Halo: A shot in the dark

[Hunter Phoenix]

Haha this is without a doubt the best multi person RP I have done on this site so far, the rest have been a bit naff lol

[ashia starstreak]

I feel that stories with action are more entertaining than those that involve romantics and/or erotic behaviors. They tend to last longer and can become tensed with increased event after event. Romantic flames can burn out and get tiresome. Sometimes those can even lead to drama that no one really wants and people may become more easily hurt, but with action based it tends to be more for the fun and possibly meant to strengthen a character. The further from my everyday life the more interested I am to write. I'm just glad that even though this story has not moved far, it is still active.

I am curious though: The flood was always something I rather enjoyed the most of the halo game. Perhaps it's because I have a thing for zombies and the flood have a similar effect, but my question is; do you think it would be possible to bring the flood into play here? Maybe there was a slight chance that not all of it was destroyed? Maybe it could bring the story into a darker and give a bit of a scarey twist, though, that in general would always depend on how the character themselves took it.

[Hunter Phoenix]

It is probably likely that we could work The Flood into here somehow, but at the moment it is set on Earth, around the time in Halo 2 when the Covenant ship jumped inside of the city after hours of intense fighting. So it could be a while before anything like The Flood can be considered.

[ashia starstreak]

I have never been good with dates and numbers so with that being explained it helps me to understand the surroundings much more clearly. The second game went too quickly and I found that disappointing. Four hours of game play and beating the game just did not satisfy me, but rather baffled me. "That can't be it..what?..." but I am still a fan none the less.


I sincerely hope no one is waiting on a post from me. I would feel aweful knowing that was the reason it has been at a stop. Until my character(s) fully join the team I have just been posting to give everyone a small understanding of how my characters are until that point. Not to say I cannot write. I can and will post if you guys wanted, but I just figured no one paid much attention considering that I'm not offically "in" just yet.

[Hunter Phoenix]

Think we are waiting on Gladiator right now but if you want to drop posts every now and then just to progress your character into joining the team, then that is likely ok :)

Yeah Halo 2 was a little short in terms of game play, I was disappointed with Halo 3 and ODST. I liked Reach quite a bit once the campaign picked up and the online play is quite fun if sometimes a little annoying.

But yeah the odd post here and there between the main team will probably be fine as it will speed up your character development and bring her into the game quicker :)

[ashia starstreak]

I haven't beaten halo 3.  My  schedule is too hectic to  sit down and settle on something. My boyfriend was not happy with halo 3 though. After that, he refused to play odst or reach  and is not happy about the fourth one coming out next year.

I would like to jump into the middle of battle to recieve some action. Her sergeant is a bit restless, but orders are orders. There is nothing these group of marines can do until the jammers are fixed and they recieve word from the spartans situation.

[Hunter Phoenix]

I has posted lol posted a while back to be honest

[Gladiator0161]

Sorry to hold everyone up, my real life is being a pain in the ass at the moment. I'll try to cook something up soon to post.

[Hunter Phoenix]

not to worry dude, real life comes first :)

[Firefighter8346]

Hello, love the halo games, any way that I can still join or is it too late?  Would like to be ODST, but whatever is fine.

[ashia starstreak]

This is a VERY slow moving thread. If you were to join you'll need lots of patience and mustn't drop your character. I'm certain that Gladiator will not be happy to have a new player drop out like some did a while back. He is in charge and I'm sure he'll pop up sometime soon.

I've been in this story for quite some time and haven't joined the main group just yet. Been waiting on the comms to get up and running so my team can join...Gladiator will be able to better confirm your questions when he leaves his distractions to see what's going on here

[Capone]

Hey folks. I'm a pretty big fan of Halo myself, though I can't stand Halo 3 for various reasons. I never got into the books, as too much of Fall of Reach also managed to piss me off.

I'd be interested in joining as an ODST, though I'm curious about the possibility of a secondary character that's part of the Covenant. I've always loved the Covenant most in Halo, feeling their culture and motivations to be really interesting. However, I can understand reasons not to have that sort of thing going, be it for having multiple characters or having a character as a Covvie.

I'll look over the thread and see how things are going.

Also, Gladiator, in response to the Covenant being in Africa "for some reason", a lot of creation myths lead back to Africa being the beginning of life on Earth. The folks who created Halo were pretty well read (inspirations from Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, Larry Niven's Ringworld and Iain Banks' Culture series are pretty obvious), so I imagine this was intentional.

[Capone]

Unfortunately I cannot edit my previous post unless I'm approved, so double post for me. I'll also wait and see if I have approval first.

