Halo: Breath of the Wild

Games Halo Infinite
1

I get a really strong Zelda: Breath of the Wild from the E3 tech demo for Infinite. Everything they show seems to be about the environment, from the sweeping vistas of mountains to the grassy plains and desert. There’s one shot looking over what appears to be a camp fire, there’s the shot inside the tent, and then of course there’s this interesting focus throughout the trailer on the animals. In the last shot with Master Chief, he’s standing on a hill overlooking a field full of the hippo-rhino things. You almost get a sense of the wolf planning it’s attack on the herd. I think light-hearted sense of survival and isolation and smallness that pervades the trailer. Plus there’s the those towers with the beacons scattered throughout the mountains and fields toward the end of the trailer, which could serve as hub locations that are present in many other open-world games. I’m thinking Halo 6 might have a super open-world campaign that is as much about the environment and your traversal through it as it is about the combat. All of this would be in line with 343’s marketing speak about reintroducing a sense of mystery, exploration, and discovery.

I also think that could be the reason for designing an engine from scratch. If they’re really taking Halo in a Breath of the Wild-esque direction, it could be that instead of paring down movement mechanics they’re doubling down, and want players to be able to do things that just aren’t possible with the current engine. What if there was serious climibing mechanic, like the one present in Breath of the Wild? Or perhaps movement in Halo Infinite could be something inspired more by like what’s in Titanfall. I’m sure that horrifies plenty of people around here, but actually I think it could be good for Halo if 343 unapologetically gave it a new identity that they’re not pulling their punches on. I’m excited for a Halo that 343 is excited for, rather than one they’re tentatively hoping will successfully jerk off their large and unweildy and vocal fanbase. Seems like with all the time they’re taking on this one, Halo Infinite could be that Halo. I’m reluctant to get too excited after the fiasco that was the marketing campaign for Halo 5 vs. what it actually turned out to be, but I remain vaguely hopeful for and intrigued by the direction they seem to be taking with Halo 6.

What do you guys think it’ll be like? Do you like the idea of an environment/world-focused/Breath of the Wild-esque campaign? How do you think gameplay mechanics might factor into this potential new direction?

2

Essentially everything you’re saying says if we’d be cool with open world Halo and it’s a no to me. Shooters make awful open world games, they’re lifeless and lack creativity, even RPGs have a hard time with it to where I almost never see an interesting open world style game. I can get having more open mission combat evolved style, but open world exploration would just be a tedious back and forth chore that open world games are known for, and when 343 has no experience in it I’m not going to be optimistic on it.

3

Zelda? It’s more or less the original concept of Halo 1, before it was Combat Evolved. I didn’t get Zelda from the tech demo at all. I mean, I suppose Master Chief’s green and it seemed like there was some sort of open-world aspect to it, but the similarities stop there.

I don’t get this fixation with turning Halo into something it’s not. If they’re going to do something completely out of character with Halo, I doubt it’s going to be in one of the main games. They’re more likely to turn it into a side project, like with Halo Wars, or outsource it to another team. The day Halo’s no longer an FPS is the day Microsoft loses its foothold in the shooter space.

4

> 2533274923562209;2:
> Essentially everything you’re saying says if we’d be cool with open world Halo and it’s a no to me. Shooters make awful open world games, they’re lifeless and lack creativity, even RPGs have a hard time with it to where I almost never see an interesting open world style game. I can get having more open mission combat evolved style, but open world exploration would just be a tedious back and forth chore that open world games are known for, and when 343 has no experience in it I’m not going to be optimistic on it.

> 2533274836465274;3:
> Zelda? It’s more or less the original concept of Halo 1, before it was Combat Evolved. I didn’t get Zelda from the tech demo at all. I mean, I suppose Master Chief’s green and it seemed like there was some sort of open-world aspect to it, but the similarities stop there.
>
> I don’t get this fixation with turning Halo into something it’s not. If they’re going to do something completely out of character with Halo, I doubt it’s going to be in one of the main games. They’re more likely to turn it into a side project, like with Halo Wars, or outsource it to another team. The day Halo’s no longer an FPS is the day Microsoft loses its foothold in the shooter space.

