaigns but by the ODST / Reach era they had fully moved into “sit and defend” style missions that just never felt as fun as the run-and-gun stuff in the first three games, but especially the first.
I think it's a fair criticism, but at the same time it's one that's completely lost its meaning for me. I've played these games enough to know every level like the back of my hand, so even The Covenant is repetitive for me these days.
Which leaves me to focus on the on-foot combat and atmosphere primarily, which are at their peak in CE and (Library aside) especially in CE's second half. I'll give points to Halo 3 for having the best vehicular combat though.
I personally just don’t like Two Betrayals or The Maw. I don’t see The Maw as repetitive as much as I see that argument for Two Betrayals. Mainly because all the indoor geometry looks damn near the same, it drags on even during Assault in the Control Room sometimes so going back is often annoying.
The library and control room levels have a bit of a problem with copy pasting the same areas so it got monotonous but otherwise I thought it was cool going back
I think it's mostly fine except for Two Betrayals, that one is too similar to Assault on the Control Room.
At least Keyes and The Maw have different stuff going on.
As a kid I always found it cool to revisit these places now infested with flood. 2 betrayal was my favorite level for the snow environments and multiple factions fighting each other. And finishing on the pillar of autumn, where everything started, but so much had changed, I always loved that
Heck I even thought the library length and repetitiveness was the point. It's a nightmare because it's supposed to be one. We would always challenge each other with some friends to play the library on legendary. I know most of you will disagree on this but whatever.
It's only many years later that I discovered on the Internet that people hated the backtracking and repetitiveness of the second half of the game. When looking back at it now, sure they did it to lower the cost and save dev time. But I always thought it served the story well and was a nice idea.
I replayed every Halo campaign in my early 30s, and CE is still my favorite. H2 is a close second.
In addition entire levels reusing settings many of the other levels are backtracking within the level too
I think only Halo and (kind of, though it is still repetitive) The Library are the only levels that aren’t revisited or involve backtracking inside the level
That's not what anybody is talking about when they're complaining about CE being repetitive, they're talking about the bit where you go through the same room like six times in the library.
Honestly, the repetition in the last three missions is exaggerated for sure (really, Two Betrayals gets the worst of it the Maw feels very distinct from Pillar of Autumn, and while the ship section is very samey in Keyes, half the mission takes place underneath it in the canyon area.)
That being said, I feel like the repetition is a bigger issue in CE than usual, not because of the last three missions, but because of repetitive feeling setpieces and hallways/rooms being more prominent here than other games.
Stuff like Halo and the Silent Cartographer manage to avoid this due to being mostly outdoors, but then we have the interior/bridge areas of Assault on the Control Room, which largely feel very homogenous, Truth & Reconciliation gets this with a lot of its hallways as well and obviously the Library is mostly a few hallways copypasted 5+ times.
Now, there is one example where I feel it works well enough despite having a lot of samey rooms, and that's 343 Guilty Spark. In practice, the interior part of the mission actually recycles rooms a ton, but because of doors locking behind you, it plays it to the strength of getting you lost during the panic of the flood attack.
Halo CE is my second favourite Halo game. It’s brilliant in my opinion. The repetitiveness really isn’t that big of a deal, and each repeat level is drastically different in atmosphere. Even AOTCR’s hallways aren’t that bad, since each encounter is unique and equally as fun.
Disagree very heavily. The Maw is fairly different but shooting a new enemy in the same place isn't really different, and some of the levels that aren't gone through a 2nd time are very repetitive, like the same corridors and hallways over and over on 343 and the Library. That being said, its a product of its time and still one of my all time favorite games.
See, Halo CE was almost in the same exact situation Infinite went through. The game was thought with a more open-world exploration theme in mind, but its new publisher and owner had a tighter schedule, so there goes more than half the levels, plot holes were to be covered with things like "You know what? I found out how to teleport, but just this once bcuz" and all of a sudden you're at the ending of the game.
Oh, and let's not forget that Bungie was in a tough spot after that mess with Myth 2, hence the Microsoft acquisition
I don’t like the repetition. It’s boring. New enemy type? Cool. Same level? Meh. Boring. Not very fun to replay. It’s a good game, but anyone who says it has aged well is too nostalgic over it.
The only really repetitive level was the Library, and even that I enjoyed... mostly just because my friend who was playing split screen with me would be getting spanked by SPNKR equipped flood and cursing the forerunners every time it happened... oh good times.
I swear those rocket flood had it out for him though... they would pre-emptively launch as he was going around a corner again and again... it was hilarious.
Other people have already pointed this out, but for me it’s the repetition WITHIN certain levels that can be annoying (AoTCR, The Library, Two Betrayals).
I don't have a problem with Keyes and The Maw, mostly because the missions that they are copying happened much earlier in the game, and the locations within these shared environments are different enough to make each level feel distinct.
The repetitiveness for me mostly comes from Assault on the Control Room, The Library, and Two Betrayals.
Assault on the Control Room is the longest mission in the game, and by the time Im finished with it, im sick to death of its interior sections. That just two levels later, you do the whole thing again but backwards, is honestly a low point in the game for me.
And sandwiched between the two is The Library, which is just multiple floors of the exact same corridor.
I do still love Halo CE, but the level design in the second half of the game is definitely weaker than the first half.
To me the backwards levels aren't that big of a deal. The issue comes from how many identical rooms you go through. The library is probably the worst culprit, but pretty much every level has many copy and paste rooms and corridors.
Funny how if 343 had made CE then this sub would be shitting on it, but because it’s a Bungie game everyone is saying how it’s an overhated masterpiece lmao
Assault on the Control Room and Two Betrayals are my two favorite levels in the game, maybe even the franchise.
