Category Archives: Game Logs

Allied Races

With the recent reveal of World of Warcraft: Dragonflight I started thinking about how much I missed WoW. As many MMOs as I’ve played, I still love the high standard of polish that, until relatively recently, I associated with Blizzard games, I still love how buttery smooth the game feels, and most of all, I still love the core lore of the Warcraft franchise.

“Raining hell with Gallywix’s G.M.O.D.”

Against my better judgment, I hopped back into “retail” restarting an unfortunate cycle that I’ve been stuck on for quite a few years now. That is, when a new expansion is announced I get hyped up for it, reactivate my account, and try to catch up on the previous expansion’s content until I get burnt out again, usually just before (or just after) the new expansion actually launches. Case in point, I logged in to discover my “main” still where I left him when I got burnt out at the end of the Battle for Azeroth Alliance campaign, and my new Horde “alt” that I created when Shadowlands was announced that I had created to familiarize myself with the changes to the game before diving back in with my main, left in the middle of a zone less than half way through the Battle for Azeroth Horde campaign. Doh.

This time would be different though. This time I had a goal: allied races. Allied races are a feature that was added to the game with the Battle for Azeroth expansion. Essentially, Blizzard added what would eventually become 5 new races per faction. Most of these new races were more or less reskins of existing races, but alas, as someone who likes to stand out in my online games, I was very interested. Unfortunately these races needed to be individually unlocked through achievements which almost all included lengthy quest lines and/or reputation grinds. Still, I figured I could focus on a few of the ones I was most interested in. That never happened.

With Shadowlands, the reputation grinds were removed and the option was added to simply skip quests that required dungeon content. Nice! I decided I would make it my goal with this return to Azeroth to not unlock one, but all of the allied races.

I wish I had kept a more detailed journal of my progress, as it occurs to me now that this could actually be pretty helpful to a lot of people. I can at least recount the journey in general. First, one small tip. The addon BtWQuests can be extremely useful for keeping track of the multiple questlines required to unlock each races. Even using it, things still got a little confusing for certain quest lines and achievements, so I can’t recommend it enough. You’ll need both the Battle for Azeroth and Legion versions. Anyway, here’s how it went…

“All allied races unlocked! A Mag’har Shaman on display.”

First I returned to my main Horde alt. I picked a Hunter for this class specifically because of how easy yet capable they are to play, so this character was the logical selection for getting re-reacquainted with the game without rolling yet another new character. First, I realized that I was already eligible to unlock the Highmountain Tauren due to questing in that zone in Legion with my main. Next I finished off my questing in Nazmir and then headed to Vuldun and more or less finished off the base Horde campaign. The Vulpera were unlocked from that alone. Then I finished the base Horde war campaign plus some of the later war campaigns to complete Tides of Vengeance, and then completed the final Zuldazar quests, unlocking the Zandalari Trolls. I’d already completed Ready for War on my main, and finishing it off for my Horde character meant I also unlocked the Mag’har Orcs.

Finally, the most grueling part of this was heading back to the Broken Isles from Legion to unlock the Nightborne. I had never played through Suramar back when Legion was current, nor had this character ever set foot in the Broken Isles, so I had to essentially start from the beginning and go through innumerable quests with sometimes little to no “breadcrumbing” to follow. I did encounter one reputation gate, which was with the quest “Uniting the Isles” which requires you to get to friendly with all of the major factions of the Legion campaign. Luckily with flying unlocked, it was quite quick to head to each zone and grind quests for just long enough to hit friendly, with only Stormheim giving me any issues. Despite how much effort the “Insurrection” achievement took, I actually really enjoyed the lore behind the Suramar questlines, never mind the unique city itself.

Victorious, I headed back to my old main and went with a similar strategy. I’d go ahead and finish off the base Alliance campaign by completing the last little bits of Stormsong Valley. I’d already earned Ready for War on this character, so the Dark Iron Dwarves were available without any real work. I then finished off the war campaign and portions of the later war campaigns for Tides of Vengeance, then completed the final Tiragarde Sound quest lines to at last unlock the Kul Tiran Humans. Next I learned I needed to play through a good part of Nazjatar in order to unlock the quest to get me to Mechagon Island. I’d never seen either of these zones when originally playing Battle for Azeroth so this was an interesting diversion and I’m tempted to return to finish both zone’s quests, but it didn’t take too long before I had Mechagnomes unlocked.

“The Kul Tiran druid forms are some of the coolest.”

