The title above is a quote taken from the first episode of hit Halo machinima series ‘Red vs. Blue’ created by Rooster Teeth. The series focused on two divisions of SPARTANs - ‘Red Team’ and ‘Blue Team’ attacking each other occasionally, as is the objective of Halo’s multiplayer. The series was created from using Halo: Combat Evolved’s multiplayer. Over the past Halo games, multiplayer was just a feature for the franchise. Explanation and story belong exclusively to Halo’s campaign. For Halo: Reach, SPARTAN vs Elite battles made more sense. Since the game revolved around a time shortly before the near-extinction of SPARTANs, it would make sense to see more of them around, killing Covenant enemies. But in previous games, such as Halo 3, Halo 2, and Halo: Combat Evolved, common questions related to the SPARTAN supersoldiers in multiplayer were “weren’t they all killed?” or “why they killing themselves?” Originally, there were no plans to explain it. It was just there because it was fun. 'nuff said.
In Halo 4, 343i plans on answering Simmons’s question.
In a recently released ViDoc of some of Halo 4’s states and promises, they claimed that they’ve “created a fairly compelling and fairly convincing reason why red Spartans can fight blue Spartans”. I’ve looked on the internet myself and found lots of fans disgracing the idea. I’ve yet to find the other side of speculation, but I have to say I kinda agree with opposing side.
“Honestly, this is the most utterly limited idea I have ever heard for a Halo game. I know that we still have yet to discover why they do fight, but come on 343. Noone but 343 has ever asked why they fight. Noone cares. It’s just multiplayer. Leave the story for campaign. There is a reason it’s called campaign. Multiplayer should be, and always has been, for fun and social (be it sometimes destructive) teamwork. Story, in my opinion and many others’, has no place in multiplayer. So unless Frankie is in fact correct saying, “We have a fairly convincing reason why Reds can fight Blues”. I will be tremendously dissapoint.” - Triple Kill 002, a fan who, like me, opposes the idea of forcing a story into the multiplayer realm.
Unfortunately for us, our word doesn’t overrule the majority of Halo fan’s opinion. So I’ve created this poll, like I’ve many others, to gather opinion from others.
What do you think about connecting multiplayer to a canon story? Leave your opinion in the poll above and/or in the comments below. Thanks for reading.