u/Gopherofdoomies

(Inb4 "I just want any game at all in this Microsoft-forsaken series")

I love the Halo Wars series to death; it is so nice to have those great games. But if we ever get a Halo Wars 3, my dream is that the gameplay could be upended in a way that eliminates blobbing. For those who don't know, "blobbing" in strategy games is the tendency to gather up your troops into one big ball and throw them against your opponents, who most often have their own big ball of units running around. It's an RTS tradition, and many popular games (like Age of Empires, made by the same company that did Halo Wars), feature it prominently.

It's a commonly accepted feature of most RTSes, but it shouldn't have to be. There are a lot of standout RTS games like Ultimate General, Star Wars: Empire at War, Battlefleet Gothic, or Warno that heavily feature lines of sight, skirmishing, and mixed unit integration in ways that Halo Wars only scratches the surface of. It does require a slower pace than most RTS's offer, but it would also cut down on the tendancy to make ten scorpions, throw them against the Covenant/Banished, and then make 10 replacements once the former die. In my lore-addled brain, that's not what Halo combat is like, gosh darn it!

So, what do you guys think? Do you disagree, like reasonable people? Or do any of you crazed lunatics think that this would be a good idea?

I think I Love Bees is probably the best-written piece of Halo media. It doesn't have as cool setpieces as some books, and certainly doesn't have the great gameplay or cool cutscenes that the series is known for. But it has some really sharp dialogue, fantastic characters, and an awesome mix of funny, sad, and heartwarming, as well as a fascinating plot.

For those who don't know, I Love Bees is an audio drama ARG released in the lead-up to Halo 2 (think Hunt the Truth, but a bit more esoteric). It consists of two narratives. The main one follows several characters in the weeks before the Covenant invasion of Earth, and a background story details a really strange, symbolic story of a Sleeping Princess (a human ai), trying to rebuild a castle (her operating system) while trying to avoid being killed by a Spider (SPDR, an automatic reconstruction program), that has mistaken her for a Pious Flea (a Covenant trojan AI program).

The sub-story is really cool, but the main story really shines as the best depiction of civilian life during the Human-Covenant War. Some of my favorite highlights:

-- We hear the civilian reaction to the Fall of Reach. Midway through the story, the news is broken, and sends a shockwave through a crowd, and the rest of the story has every character prepare for what they know is now coming. It has a very somber edge to it that is done really well.

-- A realistic look at ONI's internal workings. One of the main characters is a midlevel ONI operative uncovering a hidden conspiracy within the agency, and the story highlights his drive to genuinely help people while being frustrated by the agency's malicious bureaucracy. But it doesn't treat ONI as omniscient or all-powerful like some later Halo works do, and it highlights the people in the organization who want to defend humanity.

-- Civilian life in general is handled very well. The characters are doing fine, but there are hints that things are getting tougher as more people crowd onto Earth, there is racism against off-worlders, most food is now synthetic due to shortages, and people are living with lost family members due to the war. It's a well-told picture that I've rarely seen in other Halo media.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk, everyone. If you're interested in listening to the series yourself, the audio clips are compiled on the Halopedia page, starting with the first chapter here: Axon Clips Chapter 1 - Halopedia, the Halo wiki

Hope you guys enjoy it!