Zodi Plays: Halo ODST (Halo of the Wild)

[LaZodiac]

And so we continue with all the Halos, the exceptional third game behind us. I decided to give these their own threads instead of putting them in with whatever I am doing at the time, for better organization if nothing else. This is a blind playthrough- in many senses of the word- so don't post spoilers and try to keep the talk about ODST and not future stuff I haven't seen yet.

Zodi Plays: Halo ODST [1] Where We Droppin'?

Video Length: 38:45

Right away, ODST has... given me a hell of a first impression. I like that Bungie is trying to make characters, and trying to tell a different, more atmospheric story, with a character who isn't quite as indestructible as John Master Chief, but... so far it is REALLY not working. The gunplay seems alright, but something about the combat, especially encounters, seem weird. The open world structure is fascinating a decision, though not one that I'm 100% sold on just yet, and the hub city... is absolutely insane. Why they would make the game THIS dark, I have no idea beyond misguided attempts at providing a moody atmosphere.

What strikes me is that they actually already succeeded in the exact atmosphere they're trying to get, in Floodgate! Which takes place in and or around or near New Mombasa! They totally knew what they were doing they just dropped the ball here. Oops! But yeah, negativity aside, that's the first one. Hope you all enjoyed, we'll see you next time for more of this.

[Ninja_Prawn]

"What now?" cracked me up as well.

I don't know if I'm the outlier here, but I really like ODST. It's probably my favourite of the FPS games in the Halo series, in fact. I like how the encouters feel organic, like the Covenant are in the process of occupying the city, but it's all confused with few clear lines of control or entrenched positions. With John, you're usually having to push through layers of dug-in troops that know you are coming, whereas here you're just running into random patrols or appearing in their rear without warning. I also found the flashback-based structure interesting. Sure, it's a bit meta that picking up Dare's helmet enabled the Rookie to remember what happened to Buck, but I think you're supposed to take it that they'd searched around and figured out what happened from the wreckage. The fact that you're playing as different characters throughout the game makes the fact that each mission has a very different tone less immersion breaking, too.

Maybe you need to set your baseline brightness higher to make the nightvision work? Or maybe it's just not for everyone.

[Lord Raziere]

Halo ODST Log 001:
Well, regular in the sense your not a genetically modified spartan. Technically your the soldiers that were the badasses of all badasses before the Spartans came along. so still top percentage, because only the craziest, lucky or most badass humans ever would even go around with a name that implies they drop from literal orbit into a combat situation, followed up by the motto "Feet First Into Hell". so these guys are the reckless kind of badass that have no business working, but somehow statistically do.

Well. this went south immediately. Just another day working at UNSC, honestly.....

its definitely a grittier slower, darker feel than other Halo stuff I've seen. so thats what police cars look like in this world....

I mean its bad level design from a game standpoint, from a worldbuilding perspective, all the signs and such pointing people where to go is for the evacuees, and they're just still on because they didn't have time to turn them off and is really good because it shows the UNSC cares about evacuating its civilians which is basically the best they can do to keep them safe. in open world games I wouldn't be too concerned about getting to the next objective.

Zodi.....never play anything relating to noir if your this hung up about darkness.

also its red because red warning lights.

The story as far as I can gather is the rookie trying find and regather his squad, see if any of them are still alive. pretty basic.

again, a lot of this is good worldbuilding in that it offers a glimpse of people other than the military in Halo, and makes it all feel more lived in.

