This film, the first of the three shorts, make up the trailers done by Neill Blomkamp, who was the director that was slated for the ill-fated Halo movie. It would have been glorious...
Wow. This would have been a frickin awesome movie. (Maybe. I'm sure hollywood could find a way to screw it up).
But honestly, if it's a choice between Peter Jackson continuing to fund this movie or making the Hobbit, I vote Hobbit!
Following a swift withdrawal by film studios Fox and Universal, Microsoft is already in talks with other distribution projects to continue development of the Halo film, says Peter Jackson's representative Ken Kamins.
Speculation also centred around the Halo film's newcomer director Neill Blomkamp, who's already filmed several Halo 3 shorts.
"Everybody is supremely confident in Neal," Kamins said. "Part of what excited Peter and Fran was Neal's vision. We're very confident this film will move forward with the creative partners intact, who will take the film to production."
"This enemy you cannot kill. You can only drive it back damaged into the depths, and teach your children to watch the waves for its return." - Quellcrist Falconer
So I am playing through Chapter 8. Finally rescued Cortana before signing off.
This chapter SUCKED on Heroic. I got to this area where you needed to fight uphill through a hive of Flood (a flamethrower was hidden here if you know where that was) and got totally, frustratingly stuck.
In the end, I found out that it was pretty much a scripting problem. One of the "carriers" had burst and there were a lot of spores running around. I was trying to fight my way uphill, and because of the pace of the warrior Flood coming at me, the plethora of "shooter" bug Flood on the walls, and the spores available to ressurect every warrior I killed, I was constantly surrounded by 10-15 warriors and shooters.
Finally, after about 30 minutes of frustration, I was able to push forward to finally reach another checkpoint so my save wasn't "broken". It was a combination of making sure I killed every spore I could find, a little luck, and moving very, very slowly and killing everything behind me so it couldn't get re-zombified behind me. Ugh! Now I see why people were complaining about this level. Once I got past that part, it was fine.
Anyway, (the totally hawt) Cortana now safe and sound and it's time to go kick the Gravemind's slimy, treacherous butt.
"This enemy you cannot kill. You can only drive it back damaged into the depths, and teach your children to watch the waves for its return." - Quellcrist Falconer
So, I *finally* Finished the Fight (on Heroic, natch) last night and also broke 1000 gamerscore doing so - yay!
** Mild spoilers follow**
I really enjoyed it, but was kind of disappointed at no big, epic fight with the Gravemind. Almost a cop out on Bungie's part. Guilty Spark was a poor substitute and too easy to take down, IMO. The ending escape/chase was a hoot though.
** end spoilers ***
So much more great stuff to look forward to. I got back into Mass Effect, which is frustrating me a bit. The tank's inability to aim up and down is making me INSANE, and combat can be very unforgiving. Not too annoying is the load times weren't so long.
Then there's Gears, Half-Life 2, finishing (the finally patched) Bioshock. Such a good year to be a gamer.
"This enemy you cannot kill. You can only drive it back damaged into the depths, and teach your children to watch the waves for its return." - Quellcrist Falconer
Yes, but the escape was a retread of previous Warthog "dash-for-safety" episodes they had (especially at the end of Halo: Combat Evolved).
Incidentally, a few weeks ago I finished Halo: The Flood and while not bad, the scenes with MC were almost a blow-by-blow retelling of the game. Not so good. The parts which expanded on the game were pretty good though. But this book was not quite as good as The Fall of Reach.
I'm probably going to get the next book in the series though; Nylund is a pretty decent writer for genre fiction...
I'd heard that they were pretty good and have been thinking about checking them out - especially after how much I enjoyed Mass Effect.
Yeah, I guess the Warthog chase was a retread/homage to H1, but I still enjoyed it. Lots of Dukes of Hazard fishtail-and-jump fun, but with a big alien manning my exploding-arrow compound bow.
"This enemy you cannot kill. You can only drive it back damaged into the depths, and teach your children to watch the waves for its return." - Quellcrist Falconer
How, exactly, will you have a showdown with Gravemind anyway? My impression was that Gravemind was some sort of "dispersed" intelligence, one not bound by conventional ideas about what makes an individual. The consciousness of the "living Flood" if you will. I also get the feeling the original creators of the Flood never really intended such a being to come to existence, but rather it made the leap from pure instinct to self aware...umm..."sophontcy" by itself. Besides which, the whole "shtick" of the HALO games never really supported the idea of "level bosses" anyway (picturing MC in a side scroller while he dodges floodies...).
I think blowing up the master HALO was probably the best way to go from both a game standpoint as well as a story standpoint.
Well, it's just that you had an encounter with the Gravemind towards the end of H2, or at least some gigantical tentacled beasties that seemed to be directly controlled by him. So, I kind of expected a big fight with that central critter.
I agree completely that Gravemind is kind of a collective intelligence - sort of one mind distributed around all the half-rotting brains of all the Flood-infected critters.
It just seemed in H2 that he'd evolved some kind of central area/body/base as well. There was a spot where you could see this huge cavern where all these Floody tentacles waved around, but you never got there. Then the part where the tentacles were trying to capture you while the Gravemind spoke, and then at the end of H3 where the tentacles tried to stop MC's Pelican from lifting off. I kinda always thought that Gravemind also fashioned himself some kind of body out of the parts of lots of infected critters.
"This enemy you cannot kill. You can only drive it back damaged into the depths, and teach your children to watch the waves for its return." - Quellcrist Falconer
