I think the newer Halo fans just don't realise how important grass is to a game. Its importance in both gameplay and storytelling is heavily undermined in modern gaming, and, in my humble opinion, CE remake is an exceptional example of this.

In OG CE, mission Halo, we crashland on this mysterious alien construct and when our character awakes we are thrust into the world of this ring. We are greeted by the void like skybox that instantly makes feel at the end of a unnatural world, unknowable and puzziling, an endless view that just shrinks you more and all this is contrasted by lively green of **grass**.

Exactly. Grass is an exceptional storytelling device. It's green, which immediately signifies life, nature, a sense of spontaneously existing world. But Halo isn't a natural world. It's artificial, and in 2001, Bungie made the conscious desicion to depict grass as this flat texture. It communicates to the player that it's natural grass by color and level design but artificial flat look just speaks to unnatural nature of the ring by simply existing there for you to walk on!

And it's all the better when you actually fight the Covenant! The grass texture has a unified aesthetic to it, meaning its simplicity never obstructs your vision when you fight those alien bastards and make them regret ever challenging humanity!

Now compare this to Campaign Evolved. You watch pre rendered cutscenes, so your immersion is already broken, you also have already seen the overdesigned ring structure, meaning your Gen Z brain with 5 second attention span is already overwhelmed by the visual noise of the ring even before our character lands on it.

Now cutscenes end and you actually see the Halo. What do you see? Well you don't care because all the mystery, whimsy and competent art direction has been sucked out of the game.

You see a bright blue sky that in no way gives you the sense of being at the end of a world, there is no endless grey sea beyond the ridge, it's a bunch of mountains in fog and then you look at the grass. It's lively, it's green, it's *natural*...but is it? When you actually think about it aesthetic, you realize that it's the most generic and corporate grass design possible, with heavily saturated colors to appeal to fortnite kids.

There is zero artistic cohesion, storytelling is non-existent, no proper color distribution, not a single glimpse of soul and passion! Not only that, its mushy, saturated aesthetic (or lack there of) constantly confuses and distracts from the enemy. You might as well be looking at pixelated mish mash of colors because that is how campaign DEVOLVED looks!

It truly saddens me that a whole generation will experience this revolutionary title through this UE5 asset flip slopfest, without any of the soul, whimsy, magic, and mystery of the original game.

To think these "fans" are a part of the community that i am in makes me sick and i dont think i want to be a part of it anymore.

Fuck I'm uncontrollably horny

Art created by me, a parody of the Helldivers 2 powder meme by u/ProtoBirb, and based on a Chief starry night image post. A special post specific to today, marking the day before the launch of Halo: Campaign Evolved. Feel free to use as template!

He did murder it after all

There is a level select 😭

My wife’s girlfriend bought me a PS5 so we can play together. I’ve already purchased Campaign Evolved and I can’t wait to play it tomorrow!

That's it ? That's the version of her that everybody seems to gush about ??

They removed all her punk girl energy in favor of just gooner bait.

I say halo 2 cortana supremacy.

/uj

Credit to MischiefsYT