Hmm, I guess I’m thinking more along the lines of merely taking inspiration from Zelda. In actual practice and for keeping to it a sense of Halo I think it’d function more like ODST: Here’s this environment, go explore. Go to this, this, and this location if you want straightforward levels that will advance the story. (Straightforward levels that’d still take advantage of the open-world aspect in that there’d be a lot of ways to tackle objectives and get from place to place, but still framed in an explicitly delineated zone).

5

Cool analysis and I hope you’re right, I don’t agree with the Titanfall comment though, I’m one of those that want a more classic inspired game. At first I really didn’t like the idea of an open world mainline Halo but it’s slowly growing on me the more I think about it.

6

I think depending on how well 343 can accomplish the already dynamic sandbox of Halo combat in an open world. I’m not a fan on open world games generally but if designed in such a way that felt more traditionally linear like you get from usual Halo campaigns then it could work. ODST had an open style approach with traditional levels and that contrasted well. if 343 were clever in how they approached an open style then it could be rather excellent but if it were anything like Far Cry then I’d have issue. It’s a difficult task to be fair

7

I think a hub based open world a la ODST is more likely, or maybe the Tomb Raider reboots perhaps?

i think a full blown open world wouldn’t be as popular as those style games, but I’d be up for it.

i know I’m in the minority, though. I just enjoy soaking in the details traveling from place to place between missions.

I gotta say I think it sound awesome though!

8

Yeah, the game is clearly some flavor of open-world, which has me super pumped. One of the oldest and most requested features has been to pilot a pelican in-game. We got to do that briefly in 4, but it would be even better if we could fly one across this massive environment 343 is teasing. One can only hope.

Also, I really don’t get why people constantly try to boil Halo’s identity to down to its gameplay mechanics, as if expanding the gameplay experience will somehow rob Halo of its soul. At the end of the day, the only question that matters is whether the game is good. If Halo Infinite turns out to be an amazing game, I highly doubt the majority of Halo fans are going to say, “Nope, the environment is too large.” I don’t recall anyone boycotting GTA3 because it was too three-dimensional. A great game is a great game. That is what people will be judging this game on, not whether it plays like the last ones. If it sucks, then we’ll all riot like we did with Halo 5.

9

> 2533274792372732;8:
> A great game is a great game. That is what people will be judging this game on, not whether it plays like the last ones. If it sucks, then we’ll all riot like we did with Halo 5.

I agree, if it’s a good game and fun to play ? Bring it on, I don’t mind open world, 3rd person, 1st person, rpg, shooter etc, I enjoy playing games I find fun. If Halo Infinite is an open world, or bigger areas like CE, fine by me, if it’s good.

10

> 2533274923562209;2:
> Essentially everything you’re saying says if we’d be cool with open world Halo and it’s a no to me. Shooters make awful open world games, they’re lifeless and lack creativity, even RPGs have a hard time with it to where I almost never see an interesting open world style game. I can get having more open mission combat evolved style, but open world exploration would just be a tedious back and forth chore that open world games are known for, and when 343 has no experience in it I’m not going to be optimistic on it.

Thank you!

I’m still wondering how the Fallout franchise is so successful. I’ve got the fourth and third ones (the latter came with the former), but no matter how many times I keep trying to play them I never make it very far before I get bored.

I love the freedom of levels like Halo, The Silent Cartographer, Mombasa Streets and ONI Sword Base, and I’d love to have a similar experience on a greater scale, but I certainly don’t want a full open-world Halo. And even then, those levels were only fun because the core gameplay and enemy A.I. worked very well in the levels’ environments, adding to the sense of freedom. Halo 4 and 5’s NPCs simply wouldn’t last in such a space.

11

> 2535415876049274;10:
> > 2533274923562209;2:
> > Essentially everything you’re saying says if we’d be cool with open world Halo and it’s a no to me. Shooters make awful open world games, they’re lifeless and lack creativity, even RPGs have a hard time with it to where I almost never see an interesting open world style game. I can get having more open mission combat evolved style, but open world exploration would just be a tedious back and forth chore that open world games are known for, and when 343 has no experience in it I’m not going to be optimistic on it.
>
> Thank you!
>
> I’m still wondering how the Fallout franchise is so successful.

