Wake me, when you need me.
Okay so there's no way that I just sat down and played the entirety of Halo 3 in a single day, now is there? Except, yes that is exactly what I did and now I'm at the end of my rope. I've reached the final embers of the original Master Chief Saga and thus have touched the end of the crazy, noisy, no-good, week that encompassed the entirety of the Halo narrative up until this point. Okay, I know that technically there were a few weeks between the events of 1,2, and 3; but if we wipe away all of the ancillary lore that Bungie loved to drown the critical path of this series in, then I can totally seeing this entire series just being huge binge for crazy Chief and his bag of nutcase adventures. This is very much the tail end of the Halo franchise as it existed back in the day and you can see the way that Bungie saw themselves out the door whilst leaving one foot in the threshold just in case they ever wanted to come back to it. Which some of their breakaway members eventually did under the moniker '343 Industries'. (Don't know why it wasn't 'studio'; that would have made tons more sense.)
This was the first Halo game I played which didn't have a remaster touch up it's rough patches, and the game really does show it. Halo 3 likely won't get an anniversary release anytime soon, (given that 343 totally missed the 10 year anniversary window) which means the game I played is much closer to the original release than 1 and 2 were, and how that informs my grade will give you a back end metric to judge how good of a job that the remasters actually did. Now of course, there are going to be huge spoilers for everything that I can wrap my head around, because Bungie have serious storytelling issues that, judging by Destiny, were never really resolved; but that still means if you haven't ever played Halo 3 and want to experience that for yourself, then it's probably time you consider skipping to the summary, shouldn't you? Now back to my key points.
Gameplay
One of the casualties of the previous remasters right away is the way that the much rawer game that Halo 3 offers is instantly weaker and all the under-the-hood intricacies don't live up to their predecessors. Shooting is nowhere near as good as 'Halo 2: Anniversary Edition', which isn't to say it's terrible or anything, I actually think it's pretty darn good, but there's a considerable step down you have to acknowledge going into this one. The actual visualization of the recoil, the feel of the gun, the sounds, none of it is as crisp as it once was. Yet I feel obliged to insist for everyone that it is, crucially, very much still playable. I still had a ton of fun shooting my way through the game and even found the dual wielding mechanic feeling a little less forced on me this time. It's still there, and the balance is still skewered to disincentive single wield side-arms, but the enemies are typically less overbearingly brutish and 'do or die', when compared to Halo 2 Brutes, and thus you can afford to have a little more fun with your choice of arsenal to fight them.
Power-ups, like what one would expect find in the multiplayer portions of these games, actually show up in the main game quite often now, and fit in a lot neater than you might have expected from such a proposition. Having a deployable shield to chuck down and change the shape of the battlefield added a special little trump card to the combat dynamic that I really had a ton of fun experimenting with, even if I never managed to find a single instance where the 'Grav lift' was helpful. (I guess I wasn't creative enough) The fact that enemies were allowed to use them too added a parallel layer to combat which gave me pause at some otherwise sure-fire encounters and forced me to think on the fly here and there. Now it seems like a no brainer to add these systems into the campaign and, judging by my memory of Reach, that is something the team decided to keep up. (Which I'm stoked for.)
Vehicle manoeuvrability has taken a considerable improvement over what it was in the first two games, which still doesn't make it good, but it allows some of the cool vehicle set-piece moments to drum up some excitement only slightly tainted by the fear of the car doing a sudden 360 flip and getting you killed because of bad physics and crappy controls. There seemed to be a decent number of big car and flying machine moments in this game too, so the improvements were quite needed. Do I think the touch-ups were enough to justify the final challenge being another Warthog obstacle course? Absolutely not, those designers over in Bungie must have been bloody vindictive to force that on their audience once again, what absolute terrors.
Due to story reasons, the regular Elites from the previous games had to be replaced with the Brutes, which presented an obvious balancing concern. Brutes were tough to the line of un-reasonability in Halo 2, and there was no way that Bungie could have enemies that annoying be the bread and butter of all combat. The solution? A huge nerf to all Brute kind that made them similar to Elites in power level, but different in raw gameplay. Essentially they gave all Brutes bulky armour that can be comfortably shot off with precision aim before a final shot can be dealt. Obviously this means that they're still pretty annoying to fight, and take much more to down than the typical Elite, but throwing you against a room full of them isn't totally unreasonable like it was in 2. (Only mostly so) They changed up the combat dynamic a decent bit, and familiarity in the ranks still kept up thanks to the return of Grunts and Hunters. (Huh, I'm pretty sure they took the Elite's side of the Covenant civil war back in 2... but I guess we'll just ignore that for the sake of balancing.)
