Before I start off I just want to say that I really did enjoy Halo 5 and I love 343i, and my only goal in writing this is to help them and give some quality feedback for halo 6.
Campaign
- Better story than halo 5
- Gritty and dark missions (nightfall, cortana, most of ODST’s missions) and also bright, colourful ones (covenant, the ark, exodus, tip of the spear). Look at halo 3 and reach, they do this very well.
- Lots of large open areas with lots of options like the first mission of reach, and “halo” and the silent cartographer from halo 1.
- Get Blur to make the cutscenes
Matchmaking
While warzone is great, it seams like 343 is putting too much effort into it, and also too much effort into E-sports. In my opinion, I would rather have no HCS and less focus on warzone, and future warzone REQ drops, but have the playlists look like this:
Arena:
- Team Slayer
- Team objective
- FFA
- Team Doubles
- SWAT
- Snipers
- Breakout
Social: - Warzone
- BTB (with dev-made maps, not forge ones)
- Infection
- Invasion (using BTB maps. They should design it like in reach)
- Dominion (my favourite gametype by 343. Followed by breakout)
- Action Sack (with games like speed halo, hogs from heck, etc…)
- Race
- Griffball
Of course, some of these playlists could be combined, and new ones could be added, but this is the best possible list of gametypes a halo game could have in my opinion.
Custom Games
- All matchmaking gametypes and maps should be available for players to play offline, even warzone if possible.
- It should have at least as much customization as reach. With gametypes like ctf being both one sided, two sided, and neutral
- Basically just give us as much customization as you can, that would be amazing.
- Also a custom games browser would strengthen the halo community so much, you would not believe it.
Firefight
As much as I think warzone firefight looks cool and fun, this is what I believe should happen in future titles:
- Firefight should be playable offline and on split-screen.
- It should have many customization options like in reach.
- It should use slightly modified maps from the campaign. I think this would have been great for halo 5. Fighting on the kraken, or on sanghelios, but oh well.
- It should try to incorporate vehicles, both for the enemies and the players.
- Being able to forge firefight maps, including the AI, would be AMAZING!
Forge
- Forge was potentially the best thing in halo 5, and made the game 100X better. My advice for anyone at 343 with any amount of influence would be to give the forge staff all the resources they need, and I promise you they will not disappoint.
Theater
- I’m unable to say much about theater since I rarely use it, but it should support machinimas as much as possible, and work in ALL gametypes (multiplayer, campaign, firefight, etc…)
Extras (important though)
- We should have full armour customization, even if that means less armour to chose from. I’d rather have that over a bunch of armour with 3 different paint jobs that, honestly, don’t look that great or different except for a few like recruit burn and the one with the teeth on it. I mean we should have leg, chest, arm, each shoulder, and helmet. Maybe even a few more like back, leg and helmet accessories and stuff.
- REQ packs should go in my opinion. I understand if they stay because of HCS and all that, but warzone and the REQ pack system honestly seem like a giant cash grab from microsoft so they can say they have a proper E sport title. I would much rather have no warzone or HCS and have the rest of the things on this list, and I’m sure most halo fans (since most of them are not competing in HCS anyway would prefer this as well.
- All emblems should be unlocked immediately. The only reason they weren’t in halo 5 was to sell more REQ packs, lets be honest.
- One of my most IMPORTANT points, is that we need less UNSC maps, and less symmetrical maps. We need to see some more adventurous maps from developers. Don’t play it safe making maps like the rig and stuff, make interesting maps that feel like halo maps. All the Warzone maps feel so similar because of the home base and the ones you capture on the map all having the same layout, that is so incredibly NOT halo, it’s kinda funny. Look at maps like zanzibar, the spire, guardian, each one is so different but is so memorable when compared to maps in halo 5. One is human, one is forerunner, and one is covenant, but none are symmetrical. One is arena, one is BTB and one is somewhere in between. Those are the types of maps we need to see in halo 6.
- Bring back as many classic vehicles as possible, and the new ones you bring in should incorporate teamwork as much as possible.
- Adding water (yes I know that sounds silly) as a more core part of the game could really change things up. Being able to swim, and use boats could make for some really interesting BTB and warzone maps, and could really help bring a new element to the game, and I think the fans would be happy to see a new form of combat. Halo has always had land, air and infantry, all it’s missing is water. I know this last point seems really silly potentially but I think it could work really, really well with Halo’s mechanics. I can’t even begin to imagine the awesome forge maps that could come from this.