Also, I wonder how Bungie feels about 343 retconning this much? "Spartans have to be engineered from birth." "Oh, Buck? Yeah, he became a Spartan in about three years, no problem." And that's just the tip of the iceberg. I don't think the Halo lore is some amazing thing, but I did really enjoy the premise. But they've gone so far off the rails; the early books added so much absurd tripe, and they've just built on it since.
Not so much a retcon, they just redefined what a Spartan is. There was a 30+ year gap between the technology for the Spartan II's and the IV's. Not to mention what was deemed acceptable.
The II's were all augmented with advanced tech, extremely risky stuff. Kind of like prototypes, in a way. The III's were more based on tactics and teamwork rather than augmentation, to be cheaper and more expendable. And this was when Bungie was still at the helm.
The current IV Spartans have augmentations that are less likely to fail, as they've had so much time to perfect the procedure. Still doesn't match those II augmentations. So Buck is a volunteer in a program that is nowhere near as dangerous as the original Halsey methods.
What makes Chief and Blue Team so legendary is that they've had decades to perfect their combat techniques with these unmatched modifications. So even though they're being hunted by "Spartans," I wouldn't put the teams on even ground at all due to a) the years of teamwork of Blue Team b) the physical superiority of Blue Team and c) the field experience of Blue Team, as they were bred for war. Locke and his crew have the backing of the military, which would seem to be their only edge.
Who knows how the campaign will play out, but if the II's run into Osiris, I don't think Osiris would stand a chance.
As far as the current state of the lore, the Cortana love story stuff really bums me out. Hope that isn't a cornerstone of where 5 is going, despite the vision being the catalyst for Chief going AWOL in this video.
Looks awesome. I liked Galak-Z a whole lot, and this looks just as good (if not better).
What I hope they improve on is the longevity. Beat Galak-Z in 6 hours and haven't touched it since. But Spelunky, my roguelike of choice, has resulted in probably 1,000 hours at this point.
I hate to just compare the two games, but they have a whole lot of surface-level similarities.
3 minutes in and this issue is immediately amazing.
Edit: Ok. 4 minutes in and it's even more incredible.
Edit 2: Ok, I'm glad Dan's appreciation and adoration of Twisted Metal 2 matches my own. From the codes, to the Minion special, to picking Thumper, and down to the damn list of weapons in the HUD.
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