bring back real locations in multiplayer maps.

Games Halo Infinite
1

Examples:

High Ground - a section of some base on earth with a beach, rocks, functioning gate, and in the base there are radios and laptops and stuff, and the anti-air missile launcher in the back. It all feels like an actual location.

Cold Storage - a storage facility for cold stuff that has clearly had an outbreak of flood.

Ghost Town - an abandoned and war torn area that has been devastated in some unknown battle, and apparently a lot of people died there.

Oribital - some transit station that even has escalators and an announcer that was once used for guiding travelers.

Relic - a covenant artifact thing that’s sitting on some island. What it is is unknown.

Terminal - a terminal with a station, parking garage, street, and monorail thing.

so lets look at the Halo 5 maps that are from actual real world locations.

Plaza - a setting from an asian country. has cars, garbage with flies, and a garden area. nice.

Tyrant - some unknown forerunner construct on an astroid. very shiny.

Regret - I think midship crashed and now is being infested with plant life and shiny blue bugs. However, it is a remake, so it gets less credit.

aaaaaaaand that’s about it. On every other map, I really don’t feel like I’m in an actual location. It all feels super artificial and repetitive. and like I mentioned in my other post, the whole magical floating weapon on top of home plate with an invisible announcer AND giant green box showing the location just breaks the immersion even more.

we need to fight on real locations again.

2

Welp, I agree with this for sure

3

I think they did a really great job at some of the Warzone maps, in particular Raid on Apex 7. I get huge Silent Cartographer vibes every time I land on the beach and it definitely feels like something you’d find on a Halo ring. Seeing more stuff like that would be cool.

That being said, the big reason why a lot of Halo 5 maps look artificial is because they’re made in Forge. Don’t get me wrong they’re designed really well, but nothing beats playing on something that was built with tons of detail.

4

All the maps have lore. As much as I like strong themes in maps I’ll always take function over form.

Sure sometimes the 2 come together beautifully like guardian. But abandon shows the flaw

5

> 2535418288909351;3:
> I think they did a really great job at some of the Warzone maps, in particular Raid on Apex 7. I get huge Silent Cartographer vibes every time I land on the beach and it definitely feels like something you’d find on a Halo ring. Seeing more stuff like that would be cool.
>
> That being said, the big reason why a lot of Halo 5 maps look artificial is because they’re made in Forge. Don’t get me wrong they’re designed really well, but nothing beats playing on something that was built with tons of detail.

I’m not even talking about the forge maps, I actually enjoy some of those over the developer maps. I’m talking about the developer maps and how they really don’t have any actual character to them. I mean just think about it.

what is fathom? is it a location that people would be in? a location that soldiers would be in? I don’t even think sailors would be there. All the cut and paste platforms, pannels, walkways, windows, and everything like that make the maps feel like they were just designed for some arena fighting, which really kills the creativit .

Old Halo games designed maps to be arenas, while at the same time making sure they had the aesthetic and design that actually represented a real location. Games like Gears of War also do this very well, where they get a believable location and turn it into an arena. The problem with Halo 5 is that they designed an arena first, and then gave it a theme.

Think about it, the maps Eden, Empire, Torque, Fathom, Riptide, and even Plaza all use way too many similar features that it feels like all the maps are the same map just rearranged and with a slightly different theme.

Every map in Halo 3 is it’s own theme and style. Ghost Town, Citadel, Guardian, Sandtrap, Narrows.

All these maps play very different from each other, they all have their own theme, and they all feel like they are set in different and unique locations.

Also, i’m not the biggest warzone fan, so I actually despise the mode because it was bascially a replacement for BTB, hence BTB got zero developer made maps. Which sucks.

6

Well a lot of the H5 maps are remixes so that’s why they have a similar feel to them and I don’t really mind the locations. You mentioned Plaza which is a random location in a city, but I could say the same thing about Turf or Headlong. I agree that bland and uninspiring aesthetics can negatively influence how I feel about a map, but I can deal with that as long as the map plays well. My suggestion for 343 would be to move away from remixes and also the sterile industrial environments that are lifeless.

