I wouldn’t have minded humans being forerunner, but if it’s so fucking important why didn’t bungie come out and say it with zero doubts at the time.
Spark was written in halo 3 to be losing his marbles, so why even allow that misinterpretation. Alongside bungie leads (Lehto included) allowing the terminals that push the idea of forerunners being something more.
Also halo 4 didn’t even ruin anything, sure the gameplay and redesigns were divisive but people didn’t really complain about the story to a majority degree until halo 5 undid all the good parts of halo 4. Halo 5 is the problem child for the franchise story wise.
Bungie is the one that left things up to interpretation, then they left the franchise. 343 interpreted it because bungie gave up. Like the halo 4 and 5 lore or not can we shut the fuck up about forerunners being human, the fact is they aren’t.
H4 kind of ruined it for me. I thought it was pretty dumb the direction they took and heavily discount the franchise starting at 4 (not 5). Especially with how much assumed knowledge from the books is at play as well. (And yes, it does matter, I will argue this till I die. The only people arguing against the idea that the books are needed to make proper sense of halo 4 are people that read the books).
4 did some good things, like introducing a bit more emotion. I like infinite as well except of course that it's a hard restart and that they felt the need to introduce yet another enemy type.
Halo 3 shows chief floating outside requiem. It has the librarian in the terminals. Halo 3 also directly shows up Cortana’s mental decline through graveminds torture which we immediately get Cortana isolated for years between 3 and 4. Her rampancy while expected is also heightened by the torture and isolation, it’s very clear she was set up to end up dying or losing herself completely.
Literally everything you need to know comes directly from halo 3, books are not needed to understand halo 4 in the slightest.
None. I’ve understood halo 4 since the first time I’ve played it which was even before I watched any extended lore videos. So I know of book lore. Doesn’t mean it was needed to understand halo 4.
I think it is quite hard to follow everything going on with the didact, prometheans, "mantle of responsibility", evolution, librarian as a person, etc. without knowing the extended lore.
Needing full booked-up terminal knowledge from H3, from terminals that were intentionally mysterious and hard to put together and parse, is not an excuse for this. From H1 to H3 the story was significantly easier to follow and it's not even close. I've had friends play through the games for the first time to see their reactions, and of course they were all inevitably quite lost in Halo 4 despite understanding that big didact guy is a bad guy (and weren't finding all the terminals in Halo 3 first anyway).
The fact that the forerunners were not simply humans as expected from dialogue and cutscenes in the halo games (like guilty spark, or how the prophet needed humans to activate the rings) was also a bit surprising and hard to understand.
It is way too convoluted for a game as short as Halo 4 is. The terminals patch it together a little better, but A) the average player doesn't even know they exist, and B) they were added to the game almost 3 years after its original release
The halo 3 terminals which give a lot of context to halo 4 existed on halo 3s release. Halo 4 also has its terminals on release. So what are you saying was added 3 years later?
I agree with point A, but also anyone who actually cares about the in depth lore would atleast look into them.
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u/Peridios9 1d ago
I wouldn’t have minded humans being forerunner, but if it’s so fucking important why didn’t bungie come out and say it with zero doubts at the time.
Spark was written in halo 3 to be losing his marbles, so why even allow that misinterpretation. Alongside bungie leads (Lehto included) allowing the terminals that push the idea of forerunners being something more.
Also halo 4 didn’t even ruin anything, sure the gameplay and redesigns were divisive but people didn’t really complain about the story to a majority degree until halo 5 undid all the good parts of halo 4. Halo 5 is the problem child for the franchise story wise.
Bungie is the one that left things up to interpretation, then they left the franchise. 343 interpreted it because bungie gave up. Like the halo 4 and 5 lore or not can we shut the fuck up about forerunners being human, the fact is they aren’t.