SPOILERS Discussion Thread. Keep it here [MAJOR SPOILERS]

[* Clueless *]

It's inevitable that there will be threads made by members discussing gameplay of leaked Halo 4 footage.

Out of respect for members not wishing to have gameplay totally spoiled:

If you wish to discuss Major Spoilers, KEEP IT WITHIN THIS THREAD.

[The BiggD]

The Rookie Reacts to Halo 4 Leaks - YouTube

The Rookie Reacts to Halo 4 Leaks - YouTube

[Hishoa]

Halo 4 theater is 1-person only.

[iBuzz7S]

We get to see Master Chief's eyes.

[Hamwinkie]

The game is 2 disks. Disk one is what you play. Disk 2 is the forge and theater that you have to install.

[janhans888]

Cortana dies at the end!!!!!
u will see masterchiefs face ( only in legendary ending )
in legendary ending u will see some really nice screens
from earth ( looks UNBELIEVABLE GOOD )

[iBuzz7S]

Originally Posted by janhans888

u will see masterchiefs face ( only in legendary ending )

I thought it was only his eyes..... 343i have said that they are not ready to show his face just yet.

[janhans888]

Originally Posted by iBuzz7S

I thought it was only his eyes..... 343i have said that they are not ready to show his face just yet.

i know that they said that but u actually see his eyes, nose and the beard!!
so its the half of his face . lol
looks pretty funny and dumb...

[snyper117]

cool we get to see part of cheifs head bu8t anyone have any idea about the red vs blue easter eggs

[janhans888]

nah, didnt found any till now!!
i bet they are hard to find tough...

[Joseph212]

More likely

[Joseph212]

Yes IT is WONDERFUL?

[Joseph212]

Lol rap song

[Pr0ph3cy]

There is no end game chase scene which is kinda gay because I always enjoyed that at the end of halo games

[Matt36]

Just completed the campaign. Epic stuff. Though they hinted at a chase, with the nuke, it was a bit of a let down.

Reminded me of the Star Trek movie remake crossed with TRON a lot of the time. I liked it though.

[Annihil88torr]

Master chief dies in a firey explosion


J/k

[EscapeTheApe]

Anyone else that managed to use the Ghost longer than supposed to in the Requiem level? You normally have to abandon it near the small cliff and sniper tower, but I found a way to get it up there thanks to a similar method used on Two betrayals in Combat Evolved. Pretty nifty, though I assume someone already found this.

I assume we have to make these kinds of posts here(since it DOES say "gameplay-related"), atleast right now?

[Matt36]

She'll be back...

[iBuzz7S]

Legendary ending.

Halo 4 Legendary Ending Scene - YouTube

Halo 4 Legendary Ending Scene - YouTube

[Vagrant]

I'm gonna miss Cort man.... She was a staple in this series...

She was like Navi but with an attitude..... and the fact that I didn't want to stab her in the face....

Gonna feel a little bit lonelier playing without her in later games

[sorrow313]

how the heck does it leave it open for a number 5 i mena if u look at chiefs face his accelerated growth by the librarian made him look like a forrunner but idk who would the next enemy be?

[Tsaako]

Originally Posted by iBuzz7S

Legendary ending.

Halo 4 Legendary Ending Scene - YouTube

I played it on easy and gotten the same cut scene after the credits, not really level orientated. Unless i'm missing something and I'm dumb and blind?

[IXISHADOW]

Originally Posted by Tsaako

I played it on easy and gotten the same cut scene after the credits, not really level orientated. Unless i'm missing something and I'm dumb and blind?

Only difference that I've noticed is that you see Chief's eyes.

[Tsaako]

Originally Posted by IXISHADOW

Only difference that I've noticed is that you see Chief's eyes.

I never watched the vid he posted all the way through, seen your comment then watched it again, wonder what the point in that was, we should of seen his whole face! :L

[iBuzz7S]

Originally Posted by Tsaako

I played it on easy and gotten the same cut scene after the credits, not really level orientated. Unless i'm missing something and I'm dumb and blind?

The latter.

No, I've read that the ending depends on difficulty, so I'm going by that. Maybe you are right though.

[IXISHADOW]

Originally Posted by iBuzz7S

The latter.

No, I've read that the ending depends on difficulty, so I'm going by that. Maybe you are right though.

The ending does depend on difficulty. The legendary ending as I stated above just lets you see the Chiefs eyes.

[~F0RcEx]

Ok, having beat the game, I don't know if I'm slow or what, but I really didn't get what was going on for the most part. Like... Who or what is the didact or whatever. Forerunner? But he looked evil and had teeth. Some kinda evolution? Who trapped him? What did he do? And what was his goal exactly? Wait... The Prometheans were ancient humans? HUH? I thought the original story was the Flood was the huge problem so the Forerunners eradicated themselves plus the universe? But the librarian said they were planning for chief's return all along... What did she do to him? And why were the UNSC at a Halo ring? Installation 03. And what the heck did cortana do to save chief from the nuclear explosion at the end?

