Allright, with some inspiration up I thought it’d be a good time to go through some things I personally wish for, and for things that I think could make Halo stand out somewhat ( who doesn’t think that of their own ideas ). It’ll probably get lost in all the threads as well, oh well.
So, let’s get started:
The name Rekindle comes from the Spirit of Fire.
Yes, I want that ship and crew back, and in the fray.
There’s a deleted ending suggesting that some UNSC entity is entering the Zeta Halo space. It’s sort of “rekindle” the entire franchise and be a play on words with the SoF coming back.
IMPORTANT: Keep the ship up, it should not crash.
Story wise it obviously followed Atriox’s footsteps to escape the Ark, but were delayed because of reasons.
Continuing on it storywise, I’d very much like to see part of it being gathering the Infinity crew up, and bringing them to the SoF. This means Lasky, Roland ( if he’s still around ), Palmer, Halsey and so forth. Now, the SoF crew isn’t complete without Anders and last we saw of her was on the Alpha Halo V.3, with a Guardian looming over it.
For the sake of it, I think that part should be left as is, the Guardian was merely there as a guard, and remained that way untill deactivated as Cortana perished.
Next section contains spoilers from the extended universe;
Guilty Spark is alive, and I’d like to imagine that when this new ring was completed, it had a connection to its designated Monitor. With Version 2.0 of Alpha Halo not being completed, he’d never “feel” the connection, but this ring is completed and connection would be re-activated.
So what’d happen would be that backstage GS343 makes it to the new Alpha Halo and encounter Anders. They find the communication room, and is able to see the damaged Zeta Halo.
As these rings have emergency slipspace built in, they figure out that they can move Alpha Halo V.3 to Zeta Halo.
That way they’d bring the whole crew together, and a whole new “familiar” ring to have as a playground for missions, because, why not?
Lasky would of course let Cutter be Captain of the SoF, not hijack anything.
That’s some story elements for getting people and things together.
Now, gameplay elements, and how some of t’d be motivated by the newly arrived SoF.
It’d be extremely interesting seeing Anders interact with Halsey.
-Open world enhancement.
As it is now, it’s functional, and that’s about it. Everything is as basic as it gets.
You’ve got your fast travel, your liberated bases and small to large side mission areas, with some collectibles and a few roaming entities.
I’d very much like a form of Command interface where you could fortify bases, and send marines / odsts / spartans between them to increase their resistance. That resistance would come into with Sieges. Those would be assaults to reclaim areas or bases by the Banished.
Each base would of course have a few routes from where the enemy could come, and to decrease your own, in-person reliance, to be there to defend, you could have “ambush” spots set up to weaken enemy strength before they reach the FoB, or completely eliminate it.
Now if you wished to join the fray you absolutely could.
Some missions should be set up so that you’d set up a siege of your own, selecting what kind of vehicles you want, how many marines and their equipment as well as entry points.
Two tanks and a few sniper Marines to barge in through the middle?
Or four warthogs with rocket marines split up to flank the enemy? Spend points on air support and go in alone of foot? A point system would limit how much you can take with you.
As such, enemy presence should be felt and noticed through various means. Combat chatter from friendlies, icons on moving forces in the open world, camps being rebuilt etc.
Wild life would bring some much needed life to the environment as well.
-Co-Op
SoF would of course include the three Spartan II’s of Red team.
Playing Solo, you could command them as you would Marines, between different FoBs, ambushes etc. However, playing Co-Op, additional players could take control of these. Which would remove them from the Command screen, but you’d have them as players instead going along with you.
PS: NPCs should be able to be passengers in vehicles not controlled by the host.
-Equipment limitations
As fun as it was to load up a Razorback with Sniper Marines to watch Phantom debris and bodies fall from the sky, it kind of cheapened the experience a little that you could call in an unlimited amount of any weapon you had unlocked. Same with vehicles. Though I never tried ordering several at a time.
However in order to avoid “le crafting”, weapond and vehicles should merely be subject to cooldowns, and a stock of them.
For instance, the SoF could have 2 Snipers for you at most until they’ve made more, with a renewal rate of 30 minutes.
More powerful weapons being subject to less availability and longer wait times.
We can chalk up a low amount available to the SoF also maintaining other forces elsewhere, and they too need equipment.
-Open world to Mission to Open world.
The open world was completely separate from the missions, and vice versa, outside of unlocking new areas.
Bringing Marines into the building, same corridor even, would despawn them when the mission started.
I’d like to have the ability to bring support in from the Open World when I start a mission, as well as having support from the SoF at times during the mission.
With Sieges you’d bring with you what you can into the mission for as long as they’re available, or usable.
Air support won’t do you good on an indoor mission, but they helped during the siege, etc.
Then during missions, you could enter areas to where the SoF can send support, which you choose what you want.
Additionally, there should be non-story choices in the missions which affect the open world area. Optional missions which affect aspects of the Open World. For instance, you could get the choice to destroy a Comms antenna and the Banished will have a harder time gathering forces for Sieges, in game language, it takes longer to reach a Siege force, or have NPCs hijack a Phantom to take back to the SoF, which could show special hidden points of interest on the open world map. But you could only complete one of the,
Essentially, Open World things should have some effect on Missions, and Missions should have different ways of altering the Open World part.
-Upgrades and SoF
Like Spartan Cores upgraded your Mjolnir suit. There should be some sort of Tech Caches around which could be used to upgrade the production capabilities of the SoF, and what it produces.
These upgrades could reduce the time it takes to restock a specific weapon, upgrade troop choices, like Marine to ODST, or increase the number of “Reinforcement Points” you can take when you’re allowed to pick reinforcements for a siege or defense. Or unlock more troops for more Open World tasks.
-Tasks
These’d be different to the points of interest you visit and destroy.
Basically it’d be self-made Missions you do, or can command other groups to do, in order to get a better overview of a Point of Interest, hinder an enemy or scout ahead for a mission to see what kind of gear might be needed.
Given a big enough open world, with two rings to explore, these things would increase the enjoyment of both parts as they’d be more connected to each other than before.
Both would affect each other, and there’d be more life to the open world section where you don’t have to participate if you don’t want to as you can have your forces do it for you, with a small chance of failing.
That I think would reduce the feeling of feeling obligated / forced to run around doing small menial tasks without a sense of progress, allowing you to concentrate on the story, or exploration, and get progression on it, while allowing you to engage in larger fights featuring both Banished and the UNSC.