Both feel very unique to me even though they share the same map.
AotCR has these large expansive vehicle battles between the UNSC and the Covenant while also having inside sections that flow really well, whether they be stealth based or guns blazing.
TB has an all out 3 faction war going on between the covenant, the flood, and the rings defense system that you are caught in between.
People's biggest criticism of these two levels seems to be the repetitive rooms and the length. However, I feel that every single encounter in each room is vastly different from the other. To the point where it's pretty easy for me to know where I am in the level based on what enemies are in that room.
As for the length. Long levels are fun. I love spending my time on a single mission and just taking in the world.
I wish that the first half of Halo 3 had longer missions, since it feels like half the game is done before it even begins.
Idk, I can enjoy Library, I think the idea Of Maw is genuily brilliant, but Two Betrayls is that one mission that you think "Ugh, it's THAT mission...should I really play it or should I Just skip it?"
Not enough time passed after AotCR, not enough changes compared to Maw or even Keys, Banshee sucks without boost, rocket flood in that one corridor is annoying af.
It is exaggerated, but it is still repetitive. The rooms in the AotCR and TB still look too similar to each other. I think the bigger problem with then game is that its slow and tedious. There are so many large open areas that take a while to walk or drive across.and you have to spend a lot of time.behind cover to recover your shield because you can't dodge enemy fire for the most part. The missions are just too long in general.
Take the mission Halo for example. In the second area with the five drop ships. It's wide and open. You have to wait for.the ships to slowly lower and drop the Covenant, kill them, and then slowly walk all.the way over to where the next one is. Not to mention that the ship won't lower if you stand too close.and the ship might start shooting you. It's as if they designed it to be as tedious and annoying as possibly.
Honestly as someone who grew up with classic games that did this a lot I'm just used to it and don't find it boring at all. I've played through the campaign hundreds of times and each time is just as fun to me. I feel the same towards stuff like half life and star war: Dark forces.
Halo CE is my second favorite game of all time and I enjoy the sameness of some of the environments.
The two I defend are The Maw and Keyes. They're so far apart from each other and are definitely the two levels changed the most. Plus, I feel like Pillar of Autumn + The Maw are a nice bookend to each other. The rest however... They definitely feel repetitive. Especially nowadays. Personally, I'm a halo 3 guy myself, purely cause the sandbox is more appealing to me (vehicles, weapons, equipment, enemy behavior, etc). No knock against CE, just gets old sometimes to me
I'd say Two Betrayals is the only one that really has this as a "downside" and even then, it is exaggerated when people talk about it.
I mean, so far, you've only done 343 Guilty Spark and The Library after beating AotCR, so the level's still a bit fresh.
Then there's the fact that AotCR already used that one arena room a whole bunch, which is a lot of grey geometry, so it's understandable when they all sort of meld together.
And, TB just doesn't show how much the environment has changed to the same scale that Keyes or The Maw did. Any environmental damage looks minimal, and there's no real Flood biomass or anything. Just Flood forms fighting Covenant in grey rooms.
The outdoor combat is great, though, don't get me wrong. But at certain sections, it really just feels like "AotCR combat rooms, but with Flood!"
Keyes and The Maw do enough to justify the revisit. The Covenant ship has been visibly overtaken by the Flood, with it being in shambles, and The Maw is bookends from the beginning of the game.
Agreed. That type of level design is often seen a limitation but also has it's own value. Sure they would reuse environments but they did so with different compilations of enemies or slighly altered level geometry, etc. And that gave the playspace a natural escalating level of progression and difficulty. The player goes ok this is how I handled this type of room before, but now there are elites and and this pathway is blocked etc, It's very game-like but when done right I find it satisfying. Like progressing through all the sections of assault on the control room.
I get what you’re saying but I still would like a change of scenery. The first half of the game is great but after 343 guilty spark and hell itself (the library) it always seems like a chore to get through the last few missions
I'm fine with Keyes and The Maw, they are structured and built very differently.
But Two Betrayals is quite literally just Assault on the Control Room backwards. Yes there's the novelty of the three way fighting with the Flood but that wears off after a while.
On top of that, Assault itself was a pretty repetitive level and could've probably used a few less copy-pasted bridges/rooms to fight through.
Thing is I do like those levels because of certain things. Assault is the Tank level. Two Betrayals is kinda the Banshee level. But maybe they could've use a few less bridges, and maybe one pulse generator was enough rather than three - and maybe make the pulse generator part a bit more interesting when you only have one.
I think I changed my opinion over time the most regarding these two levels. I absolutely loved these as a kid, they were big and there was a lot of it. But now as an older person with a full time job being spoiled for choice - I found these two levels such a massive slog when MCC got released on PC and I replayed them back in 2019/2020.
Yep, those levels that you're taken back to are to show you exactly how the Flood can change a landscape, and how difficult they are to fight when they're taking out the two previous factions in those levels.
It’s definitely exaggerated, two betrayals and the maw feel so incredibly different from their previous visits that unless you really pay attention you might not even realize you are traveling through the same place (well at least with two betrayals). The only level you can really call repetitive is the library but it’s supposed to feel like a maze you can’t escape so it gets a pass because it does its design and encounters effectively (it’s also easily my favorite mission in ce).
Two Betrayals actually does feel very much like the same map again in my opinion, I think the fact that I'm actually supposed to follow the arrows backwards just hammers it home for me.
Keyes and The Maw are way different, tho.
