Brutes not Playable in Halo 3, Documentary Confirmed

[bapenguin]

Straight from the Weekly Update (http://www.bungie.net/News/TopStory.aspx?link=notinkansas).The fact is, Brutes in Halo 3 will be significantly more exciting, clever, graphically impressive, terrifying, numerous and angrier than in Halo 2, but they won't be playable, especially since you, in the role of Master Chief, will be spending a significant amount of effort and ammunition reducing their population.

The documentary mentioned on the interwebs, does indeed exist, as I have mentioned before in previous updates.

Thank god.

[jeffool]

Playing Halo 2 every time I saw one I couldn't help but think "If any alien ever needed to be more ferocious... ET could kick these guys asses."

[Captain Awesome]

Wasn't this confirmed right after the Halo 3 cinematic ad?

But yes, I think most people knew it was a stupid rumor.

[IrishWhiskey]

...they won't be playable, especially since you, in the role of Master Chief, will be spending a significant amount of effort and ammunition reducing their population.

Hey, is it just me or does that line strongly suggest that you will be playing only as Master Chief. No Arbiter then?

Or it could be that MC will kick Brute butt and the Arbiter will be doing something else... I'm just desperate for details at this point.

.

[Captain Awesome]

Hey, is it just me or does that line strongly suggest that you will be playing only as Master Chief. No Arbiter then?

Or it could be that MC will kick Brute butt and the Arbiter will be doing something else... I'm just desperate for details at this point.

.

I have a feeling the Arbiter thing will end shortly at the start of Halo 3 or something. I also have a feeling a female Spartan will join you in some asskickery.

But then again my feelings have been confused by bad gas before.

[GunnyMo]

Thank goodness. Maybe they clued in to the fact that, while fun for a bit, playing as the Covenant was boring and completely out of place in the single player. Especially since you were playing as the retarded Elite; the one with the crappy invisible armor. If the Arbiter is supposed to be the bad ass that saves the Covenant then why was he given such piss poor armor? /le sigh It would be nice to play the game as MC for more than five minutes. You know, since he started the whole franchise and whatnot and it is about the whole "destruction of Earth", his home planet, and all.

[Captain Awesome]

If the Arbiter is supposed to be the bad ass that saves the Covenant then why was he given such piss poor armor?

Actually they do explain why he gets the archaic armor in the game. It wasn't the most inventive reason but they do show why he got the old stuff.


Also, dont say "le sigh" it makes you sound gayer.

[Heretic Machine]

Maybe they clued in to the fact that, while fun for a bit, playing as the Covenant was boring and completely out of place in the single player.

I loved it. In fact, it was the only thing I consider to be an improvement in Halo 2.

[GunnyMo]

le sigh

How's that for gay?

[Captain Awesome]

I loved it. In fact, it was the only thing I consider to be an improvement in Halo 2.

I liked the Covenant segment as well.

[appel]

I liked playing as the Arbiter, but he felt a bit too much like MC with a different skin.

[Captain Awesome]

I liked playing as the Arbiter, but he felt a bit too much like MC with a different skin.

Yeah, maybe if they fleshed out some of his characteristics like some weird alien mannerisms, weapon/fight animations. Even sounds he would make or spoken alien language.

[Snarboo]

I always found it odd that the Arbiter reloads the shotgun just like MC. Same hand movements and everything.

[Morratut]

I liked the Arbiter levels too. As others have said if they just make him more alien like in animations etc.

[JazGalaxy]

The arbiter was ridiculous in Halo 2 and nearly ruined the game. The idea of making you play as the badguys undermines the whole "us vs. them" concept that made the original Halo.. and indeed any xenophobic action story... work. You don't need rationalization for blasting aliens, and indeed you dont' WANT rationalization because then you're sitting there thinking about how misguided they are, or worse yet how misguided you might be, as opposed to just wanting to see them dead. Pure crap. And don't even get me started on making them speak English. Halo 2 was one big "what was Bungie thinking?"

And for Halo 1 to be so great... It just makes me depressed.

I take this news about the Brutes as good news. I mean, at least that means we're not going to be playing as their side and suddenly realize this is all one big galactic misunderstanding and we all need a group hug. based on the Halo2 plot... that's what I was expecting.

[appel]

You still have that with the flood. And there are quite a lot of covenant left that want to kill humans just because..

I'm really looking forward to finding out what comes next in the halo story.

[OUX]

I always found it odd that the Arbiter reloads the shotgun just like MC. Same hand movements and everything.
How many different ways are there to load that shotgun?