7

on some of the maps in halo reach, if you listen to the military radios on the map you can overhear descriptions of battles from the Fall of Reach books. I want to see more little details like this with the maps

8

> 2727626560040591;6:
> Well a lot of the H5 maps are remixes so that’s why they have a similar feel to them and I don’t really mind the locations. You mentioned Plaza which is a random location in a city, but I could say the same thing about Turf or Headlong. I agree that bland and uninspiring aesthetics can negatively influence how I feel about a map, but I can deal with that as long as the map plays well. My suggestion for 343 would be to move away from remixes and also the sterile industrial environments that are lifeless.

Plaza does feel far more artificial than turf to me. Turf is lightening in a bottle though amazing play space that feels like a location from the halo universe. It helps that we saw new mombasa in the campaign and the crashed scarab made it feel like the other side of the city. I think the more varied forerunner styles in the trilogy also helped keep some mystery and thematic presence to maps like sand trap and epitaph. I think the concentration on eSports lead to too many samey 3lane maps that felt artificial in nature. Variety in art design and layout made old maps feel more alive to me. I think chilli has a point and more lived in locations do alot for longevity and even map memorisation.

9

> 2533275026446288;7:
> on some of the maps in halo reach, if you listen to the military radios on the map you can overhear descriptions of battles from the Fall of Reach books. I want to see more little details like this with the maps

Those little things elevate the experience oodles

10

How did you all feel about Reach having multiplayer and Firefight maps in campaign?

On paper I remember thinking it sounded lazy, but in the end I loved how connected everything felt and wouldn’t mind seeing it again for Halo Infinite if done right.

11

> 2533274815711361;10:
> How did you all feel about Reach having multiplayer and Firefight maps in campaign?
>
> On paper I remember thinking it sounded lazy, but in the end I loved how connected everything felt and wouldn’t mind seeing it again for Halo Infinite if done right.

of course it was lazy, but there were a lot of maps that did play pretty well even if they were ripped out of campaign. How they managed to do that? who knows. Then again, Reach was not really a competitive shooter, so the balance of the maps wasn’t really my focus when I played the game. I’m sure if there was a skill ranking system in Reach, the flaws of the maps would have shown a lot more.

However, even though the maps were cut and pasted into the the multiplayer, they were still more convincing than maps of Halo 5. Having real locations be the settings of multiplayer maps has always been a thing in Halo, and Halo 5 introduced a lot of maps like Rip Tide, Eden, and Empire where it really feels like you’re just playing in an arena, and not an actual location.

12

> 2535448062173159;11:
> > 2533274815711361;10:
> > How did you all feel about Reach having multiplayer and Firefight maps in campaign?
> >
> > On paper I remember thinking it sounded lazy, but in the end I loved how connected everything felt and wouldn’t mind seeing it again for Halo Infinite if done right.
>
> of course it was lazy, but there were a lot of maps that did play pretty well even if they were ripped out of campaign. How they managed to do that? who knows. Then again, Reach was not really a competitive shooter, so the balance of the maps wasn’t really my focus when I played the game. I’m sure if there was a skill ranking system in Reach, the flaws of the maps would have shown a lot more.
>
> However, even though the maps were cut and pasted into the the multiplayer, they were still more convincing than maps of Halo 5. Having real locations be the settings of multiplayer maps has always been a thing in Halo, and Halo 5 introduced a lot of maps like Rip Tide, Eden, and Empire where it really feels like you’re just playing in an arena, and not an actual location.

Right. I care more about having fun rather than a perfectly balanced map.

In my opinion, Halo 5 leaned too far into competitive after the backlash of Halo 4. Halo CE was originally designed as a “party game”, something everyone could pick up and have fun, but it was also deep enough to master and compete. I hope Halo Infinite takes a small step back towards fun over balanced competition.

13

We really need this so that the mp maps don’t become stale. Too many current maps have the same look. You know the maps are good and unique when while just reading OP’s list you can clearly visualize all of them in no time in your mind.

14

> 2779900484279609;13:
> We really need this so that the mp maps don’t become stale. Too many current maps have the same look. You know the maps are good and unique when while just reading OP’s list you can clearly visualize all of them in no time in your mind.

exactly. that’s why I mentioned Plaza and Tyrant from Halo 5. Both are excellent maps and actually have a style of their own, while every other map in Halo 5 just looks like the same map with rearranged pieces.