Again, I apologize if I sound slow. I played the game into all hours of the night and would just like some clarity on some plot holes. Thanks for any input.

And let us discuss.

[IXISHADOW]

Originally Posted by ~F0RcEx

Ok, having beat the game, I don't know if I'm slow or what, but I really didn't get what was going on for the most part. Like... Who or what is the didact or whatever. Forerunner? But he looked evil and had teeth. Some kinda evolution? Who trapped him? What did he do? And what was his goal exactly? Wait... The Prometheans were ancient humans? HUH? I thought the original story was the Flood was the huge problem so the Forerunners eradicated themselves plus the universe? But the librarian said they were planning for chief's return all along... What did she do to him? And why were the UNSC at a Halo ring? Installation 03. And what the heck did cortana do to save chief from the nuclear explosion at the end?

Again, I apologize if I sound slow. I played the game into all hours of the night and would just like some clarity on some plot holes. Thanks for any input.

And let us discuss.

Did you skip all of the cutscenes or just ignore all of them...

The Didact was a Forerunner who was going to eradicate the greatest Forerunner enemy who is John. The Prometheans are Forerunners who have gone under mutation and basically turned into AI Warriors. Didact was also a Forerunner Promethean. The Flood vs Forerunner War started 98,379 B.C.E and ended on 97,448 B.C.E. The Forerunners created the Halo rings and fired them killing all sentient life across the Milky Way. The only survivors were on the Ark. The Didact previously wanted to eradicate the humans and thus was imprisoned for it. when chief put hit two hands on the pillars seen in mission 3 he released the Didact and set him free. The composer was originally meant to combine the organic and digital realms making the Forerunner immortal.
This did not work and only caused problems and it created abominations. The Prometheans as earlier stated are humans who were combined with AI.

The Librarian planned for Chief's return to stop the Didact. If he found the composer which is what he was looking for then he would have killed John and the rest of mankind. The Librarian tells John that his physical evolution, combat skin and even his Ancilla (Cortana) were the events of 1,000 lifetimes of planning. John would need an immunity to the composer to defeat Didact. The Librarian then planted genes inside John to do this but they had to be unlocked. She then had to accelerate Johns evolutionary journey to do this.

The UNSC were on Installation 3 because there was a research program based there which orbited the ring.. They found a relic which turned out to be the composer which was held at the facility you go to in the game.

At the end Cortana sacrificed herself to save John. She got him off of the ship which John destroyed with the nuke. It looked like she put him inside a forcefield when the ship blew up saving him.

[iBuzz7S]

Originally Posted by IXISHADOW

The ending does depend on difficulty. The legendary ending as I stated above just lets you see the Chiefs eyes.

Oh, my bad. I had quoted the member and didn't check to see if there were other posts after.

So cool, the Legendary ending you see his eyes. Not like it will matter since I want to complete it on Legendary off the bat.

[Si Alpha]

Originally Posted by ~F0RcEx

Ok, having beat the game, I don't know if I'm slow or what, but I really didn't get what was going on for the most part. Like... Who or what is the didact or whatever. Forerunner? But he looked evil and had teeth. Some kinda evolution? Who trapped him? What did he do? And what was his goal exactly? Wait... The Prometheans were ancient humans? HUH? I thought the original story was the Flood was the huge problem so the Forerunners eradicated themselves plus the universe? But the librarian said they were planning for chief's return all along... What did she do to him? And why were the UNSC at a Halo ring? Installation 03. And what the heck did cortana do to save chief from the nuclear explosion at the end?

Again, I apologize if I sound slow. I played the game into all hours of the night and would just like some clarity on some plot holes. Thanks for any input.

And let us discuss.

This is my biggest problem with an otherwise outstanding game. They have all these grand concepts and ideas, and all they do with them is force them down your throat and expect you to swallow them. The first half of the game was spot on, it built up perfectly and the Didact's awakening was nothing short of breathtaking. But then in the second half of the game, so many different things are thrown at the player, and so little of it is properly explained or explored in the depth necessary to make it truly compelling as a narrative. Nothing had the gravity that it deserved. Nor did it have the right kind of mystery.

Whether it was intentional or not, 343 have done nothing to capture the essence of what made the original Halo trilogy so engaging from a story point of view. Instead of presenting these ideas as being truly mysterious and having real weight with the characters, they simply happen, nobody seems to notice and the plot moves on to the next big thing. In the original Halo trilogy, the rings were treated with such delicacy that they became enigmatic, they carried weight with everyone involved. They were almost characters in themselves. Before their true purpose was discovered, there was a real sense of awe and intrigue, which later transformed into genuine fear. They weren't simply another plot device, they were designed and treated in a manner which would evoke a myriad of emotions within the player over the course of the trilogy.