[Roc Ingersol]

The Arbiter sucked it.
I do not want to empathize with the Covenant. I want to blast them to bits for being imperliastic, dogmatic, fundamentalist aggressors.

From a gameplay stance: Trying to deal with covenant allies against covenant foes was a mess, and the Arbiter didn't feel any different than the chief.

It was 'meh' on top of being antithetical to my expectations.

[Mdot23]

The arbiter was ridiculous in Halo 2 and nearly ruined the game. The idea of making you play as the badguys undermines the whole "us vs. them" concept that made the original Halo.. and indeed any xenophobic action story... work. You don't need rationalization for blasting aliens, and indeed you dont' WANT rationalization because then you're sitting there thinking about how misguided they are, or worse yet how misguided you might be, as opposed to just wanting to see them dead. Pure crap.


i mean, i didn't really like playing as the arbiter either but it was a good way to explain what was going on in the Covenant internally and what ultimately led to the civil war that is going on now. that's obviously a big part of the story and you can't just leave it out. imo, it makes the story more interesting and deeper that just "us vs them" since you get to see the view from both sides instead of just from the outside looking in.

[Roc Ingersol]

i mean, i didn't really like playing as the arbiter either but it was a good way to explain what was going on in the Covenant internally and what ultimately led to the civil war that is going on now. that's obviously a big part of the story and you can't just leave it out. imo, it makes the story more interesting and deeper that just "us vs them" since you get to see the view from both sides instead of just from the outside looking in.
You can explore that without switching POV and trying to make one of the bad guy factions sympathetic. We didn't need to play a level as the pilot of a covenant freighter to get the point and story weight of 'they didn't expect humans to be on Earth'.

Hell, it would have been better imo if the purpose of the civil war within the Covenant was still mysterious when they started blasting the shit out of one another. And had Cortana feed us bits of story as she uncovered just wth was going on.

Wouldn't you rather be Master Chief caught between warring Covenant factions, neither of which is 'good' from a human point of view?
I know I would.

I don't need half the Covenant as a sympathetic ally.
I'm the goddamm Master Chief.

[RandomViolence]

You can explore that without switching POV and trying to make one of the bad guy factions sympathetic. We didn't need to play a level as the pilot of a covenant freighter to get the point and story weight of 'they didn't expect humans to be on Earth'.

Hell, it would have been better imo if the purpose of the civil war within the Covenant was still mysterious when they started blasting the shit out of one another. And had Cortana feed us bits of story as she uncovered just wth was going on.

Wouldn't you rather be Master Chief caught between warring Covenant factions, neither of which is 'good' from a human point of view?
I know I would.

I don't need half the Covenant as a sympathetic ally.
I'm the goddamm Master Chief.

I completely agree. Finding this out through small skirmishes, tidbits and perhaps even finally seeing a large battle between two sides of the Covenant war would have been BAD ASS. With the proper writing/presentation skill it wouldn't have been necessary to 'corrupt' the old image of the covenant while still sketching this image of a noble society collapsing under the combined weight of its members' ignorance and ambition.

[Captain Awesome]

Wouldn't you rather be Master Chief caught between warring Covenant factions, neither of which is 'good' from a human point of view?
I know I would.

I really can't answer that now. I want to see where Halo 3 will put me. After that then I could make that decision. But as of now, I liked what Bungie did with Halo 2.

[TheFlyingOrc]

Goodness, Halo hype annoys me. Every single thing about the game is not a news article.

When Mario 3 was coming out we wouldn't have had an article for "frog suit revealed!!!"

[swiftdraw]

When Mario 3 was coming out we wouldn't have had an article for "frog suit revealed!!!"

Then again, the internet wasn't around as we know it today and gaming was less mainstream than it is now. Also games didn't have million dollar budgets that the developers and publishers wanted to re-coop. Hell, come to think of it, was there anything besides Nintendo in '88? They really didn't need the hype being the only game in town (so to speak.)

Different times, different tools, different tactics.

[Wolvie]

Indeed, playing as a Brute in the campaign mode would've been ten times as worse as playing as that god forsaken Arbitor. Playing as one on-line? That would've been the dumbest thing ever since you'd just be one HUGE, slow moving target.

[Cefca]

I wouln´t like to play as the brutes in SP as I didn´t like to play as the Arbiter for all the reasons everyone said. However, I think it´d be nice to play as different characters in MP. Hell, why not play as an ODST, a soldier, a Jackal... why not make every character available?