As with the Nightborne, I now had to head back to Dalaran to start the Legion Argus quest lines. At least this time between having played much of Legion previously on this character and having just completed some related quests on my Horde alt, I was able to head to Argus without too much effort. I hadn’t been to Argus before now, and always being intrigued by the Draenei, the Naaru, and the Light in general, I was looking forward to this, but found myself rushing to grind through these quests without too much investment in the story, unfortunately. Finally, completing most of this story granted the You Are Now Prepared! Achievement, unlocking both the Lightforged Draenei and the Void Elves.

Once you meet the requirements to unlock an allied race, you still need to do a questline associated with each one kicked off in the embassy in the capital cities of each faction. In some cases these are quite quick, while in some others they’re fairly involved, but none are difficult. Some, like the Vulpera’s for example, were quite fun, while others will be essential for lore nerds. Once completed you’ll unlock the race, their associated achievement, and be given their race specific mount. With that…

Success! So, what will I actually do with my new found power? Well, more alts of course! I actually had vague plans to play through some old campaigns a second time with some variety of Mag’har Orc, and a Lightforged or Dark Iron Paladin could be fun, but my immediate plans were for a Kul Tiran Druid and a Mechagnome Monk. In fact, I already started my Kul Tiran Druid and headed into the Legion campaign so I could jump right into the Druid class hall, which I’ve been enjoying immensely so far. When it comes to my Monk, I’ll likely bring him through the classic Catalyst zones since that particular ridiculous race and class combination seems hilariously incongruous there.

One thing is for sure, over a year and a half later and I still haven’t even stepped foot into Shadowlands yet. Maybe I’ll keep up with tradition and wait until just before Dragonflight is released. *shrug*

Halo Fest 2020 – The Fall of Reach

Released as a bonus for pack-in for the limited edition of Halo 5: Guardians and later on disc and streaming services, Halo: The Fall of Reach is a three act animated movie based on Eric Nylund’s novel of the same name. Personally, having not followed the release of Halo 5, I had no idea this was even a thing until I started my research for Halo Fest 2020, but it seemed significant enough for me to cover here, and, surprisingly, I’m actually glad I did.

“John and his friends having some teenage fun.”

Halo: The Fall of Reach is reasonably faithful to the book its based on while also taking elements from the 2012 Marvel Comics adaptation with a handful of other changes along the way. Oddly, this new adaptation only covers the first half or so of the book, leaving out the titular, you know, falling of Reach part. Actually, it seems pretty clear to me that a lot of these changes were intended to focus more on the members of Blue Team as featured in Halo 5 itself, allowing the movie to serve as their introduction and contextualizing their relationship with Master Chief for players who hadn’t read the novels. For me, it also helps explain why so many fans of the novel were disappointed with the otherwise excellent Halo: Reach.

Since we’re already on the subject, and this is backstory told out of chronological order anyway, let’s get into the plot synopsis. While this is fairly vague, it absolutely contains spoilers. Skip the next paragraph if you want to avoid that sort of thing.

The Story: Dr. Catherine Halsey is searching colonies for child candidates for the SPARTAN-II program, a secret initiative to create super soldiers that could turn the tide against an ongoing insurrectionist movement. On Eridanus II she meets a child named John and quickly recognizes his potential. ONI agents abduct John and 74 other children, replacing them with barely functional “flash clones” to cover their kidnappings. At a UNSC academy on the colony planet Reach, the children are run through exhaustive training covering military theory, tactics, and history, along with physical and team building exercises. John, designated John-117, stands out from his peers and is soon promoted to squad leader. Years later, the SPARTAN-II cadets undergo a series of physical augmentations and chemical treatments to improve their senses, reflexes, musculature, and physical growth. A staggering 36% of the cadets do not survive the process. Later, John and four of his classmates are sent on a clandestine mission to kidnap an insurrectionist leader, with their success serving to help justify the existence of the program. Not long after, first contact is made with a hostile alien force known as the Covenant who seem intent on wiping out humanity. Dr. Halsey and the Spartans are transported to Chi Ceti IV aboard the UNSC Commonwealth when the ship is intercepted by a Covenant vessel. With the Commonwealth barely fending it off, the Spartans make it to the surface where the new Mjolnir power armor is tested on them for the first time. A success, the Spartans are assigned their armor and begin training with it. With the Covenant ship returning to face the Commonwealth a second time, John-117 concocts a plan to get behind the ship’s shields, board it, and detonate a nuclear warhead from within. The team fights its way inside and successfully plants the warhead, though one of its members, Sam-034, sustains heavy damage to his armor and volunteers to stay behind to buy his teammates time to exfiltrate. Flashing forward a number of years, the members of John’s original fireteam meet at the site of the academy on Reach, now in ruins after the planet was “glassed” by the Covenant, in memorial to their fallen teammate.