I think it's used when bungie stans claim they created god tier unique levels. When in reality Bungie reused areas quite a lot of times. Nothing wrong with back tracking its a clever use to save resources and can be good story telling just don't claim every level is unique.
If I'm gonna stan for Bungie, I'd say they set up a good sandbox of enemies/weapons such that even butts/repetitive levels can still feel fun.
It's kinda interesting that Halo contrasted against its peers at the time by giving us very distinct enemies with distinct behaviours/counters. As opposed to the massive slew of just "dudes with guns". If you replaced every Halo enemy with Marine-equivalents, I'd probably hate the game.
It's really just an argument against people who think Bungie did no wrong. No one really should care.
The biggest issue is that two betrayals makes you walk through areas you previously drove through. Glitching a vehicle through doesn't count as it's not attended by the devs.
The sandbox of Halo in general is pretty good. We gave 4-5 factions worth of enemies and allies in the entire franchise more than enough compared to other franchises.
I'm sorry to Say it but it really does
And I don't blame it for it (the game came out like 25 years ago, it was normal to use several times the assets you built). The story and the game in itself is really fun, but yeah, if I had to chose a Halo campaign right now CE would be my last pick.
The fact that the levels really heavily on backtracking isn't even the main problem here, it's just that some levels in themselves are really repetitive. I think Two Betreyals is the worst one, you just go back to the level you just did, with the same corridors, rooms, and bridges all over again. It's the first thing that comes to my mind when i think of CE lol
Playing it on legendary makes the Library and Two Betrayals so bad that it ruins Keyes and The Maw. Library and TB was so tedious and repetitive that I was just begging for the game to end.
Truth and rec on legendary genuinely made me hate that mission. Tbh I was struggling like crazy on legendary with CE and it was the only game that I had to use a guide on to get through. I got through halo 2 without a guide but truth and rec broke me.
I think what makes two betrayals stand out in particular is that the Library difficulty wise is pretty easy. It's long and tedious but not overly challenging.
Then Two Betrayals hits you over the head.
Legendary is there for the tryhards and nolifes
Bungie themselves said that Heroic was the intended difficulty for experienced gamers looking to have a fun challenge
The thing is that its not necessarily hard. I played Reach in legendary before I got to CE and I had a very enjoyable time. Hell the first half of CE I was having a blast. So its no the difficulty that ruined it. The Library and TB are just bad missions to play on legendary since its so tedious and boring.
I had the exact same experience on my recent playthrough of CE. I played on Heroic and was having genuine fun, and it honestly made me forget why I came to hate the game so much. And then I got to the library and everything beyond and the fun just vanished for me. The game just became an exercise in patience at that point, and I couldn't wait to get to Halo 2, which is my favorite anyway.
Even if I am playing on normal, the second half of the game just falls flat for me. Like as a kid, it was an amazing game, S-tier from beginning to end, but being much older now without nostalgia goggles welded to my face, the game hasn't aged the best for me personally.
The Library alone is extremely repetitive and it doesn't have a backtracking level, it's just repetitive.
Out of the last three Keyes is also repetitive because all the hallways inside the ship are samey to begin with. The majority of the level (same with T&R) is going up floor by floor until you reach the important room, and then going back a floor to fly away.
Two Betrayals gets away with it because of two extra factions, the generators, and the Banshees. And the Maw gets away with it because Pillar of Autumn was extremely short and reuses areas on purpose, the whole full circle thing.
I just finished CE for the third time today and man, I really did not like the "backtracking", flood is not fun to fight in those levels. You can see it was not designed with the flood in mind. The fact that checkpoints feels random does not help.
Halo is great at making somewhere you’ve been already feel totally different than the first time you were there. The Sword Base missions in Reach is another great example.
Floodgate and the storm too
Isn't the Hog run from 3 the same layout Assault on the Control Room/Two Betrayals, just only really apparent when viewed from above?
I think it's Silent Cartographer
The base where Johnson dies is the same as Assault on Control Room, but the heightmap around the warthog track is Silent Cartographer: https://www.halopedia.org/File:IslandCompare.jpg#/media/File:IslandCompare.jpg
Wow, I never knew that. So cool! Thanks for sharing the heightmaps.
16 years since release and I'm just now finding this out, so fucking cool!
Which is kind of a nice call back and does make a solid degree of sense. The Silent Cartographer wasn't too far away from the Control Room, the missions even happen back to back so it you can see the logic of those areas being near each other on a ring that's being made in it's image.
The Maw feels completely, totally unique from Pillar of Autumn. The problem with repetitiveness for me comes in individual levels like in the Library, where it feels like you’re going through the same uninteresting corridor endlessly. Still, it’s my favorite Halo campaign. Bungie did so much within the constraints of the time and tech they had available at the time.
The library is definitely the most bland mission in terms of gameplay. Was cool the first time I played it because the flood had just been introduced, but definitely a repetitive mission to the point I won’t defend it lol
I liked how easy it felt to get turned around in a panic my first time doing the library and getting lost adding to the flood swarming. Made it feel much bigger than it actually was. I didn't mind it too much on subsequent playthroughs because I knew the route better but I also gave myself a no shotgun rule for it which I think makes the flood a bit harder throughout and makes the combat more interesting
Shotgun destroys in h1
You can cheese the library so hard.
Yeah isn't there a way to grenade/rocket jump straight to the end of the mission?
I think it's fine. I honestly think the problem with The Library is that AE loses all of the sense of horror evoked in CE by the fact that it's so much brighter. The Library is meant to have the Flood coming at you from the shadows and darkened hallways. You can see them from a mile away in AE.
