Its amazing that bungie considered halo 2 to be a failure, due to the amount of content they had to cut, and yet remains the favorite of most fans to this day.
honestly, i agree becaus ethe multiplayer carried halo 2. i do not think anybody would be talking about halo 2 if it didnt have one of the best multiplayers in the series. the story is great, but executed like wet paper because the locations feel like you are teleported to random scenes connected only by the story instead of fighting through the world like in the rest of the halo games. not to mention the gameplay for some of the enemies are absolutely awful (sniper's, tartarus, etc). edit: i still agree with what i said but andy beautifully explains what i disagree with convincingly. it makes me appreciate halo 2 for what it does right instead of focusing on what it does wrong. its a rough game but its not like its 100% awful. its just not good to play for the first time
@@Sockrenobviously halo is synonymous with halo live multiplayer, but H2 has the best campaign in the series. Halo 2 speed running is still hugely popular
from fresh eyes that campaign is very evidently rough, I got that same feeling of wanting them to wrap it up in the second half as I did playing the library for the first time. the nostalgic superfans will hate me for it but marty was right
@@Oppen1945 I think it's fair to assume the pacing would have been different without the cuts, maybe not making it my favorite game ever but an improvement for sure.
It 100% could be nostalgia, but as a kid playing Halo 2 for the first time, hearing Blow Me Away play during the fight between the Brutes and Elites REALLY hit home how intense a moment it was both narratively speaking and for gameplay. The game trained me to recognize that when the guitars kicked in, something BIG was about to or currently going down.
it's not nostalgia, that scripted trigger wasn't by accident and it was nearly the first of its kind. a modern comparison is ace combat 7's mission 19 where Daredevil hits climax when the boss's shield is disabled
As a kid I used to boot up a halo flash game that had Blow Me Away Playing on a loop (didn’t know how to make TH-cam playlists at the time lol) and would listen to that for hours as I played Republic Commando and Battlefront on my craptop. Good fucking times dude.
Another reason why Halo 2 seems flat is because they designed the entire game thinking the stencil engine and shadows would be around and create these beautiful dynamic lights. However when they realised there would be no stencil shadows it was too late. They didn't have time to rebuild everything from the ground up.
yup. ruby's rebalanced h2 will be using those dynamic shadows (not stencil shadows) to somewhat get the effect back along with other mod tool improvements. with this mod's release, we will finally have the ultimate cut of h2, which IMO could only be topped by the full addition of Covenant Ship and Forerunner Tank.
@@ugoboom You should also give Halo 2: Uncut a play. It's mostly gameplay alterations that reflect Bungie's original intentions, but there are some areas that include dynamic lighting, most notably on "The Arbiter" and "The Oracle", in the ramped hallways leading to and from the Seraph fighter bay.
Longest review/retrospective I’ve ever put out. I thought Halo 2 deserved it, especially for its 20th anniversary So enjoy it a day early. Have a great weekend, lads
Andy - you want fun replay while keeping it fresh. Try mods like spve3 for hale ce and the mythic campaing overhauls. They add a ton of new fun and breathe a life of fresh air into them.
LOVE the touch of Marathon music throughout the video by the way. Been listening to those tracks and playing the games more recently. Definitely noticed a lot of inspiration from Marathon's art styles integrated into Halo the more I play both.
Great video. I appreciate your audio. It’s mixed well and not too plosive or poppy with fricatives. Your volume levels are consistent and the music is audible but not distracting. I relate to your experience and perspective with halo 2. I started to appreciate halo 2 almost ten years after it was out. All the praise you shared in this video I agree with. I have some memories when Halo 2 released, but I didn’t really appreciate it. I played Halo 3 for years, but I grew up playing World at War, Modern warfare 2 and black ops. When I played co-op campaign for the first time with some friends I understood how historically significant the game was for storytelling. Playing the campaign on halo 2 on legendary with some friends is one of my favorite memories from growing up. I hope people can have a similar experience like I did years ago with a bunch of friends on a couch just hanging out and handing off a controller hoping my friend would get through a section I couldn’t. I doubt video games and the industry around it will allow for a game that gives an experience like halo ce, 2, or 3. It’s good that it happened and I got a taste of it though.
I've noticed that whenever you show h2 footage on the mcc and then switch to og Xbox that the original looks so much better. mcc has done a terrible job at restoring the original. The color grading and bloom abysmally washed in the mcc, it's starting to make sense how people all the sudden are hating on halo 2s graphics, cuz their only experience with the game is from mcc and not og, and if they have played og they haven't for a really long time
Great job on this, very few 3 hour retrospectives are ACTUALLY deserving of that run time. You have something genuine to say with every minute of your time.
I love the Arbiter as a character and its criminal that he took a back seat for Halo 3. Also wished we could have had a better "forerunners are humans" reveal that could let that realization sink in, especially for Arbiter himself. Still one of the best shooters ever made. A fun fact after watching through, Halo 2 did actually have a small balance patch after it came out. And Foundation was originally unlocked by beating the campaign, seeing as it was a Marathon map remake, it was more of an easter egg, but the patch auto-unlocked it. If only pre/post game lobbies were still a thing...
Yeah Jamie Grissemer felt like the Forerunner reveal didn't make much sense for Arbiter since Arby's an alien and it's not as impactful and you'd have to think about everything the Covenant was as a religion (or something like that, can't remember exactly) and that's why they did the Spark reveal instead in H3 where Spark says it to Chief. He's mentioned this on Twitter. But honestly I think he IS wrong on that, because he missed the point. It absolutely does make sense for Arbiter, because the whole game has been following the Arbiter's personal journey. It's not necessarily about the reveal itself - it's about the Arbiter as a character. It's the ending to his story. It's the Arbiter learning that humans are Forerunners, the same race he's been genociding. Everything he had done for the Covenant for that point had been a complete lie. It's a final nail in the coffin that the Great Journey is a complete lie to him. Spark says that his "makers died - as planned". But words can only mean so much. When you have physical evidence however staring at you right in the face... Imagine what the Arbiter must have been feeling at that point, seeing that human skeleton and knowing that's a Forerunner.
Arby fell victim to several factors. He was initially disliked and him getting the flood levels didn't help his reputation much. His story also mostly concluded within Halo 2. Truth is left to be dealt with but there aren't any big revelations or questions left. I think he still does pretty cool stuff in 3, it's just him being controlled by the AI he can act stupid lol
Honestly think that it wouldn t make much sense considering that his story was for the most over at that point. The only thing left was killing truth witch he got to do.
Being called a bungie fanboy is weird to me cuz bungie made and popularized halo to begin with, ofc youre a fan of bungie if youre a fan of halo. They literaly made the damn thing
Not to mention, they literally made console FPS's. Halo CE came out when it was still common knowledge that first person shooters were literally never going to be viable on a console. Every single one before Halo was looked at as a crappy cash-grab port, almost akin to a movie tie-in game. And as if that wasn't enough pressure on Bungie, Microsoft had to go and make it THE launch title for the Xbox. Bungie didn't just create the franchise, they opened a whole new genre to consoles, AND launched... and carried... the first generation of one of the biggest consoles of all time
Wait wtf, Dee Bradley Baker is the Gravemind? You're telling me that the guy who voiced every single clone in Star Wars The Clone Wars is literally the voice of a hivemind? That's kinda ironic.
The guy who made every single clone in that terrible retcon mess of a show sound super corny is the Gravemind. Dude has range and is a good voice actor but he's the worst thing to ever happen to the clones in Star Wars.
3:45 Yeah this bothers me so much. Halo doesn't get the same discussion or love that other games get when it comes to conversation about it. Which unfortunately leaves a void for the discourse which then leads to 343 twitter shills that will try to gaslight and claims these games were overrated or bad. Just because they really dislike the early 2000s era of gaming. We need more halo videos that go into detail of what makes it good. Instead of the latest shop update for infinite.
Just finished playing the Halo 2 campaign with a friend who has never played halo before... It is not just nostalgia. The excitement he had when first playing the Arbiter, the shock at the Gravemind... man it is like playing it for the first time again back in 2004.
We had the opposite feeling. First mission as the Arbiter made us not like the game. Then the cliff hanger ending. We just had to be the aliens, felt like we were finally getting the Spartan payoff level when credits started rolling.
I think this might be your best work yet. I'm 31, so I experienced the Halo 2 zeitgeist at 11 and my god, what a time. It's not just nostalgia to say how impactful Halo 2 was and the amount of hours we put it with friends through lan parties. It was an absolutely revolutionary title with an amazing campaign, cliffhanger withstanding. You nailed it with this one, great job ❣️
Love watching these retrospectives. Me and my brother got h2 the Christmas year it released, we were both pretty young and 20 years later I still distinctly remember how surprised we were at the arbiter mission reveal and how cool it was. Now we’re both in our 30’s and he lives on the other side of the world with his family so we hardly see each other, but I’ll always remember these little moments we shared as kids so h2 will always have a special place for me forever.
