Destructible environments in Halo Infinite?

Games Halo Infinite
1

So with the upcoming release of Crackdown 3, I’m pretty eager to see how the destructible environments play out and whether or not it will set a new standard in online multiplayer. There’s an old tech demo of it from 2015 that I saw, and it was by far the most impressive and amazing destructible environments I’ve ever seen. They were practically what the game Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction could have had if the tech was available at the time. Literally every part of every building was destructible and it made for some awesome gameplay opportunities such as destroying a bridge opponents were standing on or shooting a hole in the wall to create a sniper’s nest.

Of course, extremely detailed destructible environments in regular arena maps probably might not work out too well because Slayer and other game types like typically have only a few destructible environments on the map: exploding barrels, the platform on The Rig that has camo, the exploding barrel that provides to cover panels on Eden.

I’m thinking more along the lines of Big Team Battle or Warzone where destructible environments would be way more entertaining and make for some unique and different gameplay.

So what’s your opinion on the matter? Will Crackdown 3 set a new trend for giant maps in multiplayer and show that destructible environments is a must?

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This is a Halo forum. Why are you talking about Crackdown 3? What you said is completely irrelevant from Halo Infinite.

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> 2533274966517097;2:
> This is a Halo forum. Why are you talking about Crackdown 3? What you said is completely irrelevant from Halo Infinite.

OP was making a comparison. They are wondering if Crackdown 3 will have any impact on how Halo proceeds into this next installment; if 343i will push ahead and go for destructible environments on a greater scale than what they had in Halo 2 or 5. (Halo 2 had of course those barricades you could destroy in Metropolis I believe? While Halo 5 obviously has those occasional destructible areas and walls.)

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> 2533274879757912;3:
> > 2533274966517097;2:
> > This is a Halo forum. Why are you talking about Crackdown 3? What you said is completely irrelevant from Halo Infinite.
>
> OP was making a comparison. They are wondering if Crackdown 3 will have any impact on how Halo proceeds into this next installment; if 343i will push ahead and go for destructible environments on a greater scale than what they had in Halo 2 or 5. (Halo 2 had of course those barricades you could destroy in Metropolis I believe? While Halo 5 obviously has those occasional destructible areas and walls.)

Thanks for understanding. I appreciate that you actually read my entire posts. Yes, destructible environments have been in Halo before, but if you watch the tech demo they presented of Crackdown 3, this destruction is on a whole other level. When I say that every single part of the building was destructible, I mean every single piece. The dude shot holes in a wall and every single bullet made it’s own unique hole in the wall that you can see and shoot through. He then shot at a skyscraper building and demonstrated how every single piece of the building was able to be destroyed in it’s own unique way, and the buildings and environments are designed to be destroyed in very accurate ways. (such as if you blow up the entire bottom portion, the entire thing will collapse. If you want to see, just type in “crackdown 3 destruction” and it’ll be there.

Halo Warzone or Big Team Battle or even a brand new mode could definitely benefit from this level of detail in destruction. The problem is it is probably one of the hardest things to accomplish, which might explain why Crackdown has been delayed so many times.

However, like my original statement, the success and performance of this system of destructible environments could likely influence developers at 343 to pursue the same features in Halo. And it would hardly be anything along the lines of “copying” ideas or whatever. In my opinion, hyper realistic and destructible environments could have a place in any shooter game, it’s just a matter of capability.

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> 2535448062173159;4:
> > 2533274879757912;3:
> > > 2533274966517097;2:
> > > This is a Halo forum. Why are you talking about Crackdown 3? What you said is completely irrelevant from Halo Infinite.
> >
> > OP was making a comparison. They are wondering if Crackdown 3 will have any impact on how Halo proceeds into this next installment; if 343i will push ahead and go for destructible environments on a greater scale than what they had in Halo 2 or 5. (Halo 2 had of course those barricades you could destroy in Metropolis I believe? While Halo 5 obviously has those occasional destructible areas and walls.)
>
> Thanks for understanding. I appreciate that you actually read my entire posts. Yes, destructible environments have been in Halo before, but if you watch the tech demo they presented of Crackdown 3, this destruction is on a whole other level. When I say that every single part of the building was destructible, I mean every single piece. The dude shot holes in a wall and every single bullet made it’s own unique hole in the wall that you can see and shoot through. He then shot at a skyscraper building and demonstrated how every single piece of the building was able to be destroyed in it’s own unique way, and the buildings and environments are designed to be destroyed in very accurate ways. (such as if you blow up the entire bottom portion, the entire thing will collapse. If you want to see, just type in “crackdown 3 destruction” and it’ll be there.
>
> Halo Warzone or Big Team Battle or even a brand new mode could definitely benefit from this level of detail in destruction. The problem is it is probably one of the hardest things to accomplish, which might explain why Crackdown has been delayed so many times.
>
> However, like my original statement, the success and performance of this system of destructible environments could likely influence developers at 343 to pursue the same features in Halo. And it would hardly be anything along the lines of “copying” ideas or whatever. In my opinion, hyper realistic and destructible environments could have a place in any shooter game, it’s just a matter of capability.

Yeah, it’s not the first time the accomplishments of another game company haven’t made a parallel appearance in future upcoming games. So it’s likely that 343 could try to move ahead with this as they have already tried experimenting with destructible environments in both the Anniversary of Halo 2 and Halo 5: Guardians. It all depends on what the slipspace engine can handle as that is most likely the engine they will use for Infinite.

6

It would be cool to see destructible environments make there way into a Halo game eventually. I’d just prefer them in another ODST game rather then Infinite.