“Dr. Halsey reaping what she’s sown.”

Having never read the novel, I knew a lot of the generalities of what was covered here but not many of the details. Actually seeing the child abductions, training and augmentation deaths, and even the gruesome way that Mjolnir armor testing was depicted was much more effective than I would have expected. It was also interesting to see the (somewhat) original way Dr. Halsey was depicted versus how she was presented in Halo: Reach, Halo 4, and Halo 5: Guardians. You also have the remember that the original novel was very much written to be the backstory for Halo: Combat Evolved, so it’s chock-full of a lot of the context that is, well, frankly just missing entirely from the game: who Master Chief is and why he’s so exceptional, both as an individual, and as a Spartan, and where humanity is at this point in its war with the Covenant, for instance. As a long time Halo fan, it’s pretty cool to go back and geek out over this stuff all these years later.

As for this particular production, it’s… eh, decent. Visually, I think I could describe it best as looking a lot like a motion comic that has been upgraded to have an actual animation budget. This isn’t too surprising given that the studio who made it, Sequence, also helped make most of the motion comic-like cutscenes in other Halo games, like those from the terminals in Halo: CE Anniversary and Halo 4, as well as the cutscenes in the Spartan Assault and Spartan Strike games. This doesn’t sound like the strongest praise, and it definitely isn’t, but it’s better than it sounds and I think it works well enough for me. On the audio front, Steve Downs plays older Master Chief and Jen Taylor plays Dr. Halsey, giving the whole thing a much needed direct connection to the games. We also have Tom Salta returning from his work on Spartan Assault and Spartan Strike to compose the soundtrack. Not bad all around.

“SCPO. Mendez sits the kids down for story time.”

As a whole, I was surprised with just how much I enjoyed Halo: The Fall of Reach and turned around and bought a copy of the audiobook almost immediately after finishing it. While I’m sure I’ll end up enjoying the book much more, I’m going to have to rank this one up with Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn as an actual half-way decent attempt at a Halo movie. Interestingly, a lot of Halo fans seem to think this is the story to make a big budget adaption of, so even if the new Halo series seems to have veered off in an entirely different direction, it seems possible we may return to the Fall of Reach again at some point in the future.

Next up, as we finally near the end of this series, we return to the UNSC Spirit of Fire with Halo Wars 2. I’m looking forward to it!

Halo Fest 2020 – Guardians

With my decision to skip out on the Xbox One meaning I’d likely never play Halo 5, I stayed oblivious to both the considerable amount of pre-release hype and the immediate post-release criticism around the game. That’s not to say I don’t know anything about it as these days it’s difficult to find yourself in any sort of Halo community without stumbling across a ridiculous meme bashing Spartan Locke. Indeed, the game has a remarkably terrible reputation, often slated for having the worst campaign of any of the mainline Halo games. This means I was totally intrigued to finally play it, but my expectations weren’t exactly high.

“Guns down in Sanghelios.”

Graphically, the Halo franchise’s entry into the 8th generation definitely didn’t disappoint and of course Halo 5 continues the tradition of featuring levels that span across diverse environments which helps showcase this, the awesome “glassed” moon Meridian and the beautiful Elite homeworld Sanghelios being particular standouts. Quite a nice looking game with all of the little touches and polish you’d expect from the series. Technical fidelity aside, 343 Industries continued the stylistic overhaul they started with Halo 4, bringing more of an overall cohesion to the designs of the UNSC. Some of these changes, such as with my beloved Scorpion tank, were perhaps the biggest departures from Halo: CE yet, while still quite respectful of their classic designs. The Covenant and particularly the Prometheans were similarly given a fresh coat of paint.

Things fare a little worse when it comes to gameplay. For the first time in Halo Fest 2020, I was struck by how different Halo 5 felt to play. It’s hard to describe, but it didn’t quite feel like Halo anymore. It was as if the series was moved to a new engine without much care being put into trying to replicate the feel of the previous one. On top of that, the overhauls I mentioned above didn’t stop with the graphics, with many weapons being heavily reworked as well. The classic Assault Rifle / melee combo I’d used as my crutch in literally every game since Halo: CE no longer felt quite as effective. Of course, I quickly got used to all of this and adapted, but I have to imagine that this is a big part of why fans heaped so much praise on how Halo Infinite feels to control.

“Atomizing a Promethean Soldier with a Splinter Turret.”