[Wolvie]

Hell, why not play as an ODST, a soldier, a Jackal... why not make every character available?

I would LOVE to play as an ODST, or any other character skin thats the relative size of the MC. Grunts, and Jackals might not make good choices for on-line play, due to their small size...remember Perfct Dark? Remember how everyone took the lil grey alien? Yeah that was because he was hard to hit. The same thing would happen in Halo 3 with the Grunts. So IMO, they need to keep the chatacter models at least the size of soldiers and ODST's.

[Telefrog]

I liked the idea of playing as the Arbiter. I liked the backstage details of the Covenant's infighting. I did, however, think the execution was off. My issues with the Arbiter sequences are pretty basic.

1. Not alien enough. Nothing really even distinguishes the Arbiter's perspective from Master Chief's. No special abilities. Even the cloak effect was useless.
2. If I'm part of the Covenant, then let me fight the UNSC. Fuck the Covenant schism and the Flood. I want to stand on the powdered skulls of humans!

Now if they change these two things in Halo 3, then I'm all for more Arbiter.

[Hagetaka]

Glad to hear that changed.. wonder what else they will be changing. How about that shield grenade? pssh, fug that. Ooo, and maybe MC can chuck a grenade more than a few feet this go around; he can flip a tank.. with one finger.

Im still not buying into the hype. Halo 2 did me wrong last go around, and im not letting my hopes build up again, only to be dissapointed (with an overall, mediocre game).

[fatefodder]

I personally would like it if they made grunts playable but with grunt properties--in other words, they would completely suck but be hilarious to play. If you have an uneven matchup at a party, the more experienced players could be grunts--slow, small, silly, maybe have the ability to belly-dive, unable to drive certain vehicles or hold certain weapons...

Imagine capture-the-flag where a bunch of grunts slowly train the thing home. or bomb plant, where the grunts will scream out a lily-livered "AAAAAAAGH" when the thing goes off.

...Of course, this class would be restricted from ranked matches, etc. But I've been dreaming about playing as a grunt since Halo: Combat Evolved.

[GunnyMo]

Hey, as long as they can say, "Fuck this!" like they did in the original (not GotY) version of Halo, it sounds like a lot of fun. :)

[Mason]

i mean, i didn't really like playing as the arbiter either but it was a good way to explain what was going on in the Covenant internally and what ultimately led to the civil war that is going on now. that's obviously a big part of the story and you can't just leave it out. imo, it makes the story more interesting and deeper that just "us vs them" since you get to see the view from both sides instead of just from the outside looking in.
The problem is that it changed the Covenant from implacable and inscrutable foes of humanity into confused religious imperialists who simply won't bother to ask questions about the big red button they're about to push. All mystery was torn away, there was nothing particularly alien about them (slight accents to their English, though, perhaps due to the four-part mouth), and once the Arbiter thinks about the situation for a few minutes, he becomes a traitor to everything he knows and is without a hint of regret.

If Halo had actually departed from a simple conflict in an interesting way, that would've been one thing. But simply having the Covies be clueless and wrong about everything their pan-species empire is founded on is weak and fail.

[archon]

The whole thing about the Covenant is that we didn't know shit about them before Halo 2. Nobody had ever been inside their society/caste/system/whatever to really know what the fuck was up with them aside from the fact that they wanted to murder all humans. We knew that they were sentient aliens who were by far more technologically advanced than humans and that they had extreme religious beliefs, but that's all. All this other stuff you guys are saying are just your false impressions of what the Covenant really turned out to be all along. Could the story have been executed better? Sure, personally I believe the cinematics were the weak part of the story, not the actual story itself.

Bungie tried something new by switching you to the enemy's role in a mainstream FPS, and personally I think they pulled off the whole main-character switch a LOT, LOT better than fucking-Raiden-peice-of-shit from MGS2. The character of the Arbiter was well explained in the story, and you may or may not agree with whether or not you think it was a good story, but there was nothing there that betrayed what came before (with the possible exception of the marketing blitz for Halo 2 that basically said "HALO 2 ON EARTH MASTER CHIEF SAVE THE DAY"). The invisibility was not useless if you knew how to use it.

Also, this story is at least 4 days old.

[Zeal]

They're introducing a new character soon.

[timmyd]

Good thing you don't play as a Brute, because then you'd need a new enemy. And that means the new enemy's voice would have to be even lower!

[NeoCutter]

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