Halo 2 Legendary Campaign, Iron Skull on without being ticked?

[Ven]

Me and a friend are playing through Halo 2 on Legendary, planning on going through all of it on Lasso when it all comes out later... but as of current, with only Grunt Birthday Party, IWHBYD and Pinata, every time one of us dies, we keep being reset on a checkpoint. Last I checked that's not supposed to happen without Iron being on (Read again, Iron is Not On, Thank you.) But for some reason we keep being reset to checkpoint. Any thoughts?

I'd also like to apologize if this isn't the right forum for this discussion, but I wasn't sure if General or Self-Help would count because of the context.

Thank you for your time.

[O71]

As far as I remember this was always the case with Halo 2, even on original Xbox.

[Horror Chicken]

Correct Halo 2s campaign you have to actually try and be tactical

[Ven]

So if that's the case, why does the Iron Skull do anything for Co-op? It still gives the same penalties as the previous games (And I presume the future games) but if Halo 2 already has Coop basically playing Iron, what's the point?

[bb]

https://www.halopedia.org/Halo_2_Skulls#Iron

Effect: When playing co-op, if either player dies the game restarts you at your last checkpoint. The effect resembles the effect already in place on Legendary difficulty, making it a somewhat redundant Skull.

Originally posted by LordVen:

what's the point?

To stop people from cheesing legendary (on xbox) by plugging in a second controller and using it as a mobile respawn point.

[BrySkye]

Originally posted by LordVen:

So if that's the case, why does the Iron Skull do anything for Co-op? It still gives the same penalties as the previous games (And I presume the future games) but if Halo 2 already has Coop basically playing Iron, what's the point?

It's basically a free score boost on Legendary, since its the standard way H2 Legendary co-op works anyway.

As for why the skull is there in the first place, you can still use it to add the condition to Easy, Normal and Heroic if you want the extra penalty but in a less punishing/sloggy scenario.

[Ven]

Alright, thank you. Here I was thinking it was some kind of bug, because I had originally played it on Xbox (but not on legendary) and thought it was kind of weird.

[SFJake]

So any way we can mod this ♥♥♥♥ out of Halo 2? It wasn't in the other games because guess what, its stupid.

[Alsemevad]

WTF...
I play with my friend to complete all campaigns in Legendary difficulty with many skulls enabled exclude Iron skull (Reach and CE).
We tried Halo 2 today and it is so painful.

We love the difficulty and it's why we play with many skulls enabled but the Iron skull is so punitive combine with the others... It's why we prefer disabled it.

Originally posted by bb:

To stop people from cheesing legendary (on xbox) by plugging in a second controller and using it as a mobile respawn point.

So if it is a anti-abuse for local multiplayer it stupid. Unless I am mistaken we can't use local multiplayer with the PC version.
This anti-abuse has no reason to exist.

The only solution is play alone in legendary or together in heroic difficulty?