They’re successful because they’re rpgs that give the player a choice of character and a non linear environment to grow and progress in. There are obviously millions that enjoy games like that, perhaps it’s not for you ?

I don’t think Halo Infinite will be a first person rpg, but I’m certainly open to an rpg Halo at some point. Especially if it was an rpg starting from John being taken as a child and put into the Spartan programme, I would love to be able to mould that character through an rpg game.

I would like Halo Infinite to be open word, but I think it might be like Halo CE, truth is, none of us know, we’re just hoping and speculating because we’ve only seen an engine demo.

12

> 2592250499819446;11:
> > 2535415876049274;10:
> > > 2533274923562209;2:
> > > Essentially everything you’re saying says if we’d be cool with open world Halo and it’s a no to me. Shooters make awful open world games, they’re lifeless and lack creativity, even RPGs have a hard time with it to where I almost never see an interesting open world style game. I can get having more open mission combat evolved style, but open world exploration would just be a tedious back and forth chore that open world games are known for, and when 343 has no experience in it I’m not going to be optimistic on it.
> >
> > Thank you!
> >
> > I’m still wondering how the Fallout franchise is so successful.
>
> They’re successful because they’re rpgs that give the player a choice of character and a non linear environment to grow and progress in. There are obviously millions that enjoy games like that, perhaps it’s not for you ?
>
> I don’t think Halo Infinite will be a first person rpg, but I’m certainly open to an rpg Halo at some point. Especially if it was an rpg starting from John being taken as a child and put into the Spartan programme, I would love to be able to mould that character through an rpg game.
>
> I would like Halo Infinite to be open word, but I think it might be like Halo CE, truth is, none of us know, we’re just hoping and speculating because we’ve only seen an engine demo.

I absolutely love The Elder Scrolls. I’ve had a blast playing Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim over the years. There’s two reasons I don’t like Fallout:

  • Like, Breath of the Wild, it’s barren. There’s not a lot going on. It’s an open environment where everything looks and feels the same and it takes ages to come across anything even mildly interesting. - It’s a shooter in which all the guns and ammo are incredibly spaced out over a large open world. Imagine if they took away the melee weapons from Skyrim and kept only the bows and arrows but made the arrows far more sparse. That, and the terrible VATS system. If I want to shoot something I’d like to shoot it myself.I don’t see that RPG idea working to be honest. That segment of Halo’s story is very well detailed (and linear) at this point. You’d be better off choosing a different time period in my opinion, like the following.
  • An RPG in which you’re a regular human stranded on Alpha Halo. You worked maintenance or something on the Pillar of Autumn and now have to defend yourself against the Covenant and later the Flood on the ring-shaped fortress-world. You can find armour, weapons and other equipment. across Halo’s massive valleys, canyons and inner workings, and work your way up to becoming a competent soldier. As you do so, you are given missions from officials at the likes of Alpha Base and other smaller outposts. - An RPG in which you can select from a number of races living on the colony of Venezia after the UNSC-Covenant War. Play as a human civilian, an Insurrectionist, a UNSC survivor looking for retirement, an Unggoy refugee, a Kig-Yar scavenger, a Jiralhanae sellsword or a Sangheili assassin. - An RPG in which you start as a lowly Covenant soldier trying to make a name for yourself in the broad Covenant Empire. The game is set on High Charity. You have the choice to spy on High Charity’s politicians, quell heresy within the city, join crews of small and large Covenant ships alike, embark on missions outside the city before returning when they’re complete, start your own revolt against your commanders and even the Hierache’s themselves, etc. etc.Honestly, while I could come up with countless ideas for open-world Halo games that I might really enjoy, the risk is too great for a main Halo title. As I said, no current FPS RPG has ever really been successful in my eyes (even if they’ve received plenty of purchases). They’re just not fun. If someone was to experiment with that idea, I’d like it to be after the current mainline series is complete or by a different company while 343i worked on the main game (Halo: Infinite in this case).

