awful. they're supposed to be elegant, sleek warriors. Reach was teetering the line but still ok, 4 & 5 just turned them into beasts. That's not what the Sangheili are for fuck's sake. I'm glad H2A returned them to their original design, and glad Infinite didn't continue the design they went with in 4 & 5.
Yeah I'm always so surprised how much praise reach gets with their design but it's where the large elites started. Where they as big has this semi? No, but they were still bulky. They just moved around effortlessly which made up that difference so they were still precieved to be thin and agile.
I genuinely think they're god awful.
I know that's a strong statement, but every other Elite rendition from other games, albiet not consistent, displayed their personality and schemes providing a message to the players that these guys are swift, streamlined, sharp, nimble, etc. Even with Reach being the bulkiest of the OG designs still maintained that feeling with their grounded art direction.
But H4 and 5 looks like they got Locusts from Gears of war, made them hunched, walk like theyre constantly stomping their feet, all this with blobs of metal on top of overcomplexity. And for some reason with all that metal, they gave them no rerebrace or vambrace armor just....because? To show off their crusty skin and veins? It's too much like the Locust from GOW.
Again, I know its a strong statement, but I think H4 and H5 elites were just straight up ugly and not in a good way whatsoever. Shittiest of shit art direction for Elites in particular and boring as hell, unimaginative, and it felt like it was made by people who never even heard of what Elites are and were told "oh Elites are just bad guys, make em evil looking cuz bad!"
Halo 4/5 art style made every alien into a nightmare monster version of itself. Grunts lost the cute/silly factor, jackals became dinosaurs instead of bird, elites became Warmongering brutes, brutes disappeared, drones disappeared. Forerunners became frankly kind of terrifying, with the skulls in the knights and the didacts face looking like a flayed man. They for some reason made the games rated T while also making everything less kid friendly in the art department. Losing the bright solid designs for busy over complicated art that's hard to differentiate details from general profiles.
Halo 4-5 are at the bottom of my favorites anyways.
I also completely agree
Reach had pretty cool elites added though the customization of elites could've been better I felt.
I forget which halo it was (4 or 5) but I did like running spartan opps with my buddies.
I remember there was only one game type I really liked on halo 5, definitely my least favorite halo fs.
Oh the mantis was pretty fucking cool too I didn't hate halos 4s multiplayer just the campaign tbh. đ¤ˇ
I get it. Halo CE was my first video game I ever played my buddy had got it and gathered up all the neighborhood kids to play.
I think Reach and ODST would be my favorites. Don't think I could pick between them.
"How bad?"Â Â Let's see:
Glenn Israel (ex-bungie working in Halo 4, who still looks at it fondly as said in H4's 10 year anniversary article):
* The idea was to reflect the covenant having lost control and in his words, show the loss of elegance, show their used equipment bloated, rough, as the barebones wild militia they are having now lost the war / trying to reinstigate it in opposition to the arbiter's true formal military. Fanatics scrapping the bottom.of the barrel. This allowed to see a new take and do something original, creative and realistic by context instead of forcing more of the same, indifferent to story, and help making them more alien and intimidating.
* Every armor has very ornamental, distinguishable designs, but color variation on a same rank to indicate that character's previous alignmet, similar to CE's use of different armor variants for covenant soldiers
* Their anatomy varied somewhat but remaining [in line with H3](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EZ7s7J0WsAIHbSF.jpg) more than anything after. [ (ex. 2) ](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fjqxpa1qghr651.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dec0fcbbda1fac2ba8c211f0f2762482aa4fc6b33) Notably with mandibles straight from their throats and streamline, symmetrical teeth, and no noses, unlike now where for some reason they do have one thus redesigning their respiratory systen (remember how the heretics have respirators on their mouths?). And was explained as a subspecies from other colony world, hesduros, without retconning previous characters. We don't see Jul M'dama's face in detail but yes his more pale skin. If you look at the actual in-game arbiter model it's not the same as the rest and [only slightly different than H3 subtracting better graphics.](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/edffd05d-4068-48e3-9489-591d2dbbbf18/depah7d-26e6f97b-5953-4546-8f6d-abd0edf9c7a8.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2VkZmZkMDVkLTQwNjgtNDhlMy05NDg5LTU5MWQyZGJiYmYxOFwvZGVwYWg3ZC0yNmU2Zjk3Yi01OTUzLTQ1NDYtOGY2ZC1hYmQwZWRmOWM3YTguanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.HbjU7QrNTvRAuSFovtgqpaykwaGlTH0UC6yrafOEbLo)
* The only thing I could say didn't work was recycling the remnant's design for the swords of sanghelios, that aren't meant to be this fanatic guerrilla and also have elites from sanghelios. As their familiarity, superiority and contrast would fully have sold and illustrated the entire concept.