I mean the thing is, it'd be inconsistent to have the covenant forces be different for no reason, and MC doesn't use any firearms that are fundamentally different from what the UNSC as a whole uses. so you can't just make the covenant arbitrarily tougher to kill, that wouldn't make sense given they die to bullets just fine no matter whose wielding them. and badass normal humans being able to survive against Covenant forces in similar conditions to MC has a precedent: Sergeant Johnson. the thing is about the Halo universe is that a consistent theme with it is that not even the Spartans with all their enhancements and training are immune to just being unlucky or dying unceremoniously. as with all things, the real determiner of who is the badass protagonist is pure luck. its the reason that the Halo universe fell back on to designate someone as special since logically a super-soldier spartan still dies if someone fires big enough ordinance at them. you can't say any of them are destined or chosen to be a hero, magic or the Force don't exist in this universe, and the sad truth is that modern warfare is on some level purely a game of luck for anyone who fights in it, due to its impersonal nature of so many things that could kill you that you can't guarantee you can avoid. so Halo, to have its badass protagonists in a pure sci-fi universe without some psychic field or whatever, must be honest and say MC, The Arbiter, this Rookie and whatnot- they're all just lucky to survive through a bunch of factors outside their control to be able to do anything at all. war is not about who is right, but about who is left after all. Though I guess they could've communicated that better by replacing Stamina with Luck, but whatever.

this is the first I've seen of ODST, though if you did quit I'd have more of a reason to actually purchase the Halo collection to play it if nothing else, because I've played the first three long time ago and have seen 4 and Reach on other lets plays. but then you'd probably consider me trying to play ODST a bad outcome since your warnings would go unheeded :P

[LaZodiac]

"What now?" cracked me up as well.

I don't know if I'm the outlier here, but I really like ODST. It's probably my favourite of the FPS games in the Halo series, in fact. I like how the encouters feel organic, like the Covenant are in the process of occupying the city, but it's all confused with few clear lines of control or entrenched positions. With John, you're usually having to push through layers of dug-in troops that know you are coming, whereas here you're just running into random patrols or appearing in their rear without warning. I also found the flashback-based structure interesting. Sure, it's a bit meta that picking up Dare's helmet enabled the Rookie to remember what happened to Buck, but I think you're supposed to take it that they'd searched around and figured out what happened from the wreckage. The fact that you're playing as different characters throughout the game makes the fact that each mission has a very different tone less immersion breaking, too.

Maybe you need to set your baseline brightness higher to make the nightvision work? Or maybe it's just not for everyone.

I'll definitely turn up the gamma/brightness next time we record.

I like the idea of ODST, and who knows maybe this was just a poor first impression! I'm willing to play it out to see how it goes.

And yeah... What Now? is an amazing piece of graffiti. My goodness. What a good ending to this first video.

Halo ODST Log 001:
Well, regular in the sense your not a genetically modified spartan. Technically your the soldiers that were the badasses of all badasses before the Spartans came along. so still top percentage, because only the craziest, lucky or most badass humans ever would even go around with a name that implies they drop from literal orbit into a combat situation, followed up by the motto "Feet First Into Hell". so these guys are the reckless kind of badass that have no business working, but somehow statistically do.

Well. this went south immediately. Just another day working at UNSC, honestly.....

its definitely a grittier slower, darker feel than other Halo stuff I've seen. so thats what police cars look like in this world....

I mean its bad level design from a game standpoint, from a worldbuilding perspective, all the signs and such pointing people where to go is for the evacuees, and they're just still on because they didn't have time to turn them off and is really good because it shows the UNSC cares about evacuating its civilians which is basically the best they can do to keep them safe. in open world games I wouldn't be too concerned about getting to the next objective.

Zodi.....never play anything relating to noir if your this hung up about darkness.

also its red because red warning lights.

The story as far as I can gather is the rookie trying find and regather his squad, see if any of them are still alive. pretty basic.

again, a lot of this is good worldbuilding in that it offers a glimpse of people other than the military in Halo, and makes it all feel more lived in.