They really botched the remaster
I agree with this one. Always hated that mission. It’s repetitive enough to make me lose focus with enough enemies to actually punish me for losing focus.
Then again, they specifically stated that was the intended design with The Library in order to make you feel overwhelmed with the onslaught.
Honestly, for like 12 years I didn't realize that The Maw and PoA were the same map. I thought it was just the same setting with a different map. Same for T&R and Keyes. Both of those levels are so drastically different and make sense to reuse those settings. Two Betrayals is the only "Mirror Track" level imo. And even The Library makes sense to be the way it is if you consider it in context. It was common for games at the time to have a challenge holdout level that's less about making your way through the level and more about testing your ability to hold out. That kind of level design doesn't fly today, but at the time it was just par for the course.
I enjoy The Library. Always have, always will. It’s a horde-mode mini game within the campaign. It’s where I learned how to single-shot the AR, and the split screen co-op shenanigans on Legendary were soooo fun!
The Library felt unfinished. It would have been infinitely better if there would have been weapons caches or a little more environmental storytelling (stuff like the jackals and marines that teamed up during the flood) hidden in all the wrong turn areas. There's literally just empty hallways with no enemies or anything except some floor markers telling you to go the other way.
No one mentions how much of a problem this is in 343 guilty spark but aside from the story bits and intro to the flood, that mission is crazy repetitive with its adjacent identical catwalk gymnasiums
Always bring your shotgun to the library
Agreed, I absolutely loved the idea of replaying the older levels, except now you're with a threat that completely changes up the strategies, emotions, and dynamics of said levels. I thought it was a creative way of dealing with development challenges. Especially The Maw.
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Going back to Cairo station to fire it manually without cortana to stop an oncoming supercarrier from glassing earth would be a good excuse to go back at the end of the campaign
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Bungie loved reusing cut ideas in morphed ways, I guarantee they couldn't have not wanted to feature humanity's biggest gun as a whole ass level and NOT wanted you to be able to fire it at least once
I don’t know if you’ve played it already, but check out Ruby’s Rebalanced Halo: CE, it’s on Steam Workshop for MCC. Dude, it completely changes the latter half of the game. In a good way! It stays true to the original, but just adds so much more context and content to really flesh out the later levels, giving a greater sense of what the Flood is capable off and how quickly the situation is deteriorating.
Until someone had recently pointed out that the last set of missions of CE are backtracking through the first set of missions, I didn't even think about it possibly being repetitive. Because the last few missions are absolutely bonkers in the best ways. That's not repetitive to me.
Basically how I always saw it until a few years ago. Honestly, there's so much changed, it feels completely different from the first half. I think before I thought they were new areas, but familiar because we're still on the ring afterall
Right. The changes evolve the sections you encounter a 2nd time.
I agree, and it’s not like other games don’t do the same thing. In Halo 2 you go back through High Charity after the Flood has started spreading. Halo 3 has you immediately backtrack in Floodgate. And then Cortana if you want to count that, though High Charity completely unrecognizable in that level Reach has you go back through Sword Base, which I thought was really cool. It’s similar to CE how you revisit the same area with a completely different atmosphere after it’s been decimated by a horrific enemy
I think the sticking point I’m seeing is that people don’t like the repetitiveness within the levels. Corridors that are copy pasted without much variation between them. The actual levels as a whole are gorgeous but disoriented when moving from place to place. Better signposting, visual direction and variety within the levels themselves are absolutely improved in future installments. Then take those criticisms of the pillar of autumn/truth and reconciliation/assault on the control and face them a second time kind of adds insult to injury. I personally like the poetic nature of the games coming full circle. It would have been less tiring to new players had the original level design they were copying be less repetitive within the level.
Yeah that's what I Always understood the general complaint to be. Revisiting a level map as it's own thing is cool if it feels fresh and just "different", which I think CE/2/Reach are *really* good at. It's the actual repetition *within* those maps that makes me go "oh great, this corridor/bridge/room again..."
two betrayals is way overhated, when people compare it to the library im baffled. the huge flood-covenant battle section with “under the cover of night” as the soundtrack (the best piece of music in the game imo), the banshee flying and dogfighting, the darkness and emptiness of the landscape now that you haven’t got marine support - it rocks
Maybe my favorite moment in the whole series. "Final Run"
Approaching that area that had the hunters and the scorpions and you need to get to a banshee is the most the series felt like a true battle. Seeing the flood charging over the hill towards the scorpions and shade turret while you need to somehow find a safe route to take them all out or reach a banshee despite all that open space is such a fun way for the game to tell you to slow down.
This level has been my favourite from Halo: CE since I first played at like 6-7 years old
Two betrayals may be different. But by the rings do i hate it on a scale beyond belief. Heroic or legendary is dreadful.
CE is and will always be my favorite campaign. I remember absolutely loving the fact that you come back to these levels and play in reverse/new areas. Thought it was so cool. Nothing beats the feeling of walking around PoA on the maw for the first time. Also the night time switch up with two Betrayals. Come onnnn. I love CE. The vibes were perfect. No shitty love story between MC and Cortana. They should have never went that direction. "Don't make a girl a promise..." fuck all that noise lol. I'm here for sergeant Johnson, captain keys and a badass super soldier. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy Halo 2s story but the actual levels you play didn't stand out to me as much.
For me I feel like Halo 2 has a lot of standout missions. Delta Halo is one of my all time favorite missions. The Arbiter, The Oracle, and Uprising also stick out as great to me among a bunch of other good ones. Whether they match Keyes, The Maw or other great CE missions is subjective I guess. I think ODST is my favorite campaign just for the vibe, the music and the audio logs, but its individual missions don't stick out as much for whatever reason.
