343 Industries, if you are listening, scrap the marketing on Halo: Spartan Strike. Halo 5: Guardians should feature every Halo mode to date, and a mode with the bird’s-eye view is just another wonderful experience. If I was the UI Designer on Halo 5: Guardians, this is what Halo 5: Guardians would look like after you press MENU…
- Campaign
- War Games
- placeholder_null (subject to change)
Under campaign, you will find eveything that has to do with the primary Master Chief, Jameson Locke, Miranda Keyes, Thomas Lasky, Sarah Palmer and Thel 'Vadam story.
Under War Games, you will find your typical Halo multiplayer experience…
- Matchmaking
- Custom Games
- Forge
- Anvil (a “gametype workshop”, revived from Marathon: Infinity)
- Theater (yes, I made this exclusive to War Games)
- File Browser
Under placeholder_null, you can find expansions to the Halo story and gameplay. It is in my interest that 343i locks this section off from players who haven’t completed Campaign. Interestingly enough, it will ultimately be challenging to create a settings page that can handle Halo 5: Guardians universally…
- Spartan Ops
- Firefight (bring it back!)
- placeholder_null (why you should scrap Halo: Spartan Strike)
- Halo: Spartan Assualt
- Halo Wars 2 trailer
- Halo Channel
- Halo: Waypoint
And while I am hypothesizing, let’s look at the reformed Matchmaking, shall we?
- Ranked Playlists [Dedicated Servers]
- Social Playlists [Dedicated Servers]
- Host Custom Games
- Service Record
You can host but not join? No silly! That’s under Custom Games…
- Private Custom Games
- Join Custom Games
- Host Forge Session (you saw this coming)
- Join Forge Session
inb4 “Why is ‘Host’ in ‘Matchmaking’, but ‘Join’ in ‘Custom Games’?” Well, When you are ‘making’ a 'match, having a ‘Join’ command not only allows players to join random hosts, but will allow them to join their friends with a dedicated command, ridding of the prior “Loading, Please wait… Connection failed, please try again.” issues. I split them simply by name.
inb4 “But why is ‘Forge’ stuff all under ‘Customs’?” Good Question. When I pseudo-designed this interface, I knew that Forge and Anvil were strictly tools, and so they would be in square tiles off to the side in the War Games menu that you could configure and just go without leaving the War Games menu (well, unless you launch Forge). I didn’t want a Forge menu, per say, but I also wanted something that was easier to remember.
inb4 “Well this is all hypothetical, and you’re fleshing it out so much,” I’m sorry, is there a problem? That’s what designers do. Yes, it is hypothetical, no, I don’t work for 343 Industries, this is all speculation and “hope”. Thank you for reading, by the way.