However, a couple things came to me as I was reading this. I don't want to sound like a pompous jerk, but I have a tendency to critique things, particularly film and video games, so naturally I had a lot of thoughts going through my mind as I read this. Please view this as constructive criticism. I'm bad at sounding like anything but an asshole, though, so please don't view this as an attack, even if it sounds like one.

1) What, exactly, is the point here? In 100 posts I've yet to tell what the point of the story is. Why are the Covenant in New York, specifically? Did the UNSC hide something there? Is there a base or other supposed secret like in New Mombasa? The reason I ask is because...

2) Fight after fight after fight is boring. There's no real plot development here. I know forum role-plays tend to move a bit slowly considering their nature, but every time you guys finish fighting something, you basically just say "Hey, I just got done fighting something. We should move on before we have to fight more things." And then you fight more things. What's more, until Hunter was buried and sustained a wound, there was no sense of loss or even risk. People just kept killing things. It feels like you guys are trying to just write the gameplay (and certainly not on Legendary difficulty, that's for sure), and in the end that gets boring to read. Furthermore, it'll become boring to participate in.

3) Based on how people described the events, there wasn't a lot of time between the Covenant vessel performing a space jump and Covenant being on the ground. If the Covenant were already on the ground, then they would have died. This means there had to be ships left behind in order to provide all of these forces that put up jamming signals and tanks and banshees all over the ground in no time flat. It's a bit late now, but there really should have been some calm before Covenant forces were all over the place. The areas in Halo: ODST that still had patrols were outside of the blast range of the ship dropping, but based on the descriptions here everyone is crashing down in what used to be NYC as opposed to the untouched suburbs surrounding it.

4) I can't stress this enough, but why. Why are the Covenant in NYC, and why are you creating this roleplay? Based on what I'm reading, it would be better just to sit down and co-op Reach on Xbox Live (or wait a week for the original rereleased with online play, hoo-rah!). What's the point? The purpose?

I guess the best way to describe my feelings is to bring up the ODST commercial. I can't post external links, but it should be easy enough to look on YouTube. The full video is a young man's life, from the funeral of a loved one that died in combat, to his own training and enlistment, to a drop where he is nearly killed and saved by sheer luck, to the burial of a comrade, ending with gun fire in the distance. There is emotion in this video, and so many words are spoken in silence at the very end. The once young rookie is now old and worn, and when the gun fire is heard in the distance, he lazily puts his helmet back on, as if it's back to the salt mines. The younger recruit, however, puts his helmet on with vigor and purpose. The two characters are different, have seen different things, but it gives a sense of what this war is.

A whole generation passes, and this war with the Covenant doesn't end.

In addition, there's a lot of character potential with Spartans as well. I'm not quite seeing it, though. Everyone seems pretty two-dimensional, for the most part, just there to shoot Covenant that don't seem threatening at all within the context of the story. This is the alien race that we're losing to?

I'm sorry to not even be an approved member of the board and to come in and critique this roleplay. I'd love to join in, but it seems to me part of the reason nothing is happening and it is slow moving is because it's nothing but firefights, and not even entertaining ones at that. Perhaps more people would be interested if there were a chance to actually roleplay some characters?

I hope you guys aren't offended, but if you are, then I will not partake in the game. I don't mean to insult or anything. I just want as many people to have fun as possible. I'm just not very diplomatic in my methods.

[Gladiator0161]

Capone, while I appreciate your constructive criticism, I find it flawed. The point of the role play is to have fun.

The story was provided on the 1st page of this OOC thread, and yes, I didn't provide the whole plot because I didn't know why they would be there but, then again, why wouldn't they? They're on a holy genocidal war and wanting to wipe mankind from the face of the earth and the surrounding galaxy.

Why I chose NYC is because I've been there and it is huuuuuuge! Massively huge. I thought it would be a neat place to rp. It also has underground facilities like that of New Mombasa, so it's conceivable that the Covenant in that area would move to those areas to take cover from the concussion wave of the slipspace jump. Something which I thought everyone participating in the game, or wanting to, could figure out.

As for plot development, I am the gamemaster for this rp and I find the pace of the plot fine. As I stated before, the purpose of this rp is to have fun. Life has been a little crazy for me lately so, I've not been able to post as much, and for that I am truly sorry but, if you don't like the way this rp is going, the choice is simple...don't play in it.

[Vengurd]

Capone, while you may find our style two dimensional, I find your critique one dimensional. When you first see a role-play, back off and consider the fact that some, most or all the participants may know each other off site and as such have a much wider understanding of things than you, someone who is only seeing one side of the scale, would.

Now the points you have would be valid....if it weren't for the fact that you have openly admitted you haven't read the books and dislike parts of the series in general. I own all the main stream games, I've read all the books and graphic novel(s). I've at least beaten the side games (ODST, Wars). Your criticism shows your obvious lack of knowledge, lets go on a point for point basis as you did.

