I got a chance at playing Halo 3's campaign this past weekend. I have to admit I was a little disappointed. Having given it some thought, I think I know why, and why Halo 2 didn't live up to some people's expectations.

For the record, I enjoyed Halo 2. But having played 3 has changed my opinion somewhat. I'll go into why.

This topic will assume you've played all three campaigns. If you haven't and are worried about spoilers for any of the games, just don't read this topic. Oh, and there are Star Wars spoilers, but if you haven't seen Star Wars IV-VI by now, dang.

A lot of people complained that Halo 2 was unfinished and Halo 3 was really 2.5. I think I disagree with this assessment, but ultimately that is because such complaints are largely a symptom of the bigger problem. Halo 2 had a lot of missions and a lot of content. I think overall it was bigger and longer than Halo 2. Did people have too high expectations going in? Certainly, but the real reason it seemed incomplete was because the Halo Trilogy, specifically the second two games, did not follow a standard story arc. Basically, the reason Halo 2 and Halo 3 didn't seem as good as Halo 1 was because they were disorganized.

A trilogy is essentially a three act play, and there are "rules" for such plays.

Halo: Combat Evolved was an excellent first act. It introduced the characters and the basic conflict. It was tense at times, with rising action, but ultimately the conflict was relatively small in the grand scheme. You find a Halo, you fight covenant, you discover the flood and fight them, you get a revelation about the Halo, and you blow it up to save the galaxy. That's a great story, and a great introduction to the universe. Most importantly, the story is epic, and you as the Master Chief get to be a hero in your own personal legend. Think about Luke Skywalker in Episode IV... that's what a good first act is, and Halo 1 fit the bill. Fight evil and win, but the war isn't over yet. It ends perfectly, with the Halo being blown apart in a huge explosion, and the Chief barely escaping with Cortana. That's cinematic, that's epic.

Halo 2 started off well, except for one simple fact. The Covenant didn't come with their full fleet, and they left again practically as soon as they arrived. A good second act ramps up the action in a big way, puts the characters in a dark place, and gives something major for the third act to resolve. Again, think about Hoth being attacked, Han Solo being tortured and frozen in carbonite, and Luke running away from his training against Yoda's warnings. Even the comedy relief, C-3PO, gets torn into a bunch of different pieces. So, where did Halo 2 go wrong?

Well, as I said, Earth was in danger, but not really that much danger. Halo 2 was a perfect time for things to be all about the Covenant-Human conflict. The Flood were defeated in Halo 1, there was no reason for them to make another appearance in the second act, and the Chief didn't need to save the universe, just Earth. Act Two should have been about the vast superiority in the Covenant military might vs. the scrappy determined humans fighting for their very existence. Most importantly, the humans should have been losing. This was the chance for the Master Chief to show his true heroic self. When nukes aren't enough, you send in a Spartan. Halo 2, if I could go back and force Bungie to make it all over again, would have taken place entirely on or in orbit of Earth. There would not have been a second Halo, except in an Arbiter storyline (if the Arbiter even was playable.... it could have simply been done with cutscenes anyway). Just imagine how much more fun, and how much more fulfilling Halo 2 would have been if he had just been riding around in a Pelican from hot spot to hot spot, all over Earth. Maybe it's just me, but I love a good doomsday story. You have to imagine that the UNSC fleet would have been wiped out after a point, and the ground forces would not be able to hold back the Covenant for long. So John-117 gets to run around doing whatever he can and complete missions that nobody else alive can pull off. I'm talking about stuff you only read about in the books. Put the Chief up against an army of 100 grunts with nothing but a gun turret, a little wall, and a small squad of marines. Bring a backpack nuke into the heart of a Covenant army landing at the site of some Forerunner artifact. Whatever. Halo 2 had a bunch of good Earth missions, even though they ended too soon, and Halo 3's were hardly there at all. The Master Chief in Halo 2, as I said, should be only on Earth. If you insist on doing a side story involving the Elites rebelling against the Prophets, that's fine, but keep it to cutscenes and the Arbiter. As long as the main focus is on the Chief kicking ass in the final defense of Earth, that keeps the story nice and dark, gives it real power, and certainly gives it plenty of tension. For your "Luke, I am your father" oh s### revelation at the end, that's where you pull out the huge Forerunner installation on Earth. The Master Chief fighting Flood on the High Charity isn't much of an epic story. There's no strong emotions like there would be fighting for the survival of the human race on Earth. It should have been the Arbiter fighting on High Charity alongside other Elites against Brutes, a parallel since the Elites are essentially fighting for the survival of their own race. If you absolutely must bring the Flood into things, you bring them in at the end of the Arbiter's campaign just before the end of the Master Chief's campaign on Earth. Let the Forerunner ship warp in right above Earth just as the Forerunner installation starts to be uncovered, and make that your cinematic ending to the second act. Send the Chief into a portal with nothing but a single ship to go after the massive Covenant fleet (at some point of course, the deal with The Ark should be learned). There's your "we're doomed" moment that's appropriate for the second act. Master Chief calling Lord Hood and telling him he's gonna finish the fight is a high note that makes the player/viewer cheer. You shouldn't end up cheering at the end of the second act, you should be scared about what horrible fate is going to befall the characters next. I imagine had things turned out a little more like this, swapping the first half of Halo 3 with the second half of Halo 2, people would not have complained about Halo 2 being unfinished, they'd have been calling it the best of the three.