I mean the thing is, it'd be inconsistent to have the covenant forces be different for no reason, and MC doesn't use any firearms that are fundamentally different from what the UNSC as a whole uses. so you can't just make the covenant arbitrarily tougher to kill, that wouldn't make sense given they die to bullets just fine no matter whose wielding them. and badass normal humans being able to survive against Covenant forces in similar conditions to MC has a precedent: Sergeant Johnson. the thing is about the Halo universe is that a consistent theme with it is that not even the Spartans with all their enhancements and training are immune to just being unlucky or dying unceremoniously. as with all things, the real determiner of who is the badass protagonist is pure luck. its the reason that the Halo universe fell back on to designate someone as special since logically a super-soldier spartan still dies if someone fires big enough ordinance at them. you can't say any of them are destined or chosen to be a hero, magic or the Force don't exist in this universe, and the sad truth is that modern warfare is on some level purely a game of luck for anyone who fights in it, due to its impersonal nature of so many things that could kill you that you can't guarantee you can avoid. so Halo, to have its badass protagonists in a pure sci-fi universe without some psychic field or whatever, must be honest and say MC, The Arbiter, this Rookie and whatnot- they're all just lucky to survive through a bunch of factors outside their control to be able to do anything at all. war is not about who is right, but about who is left after all. Though I guess they could've communicated that better by replacing Stamina with Luck, but whatever.

this is the first I've seen of ODST, though if you did quit I'd have more of a reason to actually purchase the Halo collection to play it if nothing else, because I've played the first three long time ago and have seen 4 and Reach on other lets plays. but then you'd probably consider me trying to play ODST a bad outcome since your warnings would go unheeded :P

I like Noir stuff! The issue is that I need to be able to see to play the video game!

I get what you mean, mechanically it is... kind of hard to get across that Soldier McSolderson and Nathan Fillion are weaker than the Arbiter and John Spartan.

[DataNinja]

Whoof. That was... a day. But, time to relax with some shooty shooty bang bang videos.

So, to me... ODST is... it's weird. I wouldn't call it a bad game, but I just... don't enjoy how it's laid out as much as the other Halos. It was ambitious, I feel, and there are a lot of things to like but... I dunno. Not super much to my taste, but, like... it wasn't horrible? I didn't mind playing through it, but I probably wouldn't go back to it in the same way as I would other Halos. ...anyways, that's my rambling, because I am not well put together tonight.



Ah, I see you had the same reaction I did when seeing most of these characters. I did eye rolls, instead of head in hands, but... same thing.

The "squads" think is definitely an interesting take. Where it really does feel like you're fighting against more of roving bands that can kill you a lot quicker if you aren't careful. ...at least it did for me.

The Audio transcript things are... interesting. And it's neat, finding them as you wander around the city. But... geez, there are a lot. I really hope you don't try and get them all.

...but, yeah, the VISR tutorial is a lot all at once. But, necessary, due to the mazelike city.

Yeeeah, the brightness settings suuuucked for this one. The night vision was either not bright enough at night, or too bright during the day (when highlighting enemies would've been nice still), and just... bleh.

Hunters: The reason man invented stole sticky grenades.



Ahhhh… poor Zodi. XD

[Rynjin]

ODST is actually my favorite Halo game (for the campaign). I still have fond memories of going to the midnight release and co-oping through the whole game with my friend in a single sitting.

I think the game does pretty good at getting across that you're MUCH weaker than a Spartan. You lose a lot of basic functionality (can't rip off turrets, no dual wielding) and there's a few subtler things too, like a lot of the staple weapons being missing or downgraded to work better in normal human hands (the pistol isn't a big **** off .50 cal round, it's a much more reasonably chambered weapon), and a focus on stealth as far as the story goes (many weapons come suppressed, and a big deal is made of this in cutscenes).

The ODST are good, damn good even, but they're just humans. The game makes Brutes feel scary again.

[DataNinja]

(can't rip off turrets

Actually, you can. And I did it a lot. Heck, Zodi did it in this video.

Brutes def felt scarier, though. Can agree on that. Same with Hunters. You really needed a second player to help distract the latter.

[LaZodiac]

ODST is actually my favorite Halo game (for the campaign). I still have fond memories of going to the midnight release and co-oping through the whole game with my friend in a single sitting.