Gone are the armor abilities that had been evolving since Halo 3, replaced instead with some inherent “Spartan Abilities”. You can now sprint at will, have built in thrusters to propel you directionally, and you can also perform special charge and ground pound attacks. The charge in particular is used a lot in the campaign to break through walls, unlocking secret stashes or alternate routes. There’s also a new ledge grab, which improves jumping and climbing quite a bit. I’m honestly not sure how “Halo” it all feels, but you’ve definitely got dramatically more maneuverability than ever before. Not technically a Spartan Ability but “assassination” melee moves are also a prominent part of the game now too. Another core change is that all weapons have an “aim down sight”-like system of zooming which is helpful without going all the way into Call of Duty territory.

Speaking of weapons, new to Halo 5 we have the tracking UNSC mini rocket launcher, the Hydra, the Covenant Plasma Caster, which is kind of a combination of the old Concussion Rifle with an alt-fire mode that charges up to fire a high damage projectile, and the Promethean Splinter Turret, which feels like some sort of cannon, and I absolutely grabbed it every time I had the opportunity. They also replaced our beloved SPNKR missile launcher with a totally new model that tracks like in Halo 2. On the vehicle front, the most notable additions are the UNSC Wasp, yet another Hornet and Falcon like aircraft, and the Phaeton, something of a Promethean equivalent. As mentioned, quite a lot of the weapons were tweaked and adjusted, with the Promethean weapons in particular being heavily altered. While I might prefer the old Suppressor, at least it feels like a distinct weapon now.

“Chief finally meets the Warden.”

Oddly, the difficulty struck me as a bit more brutal than the last few games. Playing on “Heroic” as usual, I felt like I could be killed in only a few shots, encouraging further engagement distances and a bit less aggressive play than usual for me. When things did go pear-shaped, my squadmates could usually be trusted to save the day and revive me. That is, for the first time in the Halo series, every single mission has you running as part of a four person fireteam. You have a single context sensitive button, being able to order them to go to a particular location, get in a vehicle, pick up a weapon, engage an enemy, etc. This works reasonably well, but is a far cry from the highly tactical experience I first dreamed of when hearing about Halo: Reach, largely thanks to the AI squadmates being absolute blithering idiots. At least they give us plenty of banter during missions…

The missions themselves are quite quick. If I hadn’t been obsessively scouring every map for hidden intel and skulls I think I would have wrapped up Halo 5’s campaign in record time. This wasn’t an issue for me though; the game was paced with a momentum that never left me ever stopping to wonder if I was bored, even with the addition of a few new “guns down” areas where all you’re expected to do is wander around and talk to other characters. Really, my only major complaint around the campaign structure and level design is with the repeated Warden Eternal boss fights, and even if it was a bit repetitive running into this goon over and over again, the fights were at least a fun challenge.

“Filling a Promethean Knight full of lead.”

Since I griped about them quite a bit during my Halo 4 post, I should mention that the Prometheans have been pretty thoroughly reworked. Knights are now mini-bosses, complete with a “shoot parts off their armor” mechanic for taking them down, and they, along with the Watchers, appear a lot less frequently. Crawlers also appear a lot less, and in much smaller groups when they do. Instead, the Promethean roster now includes a new type of humanoid robot called a “Soldier”. Soldiers can teleport, though not as a frustrating way of fleeing from firefights as with Halo 4’s Knights, and they can wield a variety of weapons, including the above mentioned Splinter Turret. All in all, this version of the Prometheans is far less of a chore to fight and personally, I’m pretty damn happy about that.

So, by now I must have mentioned at least half a dozen things that you might imagine could be responsible for the derision this game constantly gets from the Halo community, but not so fast! I think it’s time for us to talk about Halo 5’s story. Since I feel the need to nitpick it, and from Halo 4 on the games are only loosely connected anyway, I’m going to go ahead and summarize the plot right here. As usual I’ll keep it somewhat vague, but this, as well as the two paragraphs after it, will definitely contain spoilers. Skip the next three paragraphs if you want to avoid them!

“Fireteam Osiris heading towards a distant Forerunner Guardian.”

