The High Charity levels in Halo 2 were slightly disappointing in terms of worldbuilding. The Earth missions really felt like a real city since the battles took place in actual infrastructure and facilities:>Alleyways>Tunnels>Plazas>Bridges>Deserted businesses/apartments.High Charity is a totally different story. You get to see skyscrapers in the distance, but you're otherwise fighting through nonsensical hallways that don't actually seem to serve any purpose. You don't get to see even the most basic of amenities, let alone any residential districts; just purple corridors. This doesn't feel like the capital of an empire at all.
Halo 2 was disappointing across the board.
>>12032798Anon you can't really expect game devs to cram whole cities into levels you're expected to spend 30 minutes playing through.
>>12032820Halo 2's Earth levels were way more fleshed out than the High Charity levels though.
>>12032827Halo 2 was severely, severely, downgraded New Mombasa, Delta Halo, Quarantine Zone, High Charity were reduced to 40% of what they once were.Joseph Staten: "This process began with the end of Halo and realizing all the stuff that we had left out, and Jason, and I, and Jamie, and a few other people, sitting down and thinking really hard about, 'Wow, what did we really want to tell?' And then Jason locked himself in a room for a while and organized his core ideas and then came to me and said, 'Hey, these are my thoughts about a story for Halo 2. What do you think?'Joseph Staten: (holds up script) "This is the copy of the script—the cinematic script for Halo. This document needs to talk to programmers, and artists, and animators, and everybody. This is 160 pages worth of cinematic. That's kind of crazy if you just think about it on its own. But when you look at a game which is 15 levels long, and with a couple of protagonists, and a fairly complex story arc, we need to drive the player's experience for 20 hours of game play, say. 120 minutes of cinematic doesn't really seem that out of proportion. But just to look at it prima facie, it's pretty daunting. You think, 'My God, you're making a feature film.'"Jason Jones: "It's not about making it complex, and it's not about playing movies for 2 hours between every 5 minutes of game play, but the more you can make somebody believe that they're in this cool place, that they're on Halo fighting the Covenant, instead of... whatever, sitting in their living room at two in the morning, trying to finish some stupid video game."Joseph Staten: "Of all the people on the team, Tyson and I are probably the people who are most frightening for Jason and the programmers. We are the most crazy-scripting, crack-smoking, 'This would be so cool. Damn the frame rate! Let's pound the code and make these crazy things happen!'">tfw Joe didn't care about the fps, he just wanted to make a fun gamePlease understand.
>>12032798>The Earth missions really felt like a real citynot at all and the whole "dude you fight on earth" thing was a huge bait and switch. i wasnt even following the behind the scenes development but it was painfully obvious they had a bunch of normal halo levels they haphazardly had to turn into "earth". theyre just halo levels with a street sign here and there
The New Mombasa stages felt like they were desperate to smash together parts of Halo (the level) from the first game and Assault On The Control Room, with no actual set pieces given any room to breathe.
>>12032827The earth levels were the levels the game was sold on, with every trailer/image of halo 2 being the earth master chief levels They clearly made sure those were the best with extra effort
>>12033036Did people back in the day rag on this and the fact that the marketing didn't mention you would be playing as The Arbiter for half the game? Kinda like how MGS 2 got hate for the Raiden bait and switch.
>>12033220Yeah dudebros on gameFAQs genuinely complained that most of Halo 2's levels took place on Halo
>>12034420Dudebros schizo, you've been posting this long enough. It's time to let it go. Just because all the cooler guys that bullied you liked halo doesn't mean you have to hate it forever. Those guys have way more successful lives with wives an kids and don't even think about your or halo at all now. You are holding onto something that never really existed. Halo was and is for everyone. The dudebros only exist in your head
>>12033220yup. i remember most reviewers not liking the story. hell i didn't like it. the game ended exactly like it started: about to go fight down on earth.
>Level 09: The ArkAs explained by O'Donnell, the original Halo 2 ending saw Master Chief returning to Earth, finding the Ark of the Covenant, teaming up with the Arbiter, and then working with him to defeat the Prophet of Truth. O'Donnell claims that the voice actors even recorded lines for this original, conclusive ending, but ultimately time constraints meant that Bungie had to cut the ending short.>Halo 2's Arbiter Introductionthe original plan was to start in first person with full movement and camera control. You would have been sitting in a jail cell and then have been able to melee attack the Brutes as they unlocked your cell etc.The Brutes would have overpowered you as the Jackals in the next cell jeered—and then would have dragged you down the hall with full camera control. The cinematic would have started in frame two, as you exited through the doorway.Ultimately this proved too complex and also we decided that the best moment to “become” the Arbiter was when you landed at the heretic base and activated your energy sword for the first time.https://twitter.com/joestaten/status/1067193426964230144>Halo 2 Alpha with 343 Industries developers Sean Cooper (kornman/kornman00), Brian Jarrard, and Frank O'ConnorBungie mentioned having to scale back the sizes of levels from what they intended.https://youtu.be/Qp86KNbeCA8>Behind the Scenes: Making of Halo 2Marcus Lehto: "Exploring huge environments ten times the size of Halo 1."https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q69Msy8ttM>Halo 2 Cinematics Commentary by: Project Lead Jason Jones, Writer, Director of Cinematics Joseph Staten, Composer, Audio Director Martin O'Donnell"There was a covenant-sabotage expedition to take away the human pistol because it was just too good"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBi_xx26ClM>Halo 2: Max Hoberman dishes on Halo 2's crazy developmenthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BURsPjNKck