I think the game does pretty good at getting across that you're MUCH weaker than a Spartan. You lose a lot of basic functionality (can't rip off turrets, no dual wielding) and there's a few subtler things too, like a lot of the staple weapons being missing or downgraded to work better in normal human hands (the pistol isn't a big **** off .50 cal round, it's a much more reasonably chambered weapon), and a focus on stealth as far as the story goes (many weapons come suppressed, and a big deal is made of this in cutscenes).

The ODST are good, damn good even, but they're just humans. The game makes Brutes feel scary again.

Uh... slight issue here; we do remove a turret from its emplacement in this video. That being said, I'm not gonna write this game off from one experience with it. Who knows, maybe it'll impress me!

[LaZodiac]

Every game I play for this has something go wrong early in the series. ODST decided to go HAM with it's wrongness...

Zodi Plays: Halo ODST [2] What Now?

Video Length: 34:54

In this episode, as we go to resume playing the game, we run into a snag. The Master Chief Collection, when playing Co-op, always says "you will have to restart the current mission, no starting at the last checkpoint". Now, because of the structure ODST has, each "mission", which is to say each individual level of the game, just takes you back to a checkpoint in Mombasa Streets, the hub... but because it's still level based under the hood, that means you're now in "Mombasa Streets" the mission... which means that when you restart it from the beginning of the mission, you restart it from the BEGINNING of... the video game. Oops. Thanks 343.

So with that in mind; we replayed all of the first level again. I made sure to put in anything interesting that happened in, which wasn't TOO much beyond banter about the game and... what may or may not be me suddenly becoming invincible for a time? It's hard to tell, and I think the reason this happened is due to a problem of conveyance ODST has. It was not clear that this game uses a health system like Halo 1, wherein you have a shield (your stamina) and then your fleshy meat points beneath it (your health). This was... not conveyed at all. Then, the sudden jolt of fully healing was accompanied by no actual sound effect, meaning I had no idea what happened... and then, because there is no real clear indicator of how damaged your shields are, I could not tell if the damage I was taking was enough to have supposed to have broken my shields or not. Given the power of some of the things that DID hit me, I'm still unsure what the deal was.

What's fascinating to me though is that, in a game where you are meant to feel less powerful than Master Chief... you are playing as a character who can endure bullets with his raw stamina, who can go toe to toe with the Covenant forces just as well, and is capable of using every weapon he could.

That all being said the actual new content of this video is fun! We have our lengthy walk to the next level which is a little eh, but I actually kinda like the banter, and some of the combat encounters we hit were kind of good. I'm especially interested in finding out what this weird jellyfish covenant is, we have NOT seen those before...

As for the level; it's good! Dutch is a tolerable character (kind of brutish demolition guy) compared to the others that stuck out, and mechanically speaking it was pretty fun. I think Bungie definitely knows how to make fun vehicle levels now. It is strange as all heck he gets a Spartan Laser, and it seems severely depowered, but eh. It's still fun. It does feel weird to have all this dramatic tension in the wake of the level though, given it was basically a pure comedy chapter. And, I'll admit, realizing that the drone is some sort of ODST monitoring agent that is watching Dutch specifically makes it a bit more understandably why interfacing with that gave us a level.

So yeah. That's it for today. As said at the end of the video, this is going to be the last touch of Halo of the Wild. 343's decision making with regards to how to handle multiplayer has completely broken the open world mechanic. The only way it'd be feasible is if we went INTO the next level AFTER recording, so that it'd register that as our current mission... which means it is far more effective to just use Mission Select. Sorry! On the brightside, with the gamma turned up and with the prospect of the Open World being gone, I'm liking the game a lot more!

[DataNinja]

I'm just remembering my friend's reactions to the jellyfish. "AAAAAAAA, what is that??? Is it more flood????? A big slappy boy??? [Flood Infection Form]"

Manually setting waypoints really helps with navigating the map. ...not great to trudge across, but... still.
Oh, you've done that, I see.

...ah, my exact reaction when my friend got a Spartan Laser and I didn't. XD

Fun fact! That Cutscene changes depending on what vehicle you're driving off the cliff with!

