Discussion on Halo 5 vs Halo: Reach

Community General Discussion
1

I originally posted this as a comment on a poll, but I spent a lot of time and felt it worth to be on its own and up for discussion.

In my opinion, Halo: Reach was better than Halo 5 because Halo 5 simply is not a typical Halo game.

To expand: Halo Reach was the last of the familiar halo series we have all grown up to love and respect. Following closely to its predecessor (Halo 3, Halo 2, Halo Combat Evolved) in multiplayer and community based game play; while also taking notes from Halo outliers like ODST and its story telling components as well as fire fight. Halo Reach basically took everyone’s favorite components from the different games and presented them all together in one smooth and awesome package. Forge mode was provided at launch, was improved upon tremendously, and made larger than life for endless community creations. The Armors and added affects allowed personalization along with a little extra flair because the game knew it wasn’t above giving you a flaming or a trail of fluttering hearts for the heck of it. And let us not forget the little things which everyone looks fondly back to like split screen, file shares, and firefights so friends could all hang together, kick back, fight endless waves of grunts with rocket launchers, and post the most memorable screen shots or clips to their file share for everyone to enjoy. To reiterate, Halo: Reach was a summation of everything Halo fans had loved about the series hence far.
Halo 5 has diverged significantly from the original path founded previously. The largest and most obvious difference between the other games and Halo 5 is that it is trying to be more like other successful games of the more recent era; attempting to appeal to a different growing audience while leaving the faithful behind; in search of greener pastures if I may. Where the focus for Reach revolved around “what made us great and what can we do to bring it all together to go out with a bang”, it is clear Halo 5 tailors to following the most popular and profitable trends in gaming now; i.e. Counter Strike and other competitive shooters.
Many of the central themes in Halo 5’s core mechanics can be directly linked to CSGO and trends in the “lowest common denominator” of games. My first point is the Req packs introduced into the Halo series for the first time. “Suspiciously” similar to Weapon cases in CSGO, it is a mechanic used in many free to play games in order to exploit a gamboling tendency everyone is wired to be susceptible to. Other articles cover this in much more depth, so look online for more information. The fact is that statistics clearly show the general populous is more sold by these mystery packages than ever before (Card Packs, Hearthstone; Mystery Chests, League; Loot Crates; etc.) and therefore means more young gamers will put down their Minecraft pick axes and pick up Halo 5.
On that note, Halo 5 is trying to appeal to the staggeringly large number of young gamers watching twitch and Minecraft videos by making in game mechanics more competitive. This is actually good in my opinion because the added precision play tailors to my competitive spirit. With built in 60 fps and faster paced games, Halo games are more suited to become popular on live streams instead of only having short “bloopers” worthy to be watched on YouTube like what was popular on games past. The problem with it all is that it was done in order to appeal to the masses and sell copies, therefore became priority and put many important aspects on backburner that classic Halo fans would want dearly. Split Screen was removed to keep the 60 fps standard at all times, the campaign story was short and very linear, forge mode will not be available for 2 months after launch, and many small joys like viewing metals and file shares have been totally removed.

All in all Halo Reach was made by the Halo Family for the Halo Community, where Halo 5 was made for the larges group of games making up the market. Hopefully whit the release of Forge mode in a couple months, the community aspect of Halo will shine through and save it all.

If you took the time, thanks for hearing my thoughts and I’m eager to hear yours as well.
Catch you on the flip side,
Loco Monkey Ro
Raptor Brothel

2

I read your comment, and it was interesting, you’ve obviously put a lot of thought into it, unfortunately I can only say so much as I haven’t played Halo Reach.

The question we must ask ourselves is: “Is it really such a bad thing for Halo to try to expand it’s audience?”

When we get right down to it, Halo is a game made for one reason, to make money. 343 is a buisness and it makes sense that they would want to appeal to a larger group of people. All of this may not seem too great but let’s further our thinking. If more people buy into the Halo 5 franchise, there will be a larger desire for companies to further the Halo story. Halo will die if it’s not profitable, plain and simple. And dedicated old timers can only stretch so far.

It’s a catch 22, we can keep the old spirit of Halo and risk it dying, or we can give it new life and go beyond our comfort zone.

3

Um ok in your post about how halo 5 is different from past halos you actually give several reasons why halo 5 is closer to 1-3 the Reach was.

Reach’s forge mode was great but what you seem to forget is that its File share and custom game functions actually lacked much of what they had in Halo 3. The game also ditched Halo 3’s competitive ranked Playlists along with Halo 3’s skill based ranking system. The latter of which it replaced with a credit grind. Invasion was fun for a while but It only shipped with 2 maps and even the payed DLC only gave it one more.

You say Reach’s campaign took cues from ODST? but the characters in Reach were for the most part under developed and 1 dimensional.

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Also Armour-lock

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personally I think it is good for halo to change, as it allows new fans to shine as well as old ones. I mean they even gave us mcc for if we didn’t like 5.

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Haha, JOLTLORD, I had nearly forgotten about armor-lock. All opinions are appreciated!
the cues from ODST campaign were the dark sneaking around aspect of many levels, like the night Sniper level. Yes, file share was much more limited then in 3, but still was there. I actually logged onto Bungie.net the other day with a friend and looked at each others file shares from 3 and reach! The thumb nails where the only part that would load, but just seeing the small image brought back the memories.

FallenGrace616, I totally agree with you on tradeoffs and being a business. I guess my 2 cents on that is that when halo 3 was loosing its community, I was mentally prepared to say goodbye to Halo honestly, for all good things must come to an end. When Reach came out and Bungie said it would be the last installment, I appreciated it and thought of it as their “Viking Funeral” in a way; casting off in a fiery ball of glory for one last show. I was content with it ending, I was sad, but I enjoyed the time I had. But it isn’t good business to let a good IP go to waste so it was revamped and kept going like an old movie that really didn’t need a Die Hard 7. As much fun as I am having playing halo right now, it will never be as good as it was, and I hope they don’t drag it out too long to where it soils the name and becomes something different.

Thewhiteboatman, yes the MCC was a great instalment. I didn’t have enough to buy it when I came out, but I played it quite a few times at my friend’s apartment. I LOOOVED being able to play all my favorite custom games on my favorite maps like vehicles vs zombies on Sandtrap!

Once again, thanks all for your time and opinions!