Halo 3, being the third act, is where things get resolved, but it's more importantly where the characters pull themselves up from being beaten down. Earth should be in shambles, and the player would know this because they saw it with their own eyes in Halo 2. What's more, as we learned at the end of Halo 2 (the mrxak version), the Covenant are going to activate all of the Halos from The Ark. Halo 2 was about trying to save Earth. Halo 3, in full circle with Halo 1, is about saving the entire galaxy. So of course the first thing that happens in Halo 3 is that the Flood make their return. We know perhaps from the very end of the Arbiter campaign in Halo 2 that the Gravemind is coming, and is trying to stop the Halos from ever firing again. So as soon as the Chief lands on The Ark, he's cut off (with Cortana), has limited reinforcements, and suddenly the Flood are everywhere and so are the Covenant. The Arbiter will then make his appearance and offers a truce with the Chief. Together they can try to save the entire galaxy by defeating both the Flood and the Prophets. You throw in all the crazy Forerunner stuff you want via terminals or Cortana's investigations, and in the end you save the galaxy. That's where you ought to cheer, just as when the Death Star gets blown up in VI and Luke escapes to live happily ever after (at least, in the movies).

To me at least, this sounds like a better, more-organized story, and not a whole lot of the details needed to be changed. All they really had to do was keep the characters from traveling at faster-than-light speeds in the middle of any given game. There's a reason the standard three act set-up is done all the time: it works. The main issues people have with the Halo trilogy storyline could be fixed simply by better organizing things into a Game of Three Acts. People say they made Halo 1, 2, and 2.5. I say they made Halo 1, 1.5, and 2.5. Halo 2 was essentially more of Halo: Combat Evolved, and Halo 3 was basically the second act with the third act mashed into it. As a result, it ended up a jumbled mess, and for that reason the story seems worse than it really is. You can blame Microsoft or Bungie, or anybody else you want, but when it comes down to it, they didn't know how to make a second act a second act and that made the third act have to make up for it in limited space and time. Halo 2 was a true sequel, and an enjoyable one. But by not being a true second act of a trilogy, Halo 3 made Halo 2 and Halo 3 seem poor.

Obviously what's done is done, but hopefully the next time somebody makes a video game trilogy, they'll do it proper.

I think that there's good evidence that Bungie can make a good trilogy. I blame M$ and think that you need to get a job as a story writer at Bungie.