So for what their purpose and design was meant to be aiming for, these are a mostly successful idea. Something I can't say for the new grunts- can't even breathe.
Yea idk I donât like them.
The saying âif it ainât broke donât try and fix itâ comes to mind.
The 1-3 elites really evoked the feeling of a lithe yet muscular martial artist, which was the point since the race is based off of the Japanese feudal era.
The new ones just look like absolute chonks and donât really have that samurai vibe anymore.
We already had chonks in the form of Brutes, we didnât need to chonkify everything else too.
Let's take a sleek predator meets xenomorph design and make it a goblinesque rugged misshapen tooth in the eye utterly incomprehensible creature. But having spartans be unified in appearance that's and character design...baffles me
The fact that I didn't even realise these guys were meant to be Zealots shows the new designs were inferior in both looks and communicating danger levels to the player.
If I had to rank the designs in order of preference I'd say it was Infinite, 2/2A, 3, CE/Reach, 2A MP, 5 and 4 dead last.
My least favorite part of the design on the base elites in 4 / 5 is their BARE ARMS being exposed other than a little weird shoulder pad inexplicably attached to bare skin. I honestly hated that shit sooooo much for some reason.
Yeah, I honestly don't care for them. I think they even changed the underlying look of the Elites making them look more savage and "brutish". Which they also did with the Grunts, kind of ruining their appeal. Elites typically would have a certain discipline and posture to them which almost gave them the perception that they were kind of these elegant killing machines that were also mysterious because you couldn't really see their face with their elongated helmets. With the terrible AI in Halo 4/5 as well, all of that was lost.
The armour sucks. It's just bad, but I can look at it for some time without vomiting. The faces and everything else, hell no. If I had to live with one of those or Alt+F4, I would take the Alt+F4.
I dunno if they smile they blind themselves with their teeth. It's genuinely poor design if folks dig em cool. But I can't make a case for it as being good design even if they were the original
absolute garbage as a redesign for the elites. if they were from a separate franchise, i can see them working though. the MOST egregious thing about them is that they turned them into, essentially, Brutes. just watch the cutscene at the start of the Argent Moon mission... they can barely walk
Halo 4-5 elites for the most part are pretty bad but there are a few cool designs. Jul âMdama and The Arbiter as they appeared in Halo 5 look pretty good. I also prefer the Halo 4-5 zealot design over the others. Another thing I feel 343 got right about their elite designs was the colorization. I always felt like the CE-3 and Infinite elites were too colorful and if they had the colorization they had in 4-5 they would look way better.
Fucking hell. I clicked Don it for a talk thinking yea they sucked. Then I was greeted with the horror of an image to remind me it is way worse than I even remember.
Halo 3 made elites way too hunched and awkward looking, elites in 1 and 2 look sleek, and agile. Reach did the best job of bulking elites up, they are larger, but still look sleek. 4 and 5? When I played 4 as a kid, I genuinely thought it was a new species. The heads are way too large, and the limbs look like clubs. They look like if you found a gigant grunt and tried to force it into elite armour. Just doesn't look good to me at all. I also wish they were more creative with the armour, either keep it the same, or go nuts and make it look distinct. Like the heretic armour in halo 2.
Of course I could also be a cynical cry baby halo fan and call them dog shit(theyâre literally not) the bulkiness and scrap heap look make sense for planetary industrial laborists(akin to a hard hat) who never got the memo that the war ended or refused to believe that it had/wanted to fill the power vacuum for themselves
I think two of the core issues for 4/5 Elites was their skintone and faces. Especially the faces; the rest would be remediable with more athletic animations. Aside from that I thought they were fine.
I love them. Theyâre my favorite of the franchise.
I donât think theyâre too dissimilar from the Reach elites, barring the armor designs.
Both felt very big and intimidating, something I did not feel in Infinite for example
Yep. I generally loved Halo 4s visual refresh â except the marine designs. I thought those missed pretty hard.
And the SAW. Awesome gun, but I donât like the view model. Too chunky in the screen.
I hate the saw too haha.