I can see the game being somewhat of a hybrid between the two. Perhaps it’ll have much larger levels than Halo CE with a similar sense of freedom and without the long empty landscapes of an open-world game, but there might only be five levels instead of ten. Who knows? Maybe they’ll even have a hub world like classic 3D Platformers often had with the different levels spinning off that one. ODST came close to that idea.

13

> 2592250499819446;9:
> > 2533274792372732;8:
> > A great game is a great game. That is what people will be judging this game on, not whether it plays like the last ones. If it sucks, then we’ll all riot like we did with Halo 5.
>
> I agree, if it’s a good game and fun to play ? Bring it on, I don’t mind open world, 3rd person, 1st person, rpg, shooter etc, I enjoy playing games I find fun. If Halo Infinite is an open world, or bigger areas like CE, fine by me, if it’s good.

Definitely with y’all on the idea that if it’s good it’ll be good. I don’t think they’d go as far as to make it 3rd person–they gotta keep some stuff that makes it Halo–but I like the idea of a 343 going for broke on this one. They’re spending 4-6 years on it, they might as well bust out something that’s really gonna do it.

> 2533274792372732;8:
> Yeah, the game is clearly some flavor of open-world, which has me super pumped. One of the oldest and most requested features has been to pilot a pelican in-game. We got to do that briefly in 4, but it would be even better if we could fly one across this massive environment 343 is teasing. One can only hope.

Love the idea of a pelican as a mobile base. (Elephants…? Mammoth?!?!) (Lol)

> 2535415876049274;12:
> > 2592250499819446;11:
> > > 2535415876049274;10:
> > > > 2533274923562209;2:
> > > > Essentially everything you’re saying says if we’d be cool with open world Halo and it’s a no to me. Shooters make awful open world games, they’re lifeless and lack creativity, even RPGs have a hard time with it to where I almost never see an interesting open world style game. I can get having more open mission combat evolved style, but open world exploration would just be a tedious back and forth chore that open world games are known for, and when 343 has no experience in it I’m not going to be optimistic on it.
> > >
> > > Thank you!
> > >
> > > I’m still wondering how the Fallout franchise is so successful.
> >
> > They’re successful because they’re rpgs that give the player a choice of character and a non linear environment to grow and progress in. There are obviously millions that enjoy games like that, perhaps it’s not for you ?
> >
> > I don’t think Halo Infinite will be a first person rpg, but I’m certainly open to an rpg Halo at some point. Especially if it was an rpg starting from John being taken as a child and put into the Spartan programme, I would love to be able to mould that character through an rpg game.
> >
> > I would like Halo Infinite to be open word, but I think it might be like Halo CE, truth is, none of us know, we’re just hoping and speculating because we’ve only seen an engine demo.
>
> I absolutely love The Elder Scrolls. I’ve had a blast playing Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim over the years. There’s two reasons I don’t like Fallout:
> - Like, Breath of the Wild, it’s barren. There’s not a lot going on. It’s an open environment where everything looks and feels the same and it takes ages to come across anything even mildly interesting. - It’s a shooter in which all the guns and ammo are incredibly spaced out over a large open world. Imagine if they took away the melee weapons from Skyrim and kept only the bows and arrows but made the arrows far more sparse. That, and the terrible VATS system. If I want to shoot something I’d like to shoot it myself.I don’t see that RPG idea working to be honest. That segment of Halo’s story is very well detailed (and linear) at this point. You’d be better off choosing a different time period in my opinion, like the following.
> - An RPG in which you’re a regular human stranded on Alpha Halo. You worked maintenance or something on the Pillar of Autumn and now have to defend yourself against the Covenant and later the Flood on the ring-shaped fortress-world. You can find armour, weapons and other equipment. across Halo’s massive valleys, canyons and inner workings, and work your way up to becoming a competent soldier. As you do so, you are given missions from officials at the likes of Alpha Base and other smaller outposts. - An RPG in which you can select from a number of races living on the colony of Venezia after the UNSC-Covenant War. Play as a human civilian, an Insurrectionist, a UNSC survivor looking for retirement, an Unggoy refugee, a Kig-Yar scavenger, a Jiralhanae sellsword or a Sangheili assassin. - An RPG in which you start as a lowly Covenant soldier trying to make a name for yourself in the broad Covenant Empire. The game is set on High Charity. You have the choice to spy on High Charity’s politicians, quell heresy within the city, join crews of small and large Covenant ships alike, embark on missions outside the city before returning when they’re complete, start your own revolt against your commanders and even the Hierache’s themselves, etc. etc.Honestly, while I could come up with countless ideas for open-world Halo games that I might really enjoy, the risk is too great for a main Halo title. As I said, no current FPS RPG has ever really been successful in my eyes (even if they’ve received plenty of purchases). They’re just not fun. If someone was to experiment with that idea, I’d like it to be after the current mainline series is complete or by a different company while 343i worked on the main game (Halo: Infinite in this case).
>
> I can see the game being somewhat of a hybrid between the two. Perhaps it’ll have much larger levels than Halo CE with a similar sense of freedom and without the long empty landscapes of an open-world game, but there might only be five levels instead of ten. Who knows? Maybe they’ll even have a hub world like classic 3D Platformers often had with the different levels spinning off that one. ODST came close to that idea.

