AWKWARD ZOMBIE

I've already got my EVA helmet, which is objectively the best helmet.
Also Frost visor makes it doubly awesome.

Is there a Halo 4 equivalent to the Operator Helmet from Reach?

This is important and will decide whether or not I get the game.

The Enforcer Helmet looks kind of similar, with something that looks like the optics equipment from the Operator Helmet on it.

I want my EVA Goddammit but my brother took the game back to his apartment boo hoo BOO HOO

I want the Infiltrator helmet, but the requirement is RIDICULOUS. The Enforcer one I saw because I noticed I was dangerously close to turret gunner mastery, and it looked badass enough to tide it over. Plus I'm already almost level 4 on multikill mastery. I realize when I get to level 7, it'll take about a million medals to unlock it, but I GET TO LOOK LIKE ISAAC FROM DEAD SPACE!

My brother's inventory shows the Venator set and it looks so cool but he's much better at whatever it takes to unlock that set that it hasn't even shown up in my inventory yet.

I just looked that up thinking it was just one of the "level up" helmets, but apparently it's the assassination helmet. That's actually a pretty big deal. I define a good match when I get just one assassination, really good when I get an assassination plus a handful of vehicle kills (and then the ones where I rack in the multikills are just great...just fucking great oh my god, I love Exile map. Me + Gauss turret = <3 Assuming I actually get a good driver, and not one that sees the Scorpion and is all "LOL IMA DRAVE AT TEH TANK!").

Hopefully it's because he was a badass at assassinating and not that he did the cheap thing and get on two accounts to do it to himself.

I'm not hating on the game or anything, but wow am I disappointed with the art direction.
It doesn't look like military stuff anymore. Reach was great because everything was rough and worn without falling prey to the shitgrit brown fps stereotype.
4 is like an anime. The Spartan's proportions are shameful - the gaps between their legs aren't anything you'd see on a recovering anorexic, let alone specially engineered elite soldiers. These armors aren't practical and they'd never see deployment. Half the helmets don't even have visors, and the ones that do have a viewing angle of approximately thirty degrees. They look like the trying-too-hard scifi you see in Section 8. I like Section 8, but not for its aesthetics.

What's with so much exposed bodysuit? If that's safe, what's the sense in having metal in such odd configurations everywhere? Why do are there so many ridges in the chest pieces? It all looks like sporting equipment, not combat gear.

I have no idea why this drives me up the wall like it does. I guess I'm disappointed that this is the direction 343 is taking the series? Which means we're probably not going to see another Halo with art like Reach again.

EDIT: Huh, I actually had these same complaints about Halo Anniversary Edition. I just don't like where 343 is taking the art. It's all too spangly.

I think the body-suit is supposed to be some kind of nano-weave armor thing, but yeah, a lot of proportions on the Spartan IVs seem off. From the lists of helmets I can see that a fair amount of them, more than half, have visors. Also, the art style for Halo has been constantly changing since the first game, and it's always been hit or miss. The most important thing to me though is that 343 didn't go and CoD them up. The regular marines look like marines, just with gear that's 540 years into the future, and the Spartans still look very much like Spartans.

Spartan's are genetically engineered for their suits, so liberties with proportions are easily explainable. In what way would the suits never see deployment? The physical "visor" could very well just be something to give the Spartans a more humanistic look, In reality it could be that the helmet collects outside stimuli and relays to the user by ways other than the physical visor. Or it could be that the optics in the visor are powerful enough to replay enough information. See: Ironman. How do you know those patches of armor are actually just plate metal? It could be that the suit is actually carbon fiber-esque armor, or some harder, more futuristic material, and those "bulges" are to hold the circuitry of the armor?

As for the art, it's a video game. If a game doesn't look physically pleasing, or "cool", no one would buy it. Everyone loved Reach for the customization, but for some reason you didn't. If it was just Master Chief all the time, it would lose itself to the same issue COD gets with the sense that it's just the same shit over and over again.

Actually YCobb said that he liked Reach's art.

Oh OK, I didn't see the "not" in that sentence.

Either way if it's just the art, then there's not too much that can be done about it. As gamers, we're supposed to have this creed where the graphics of a game don't determine the quality of it (even though it does) and art is up to the discretion of the video game makers.

Besides, I thought Halo 4 was going to be the last Halo game (it's not, Reach was supposed to be the last game).

No? 4 is the first in a new trilogy, I believe. It was never intended to be the last. Similarly, Reach was only ever going to be Bungie's last Halo game, because the series passed on to 343.

And yeah, of course they can do whatever they want with the art and it doesn't matter much, I'm just commenting that I dislike it.
Also, re: proportions: No. They're still human, they're not going to have their bodies pulled apart and reconstructed with their hips a foot wider. The most that happened in that regard was injections/growth hormones/whatever to get them bigger.

Iron Man's helmet is even worse than a few of the Halo 4 helmets, but at least it looks cool. These things are just messes of curved panels and cameras.

Re: aesthetically pleasing/cool: This is subjective, but I don't think it does. Like I said, I believe it's taken a step down and now mingles with the mediocre art of Section 8 or NOVA. They've traded reasonable designs for greeble, and none of it makes sense. Sure, they could put circuitry in the bodysuit. But I'm betting they always have, since Reach and earlier. I don't see why the physical side of the armor is suddenly wavering or why it's so inconsistent in doing so. I don't know why the Enforcer armor has gigantic screwheads on its boots while everything else has silly little blocks running sideways. I don't know why the Aviator armor has circles instead of shoulder pads. Reach had variation, but it was reasonable variation. You could opt for huge shoulder pads, small shoulder pads, shoulder pads that flared out at the top. Yes, there were many styles that were functionally equal but looked slightly different, but none of them were as stupid as Halo 4 has.

I don't know why I'm bothering to try and articulate my points, because above all it's just a sense of impropriety that I get from the designs. I just don't like them. They seem to me to be trying too hard to be sci-fi.

Also, uh. I hope you realize this game is more Master Chief? I don't know where you're going with that.

((Another silly thing, but not one I really care to complain about: Why is the Oceanic armor styled after old fashioned submarines? We've already seem that bodaciously every type of Mjolnir armor (see: Reach's customization) can operate in a vacuum without any problems, so what makes the helmet necessary?))

Well the Oceanic implies that it's meant for the ocean and extreme pressure (a drastic opposite of the vacuum of space with no pressure at all).

And yeah, I strongly agree with you that the proportions on the lower body are weird as all hell.

Then at this point you're more arguing against the evolution of video game graphics. Back then, they had to be more simplistic. Now that they can do more, they do more, and a lot of people seem to like it so they're probably going to stick with it. I'll agree that a lot of the helmets look like someone shotgunned electronics to someone's head, but there's a hell of a lot more to pick from, so you can just ignore those appreciating the fact that you don't have to stick with it.

As for why I'm "arguing against Master Chief" it's not because I don't like him, or question why he's in the game. I said it because character customization seemed to be a really big deal with reach (especially since it wasn't Master Chief). It gave a sense of personality in the character that allowed for more immersion. If anything, we should appreciate the fact that 343 kept it in there instead of getting rid of it because "It's a Master Chief game!"

Besides, you can just beat the game on Legendary and unlock the armor to make your character look like Master Chief anyway.