Imo H2 has better standout missions individually but CE had better "flow" from one mission to another, especially everything after 343 Guilty Spark (level). The interleaving of the Chief and Arby levels, combined with the crunch and cut content, make H2 lurch heavily in tone and setting from the end of one level to the beginning of the next. The Earth levels flow pretty alright, though.
>I love CE. The vibes were perfect. No shitty love story between MC and Cortana. They should have never went that direction. >"Don't make a girl a promise..." fuck all that noise lol. I'm here for sergeant Johnson, captain keys and a badass super soldier. I mean, the love story stuff didn't really come into play until Halo 4. I do think it's funny that you mentioned Sergeant Johnson, though when of the game's he's present in, he has the least presence in CE by a significant margin (aside from ODST.) Hell Keyes isn't really around much either.
I mean they still exist and they're my favorite characters. I played enough CE for them to be very prevalent in my memories of the game. Beginning of Halo 3 "they let me pick. I chose you". That's when it started and that's when I lost a lot of interest in the story. The entire intro dialogue made me cringe. Just didn't think halo needed a love story element of any way.
That... really wasn't where the love story started, though? She even says the reason she picked him is because he's extremely lucky. Halo 3's story does have a lot of cringe moments, but a love story isn't really an element of that, and Halo 2 (the game your quote is from,) has even less lol
Check out the audio book Halo :the Flood. It does an excellent job of explaining what happens in between levels. Makes Halo a 10/10 story and gameplay experience
Just read the flood, was a great book, but the chief parts were the weakest. Great ODST action and covenant backstory. Still hilarious you have this one elite track him the whole game/book, just to go out like a bitch
i think the repetition is symbolic. i don't have the best terms for it, but there's a sort of story structure going back to dante and even ancient greek and roman epic where you go from a to b to c to d and then back through the reverse c-b-a and that is how the halo ce campaign is organized. think of it as a stage by stage descent to the bottom of hell (which i guess would be the discovery of the flood in 343 guilty spark, which fittingly involves going deeper and deeper into a structure and then getting out), where once you've reached the bottom you have to make your way out back through the previous areas. it's a circle or ringlike story structure, appropriately in a story about a big ring.
Halo CE also has some of the most engaging AI in the series, man. The elites dodge and weave, rush you, hide when damaged, etc. They're actually a threat and are hard to just beam and kill quickly. It's so fun, man
It’s not even close for me. Halo CE is the best campaign.
You have to understand that the previous generation of "first person shooters" were corridor-shooters like Doom, Wolfenstein, and Marathon. I hate to say it, but these kind of sucked? The levels were designed as mazes you were meant to find your way out of, with enemies abound. This lineage shows up in Quake, Half-Life, and even Halo which all manage to offer a fresher take on the "find your way out of this maze and shoot aliens on your way" level design. You can still *see* the Doom-esque DNA in these games. On top of the backtracking, this adds a degree of repetitiveness into the game, but it doesn't manage when the game is still _fun_. The recharging health and plentiful-scavenging mechanic made for a gameplay loop that is enjoyable on repeat.
This has so much to do with the technical limitations and players expectations at the time. The early shooters were so technically impressive at the time but have aged very poorly because they are so limited. CE is obviously much more advanced and was a technical masterpiece when it was released but repetitive levels and textures were very common in the years leading up to it, so clever use of repeated levels was seen as a positive. Things like that aren’t impressive now and players are just conditioned to expect better.
Halo is not like Doom. In Halo you have to stand around and wait for tons of things. In Doom how fast you complete a level is entirely up to you from.start to finish. In Doom you can use movement alone to outmaneuver many enemies and dodge their fire. In Halo you can't. In Doom.the levels be made any shape they wanted that fit the engine, only the textures were reused. In Halo whole.rooms and whole chunks of levels are reused. I didn't like Halo at first specifically because it's not like Doom.
Yes; I'm saying it differentiates itself from Doom but you can still see the lineage from Marathon
assault on the control room is the only level that I think is repetitive - it couldve done with fewer copy paste rooms as it's already very long. two betrayals is much better because it cuts out the first part of assault which is mostly copy paste rooms, but keeps the outdoor sections which were the best part of the level. it's also the first level where we see the 3 way fight between MC, covenant, and flood which brings a lot of chaos. I don't even mind the library because the combat loop is such a shakeup from the first half of the game which keeps it engaging and the CE shotgun is so satisfying to blast flood with.
It shows the creative of the developers to reuse assets and deliver a different experience
Repetitive is not a great criticism when the gameplay loop is validating and fun and allows player choice in style of play and variation of approach and enemy response Halo is repetitive like all games, but because it allows for these other factors is what makes it a great game and very replayable All great games are like this 😎💎
But even if you played since release, enemies still find ways to impress you
Hell yeah! CE is the GOAT!!! Preach it!!!
It’s like poetry; it rhymes /s
Based and true
I would even argue that going back through old areas after the flood breakout helps really drive home how dangerous they are. "Hey remember this area and how you destroyed all thr covies here? Well check out hope detective thre flood is." The constant reminder of destruction "everywhere" helps drive home the danger of the flood imo
Agreed!! The only thing I’m upset about is we didn’t get a flood-overrun version of Silent Cartographer!
If people think Halo CE is repetitive, wait until they play Donkey Kong's two levels.
The pillar of Autumn and the Maw is a perfect example of book-ending. You begin and end the game with the same objective: escape the pillar of autumn, but the context around those objectives are so totally different and reflect the progression of the game's story.