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TBH I woke up and read the whole thing thinking that you were just talking about Crackdown 3. Sorry about the confusion

8

I doubt Crackdown 3, no matter how successful it is, will end up influencing future multiplayer games all that much. Even if Crackdown 3 is taking destructible environments to a new level, destructible environments as a mechanic is nothing new. That the mechanic hasn’t been implemented in Halo in a major way by now seems indicative that it’s simply not something the devs think will contribute to the Halo MP experience in a meaningful way. And with how long the destructible environment mechanic has been around, I’d hardly call it a “must” in game development. A little destruction can increase immersion, sure, but some of the most popular MP games in recent memory didn’t make destructible environments a major selling point (excluding Fortnite), and they did fine.

IMO, Infinite doesn’t need majorly destructible environments. A little bit of destructible environment would be nice, like icing on a cake, but totally not necessary.

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> 2533274817408735;8:
> I doubt Crackdown 3, no matter how successful it is, will end up influencing future multiplayer games all that much. Even if Crackdown 3 is taking destructible environments to a new level, destructible environments as a mechanic is nothing new. That the mechanic hasn’t been implemented in Halo in a major way by now seems indicative that it’s simply not something the devs think will contribute to the Halo MP experience in a meaningful way. And with how long the destructible environment mechanic has been around, I’d hardly call it a “must” in game development. A little destruction can increase immersion, sure, but some of the most popular MP games in recent memory didn’t make destructible environments a major selling point (excluding Fortnite), and they did fine.
>
> IMO, Infinite doesn’t need majorly destructible environments. A little bit of destructible environment would be nice, like icing on a cake, but totally not necessary.

The mechanic of destructible environments is nothing new, but the way they’re doing it, with massive cloud servers backing up the data, this is destruction on a level no other game has ever accomplished. Here, just look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWANLy9TjRc&t=290s

If you can look at the destruction in this video and tell me that this level of detail and authenticity is “nothing new,” then I totally want to see what other games have accomplished this because I’ll go check it out right now. But as far as I’m concerned, this level of destruction detail is unparalleled by any other game who’s focus is on destroying things, therefore it could be a market changer, in my opinion.

To be clear, I’m mainly talking about the social gamemodes like Warzone and BTB. I think that overly destructible maps would mess up the balance of competitive matchmaking. However, having large, destroyable maps in BTB would be amazing, and Halo 5 has already rubbed a lot of people the wrong way by including zero, zero, developer made BTB maps, which is a huge loss for the casual players.

Also, you’re forgetting about R6 Siege, which one of the biggest and most enjoyed features of the multiplayer is that most of the maps are destructible and influence the gameplay. And it’s funny you bring up Fortnite because my brother likes that game a lot, and when I told him about the destructible buildings and stuff in Crackdown 3, he was like “well Fortnite already has that,” so I showed him the video and he was like, ooooh ok. yeah, that’s way different.

> And with how long the destructible environment mechanic has been around, I’d hardly call it a “must” in game development

Just because something isn’t absolutely 100% necessary, doesn’t mean it won’t be a hit and that players won’t appreciate it. One of the biggest complaints I’ve seen about GTA V is that you can barely interact with the environment, and if you do a bit of research, there are people who actually create entire mod engines in order to make things more destructible to their liking. So to say that it’s not a must in development you’d basically be shutting out thousands of people who enjoy destroying things in games. Do you really think that the devs at Rockstar are gonna look at Crackdown and just be like “meh, lets just make GTA VI with the same invincible buildings even tho our fanbase really wants destructible environments.” Doubt it.

Like my 3rd person hope for Halo, I feel like overly destructible environments won’t be a thing in the mainline game, however that doesn’t mean they can’t make a 3rd person, RPG open world style game with destructible environments on the same level as crackdown? One can only hope.

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> 2535448062173159;9:
> > And with how long the destructible environment mechanic has been around, I’d hardly call it a “must” in game development
>
> Just because something isn’t absolutely 100% necessary, doesn’t mean it won’t be a hit and that players won’t appreciate it. One of the biggest complaints I’ve seen about GTA V is that you can barely interact with the environment, and if you do a bit of research, there are people who actually create entire mod engines in order to make things more destructible to their liking. So to say that it’s not a must in development you’d basically be shutting out thousands of people who enjoy destroying things in games. Do you really think that the devs at Rockstar are gonna look at Crackdown and just be like “meh, lets just make GTA VI with the same invincible buildings even tho our fanbase really wants destructible environments.” Doubt it.

I feel like Rockstar already answered that concern with RDR2. Based on what I can see, destructible environments is not a major aspect of the game in either single-player or online modes. I’m sure Rockstar got plenty of feedback between the launch of GTAV and when they started development on RDR2, yet still didn’t choose to implement that as a game mechanic. And yet, RDR2 doesn’t seem to have suffered for it. So it looks like, yeah, Rockstar went ahead and made a new game with the same invincible buildings even though a bunch of their fanbase say they wanted destructible environments.

Historically, the Crackdown franchise hasn’t made huge waves on the gaming industry. The first 2 games were ok and had their charms, but I’m betting that Crackdown 3 will be on par with the success of the previous entries, or lower. I don’t think Crackdown 3 will influence the gaming scape like PUBG or Fornite after it did. I consider No Man’s Sky’s procedurally generated galaxies to be a more impressive feat than the extreme destructibility that C3 has showcased, but it’s not like devs are rushing to implement that mechanic into games.

And, sure, not everything in a game has to be absolutely 100% necessary for it to be worth putting in. I’m sure plenty of players would appreciate destructible environments in Infinite. But ultimately, I don’t think it would become a selling point for the game or the quality that makes or breaks it for >90% of players. It’s not a “must”, and I don’t think C3 is suddenly going to make it a “must”.

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Not sure if I want Crackdown 3 level destructibility. Halo isn’t really designed around destructible environments but I could see them implementing it to a certain degree in campaign.