Finally for the gameplay section, there are more boss fights in this Halo game, although it might be fairer to say that there is one boss fight repeated about three or four times. The impressive Scarab enemy weapons platform from Halo 2 returns in a slightly more vincible state (only slightly) to serve as all of your boss encounters for this entry. And you know what- I actually think this is the best boss that the series has had yet. It boasts modular weak points, totally changes up the shooting monotony, offers several totally legitimate angles to tackle it- these make for really great challenges! I don't even mind the repetition of them, because it makes for such an impressive and cool set piece moment each time you manage to get the better of one of these behemoths and watch it fizzle up in azure flames, I was never disappointed with these fights. One more repeat of them and I might have become a little leary, but the team knew the right cut-off point.
Narrative
This topic is going to be a sticky one, because I have a lot to say on this front. Firstly, Halo 2 did a fantastic job setting the stakes for this game to hit the ground running, practically ending on an endgame cliffhanger that could have kicked off in roaring flames. Chief was there, aboard the Forerunner ship, ready to confront the Prophet of Truth- this game was destined to start with a bang! And then Halo 3 began with Master Chief falling out of the sky, landing in a heap inside of Africa, and spending the rest of the game chasing down the ship he just ejected himself from. Why? When did this happen? Does the game bother to explain? Of course it doesn't, and here bleeds some of the worst tendencies of Bungie storytelling- the tendency to, you know, not tell the damn story! As I had to learn from reading a freakin' forum post, prior to the release of Halo 3 there was a comic released which depicted Chief directly after the events of 2 (right after "I'm finishing this fight!") trying and failing to assassinate Truth and then being forced to jump off the ship in an emergency exit. Did Bungie bother to explain this in the actual game which was telling the story? Maybe with a cutscene, or even an animatic with panels from that comic? Nah, they don't even mention what happened with dialogue, leaving anyone not following these games with a religious fervour, totally out-of-the-loop.
I know this probably sounds a little strange coming from someone who loves untraditional narratives that don't lay out their stories like Dark Souls or Hollow Knight; but it's so important, even when telling a multimedia story across games and printed media, that each individual story is satisfying in it's own right. Further reading into works around the main line project should lead to a greater understanding and appreciation of the story, not a basic understanding and appreciation. If you have to turn off your game and look online to read a page of lore in order to appreciate what is happening in that game, then you've failed to write a cohesive scene. Halo isn't a game laid out like Dark Souls is, where the discovery of the basic plot is symbiotic with the theme and worldspace. Halo is a traditional action game with Sci-fi trappings, such genres simply scream to have their basic plots be sensibly laid-out, otherwise key important emotional scenes can completely and totally fall apart.
But I've gotten away from myself. Halo 3 flounders and fumbles the momentum set-up from 2 and thus has to build everything from scratch. Not too much of an issue given that these games are pretty exciting and pick up fairly quickly, especially with the state of the world that 2 left things with, but it does feel like some time is wasted. In the 11 missions this game has, 4 of those is spent just trying to make back the ground you lost when Master Chief decided to jump out of a window off-screen. It feels like a poorly contrived plot rug-pull in order to facilitate an ill-fitting follow-up story in my opinion. And though I have enjoyed the Halo 3 narrative quite a bit, enough to binge the whole thing in a single day; I think the game would have been better served with a cleaner rewrite. (Maybe one which remembered that The Arbiter was a main character in the last game and thus probably deserves a mission or two thrown his way. Poor guy.)
Oh, and let me retroactively take back one praise that I gave Bungie in their last game, how they were learning the intricacies of basic world building. Because I just learned that, apparently, Bungie kept a huge piece of the overarching lore totally out of the game in 2, and I only know of it now because of how it's offhandedly implied, and then directly mentioned in 3. Namely that the Forerunners who built the Halo rings, where the ancestors of the human race. A pretty big plotpoint to keep from the script, don't you think? And yet the Prophet of Truth just randomly mentions it midway through this game in a line just dripping with a sense of 'You already know this, obviously. You read all the books and comics, didn't you?' Show Bungie, show your lore! I don't know why I get so worked up over this but it really does annoy the crap out of me. And maybe that's the reason why despite liking this third arc of the core Halo story, and decently enjoying the way things wrapped up, (I would have preferred a more direct encounter with The Gravemind) I just don't think this narrative was as strong as Halo 2's. So that's a bit of shame.
Characters
For pretty much the first time in this series I started to get used to the idea that Master Chief was the badass that the game really wanted to insist that he is. I think it comes from being tasked with doing important missions entirely by himself, equating his worth to that of an entire human battalion, rather than sending him in with a stocked troop and just not acting surprised when he was the last one standing. But Cortana was really the one who stole the show here. Despite having left herself behind to have a prolonged chat with the Gravemind, Cortana seems to telepathically haunt Master Chief throughout the game and force her emotional connection upon the player with stories about why she picked Chief as her Spartan and harping on about the promise he made. (Which, by the way; he technically didn't make the promise to come back. She stopped him.) And I'm not a total heartless scrooge, despite finding Cortana kind of annoying in previous games I did kind of care about her in this game. Their connection felt genuine and when Chief went into the worst place in the galaxy just to get her back, I could totally understand why. The two of them are partners and they're happy to share their icy crypt together.