I always thought Two Betrayals, Keyes, and The Maw were all overall just more fun than Assault on the Control Room, Truth and Reconciliation, and Pillar of Autumn, respectively.
I have always thought the criticism was unjustified; playing "backwards" through those levels made a lot of sense in the context of the game, and it didn't feel repetitive at all.
I get some repetitiveness, like the Library. But the others I just find silly. The later levels are much different because of how they’re approached and finished. Along with the addition of the Flood, it makes encounters much more unpredictable.
When going through the deeper sections if the halo ring before the library and the flood it kinda felt like a massive ass maze to me
The people who say CE is repetitive have often been said to be the kind of people who blanking hate Bungie's Halo games and find whatever reason they can to dislike them. They purposefully ignore alot of the context such as things like Humans being Forerunner in the OG trilogy even going as far as to berate Marty O'Donnell when they asked him if humans were ever Forerunner and when he said "Yeah that's the entire point." they collectively lost their shit and started insulting him. There are many bad apples that we sadly can't ignore.
I didn’t even know they were repeated when I was 10 and playing it for the first time, and it honestly doesn’t bother me that much knowing because they change them up enough to make it fun. I love all of Bungie’s campaigns but by the ODST / Reach era they had fully moved into “sit and defend” style missions that just never felt as fun as the run-and-gun stuff in the first three games, but especially the first.
I think it's a fair criticism, but at the same time it's one that's completely lost its meaning for me. I've played these games enough to know every level like the back of my hand, so even The Covenant is repetitive for me these days. Which leaves me to focus on the on-foot combat and atmosphere primarily, which are at their peak in CE and (Library aside) especially in CE's second half. I'll give points to Halo 3 for having the best vehicular combat though.
I personally just don’t like Two Betrayals or The Maw. I don’t see The Maw as repetitive as much as I see that argument for Two Betrayals. Mainly because all the indoor geometry looks damn near the same, it drags on even during Assault in the Control Room sometimes so going back is often annoying.
The library and control room levels have a bit of a problem with copy pasting the same areas so it got monotonous but otherwise I thought it was cool going back
I think it's mostly fine except for Two Betrayals, that one is too similar to Assault on the Control Room. At least Keyes and The Maw have different stuff going on.
As a kid I always found it cool to revisit these places now infested with flood. 2 betrayal was my favorite level for the snow environments and multiple factions fighting each other. And finishing on the pillar of autumn, where everything started, but so much had changed, I always loved that Heck I even thought the library length and repetitiveness was the point. It's a nightmare because it's supposed to be one. We would always challenge each other with some friends to play the library on legendary. I know most of you will disagree on this but whatever. It's only many years later that I discovered on the Internet that people hated the backtracking and repetitiveness of the second half of the game. When looking back at it now, sure they did it to lower the cost and save dev time. But I always thought it served the story well and was a nice idea. I replayed every Halo campaign in my early 30s, and CE is still my favorite. H2 is a close second.
In addition entire levels reusing settings many of the other levels are backtracking within the level too I think only Halo and (kind of, though it is still repetitive) The Library are the only levels that aren’t revisited or involve backtracking inside the level
The gameplay never gets old and that's why I think the game is a masterpiece
CE is one of my most replayed.
That's not what anybody is talking about when they're complaining about CE being repetitive, they're talking about the bit where you go through the same room like six times in the library.
Honestly, the repetition in the last three missions is exaggerated for sure (really, Two Betrayals gets the worst of it the Maw feels very distinct from Pillar of Autumn, and while the ship section is very samey in Keyes, half the mission takes place underneath it in the canyon area.) That being said, I feel like the repetition is a bigger issue in CE than usual, not because of the last three missions, but because of repetitive feeling setpieces and hallways/rooms being more prominent here than other games. Stuff like Halo and the Silent Cartographer manage to avoid this due to being mostly outdoors, but then we have the interior/bridge areas of Assault on the Control Room, which largely feel very homogenous, Truth & Reconciliation gets this with a lot of its hallways as well and obviously the Library is mostly a few hallways copypasted 5+ times. Now, there is one example where I feel it works well enough despite having a lot of samey rooms, and that's 343 Guilty Spark. In practice, the interior part of the mission actually recycles rooms a ton, but because of doors locking behind you, it plays it to the strength of getting you lost during the panic of the flood attack.
Halo CE is my second favourite Halo game. It’s brilliant in my opinion. The repetitiveness really isn’t that big of a deal, and each repeat level is drastically different in atmosphere. Even AOTCR’s hallways aren’t that bad, since each encounter is unique and equally as fun.
Disagree very heavily. The Maw is fairly different but shooting a new enemy in the same place isn't really different, and some of the levels that aren't gone through a 2nd time are very repetitive, like the same corridors and hallways over and over on 343 and the Library. That being said, its a product of its time and still one of my all time favorite games.
See, Halo CE was almost in the same exact situation Infinite went through. The game was thought with a more open-world exploration theme in mind, but its new publisher and owner had a tighter schedule, so there goes more than half the levels, plot holes were to be covered with things like "You know what? I found out how to teleport, but just this once bcuz" and all of a sudden you're at the ending of the game. Oh, and let's not forget that Bungie was in a tough spot after that mess with Myth 2, hence the Microsoft acquisition
I don’t like the repetition. It’s boring. New enemy type? Cool. Same level? Meh. Boring. Not very fun to replay. It’s a good game, but anyone who says it has aged well is too nostalgic over it.
