Introduction
Halo 5’s mobility feels really good and I think it could lead to some very interesting things. Now, mirror’s edge is a sort of first person running game which utilizes the environment a lot. I haven’t played it myself but I do know a lot of people like it and it just seems fun to feel free and run around. Halo 5’s mobility reminds me a bit of mirror’s edge so it got me thinking about having a mirror’s edge style section in halo 5.
Gameplay for those who haven’t played or seen mirror’s edge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT5W3mXBhNY
During the beta
I think it could be quite a lot of fun. Shooting stuff is fun, but the new movement feels great and flows well. You guys might have played the halo 5 beta, particularly Orion. Orion had some nice routes you could take to get up. For instance, there was this sort of half circle you could clamber onto and run on it and then jump towards another area. It had the little cage area near the DMR behind the 1x1 block I think. There you could clamber and get up. I spent some of my time in halo 5 enjoying moving around and having the mobility a lot. I’m watching a clip of me running around with the sword due to the enemy quitting, and it looks speedy, fast, fluid. So I think it’d be great to have a mobility oriented section or level, or at least something for people to make in forge.
Where it could be implemented
So to the specifics, obviously sprint gives off a very speedy feel which is the base needed for this to work. It being unlimited is what makes it really work. Maybe it could be in campaign, one of the first levels to ‘tutorial’ mobility. Or to simply break up certain aspects of the gameplay. A running section to break up the shooting sections. Variety, highs and low valleys of excitement and breaking things up. Maybe even have sections where you can just run instead of fight. And one of the most important things too about doing such sections is giving people choice in the matter. Don’t simply have a one route, but have multiple routes people can discover, make, take and find with varying levels of difficulty. Utilize pound jumps [jump + ground pound to gain a bit of extra height and canceling as you clamber], to get to certain more difficult areas.
Examples of implementation
So now let’s imagine one of those sections: You’re on a ship that’s falling apart, or a building. Things are blowing up, stuff falls down. You start running along some lower levels. Maybe a warehouse of some sorts, storage bay. You can run along the lower levels, but also get on top of the crates by multiple paths. Some crates, 3 meters high, you can jump on them, others crouch jump or clamber. You keep running. An object falls towards somewhere ahead of you. Now, you can either more slowly jump on that object, take another route which avoids it, or maybe you can crouch underneath. But oh? what’s that? Let’s slide underneath and keep running instead! Slide under objects! Lots of pipes, objects to slide under! Maybe you reach a high area, and you have to jump quite a distance, well maybe there is a series of platforms and ledges that require a jump and a thruster, to access. And maybe you want to take another route, but it’s too far to jump and thruster too. So what can you do? Ground pound to get to it! Ground pound as mobility yay! Perhaps even have a sort of fan that you need to go through, something that moves fast, but requires you to go on top of it, along the sides onto other platforms, or maybe you can use groundpound to be fast enough to make it through. Another ground pound based movement? Let’s say a wall fell and is blocking your progress but to your left it’s open and you can fall to your death, however, while you can take different routes, you can also jump towards the open area where you’d fall to your death but quickly ground pound towards the other side of the wall. Bam! safety! Maybe even have sections where you can use ground pound or stabilizers to hover on an area long enough for a moving platform to get underneath you.
Conclusion
There are a lot of possibilities and ways this could go, I think this could be quite a lot of fun. The halo 5 movement is very fluid, ground pound can be used for mobility, getting access to higher places thanks to pound jumping, clambering makes navigation and getting to several places possible. The sprint is the thing that makes it really fluid and speedy. And why not bring a few grenade jumps into the mix? Slide can help you get under objects and keep going fast without having to slowly crouch underneath. Halo 5: Mobility Evolved. That would be so fun and great I think. Fun fun fun. … … now imagine that with a portal gun… ground pound towards portal…
