I didn’t see lately discussions about it, so here we go:
How would you improve it? Because in my opinion, the “weapons-down” missions is a great idea, but bad executed in Halo 5.
I mean, I look at this concept art by Darren Bacon and I imagine if this missions could have worked like that.
You have a big city to explore, similar to the ‘Sanctuary’ in Borderlands 2 or ‘Whiterun’ in Skyrim, and you can talk to people, see what they do in their normal lives, their relantionships, their jobs, what they think as civilians about the universe events, the main characters, the UNSC, etc. It is a great opportunity to expand and enrich the Halo universe as a whole.
Remember when we found an audio log on Meridian about someone who’s working on deglassing Meridian, their perspective for the future? The person who found a body in the glass? Remember the woman who is returning to Meridian?
What if we could meet these characters in person, talk to them? This could build up some kind of relanshionship to make us care about the people of Meridian.
In the mission ‘Evacuation’ (one of my favorites in this game) we hear the same woman from the intel asking for help, but since we didn’t have met her we act just liike “who cares?” and all the drama in this particular scene is meaningless.
Imagine a mission (or a lobby) like that on Infinity, where we can walk through all the sectors of the ship, talk to Lasky, Palmer, marines, engineers working in control panels, building warthogs, fixing pelicans, testing weapons, make the world feel alive!
I know that there are people who didn’t like these ‘weapons-down’ missions, so 343 just gave us the choice to simply go to the main objective and skip the mission completely, but for people who are lore fanatics, this misions would be a paradise to explore the Halo universe and make it alive and rich.
If ‘Hunt the Truth’ is still a thing, missions like that with the artemis tracking system could make the hunt much more intersting.
What do you think? Would you like to see these kind of missions returning? How would you improve them? Please, share your thoughts.
How to make non-combat missions better:
-integrate them into the combat missions instead of making them separate
-give players more incentive to explore the area (somehow. I dunno, but do it somehow)
Definitely need to be as long as regular missions. You can go through these in Halo 5 in less than 3 minutes. The Infinity idea sounds spot on. Personally I don’t like these missions because I feel like they were put in there just as fillers to make the campaign seem longer. Those missions could’ve easily been cut scenes.
> 2535437652903765;2:
> How to make non-combat missions better:
> -integrate them into the combat missions instead of making them separate-give players more incentive to explore the area (somehow. I dunno, but do it somehow)
Honestly worst part I feel like about the non-combat missions.
> 2535437652903765;2:
> How to make non-combat missions better:
> -integrate them into the combat missions instead of making them separate
> -give players more incentive to explore the area (somehow. I dunno, but do it somehow)
The incentive to explore is very important.
I don’t know how, but give the player something to investigate or search for evidences(if we will eventually ‘hunt for the truth’) or some rewards for the multiplayer. The artemis system could be a major element for this.
> 2535455681930574;7:
> Me and EmperorNova were just talking about this in my thread…
I wouldn’t say just talking about it… it has been around 4 hours since I posted there… I’ll link it here to see if it’ll get more attention though. Link to Arc Trooper’s thread.
> 2533274856059836;4:
> Definitely need to be as long as regular missions. You can go through these in Halo 5 in less than 3 minutes. The Infinity idea sounds spot on. Personally I don’t like these missions because I feel like they were put in there just as fillers to make the campaign seem longer. Those missions could’ve easily been cut scenes.
Yes, I feel that these missions are unnecessary, I think 343 thought when making these missions that the players would just think “get me into the action,now”, so they give the choice to skip them.
But, at the same time, I think these missions could open a lot of opportunities to enrich the story and the universe.
Not add them and maybe make halo 6 main menu a hub in the infinity where you walk with your guns down (your Spartan) and your friends (or people in your lobby or something that would be cool is a bunch of people) and you’d have to go to different places to activate force or cc campaign matchmaking etc.
> 2533275010793662;10:
> > 2535455681930574;7:
> > Me and EmperorNova were just talking about this in my thread…
>
> oh, my bad, I didn’t see your thread, actually I was wanting to talk about this a long ago.
No no my thread was about improving halo 6’s campaign as a whole, and Nova mentioned the non-combat zones.
So what I’ve though about is maybe there’d be one or two non-combat zones where you’d prepare for the next level (it would be a large scale battle mission). There’d be a map of the area and where all the enemies are so you could plan your attack. You’d be given a certain amount of vehicles and marines, and you could place them in different spots (near the beginning, not the end). It would bring some halo wars into it, but you’d actually be participating in the battle you planned. You could also choose which weapons to start of with.
Of course, that’s not all in the non-combat zones. The rest would basically be a much bigger version of the ones we have now, still littered with funny dialogue and Easter eggs. I like the idea of the Infinity being one, but that concept art also looks too good to pass up.
> 2533274847563380;6:
> I would take out the whole weapons down part, that takes the fun out of screwing with the marines lol
>
> Anybody remember crows nest in halo 3? I would do it like that.
I’d definitely integrate then into combat missions to make one big super mission. Maybe make them quite a bit bigger, too. Add some interactivity to affect the rest of the mission as well (someone else in here mentioned planning an attack; something like that).
I prefer if they replace them with cutscenes since it hurts the game’s pacing. You go from a intense fight to almost doing nothing but walk and talk. The best part were the grunts in one of the levels. One of them was practically breaking the 4th wall at times.