Quake2 was released in 1997/1998, while HaloCombatEvolved appeared somewhere about 2001. In Quake2 we clearly get that the soldiers assaulting the enemy encampment are what Halo would later refer to as “orbital drop shocktroopers”, the enhanced infantry sent to enemy territory in dedicated drop pods launched from an orbital carrier. The Quake2 original pattern of ODST would later be unfolded in Quake4, where the drop pods - at least accidentlly - suit the purpose of shooting through enemy reinforcements, employing the drop momentum, delivering the troopers directly into secured installations and fortresses, allowing to cause havoc more efficiently. Quake4 also in particular depicts that sometimes the ODST landings are very unfortunate, especially when point breakthrough coordinates are unclear. Does anyone have any data whether the original pattern of ODST was used anywhere before the Quake2 in digital gaming, at least among the shooters of all kinds?
By the way, Quake2 is one of the very few games I remember that I can tell had some real punch, meaning, delivering damage impact in this shooter felt like it ought to. The gunsounds, the enemy behaviours, the pace, the ambience, the music - though I would rather swap NIN from the original Quake in the place of default SonicMayhem - simply did the justice. Quake4, in turn, I would not recommend, TBH, for reasons given a bit further.
Quake2, just to get the feel of it, modded to match the modernday expectations a bit more with “Q2XP” mod, links HERE and HERE. Explosions could definitely be better, but minding it is all fanmade, it is good. You can also see inefficient AI response to being shot at from the Hyperblaster [the fiery toilet paper roll], ducking and doing nothing, but that is native - maybe if they could at least shoot simultaneously while ducking. Quake2 included handheld grenades, next to grenade launcher, but it was necessary to switch to it as a separate weapon. Quake2 begins with a famous back then intro depicting ODST assault going plan B, which I assume is the first ODST theme in digital gaming.
HERE is a Quake4 [2005] gameplay feature framing some ODST moments, gameplay without any mods. Time 04:00, the famous Dark Matter Gun, the shot of which is capable of gravitationally dragging weaker enemies throughout open spaces as it proceeds slowly, but it made rather meagre impression against any foe capable of sustaining more than one hit of it, so ultimately I would say, poor execution to a great idea. HERE, for the sake of environments. 09:00, TacSim? Also for the note, the field of view [FOV] employed in these footages is increased well above the typical gaming shooter 90 degrees via manual tweaking of the IDtech4 engine, matching the value of about 110, as I estimate. Quake4 itself, though, in all honesty, is very much meh, with fights feeling artificial and set up, enemies of plastic fabric - void of any Quake2 legacy - and overall design patterns, along with the plot, giving an impression you have already seen it somewhere else, even if there were any genuine or better made parts to it. Artstyle faults of Quake4 emerge in my perspective from developers looking to much away to other franchises, hoping to mesh up various influences into a coherent synergistic outcome, which could work but unfortunately failed, loosing also the crucial Quake2 vibe along the way. Any team of developers can fall into similar traps, so the mindset behind the problem should be given attention. Keeping focus on adequate themes is quite a difficulty in proper continuity of the franchise it seems. What I would experiment with is actually locking up oneself - as an artist or a designer - with only the products of priority importance and studying them solely until drop.
For your consideration, in Quake2, as well as in Quake4, we fight the “Strogg”, which is an extragalactic, perhaps silicon based and highly aware entity, capable of cybertechnological excellence, treating biological organisms like effective and advanced aggregates of spare parts, creating army of cyborgs to expand throughout the universe in a way very analogous to the Halo Flood. So this is roughly and arguably Flood combined with corrupted Cortana in a Joseph Stalin frenzy mode, lacking any compatibility with human empathy or sensibility, therefore emerging brutalistic. Death of millions is a statistic. The conjecture is that the Strogg refers to sentient carbonbased biological organisms as towards a virus. Wonder how would it be if to unleash Strogg versus the Flood. They would probably wreck quite a bit of the Galaxy in mutual struggle.
Getting back to ODST topic, I highly doubt personal capsules would be the thing of common use, as they are costly, save maybe for some specific scenarios with high casaulty expectations, in particular minding the intended wall breakthrough collision thing, that would take further reinforced capsules to manage the strain. In turn, I would rather see regular drop capsules to contain from three to about ten soldiers majority of times, especially for flat ground safe landings. Bigger capsules are simply more economic for common use. Individual capsules suit special commando missions more to my evaluation.