I was out on a run and started thinking about the halo 5 beta trailer we were given at e3. And while some people see the spartans shoulder checking each other and a spartan slamming the ground and causing a shockwave; I saw a melee override system instead. Now some people may ask, “what is a melee override system, and how does it work?” Simple, it’s a way to change up melee combat all together, where over a certain amount of time, kills, point etc etc a meter fills up and once it’s full a player can change their melee attack, the way they do this is holding down the melee button (easiest way to implement an override system). Now some people may say that this is lame or it’ll be OP or I’m just plain stupid and crazy. I say, yes I am crazy, but I’m not 100% stupid. And I have a couple ideas that can add extra in game scenarios that mimic what spartans should be able to do based of the lore in the books. Plus these features would make halo 5 more unique of a game.
Now, if 343 does go with a melee override system, the way I see it working is over a period of time your spartan’s mjolnir armor generates X amount of in suit propulsion system that’s used in zero g environments. Now I don’t know about you guys but if I was a super soldier fighting an ancient alien race bent on killing the -Yoink- outa me. I’d use any resource I had on me to fight, hence why adding the override system makes canonical sense. You use the in suit propulsion system to add extra melee damage in varieties of ways. Like shoulder checking an enemy or jumping up and slamming back into the ground with thousands of newton’s worth of force. Now comes the question of, well if you hold down the melee button then you can’t assassinate people because you’ll go straight into a override attack. Well I thought of a way around that too. You see if 343 were to put into the system that the enemy’s back sends out a signal to an attacking player to cancel the melee override so he can assassinate. How would that work you ask? Simply put it’s like the critical hit spot for a hit box, like the head of an enemy, it registers different levels of damage sure, but it’s also sending out a signal saying, “hey shoot me here for more damage!” Remember on the sniper and BR how if you highlight an enemy’s head you get that little dot in the center of your crosshairs. Well that’s almost the exact same thing as sending a signal to stop melee override for an assassination.
Another idea I had was how to make a jump override based on the same system as the melee override, meaning basically you can extend a jump or even double jump, I’m just putting this out there, please don’t flame me. Now if we take the same meter as the melee override and apply it to the jumping system we can allow for an extended jump time, distance, or a second one. Now this would be running off of the same rechargeable meter as the melee so you can do one or the other but not both. Keeping a check on how much you can do, and canonically speaking, it makes sense that you can use it in both scenarios but you still have to wait a while before it comes back before you can use it for either one. Now this could be activated my hitting the jump button a second time in the air. Again, I don’t have much on the jump override but I do have another jumping idea coming up later.
Now I know a lot of people want duel wielding back, myself included, I believe it makes the game more engaging when you need extra fire power and all you got is a single pistol, why not pick up another gun and shoot both at the same time? Now, we can bring back duel wielding but with armor abilities and sprint, we’re running low on buttons on our controllers, so we have to find a way to make some button duel functioning so we can implement things like duel wielding sprinting AND armor abilities. (and when I mean duel function buttons, yes that includes the melee and jump overrides I’ve already talked about.)
In order to clear up some buttons on our controllers, I came up with a solution that puts both the crouch and sprint on clicking the left analog button, now again you may be saying, but Chris (my actual name) that’s limited, you’re gonna make me sprint when I wanna crouch and vice versa. Well listen to me first, we can base it off of movement speed for one or make one toggled on and one off. For the movement speed option, if you’re already having your spartan move at max speed without sprinting and then you click the thumbstick, you start sprinting, but if you’re at a standstill or slowly walking forward and you click it, you crouch, simple enough. Right? For example, you have to start moving forward first before you can really start sprinting, I don’t know if you’ve ever started sprinting from a standstill before but I have, and you can’t hit max speed right off the blocks, there’s about a half second of slow movement before you really hit high gear. So this makes sense, on the other hand say you want it the other way, if you want toggle crouch you press the stick down and push forward and keep it there till you don’t want to sprint anymore, vice versa works just as well. Now another problem with this is crouch jumping, it’s not huge but this idea could have problems with sprinting and crouch jumping onto something or over something. One way this would come into effect that I see is if with the toggle crouch when you have to hold down the sprint button, if you have to clear a gap with a jump just right it could lead to having to stop your sprint in air and crouch which, I can guarantee would make you fail the jump. But then again, you can almost NEVER make a crouch jump with toggle crouch on anyways, so I’d call that good anyhow. Also if we took the movement speed idea and try to make a sprinting crouch jump, you’re already moving to fast to crouch so there’s no way to make it work. But if we dual purpose the jump button to where if you hold it while jumping you can crouch jump. That combined with the jump override could be tricky but it could work where if you don’t have jump override you just hold down the button and crouch jump or if you do have the override ready, you jump, use override then hold down the button and crouch. (I told you I’d talk about jumping again.)
Anyways, that pretty much sums up the majority of my ideas for Halo 5. What do you think? Personally I would love the extra in game functions that these ideas offer and I truly believe this could redefine the Halo experience and make us really fell like we’re controlling the same spartans as the ones in the books and lore.
Controller Scheme Ideas. (Because I’m bored and this post needs a boost :p)
Bumper Jumper (The only one I’m doing because it’s the only scheme I use)
LB:Jump, Jump Override
LT:Grenade
RB:Melee, Melee Override
RT:Shoot
Back:Scoreboard
Start:Pause Game
Y:Swap Weapons
X:Armor Ability
A:Duel Wield weapon reload
B:Reload, Interact
RS Click: Zoom
RS:Look
LS:Move
RS Click: Sprint, hold for crouch
D-Pad
L-R:Cycle Grenades
U:Flashlight/night-vision
D:Order me a pizza button