A question for the Elders (Destiny)

by Kermit , Raleigh, NC, Tuesday, August 19, 2025, 07:18 (6 hours, 35 minutes ago) @ cheapLEY

Aside from the abominable sin that was moving from mac to xbox-first, was there any push-back from the community on Halo when it was released, from a purely gameplay/story/presentation perspective? Any sentiment that it was somehow a lesser game than Myth or Marathon?

I don't recall too many Codys--that is, hardcore detractors who hung around for some reason. They simply didn't play it because they refused to buy an Xbox. I held out a month. And, as a Mac Bungie fan, if you've talked yourself into buying a console for Halo, you're kind of already sold. And although the story might not have been as sophisticated in-game as, say, Marathon, we had the Fall of Reach. A universe was established. In most ways, it was a leap forward.

We saw it in Halo 3 with the Terminals a bit and Reach with Data Pads, but I wonder if some of those fans would have been happier if they had added something like that in the first Halo. Halo brought us forward with a story told with actual dialogue and cutscenes, but obviously couldn't be as complex as basically just writing a book and putting it in terminals in the game. Lots of games do that now (Hell, even Destiny does), but I think it ends up where the text parts get ignored as extraneous.

I'm sure some people expressed disappointment at the lack of text, but I just don't remember it, because the glow of the first Halo game was pretty blinding. Halo did have a great example of environmental story telling, although it wasn't text--Jenkins' helmet footage. I certainly appreciated the environmental story telling in later games--especially the text, and was unhappy when 343 went in a different direction. Had a pretty strong opinion about it.