It is no secret that 343i has made enhanced mobility a focus and further attempted to ingrain it into Halo, despite the earth shattering shouts of voices in opposition. As the campaign reveal trailer has shown not only has sprint, clamber, sliding etc, returned, but along with those comes a Grappling hook, ignoring idea theft, this increased speed of gameplay has drastically altered the tenants of ‘Halo’ gameplay.
Regardless of the position one takes in the enhanced mobility debate the following are true.
- Enhanced mobility has sped up the gameplay, reducing the time and capacity for strategic thought. - By facilitating the player with sprint it has caused a de-emphasis on vehicles as the role becomes somewhat redundant and non essential. - Sprint causes maps to be stretched out to ensure traversal time remains within a margin of consistency. - In enabling the player to move faster it became necessary for the enemies to both have a faster fire rate and their projectile speed was significantly increased. - Bullet magnetism for the player was also increased to compensate for split focus amongst other things. - Many enemies are straight up using homing weapons.
All of these factors are forcing the player to utilise the enhanced mobility in order to survive rather than letting the player play how they wish to.
If 343i is serious about honouring Halo’s legacy rather than burning it away, they should seriously consider enabling controls for the player to disable enhanced mobility. In doing this it would also remove the associated snowballing effects such as increased bullet magnetism, increased enemy fire rate and projectile speed. Whilst maps may be stretched out for the sake of time, vehicles will be able to return to there prominent position. Unless 343 have made certain sections of the game requiring utilisation of enhanced mobility, robbing player choice, the options should be present both for continuity but a olive branch from a developer often seen as arrogant, out of touch and stubborn.
Of course it is impossible to please everyone, but 343’s first loyalties should be to Halo’s customer base and ensure they always have loyalists.