Hmm, I definitely don’t want a game like Far Cry either for a Halo game. I’m thinking less about a Zelda comparison from an explicit genre perspective than I am from a sort of overall design perspective. In Zelda, they designed the world around certain principle interactions that apply anywhere in the world, and the effect is that the world feels like it lives and breathes. It stinks of opportunity. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time messing around with the elements or all the crazy weird niche things you can do just for -Yoink- and gigs, but I know that those opportunities are there, and that makes the game exciting to play even if I’m not necessarily taking advantage of those opportunities. The trailer made me think less of a literal Halo-ized version of Zelda than it did the feeling that Zelda gives me when all it’s components come together as I’m playing it. I.e. Infinite’s trailer painted a picture for me of a world that’s alive, far moreso than something like Far Cry or Assassin’s Creed. I’d argue Skyrim feels pretty alive, though the gameplay that fills the world is ultimately kinda trash.

14

(Continued from above)

I think the closest comparison of this feeling to be found in a mainline Halo game is in CE or 2. Both have so many odd things you can do just for the hell of it–back in the day, there weren’t even achievements for those things. You just did’em cuz you stumbled upon them and could then play around with them to yield interesting results.

Halo CE:
“Yow! I grabbed the overshield, and then this hunter wacked me on to the top of this island?? Wtf! I wonder if another hunter at this other part could help me get on top of this other thing…”
"What? My co op partner drops a million grenades every time they respawn and I back smack them. Hmm…"
“If chuck a grenade at the start of the level, I can hang out in this pelican a while longer. Interesting!”

Halo 2:
“Scarab gun. Soccer ball. Banshee. Wut.”
“Sword canceling.”
“Why when I landed on this particular pixel did I go flying a gajillion feet into the air?! Lemme try that again…”

I guess a lot of these examples are kind of unintentional, but they still added to this whole element of making the games feel alive, and of feeling like they’d taken on a life of their own as a result of what the player had discovered but what the developers hadn’t intended. Breath of the Wild is a cool game because it is by design meant to impart that feeling that there are things to experiment with and discover. It’d be cool if Infinite managed to incorporate that feeling of aliveness somehow. I loved Halo 4’s campaign for the story, but playing it ultimately felt lifeless. Halo 5 felt fairly interactive, but then the story ultimately failed to drive the gameplay. Both are so polished, though, that you can’t help feeling like you’re a rat running through a maze. Bungie’s campaigns never felt like that to me (though actually, fun as ODST was as an experience, you were never really compelled to explore the city streets aside from looking for audio logs). It might just be a function of the fact that as games get more popular, they get more money dumped into them and are ultimately allowed less leeway to be anything other than what the developers intended. Still, Breath of the Wild is an extraordinarily polished game and, as I said, brings that life into its world by design.