The Gravemind made a return, although in voice only, to serve as one of the antagonists in this game, and I really did enjoy his performance. He has this creepy 'omniscient' vibe to him, being the heart of the Flood hivemind, and the idea of something as chaotic and ravaging as the Flood having a sentient mind with thoughts and wants operating at the centre of it is a really cool concept. However, in the level when you here the most from him, 'Cortana', he does slip into 'scary hivemind' clichés at times. Raving about being all powerful and slipping out of his 'I can be reasonable' façade of just being a simple virus trying to make way through the universe. Maybe that was an intentional move from the writers part to show the 'monster' beneath the apparent rationale, but for me it just ironed in the creature and smoothed out some dimensions in the process.
The Arbiter and his journey are relegated to mere side stories in this game, with him just being your most commonly reoccurring battle buddy, practically abandoning the interesting exploration of his self redemption and emancipation. (I don't feel like it was totally resolved in 2, but here we are.) And the Prophet of Truth became a cliché badguy. I was hoping we'd get the opportunity to explore more about his race and perhaps their true intentions and desires, but instead we just got the "I'm going to wipe out all life in the Galaxy, just because." One curious little tidbit is that Truth seemed to acknowledge that the Halo ring would indeed kill everyone just before the end, and not embark them on the vague 'great journey' line that he seemed to be selling his congregation, but there doesn't really seem to be much more room to dive into that in the future of the narrative, given that The Arbiter freakin' shanked him and now the Covenant is no more. Oh well... missed opportunities.
343 Guilty Spark is always a welcome addition to the team, especially given that he was actually part of the team in this game, for unclear and arguably somewhat fudged reasons. I don't care, I loved having him aboard and never tire of hearing his high-pitched nattering. A simple character in motive, but soaking in intrigue and curious casual world expanding elements each time he talks, I love his character to bits. Such that I was actually a little distraught having to kill him. Although that was offset by the recent death of my favourite side character, Sergeant Johnson. I mean it was only a matter of time, the guy was pretty much useless and kept throwing himself into dangerous situations, but not getting to hear another one of his ill tempered insult strings with that charismatic wink in his tone almost makes me want to quit this series right here and now. (I hope he shows up in ODST.) Oh, and Amanda's performance was a lot better this time around. If they keep this up I might actually start to like- oh and she's dead. Oh well.
Level Design
In design I think that Halo 3 has been the most modern out of all the games I've played so far. Which is to say that each mission was paced with just the correct amount of content in just the right places to keep me hooked and make me play on and on until the end. Previous Halo games suffered from the odd level that was tad too long (or for Halo 1, over half of the levels) which would tire you out and maybe even bore you for some prolonged bouts of 'defend the position', but for 3 the team seemed to hone in on that golden ration which ruled the entire game's structure. In fact, there were a few missions that I felt were actively too short, such as the first one. But the action was never totally absent, even if there were a couple of mission that felt designed to be more picture galleries as you ran through them rather than deep, complex explorations. (like 'Cortana') Nothing had the scale of 'The Silent Cartographer' from 'Halo: Combat Evolved', however, so that's a bit of a loss in my book. (I quite enjoyed that almost unburnished approach to level design.)
Music
The suite of music was good, as expected from the team, but again it falls a bit short after 2. Now this one I readily admit is unfair, because Halo 2 anniversary Edition intentionally redid a lot of it's scores in order to sound better and fit scenes more, but I can't help but point out how Halo 3's non-remastered OST feels limp in comparison. It's still great on it's own merits, however, and the scenes that are meant to get you pumped still ring in your ears just as rhythmically, but there's no tune nearly as powerful as the howling Precursor theme from 2. Also, and this might be something only I in the entire world felt, but Halo 3 might have played the exact same version of Master Chief's theme just one time too many. Escaping the Halo ring at the end and hearing the same rising riff build up felt a little eye-roll worthy; as if this was just 117's Saturday morning cartoon theme tune now, rather than a roaring moment of musical triumph.
Summary
All in all, Halo 3 is another great entry in the series of Halo games, neatly concluding the original trilogies story, but it fails to capture the magic and grandeur of 2 in it's entirety, regardless of 2's Anniversary touch-ups. But maybe that's too high of a bar anyway, because Halo 2 really was remarkable in it's execution and Halo 3 is no slouch for not matching that. But aside from the gameplay being strong, I'm a story guy deep at heart and unfortunately this is a story where some of Bungie's worst narrative habits sneak into the game to sully the experience. They don't totally upend the enjoyment, but they still manage spoil the story being told through the gameplay. Ultimately I found this whole finale to be decently satisfying, however, and can be confident in giving Halo 3 a right-on-the-dot B Grade. If you're following the Master Chief collection like I was, be aware that this is going to be a noticeable step down from 'Halo 2: Anniversary Edition' on most fronts. Now I look forward to touching on the side games that bridge the Chief's long hibernation, which results in him utterly forgetting how to be ambidextrous for the rest of his career.
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