I come to you a disenfranchised pilot. I’ve been playing since H2 and I have some frustrations with the Infinite Banshee. There has been plenty of feedback by the community considering the squishiness and lack of damage. I’m sure 343 can balance this, or maybe we just need a bigger BTB map for the Banshee to shine, idk.
My frustrations are with the Banshee tricks (backflip and barrel roll) and the “brake”. In my opinion, 343 nailed it in H3. While performing the tricks in H3, the Banshee would (1) retain some momentum from its previous movement and (2) allow for adjusting its orientation mid-trick. Also, the roll and flip animation was slower than from H:Reach onwards.
Its slow wind-up for the roll and flip allows a backflip to be chained into a roll in a smooth movement front to back. Combined with the retention of momentum while allowing turns opened up a world of mid air acrobatics to confuse, bait and flank your opponent.
https://giphy.com/gifs/5tUJCNKmsocELQsEQq
https://giphy.com/gifs/9w1qVd8v4EaWfn85wb
Compare this to the Infinite barrel roll, which only seems to function as a quicktime event to dodge a single shot and puts you in some sort of cooldown state where your movement inputs don’t register.
https://giphy.com/gifs/MDzzmgspduk6Cxz0Vj
Considering the brake, in Infinite the brake just slows you down, presumably to compensate for it’s increased movement speed in order to allow you to put some more shots on target before coming into hijack range. In contrast, the brake in H3 first slows you down but then quickly drops your altitude as well. This is an underrated feature imo. It allows you to drop straight down behind cover while keeping the crosshair on target and boost away in any direction without having to first pitch up again.
https://giphy.com/gifs/eLJobFpSt8aRTBYQtC
The brake drop, the tricks and the boost were the (dare I say) Holy Trinity of Banshee shmovement when chained together. I understand the Infinite Banshee has some compromises in its design to make it more practical in the open world campaign, but in multiplayer it just doesn’t hold up.
What do I want? An alternative Banshee type in Forge. The Covenant one. The one with the butter smooth rolls and the purple shine.
