Let me be clear - I very much enjoyed the Halo 5 beta. There is still a lot that we haven’t seen and don’t know about for Halo 5 yet, and some things I have seen, I’m not so keen on. But the “esports” focus that has been put on Halo 5, will ensure that it succeeds,* as it will follow the pattern of all previous Halo multiplayer games.
*I am defining “succeeds” by people actually playing the game, the online population. The last Halo game to succeed in this way was Halo 3. Reach performed miserably compared to Halo 3, and Halo 4…say no more.
Firstly, what does this esports focus bring to the game? Well, firstly, with $1,000,000 on the line, it brings a lot more attention and publicity to Halo, and this will subsequently lead to more people taking a look at it. HCS has been very professionally done, and when I’ve been watching HCS H2A, simultaneous viewers have easily hit 15k, which is pretty impressive for a recovering series, and in a game which only started working properly several months after release (MCC). Halo 4’s Global Championship hit 20k viewers (I think) despite it being immensely an unpopular game (In Halo terms). But there was $1,000,000 on the line. So what could a popular Halo game achieve?
I say recovering, because lets face it, Halo isn’t what is was. A lot of people have left Halo, and it’s no coincidence that it started to die off in Halo Reach, and nosebombed at Halo 4. Halo MCC could have helped matters a lot more if it was working from release day - but it was far, far from it. And as a huge Halo fan, I’ve only started playing it for the last 2 or 3 months as it has become bearable.
Back on track. Aside from the publicity aspect and people taking an interest who perhaps usually wouldn’t, there are several key gameplay aspects the an esports focused Halo game brings. Firstly, smaller maps, which in turn bring fast paced gameplay. There’s a place in Halo for all kinds of maps, but HR and H4 distinctly lacked a good range of small and quality maps. Take halo 3 as an example. When people talk about Halo 3 maps, it usually goes The Pit, The Pit, Guardian The Pit. It’s no coincidence. These maps weren’t just good for Halo esports, they were great for Halo in general.
Looking at the maps we have currently seen in H5, it seems like we have small maps which actually have a bit of quality. Not too much clutter. Plenty of clever jumps to be made. No more jetpacking around the map and rendering the map design itself useless. An esports focus has made map design come back to life, and, as much as I constantly used it during HR/H4, removing jetpack is also a key move.
So lets look at previous Halo games.
Halo 1 was before xbox live so I will skip it, although I know many are fond of Halo 1 MP (Sorry guys).
Halo 2 was in essence an “esports focused” game, albeit not deliberately. It had no forge. It had limited custom game options. But what it did have was some BR starts, several amazing maps, a large skill gap, fast gameplay, clans, and a little thing called matchmaking. Halo 2 was top of the Xbox Live charts from the day it released until the day they closed the servers. A truly remarkable game, and Halo game, and in essence, a competitive game. A revamp of the graphics, and this near 11 year old game still proves popular with players and viewers alike.
Halo 3 had the advantage of forge, and a huge anticipation behind it. But there was also more competition from other games. Despite this, Halo 3 successfully battled away with both Call of Duty 4 and World at War to remain, at very worst, in the top 2 games and never far behind. By the time Modern Warfare 2 came out, a population drop was fairly inevitable - Halo 3 was 3 years old and it’s biggest competitor was on it’s 3rd much anticipated brand new game. Even so, Halo 3 kept a very steady population and continued to do until Reach.
Once again, Halo 3 was very easy to play competitively, and little had to be done to the core gameplay for esports purposes. A lot of the original maps were used, with a few forge ones added in. In fact, simply playing a ranked game in any playlist with BR starts was enough. Halo 3, once again was incredibly popular, and whilst not necessarily esports focused, it was certainly esports friendly.
You get where this is going. Whether you think Reach and Halo 4 were the best games ever, you loved jetpacks, armour lock and ar starts and your gamertag is warthogdriver3785, the proof is in the pudding. When Halo started to stray away from it’s competitive roots, people started to leave. And when it totally abandoned them (Halo 4) the game nosebombed.
Halo 5 won’t. It will be vastly more successful than Halo 4. And although many things have changed now from the original Halo’s, the desire to give the game a competitive focus will see Halo succeed once again.
