That’s right, I think a mix of three 343 games would make the ultimate Halo game. Feel free to disagree, but be nice about it, I’m trying to be nice here, after all.
Halo 4: Story. Halo 4’s campaign was pretty bloody good, I do believe. The return of the Forerunners, the imminent rampancy of Cortana and Chief’s panic of losing Cortana, which would both be him losing a friend, and also him losing his humanity (which Cortana embodied). I am fully aware of Halo 4’s less-than-great gameplay (looking at you, point streaks). But yeah, the story was brilliant. More of that, please.
Halo 5: Gameplay. Okay, minus the Spartan Charge. Otherwise, the hyper-maneuverability is great, the larger-scale battles are fun and the guns are satisfying to use, without any ‘god weapon’, minus Mythic REQ’s, but yeah nah let’s not bother with those. I like being able to climb and sprint, the guns are fun to use and the gameplay is hectic but not entirely unbalanced (talking about Arena here, obvs). I’d only ask for more emphasis on team-oriented vehicles, I feel that Warthogs are tragically underused in this game.
Master Chief Collection: Customization. The MCC’s customization features and how they were unlocked are far better than Halo 4 or 5’s. Halo 5 was based entirely on luck (and money, yuck) and Halo 4’s, while not terrible, felt fairly devoid of depth. The MCC however urged players to actually play the game to unlock things. Emblems, playercards, nameplates. All of these should be carried over to the next Halo game. There was a HUGE amount of things to unlock, and unlocking them were fun and challenging. More of this, please.
Okay, I have to add a smidgeon of Reach here. Reach’s pre-game and post-game UI was way better than any other Halo game. I would only like to add the ability to view fileshares pre-game. (Being able to pick which maps you played was also a good feature, don’t know why that was so absent in Halo 5).
EDIT: I should add some further clarity: I do not mean that the applications of these ideas were picture-perfect, but they were the better aspects of otherwise iffy games. I don’t mean to cut-and-paste these ideas together and it’s perfect. Rather, these better points of the games should be expanded upon, improved and pieced together with care, and time taken to avoid making a mess of them all.
So yeah, that’s my thoughts on the matter.
MCC was probably the most botched launch in history but there are good qualities about the game and despite what most say it seems to be playable now and has been for a long time.