Compare this to the Composer. And while you're at it, compare it to the Crucible from Mass Effect 3. Here we have this all powerful, ancient piece of technology which appears in the story almost out of nowhere. We are told that it is important in some fate-of-the-world related way. Doesn't it look shiny? Also, it begins with C. Any questions? No? Onto the next level then. How can we possibly be expected to care about these things, how can they emotionally resonate with us at all if they are so carelessly, clumsily and downright lazily slotted into the storyline like a new enemy type? And this is just one example out of many.

The Prometheans. So many mindblowing possibilities with their background and their role in the events of the game, but no sooner do they crop up than you're forced to shoot first and keep your questions to yourself. Yes, we've all seen them in the trailers pre-release, but that is no excuse to bundle them in as little more than eye candy and an enhancement to the Halo bad guy roster. And the whole ancient human thing is starting to become an annoying trend, not just in video games but in sci-fi stories from all kinds of media. Am I the only one who wants something a little more mystical and imaginative?

The Librarian. Perhaps the most intriguing part of the campaign. A lot of things are hinted at, but nothing is explicitly explained, which is a good way to start. But instead of clarity, we get the bad guy. Well, his voice. It's as if he realised that the plot was gaining some traction and credibility and stepped in to put a swift end to things. The crafty git. And so we gain the power of immunity to decomposition. Whoo! Except we don't know that. Why bother telling us? I mean the Chief clearly understood everything she was saying and he's meant to be the grounded, relatable central figure in all this so maybe we just missed a memo? Nevermind, I'm sure we'll see her again. Maybe then we'll seem more surprised and won't talk to her like she's any other meaningless character in this heinously underwritten plot.

A few other major gripes: the Didact's "death". First of all, it was crap, we all know that. He's a bit of a laughing stock to be fair. All he seems capable of doing with that big grisly jaw of his and that awesome but unimaginative armour is making Chief float. Woooow. It's even more impressive the second time around. Then Cortana's army of twins spawn for no apparent reason out of the middle of the light bridge and use... blueness to constrict him. Chief (now this is kinda petty...) uses a grenade which previously didn't stick to a damn thing and sticks it on the Didact's chest. It doesn't behave the way it normally does and simply detonates (weakly) sending Didact over the edge and into the pool of decomposition. So he's dead. But wait! Shock! No he isn't! And we find this out, not by the cliche hand-out-of-lava and nor by the return as a disfigured and battle-ready boss, but by a voiceover during the post-credits scene, where he actually gives us more relevant information than any other character has throughout the entirety of the game. It's all wrong, and it's all done at the wrong time. The final showdown with an antagonist should make his announcement seem like a distant memory. It shouldn't fall flat on its face and mimic the events of the announcement to a much lesser, less emotional degree.

This whole ending leaves us with even more problems. I'll start with the one I care about the least. During the last portion of the game, the Didact begins to utilise the Composer on some unknown part of Earth. No drama is made about it, no consequences are shown (not until the post-credits scene, which is far too late), we just have to assume that bad things are happening at the end of that beam of light. And it's another detail which 343 gloss over, because rapidly progressing the story seems far more important than stopping for a quick breather and giving the player a chance to give a damn about the events unfolding around them.

My biggest issue, however, is Cortana's death. Without quotations. Perhaps my reason for despising this part of the story so much is that I felt robbed more than anything. After everything that happened up to that point, the severe lack of care or clarity in every major event, the brief introductions and the glossed over details, the crap demise of Didact... her death just felt like another step on the constantly-moving journey to the credits. I felt robbed of the emotional resonance which I damn well should have felt knowing that my favourite character in the series had just bitten the artificial bullet. The whole affair was mute. If anything, it seemed avoidable. Chief certainly believed so. Maybe you'll read the next sentence and scream "rampancy!", but there just wasn't any build-up to this. One minute we're offing the bad guy, the next minute Cortana has to stay and die. Wait, what? I'm still reeling from this Gears 2 style failure of a final boss, and now you think my mind is in the right place to be told straight up that Cortana is done for? WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

You can agree or disagree (more than likely) with anything or everything that I've said (hell I don't even know if this can all fit on one post...), we're all entitled to our own opinions. And who knows, maybe I'm missing several crucial plot points. But it doesn't change the fact that this is a poorly handled story whose reach far exceeds its grasp, which, despite starting brightly, quickly devolves into a disorganised mess of unexplored ideas as it races to its endgame, taking a potentially astounding emotional payoff and transforming it into a careless nudge in the ribs. Don't get me wrong - I love Halo. All things Halo. I love Halo 4 in almost every single aspect and I think 343 have done an insanely good job of taking one of the most iconic and respected franchises in gaming and not totally screwing it up the way I suspect many thought they would. But if Halo has ever been about anything, its been about the story. And this just isn't good enough.