Hey, I'm trying my hand as a science fiction writer, maybe someday something I write will end up as a game .

QFT. I think mrxak did an excellent play-by-play of how it should have unfolded.

Well I dunno about all that, all I know is that Halo 2 had the worst multiplayer.

I rank the games in greatness by : halo, Halo 3, Halo 2.

It has nothing to do with story to me. Its all about gameplay. They took out and changed a lot of things that i liked about Halo 1 in Halo 2. Most importantly, the pace of the game at all levels of play. Sure pistols and what not at high level in halo one meant lifes were short lived, but in an average room i think the lifespan of a player was much longer in halo 1 than in 2. This is because halo 1 had more open maps, more space, and more focus on vehicles in a lot of ways. By 3 they were gone. Also while they tried to balance the weapons in 2 the needler was STILL pointless and the new sword was amazingly annoying and furthered the transition from something unique, to something more akin to Unreal tourney.

Personally i barely remember the story exactly. I will admit it was not that great.

i liked the halo 2 multi player better then halo 1 multi player.
and i haven't played halo 4(3 I mean)multi player.

I would just like to say that I whole-heartedly support mrxak's analysis of the Halo trilogy.

???

I haven't really played 1, beaten 2 and haven't played 3 so I don't really know what the games are like. As such I was pretty happy with 2 becuase I don't know what the other games were like.

And I like the Needler. Dual-wielding makes it a lot easier to kill brutes if I don't have an energy sword.

My analysis was for online play. Where walking backwards at an angle causes needler shots to miss or reflect off your shield. You can get them to work, but at that point you could have used just about any other weapon to kill the person. Hence it being useless. Not to mention there were much better combos out there.

NoobShot FTW: Overcharged plasma pistol + SMG

Or (even easier): Two overcharged plasma pistols.

That makes sense. I didn't know you were talking online play.


Nah. That would just drain their shields. I doubt it would be enough to kill someone if you can't kill an Elite on easy.

The story was alright. People died and everyone went home.

As far as multiplayer is concerned, Halo 1 was the most fun only because of the massive LAN parties that we had. The pistol was overpowered, but it didn't matter too much since no one was good enough to pull off the three headshots consistently.

Halo 2 easily had the worst multiplayer of the three. The sword had unlimited ammo and a ridiculous range, the SMG wasn't even worth picking up, meaning that the BR dominated gameplay along with the amazing button combos. The sniper had the amazing feature of being able to point in someone's general direction and get a headshot far too often. Dual-wielding was alright before the update, then the pistol was toned down so much that it was almost never used again. And the generic lunge that came with every weapon, my favorite. There's nothing I like more than lunging at someone from behind, only to have nothing happen 8 times in a row and have him turn around and kill me. The shotgun did nothing unless you were right next to someone, a huge letdown considering how powerful it used to be. The game was still fun to play with people, but the amount of BS made it lose its appeal after a while.

Halo 3 was a huge improvement over Halo 2, although the spawning system could use a little work, the amount of BS is significantly less than what it used to be.

Very good analysis mrxak. I tried looking at my favorite series of story-based FPS games, namely the Half-Life series, and realized that they have a very good three-act setup going on, though the fact that last act is another trilogy itself makes it all a bit strange.

I would also like to throw in that Halo 2 & 3 definitely smack of "Got way ahead of themselves." They were all excited about various things, and skipped the quality stuff that mrxak talked about.

But, it being quite obvious that there will be another Master Chief game, maybe they're setting up for something else?

I could not agree more. The most disappointing aspect of Halo 2 was that the defense of Earth was an afterthought. The rest of the story became a convoluted mess because they couldn't just stay with one concept.

_bomb

At the end of the second one I noticed that you can get the banshee into the control room.

You can get a banshee into the first game's control room too, you just have to kill one of the two elites on the bridge overlooking it before he can get into the second banshee. Makes the whole rest of the map a piece of cake.

Control room where?

Uh, on the first Halo installation?