I’m not sure exactly how to put that life into a game, but what I hope it would ultimately actually play like would resemble something akin to ODST–hugeass hub world, more linear (but still open in the case of infinite) missions accessible through the hub. I’m less interested in a Halo game in collecting the meat of rhinos aforementioned in the OP lol. Definitely a bit of a miscommunication there.

15

> 2535415876049274;12:
> > 2592250499819446;11:
> > > 2535415876049274;10:
> > > > 2533274923562209;2:
> > > > Essentially everything you’re saying says if we’d be cool with open world Halo and it’s a no to me. Shooters make awful open world games, they’re lifeless and lack creativity, even RPGs have a hard time with it to where I almost never see an interesting open world style game. I can get having more open mission combat evolved style, but open world exploration would just be a tedious back and forth chore that open world games are known for, and when 343 has no experience in it I’m not going to be optimistic on it.
> > >
> > > Thank you!
> > >
> > > I’m still wondering how the Fallout franchise is so successful.
> >
> > They’re successful because they’re rpgs that give the player a choice of character and a non linear environment to grow and progress in. There are obviously millions that enjoy games like that, perhaps it’s not for you ?
> >
> > I don’t think Halo Infinite will be a first person rpg, but I’m certainly open to an rpg Halo at some point. Especially if it was an rpg starting from John being taken as a child and put into the Spartan programme, I would love to be able to mould that character through an rpg game.
> >
> > I would like Halo Infinite to be open word, but I think it might be like Halo CE, truth is, none of us know, we’re just hoping and speculating because we’ve only seen an engine demo.
>
> I absolutely love The Elder Scrolls. I’ve had a blast playing Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim over the years. There’s two reasons I don’t like Fallout:
> - Like, Breath of the Wild, it’s barren. There’s not a lot going on. It’s an open environment where everything looks and feels the same and it takes ages to come across anything even mildly interesting. - It’s a shooter in which all the guns and ammo are incredibly spaced out over a large open world. Imagine if they took away the melee weapons from Skyrim and kept only the bows and arrows but made the arrows far more sparse. That, and the terrible VATS system. If I want to shoot something I’d like to shoot it myself.I don’t see that RPG idea working to be honest. That segment of Halo’s story is very well detailed (and linear) at this point. You’d be better off choosing a different time period in my opinion, like the following.
> - An RPG in which you’re a regular human stranded on Alpha Halo. You worked maintenance or something on the Pillar of Autumn and now have to defend yourself against the Covenant and later the Flood on the ring-shaped fortress-world. You can find armour, weapons and other equipment. across Halo’s massive valleys, canyons and inner workings, and work your way up to becoming a competent soldier. As you do so, you are given missions from officials at the likes of Alpha Base and other smaller outposts. - An RPG in which you can select from a number of races living on the colony of Venezia after the UNSC-Covenant War. Play as a human civilian, an Insurrectionist, a UNSC survivor looking for retirement, an Unggoy refugee, a Kig-Yar scavenger, a Jiralhanae sellsword or a Sangheili assassin. - An RPG in which you start as a lowly Covenant soldier trying to make a name for yourself in the broad Covenant Empire. The game is set on High Charity. You have the choice to spy on High Charity’s politicians, quell heresy within the city, join crews of small and large Covenant ships alike, embark on missions outside the city before returning when they’re complete, start your own revolt against your commanders and even the Hierache’s themselves, etc. etc.Honestly, while I could come up with countless ideas for open-world Halo games that I might really enjoy, the risk is too great for a main Halo title. As I said, no current FPS RPG has ever really been successful in my eyes (even if they’ve received plenty of purchases). They’re just not fun. If someone was to experiment with that idea, I’d like it to be after the current mainline series is complete or by a different company while 343i worked on the main game (Halo: Infinite in this case).
>
> I can see the game being somewhat of a hybrid between the two. Perhaps it’ll have much larger levels than Halo CE with a similar sense of freedom and without the long empty landscapes of an open-world game, but there might only be five levels instead of ten. Who knows? Maybe they’ll even have a hub world like classic 3D Platformers often had with the different levels spinning off that one. ODST came close to that idea.