This is easily the most well-put together retrospective on this game, and I really appreciate that you give a lot of insight, not only just the game from its ins and outs, but everything that surrounded it from Bungie, and the community also. I wish more Halo retrospective are more like it with how rich this franchise's history is that I feel gets overlooked overtime. I hope to inspire that with the vids I want to create one day. :)
I remember being excited for halo 2 after playing CE as a kid and absolutely loving it; campaign, multiplayer, everything about it. Thinking back on it as a 28 yr old man, it's both heartwarming... and bittersweet.
Reading First Strike like 8 years after Halo 2 and learning Johnson’s true survival story is so funny to look back on. I always believed (even after the lore was in the public) that Johnson really did just activate plot armor.
5:24 unfortunately, a familiar of line of thought also present within the halo community, specifically the 343 era fans. Many of them have shown disdain towards them for two frankly asinine reasons. One reason is that the Bungie era halo stories were not lore filled plots with “deep” characters. I encountered an idiot on social media that unironically thought that Halo Infinite was better than Halo CE because infinite has more lore and “better” gameplay. The plot of bungie era halo isn't meant to be a “deep” slop that Redditors eat up because it mentions multiverse theory. Halo was meant to be a space opera set in one of the most grounded hard sci-fi settings in fiction. A sort of modern Star Wars if you will. A sizable portion of the 343 era fans that despise the Bungie era stories, only consume halo media from books and never even played the games. They even have the audacity to claim to be big “fans” and understand Halo better than the very team that developed the original games. The other argument relates to gameplay. Many of the 343 era halo games grew up during an era where games and media in general were becoming much faster paced than what was developed pre 2010s for a variety of factors (one of them being shortened attention spans). This results in the 343 era developed games being design to not just follow trends, but also to be much faster paced than the Bungie era games ever were. Resulting in Halo “fans” that dislike the pre 343 developed games for not being direct copies of other modern shooters such as COD. But yeah, that's all I got to say about this issue. Don't get me started on how 343 bungled the handling of the forerunners.
343 fans are almost entirely compised of nerds who spend their free time reading snd editing halo wikis. The Greg Bear books and forerunner retcon are the biggest indicators that 343 never "got" halo is a series where the setting is the main character
343's handling of the Forerunners, alongside the shit stories they have told with their mainline games, is the reason why their contributions to the series should be considered as nothing more than fanfiction. Real Halo ended with Reach (which tbf had its own problems lore-wise but nothing as egregious as what came after it and CAN be reconciled).
the "faster" title that they claim new halo has is just a placebo for the most midwit of gamers getting played by companies that realized just having a dedicated lateral momentous movement option and shaky camera with speed lines will make a gamer feel like the game theyre playing is faster then it actually is. there is alot more to speed then going faster from a to b in an animation lock where you cant make turns or anything else basically
When I used to play through this game on Coop with my uncle, he would actually have us both jump off the cliff at the end of the fight just to relisten to blow me away. And play the segment again😂
I know games nowadays require a heck ton of people working on it, but damn the Halo 2 OST works so well compared to modern titles also because Marty was audio director as well. What we hear was perfectly conceived and crafted for those specific moments. And every specific moment hits the landing, every single time.
1:13:29 I keep telling everybody, Halo CE legendary cutscene shows Johnson and the arbiter hug while the ring explodes, and splits off into multiple pieces, arbiter gets launched all the way back to high charity and Johnson gets launched all the way to Earth. It's classified because it sounds absurd but it cannon because it sounds awesome.
I relate to you so much being a “older zoomer” I was late to halo 2 but it’s always been probably my favorite game of all time. Its story and gameplay have crafted what my taists are as an adults. Me and my dad would play the campaign together when I was little and just recently I gave it a legendary play through and I still love it
You know, I never noticed the stuff you said about the Covenant being an Empire in decline before. But it makes sense. A 25 year campaign of extermination against another galactic species probably sucks up a ton of resources. Most of the food they get goes directly to the ever expanding front. And they can't forage or harvest on the human worlds because they glass them the moment they find them and strip them bare of Forerunner tech (also an expensive endeavor since they have to fight the humans to get to it). This is not a war being fought strategically and thoughtfully. And the Covenant Empire is paying the price.
Not really, it would be cool to think that, but according to most of the expanded lore (i.e the novels), the Covenant wasn't even stressed by the War of Annihilation against the humans, they were devoting a tiny portion of their total fleet to each space battle, and even stuff like First Strike and blowing up the factory that Truth was using to build another invasion fleet to get to Earth, they weren't really bogged down - what put the nail in the coffin was the Great Schism, since the Elites had the majority of the fleet and were by far superior ship/fleetmasters than the Brutes.
i will stand by this to the day i die that the anniversary graphics for 1 & 2(to a lesser extent) are way too busy and overdone, even the music is too grandiose. the songs are mastered so poorly some tracks even redline i think they should’ve just upscaled and touched up the old graphics instead of re doing them
I hate anniversary weapon designs and sound designs. Most are Reach assets and the new sounds are awful or straight up sound nothing like the original.
Halo 2 anniversary is too busy, to bright and hard to see things. I never got why people LOVE it and give it endless praise. Even when you shoot guns, the flare makes it so the lighting darkens and you can barely past the bullets firing in a direction. Particularly the BR Carbine Plasma Rifle SMG
God like video! I'll never forget experiencing this for the first time with my dad, especially Xbox Live. Fun fact about the early external bands, in the IGN interview with Marty O'Donnell he talked about how Nile Rogers heard Halo 1's music because Maroon 5? was playing it and decided to get in contact with him/Microsoft to get Halo CE's soundtrack released and supply Marty with any talent he'd want to have come on for Halo 2. John Mayer, Incubus, Hoobastank and Steve Vai came ready to go, especially with the former three being fans of Halo 1. John Mayer just wanted he gamertag in the credits as he didn't want to get agents and contracts involved.
Sad day being born in 2003 halo 2 looked so fucking good back then and the marketing gives me chills on my butt cheeks. People that got to experience this beautiful game are lucky and I’m happy they got to enjoy the hype
Finally, someone who uses classic Halo 2 graphics in their videos... It always irked me whenever people would use Halo 2 Anniversary footage. While, sure, it's pretty on its own in certain spots, it always just looked weird to me when thinking about the classic graphics. Nostalgia and being so used to the classic graphics is probably a big part of it, but it always felt like there was more to it, and this video explained it pretty well without going into much depth (though I'd love to see that). It also pains me because so many people nowadays shit on the classic graphics, but they forget that the game was released in 2004 on the same engine as Halo CE on the Original Xbox. Hell, I'd say for a game that released on the Original Xbox just 3 years after the release of Halo CE, it looks pretty damn good. The designs of the environments and Covenant species especially shine. The graphics seriously need more appreciation, even if it looks awkward in some aspects. It just adds to the charm of the game and shows the early 2000s' influence.
You really did call the Halo cycle spot on with the last video. Seeing the hype from a rebrand is crazy. Halo after bungie has been the idiot that keeps falling for the get rich quick scams of the industry. Well, I guess the fans are for constantly falling for it.
It doesn’t hurt to hope that the game franchise you love can make a comeback. And imo, compared to the previous promises of better games, i have more faith this time purely because most of the upper management is gone and there is potential of something different this time Naive sure but I rather hope for the best
@@theprototype1995 i dont get it, personally. This rebrand means nothing. The management are the same people who ran 343 post-layoffs, for what, a year now? I dont think halo will ever make a comeback.
Halo 2. I had that at launch as a kid. I never got to play the MP online, but I played the hell out of it, it's easily one of my favorite campaigns, despite the issues. The wizardry Bungie pulled off on the OG Xbox was astounding to me.
Crazy to think Halo 2 turned 20 this year... wonderful review Andy! Happy to see your work in my feed be it by recommendation or subfeed (I missed it sadly) but every time a smile grows big each time. I hope you have been well.
I remember my first Halo being Halo 2 because I rented a copy of CE at a blockbuster before it closed, close to my house. When I headed back and opened the case, a Halo 2 disc was in the case. and didn't even have to return because the blockbuster was closed down.
This is an amazing retrospective. Amazing production value. Also I’ve played halo 2 many times and yet I seem to miss the fact that high charity is grimy and how the brutes line up”my belly aches” was set up showing that the covenant was already failing on its own. I wish I was there for the launch and early days of the game but no I was born in a time to be perfectly set up to be a reach kid. But I look back at halo 2 and I see it as a perfect gem along with ce,3 and reach (along with odst and wars) halo 2 like you said had an insane scip but I’ve always thought that it was for the best the way it turned out, to live in a universe without halo 3 as it is would suck
Who remembers the stupid Mastodon « custom game mode » where you had to obey a Master by crouching in front of him and trying to assassinate him cowardly ?
