I have to admit, I was disappointed by the big Warzone reveal at E3; the game mode looks like it could be fun, but it doesn’t fill that crucial PvE niche first established by Firefight.
Given everything we know about Warzone, I strongly doubt that Warzone will satisfy PvE players in the way that Firefight did; no offline play, no custom game options, and not even a single-player option? Warzone will not be an acceptable replacement for Firefight any more than Spartan Ops was.
Firefight needs to come back. I don’t know what made 343i think that they ever needed to create a whole new game mode to replace it; it did not need to be replaced, it needed to be improved. I have to wonder why 343i is taking these big risks with these new game modes like Spartan Ops and Warzone, which feel like gimmicks more than anything else, when they could simply improve upon Halo: Reach’s version Firefight mode.
Halo: Reach improved upon Firefight with an incredible number of customization options that let you tailor the game to your own preference. Matchmaking may have been all about Arcadefight and credit farming, but in Custom Games you could create your ideal Firefight experience, make it as challenging or as easy as you wanted, and play it for as long as you wanted, whenever you wanted, either solo or with your friends.
Spartan Ops, with it’s lack of customization options, Theater mode, the always-online requirement, and co-op matchmaking being bogged down in an intolerable amount of lag, was a huge step backwards… and it seems 343i may repeat many of the same mistakes with Warzone.
There’s a lot they could still do with Firefight; bigger maps with large-scale vehicle battles that emulate Halo 3’s most epic Campaign missions like “The Ark” and “The Covenant”, heavy vehicles like the Scorpion, Mantis, Banshee, and the new Phaeton, Forerunner, Flood, and Promethean enemies, friendly AI like what was seen on the Installation 04 map in Halo: Reach’s Anniversary Map Pack, interactive map features like on Halo 2 and Halo 3 multiplayer maps… the list goes on. Firefight has so much more potential, and 343i won’t even touch it.