Like I’ve stated before, it’s prefernces, I don’t like the Elder Scroll series, you do. You don’t like Fallout, I love it. Same with a Halo RPG set around John being taken and evolving from that point, that’s my wish for a Halo RPG, I think it would be great. You have your opinion and it differs from mine.

It also does not have to be a FPS RPG, why not have the option of both 1st and 3rd and let the player choose ? I do believe we’ll see a Halo RPG at some point, we have an arcade Halo, FP shooters, twin stick shooters and RTS in Halo Wars.

16

> 2533274809073993;14:
> (Continued from above)
>
> I think the closest comparison of this feeling to be found in a mainline Halo game is in CE or 2. Both have so many odd things you can do just for the hell of it–back in the day, there weren’t even achievements for those things. You just did’em cuz you stumbled upon them and could then play around with them to yield interesting results.
>
> Halo CE:
> “Yow! I grabbed the overshield, and then this hunter wacked me on to the top of this island?? Wtf! I wonder if another hunter at this other part could help me get on top of this other thing…”
> "What? My co op partner drops a million grenades every time they respawn and I back smack them. Hmm…" “If chuck a grenade at the start of the level, I can hang out in this pelican a while longer. Interesting!”
>
> Halo 2:
> “Scarab gun. Soccer ball. Banshee. Wut.”
> “Sword canceling.”
> “Why when I landed on this particular pixel did I go flying a gajillion feet into the air?! Lemme try that again…”
>
> I guess a lot of these examples are kind of unintentional, but they still added to this whole element of making the games feel alive, and of feeling like they’d taken on a life of their own as a result of what the player had discovered but what the developers hadn’t intended. Breath of the Wild is a cool game because it is by design meant to impart that feeling that there are things to experiment with and discover. It’d be cool if Infinite managed to incorporate that feeling of aliveness somehow. I loved Halo 4’s campaign for the story, but playing it ultimately felt lifeless. Halo 5 felt fairly interactive, but then the story ultimately failed to drive the gameplay. Both are so polished, though, that you can’t help feeling like you’re a rat running through a maze. Bungie’s campaigns never felt like that to me (though actually, fun as ODST was as an experience, you were never really compelled to explore the city streets aside from looking for audio logs). It might just be a function of the fact that as games get more popular, they get more money dumped into them and are ultimately allowed less leeway to be anything other than what the developers intended. Still, Breath of the Wild is an extraordinarily polished game and, as I said, brings that life into its world by design. I’m not sure exactly how to put that life into a game, but what I hope it would ultimately actually play like would resemble something akin to ODST–hugeass hub world, more linear (but still open in the case of infinite) missions accessible through the hub. I’m less interested in a Halo game in collecting the meat of rhinos aforementioned in the OP lol. Definitely a bit of a miscommunication there.

Maybe the game it’s not necessary be an open world game, but can be alive.
I had suggested in one post on the forum about the scenarios, but they closed down because they’re interfering the mechanics.
Well there’s a sort of examples how the maps or the scenario could be alive.
-Destructable scenarios(partial destruction, not total destruction).
-climate changes, like rain, windy, cloud, heat (causing overheat), sandstorm, tempest; eletro magnetism changing the way of combat, with dynamic change clymatic

  • Anti-gravity, forced and reverse gravity areas;
  • secrets areas where is hard to reach
  • secret areas where is destructable
    -interaction with equipments like computers, npc, itens
  • Usage of vehicles,
  • fiding rare weapons or mods,
  • scenarios in underwater places ( like oceans, lakes, etc.), With pressure and salinization effects
  • Diversity weapons causing diferent effects on scenario.
    Are INFINITE possibilities, because of thematic of Halo: Sci-fi fiction. Maybe not be an open world, but the campaign maybe never be the same for everyone. That’s what I feel alive on a imersive real world combat.
17

> 2533274923562209;2:
> Essentially everything you’re saying says if we’d be cool with open world Halo and it’s a no to me. Shooters make awful open world games, they’re lifeless and lack creativity, even RPGs have a hard time with it to where I almost never see an interesting open world style game. I can get having more open mission combat evolved style, but open world exploration would just be a tedious back and forth chore that open world games are known for, and when 343 has no experience in it I’m not going to be optimistic on it.

cough Destiny cough

18

I think people are reading into the E3 tech demo WAY too much. I really think it was 343I just showing off things, that’s it. Sure maybe they were dropping little hints of this and that in there to get people talking, but overall, it’s just a tech demo I think. No more, no less.

