A machinima-creator's wish list for Halo 5

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

I am an amateur machinima creator who has created 2 series, “A Halo Series” and “Dawn of Revolution”, both of which are on my YouTube channel. They are for the enjoyment of others and I do not monetize my videos. I enjoy making them and am actually going to school for filmmaking. While I have had an easy time in Halo 3 and Reach making machinimas, Halo 4 and TMCC has some issues that caused the experience to be a bit more frustrating.

Below is my list for tools that a machinima creator wants/needs in Halo 5. The list is separated into 3 categories; BASIC - the essential needs that have been in past Halo games, NEW - extra things that have not been in past games and would innovate the machinima-making experience, and ICING ON THE CAKE - extra things that are not essential but would bring really cool elements to the machinima-making experience.

BASIC:
-Theater Mode: Duh.
-Ability to save films/clips: Absent from TMCC.
-Object Scripting in Forge: This was a very useful feature in H2A Forge which helped machinima creators.
-4 player split screen: Essential for small, dialogue-heavy scenes. Recruiting body actors and getting them all together at once is a lengthy process. When I need to get a small scene done I just call upon the help of my brothers, add more controllers, and get the scene done.
-Armor Customization: Long story short, I was going to make a prequel to “Dawn of Revolution” but ended up scraping it because I couldn’t change the visor colors in TMCC, and I sold my 360 beforehand. If you watch my series you will understand that there is a plot device that requires the armor to be changed/customized.
-Ability to lower weapon and walk at same time: For some reason this was absent in Halo 4, not sure if it was a bug or what.
-Playable Elites: At least in custom games. Once again, absent from Halo 4.
-UNSC flying vehicle: Don’t really care if it is a Hornet, Falcon, or something new as long as it is there. Also absent from Halo 4.

NEW:
-Ability to turn off announcer/Spartan chatter: This applies to Halo 5 since the Spartan chatter is a new feature in the game.
-Multicam/Dolly cam: Similar to the features in CoD: Black Ops 1’s theater.
-Bots/AI in custom games: Would be cool to have and would give machinima creators the ability to create larger-scale battle scenes.
-Large Vehicles: Pelicans, Scarabs, Phantoms, etc. The largest vehicle that a player could drive was the Elephant in Halo 3. Once again, would give machinima creators the ability to create larger-scale battle scenes.

ICING ON THE CAKE:
-Ability to control bots/AI: Give them paths to walk on, give them commands on whether to shoot or not, or even being able to “jump” inside of them, essentially giving the ability for one player to control several Spartans/Elites, or vehicles, at once.
-Player animations: There are animations for getting in vehicles, so why not things like saluting, kneeling, sitting, standing, etc. Obviously this feature would be an option in custom games.

2

Some great ideas here. Personally I would like Halo 3’s theater mode back. It was possible to have a party of two people playing theater mode for saved games in Halo 3. There was also an ability to use a controller combo in gameplay to activate Pan-cam mode, which allowed people in theater mode to exit the boundaries of the map. In addition, theater mode was also included for campaign. I’d also like to see the rewind button–which was added in Reach–and possibly integration with the Xbox One feature of uploading gameplay clips to various sites, reducing some of the need for an external game capture device.

Funnily enough, The Master Chief Collection actually does save Halo 3 campaign missions–you can view them in theater mode. I think you might actually be able to save clips for the campaign and multiplayer in Halo 3. This just makes it even more obvious how theater mode has been neglected for other halo games.

LAN and splitscreen seem to also be neglected features recently. I know it is possible to have 4-player splitscreen for Halo CE multiplayer on the MCC–there’s an achievement for it, after all.

Armour customization–I’m hoping that 343 industries is going to fix that for the MCC. I think that they’ve just been too busy fixing the bugs to remember things like releasing the timed-exclusive skulls for everyone [have they done that yet?] and being able to actually mix-and match armour variants.

As to not being able to lower your weapon in Halo 4…I’m not sure why they would have forgotten that. 343 industries has a close working relationship with RoosterTeeth Productions, after all.

Spartan chatter–yes, hopefully there will be an option to turn it off. I get the feeling that 343 industries said there would be somewhere…anyway, whilst they’re doing that, I hope they have an option to mute the announcer. He used to sound awesome, and like someone who actually would be a Spartan overseeing, or participating in the battle…now he just sounds like a sports announcer. :frowning:

Player animations–well, they did have the 17 custom player stances in Halo 4, didn’t they? Make animations of those. That takes care of the saluting as well. There should also be an option for equipping the combat/energy knife, and for being able to drop all weapons and not look silly by holding an invisible weapon. Proper animations for picking up and placing objects slowly on the nearest available surface would be good, too. Hands in the air and hands behind your head would be good ones, too. Sitting cross-legged on the ground, sitting with legs out and leaning back against the wall or ground, lying down, being able to turn the head separately from the body, jumping jacks, push-ups and situps would be good, too. Finally, if we have Elites sitting down, then this would be an opportunity to design some alien furniture as well [1,000 pound Spartans using standard human furniture would not be a good idea]. So…in short, a lot of animation work. It might help 343 industries too, having these animations standardized–allowing for easily made DLC campaign missions with interesting, well done, and quickly made in-engine cutscenes.

As for your other ideas, I like them. Check out the multiple posts I’ve made on the thread “Innovation in Halo / New Gameplay Options for Halo 5.” I think you’d be interested. Note that I only start stating my ideas on the second post down. I had to start the thread by explaining why people who say they don’t like change in Halo are being a bit silly, seeing as Halo’s gameplay has changed from game to game.

3

Just to add on a few things.

-Lowering weapon online. Makes it much easier to do dialogue scenes even if you only have one controller at home. Was present in H2A. Don’t get rid of it.
-Stable -Yoink- custom lobbies. Sorry, lost my cool there. Present in literally every Halo title prior to MCC.
-Theater mode across all game modes. Campaign, firefight, spartan ops, multiplayer, whatever you throw in, theater mode compatible. Present in Halo: Reach if not in Halo 3 as well.
-The green screen forge object. Present in Halo 4.

4

I hope they take and implement your ideas or at least the basic ones.

5

I believe the ability to lower your weapon is called ‘alert carry’. I liked using it to create screenshots etc. but in some games it was a bugger to activate. In Reach you had to contort your hands to push about 7 buttons at once, so it’d be good to see it assigned a single button and not waring off after doing anything like jumping or driving.