Quote Originally Posted by Champ View Post
I picture the whole space battle thing as basically being the same thing as controlling a banshee. Except a little bigger ship..and different weapons.
The Banshee isn't really core to Halo, either. Especially when they put you in a "banshee section". But at least you can climb out of a Banshee and pull off a free-falling air-jack. It looks like you're strapped in to that Saber.

In ODST, I think they went way too far in dictating to the player with the vehicles. 'Okay, now drive a warthog through this whole level. Now get in a tank. Board a Banshee. Get back in a tank.' That stuff is well and good, but it's like Chinese food -- great when it's hot and fresh, but you're hungry an hour later and when you look at the leftovers in the fridge the next day, they don't seem 1/10th as appetizing. The core combat is what sticks to your ribs, it's the stuff that you see in the fridge and pounce on. It's the stuff that keeps you coming back for more.

Now, Halo 1 proved that you don't have to have a Warthog section or a Banshee section (there was a linear tank section, but only one) to make the vehicles useful. There were sections IDENTICAL to those you'd assault on foot, it just so happened that, this time, you had a warthog handy and it was a blast figuring out how to leverage the asset. And the Banshee was a glorified elevator or a Metroid powerup that let you reach areas you couldn't before. That was a good thing.

Anyway, Bungie's vehicle sections have been piss-easy, so I'm not too worried about Gears of War-esque BS (watch them announce underwater combat now). I'm just hoping they give us a higher proportion of the core goodness than we had with ODST, or really any Halo game since Halo 1. I'm thinking an 80-20 split would be nice. I want MEAT, not filler.