Whenever you get to the closing parts of your videos for Halo, I breakdown crying man. You put it into words that no one else can do or where others can't find them. I still remember the first time I saw Halo 2, when I saw that ship blow up in space because of that bomb... I felt like I was on another level of gaming. In fact looking at Halo 2 feels like I got teleported back in time to the memories. I could only experience Halo by going to one of my crappy cousin's house. It's the only reason I would wanna go as a kid, despite that dude sucking I just wanted to play Halo.
As someone who’s about twice your age, I can say that meaningful critiques/retrospectives of the series are hampered by the perception of the community, especially by the thoughtful types who make good content of that kind. But there’s so much brilliance in the series, especially in the early games, not to mention the massive influence it had in figuring out online play and matchmaking.
I never heard of that interpretation that the covenant was in decline but now that you say it, it’s so obvious For me I originally thought it was the shock of there most holy sites being destroyed that gave everyone a reason for why they acted as they did
been replaying bungie halos nonstop. haven't touched 343 halos since buying 4, never mind that i never bought anything 343 past 4 given how dogshit they are
4:30 absolutely. Dont subscribe to these low tier sensation farming channels with no good insight or understanding of halo. Check out channels like shredded nerd or conrads multiplayer analysis videos, c3 sabertooth too, these should all be mandatory viewing
Saying the anniversary graphics are better is like taking a iPhone picture of the sky and saying its better than Van Gogh's Starry Night cause it's more realistic
The Blur cutscenes' art style is really the best Halo and maybe any videogame has ever looked. However with the in game remastered graphics, they are quite flawed just like the og H2 graphics, and it really depends from place to place which graphics are better, whereas this video cherrypicks the good from og graphics and the bad from new graphics. Except for when he talks about High Charity, there he's just wrong. He reads in an artistic meaning that wasn't intended and doesn't even make sense, the idea that the Covenant is falling apart, that one Brute saying he's hungry means that the whole Covenant must be hungry, and that would somehow reflect on the highest levels of society looking grimy and grey. No the game just looked bad, or should I say not as good as Bungie intended. They didn't get their lighting engine right. Given the fact Truth was intending to leave the Covenant for dead, maybe he saw it as a lost cause that would inevitably collapse, and maybe you could see that by going into the more common areas, but that's not where you are in the High Charity missions.
2:56 oh my, you did not just use the track " Swirls " from Marathon One in this video hahaha I love that game so much. Beautiful easter egg, man! Edit: I just finished this amazing video. Thank you, Andy.
Hey, thanks for this awesome deep dive into Halo 2! Really love your video essays, especially your Halo and Lost Planet videos. Your intro really resonated with me, since I'm in a similar place. I'm also a (much smaller) video essayist, on the older gen Z side. I missed the games in their prime, but last year I dove really deeply into the campaigns and came to understand what made each game in the series so special. It was one of the most rewarding experiences I've had on TH-cam so far. Not to shill my own channel, but given what you said in your intro, I think you would appreciate those videos. Either way, I appreciate the content, and hope you have an awesome weekend!
I really, really, really, really love the arbiter's story. A lot of people I think say it's good and don't think about it past the vibes. But and maybe this wasn't what Joe Staten and Bungie wanted his and the elites story to be interpreted as but I've always taken it to be a cautionary tale about how the people that lead you will use the things you love and are important to you to lie and lead you to do things that are wrong and cloud your ability to see that you're doing the wrong thing. And even lead you to tragedy as everyone follows until they can no longer believe the falsehood fed to them. Again maybe that's not what bungie meant with the story but that's always how I interpreted it. Another thing is how I think way too many people think Halo 2 is an allegory for the war on terror and overstate the commentary about religion in these games.
The flood could have easily been a replacement imo. However, the combat gameplay would be radically different. The flood would be similar to the demons in Doom 2016/Eternal A hive mind that possesses the mind, skills, and battle knowledge of its host? Yeah, the flood could have easily been a replacement. You have so many unique character designs and gameplay encounters with the flood -floodified marines, elites, grunts, pure forms etc…Doesn’t have to be that frantic as D2016 and DEternal, but just let the flood have similar combat encounter design to the covenant. Don’t make them rush the player, lean into that push and pull gameplay. There were already shades of that in H3 with more ranged flood types. Tankers are similar to the hunters…you get my point. I would’ve liked to see it.
Saying breaking Benjamin received mixed receptions in halo 2 is straight heresy. You couldn't go anywhere without hearing blow me away and seeing Amvs of halo with the song or flash animations during the day. Nobody today hears that sing and doesn't instantly think of halo 2.
This was fantastic. And the crazy thing is, there’s still even more you could have talked about. I hope you go this in depth for Halo 3 as well. I’d love to see that video.
Imo modern gaming has been plagued with so many cancerous things that prevent it from reaching the heights of the 360 days. SBMM, censorship, forced ideology, overly-competitive game mechanics, lack of fun modes/features, difficult or nonexistent community features, and over-monetization to name a few. We've strayed so far from the days of the "virtual couch" that made old gaming incredibly fun. Now gaming feels more lonely than ever, and developers actively discourage you from playing with the same people, talking, or making friends. There's no pre/post game lobbies to make conversation and every match is filled with new people due to their implementation of SBMM. Even playing with your irl friends is damn near impossible due to the strict SBMM (even in casual lobbies). It's not fun to play a game where you have to carry your friend who is constantly getting destroyed or vice versa. I think a lot of game developers fundamentally forgot that video GAMES are supposed to be fun first, competitive second. I don't think any of use knew how good we had it back then...
Halo 2 was the game I always wished to own as a young kid, but played religiously at a friend's house. When I finally got a 360 at age 13, I started with Halo 3. Halo 2 though, now, is a story that inspires me to this day!
52:00 "It feels like this was a real structure Bungie built and carved out full with corridors" My absolute favorite aspect of Halo I never hear about from anyone, Halo 3 does this with the first half of the game, too, which I LOVE! And if we look into cut content for 3, seeing Forerunner City (and the sneak peak we had at how genuinely insane they were in designing that to live up to the City description, seriously the block-out file we saw felt unreal)
When I moved from Xbox to pc I was itching for halo so I came across project cartographer and the small but dedicated community there made me feel what I missed in og halo 2
HALO 1 and. 2 were great!!!!!... But, Halo 2 represented the beginning of the end of concentration on the 'single-player' experience, towards 'online' play. To this day, I'm still not an online guy. HALO 3 was it for me.
I wasnt old enough for halo 2. Grew up on halo reach and halo 3 one of the first games i ever owned i remember playing the life out of it even tho i was 4 or 5 years old i was absolutely obsessed with them. When i got to around 14 i bought an og xbox as i got a thing for console collecting bought halo 2 started playing it on a friday and was just gobsmacked considering i grew up playing games like bo2,portal gears of war 3 (i think so long ago now) in that golden age of xbox 360 with so many hit classics. I was blown away by the soundtrack the gameplay the missions just absolutely everything with it was so amazing. You could see within the first 30 mins you were hooked and I was. I couldn’t imagine how amazing it was to play online at that time. You can feel the love for this. Words cant describe that very first time playing though it was only 6 or 7 years ago now it definitely was one memory that sticks out being so positive. I was always an xbox fan boy just from nostalgia i was once again shown why i love xbox and will continue to no matter what thank you bungie for all those amazing memories during my childhood.
I was still gaming on the OG Xbox when the 360 and PS3 were a few years in since their launch. My Dad was coming home from a trip so he asked what kind of games and Xbox I had specifically. When he got home he handed me Halo 2 and Scarface:TWIY. This was a time when Gamecrazy was around and pawnshops had an abundance of old games. I know I was very late to the party, but hell I was happy I finally got a copy of H2. I spent countless hours playing and being immersed into the story. The gameplay, music, etc. The times I would simply sit and listen to the menu music before I continue the journey. Finishing the fight. Halo 2 is solid. It’s beautiful.
I cant stand when someone posts a “Why Halo CE (or 2/3) is so Good” video and all they do is explain the campaign level to level. So stupid. I think Noodle has a great video about Halo CE though cause he actually talk about the substance of the game (AI, Atmosphere, Music, art design, etc.)