19

> 2533274815533909;18:
> I think people are reading into the E3 tech demo WAY too much. I really think it was 343I just showing off things, that’s it. Sure maybe they were dropping little hints of this and that in there to get people talking, but overall, it’s just a tech demo I think. No more, no less.

Eh, we’ll read what’s there to be read.

20

> 2535436090432793;16:
> > 2533274809073993;14:
> > (Continued from above)
> >
> > I think the closest comparison of this feeling to be found in a mainline Halo game is in CE or 2. Both have so many odd things you can do just for the hell of it–back in the day, there weren’t even achievements for those things. You just did’em cuz you stumbled upon them and could then play around with them to yield interesting results.
> >
> > Halo CE:
> > “Yow! I grabbed the overshield, and then this hunter wacked me on to the top of this island?? Wtf! I wonder if another hunter at this other part could help me get on top of this other thing…”
> > "What? My co op partner drops a million grenades every time they respawn and I back smack them. Hmm…" “If chuck a grenade at the start of the level, I can hang out in this pelican a while longer. Interesting!”
> >
> > Halo 2:
> > “Scarab gun. Soccer ball. Banshee. Wut.”
> > “Sword canceling.”
> > “Why when I landed on this particular pixel did I go flying a gajillion feet into the air?! Lemme try that again…”
> >
> > I guess a lot of these examples are kind of unintentional, but they still added to this whole element of making the games feel alive, and of feeling like they’d taken on a life of their own as a result of what the player had discovered but what the developers hadn’t intended. Breath of the Wild is a cool game because it is by design meant to impart that feeling that there are things to experiment with and discover. It’d be cool if Infinite managed to incorporate that feeling of aliveness somehow. I loved Halo 4’s campaign for the story, but playing it ultimately felt lifeless. Halo 5 felt fairly interactive, but then the story ultimately failed to drive the gameplay. Both are so polished, though, that you can’t help feeling like you’re a rat running through a maze. Bungie’s campaigns never felt like that to me (though actually, fun as ODST was as an experience, you were never really compelled to explore the city streets aside from looking for audio logs). It might just be a function of the fact that as games get more popular, they get more money dumped into them and are ultimately allowed less leeway to be anything other than what the developers intended. Still, Breath of the Wild is an extraordinarily polished game and, as I said, brings that life into its world by design. I’m not sure exactly how to put that life into a game, but what I hope it would ultimately actually play like would resemble something akin to ODST–hugeass hub world, more linear (but still open in the case of infinite) missions accessible through the hub. I’m less interested in a Halo game in collecting the meat of rhinos aforementioned in the OP lol. Definitely a bit of a miscommunication there.
>
> Maybe the game it’s not necessary be an open world game, but can be alive.
> I had suggested in one post on the forum about the scenarios, but they closed down because they’re interfering the mechanics.
> Well there’s a sort of examples how the maps or the scenario could be alive.
> -Destructable scenarios(partial destruction, not total destruction).
> -climate changes, like rain, windy, cloud, heat (causing overheat), sandstorm, tempest; eletro magnetism changing the way of combat, with dynamic change clymatic- Anti-gravity, forced and reverse gravity areas;
> - secrets areas where is hard to reach
> - secret areas where is destructable
> -interaction with equipments like computers, npc, itens
> - Usage of vehicles,
> - fiding rare weapons or mods,
> - scenarios in underwater places ( like oceans, lakes, etc.), With pressure and salinization effects- Diversity weapons causing diferent effects on scenario.
> Are INFINITE possibilities, because of thematic of Halo: Sci-fi fiction. Maybe not be an open world, but the campaign maybe never be the same for everyone. That’s what I feel alive on a imersive real world combat.

I like all these! Particularly the bolded stuff. Definitely some cool ideas.