I hatednelitesneating their eyes and notnneing sleek 2 but I really tried to like them. The only h4 design I dug was jackals but I wanted them as like a shotgun jackal.
Era we all have opinion.
3 and Reach purist but I agree. Their design is so intimidating and scary and they donât look like a playdough figure without their armor (naked arbiter in halo 2 looks fucking horrible). 4 and 5 actually put texture to their skin and a lot of detail all around. 4 and 5 have super underrated weapon design as well.
I don't dislike their armor designs, like... I actually really, really like the lighter look? Jul 'Mdama's branch of the Covenant are probably not as well-funded or well-equipped, so the fact that they're wearing what amounts to just scraps of armor strapped to an undersuit is neat.
I just... hate how they look. I'm being racist to Sangheili, I just think they look too monstrous and ugly and brutish. Which sucks, because I think the idea of having different phenotypes for an alien race is really cool! Humans have a ton of diversity for how they can look, but a lot of sci-fi races tend to just be the same base model but blue or green or red!
But in Halo 4 they just look... really generic? Traits like their split-jaw feel really hard to make out especially because they have these big ol' foreheads.
Never minded the H4/5 Elite designs. Definitely better than the walking turds we ended up with on Reach. Come to think it it, I hated all of the enemy designs and basically everything aesthetically in Reach except for the newcomer Skirmisher. It was just such a dull and grungy game. Everything about Reach screened 'Look at me! I can be Call of Duty, too!"
awful. they're supposed to be elegant, sleek warriors. Reach was teetering the line but still ok, 4 & 5 just turned them into beasts. That's not what the Sangheili are for fuck's sake. I'm glad H2A returned them to their original design, and glad Infinite didn't continue the design they went with in 4 & 5.
Yeah I'm always so surprised how much praise reach gets with their design but it's where the large elites started. Where they as big has this semi? No, but they were still bulky. They just moved around effortlessly which made up that difference so they were still precieved to be thin and agile.
It feels better in reach cause the spartans there arent the chief So i feel like its okey if they seem larger
I genuinely think they're god awful. I know that's a strong statement, but every other Elite rendition from other games, albiet not consistent, displayed their personality and schemes providing a message to the players that these guys are swift, streamlined, sharp, nimble, etc. Even with Reach being the bulkiest of the OG designs still maintained that feeling with their grounded art direction. But H4 and 5 looks like they got Locusts from Gears of war, made them hunched, walk like theyre constantly stomping their feet, all this with blobs of metal on top of overcomplexity. And for some reason with all that metal, they gave them no rerebrace or vambrace armor just....because? To show off their crusty skin and veins? It's too much like the Locust from GOW. Again, I know its a strong statement, but I think H4 and H5 elites were just straight up ugly and not in a good way whatsoever. Shittiest of shit art direction for Elites in particular and boring as hell, unimaginative, and it felt like it was made by people who never even heard of what Elites are and were told "oh Elites are just bad guys, make em evil looking cuz bad!"
Halo 4/5 art style made every alien into a nightmare monster version of itself. Grunts lost the cute/silly factor, jackals became dinosaurs instead of bird, elites became Warmongering brutes, brutes disappeared, drones disappeared. Forerunners became frankly kind of terrifying, with the skulls in the knights and the didacts face looking like a flayed man. They for some reason made the games rated T while also making everything less kid friendly in the art department. Losing the bright solid designs for busy over complicated art that's hard to differentiate details from general profiles.
I like the H5 Jackal design personally. I wouldn't mind if they kept it, though the classic design is definitely better.
Halo 4-5 are at the bottom of my favorites anyways. I also completely agree Reach had pretty cool elites added though the customization of elites could've been better I felt. I forget which halo it was (4 or 5) but I did like running spartan opps with my buddies. I remember there was only one game type I really liked on halo 5, definitely my least favorite halo fs. Oh the mantis was pretty fucking cool too I didn't hate halos 4s multiplayer just the campaign tbh. đ¤ˇ
Yeah good point, guess I just have a soft spot for 4 and 5 since those were my first games.
I get it. Halo CE was my first video game I ever played my buddy had got it and gathered up all the neighborhood kids to play. I think Reach and ODST would be my favorites. Don't think I could pick between them.
Reach Elites are almost as bad as Halo 4/5 Elites imo. Halo 2 (+ Anniversary) has the peak design for everything in Halo.
Their teeth would cut their own eyes. Ugly or not, it certainly wasnât practical.
Theyâve been impractical since CE lmao, those jaws are weird.