I almost cried when i played mcc multiplayer for the first time the other day and there were people shit talking me and having their mic on the whole game. I missed halo so much i didnt even get enough sleep for today cuz i kept saying '1 more game 1 more...' they need to make future games more social im so sick of games feeling like youre in a fucking court room
1:13:00 I think what makes Johnson so beloved is its captivating to have a 'ordinary' person navigate extraordinary situations. Its why the first die hard hits us so well. He's not a superhero. He's just a cop in the wrong place at the right time. Same with Johnson. He survives in a place where mostly only the master chief. A supersoldier with armor and shielding survived. Obligitory: yes. I called a marine ordinary. Go frolic in oceanside and scream about how you're not ordinary you're marines
2:56:00 this right here is what made Halo 2 great. It was the socializing that came from as you said it - "most peoples first online multiplayer shooter" especially on consoles. You racking off the names of game modes 10 seconds later actually hit me like a truck in my chest. I haven't heard of some of those game types in decades. I always talk about Infection coming from Halo 2, HOURS long games of ToP and of course Troy. You saying Cops and Crooks and Cat and Mouse is like that scene from Ratatouille where the food critic eats the Ratatouille and gets sent back to when he was a child. I was there sitting on my futon at 10 years old bullshitting with people twice my age in college or working full time jobs, but we were all just having fun playing stupid custom games. That's what truly made this game great and it's something I could never put my finger exactly on. Yeah the GAME was amazing, I loved the campaign and the game-play and multiplayer but the online experience was magical. The early days of console online multiplayer before we hit the event horizon with party chats, Social media, Dicord's and Skill Based Matchmaking. The overarching sense of community. Regardless of if you liked to sweat it out and get mad after you lose a ranked Team Slayer or play customs games until your eyes hurt and you contract "Halotosis" we all just wanted to have FUN. I whole heartily agree - "Don't be sad that it's gone, be glad that it happened"
Fantastic in depth review of my favorite game of all time and as you said at the begining there are very few in depth analysis of the halo games and are just considered cool and the discussion ends there so it's great to see someone do this. Hope to see this level of deep analysis for the rest of the franchise and i am glad someone loves halo 2 as deeply as i do.
Halo 2 is really great, but my opinions on it has changed throughout the years. I played Halo CE first, but it was only several months before Halo 2 dropped and when it did, it became MY Halo game. Lately though, I tend to revisit Halo CE more often. Halo 2 makes a lot of improvements on the level design and the wider variety of locations (fuck me if I didn't spend hours at a time in a Banshee just flying around the Threshold Gas Mine, marking down the locations I'll get to later on), but CE just has better enemy AI. But I love Halo 2 for its story and energetic world-building. In Halo CE, we don't know much about the Covenant or the Forerunners but that's okay, because it was told from the Humans' perspective and they're noobs to the Galaxy. They don't even know much about the Covenant either, despite being at war with them for decades (though later media would revise this). But in Halo 2 we take on the role of the Arbiter and in doing so, we get a glimpse of a vast Universe that exists outside of Humanity's narrow field of view and turning Halo into more than just a game about blasting aliens in outer space. What you said about Halo 2 having an underlying feeling of futility fits, but only if you look at Halo 2 on its own. When you look at the story of Halo as a whole, from Reach to CE, 2 ODST and 3, it tackles really dark subject matter but has an underlying sense of humor, hope and optimism. The sacrifices made by heroic characters can and do make the world a better place. We see this in the past with the Forerunners, who sacrificed their entire civilization to stop the Flood, but lived on to become Humanity; and we see this in the Epilogue to Halo Reach, where after the tragedy of the Human-Covenant War, humans have survived and returned to Reach to rebuild and reclaim what was lost. Great video, and I'm glad you gave so much love to the Threshold Gas Mine, it is definitely my favorite location in ALL the Halo games put together.
When i played Halo 2 for the first time this year after CE i wasn't expecting that you not only play the Chief but also the Arbiter. I was blown away you get to play him. Also i'm young and i played Halo for the first time this year, and i'm glad i did.
Finally finished this, and as someone too young to have experienced Halo at its prime, this was amazing. I sat down 3 hours ago just planning to watch a little bit and ended up hooked all the way through. My new favorite video from you and easily one of the best video essays I have ever seen. I really wish I could have been there to experience Halo 2 in all its glory.
One of the main problems I have with the 343 trilogy is that they treat like the original trilogy almost never happened, there are few, if not at all many references to the almost complete extermination of all of humanity, which would have lasting impact on the Shanghelia that allied with the Unsc. Somehow they manage to recover from that fact in only just 4 years, feels super just convenient. So many comparisons can be used from Disney star wars trilogy, each release of game/movie feels super disconnected from each other. And don't forget the lies that 343 kept giving.
So happy and proud to call myself a halo 2 vet. Used to play halo 1 with buddies all on the same tv. My fav gaming era of all time. Proud I made it to the mid 30s ranking on matchmaking before the modders soft capped you.
the issue with halo 2 is that imo its the only game that understands the brutes in regards to design in a good way. what makes the covenant so alien is that well, they look alien. grunts, elites, prophets etc all look alien and not like anything on earth. but for most of halo brutes just look like gorillas or in the case of reach just space orcs. halo 2 having the brutes with these slopped komodo dragon like faces that stick out from the head, they look alien.
I’m 26 and remember playing this with my brother when it came out played this and Mortal Kombat Shaolin monks and both are golden games I’ll always love
I hope you will do a similar video for Halo 3. Bungie really double downed on making a game for a large, diverse community by expanding existing features, such as custom games and adding new features such as forge mode and theater mode. Halo 3 was such a juggernaut in terms of features in an FPS game, compared to its contemporaries.
I still remember being at Blockbuster the night this came out, I was struggling to make a selection when one of the workers comes and put this on the shelf, all i could think about at school the next day was getting home and playing.
3:54 I remember hearing that it's harder to praise a piece of media and show the good in it than it is to criticize and show the bad in a piece of media so that's probably the reason why most people shy away from doing it
Great video bro, I am at the same spot and glad that I dont feel I was the only one that I was too young to experience the peak halo experience. Still have my halo 2 copy from +10 years ago.
heck yea, looking forward to this... this game is literally responsible for my current life... if anyone cares to show some love, i'm the developer of repuls io, a web based halo inspired fps.. i know its janky but hey, i'm a solo dev and i guess i like to compare myself to the olden days of bungie when they were just friends banging out awesome ideas... oh how i wish i had a friend or 2 as passionate about this as I was as I really believe people would appreciate a modern game that has that classic halo feel
It’s weird looking back on this through your eyes, so to speak. I was 22 years old when H2 dropped. I definitely remember the massive release event that happened back when TrU was at TS. I skipped over halo because I didn’t have an Xbox. I wasn’t interested. And I was more interested in what would be releasing on PC that next week. But I can commiserate with the feelings you describe in the intro. For you it was Halo, for me it was Street Fighter 2. Oh man… and because of that, I can completely understand and appreciate how this game makes you feel. Great job.
im not a halo 2 campaign fan, but you beautifully described why somebody who loves it loves it. i thought of it as a great story, but it felt like you didnt know any of the locations. i just knew i was in forerunner areas or on earth or on a halo ring, but never really knowing why or when you were there unlike the rest of the halos. now that i understand the locations from this video i can appreciate it. especially the delta halo theory and what the hell is going on in the quarantine zone.
What a lucky coincidence I decided to play all original Halo games on Halo 2 20th anniversary. It's been a blast and H2 is what I'd consider the perfect sequel, despite cuts. My third favorite Halo game, after ODST and H3.
![Halo Infinite is a Hilarious Mess - Review [1/2]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/mjDftHRrJgs/mqdefault.jpg)
![Halo Infinite is a Hilarious Mess - Review [1/2]](/img/tr.png)
Don't be sad it's over, be happy it happened and you were there.
Wise words to live by brother
I was too busy... being a newborn
Good thing the MCC exists.
@@peanutgallery4real asf
Best midnight release ever!🥲
Its amazing that bungie considered halo 2 to be a failure, due to the amount of content they had to cut, and yet remains the favorite of most fans to this day.
honestly, i agree becaus ethe multiplayer carried halo 2. i do not think anybody would be talking about halo 2 if it didnt have one of the best multiplayers in the series. the story is great, but executed like wet paper because the locations feel like you are teleported to random scenes connected only by the story instead of fighting through the world like in the rest of the halo games. not to mention the gameplay for some of the enemies are absolutely awful (sniper's, tartarus, etc).
edit: i still agree with what i said but andy beautifully explains what i disagree with convincingly. it makes me appreciate halo 2 for what it does right instead of focusing on what it does wrong. its a rough game but its not like its 100% awful. its just not good to play for the first time
@@Sockrenobviously halo is synonymous with halo live multiplayer, but H2 has the best campaign in the series. Halo 2 speed running is still hugely popular
My favorite game ❤❤❤
from fresh eyes that campaign is very evidently rough, I got that same feeling of wanting them to wrap it up in the second half as I did playing the library for the first time. the nostalgic superfans will hate me for it but marty was right
@@Oppen1945 I think it's fair to assume the pacing would have been different without the cuts, maybe not making it my favorite game ever but an improvement for sure.
This is the best marathon 5 video of all time
"Finally, some good fucking Halo games."
- Gordon Ramsay probably
Your pfp is really interesting
@@kestrel4360 schizofrenic
It 100% could be nostalgia, but as a kid playing Halo 2 for the first time, hearing Blow Me Away play during the fight between the Brutes and Elites REALLY hit home how intense a moment it was both narratively speaking and for gameplay. The game trained me to recognize that when the guitars kicked in, something BIG was about to or currently going down.
it's not nostalgia, that scripted trigger wasn't by accident and it was nearly the first of its kind. a modern comparison is ace combat 7's mission 19 where Daredevil hits climax when the boss's shield is disabled
As a kid I used to boot up a halo flash game that had Blow Me Away Playing on a loop (didn’t know how to make TH-cam playlists at the time lol) and would listen to that for hours as I played Republic Commando and Battlefront on my craptop. Good fucking times dude.
