u/GeminiTrash1

And now I'm questioning why there's a cooldown for any Elemental Pickup at all. Were Void Breaches really that OP? In a sandbox where Titans have infinite Stasis Crystals would more Tangle availability even dent the sandbox? Strange

But unfortunately they land on basically no current weapons and the few that do have it feature it in column 4 on non-darkness burn weapons. I crave a Strand Under Over and Aggregate Charge Rapid-Fire Sniper. RIP

Also super sucks that Wifi Enlighten wasn't an intended I actually enjoyed that as a mechanic

But seriously on the banes the Angelic on Consecrated took a full Chaos Reach with x7 Thunderous Retort and only just barely died. Someone fat fingered a zero in somewhere in that guys HP bar xD

Just starting out I actually wanted to complement the Warpriest encounter. Even though it's absolutely ridiculous on 5 Feat I think I actually enjoyed the no feat/ low feat version more than the original which is kind rare for me with challenges

Argos is Argos, Eater was never really a challenge, but what it had was the spectacle of that crazy boss design and the satisfaction of a Damage phase that really let you dump all the ammo you had on hand. I kind of wish the starting point was at the barrel that fires you into the final arena, but thats my only critique. The detain blasts being constant instead of just reserved for damage is hilarious

I'm not very sure what's different about Calus, but also I'm not sure Calus needed to be all that different. I was a big enjoyer of the original Leviathan and Gauntlet was probably the only weak encounter in the whole raid. I'm just happy to replay the encounter again.

Gahlran was great, but I'm surprised that it was actually made easier than it originally was. You have to do challenge to get the original experience with the crystals.

I'm of course happy to see Insurrection Prime return with the original Brigg. Scourge of the Past was my favorite raid for some time and honestly I'd say it still is. The more 3D map designs, sparrow access and sparrow racing encounter! I remain a believer that Sparrows should be accessible at all times in large because Scourge let me and because Mercury (and now Kepler) made me walk everywhere. I'm surprised by how much of Scourge of that Past made it into the encounter and I really enjoyed exploring around after the encounter was finished. The only only thing that surprised me was I remember Scourge being darker and more yellow/red toned. It was much brighter and blue-r than I believed it originally was.

As for the Consecrated Mind and Morgeth, I've always liked Morgeth, not so much Consecrated Mind. These are both crazy long encounters with the reworks that could've used some trimming Morgeth isn't as bad, but it's gotta be like 8 minutes to damage on Consecrated. Focusing Consecrated I like the Wifi Enlightenment and the mechanics of the 5th plate, but things take an ungodly amount of time to spawn and it felt like the whole encounter was just us waiting around for the mote guy to show up. If I were to make a suggestion I'd say maybe have the Hydras and Hobgoblins spawn on 2 plates at a time

For encounters I would've liked to see, I'm actually really surprised Val Ca'our didn't make the cut. I really enjoyed the final Spire of Stars encounter quite a lot because mostly everyone had a role. The going into space and marking ships mechanic was very cool. I also really enjoyed the Sparrow racing section in Scourge of the Past and I think it would've been so cool to feature the race and evolve the end into a boss battle with that crazy flaming servitor. I was also a fan of the Leviathan Dogs encounter for the spore collecting phase, but imagine instead of fighting the little dogs that don't fight back you run back out to Castellum and fight a really one that does!

In all the Consecrated Mind is really the only encounter I don't like and while I'm on the fence with Morgeth I really enjoyed every other encounter so I'm pretty happy with what the Pantheon brought to us. I definitely wish more vaulted content were released back to us, but of what was brought back we definitely got some solid picks in the line-up

Back in the Luna's and Not Forgotten meta one of the few weapons still holding it down in the Crucible was was Inaugural Address. That baby would run through your ass in the Midtown streets with little resistance. Also had great sound design. I was always a fan of the Omolon gun sounds. It's almost like a bird chirping

I haven't seen anything about it, but focusing rolls with multiple perks was so convenient for Vault space. Having a Blowout With Field Prep and Demolitionist with Explosive Light was versatile and there are a lot of other guns I want with multiple trait combos.

