I just got Halo 5 in the mail today and haven’t even touched it out of disgust. I loaded the game and instantly was enraged to find that the co-op was missing completely. I know that tons of people are pissed off about this but I want to explain why this really represents a problem for gaming in general. Please bear with me and if you decide to read the whole post I would like to thank you. If you just automatically post a TL;DR response then you are just admitting that you don’t bother reading things longer than the back of a cereal box. Try reading Ulysses and then come back to complain about TL;DR.
The Problem is Microsoft and Money
Microsoft, as we all know, took over the Halo franchise and began remastering titles with beautiful graphical overhauls that inspired people to pay for games they already had. They paid that money because the gameplay had staying power while the visuals were obviously limited to their time. The original Halo was produced well over a decade ago. Today’s portable electronics have enough hardware power to emulate the original Xbox entirely.
So what does this have to do with profit and the missing co-op in Halo 5?
It is quite simple. We shelled out money to 343 (Microsoft) and they started seeing dollar signs everywhere. The evidence of this is clear when you examine Halo 4 and the Master Chief collection. Halo 4 was designed to emulate Call of Duty in order to poach their players and expand the customer base that would pay for the game and any DLC it included. The playlists started to reject co-op in campaign and thus began driving the nail into the coffin for local splitscreen. If the flagship Xbox game rejects guests and split screen then Microsoft stands to make more console sales. Those translate into more profitable game purchases and feed the money machine they are attempting to construct.
Later when the Master Chief Collection came out they slashed guests from ranked playlists too. This began killing the gameplay value of the MCC for people that wanted to play with their friends in real life. The gameplay that stood the test of over a decade was being shaped by concerns of percentage points on a profit margin so large it boggles the mind. The people that suffer this blow are relatively silent because they cope by reshaping their play behaviors. Microsoft never received blowback over the concerning trend and everyone is relatively happy.
Halo 5 Has Killed the Halo Franchise’s Core Gameplay
The whole reason Halo originally took off in the way that it did was that it provided a multiplayer that predated Xbox Live gameplay entirely. LAN parties and physically social gaming were still considered normal. If you wanted to play a video game with your friend you actually had to have a friend to play with. You might visit their house and pick up a second controller. You would probably eat snacks and have fun doing these activities. The whole point was having fun with your buddies over a competitive game. It felt like what our parents must have felt when people still ventured outdoors to play.
Today’s Xbox experience is drastically different. “Friends” are replaced with people playing over the internet. You literally can’t play with your physically present friends anymore. We have lost the sense of physical connectedness that drove people into being really excited about something in the game. In the original Halo you didn’t have accurate grenade sounds and high definition graphics but it was more exciting to blow up a Warthog your friends were driving at you. Halo 5’s Warthog is being driven at you by a series of random players. When you blow it up you haven’t bested a person that can give you feedback in real life. The best thing that happens is you receive an insulting message in your inbox before the next match or get called some profanity by a twelve year old kid on a mic.
I’m 25 years old now. Back when Halo first came out and people started talking about it I was in the 8th grade. We would talk about last night’s match on recess and recount our favorite moments with excitement. It was cool to hear how Ryan was sniped by Paul while Jordan drove that vehicle around to pick up Dane from the spawn. It felt alive because the people were able to connect in real life. You could sit around eating dino nuggets while waiting for the map to load. Things were awesome.
Today’s game ignores that entire chain of interaction that keeps you invested in the game. If you want to recount a cool moment you upload a clip into your file share and link the other person to it. Instead of meeting at someone’s house to play you sign into XBL and connect to other people with consoles that you don’t know. If you can somehow organize 4-8 friends into being online at the same time you can still play, but you are all isolated physically. The option to have a local LAN or co-op or splitscreen game is gone entirely. That kills the option for people to hang out and thus kills the entire point of Halo.
How Does Ignoring Physically Present Players Drive Sales?
If you want to make money, screw over the people that want to have fun IRL.
Imagine you have a roommate, spouse, or sibling you want to play Xbox with. Under the old Xbox and Xbox 360 you had to spend money on the following items…
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Xbox Console - Copy of Halo - Two controllers - Television, monitor, or projector for displaying the game - Xbox Live subscription for 1 person with guest access (optional)Now imagine you want to play the same sort of thing with a friend on Halo 5 via Xbox One…
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Xbox One for Player 1 - Xbox One for Player 2 - Halo 5 for Player 1 - Halo 5 for Player 2 - XBL subscription for both players (not optional) - Controllers and mics for both players (included with consoles if bought new) - Television for player 1 - Television for player 2 - DLC maps for Player 1 - DLC maps for Player 2 - DLC accessories, series maps like Spartan Ops, and whatever else they come up with.Tell me again how we aren’t all being taken for a ride by Microsoft on this release. Halo 5 isn’t designed to be fun. It has one function, to make money. Lots and lots of money. That’s why I’m returning it. I’d rather play the old games with my friends than be forced to spend thousands of dollars to recapture the fun of my youth.