Another reason why Halo 2 seems flat is because they designed the entire game thinking the stencil engine and shadows would be around and create these beautiful dynamic lights.
However when they realised there would be no stencil shadows it was too late. They didn't have time to rebuild everything from the ground up.
Yeah. I was looking for a comment talking about this. Thank you for providing some context
yup. ruby's rebalanced h2 will be using those dynamic shadows (not stencil shadows) to somewhat get the effect back along with other mod tool improvements. with this mod's release, we will finally have the ultimate cut of h2, which IMO could only be topped by the full addition of Covenant Ship and Forerunner Tank.
Oooh I didn’t know about this, I love Rubys rebalanced mods
@@ugoboom You should also give Halo 2: Uncut a play. It's mostly gameplay alterations that reflect Bungie's original intentions, but there are some areas that include dynamic lighting, most notably on "The Arbiter" and "The Oracle", in the ramped hallways leading to and from the Seraph fighter bay.
Longest review/retrospective I’ve ever put out. I thought Halo 2 deserved it, especially for its 20th anniversary
So enjoy it a day early. Have a great weekend, lads
I was 3 months old when Halo 2 came out and it’s still my favorite minus sacred icon 5/10 yap session +5 if it was longer
Andy - you want fun replay while keeping it fresh. Try mods like spve3 for hale ce and the mythic campaing overhauls. They add a ton of new fun and breathe a life of fresh air into them.
LOVE the touch of Marathon music throughout the video by the way. Been listening to those tracks and playing the games more recently. Definitely noticed a lot of inspiration from Marathon's art styles integrated into Halo the more I play both.
Great video. I appreciate your audio. It’s mixed well and not too plosive or poppy with fricatives. Your volume levels are consistent and the music is audible but not distracting. I relate to your experience and perspective with halo 2. I started to appreciate halo 2 almost ten years after it was out. All the praise you shared in this video I agree with.
I have some memories when Halo 2 released, but I didn’t really appreciate it. I played Halo 3 for years, but I grew up playing World at War, Modern warfare 2 and black ops. When I played co-op campaign for the first time with some friends I understood how historically significant the game was for storytelling.
Playing the campaign on halo 2 on legendary with some friends is one of my favorite memories from growing up. I hope people can have a similar experience like I did years ago with a bunch of friends on a couch just hanging out and handing off a controller hoping my friend would get through a section I couldn’t.
I doubt video games and the industry around it will allow for a game that gives an experience like halo ce, 2, or 3. It’s good that it happened and I got a taste of it though.
I've noticed that whenever you show h2 footage on the mcc and then switch to og Xbox that the original looks so much better. mcc has done a terrible job at restoring the original. The color grading and bloom abysmally washed in the mcc, it's starting to make sense how people all the sudden are hating on halo 2s graphics, cuz their only experience with the game is from mcc and not og, and if they have played og they haven't for a really long time
20 fkn years... I cant believe how old I am now.
Random 3.5 hour Halo retrospective... this is why I am subscribed
Your mixing of OG Xbox footage and modern PC footage is fantastic.
Great job on this, very few 3 hour retrospectives are ACTUALLY deserving of that run time. You have something genuine to say with every minute of your time.
I love the Arbiter as a character and its criminal that he took a back seat for Halo 3. Also wished we could have had a better "forerunners are humans" reveal that could let that realization sink in, especially for Arbiter himself. Still one of the best shooters ever made.
A fun fact after watching through, Halo 2 did actually have a small balance patch after it came out. And Foundation was originally unlocked by beating the campaign, seeing as it was a Marathon map remake, it was more of an easter egg, but the patch auto-unlocked it. If only pre/post game lobbies were still a thing...
Yeah Jamie Grissemer felt like the Forerunner reveal didn't make much sense for Arbiter since Arby's an alien and it's not as impactful and you'd have to think about everything the Covenant was as a religion (or something like that, can't remember exactly) and that's why they did the Spark reveal instead in H3 where Spark says it to Chief. He's mentioned this on Twitter.
But honestly I think he IS wrong on that, because he missed the point. It absolutely does make sense for Arbiter, because the whole game has been following the Arbiter's personal journey. It's not necessarily about the reveal itself - it's about the Arbiter as a character. It's the ending to his story. It's the Arbiter learning that humans are Forerunners, the same race he's been genociding. Everything he had done for the Covenant for that point had been a complete lie. It's a final nail in the coffin that the Great Journey is a complete lie to him. Spark says that his "makers died - as planned". But words can only mean so much. When you have physical evidence however staring at you right in the face...
Imagine what the Arbiter must have been feeling at that point, seeing that human skeleton and knowing that's a Forerunner.
Arby fell victim to several factors.
He was initially disliked and him getting the flood levels didn't help his reputation much.
His story also mostly concluded within Halo 2. Truth is left to be dealt with but there aren't any big revelations or questions left.
I think he still does pretty cool stuff in 3, it's just him being controlled by the AI he can act stupid lol
Way more criminal that he was completely ignored in every game set after that 💀
Honestly think that it wouldn t make much sense considering that his story was for the most over at that point.
The only thing left was killing truth witch he got to do.
Halo 3 wouldve been better with more arbiter involvement
2:21:59
Neat, it's cool to finally hear the context behind this promo image. It was my desktop for years during the 2000s.
Being called a bungie fanboy is weird to me cuz bungie made and popularized halo to begin with, ofc youre a fan of bungie if youre a fan of halo. They literaly made the damn thing
Not to mention, they literally made console FPS's. Halo CE came out when it was still common knowledge that first person shooters were literally never going to be viable on a console. Every single one before Halo was looked at as a crappy cash-grab port, almost akin to a movie tie-in game. And as if that wasn't enough pressure on Bungie, Microsoft had to go and make it THE launch title for the Xbox. Bungie didn't just create the franchise, they opened a whole new genre to consoles, AND launched... and carried... the first generation of one of the biggest consoles of all time
fanboy applies to those praising destiny which is a overmonetized, souless, inferior product.
Wait wtf, Dee Bradley Baker is the Gravemind? You're telling me that the guy who voiced every single clone in Star Wars The Clone Wars is literally the voice of a hivemind? That's kinda ironic.
He also voiced most of the zombies in L4D
The guy who made every single clone in that terrible retcon mess of a show sound super corny is the Gravemind. Dude has range and is a good voice actor but he's the worst thing to ever happen to the clones in Star Wars.
@@PANCAKEMINEZZ Mad about a 2008 kid's show award
@@PANCAKEMINEZZclone wars was dope and you know it was
@@bryanleslie2617 no tf it was not lmfao it reads like filonis fan fictions
3:45 Yeah this bothers me so much. Halo doesn't get the same discussion or love that other games get when it comes to conversation about it. Which unfortunately leaves a void for the discourse which then leads to 343 twitter shills that will try to gaslight and claims these games were overrated or bad. Just because they really dislike the early 2000s era of gaming. We need more halo videos that go into detail of what makes it good. Instead of the latest shop update for infinite.
Just finished playing the Halo 2 campaign with a friend who has never played halo before... It is not just nostalgia. The excitement he had when first playing the Arbiter, the shock at the Gravemind... man it is like playing it for the first time again back in 2004.
I just played with a friend through CE and 2, she’d never really played games like that, but loved going through the series with me. It was fun
So awesome, you guys sharing the ol' Halo 2 experience with a friend, in this year of 2024!
We had the opposite feeling. First mission as the Arbiter made us not like the game. Then the cliff hanger ending. We just had to be the aliens, felt like we were finally getting the Spartan payoff level when credits started rolling.
@@buddyfett1341 Oh come on, the Arbiter was awesome. His levels were a bit weaker from a game play perspective but the narrative was top notch.
I was there midnight 2004. You just had to be there
Thank you for your service, fren. (^ ^)
I think this might be your best work yet. I'm 31, so I experienced the Halo 2 zeitgeist at 11 and my god, what a time. It's not just nostalgia to say how impactful Halo 2 was and the amount of hours we put it with friends through lan parties.
It was an absolutely revolutionary title with an amazing campaign, cliffhanger withstanding. You nailed it with this one, great job ❣️
Love watching these retrospectives. Me and my brother got h2 the Christmas year it released, we were both pretty young and 20 years later I still distinctly remember how surprised we were at the arbiter mission reveal and how cool it was.
Now we’re both in our 30’s and he lives on the other side of the world with his family so we hardly see each other, but I’ll always remember these little moments we shared as kids so h2 will always have a special place for me forever.
This is easily the most well-put together retrospective on this game, and I really appreciate that you give a lot of insight, not only just the game from its ins and outs, but everything that surrounded it from Bungie, and the community also. I wish more Halo retrospective are more like it with how rich this franchise's history is that I feel gets overlooked overtime.
