Halo - A game with an Identity Crisis!

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

I have been a gamer all my life, from the Sega Megadrive playing Sonic, and Zelda and Mario on the N64 , through to the Xbox 360, and imminent arrival of the Xbox One for Christmas.

Halo CE was the first game I played on the original Xbox, and I bought the Xbox 360 eager for the arrival of Halo 3. I have been hooked on Halo for the last decade, from what it was, to what its become. I view the campaign as excellent, and the world in which it is set flourish and prosper, with me becoming engrossed in its entirety.

However This post concerns the Mechanics and Multiplayer aspect of the game, and how I feel, with the recent releases, the game has suffered from an ‘Identity Crisis’. I the current games market, a mass selling shooter has to have a footing in the Multiplayer department.

From its peak in Halo 2/3, Halo as a franchise has seen its popularity decline, this is undeniable. I feel this is due to its gameplay becoming too confusing from title to title. Each new Halo game doesn’t ‘feel’ the same as the previous one, its identity has been warped. When people used to talk of games and what they were like, do describe something to be ‘like Halo’ was a definitive description. Now, Halo is likened to other games.

Where Halo succeed, was that it had its identity in the games market. Now without passing judgement on whether they were good ideas or not, the implication of new mechanics, target audience, and switch form an arena-style to perk-based FPS, it has lost its identity, even if not necessarily its standard.

I feel that now with the Xbox One, and more online gaming than ever before, it needs to return to its classic style, and offer gamers a different option to what is already out there.

What are everyones views on this?

Peng :smiley:

2

More or less. Not completely how 2/3 was, but similar. More modernized.

3

> More or less. Not completely how 2/3 was, but similar. More modernized.

I don’t make that the expectation, just for the game to have a familiarity to those titles.

If you look at the best selling franchises currently, they all retain a high level of consistency, take for instance Call of Duty, Fifa, even GTA, they all have a level of consistent gameplay, now whatever you think of these games, each new title has an aspect of familiarity. Each has their own identity.

4

Halo has progressively strayed more and more away from its fast paced, small scaled roots.

Halo has always had a few fairly large 4v4 maps such as Hang em High, along with flat and large BTB maps like Blood Gulch, but these have taken a backseat to the smaller arenas, such as Chill Out, Wizard, Prisoner, etc.

But over time more emphasis has been put on this style of play (Pit, Colossus, Turf), to the point of Halo 4 where the vast majority of the 4v4 maps are very large with very long sightlines (Adrift, Abandon, Solace, etc.)

There isn’t a single truly small map in Halo 4. Even maps like Haven or Monolith are quite large compared to their predecessors. This puts much less of an emphasis on strafe and much more of an emphasis on proper positioning.

Halo 4 plays like a modern shooter, regardless if it still has floaty jumping, mancannons, etc. Even without loadouts, it would still play like a modern shooter due to map design and sprint alone.

Being as unbiased as possible, one can argue this style of play has existed since the beginning, and that mechanics like sprint and bloom are naturally fitting. I’m still not a huge fan regardless.

TLDR in a way Halo has always had an identity crisis, trying to be multiple styles of play at once. Halo 4 is finally solidifying its identity, the problem is this is not the identity many players want it to take, including myself.

5

> Where Halo succeed, was that it had its identity in the games market. Now without passing judgement on whether they were good ideas or not, the implication of new mechanics, target audience, and switch form an arena-style to perk-based FPS, it has lost its identity…

Well keep in mind this franchise started out as a campaign shooter (similar to Shogo, Jedi Knights, or even Half Life) and was later co-opted to suit multiplayer interests. Halo 2 was the start of Halo’s identity crisis, and what we’re seeing now may just be the long-term consequences of that.