1) The point here is the UNSC doesn't know why the covenant are there, nor do the characters. Secondly, the Covenant hit New Mombasa, not because of some secret base, but rather because the previous super species of the galaxy had hidden a number of things on earth.

2) Fight after fight can be boring. That isn't all that this topic is about, nor is that all that has really happened. There have been a number of losses, considering some members have gone AWOL, their characters have been split from us, in some of those fights we've had our characters nearly die. Oh yes, there is plenty of risk and loss involved in this topic, not to mention that the building holding our snipers had been destroyed- how is that not considered a risk or loss?

Your statement that we are following game-play on easy difficulty is completely bogus and entirely insulting. Since when is trying to keep realism within a Science Fiction story following game-play? Specifically when said game-play incorporates as much realism as possible.

3) Considering no one really bothered to mention time, nor was there a reason to, why exactly would we need to? Sure, for that extra point of "Its been so many hours since this has happened". When it comes to a fight for your life, would you be able to spare enough attention to look at your clock and say "Okay, so its 23:37 so I've been here for....X amount of hours, wow, that is fantastic" ? I very much doubt it. Now don't forget those jammers that are in place, the characters don't know whats up, there could very well be more ships- oh wait we're talking about the attack on earth of course there will be more ships.

4) Again, points one and two should tell you.

Now we're onto what you said about characters. I'd have been fine with what you previously said before, I would have even been nicer, but seriously- if you are to call our characters two dimensional you must have skipped a fair bit. The Spartan Gladiator for example- he's the one who is constantly seeing how close he comes to death in a particularly risky move or unexpected encounter. Patric, another Spartan often has glimpses of his past. The characters in the Pelican and the one playing the Marine are posting exquisitely detailed posts and you are calling everyone's characters two-dimensional. You sir have likely pricked a lot of people with that comment.


That is all I am going to say for the time being other than the to bring up the fact that at least half of the participants here do have a life and need to see to the needs of such. That is why the topic is so slow at this time.

[Capone]

Alright. I do not believe we are looking for the same things in an RP, then.

I'm sorry for ruffling feathers. I hope you guys have some fun. :)

[Firefighter8346]

Gladiator0161, I was informed to ask you about joining the rp game, got any more room for another soldier, if necessary I can take over for someone that has left.  Thank you for your consideration.

[Gladiator0161]

As soon as you are approved I'll happily accept you into the rp. Feel free to look around the OOC thread to see who you'd be interested in roleplaying.

We have several writers that have left this rp for one reason or another, including Lance (Spartan 132 originally played by Hunter) Sniper)), Sergeant "Sling" Desmond Rockwell (ODST originally played by Aiden), Kyle Nassir (also ODST originally played by Kyle 989), and Jack (another ODST originally played by Angle1932).

I would contact the player that originally played the character you're interested in taking over as a courtesy, unless they were deverified or otherwise kicked from Elliquiy.

Other than that, there's no problem. I would also read everything that has happened so far, so that you can pick up where the characters left off, and where we are in the thread. If you haven't already that is.

[Firefighter8346]

Okay, thanks I will look it over.

[Firefighter8346]

Okay, read over the story so far, wondering if i could be a Spartan sent on a secret mission to do something in New York and then the battle started.  If so I could have fallen through the street and into the sewers and subway tunnels which have been destroyed and had to find a way out.  If not just let me know.

[Gladiator0161]

Fine by me as long as you have a reason for being sent on this secret mission.

I'm assuming this mission would be out of the norm for a Spartan, as most of their missions are kept from the public's knowledge, so, I'm assuming that most of the staff in the UNSC wouldn't know about this mission of his, including some, or most, of the upper brass.

[Firefighter8346]

Correct, my mission came straight from the president and the sec def.  I was sent into new york to rescue technology from a topsecret lab under the streats of new york.

[Hunter Phoenix]

better make sure you don't get buried down there then, with all that structural damage it would be easy for a man, spartan or otherwise, to get lost down there

[ashia starstreak]

I find it interesting to have the only character that is female, a marine, and also the lowest of ranking. My thoughta can only wonder about what will happen once with the main group. PG-13 written, but the mind can explore further more so long as it's not mentioned I suppose. I look forward to seeing your posts, Firefighter. Don't forget to describe your Spartan's colors (primary and secondary), ranking, and armor. It will help me out when reading.

[Firefighter8346]

Will do, my rank is Conl. and my colouring is black with yellow bands like my Spartan was wearing fdny fire gear.  I am using the regular monjilar 6 armour.