The Story: Spartan Fireteam Osiris, led by Spartan Jameson Locke, is dispatched from the UNSC Infinity to rescue Dr. Halsey from Covenant faction leader Jul’Mdama. Once planetside, the Spartans find that the Promethean and Covenant forces have turned on each other. Taking advantage of the chaos, Osiris eliminates Jul’Mdama and his retinue and successfully extracts Halsey. Meanwhile, the Master Chief and his fireteam “Blue Team” are conducting a routine mission when the Chief sees a vision of Cortana, who gives him a cryptic message about the planet Meridian. Deciding to investigate instead of returning to the Infinity, Blue Team are listed as AWOL. Arriving on Meridian, Osiris tracks Blue Team to a Forerunner structure housing a Guardian, massive Forerunner ancilla built to police entire systems. Soon after, Osiris catches up to and briefly confronts Blue Team, but they’re able to escape onto the Guardian, leaving Osiris to hastily flee the structure and later the Meridian itself as the Guardian activates and jumps away to devastating effect. Blue Team arrives on an unknown Forerunner planet where Guardians from all over the galaxy are gathering. There Master Chief reunites with Cortana, who shares that when the Didact was defeated his ship performed an emergency jump to this planet, Genesis, where she was able to join the Forerunner data network, the Domain, curing her of her rampancy. She also reveals her plan to take up the Forerunner’s “Mantle of Responsibility” herself, enforcing a new era of peace across the galaxy, seemingly accepting the death and destruction this will inevitably cause. Eager to show Master Chief that her plan will work, she places Blue Team in stasis. Aboard the Infinity, Halsey hatches a plan to hijack a dormant Guardian located on Sanghelios, the Sangheili homeworld. Despite being embroiled in a civil war against the remnants of Jul’Mdama’s Covenant, the Arbiter and his Swords of Sanghelios get Osiris to the Guardian just as it is about to jump away. On Genesis, Osiris, with the help of the planet’s caretaker AI, 031 Exuberant Witness, is able to wrest control of the planet’s systems away from Cortana, freeing Blue Team in the process. Cortana and her fleet of Guardians jump away to continue with their plan. Some time later, with innumerable AIs joining her cause, Cortana and her “Created” begin disabling ships and other technology all over the galaxy, sending the UNSC Infinity on the run.

From the cutscene at the beginning, which is the most over the top depiction of Spartans I’ve seen since “The Package” in Legends, I was bracing for the worst, but thankfully I found most of the claims of the story being a train wreck to be hyperbole. I think my aforementioned low expectations helped a lot, but, despite so much of the story between Halo 4 and Spartan Ops as well as other crucial background information (like who the hell Blue Team actually is, for one) being left to the most dedicated Halo fans to discover via novels and comics, I was able to follow the plot reasonably well. I admit, I was disappointed that the events of Spartan Ops were wrapped up in such an unceremonious way, but I’d probably be even more bummed out to have never played through Spartan Ops and have no idea why Halsey was hanging out with the Covenant and missing an arm, if I even knew who she was in the first place. Regardless, while there are many signs that maybe the game had been rewritten perhaps one too many times and I’m absolutely certain that a closer examination of the game’s plot would reveal it to be a swiss cheese of much more disconcerting plot holes, there are some very cool ideas here.

“That actual main character of Halo 5, Spartan Locke.”

A much more immediate issue is Halo 5’s dialog. I can generously interpret that 343 intended to depict Blue Team as “quiet professionals” but Master Chief hardly says anything and half of the little he does say is, well, just kind of stupid. It’s easy to imagine that after the traumatic loss of his only companion after so many months fighting the Covenant on his own he’s chosen to lose himself in his work, but the game doesn’t make any effort to show us that, and that is an example of what people really mean when they say Halo 5’s writing is bad. Cortana is the real standout to me though, as her physical depiction, voice acting, and even her behavior (like cruelly mocking the members of Osiris towards the end of the game) barely resemble the Cortana we know. Sure, this could be explained by everything that happened to her since Halo 4, but it just feels… off. Speaking of Osiris, it’s absolutely mind boggling that, after the well-known fan backlash over playing the Arbiter for a third of the game in Halo 2, 343 would have us playing Locke and Fireteam Osiris for all but three of the 15 missions in Halo 5. *facepalm*

While I could go much, much further, this is already getting too long. I actually enjoyed the game quite a bit more than I was anticipating. Still, it fails to continue Halo 4’s character development of either Master Chief or Cortana and it fails to wrap up the events Spartan Ops set up in any meaningful way. Indeed, it also sounds like, despite introducing a huge new threat and ending on somewhat of a cliffhanger, it doesn’t connect in an important way to the story of Halo Infinite either. So, while maybe Halo 5 might not deserve every bit of the ridicule it gets online (and indeed, much of the community was quite fond of its multiplayer, and its Forge is supposedly incredible) that doesn’t exactly make it an impressive entry into the series either.

To briefly carry on the tradition of talking about live action media around the series, the “Hunt the Truth” campaign advertisements The Hunt Begins, All Hail / The Cost, and A Hero Falls set up a seriously epic showdown between the Chief and Locke, which, yeah, isn’t even close to what happened. Ooops! What was it I said about too many rewrites again?