While I overall didn’t enjoy Spartan Ops very much in Halo 4 I think there is great potential for it and if it were to come back I’d rebrand it as Halo Ops (as we are making a return to a ring for most if not all the game it would appear) and make it as a later DLC story expansion.
The idea behind it is to create new and unique missions from others perspectives. Perhaps from more than just a spartan? Hence the broader title Halo Ops. Additionally, this ‘mode’ could even introduce the ability to make your very own missions with a forge like feature! While playing original Bungie/343 content has always been great its the ability to customize experiences with similar tools they use that has been the crux of community growth, creativity, and continued support for the games.
I think spartan ops or halo ops or whatever title one wants to use , is really ripe for the picking in the current games as a service environment .
The 2012/13 H4 offering had a stack of potential but was well ahead of its time , the audience wasn’t quite ready for it back then , and the devs ambition while commendable they weren’t able to quite deliver either .
Fast forward to 2019 modern gaming , a new slipspace engine that apparently is able to produce content at a far more efficient rate and an audience that is comfortable with with games as a service, battlepasses and regularly receiving seasons and content drops .
I’d be surprised if they didn’t pursue a story driven, destiny-Esk type of ongoing engagement with the audience outside of the campaign and match making experiences . If done right this time around it could give so much quality of life to infinite .
I personally wasn’t a fan of the cast of characters presented to us in Spartan Ops or its story in general. I’m not against another attempt at another episodic side story. In my opinion though a new cast of characters are needed who do not possess any real identity, kind of like Fireteam Crimson and what exactly do I mean by that. We only see highly trained soldiers in cutscene wearing armor, no helmets off.
I’d imagine the ideal team to follow are Spartan-III’s as they are war orphans still trying to adapt to a Post-War Galaxy as they are now sometimes fighting alongside the same alienes who orohaned them in the first place. There story would certainly be worth following in my opinion as I am not a fan of Tom and Lucy actually being supportive of aliens and humans going to school together in that one book.
I like the idea of Forgeable Firefight variations that allow for less constraint to a small mission area, for sure. Firefight returning at all will constitute a massive win in my book (I can’t imagine them leaving it out of yet another game, but that’s how I’ve felt since they confirmed it would be absent in H4, so…).
As far as invoking SpOps goes, even with the delineations you are putting forward, I’d rather not have that called back to. Halo 4’s campaign didn’t do the supporting command crew of the Infinity and pretty much the entire branch of S-IV’s any favors as far as winning over fan support/affinity. I understand that what you’re talking about isn’t the same narratively “integral” mode, but tying “Ops” into the name makes me feel nigh on queasy.
I’d say they should just bring Firefight back en force. If they feel the need to justify it in the lore as yet another “training simulation,” that’s fine (I miss when Bungie just didn’t feel the need to simultaneously canonize non-campaign modes, but whatever). Just make it an insanely customizable PvE experience that supports any number of viable players, from offline sessions of one to four players to online games with up to sixteen (or whatever is feasible). Halo has always been at its best when it’s passionate community has the power to create and implement their own ideas into these games. 343i giving us an unprecedented tool to do this in a PvE context would be a literal game changer.
They don’t need the reminder, but something has to change about how they’ve been doing Halo. The series has been on a gradual decline since they took over (maybe their fault, maybe not, but it’s a fact). This sort of player/community empowerment is the type of thing that could get Halo back into the top eschelon of the entire industry.
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> I like the idea of Forgeable Firefight variations that allow for less constraint to a small mission area, for sure. Firefight returning at all will constitute a massive win in my book (I can’t imagine them leaving it out of yet another game, but that’s how I’ve felt since they confirmed it would be absent in H4, so…).
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> As far as invoking SpOps goes, even with the delineations you are putting forward, I’d rather not have that called back to.
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> I’d say they should just bring Firefight back en force.
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> This sort of player/community empowerment is the type of thing that could get Halo back into the top eschelon of the entire industry.
Pretty much in entire agreement. Before anything else Firefight being brought back, accompanied with forging and good ‘gametype’/wave customization, is an absolute must. Like you said, baffling that it hasn’t made a real appearance. Definitely one of my favorite features in Halo.
After that, my general thought is the next logical step is something along the lines of what I suggested. In fact, its big enough of a concept that it might deserve an entire game all of its own to be the ultimate Halo PvE sandbox experience, even bringing back old enemies from past games as usable assets in your created missions.
Definitely in for some potentially exciting times depending on how Infinite shakes out.