Some form of Firefight returning would massively benefit Halo Infinite. It would give people a Co-Op PVE mode to play besides campaign and is something they can jump into whenever.
BUT ALSO, it could easily become something even bigger.
It could be used to lead the narrative. If a new firefight map or two released every season, it could be used to tell the story the same way Call of Duty Zombies maps tell the story. Through hidden ciphers, audio logs and most of all through Easter Egg quests with a unique boss fight and cutscene at the end.
Imagine every map has hidden puzzles, buttons, combinations, etc. that you have to try and complete whilst surviving the endless onslaught of the Banished, the Flood, etc. Then it gives you specific tasks such as defend this area, kill this high value target, maybe a certain enemy drops an item used to unlock a hidden area to find the next step, etc.
Complete all the objectives and it reveals a big boss you have to defeat and at the end you get a cutscene that reveals something new about the story, introduces characters, where its going next, etc. That would feel very fresh in Halo and could also be used to bridge the gap between full Campaign DLCs.
This feels like VERY wishful thinking but if 343 did this it would build an entire new community around Firefight.
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I’ve been saying for years that Firefight has potential to be massive. In ODST it was basically a mini-game, Reach brought a lot of upgrades and customization, I was looking forward to the narrative experience of Spartan Ops, but ultimately it fell flat with fans. Warzone FF was a regression in almost every aspect of what made FF fun, imo. I would love if 343 actually built upon previous successes instead of starting over every time.
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Infinite has so much potential for a good Firefight/Spartan Ops style mode. The game’s PvE gameplay is on point, IMO anyway, and there’s such huge potential for a really engaging and good experience to leverage that. I do think we’ll see something like that eventually, but it’s realistically going to take a long time before anything tangible shows up in that vein, sadly. Though I do hope the work they’re doing for coop would help smooth out the road to producing such a mode.
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A good firefight mode would do WONDERS for Halo Infinite, I completely agree. I would play it myself, and probably exhaustively. Cooperative PVE is one of my favorite modes of play; it’s why I still hold Halo 5: Guardians’ “Mythic Warzone Firefight” with high regards.
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The only thing I don’t like is that firefight was always more for casuals and the easter eggs for zombies was always a niche high-skill gap thing. I never completed an easteregg because I was never good enough and neither was my team.
I would keep the firefight story clear and obvious. Or maybe an event happens and your firefight match gets hijacked and turned into a pve objective typoe mode. Something. I don’t like having to use the wiki and youtube to piece together the story like I did zombies. But I do want the cutscenes to rely on the gameplay unlike spartan ops where you had the gameplay with fireteam crimson and the cutscenes with majestic & the Infinity crew.
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Maybe theres a cutscene before the map aswell to tell the main story points and then the easter egg cutscene is something extra, or maybe once the first team completes the easter egg everyone gets to see it even if they havent completed the easter egg. But those that do complete it get a nameplate, coating, etc. something to show they did it. And the first team to complete it could get a special nameplate too.
Yeah. I’d rather they put the effort and craft into Firefight instead of churning out something for the multiplayer maps which just aren’t designed for it. There’s definitely something to be said for this.
One of the best multiplayer games I’ve seen for weaving the story into maps was Battlefield 1 Operations. It really felt like an unfolding narrative and gave you a sense of both factions and the stakes in these historical battles that could last for an hour plus.
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