[Ninja_Prawn]

It's hard to tell, and I think the reason this happened is due to a problem of conveyance ODST has. It was not clear that this game uses a health system like Halo 1, wherein you have a shield (your stamina) and then your fleshy meat points beneath it (your health). This was... not conveyed at all.

Point of order: the very first in-game tutorial covers this, you just missed it because you were talking to Em. When the Rookie wakes up, he is on half health, then jumping down from the crashed pod depletes their stamina. So the game instructs you to take shelter until your stamina recovers, then tells you to pick up the health pack that's right nearby.

Dutch is fun though, and the vehicles do feel good in Halo 3.

[LaZodiac]

Point of order: the very first in-game tutorial covers this, you just missed it because you were talking to Em. When the Rookie wakes up, he is on half health, then jumping down from the crashed pod depletes their stamina. So the game instructs you to take shelter until your stamina recovers, then tells you to pick up the health pack that's right nearby.

Dutch is fun though, and the vehicles do feel good in Halo 3.

In my defense, I just completely missed the health bar aspect of that.

[DataNinja]

In my defense, I just completely missed the health bar aspect of that.

It's admittedly super easy to miss in the heat of the moment. The red glow is real easy to gloss over, so you see only the bar.

[Lord Raziere]

Halo ODST Log 002:
I mean.....without the Stamina you'd be playing rocket tag. more likely without Stamina, ODST would be more like a stealth game where you creep around shooting things once then going back into the shadows to wait to shoot them again while constantly trying to find cover so they don't kill you in one or two shots, rather than walking through a warzone as if your a badass.

I could see a game like that working. its technically even, how combat with guns is actually supposed to go, and what you do with sniper rifles. But whether shooter genre fans would take kindly to that kind of slow, methodical gameplay is probably not something they were sure about. shooters are all about being an action hero and getting into gunfights you shouldn't be able to survive much less quickly recover from, so if there is a shooter game about being methodical, constantly behind cover and stealth I don't know of it. I wouldn't be surprised if someone eventually makes that someday however if its not already made, and I wouldn't be surprised if it people started calling it "the dark souls of shooters" or if it would play more like a puzzle game with who you shoot first and how you hide so that you can keep shooting carefully chosen shots until they are all dead and game play would be all about managing your ammo. or maybe it would just be skyrim stealth archer but with guns, who knows. All I know is that the Halo franchise is probably never going to be the place for that kind of game.

Keep in mind only ODSTs and Spartans were given access to the Spartan Laser. I looked it up, thats what the halo wiki says. now we can argue whether it ruins the feel or not, but thats the canon. as for the HOW your using a Spartan Laser despite not being a Spartan: See Sergeant Johnson. also its probably a less-powerful model, much like some guns are lower caliber because of recoil.

Well at least you found a solution that works for you, Zodi.

[Rynjin]

as for the HOW your using a Spartan Laser despite not being a Spartan: See Sergeant Johnson.

...Who is a Spartan.

But I mean, it's a laser. Not like there's a ton of recoil to worry about or anything.

[DataNinja]

...Who is a Spartan.

But I mean, it's a laser. Not like there's a ton of recoil to worry about or anything.

Ah, the fun of retcons and stuff never mentioned or referenced in the games themselves, and only external sources.

(Personally, I wasn't planning on bringing it up, because it never matters one jot to anything, and I'm certain was never intended from the start.)

Spoiler: Actual Details for those who care

Show

Basically, Johnson participated in the ORION project that created the SPARTAN-1s. The basic gist is it suffered from a lot of problems. The first batch of 5 died and it was shut down. Then relaunched, and the Spartan-Is (including Johnson) did some typical sneaky super soldier stuff. And then the project was discontinued, because of cost, effort, and the fact that things weren't as effective as they'd hoped. And so the remaining Spartan-Is quietly got shuffled into the rest of the military.

So, that's when they turned to the Spartan II project.