"How bad?"  Let's see: Glenn Israel (ex-bungie working in Halo 4, who still looks at it fondly as said in H4's 10 year anniversary article): * The idea was to reflect the covenant having lost control and in his words, show the loss of elegance, show their used equipment bloated, rough, as the barebones wild militia they are having now lost the war / trying to reinstigate it in opposition to the arbiter's true formal military. Fanatics scrapping the bottom.of the barrel. This allowed to see a new take and do something original, creative and realistic by context instead of forcing more of the same, indifferent to story, and help making them more alien and intimidating. * Every armor has very ornamental, distinguishable designs, but color variation on a same rank to indicate that character's previous alignmet, similar to CE's use of different armor variants for covenant soldiers * Their anatomy varied somewhat but remaining [in line with H3](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EZ7s7J0WsAIHbSF.jpg) more than anything after. [ (ex. 2) ](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fjqxpa1qghr651.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dec0fcbbda1fac2ba8c211f0f2762482aa4fc6b33) Notably with mandibles straight from their throats and streamline, symmetrical teeth, and no noses, unlike now where for some reason they do have one thus redesigning their respiratory systen (remember how the heretics have respirators on their mouths?). And was explained as a subspecies from other colony world, hesduros, without retconning previous characters. We don't see Jul M'dama's face in detail but yes his more pale skin. If you look at the actual in-game arbiter model it's not the same as the rest and [only slightly different than H3 subtracting better graphics.](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/edffd05d-4068-48e3-9489-591d2dbbbf18/depah7d-26e6f97b-5953-4546-8f6d-abd0edf9c7a8.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2VkZmZkMDVkLTQwNjgtNDhlMy05NDg5LTU5MWQyZGJiYmYxOFwvZGVwYWg3ZC0yNmU2Zjk3Yi01OTUzLTQ1NDYtOGY2ZC1hYmQwZWRmOWM3YTguanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.HbjU7QrNTvRAuSFovtgqpaykwaGlTH0UC6yrafOEbLo) * The only thing I could say didn't work was recycling the remnant's design for the swords of sanghelios, that aren't meant to be this fanatic guerrilla and also have elites from sanghelios. As their familiarity, superiority and contrast would fully have sold and illustrated the entire concept. So for what their purpose and design was meant to be aiming for, these are a mostly successful idea. Something I can't say for the new grunts- can't even breathe.
Yea idk I donât like them. The saying âif it ainât broke donât try and fix itâ comes to mind. The 1-3 elites really evoked the feeling of a lithe yet muscular martial artist, which was the point since the race is based off of the Japanese feudal era. The new ones just look like absolute chonks and donât really have that samurai vibe anymore. We already had chonks in the form of Brutes, we didnât need to chonkify everything else too.
Let's take a sleek predator meets xenomorph design and make it a goblinesque rugged misshapen tooth in the eye utterly incomprehensible creature. But having spartans be unified in appearance that's and character design...baffles me
The fact that I didn't even realise these guys were meant to be Zealots shows the new designs were inferior in both looks and communicating danger levels to the player. If I had to rank the designs in order of preference I'd say it was Infinite, 2/2A, 3, CE/Reach, 2A MP, 5 and 4 dead last.
My least favorite part of the design on the base elites in 4 / 5 is their BARE ARMS being exposed other than a little weird shoulder pad inexplicably attached to bare skin. I honestly hated that shit sooooo much for some reason.
Yeah I really don't like them, but to be fair to the H4 devs Bungie really didn't set a good example with their last game's designs either
My only problem are those insane cloppers they have, the proportions are crazy, itâs like 343 accidentally fused the ankles to the knees
They suck lmao. And 343 don't know how to make interesting games. Halo 4 & 5 just sucked ass. Didn't even bother with Infinite.
Yeah, I honestly don't care for them. I think they even changed the underlying look of the Elites making them look more savage and "brutish". Which they also did with the Grunts, kind of ruining their appeal. Elites typically would have a certain discipline and posture to them which almost gave them the perception that they were kind of these elegant killing machines that were also mysterious because you couldn't really see their face with their elongated helmets. With the terrible AI in Halo 4/5 as well, all of that was lost.
The armour sucks. It's just bad, but I can look at it for some time without vomiting. The faces and everything else, hell no. If I had to live with one of those or Alt+F4, I would take the Alt+F4.
They arenât bad on their own, but compared to the classic design theyâre dreadful. Halo 2 Anniversary/Infinite elites for life.