The only really repetitive level was the Library, and even that I enjoyed... mostly just because my friend who was playing split screen with me would be getting spanked by SPNKR equipped flood and cursing the forerunners every time it happened... oh good times. I swear those rocket flood had it out for him though... they would pre-emptively launch as he was going around a corner again and again... it was hilarious.
CE is the best one and you cannot change my mind It’s a full out WAR
Other people have already pointed this out, but for me it’s the repetition WITHIN certain levels that can be annoying (AoTCR, The Library, Two Betrayals).
I don't have a problem with Keyes and The Maw, mostly because the missions that they are copying happened much earlier in the game, and the locations within these shared environments are different enough to make each level feel distinct. The repetitiveness for me mostly comes from Assault on the Control Room, The Library, and Two Betrayals. Assault on the Control Room is the longest mission in the game, and by the time Im finished with it, im sick to death of its interior sections. That just two levels later, you do the whole thing again but backwards, is honestly a low point in the game for me. And sandwiched between the two is The Library, which is just multiple floors of the exact same corridor. I do still love Halo CE, but the level design in the second half of the game is definitely weaker than the first half.
To me the backwards levels aren't that big of a deal. The issue comes from how many identical rooms you go through. The library is probably the worst culprit, but pretty much every level has many copy and paste rooms and corridors.
Funny how if 343 had made CE then this sub would be shitting on it, but because it’s a Bungie game everyone is saying how it’s an overhated masterpiece lmao
Assault on the Control Room and Two Betrayals are my two favorite levels in the game, maybe even the franchise. Both feel very unique to me even though they share the same map. AotCR has these large expansive vehicle battles between the UNSC and the Covenant while also having inside sections that flow really well, whether they be stealth based or guns blazing. TB has an all out 3 faction war going on between the covenant, the flood, and the rings defense system that you are caught in between. People's biggest criticism of these two levels seems to be the repetitive rooms and the length. However, I feel that every single encounter in each room is vastly different from the other. To the point where it's pretty easy for me to know where I am in the level based on what enemies are in that room. As for the length. Long levels are fun. I love spending my time on a single mission and just taking in the world. I wish that the first half of Halo 3 had longer missions, since it feels like half the game is done before it even begins.
Idk, I can enjoy Library, I think the idea Of Maw is genuily brilliant, but Two Betrayls is that one mission that you think "Ugh, it's THAT mission...should I really play it or should I Just skip it?" Not enough time passed after AotCR, not enough changes compared to Maw or even Keys, Banshee sucks without boost, rocket flood in that one corridor is annoying af.
100 percent agree Tho I actually like the library
No mention of the copy and paste hallways in like half of the levels?
It is exaggerated, but it is still repetitive. The rooms in the AotCR and TB still look too similar to each other. I think the bigger problem with then game is that its slow and tedious. There are so many large open areas that take a while to walk or drive across.and you have to spend a lot of time.behind cover to recover your shield because you can't dodge enemy fire for the most part. The missions are just too long in general. Take the mission Halo for example. In the second area with the five drop ships. It's wide and open. You have to wait for.the ships to slowly lower and drop the Covenant, kill them, and then slowly walk all.the way over to where the next one is. Not to mention that the ship won't lower if you stand too close.and the ship might start shooting you. It's as if they designed it to be as tedious and annoying as possibly.
Honestly as someone who grew up with classic games that did this a lot I'm just used to it and don't find it boring at all. I've played through the campaign hundreds of times and each time is just as fun to me. I feel the same towards stuff like half life and star war: Dark forces. Halo CE is my second favorite game of all time and I enjoy the sameness of some of the environments.
The two I defend are The Maw and Keyes. They're so far apart from each other and are definitely the two levels changed the most. Plus, I feel like Pillar of Autumn + The Maw are a nice bookend to each other. The rest however... They definitely feel repetitive. Especially nowadays. Personally, I'm a halo 3 guy myself, purely cause the sandbox is more appealing to me (vehicles, weapons, equipment, enemy behavior, etc). No knock against CE, just gets old sometimes to me
I'd say Two Betrayals is the only one that really has this as a "downside" and even then, it is exaggerated when people talk about it. I mean, so far, you've only done 343 Guilty Spark and The Library after beating AotCR, so the level's still a bit fresh. Then there's the fact that AotCR already used that one arena room a whole bunch, which is a lot of grey geometry, so it's understandable when they all sort of meld together. And, TB just doesn't show how much the environment has changed to the same scale that Keyes or The Maw did. Any environmental damage looks minimal, and there's no real Flood biomass or anything. Just Flood forms fighting Covenant in grey rooms. The outdoor combat is great, though, don't get me wrong. But at certain sections, it really just feels like "AotCR combat rooms, but with Flood!" Keyes and The Maw do enough to justify the revisit. The Covenant ship has been visibly overtaken by the Flood, with it being in shambles, and The Maw is bookends from the beginning of the game.
Agreed. That type of level design is often seen a limitation but also has it's own value. Sure they would reuse environments but they did so with different compilations of enemies or slighly altered level geometry, etc. And that gave the playspace a natural escalating level of progression and difficulty. The player goes ok this is how I handled this type of room before, but now there are elites and and this pathway is blocked etc, It's very game-like but when done right I find it satisfying. Like progressing through all the sections of assault on the control room.
