General Thoughts on the first S2 Narrative Event
I was unsure of what to expect for a “narrative event”, and I’m frankly glad I didn’t set my sights too high. It seems that a cutscene that sets the theme for a mode and map combo is all it is, and that seems a shame to me. The cutscene was decently done, and it was neat to have your MP spartan be a part of it, but I can’t help but feeling there’s a significant amount of untapped potential there. I can’t help thinking how much more fun it would be to play the events leading up to the Phantom showing up at the Academy than it is to just watch the cutscene and then play normal multiplayer, albeit with new modes/map.
The Future
While watching the cutscene, I found myself really hope down the line we can actually play portions of the story instead of just watching it. A question I had to ask myself, however, is how would this realistically work? The free MP portion of the game likely doesn’t contain any of the campaign assets that would be necessary to play the story of the two featured Spartans fighting through the shipyard - Banished models and AI, specifically. This would mean that someone would likely need to own campaign in order to play the story portion of the Narrative Event. And I guess this raises one of my questions - do folks think this would this be fair?
- Yes - it’s fair to have PvE content locked to campaign ownership
- No - it’s not fair to have PvE content locked to campaign ownership
0 voters
Personally, I do think it’s fair - the PvE content in the campaign is not free (unless you get it through GamePass, though you’re still paying for GamePass), and as such buying the campaign would effectively act as the premium battle pass for narrative events, creating a two-tiered system. Those who own the campaign could play PvE content with their MP Spartan and get a little more out of the story - perhaps even with some unlocks or challenges associated - and both campaign owners and F2P players can play the PvP portion of the event. Along with this, I tend to think that folks who own the campaign are more likely to be interested in PvE than folks who do not, so it would be nice to have some content for people who like that portion of the Halo experience.
Conclusion
Overall, the idea of including your personal MP Spartan in the universe is a fun idea. However, the execution of this first iteration of a narrative event leaves a lot on the table in terms of ways to engage players in these narrative events. Watching a story unfold is a movie experience, whereas a game experience is playing the story and engaging in the unfolding of the story. The inclusion of your MP Spartan in only a cutscene is, unfortunately, a half-step in that regard, IMO.
Clearly, however, the game and its content and the creation of said content is not in the state 343 or we want it in, so perhaps this is a result of what can be done given limited resources and time to spend on new content in the light of having so much QoL work to undertake (which I do think is more important, TBH). Either way, hopefully someone at @343 can pass this feedback along to the narrative team. There’s much potential here for future seasonal narrative, just hope the experience can evolve to involve the player in the story more.