for all of those brainstorming how to innovate halo without changing its formula here’s a video I found How to Innovate Halo Without Changing its Formula - YouTube
btw it’s about 30 minutes long so just a warning
Yeah I’ve already seen this video before and I got to say I agree with everything he says. Favyn really deserves more views, he puts a lot of effort into in his videos and they’re all very well thought out and spoken.
Really amazing video. He makes nothing but good points.
Nice video though I don’t think it gives enough context. While Favyn mentions it, I think Halo:Reach should be a far bigger part of his video. Comparing Halo 5 to the Halo 1-3 is sort of missing the point. Halo 5 isn’t a sequel to those games, it is a sequel to Reach. The Spartan abilities in H5 are a direct response to one of the core complaints towards Halo: Reach and Halo 4: how loadouts killed the equal starts gameplay that was such a important element of Halo 1-3. By taking those out and replacing them with universal core gameplay mechanics you enable your design team to make better decisions.
With that said, I do agree with Favyn’s suggestions. Expand design by expanding the sandbox? Great. Innovate through adding more features specific for individual maps? Awesome! With that said, you don’t have to remove Spartan abilities to achieve any of that. You have to remember that Halo 5 is the first game to include these mechanics (at least in their current form, sprint was a equipable ability in H4/Reach).
I personally like the changes made to the core mechanics in Halo 5. I think it presents the best multiplayer experience the series has offered since Halo 2. But I also get why some members of the community wish for a return to simpler times and sure enough I agree that changes must be made to the core gameplay formula. Sprint has to be either removed or changed so it doesn’t continue to be a easy “press X to disengage” tool, for example. I completely agree with that. But I don’t think that should mean we have to revert the clock back to 2007. These mechanics can still be refined in a way that enables the changes mentioned in the video to be applied. With Halo: Infinite shaping up to be a 2019/2020 release, we can safely assume that 343 are taking all the time they need to design and refine their core gameplay systems and hopefully that will give us the first “complete” Halo game since Halo 3.