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Alright, to me… the game looks like it isn’t go to live up to the Halo we know and love. I don’t have too much of a problem with the visual differences. New artists means new styles. But what hit me the hardest was that Halo 4 is going to have “customizable loadouts”.
That will probably kill the gameplay style of Halo’s multiplayer. Halo is about rushing towards the power weapons to control the map. That’s what it has always been about. Being able to spawn in with a weapon of your choosing might break what Halo is known for.
Now, about the title of this post… I’m sure a lot of you have come from Bnet, and after lurking these forums for awhile, I can see a large amount of you detest Reach. Reach was the first Halo to bring a large amount of change to the game. It played very differently from its predecessors. Afterwards, when Reach came out, you despised it, saying that it needed to be more like the past Halos. Now you want even more change. But what has been shown so far doesn’t seem like it will live up to this glorious game franchise’s standards. And if history repeats itself, then you will despise this game just as you did Reach.
> That will probably kill the gameplay style of Halo’s multiplayer. Halo is about rushing towards the power weapons to control the map. That’s what it has always been about. Being able to spawn in with a weapon of your choosing might possibly break what Halo is known for.
History isn’t self justifying. Though Halo may have been about rushing the spammiest weapons that’s no argument against trying something else which has not yet been able to show it’s merit.
> Reach was the first Halo to bring a large amount of change to the game. It played very differently from its predecessors. Afterwards, when Reach came out, you despised it, saying that it needed to be more like the past Halos. Now you want even more change. But what has been shown so far doesn’t seem like it will live up to this glorious game franchise’s standards. And if history repeats itself, then you will despise this game just as you did Reach.
Not necessarily. Reach may have been a departure but if we look back at Halo it’s pretty -Yoink!- hard to agrue that AA’s and bloom constitute a bigger change to gameplay than recharging health, boardable vehicles, and pretty extensive overhaul of nearly every weapon and vehicle. Ie. Halo 2.
Reach went wrong in simply tacking on meaningless changes rather than incorporating them into the core gameplay, which largely remained the same between it and previous Halos excepting the -Yoink- that the new “features” added. Thus more weight was added to the already overburdened Halo gameplay model which broke it in all the ways we can see in Reach. With less it may have been simply dull, but it’s close to unplayable because nothing was rectified and more was simply added.
With Halo 4 then, being different is in no way a guarantee that I, the model hater in this case, will cry and cry about it as I do about Reach. The only way I can think of that will doom me to another cycle of whining is if nothing changes, and all we are treated to is a rehash of gameplay which was already a little outdated (referring to Halo 3 and beyond) when it shipped.
I didn’t like Reach. I knew going into the game that it was going to be bad. I play the classic playlist now, but thats it. BUT, I didn’t dislike Reach because it was too different than past Halos like it was. That may have been a small factor, but the main problem was that all of the new stuff they added i.e. bloom, sprint, jetpack, was implemented wrong and really ruined the (halo style) gameplay many players knew and loved. It’s not the fact that change was a big issue, because I transitioned smmothly from CE to H2 to H3, it was that the change was done poorly and made the game almost unplayable (to me and many others)
With all of that out of the way, I have a strong belief that even if 343 is adding things like sprint back into H4 that they will do it right. And by doing it right I mean it won’t break the game. And even if by some oddball chance H4 does turn out as rotten as Reach did (in the beginning), I still have a strong feeling that 343 will fix many problems and make the game more appealing through a sort of classic playlist like they did in Reach; a playlist that would take out the game breaking aspects of the default mode (if there is any).
This is just my belief for H4, and I must say I’m truly excited.
P.S. I have no idea how your title about being a hypocrite relates at all to what you posted.
How do you know how customisable these loadouts will be? What if they are customisable offline only? What if they are customisable only by 343 employees in title updates?
Additionally, how do you know what weapons will be available in the loadouts? Are you assuming that players will be able to opt for a rocket launcher at the beginning of the match? And, if so, are you then assuming that other players won’t be able to do the same?
In short, how do you know anything about loadouts at this point in time?
> How do you know how customisable these loadouts will be? What if they are customisable offline only? What if they are customisable only by 343 employees in title updates?
>
> Additionally, how do you know what weapons will be available in the loadouts? Are you assuming that players will be able to opt for a rocket launcher at the beginning of the match? And, if so, are you then assuming that other players won’t be able to do the same?
>
> In short, how do you know anything about loadouts at this point in time?
I was overly optimistic about Reach and was really looking forward to it like you say, and then I was also dissapointed with the difference in what bungie made it look like in the vidocs etc compared to how it played.
Which is why I am trying to be realistic about Halo 4 and not expect too much and to at least try and raise some genuine concerns with what 343 have told us thus far even if it is early days.
I’ll be the first to say that loadouts are not rubbin’ me the right way. But I can think of several ways that it wouldn’t break the level playing field Halo’s all about. (Only for the “perks”, whatever those are, or only armor ability upgrades, etc.)