Halo 4 rips off another big franchise?

Might want to check your game chronology: Halo had its first three games out before the first Mass Effect was released.
The Forerunner/Humanity interaction is new, coming out in early 2011 from the Forerunner saga books.

But ancient starfaring civilizations and their antics are hardly unique to these two games, or even games for that matter, so I don't see a reason to get upset at all.

IIRC, this plot was established in the first Halo game, and the whole plot was about preventing it from being repeated.

Opty said:

Granted, it could also be said that Forerunners and Protheans share similarities. It doesnt matter who is first with the idea, in this case. It matters more who's more well-known for it.

Just, from reading the article, I'm hoping that there is enough that is fresh and dissimilar so that these elments don't feel "been there, done that."

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/snip, and bold mine


Interesting thought. I can see what you mean by it, and can't help but think that it is truly unfair.

That said, whether people are more familiar with the story of Mass Effect or Halo is not the Halo developers' problem. Many of us were there with Halo from game 1, and dallied with Mass Effect as it came.

Opty said:

So, I'm reading the preview article on Halo 4 in this month's Game Informer magazine and see this...



Gee, where have I heard that nonsense before?

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Christ, this is like people complaining Gandalf is a rip off of Dumbledore. If we go by your route, then the Reapers are ripped off the Flood except metals and with a really weak reason for the killing, the Doomsday Machine from Star Trek or the Borg or the Cybermen from Doctor Who. Hell, there arep eople who complain the Cybermen ripped off the Borg.

Opty said:

One hundred thousand? Wow, that's like two whole Reaper cycles.

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Mass Effect honestly sucks in my opinion. I never got the hype for the game. Though the Reaper Cycles is probably the most awesome thing about that trilogy. So your complanining about what?

Opty said:

Ah, so they turned them into husks.

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No, they were turned from a spacefaring race of tyrants and Nazi's that ruled thousands of planets into primitives trying to rebuild their civilization in a single planet. Seven races of humanity, neanderthals and cro-magnon and all the others, deposited on one planet. They can think. Husks can't. They're living. Husk are dead. Husks are rip offs of Cybermen or Borg.

Opty said:

Seriously, I'm looking forward to the game, but this bit of the back story for the newish (main) villains seems to have some very glaring similarities to certain major story elements of the current industry leader in this genre, Mass Effect (which has surpassed the Halo franchise in recent years for industry dominance).

I was able to overlook the identical plots in Dragon Age: Origins and the original Mass Effect because they were from the same company but different genres.

But, 343 Studios is going to have to dance a fine line and come up with a fresh spin on this in order for these story elements to not come off as a complete "Me, too!" rip off of ME's Reaper story.

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Mass Effect ripped off Halo, you mean right?

Opty said:

Why do I need to check my "game chronology?" I never claimed that ME was out first. I played Halo on the original Xbox just like everyone else.

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By claiming Halo was ripping of Mass Effect it implies ME came out first. Though that thought was baised based off the title.

Opty said:

Yeah, I know. That's kind of the whole point. They're back (in Halo 4) to destroy humanity again, I guess, and get the cycle going again. I read somewhere that they were originaly supposed to be human or descended from ancient humans but that was changed.

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Humanity was de-evolved from a spacefaring races into primitives that thought steam power was all that was becaue they were a bunch of xeno-phobic Nazi's who thought they were all that. When they were being torn apart by the Flood, they wiped out Forerunner populations to settle their own displaced populations. The Forerunners retaliated. There is no cycle. The only cycle is the Precursors and the Flood testing races to see which deserved to inherit the Mantle, which is basically over since the Precursors are, for the most part, dead.

Opty said:

The Reapers goals of "wiping out sentient life to save it" has been around since ME2 was released in early 2010. I just think 343 needs to put a different spin on it, whether or not they laid the groundwork in their earlier games.

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I thought that motivation only came about in ME3? Didn't ME1 and ME2 have different motivations? Is probably faulty memory. Why should 343 put a different spin just because another franchise decided to use the same idea for their own game? Halo and ME both took ideas from other games and tropes to make their respective universes work.