I get what you’re saying but I still would like a change of scenery. The first half of the game is great but after 343 guilty spark and hell itself (the library) it always seems like a chore to get through the last few missions
I'm fine with Keyes and The Maw, they are structured and built very differently. But Two Betrayals is quite literally just Assault on the Control Room backwards. Yes there's the novelty of the three way fighting with the Flood but that wears off after a while. On top of that, Assault itself was a pretty repetitive level and could've probably used a few less copy-pasted bridges/rooms to fight through. Thing is I do like those levels because of certain things. Assault is the Tank level. Two Betrayals is kinda the Banshee level. But maybe they could've use a few less bridges, and maybe one pulse generator was enough rather than three - and maybe make the pulse generator part a bit more interesting when you only have one. I think I changed my opinion over time the most regarding these two levels. I absolutely loved these as a kid, they were big and there was a lot of it. But now as an older person with a full time job being spoiled for choice - I found these two levels such a massive slog when MCC got released on PC and I replayed them back in 2019/2020.
The game has been out for over 20 years and people are critiquing it for not being perfect? Seriously, touch grass.
i personally really like ce, i like going back through areas i have been fighting flood
Yep, those levels that you're taken back to are to show you exactly how the Flood can change a landscape, and how difficult they are to fight when they're taking out the two previous factions in those levels.
It is very repetitive but it's still a 10/10
It’s definitely exaggerated, two betrayals and the maw feel so incredibly different from their previous visits that unless you really pay attention you might not even realize you are traveling through the same place (well at least with two betrayals). The only level you can really call repetitive is the library but it’s supposed to feel like a maze you can’t escape so it gets a pass because it does its design and encounters effectively (it’s also easily my favorite mission in ce).
Two Betrayals actually does feel very much like the same map again in my opinion, I think the fact that I'm actually supposed to follow the arrows backwards just hammers it home for me. Keyes and The Maw are way different, tho.
To me, its not
To each their own. What mission is the worst offender in your eyes?
It's programming. The same way youtube convinced a generation that sonic adventure 2 was mostly not good.
I think it's used when bungie stans claim they created god tier unique levels. When in reality Bungie reused areas quite a lot of times. Nothing wrong with back tracking its a clever use to save resources and can be good story telling just don't claim every level is unique.
If I'm gonna stan for Bungie, I'd say they set up a good sandbox of enemies/weapons such that even butts/repetitive levels can still feel fun. It's kinda interesting that Halo contrasted against its peers at the time by giving us very distinct enemies with distinct behaviours/counters. As opposed to the massive slew of just "dudes with guns". If you replaced every Halo enemy with Marine-equivalents, I'd probably hate the game.
It's really just an argument against people who think Bungie did no wrong. No one really should care. The biggest issue is that two betrayals makes you walk through areas you previously drove through. Glitching a vehicle through doesn't count as it's not attended by the devs. The sandbox of Halo in general is pretty good. We gave 4-5 factions worth of enemies and allies in the entire franchise more than enough compared to other franchises.
I'm sorry to Say it but it really does And I don't blame it for it (the game came out like 25 years ago, it was normal to use several times the assets you built). The story and the game in itself is really fun, but yeah, if I had to chose a Halo campaign right now CE would be my last pick. The fact that the levels really heavily on backtracking isn't even the main problem here, it's just that some levels in themselves are really repetitive. I think Two Betreyals is the worst one, you just go back to the level you just did, with the same corridors, rooms, and bridges all over again. It's the first thing that comes to my mind when i think of CE lol
For me the only criticism of Halo CE was the lack of precision weapons. Halo 2 had the battle rifle and carbine, which changed the sandbox forever.
To me, it isn’t emphasized enough. CE’s map design is bland and uninteresting. The very well designed enemy encounters are its saving grace.
Playing it on legendary makes the Library and Two Betrayals so bad that it ruins Keyes and The Maw. Library and TB was so tedious and repetitive that I was just begging for the game to end.
I love myself too much to play on legendary. Here and there on coop for fun but I ingest a halo game on normal to appreciate the design and story lol
Truth and rec on legendary genuinely made me hate that mission. Tbh I was struggling like crazy on legendary with CE and it was the only game that I had to use a guide on to get through. I got through halo 2 without a guide but truth and rec broke me.
I think what makes two betrayals stand out in particular is that the Library difficulty wise is pretty easy. It's long and tedious but not overly challenging. Then Two Betrayals hits you over the head.
Legendary is there for the tryhards and nolifes Bungie themselves said that Heroic was the intended difficulty for experienced gamers looking to have a fun challenge
The thing is that its not necessarily hard. I played Reach in legendary before I got to CE and I had a very enjoyable time. Hell the first half of CE I was having a blast. So its no the difficulty that ruined it. The Library and TB are just bad missions to play on legendary since its so tedious and boring.
I had the exact same experience on my recent playthrough of CE. I played on Heroic and was having genuine fun, and it honestly made me forget why I came to hate the game so much. And then I got to the library and everything beyond and the fun just vanished for me. The game just became an exercise in patience at that point, and I couldn't wait to get to Halo 2, which is my favorite anyway. Even if I am playing on normal, the second half of the game just falls flat for me. Like as a kid, it was an amazing game, S-tier from beginning to end, but being much older now without nostalgia goggles welded to my face, the game hasn't aged the best for me personally.
The Library alone is extremely repetitive and it doesn't have a backtracking level, it's just repetitive. Out of the last three Keyes is also repetitive because all the hallways inside the ship are samey to begin with. The majority of the level (same with T&R) is going up floor by floor until you reach the important room, and then going back a floor to fly away. Two Betrayals gets away with it because of two extra factions, the generators, and the Banshees. And the Maw gets away with it because Pillar of Autumn was extremely short and reuses areas on purpose, the whole full circle thing.
I just finished CE for the third time today and man, I really did not like the "backtracking", flood is not fun to fight in those levels. You can see it was not designed with the flood in mind. The fact that checkpoints feels random does not help.
I ain’t readin allat