Let me ask you both a question (Destiny)

by Phoenix_9286 , Sunday, July 20, 2014, 14:41 (3789 days ago) @ Kermit
edited by Phoenix_9286, Sunday, July 20, 2014, 14:45

I'm not a fan of non-text terminals in the first place. It seems to me that 343 just decided that they were going to make terminals "better" without really understanding what made terminals cool and interesting to begin with.

I just want to add that I 100% agree with this assessment, and it isn't coming from a place of 343 hate, it simply (as far as I'm concerned) is a truth.

The first time I heard the word "Terminal" associated with a game, was Marathon. In Marathon they were all text, they occasionally had images (more often diagrams), and they were the main way the story was delivered and pushed forward. You walked up to one, activated it, and stood there reading it.

Fast forward to Halo 3, where, again, the word "Terminal" is being batted around. As this is the same developer, I know what I should be expecting. An in world interface, text, potentially lots of it, and maybe images, all of which will likely push the story forward. That's exactly what we got, though the story was more of a parallel B-plot to Halo 3's A-plot.

ODST. They said we'd have "Audio Logs". They served a similar function and purpose to Terminals, but they've been renamed, and with the new name comes a new expectation. Yeah, you had a slide-show animated video to go with them, but it was presented as security camera footage/snapshots. You could also ignore the video entirely and treat it as a pure audio log. The way it worked in the context of the game and the universe was pitch perfect. The Super wants to tell you something, to fill you in. He directs you to these Audio Logs, you listen and learn what's going on, and in the end, the pay out is avenging a person you never met, and a different take on the Engineers.

Reach gave us "Datapads", and again, with the new name comes a new expectation, though these largely were exactly the same as Terminals.

But Halo Anniversary and Halo 4 break this idea. They're called Terminals, but they aren't anything like a Terminal. Before these were all stories that the Chief, the Rookie, or Noble Six accessed on their way to something else. Now they're stories for the player to access on the way to something else. That's a marked difference. It's further muddled by the presentation. The Terminals in CEA could've maybe worked if it was all first person from Guilty Spark's perspective, but they weren't. They were all third person. You weren't seeing a record of his memories or stumbling onto a journal or a diary, he was narrating them to you, he was literally telling you a story. That doesn't make sense for something the Chief stumbles upon, and it's kinda boring for the player too. It's just another cinematic.

And Halo 4... I barely even remember. The fact I had to go to an external source to view them was awful. The fact it was on Waypoint, which was terrible at streaming, left a horrible taste in my mouth. I looked them up on YouTube, found a single video that contained all of them, and watched it in 720p. I recall them feeling nonsensical, confusing, and what little redeeming quality I saw in back story and motivation for Didact should've been presented upfront. Not buried in a stupid thing the player has to find and then dumped on a friggin website.

At any rate, I think that is the critical difference. Terminals under Bungie were items to be consumed, in game, in universe, by both the player AND the main character. Terminals under 343 aren't items to consume. They're just additional cinematics.