Opty said:

Who's "upset?" I was merely saying that these "new" story elements, especially given the timing, will seem too familiar to the audience and it will prove tricky for 343 to present them in a way that doesnt come across as a rip off of the reveals of ME 2 and 3.

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The way you come off in your post says 'I'm raging mad! Halo is copying Mass Effect! 343 are a bunch of copy cats!' The sarcasm in it doesn't not help at all.

Opty said:

Granted, it could also be said that Forerunners and Protheans share similarities. It doesnt matter who is first with the idea, in this case. It matters more who's more well-known for it.

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Halo and Mass Effect are both well known. Its just that ME is newer and has built up a lot of hype. To use the last post comparison, its kids knowing more about Dumbledore than Gandalf.

Opty said:

Just, from reading the article, I'm hoping that there is enough that is fresh and dissimilar so that these elments don't feel "been there, done that."

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Halo is a completely different Universe than Mass Effect. So far the games, other than very SELECT elements of the backstory, seem different.

Lord Hierarch said:

Mass Effect honestly sucks in my opinion. I never got the hype for the game. Though the Reaper Cycles is probably the most awesome thing about that trilogy. So your complanining about what?

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Thems fighting words.

But also, Mass Effect and Halo are both cribbing from Larry Niven (devolved humans strikes me as very similar to the Breeder-Pak/Protector-Pak and us and ringworlds in general) and Berserker (the whole sentient machines trying to kill all life in the galaxy thing).

The difference is that Mass Effect actually references Berserker (the Quarian vessel Qui-Queb is named after the friendly Berserker) and Halo's ringworld is just plain wrong.

I mean, first it's in orbit around a GAS giant, and then when you get on it, it has a sun...but there was no sun visible when you crashed...

That's a minor quibble, yes, but it always bugged me about the first Halo.

Hell, we could go even further and say that Halo bloodily ripped off Starship Troopers and Warhammer 40,000...

But that's the thing. Good Sci-Fi takes old ideas and puts a new spin on them. Both games have their upsides and downsides. I personally think that Mass Effect did a better job of being sci-fi (but I hear that Halo's novels were quite good and indepth, so it could be just that ME put more of their science fiction into the actual GAMES) but that doesn't make Halo a bad game.


No, the fact that it sucks is what makes Halo a bad game

...

Gandalf is a rip off of Dumbeldore.

Well, they're both a rip off of Merlin.

Zoombie said:

Well, they're both a rip off of Merlin.

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MERLIN RIPPED OFF THE GORY THAT IS ME!!!

Still looking forwards to it

I just made a profile literally to say your an idiot. 343 branched out and hired talent (people) from all over. So there's a good chance that people who helped with mass effect were hired to help make halo 4. It's actually really funny how just bc something is similar means they must have ripped off another game or movie or some crap and yes in some cases it's probably true but halo 4 hired a lot of new people from all over the gamers grid so chill dude.
Now I'm going to delete this profile bc that's literally the hole reason I got this. Bye now and try to be less of an ignorant moron

Wait a minute. You mean to say that people played Halo for the story?

When I read driveby posters like that, I think of this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g

Channy said:

Wait a minute. You mean to say that people played Halo for the story?

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I played Halo for the story.

No, seriously.

This is news to me. I recall many memories of Halo parties and gatherings but never for a story... Even myself I can't quite remember the story of it.

But as far as the whole.. stole from ME thing.. like people have already said.. aren't a lot of popular ideas just carbon copies of something that came out before such and such years ago?

Halo does quite well for itself, with or without 'stealing' from ME. It'll do just fine, people should calm down a little. Real fans won't care.

Love the avy btw. I'minspace~

Opty said:

Ah, the delicious irony of some (likely teenage) douchebag troll telling me in a post riddled with misspelled words, missing punctuation, and poor grammar that *I'm* the moron.

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Are you talking about me? Cause as a teen I'm insulted by your statement .

In all seriousness though, if you are, when did I call you a moron?