my gripes with halo 2 may be different then some of you: no closure, playing as that stupid arbitor, and most of all NO ONLINE/LAN CO-OP. other then that i loved the game and to me it did have the same feel as part one just more refined. you can tell that they tried to balance things out better then part one and i give them credit for that. give me co-op on live/lan and get rid of the arbitor is all it will take to please me.
and if it wasnt for me being at work right now i would ask for a link that says halo1 and halo2 dont use the same engine. i could have sworn that it was at the core the same engine they just rewrote a lot of it specifically for the xbox (the first wasnt optimized as much for the xbox as it was ported so quickly). and i would be dissapointed if they used the same engine for part 3 unless they were also planning on releasing a part 4 and really using a new engine. i see no reason why they couldnt use the U3E and just use similar animations, concept arts and the like but with a newer actual next gen engine.
and as for the first halo2 trailor/demo: its true that it was never meant to be halo2 the game but instead basically a tech demo of sorts to who what new effects have been added for part 2. i dont think that the lack of ram was the main reason for the big change from the demo. instead it was the fact that a controlled and very specific scene is easier to put rendering power into rather then an actual game that is spread over levels bigger then a ships cargo area. that isnt saying that those effects that they demoed arent in the actual game but they probably watered down.
im not so much scorned like some about halo and i like the story mode much better then the online mode (deathmatch gets old soon, co-op all the way for me) i just hope they fix these minor problems for part 3
