How to remove Spartan Abilities, Lore-Friendly

Games Halo Infinite
1

Ok so I see a decent amount of people want a Halo 2/Halo 3-esque gameplay without he armor abilities of Halo Reach/Halo 4 or the Spartan Abilities/jetpacks/thrusters of Halo 5. Ok well one way to do that is just do it and don’t explain it, however…

I think a lore-friendly way of doing that is say the bad guys have upgraded their weapons so that Gen 2 Spartan armor and shields are too weak to keep using. So the UNSC upgrades the armor and shields greatly, but this increases the weight of the now Gen 3 armor so that the new armor is similar in weight to Gen 1 Spartan armor, if not greater. This means the thrusters and jetpack are no longer viable to use outside of a low gravity environment.

Imagine this, ordinary gameplay is a lot like Halo 2/3, maybe it has Sprint, maybe it doesn’t, but at certain points in Campaign or certain areas of multiplayer maps have Zero-G or Low-G sections that you can use the thrusters and jetpack to move around.

I think the climbing/clambering of Halo 5 is fine, and I personally want it to stay. If nothing else, keep that. I’m on the fence about sprint. I would be fine with either. Halo 5 did a decent job of mitigating sprint by limiting shield regeneration.

Here’s a secondary idea that I thought up after I wrote the above. This is strictly for multiplayer. I don’t expect this to be added in campaign at this point.

You can choose which of the “movement” styles you want, but they come with pros and cons, and they are linked to which Gen of Mjolnir you choose to use. This would be chosen in the multiplayer menu kind of like how you could choose whether to be Spartan or Elite in classic Halo games.

Gen 2 Mjolnir: Halo 4-5 movement stye. Comes with spartan abilities and sprint. However, it has weakened shields and/or lesser physical health. Can carry only 2 grenades of each type.

Gen 1 or Gen 3 Mjolnir: Classic movement stye. Faster base movement, no sprint, enhanced shields and/or armor, can carry up to 4 grenades of each type. No thrusters or spartan abilities or armor abilites. Perhaps even a higher max ammo capacity, but starts with the same ammo as the other Mjolnir type.

I think it would be interesting to see a battle between people using this sort of setup. You could have faster, weaker people vs stronger, somewhat slower people.

2

Lore explanation for sprint removal could be great, Ithink you’re on to something here.

3

If i remember correctly, the backwards-compatible explanation for not having sprint in Halos 1-3 was that it was too hazardous. The armor upgrade in Halo Reach disabled the safety feature, and Gen 2 armor improved enough from Gen 1 to allow sprint safely.

Keep in mind that Spartans are being trained to fight foreign threats, not other Spartans. Also, you could always say “Gen 2 was too expensive, so we cut features in Gen 3 armor” but i don’t like that explanation as much as my following ideas.

So, how do we “upgrade” to remove sprint? Maybe Gen 3 is so much better that it allows you to “sprint” (move at full speed) and fire your weapon at the same time. Alternatively, someone in a different thread suggested that you keep sprint (speed boost), but you can only hip fire while doing so (and maybe there’d be some balancing between jump height vs jump distance).

On the note of hip-firing, they could “upgrade” spartan armor to not need to “aim down sights”, but that’s a little dumb, because supposedly you can ADS via a link between the weapon and armor/HUD, and i don’t see why Gen 3 would remove that. Additionally, it’s inconsistent in that players would expect to still be able to ADS with a sniper rifle. Not that it ever really made sense that we could ADS with covenant and promethean weapons via weapon link. Correct me if i’m wrong here.

You could “upgrade” thrusters by giving you 50% mid-air control instead of just thrusting you aggressively in a single direction. This could also remove stabilize, or maybe you give players some sort of 50% vertical movement speed control (fall slower/faster and maybe jump higher/lower). This would definitely replace ground pound.

Slide and spartan charge could simply be chocked up as “unsafe tactics” not recommended by UNSC training.

I don’t have a good lore “upgrade” excuse for removing clamber, but maybe they can make it so you can’t clamber ledges above your knee/waist (and you don’t have to put down your weapon, maybe just hip-fire).

Also Halo 5 has a hidden “spring jump” bug/mechanic that could be fleshed out into a real mechanic (with appropriate balance). This could easily be seen as a Gen 3 upgrade, to make up for some of the features that were “upgraded” out of Gen 3.

If i’m leaving out any mechanics that need to be “upgraded” in Gen 3, let me know.

4

You already did, but let’s use this thread for discussing modern vs. classic movement:
https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/forums/29568daf8cd14083bd1b70a810bf3581/topics/the-return-of-classic-movement-mechanics/dbb9e311-d2f8-48b5-9826-259bffe75cac/posts