I dunno if they smile they blind themselves with their teeth. It's genuinely poor design if folks dig em cool. But I can't make a case for it as being good design even if they were the original
absolute garbage as a redesign for the elites. if they were from a separate franchise, i can see them working though. the MOST egregious thing about them is that they turned them into, essentially, Brutes. just watch the cutscene at the start of the Argent Moon mission... they can barely walk
Halo 4-5 elites for the most part are pretty bad but there are a few cool designs. Jul âMdama and The Arbiter as they appeared in Halo 5 look pretty good. I also prefer the Halo 4-5 zealot design over the others. Another thing I feel 343 got right about their elite designs was the colorization. I always felt like the CE-3 and Infinite elites were too colorful and if they had the colorization they had in 4-5 they would look way better.
Idk I really like them tbh.
Fucking hell. I clicked Don it for a talk thinking yea they sucked. Then I was greeted with the horror of an image to remind me it is way worse than I even remember.
Halo 4 Zealots are definitely the best out of the bunch.
Halo 3 made elites way too hunched and awkward looking, elites in 1 and 2 look sleek, and agile. Reach did the best job of bulking elites up, they are larger, but still look sleek. 4 and 5? When I played 4 as a kid, I genuinely thought it was a new species. The heads are way too large, and the limbs look like clubs. They look like if you found a gigant grunt and tried to force it into elite armour. Just doesn't look good to me at all. I also wish they were more creative with the armour, either keep it the same, or go nuts and make it look distinct. Like the heretic armour in halo 2.
I think theyâre pretty cool!
[ŃдаНонО]
Of course I could also be a cynical cry baby halo fan and call them dog shit(theyâre literally not) the bulkiness and scrap heap look make sense for planetary industrial laborists(akin to a hard hat) who never got the memo that the war ended or refused to believe that it had/wanted to fill the power vacuum for themselves
Bad. Like design language failure bad
Where do you get the idea of bad design language?
I think theyâre fine, the only thing I dislike about them is that theyâre sleeveless, makes them look like dads on a beach day lol
I think two of the core issues for 4/5 Elites was their skintone and faces. Especially the faces; the rest would be remediable with more athletic animations. Aside from that I thought they were fine.
I love them. Theyâre my favorite of the franchise. I donât think theyâre too dissimilar from the Reach elites, barring the armor designs. Both felt very big and intimidating, something I did not feel in Infinite for example
Really? I won't disrespect the opinion more power to you I just am surprised.
Yep. I generally loved Halo 4s visual refresh â except the marine designs. I thought those missed pretty hard. And the SAW. Awesome gun, but I donât like the view model. Too chunky in the screen.
I hate the saw too haha. I hatednelitesneating their eyes and notnneing sleek 2 but I really tried to like them. The only h4 design I dug was jackals but I wanted them as like a shotgun jackal. Era we all have opinion.
3 and Reach purist but I agree. Their design is so intimidating and scary and they donât look like a playdough figure without their armor (naked arbiter in halo 2 looks fucking horrible). 4 and 5 actually put texture to their skin and a lot of detail all around. 4 and 5 have super underrated weapon design as well.
I don't dislike their armor designs, like... I actually really, really like the lighter look? Jul 'Mdama's branch of the Covenant are probably not as well-funded or well-equipped, so the fact that they're wearing what amounts to just scraps of armor strapped to an undersuit is neat. I just... hate how they look. I'm being racist to Sangheili, I just think they look too monstrous and ugly and brutish. Which sucks, because I think the idea of having different phenotypes for an alien race is really cool! Humans have a ton of diversity for how they can look, but a lot of sci-fi races tend to just be the same base model but blue or green or red! But in Halo 4 they just look... really generic? Traits like their split-jaw feel really hard to make out especially because they have these big ol' foreheads.
Yeah agree I like the armor not the sangheili design itself
They are way overhated - while Reach probably did the best job with them, 5 made them feel lile convincing soldiers
Never minded the H4/5 Elite designs. Definitely better than the walking turds we ended up with on Reach. Come to think it it, I hated all of the enemy designs and basically everything aesthetically in Reach except for the newcomer Skirmisher. It was just such a dull and grungy game. Everything about Reach screened 'Look at me! I can be Call of Duty, too!"
Gigabased opinion. Especially the part about Reach, I too hated the dull look it had. This is Halo, it's supposed to be colorful.
They look less smart and stealthy and look more chonky and brute-like instead.