Prestige-ing for extra perks in your trait columns was also just a good passive grind. No matter what you were doing or how you were doing it you know that eventually your efforts would be rewarded. I feel like it was a colossal mistake to ax this system

I'll be starting with management

•Studio Head: Pierre Hintze

Formally the Halo MCC game lead many of you might know him as the guy why fixed MCC, but I still know him as the guy who abandoned MCC because he couldn't monetize Spartan Points.

•Chief of Staff: Angela Hession

Formally a Twitch Chief of Customer Trust with a tenure of 3 years 8 months, the Microsoft Gaming Chief of Safety and Trust, and the founder of the Hession A.I. Consulting Co. This person is now in charge of the culture within Halo Studios. A mishmash of Twitch and Microsoft culture sounds hilarious.

•General Manager of Franchise: Brian Koski

343 vet, in charge of marketing and monetization. You see his work in Infinite.

•Business Operations: Elizabeth Van Wyck

Actually the former COO of 343 Industries and as such was core leadership under 343

--- So it's 3 343i vets in management and 1 Microsoft/Twitch vet. Let's see the creative lead staff.

•Franchise Writer: Alex Wakeford

Previously a 343 Community Writer, joined in 2021 and was pushed up to lead in 2025. In fairness he hasn't been around long enough for his work to have impacted a game. He came up quick so I'm hopeful with this guys writing.

•Franchise/Narrative Writer: Jeff Easterling

This guy joined 343 in 2014 and worked on Halo 5's story. Honestly this guy's writing is silly. I don't think I need to go deeper than that. I'd probably trust a coked up street bum to write Halo over this guy.

•Creative Director: John JJ Williams

This guy was formally the gameplay designer in Call of Duty and Apex Legends. I remember a core issue with 343 Halo is it played like CoD so this is an interesting decision. I like my Halo to play like Halo, not like CoD with a Halo skin.

---The Community Management remains unchanged.

•Community Managers

Community Director Brian Jarrard "Ske7ch" and Senior Community Manager John Junyszek "Unyshek".

These guys were both there basically from the beginning and I'm looking forward to their famous radio silence when Halo Studios trips up. The way these guys operate at their job when the going gets rough is frustrating because you can expect them to evaporate right out of existence.

--- That is the full and complete leadership under Halo Studios and there was only 1 person from management and 1 from creative that weren't formally 343. They were however Microsoft and CoD vets which is uninspiring

This isn't necessarily a call to rewrite Darth Maul, just a conversation on a "what if" scenario and it's a writing technique I haven't seen mentioned a lot. Throughout our all of Phantom Menace movie Darth Maul only says 3 lines. "At last we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi, at last we will have our revenge.", "Yes, my master.", and "I will find them quickly my master.". Beyond that all we see is smoldering hateful stares from his golden Sith eyes, indifference, and gloating smiles as he sends sparks flying into Obi-wan's eyes believing that he had already won.

I don't know if there are any fans of Halo here, but Halo and Star Wars were always my two favorite franchise. I used to watch all of Bungie's ViDocs and sometimes I still do. Something that stuck with me was the lead writer Joe Staten's approach to writing the Master Chief. Joe Staten said that he actually didn't consider the Master Chief the main character, he wrote Cortana the Master Chief's A.I. companion as the main character. Despite Master Chief being the Main Protagonist he was also the Player Vessel an empty avatar for the player to fill. Joe Staten talked about the challenges this created for keeping the story interesting and ultimately he solved it by keeping the Master Chief surrounded with interesting characters like Cortana, Johnson, Spark, and Arbiter.

Joe Staten's approach I think was fitting for a stoic and it allowed him to write a protagonist that mostly delivered more impactful one-liners in a way that still felt very natural. As it relates to Darth Maul you maybe don't have to be as extreme a writing a vessel but this style of writing would allow you to let Maul process his loss to Obi-wan build him back up as a character slowly. He could remain concise in conversation as well allowing his lines to be more punchy. I think adding Savage Oppress was very smart for this approach because in this scenario he would essentially be the main character for a time even though the focus would be central to Maul. It's almost like 3rd person writing. Of course Savage can't be around Maul all the time, but you could add more substantial allies from the Death Watch and even the Pikes.

For some time now writing has had my attention and as of late so has the idea of a more stoic Darth Maul. I think a spin on Maul inspired by Joe Staten's work with Master Chief would've been very nice. Imagine how much more impactful Maul wildly yelling "KEEEENOBII"would be after mostly remaining mostly collected in the story. It's cool to think about.