I’ve recently been skimming through the forums, reading everyones opinions on multiplayer, and it’s got me thinking about something…
Why is Halo 4 influenced so much by Reach?
Really, Why? I mean, I enjoy H4 MP more than Reach, but it could have been much better.
If we look back over Halo’s MP history, you can clearly see what gameplay style players most enjoyed, indicated by the consistant magnitude of a high population count. From 2004 to 2009, Xbox Live was dominated by Halo players, it was clear as crystal that people loved how Halo 2/3 played, then after the release of Halo Reach (and the addition of AA’s, bloom, weaker physics, poor vehicles health system, etc) the population began to dip. What this showed us is that people weren’t as keen to keep playing the “new style” Halo. So after us all seeing what this new direction was doing to the franchise, why did 343i continue (and extend upon) the Reach traditions of classes, poor vehicle health system, AA’s etc, when they clearly didn’t boad as well as the Halo 2/3 way of doing things?
I don’t understand the logic, can someone explain to me why they would decide to go more in favour of Reach than the original trilogy? Halo reach was a pre-quel, Halo 3 was a main game.
Why did they build on top of the Reach framework and not Halo 3’s?
They could have implemented change in so many differnet ways without taking their ideas from the least popular Halo game to date.
I’ll compare what is happning here to a real life scenario and I’ll try to show why I think it wasn’t smart to keep Reach’s features…
Say you have a song writer is known for writting superb rock songs, if he then starts to alter his stlye to include more Jazz in his work, then he is taking a huge risk which could kill his career or further it. Let’s say the Jazz doesn’t work for him and he begins to lose fans, what does he do now? Does the writer carry on attempting to write jazz songs and possibly slowly destroy his legacy? Or does he make a U-turn, go back to his basics and start doing what he does best and re-establish his legacy? He goes back to what he does best, doesn’t he!
Do you see where im coming from here? I fear Halo MP is forever riddled with these faulty features as 343i are now into deep to turn back to any form of classic Halo, or at least remove some of the new implemented features.
But I hope I’m wrong, 343i put blood, sweat and tears into this game. I hope that within 6 months Halo 4 is still going strong and that I would have warmed to it, I really, really do.
tl;dr - Why did 343i use features from the least popular MP Halo game and not go back to Halo 2/3 and build from there?
P.s. I’m not trying to get people riled up here, I’m only expressing my opinion and trying to understand why Reach had such an influence on this game.