[LaZodiac]

I was under the impression the Spartan Laser was for Spartan's only because it was about as big as, lets say, an entire small human adult. Kinda need to be a super soldier to hold this bad boy.

[DataNinja]

I was under the impression the Spartan Laser was for Spartan's only because it was about as big as, lets say, an entire small human adult. Kinda need to be a super soldier to hold this bad boy.

Spartans aren't that tall. They're "only" around 6 and a half feet. Though, definitely still decently hefty. Probably like, a child.

[Lord Raziere]

I was under the impression the Spartan Laser was for Spartan's only because it was about as big as, lets say, an entire small human adult. Kinda need to be a super soldier to hold this bad boy.

Yes it was originally created for that purpose.

however looking deeper into it, the reason why its initially made for the Spartans is not because its big or anything....but according to the sources I can find, its the most prohibitively expensive small arms firearm the UNSC has ever produced, and later iterations were all about making it cost less, more efficient, not mentioning anything about how big it is. so it seems to be more of a case where, the Spartan Laser was so expensive at first, they only made it for the best of the best so they can use the darn thing in the best possible way. normal humans could always wield it, it was just never worth the money and time to give it to anyone who wouldn't be able to kill a lot of covenant with it because if it was wasted, that would be a lot of money down the drain.

here is its measurements:
Length: 38.9 inches (99 cm) - 47 inches (120 cm)

Width: 7.7 inches (20 cm)

Height:15.4 inches (39 cm)

Weight:
Empty: 19.07 kilograms (42.0 lb)
Loaded: 20.4 kilograms (45 lb)

so according to this, the Spartan laser is either about 3-4 feet long, with a height of 1.3 feet, width of about half a foot, and weighs 20.5 kilograms when fully loaded, without much difference when not loaded.

now lets figure out what real life humans can lift: the average human will struggle to lift 45 kilograms over their head, but the record overhead lift stands at 263.5 kilograms, with human weightlifters nearly five or six times stronger than the average person.

the Spartan Laser is 20 kilograms, which is less than half of 45. the answer varies as it can depend on the circumstances and weight, but it is generally within the range of something that someone can lift, if edging up on the limit of what is considered reasonable, which is about 22kg. for the average person its possible, just heavy. for the best of the best like ODSTs and Spartans who for sure have gone athletic training to get physically fit and probably has heavy weapons training to deal with equipment like this? perfectly possible.

[Ninja_Prawn]

I was under the impression the Spartan Laser was for Spartan's only because it was about as big as, lets say, an entire small human adult. Kinda need to be a super soldier to hold this bad boy.

Also the visual style of it, in terms of the shape and colour, clearly resembles the Mjolnir suits that spartans wear. It does feel weird to me to see a non-spartan weild it, though clearly this particular ODST team is on some kind of special mission for ONI, so it would make sense that they'd be given the best eqipment.

[DataNinja]

Also the visual style of it, in terms of the shape and colour, clearly resembles the Mjolnir suits that spartans wear. It does feel weird to me to see a non-spartan weild it, though clearly this particular ODST team is on some kind of special mission for ONI, so it would make sense that they'd be given the best eqipment.

It does imply that they'd've been trained with it before, though.

I've never really felt the dissonance, but mainly because "cool laser gun" overwrote all.

[LaZodiac]

I'll be honest every time I'm reminded that the quasi good guy military spy group is one letter off but still sounds the same acronym wise to the company run by the main villain in my novel, I roll my eyes.

[DataNinja]

I'll be honest every time I'm reminded that the quasi good guy military spy group is one letter off but still sounds the same acronym wise to the company run by the main villain in my novel, I roll my eyes.

...yes. Good guys. That's entirely them. Honest.
(Let's just say the EU makes it very clear that they're no angels.)

[Lord Raziere]

Yeah, ONI aren't good people. They're on the side of humanity's survival, not goodness.

[Rynjin]

Eh, cutting them some slack, there's a certain amount of ruthlessness that should be expected (and forgiven) when the survival of your entire species is at stake.