I hope to inspire that with the vids I want to create one day. :)
Oh, Halo 2 video, those are rare, this is going directly into my "EPIC and Interesting Stuff" playlist.
Bunkerdweller is my fav 343 fan
I remember being excited for halo 2 after playing CE as a kid and absolutely loving it; campaign, multiplayer, everything about it. Thinking back on it as a 28 yr old man, it's both heartwarming... and bittersweet.
Amazing review btw.
Reading First Strike like 8 years after Halo 2 and learning Johnson’s true survival story is so funny to look back on. I always believed (even after the lore was in the public) that Johnson really did just activate plot armor.
5:24 unfortunately, a familiar of line of thought also present within the halo community, specifically the 343 era fans. Many of them have shown disdain towards them for two frankly asinine reasons. One reason is that the Bungie era halo stories were not lore filled plots with “deep” characters. I encountered an idiot on social media that unironically thought that Halo Infinite was better than Halo CE because infinite has more lore and “better” gameplay. The plot of bungie era halo isn't meant to be a “deep” slop that Redditors eat up because it mentions multiverse theory. Halo was meant to be a space opera set in one of the most grounded hard sci-fi settings in fiction. A sort of modern Star Wars if you will. A sizable portion of the 343 era fans that despise the Bungie era stories, only consume halo media from books and never even played the games. They even have the audacity to claim to be big “fans” and understand Halo better than the very team that developed the original games. The other argument relates to gameplay. Many of the 343 era halo games grew up during an era where games and media in general were becoming much faster paced than what was developed pre 2010s for a variety of factors (one of them being shortened attention spans). This results in the 343 era developed games being design to not just follow trends, but also to be much faster paced than the Bungie era games ever were. Resulting in Halo “fans” that dislike the pre 343 developed games for not being direct copies of other modern shooters such as COD.
But yeah, that's all I got to say about this issue. Don't get me started on how 343 bungled the handling of the forerunners.
343 fans are almost entirely compised of nerds who spend their free time reading snd editing halo wikis. The Greg Bear books and forerunner retcon are the biggest indicators that 343 never "got" halo is a series where the setting is the main character
343's handling of the Forerunners, alongside the shit stories they have told with their mainline games, is the reason why their contributions to the series should be considered as nothing more than fanfiction. Real Halo ended with Reach (which tbf had its own problems lore-wise but nothing as egregious as what came after it and CAN be reconciled).
the "faster" title that they claim new halo has is just a placebo for the most midwit of gamers getting played by companies that realized just having a dedicated lateral momentous movement option and shaky camera with speed lines will make a gamer feel like the game theyre playing is faster then it actually is. there is alot more to speed then going faster from a to b in an animation lock where you cant make turns or anything else basically
When I used to play through this game on Coop with my uncle, he would actually have us both jump off the cliff at the end of the fight just to relisten to blow me away. And play the segment again😂
I know games nowadays require a heck ton of people working on it, but damn the Halo 2 OST works so well compared to modern titles also because Marty was audio director as well.
What we hear was perfectly conceived and crafted for those specific moments. And every specific moment hits the landing, every single time.
1:13:29 I keep telling everybody, Halo CE legendary cutscene shows Johnson and the arbiter hug while the ring explodes, and splits off into multiple pieces, arbiter gets launched all the way back to high charity and Johnson gets launched all the way to Earth. It's classified because it sounds absurd but it cannon because it sounds awesome.
I relate to you so much being a “older zoomer” I was late to halo 2 but it’s always been probably my favorite game of all time. Its story and gameplay have crafted what my taists are as an adults. Me and my dad would play the campaign together when I was little and just recently I gave it a legendary play through and I still love it
You know, I never noticed the stuff you said about the Covenant being an Empire in decline before. But it makes sense. A 25 year campaign of extermination against another galactic species probably sucks up a ton of resources. Most of the food they get goes directly to the ever expanding front. And they can't forage or harvest on the human worlds because they glass them the moment they find them and strip them bare of Forerunner tech (also an expensive endeavor since they have to fight the humans to get to it). This is not a war being fought strategically and thoughtfully. And the Covenant Empire is paying the price.
Not really, it would be cool to think that, but according to most of the expanded lore (i.e the novels), the Covenant wasn't even stressed by the War of Annihilation against the humans, they were devoting a tiny portion of their total fleet to each space battle, and even stuff like First Strike and blowing up the factory that Truth was using to build another invasion fleet to get to Earth, they weren't really bogged down - what put the nail in the coffin was the Great Schism, since the Elites had the majority of the fleet and were by far superior ship/fleetmasters than the Brutes.
I think one of my favourite parts of the campaign is after the underwater lift. The prophet hologram starts chanting going mmmm mmm mmm.
That bungie intro music man.. that took me for a ride :,)
i will stand by this to the day i die that the anniversary graphics for 1 & 2(to a lesser extent) are way too busy and overdone, even the music is too grandiose. the songs are mastered so poorly some tracks even redline
i think they should’ve just upscaled and touched up the old graphics instead of re doing them
Not a Hot take at all, maybe on 2. but overall very room temp almost chilly take
I hate anniversary weapon designs and sound designs.
Most are Reach assets and the new sounds are awful or straight up sound nothing like the original.
@@blindvalkyrie9352 never said it was a hot take
Halo 2 anniversary is too busy, to bright and hard to see things. I never got why people LOVE it and give it endless praise. Even when you shoot guns, the flare makes it so the lighting darkens and you can barely past the bullets firing in a direction. Particularly the
BR
Carbine
Plasma Rifle
SMG
on god the remastered music was so unnecessary. it makes the soundtrack sound so much worse
I’m trusting you will be alive in 2027 to make one of these for Halo 3s 20th anniversary
God like video! I'll never forget experiencing this for the first time with my dad, especially Xbox Live. Fun fact about the early external bands, in the IGN interview with Marty O'Donnell he talked about how Nile Rogers heard Halo 1's music because Maroon 5? was playing it and decided to get in contact with him/Microsoft to get Halo CE's soundtrack released and supply Marty with any talent he'd want to have come on for Halo 2. John Mayer, Incubus, Hoobastank and Steve Vai came ready to go, especially with the former three being fans of Halo 1. John Mayer just wanted he gamertag in the credits as he didn't want to get agents and contracts involved.
Sad day being born in 2003 halo 2 looked so fucking good back then and the marketing gives me chills on my butt cheeks. People that got to experience this beautiful game are lucky and I’m happy they got to enjoy the hype
Finally, someone who uses classic Halo 2 graphics in their videos... It always irked me whenever people would use Halo 2 Anniversary footage. While, sure, it's pretty on its own in certain spots, it always just looked weird to me when thinking about the classic graphics. Nostalgia and being so used to the classic graphics is probably a big part of it, but it always felt like there was more to it, and this video explained it pretty well without going into much depth (though I'd love to see that). It also pains me because so many people nowadays shit on the classic graphics, but they forget that the game was released in 2004 on the same engine as Halo CE on the Original Xbox. Hell, I'd say for a game that released on the Original Xbox just 3 years after the release of Halo CE, it looks pretty damn good. The designs of the environments and Covenant species especially shine. The graphics seriously need more appreciation, even if it looks awkward in some aspects. It just adds to the charm of the game and shows the early 2000s' influence.
You really did call the Halo cycle spot on with the last video. Seeing the hype from a rebrand is crazy. Halo after bungie has been the idiot that keeps falling for the get rich quick scams of the industry. Well, I guess the fans are for constantly falling for it.
It doesn’t hurt to hope that the game franchise you love can make a comeback. And imo, compared to the previous promises of better games, i have more faith this time purely because most of the upper management is gone and there is potential of something different this time
Naive sure but I rather hope for the best
@theprototype1995 My brother, take a step back at what you are saying and compare it to infinite, and it is eerily similar.
You are going to be hurt again.@theprototype1995
@@theprototype1995 i dont get it, personally. This rebrand means nothing. The management are the same people who ran 343 post-layoffs, for what, a year now?
I dont think halo will ever make a comeback.
Halo 2. I had that at launch as a kid. I never got to play the MP online, but I played the hell out of it, it's easily one of my favorite campaigns, despite the issues. The wizardry Bungie pulled off on the OG Xbox was astounding to me.
Crazy to think Halo 2 turned 20 this year... wonderful review Andy! Happy to see your work in my feed be it by recommendation or subfeed (I missed it sadly) but every time a smile grows big each time. I hope you have been well.
I remember my first Halo being Halo 2 because I rented a copy of CE at a blockbuster before it closed, close to my house. When I headed back and opened the case, a Halo 2 disc was in the case. and didn't even have to return because the blockbuster was closed down.
We finishing the fight tonight
hell yeah
Hell yeah!
