Now, I’ll start this thread by saying one thing. I know many of you were disappointed with halo 5s story, especially how it did not involve much of the story and themes from hunt the truth. Further, the plot twist involving the guardians and Cortana wasn’t the best story decision, in my opinion. However, all this could fit into a great ODST themed game, taking place after halo 5, to build the foundation for Halo 6. How? Read on, these are my ideas, and I’d hope that you, the community, could add to it.
Now first off, this would be open world style like the original ODST game, however improve on this, and give the character more exploration and a better sense of an open world. This open world would either be Earth, or another human planet/colony which had been shut down by the guardians. The story would revolve around you and an ODST fireteam, finding a way to bring power back to all the shut down technology and destroy the guardian orbiting the planet. You would travel around the set world, possibly reverse engineering generators and reactors to make some prototype power plant that would be immune to the guardians emp blast. As you do this, of course you will be encountering prometheans, as well as traverse around civilian zones being ‘policed’ by Cortanas forces. This would give the story a sense of urgency, and build up real hype for Halo 6, not like hunt the truth where it was essentially false advertising.
In in terms of how the story starts, the prelude would involve your squad being hot dropped to ‘capture’ Phero, the prominent character form hunt the truth. If this rings a bell it should, as this event happened in hunt the truth. This prelude mission or missions, would set the tone of how ODSTs and ONI operate, especially to players who never read the books or listened to hunt the truth, it would show that Humans aren’t the rosy good guys working together as the previous games generally showed. In terms of the hunt for the chief, I think we can all agree that part is rather fruitless, as the ‘hunt’ never existed to begin with, it was more of a search, and in the end a misunderstanding, as chief and Locke had the same goal.
In terms of gameplay, it could utilise an rpg system. Where you can set skills for you character, create armour upgrades or weapons upgrades from items found around the world. Example, investing into a sniper tree, or grenadier tree, marksman tree, support tree etc etc, becoming a specialised soldier for your fireteam, and the same would apply to them, creating a skill set for each member. On top of this, Searching and conserving ammo, medical supplies etc etc from the world around you. In terms of gameplay, it should be gritty and have a sense of survival, as let’s face it. Having some giant emp pulsing guardian in orbit with Cortana ‘policing’ the human race isn’t exactly a walk in the park.
This is where I sort of run out of ideas, keep in mind I typed this on a mobile device so there are likely formatting or grammar related errors, however I would ask you focus on the ideas present, criticise them if needed, and even give your own ideas. With E3 around the corner, who knows, maybe 343 is planning a halo 5 ODST? And if they aren’t, if this thread is successful atleast they’ll know we want it and have a good idea of where it should belong in terms of story. If you read the whole thread up to this point, then surely you can make a comment and present some form of feedback or ideas, that would be greatly appreciated. I now hand the baton over to you forum readers to discuss and formulate concepts with each other. Thank you for reading!