Then again, IIRC, they initially started the Spartan program to fight some kind of human separatist group, so it's more a matter of "Boy, somehow all that evil turned out pretty swell in the grand scheme".

[Lord Raziere]

Eh, cutting them some slack, there's a certain amount of ruthlessness that should be expected (and forgiven) when the survival of your entire species is at stake.

Then again, IIRC, they initially started the Spartan program to fight some kind of human separatist group, so it's more a matter of "Boy, somehow all that evil turned out pretty swell in the grand scheme".

Your being too kind.

these idiots continued their actions after the war ended and only made things worse, and one of their failed experiments included try to control the Flood, and one of their quotes consist entirely of how all four to five divisions lie to each other for no reason. only some of their actions make any sense, others are just "why haven't we killed these people and replaced them with a competent black ops?"

[Rynjin]

Your being too kind.

these idiots continued their actions after the war ended and only made things worse, and one of their failed experiments included try to control the Flood, and one of their quotes consist entirely of how all four to five divisions lie to each other for no reason. only some of their actions make any sense, others are just "why haven't we killed these people and replaced them with a competent black ops?"

Yeah, the last Halo game I played was 4 (and I kinda hated it, so I never finished the campaign), so I don't know anything about that. Never bought an Xbone. I'll take your word for it.

I might try my hand at re-reading the novels some time though. I remember most of them being good, even if the first one is literally "Ender's Game, but XTREEEEME!!!".

[DataNinja]

Anyways, not getting into EU stuff that Zodi hasn't touched on yet...

Yeah, the last Halo game I played was 4 (and I kinda hated it, so I never finished the campaign), so I don't know anything about that. Never bought an Xbone. I'll take your word for it.

I might try my hand at re-reading the novels some time though. I remember most of them being good, even if the first one is literally "Ender's Game, but XTREEEEME!!!".

Most of them are quite good, at least until they started getting into post-3 Era. I really did like the first book, even if just for Supersoldier Shenanigans. The Cole Protocol is another of my favorites.

Anything that happens post Ghosts of Onyx though is... meh at best. And even that is ehhhhhhh. There are some writer biases there and in the Kilo-Five series (which started out not bad, but... ergh.)

Anyways, that's the most I feel comfortable saying until The Time Comes(tm).

[LaZodiac]

And so, we a heavy heart... we throw away the open world gameplay and enter the phase of ODST where it's just a bunch of short vignette length levels.

Zodi Plays: Halo ODST [3] Tanks A Lot

Video Length: 14:19

So it turns out that, without 30 minutes of wandering through a hard to see, random encounter laden death city, that Halo ODST is immediately a much funner game. It doesn't hurt that the level we're playing is one where a character says "yeah we'll go, but only as long as I get to drive the tank" and then you get to drive a tank and it is amazingly fun because the Scorpion Tank kicks ass.

I actually kinda like Mickey from what we've seen of him too. He's a hot shot but clearly the youngest of this group, can't/won't swear despite this being an M Rated game, and generally enjoys heavy weaponry. My kind of rat, if we're being honest. They also do some work towards making it feel like he and Dutch are friends, due to a shared appreciation of Tank and Explosion, and because Dutch is a big gruff religious guy so of course he's gonna be friends with the younger recruit. That's just "writing an enjoyable military unit" 101. Usually the religious status is the young guy's domain and when he dies tragically the big one takes it up symbolically, but inverting it here could be fun.

I don't believe we'll really see the depths of what these characters could have, unfortunately, due to the... lets say truncated nature of the video game both in design and by our unfortunate necessity, but hey. They're trying. It matters!

Anyway, hope you all enjoyed! We'll see you all next time for more ODST.

[DataNinja]

That's one nice thing about ODST: they put some work into at least setting the foundations for some nice character interactions. Feels like the precursor to some other stuff that we'll see when the time comes. So, definitely is a little... half-baked, but it's a decent foundation.