This is an amazing retrospective. Amazing production value. Also I’ve played halo 2 many times and yet I seem to miss the fact that high charity is grimy and how the brutes line up”my belly aches” was set up showing that the covenant was already failing on its own. I wish I was there for the launch and early days of the game but no I was born in a time to be perfectly set up to be a reach kid. But I look back at halo 2 and I see it as a perfect gem along with ce,3 and reach (along with odst and wars) halo 2 like you said had an insane scip but I’ve always thought that it was for the best the way it turned out, to live in a universe without halo 3 as it is would suck
I was there. Day 1. Long live halo love
Don't forget to pay 25$ for Halo 2 Armour in Halo Infinite!!!!!!!!!!
But wait! For 35$, you could pretend to be an elite too, eh?
Who remembers the stupid Mastodon « custom game mode » where you had to obey a Master by crouching in front of him and trying to assassinate him cowardly ?
your commentaries are always great, gets everything across and is full of passion, keep them up bro
Whenever you get to the closing parts of your videos for Halo, I breakdown crying man. You put it into words that no one else can do or where others can't find them.
I still remember the first time I saw Halo 2, when I saw that ship blow up in space because of that bomb... I felt like I was on another level of gaming. In fact looking at Halo 2 feels like I got teleported back in time to the memories. I could only experience Halo by going to one of my crappy cousin's house. It's the only reason I would wanna go as a kid, despite that dude sucking I just wanted to play Halo.
As someone who’s about twice your age, I can say that meaningful critiques/retrospectives of the series are hampered by the perception of the community, especially by the thoughtful types who make good content of that kind.
But there’s so much brilliance in the series, especially in the early games, not to mention the massive influence it had in figuring out online play and matchmaking.
I never heard of that interpretation that the covenant was in decline but now that you say it, it’s so obvious
For me I originally thought it was the shock of there most holy sites being destroyed that gave everyone a reason for why they acted as they did
The sandbox is unmatched… nostalgia my ass.
its really good
been replaying bungie halos nonstop. haven't touched 343 halos since buying 4, never mind that i never bought anything 343 past 4 given how dogshit they are
4:30 absolutely. Dont subscribe to these low tier sensation farming channels with no good insight or understanding of halo. Check out channels like shredded nerd or conrads multiplayer analysis videos, c3 sabertooth too, these should all be mandatory viewing
Saying the anniversary graphics are better is like taking a iPhone picture of the sky and saying its better than Van Gogh's Starry Night cause it's more realistic
I like muddier older graphics. It leaves a gap for your mind to fill in the blanks
the cutscenes tho
The Blur cutscenes' art style is really the best Halo and maybe any videogame has ever looked. However with the in game remastered graphics, they are quite flawed just like the og H2 graphics, and it really depends from place to place which graphics are better, whereas this video cherrypicks the good from og graphics and the bad from new graphics. Except for when he talks about High Charity, there he's just wrong. He reads in an artistic meaning that wasn't intended and doesn't even make sense, the idea that the Covenant is falling apart, that one Brute saying he's hungry means that the whole Covenant must be hungry, and that would somehow reflect on the highest levels of society looking grimy and grey. No the game just looked bad, or should I say not as good as Bungie intended. They didn't get their lighting engine right. Given the fact Truth was intending to leave the Covenant for dead, maybe he saw it as a lost cause that would inevitably collapse, and maybe you could see that by going into the more common areas, but that's not where you are in the High Charity missions.
@@peanutgallery4 too long, didn't read
@redcrown5154 cutscenes good, og and remaster sometimes good sometimes bad, Andy is cherrypicking a bit
2:56 oh my, you did not just use the track " Swirls " from Marathon One in this video hahaha I love that game so much. Beautiful easter egg, man!
Edit: I just finished this amazing video. Thank you, Andy.
Hey, thanks for this awesome deep dive into Halo 2! Really love your video essays, especially your Halo and Lost Planet videos. Your intro really resonated with me, since I'm in a similar place. I'm also a (much smaller) video essayist, on the older gen Z side. I missed the games in their prime, but last year I dove really deeply into the campaigns and came to understand what made each game in the series so special. It was one of the most rewarding experiences I've had on TH-cam so far. Not to shill my own channel, but given what you said in your intro, I think you would appreciate those videos. Either way, I appreciate the content, and hope you have an awesome weekend!
I really, really, really, really love the arbiter's story. A lot of people I think say it's good and don't think about it past the vibes. But and maybe this wasn't what Joe Staten and Bungie wanted his and the elites story to be interpreted as but I've always taken it to be a cautionary tale about how the people that lead you will use the things you love and are important to you to lie and lead you to do things that are wrong and cloud your ability to see that you're doing the wrong thing. And even lead you to tragedy as everyone follows until they can no longer believe the falsehood fed to them. Again maybe that's not what bungie meant with the story but that's always how I interpreted it.
Another thing is how I think way too many people think Halo 2 is an allegory for the war on terror and overstate the commentary about religion in these games.
The flood could have easily been a replacement imo. However, the combat gameplay would be radically different.
The flood would be similar to the demons in Doom 2016/Eternal
A hive mind that possesses the mind, skills, and battle knowledge of its host? Yeah, the flood could have easily been a replacement. You have so many unique character designs and gameplay encounters with the flood -floodified marines, elites, grunts, pure forms etc…Doesn’t have to be that frantic as D2016 and DEternal, but just let the flood have similar combat encounter design to the covenant. Don’t make them rush the player, lean into that push and pull gameplay. There were already shades of that in H3 with more ranged flood types. Tankers are similar to the hunters…you get my point.
I would’ve liked to see it.
The lowered crosshair was actually a bug that they decided not to fix. It was in a halo doc video.
Saying breaking Benjamin received mixed receptions in halo 2 is straight heresy. You couldn't go anywhere without hearing blow me away and seeing Amvs of halo with the song or flash animations during the day. Nobody today hears that sing and doesn't instantly think of halo 2.
Mannn I really miss prime bungie. That run? These stats? Under THOSE conditions?! One of one
This was fantastic. And the crazy thing is, there’s still even more you could have talked about. I hope you go this in depth for Halo 3 as well. I’d love to see that video.
Imo modern gaming has been plagued with so many cancerous things that prevent it from reaching the heights of the 360 days. SBMM, censorship, forced ideology, overly-competitive game mechanics, lack of fun modes/features, difficult or nonexistent community features, and over-monetization to name a few. We've strayed so far from the days of the "virtual couch" that made old gaming incredibly fun. Now gaming feels more lonely than ever, and developers actively discourage you from playing with the same people, talking, or making friends. There's no pre/post game lobbies to make conversation and every match is filled with new people due to their implementation of SBMM. Even playing with your irl friends is damn near impossible due to the strict SBMM (even in casual lobbies). It's not fun to play a game where you have to carry your friend who is constantly getting destroyed or vice versa. I think a lot of game developers fundamentally forgot that video GAMES are supposed to be fun first, competitive second. I don't think any of use knew how good we had it back then...
Halo 2 was the game I always wished to own as a young kid, but played religiously at a friend's house. When I finally got a 360 at age 13, I started with Halo 3. Halo 2 though, now, is a story that inspires me to this day!
52:00 "It feels like this was a real structure Bungie built and carved out full with corridors" My absolute favorite aspect of Halo I never hear about from anyone, Halo 3 does this with the first half of the game, too, which I LOVE! And if we look into cut content for 3, seeing Forerunner City (and the sneak peak we had at how genuinely insane they were in designing that to live up to the City description, seriously the block-out file we saw felt unreal)
When I moved from Xbox to pc I was itching for halo so I came across project cartographer and the small but dedicated community there made me feel what I missed in og halo 2
You put everything that has made Halo 2 great into concise words. Everything.
What a phenomenal video! Great job lad!
HALO 1 and. 2 were great!!!!!... But, Halo 2 represented the beginning of the end of concentration on the 'single-player' experience, towards 'online' play. To this day, I'm still not an online guy. HALO 3 was it for me.
I wasnt old enough for halo 2. Grew up on halo reach and halo 3 one of the first games i ever owned i remember playing the life out of it even tho i was 4 or 5 years old i was absolutely obsessed with them. When i got to around 14 i bought an og xbox as i got a thing for console collecting bought halo 2 started playing it on a friday and was just gobsmacked considering i grew up playing games like bo2,portal gears of war 3 (i think so long ago now) in that golden age of xbox 360 with so many hit classics. I was blown away by the soundtrack the gameplay the missions just absolutely everything with it was so amazing. You could see within the first 30 mins you were hooked and I was. I couldn’t imagine how amazing it was to play online at that time. You can feel the love for this. Words cant describe that very first time playing though it was only 6 or 7 years ago now it definitely was one memory that sticks out being so positive. I was always an xbox fan boy just from nostalgia i was once again shown why i love xbox and will continue to no matter what thank you bungie for all those amazing memories during my childhood.
I was wondering why there wasn't a halloween video/videos, but now i know, and Christmas has come early this year 👌
2:15:39 More Halo retrospectives? Subscribed! Incredible work on this video. What an enjoyable and cozy watch.
