Halo 5: Interesting Enemy Encounter Designs

So, something I noticed during my first campaign playthrough: 343i designed the Osiris levels to be more in-your-face full scale and messy combat, whereas the mere three Blue Team missions all share this theme of a sort of precision and clean encounters.

It’s an interesting design choice that allows for the narrative elements long-time fans have wanted to incorporate themselves into gameplay. Blue Team is the epitome of clean, team-oriented combat that minimizes casualties, and the three campaign missions all follow that narrative element fairly well - most conflicts are kept pretty precise and clean for the relatively skilled player.

One moment in particular resonated with me: When Blue Team arrives on Genesis and you find the first downed Phantom of Covenant soldiers, a well placed grenade and coordinated fire will wipe the entire group out before they can so much as fire at you. The Covenant are caught entirely unaware, and the game allows you to utilize that precision to more or less grease an entire encounter in one fell swoop.

I noticed this exact comparison with the two different intros to the missions Osiris and Blue Team. Osiris is very unconventional and unpredictable. Their unit is a composition of different specialists that make for a versatile team. Blue Team on the other hand is very efficient and precise. Everything they do is done to be as fast and deadly as possible and they work together as a group so well because they have trained for their entire lives. And these comparisons are definitely seen in the missions. Osiris being huge raids and direct action operations with Blue Team being more discreet and low key. Both units are professional and deadly but have different ways of going about missions. I love this comparison between the IIs and IVs (wish the IIIs fit into it somehow).

i loved that switch between the two it would have been nice if there were just a few more blue team missions

Good eye! Wow didn’t even notice that until this… I can’t unsee this. :smiley: