Our Non-Spoiler Impressions of Halo Infinite & FFXIV: Endwalker | Dropped Frames Episode 296

4 thoughts on “Our Non-Spoiler Impressions of Halo Infinite & FFXIV: Endwalker | Dropped Frames Episode 296”

1. I couldn't disagree more with the opinions on Halo Infinite. Mostly regarding the writing and open world. I think it's widely agreed upon that the core gameplay of rooty tooty point and shooty is phenomenal and probably the best halo combat has ever been. I love to just zip zoom around and shoot grunts because of how stupid fun it is.

   Now I don't think what I am about to say will be spoilers for the story, unless you have context, but to be safe, don't read ahead if you don't want any spoilers at all.

   The writing in this honestly reminded me of Rise of Skywalker, where the writers tried to "fix" the issues of the last installment while relying too much on fan service to win people back, but ultimately making nothing of substance and being too safe.

   I was super interested in the story, up until the last quarter. The writing left me disappointed, made me scratch my head trying to figure out how certain characters know things, wondering why and who wrote certain things, like how a character who suffers from great fear and anxiety and had been alone with those things for many months, is suddenly cured and all heroic because of one line. And the story led me to believe certain characters major decisions ultimately meant nothing and were pointless. And another thing, can anyone tell me where the Banished came from, their backstory, who the "endless" are, what race one of the main characters is and the motivations of some characters, without listening to audio logs? They put all these major character points in audio logs, or leave it to other games to explain, rather than explain in the main story like a any good writing would.

   Regarding the open world, it doesn't detract from the game, but it doesn't add anything either and there feels like a major disconnect between the open world and the story. Nothing you do in the open world affects the story, the things you accomplish are not even mentioned. The marines you save serve no purpose aside from getting unlocks. There is no great "silent cartographer moment" where you go charging in with marines. There is no major character representing the marines and Chief doesn't interact with any of them. It feels like the Devs thought of the grapple hook first then thought, "we need an open world to make this work" when I think it could have been fine in a linear game with the right development.

   Imo the writing in this is marginally better than Halo 5.

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2. I don't agree with Cohh's definition of a bug.

   A bug is not just an error. It is an error that happens in unintended or unexpected ways. If it was a bug, it would not have an error code, because the error code shows that it is a known/expected thing, and the error handling is booting people from the queue.

   Error 2002 is intended behavior, which is not great ofc. I don't know enough about server infra-structure to give input if that is actually fixable when the scale is world-wide MMO

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3. If queues are an issue, play it during the morning stream instead of using the Cohhzy ones..

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4. Because of the boss and vehicle issues I’ve stuck with heroic difficulty and had a great time. Challenging but it hasn’t felt totally BS

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