I was still gaming on the OG Xbox when the 360 and PS3 were a few years in since their launch. My Dad was coming home from a trip so he asked what kind of games and Xbox I had specifically. When he got home he handed me Halo 2 and Scarface:TWIY. This was a time when Gamecrazy was around and pawnshops had an abundance of old games. I know I was very late to the party, but hell I was happy I finally got a copy of H2. I spent countless hours playing and being immersed into the story. The gameplay, music, etc. The times I would simply sit and listen to the menu music before I continue the journey. Finishing the fight. Halo 2 is solid. It’s beautiful.
I cant stand when someone posts a “Why Halo CE (or 2/3) is so Good” video and all they do is explain the campaign level to level. So stupid. I think Noodle has a great video about Halo CE though cause he actually talk about the substance of the game (AI, Atmosphere, Music, art design, etc.)
I almost cried when i played mcc multiplayer for the first time the other day and there were people shit talking me and having their mic on the whole game. I missed halo so much i didnt even get enough sleep for today cuz i kept saying '1 more game 1 more...' they need to make future games more social im so sick of games feeling like youre in a fucking court room
1:13:00
I think what makes Johnson so beloved is its captivating to have a 'ordinary' person navigate extraordinary situations. Its why the first die hard hits us so well. He's not a superhero. He's just a cop in the wrong place at the right time. Same with Johnson. He survives in a place where mostly only the master chief. A supersoldier with armor and shielding survived.
Obligitory: yes. I called a marine ordinary. Go frolic in oceanside and scream about how you're not ordinary you're marines
The use of Marathon music is a nice touch. I look forward to watching the rest of this.
I love the amount of work and love that went into making this. Great video!!!!
2:56:00 this right here is what made Halo 2 great. It was the socializing that came from as you said it - "most peoples first online multiplayer shooter" especially on consoles.
You racking off the names of game modes 10 seconds later actually hit me like a truck in my chest. I haven't heard of some of those game types in decades. I always talk about Infection coming from Halo 2, HOURS long games of ToP and of course Troy. You saying Cops and Crooks and Cat and Mouse is like that scene from Ratatouille where the food critic eats the Ratatouille and gets sent back to when he was a child.
I was there sitting on my futon at 10 years old bullshitting with people twice my age in college or working full time jobs, but we were all just having fun playing stupid custom games. That's what truly made this game great and it's something I could never put my finger exactly on. Yeah the GAME was amazing, I loved the campaign and the game-play and multiplayer but the online experience was magical.
The early days of console online multiplayer before we hit the event horizon with party chats, Social media, Dicord's and Skill Based Matchmaking.
The overarching sense of community.
Regardless of if you liked to sweat it out and get mad after you lose a ranked Team Slayer or play customs games until your eyes hurt and you contract "Halotosis" we all just wanted to have FUN.
I whole heartily agree - "Don't be sad that it's gone, be glad that it happened"
Fantastic in depth review of my favorite game of all time and as you said at the begining there are very few in depth analysis of the halo games and are just considered cool and the discussion ends there so it's great to see someone do this. Hope to see this level of deep analysis for the rest of the franchise and i am glad someone loves halo 2 as deeply as i do.
This doc is gonna go down as one of the best analyses of Halo 2 ever done. Holy crap, it was good!
Halo 2 is really great, but my opinions on it has changed throughout the years. I played Halo CE first, but it was only several months before Halo 2 dropped and when it did, it became MY Halo game. Lately though, I tend to revisit Halo CE more often. Halo 2 makes a lot of improvements on the level design and the wider variety of locations (fuck me if I didn't spend hours at a time in a Banshee just flying around the Threshold Gas Mine, marking down the locations I'll get to later on), but CE just has better enemy AI.
But I love Halo 2 for its story and energetic world-building. In Halo CE, we don't know much about the Covenant or the Forerunners but that's okay, because it was told from the Humans' perspective and they're noobs to the Galaxy. They don't even know much about the Covenant either, despite being at war with them for decades (though later media would revise this). But in Halo 2 we take on the role of the Arbiter and in doing so, we get a glimpse of a vast Universe that exists outside of Humanity's narrow field of view and turning Halo into more than just a game about blasting aliens in outer space.
What you said about Halo 2 having an underlying feeling of futility fits, but only if you look at Halo 2 on its own. When you look at the story of Halo as a whole, from Reach to CE, 2 ODST and 3, it tackles really dark subject matter but has an underlying sense of humor, hope and optimism. The sacrifices made by heroic characters can and do make the world a better place. We see this in the past with the Forerunners, who sacrificed their entire civilization to stop the Flood, but lived on to become Humanity; and we see this in the Epilogue to Halo Reach, where after the tragedy of the Human-Covenant War, humans have survived and returned to Reach to rebuild and reclaim what was lost.
Great video, and I'm glad you gave so much love to the Threshold Gas Mine, it is definitely my favorite location in ALL the Halo games put together.
When i played Halo 2 for the first time this year after CE i wasn't expecting that you not only play the Chief but also the Arbiter. I was blown away you get to play him.
Also i'm young and i played Halo for the first time this year, and i'm glad i did.
Finally finished this, and as someone too young to have experienced Halo at its prime, this was amazing. I sat down 3 hours ago just planning to watch a little bit and ended up hooked all the way through. My new favorite video from you and easily one of the best video essays I have ever seen.
I really wish I could have been there to experience Halo 2 in all its glory.
Spectacular work with this video!
LET'S FUCKING GO PEAK IS BACK ON THE MENU
One of the main problems I have with the 343 trilogy is that they treat like the original trilogy almost never happened, there are few, if not at all many references to the almost complete extermination of all of humanity, which would have lasting impact on the Shanghelia that allied with the Unsc. Somehow they manage to recover from that fact in only just 4 years, feels super just convenient. So many comparisons can be used from Disney star wars trilogy, each release of game/movie feels super disconnected from each other.
And don't forget the lies that 343 kept giving.
So happy and proud to call myself a halo 2 vet. Used to play halo 1 with buddies all on the same tv. My fav gaming era of all time. Proud I made it to the mid 30s ranking on matchmaking before the modders soft capped you.
the issue with halo 2 is that imo its the only game that understands the brutes in regards to design in a good way. what makes the covenant so alien is that well, they look alien. grunts, elites, prophets etc all look alien and not like anything on earth. but for most of halo brutes just look like gorillas or in the case of reach just space orcs. halo 2 having the brutes with these slopped komodo dragon like faces that stick out from the head, they look alien.
I’m 26 and remember playing this with my brother when it came out played this and Mortal Kombat Shaolin monks and both are golden games I’ll always love
20 years already?! Jesus... I'm having an existential crisis
I hope you will do a similar video for Halo 3. Bungie really double downed on making a game for a large, diverse community by expanding existing features, such as custom games and adding new features such as forge mode and theater mode.
Halo 3 was such a juggernaut in terms of features in an FPS game, compared to its contemporaries.
I still remember being at Blockbuster the night this came out, I was struggling to make a selection when one of the workers comes and put this on the shelf, all i could think about at school the next day was getting home and playing.
3:54 I remember hearing that it's harder to praise a piece of media and show the good in it than it is to criticize and show the bad in a piece of media so that's probably the reason why most people shy away from doing it
Great video bro, I am at the same spot and glad that I dont feel I was the only one that I was too young to experience the peak halo experience. Still have my halo 2 copy from +10 years ago.
Masterful video. Covered every conceivable point about the profound impact this game had/has.
heck yea, looking forward to this... this game is literally responsible for my current life... if anyone cares to show some love, i'm the developer of repuls io, a web based halo inspired fps..
i know its janky but hey, i'm a solo dev and i guess i like to compare myself to the olden days of bungie when they were just friends banging out awesome ideas...
oh how i wish i had a friend or 2 as passionate about this as I was as I really believe people would appreciate a modern game that has that classic halo feel
listening to this in background while playing through Halo 2
It’s weird looking back on this through your eyes, so to speak.
I was 22 years old when H2 dropped. I definitely remember the massive release event that happened back when TrU was at TS. I skipped over halo because I didn’t have an Xbox. I wasn’t interested. And I was more interested in what would be releasing on PC that next week.
But I can commiserate with the feelings you describe in the intro. For you it was Halo, for me it was Street Fighter 2. Oh man… and because of that, I can completely understand and appreciate how this game makes you feel.
Great job.
im not a halo 2 campaign fan, but you beautifully described why somebody who loves it loves it. i thought of it as a great story, but it felt like you didnt know any of the locations. i just knew i was in forerunner areas or on earth or on a halo ring, but never really knowing why or when you were there unlike the rest of the halos. now that i understand the locations from this video i can appreciate it. especially the delta halo theory and what the hell is going on in the quarantine zone.
What a lucky coincidence I decided to play all original Halo games on Halo 2 20th anniversary. It's been a blast and H2 is what I'd consider the perfect sequel, despite cuts. My third favorite Halo game, after ODST and H3.