Halo reach did something very unique; it made elites different from spartans not only in their appearance, but also in their physical attributes. Whilst I feel this was mainly negative, as it stopped you being able to choose which you were, It did give me a few ideas.
In halo 4, proper spartan 2’s will return, and therefore will be the same size as elites. I’m pretty sure brutes are also a similar size to these, and so all could function in multiplayer. But what if you could carry on the bungie idea of them being different.
This would be done by making all base statistics, shield size health size melee damage, speed jumpheight etc changeable. If this was the case, they could all be exactly the same, or if people wanted to there could be differences between them, whether balanced or not.
Ideas could include making elites slightly faster, but unable to jump as high, brutes the opposite, and spartans inbetween.
Differences to their melee damage could also come into play (giving brutes a higher and spartan lower damages) but as a compensation, the speed of spartans beatdowns is slightly quicker.
spartans could have more shield than elies and brutes, but less health, and brutes more health, but less shields than them. This could mean spartans when they lose their shields are 1 shot, but it takes a bit more damage to get there, whilst brutes may be 2 shots once their shields pop, but of coruse they pop faster.
Again seeing as flood are similar in size to spartan 2s, elites and brutes (because thats what they are made from). They too could be awesome playable characters, and in terms of custom armour be so customiseable!
I’ve heard alot of things about there being no covenant no brutes elites etc in halo 4. Whilst i can understand why people think this, i cant imagine a halo without those people, but more importantly the weapons, espeically in multiplayer!
If forerunners are in it, they too could be in multiplayer, but seeing as this is a place for awesome gameplay, i really hope they get multiplayer right and include previous weapons. THeres no reason other characters could be in it aswell. And all of the above (so 5 different equal sized characters, plus a 6th if you include heretics) could be possible. All would be equal sized, and have a huge number of custom options available armour wise. That would be so awesome, as the number of combinations for games would be so varied. Also it would take a huge amount of time to collect them all.
I also like the idea of other playable characters, but not for general matchmaking, as their size etc would be different.
As for balancing. I still don’t know whether balanced, but different stats would be good or not (ie one faster, one higher jump etc). I’m thinking no for normal gameplay. Keep it like halo 3 (all stats equal). But the option to limit a team to one race, or change the stats for an individual race would be awesome.
All these races would be aweomse for things like multiteam when every team is a different race or something.
I think that the halo reach armoury system was quite cool, and wouldnt mind seeing it return. What i didn’t like about it was that basically if you got the more expensive things, it basically made your spartan look more chunky. I think it would also be cool to get elites and brutes, flood which you could customise, seeing as throughout the games they have had many different looks. If forerunners are in it too they could also be customiseable.
Another possible idea is to have loads of playable characters, such as being grunts, jackals etc. and from the other side like a marine, the return of the odst, and even a spartan 3. Gears of war 3 has currently produced a new horde mode wherby the player plays as the locust. Many a gametype could come about from being able to play as other characters. I’d like to point out that playable characters such as grunts jackals hunters would only be for specific gametypes, not all matchmaking. these too could be customiseable in the armoury aswell.
Any ideas people have about playable characters they’d like to play as, how to make the 3 main species really play well against eachother, or any amazing gametypes that could come from all 3 of them (3 way battles). Even if the ideas to make them different from eachother aren’t great, i would love to be able to play as brutes and elites and spartans if they were all balanced.