I was sad to not find any option to disable those distracting flashing (X) hit markers in my options menu, not a fan. I hope to see the option added.
To me playing OG Halo has always been like playing in a classic action movie, blood squibs bursting from shot guys as they fly across the room with dust and debris and bullet casings still falling down around you.
If Halo had slomotion, roundhouse kicks and stencil shadows it would basically be FEAR, because the combat already has all the detail in smoking gun barrels, decals, blood spurts and physics based bullet casings and particles and stuff.
Stuff like hit markers are ingrained in my brain as being tied with the modern free-to-play-live-service-casino-trappings, where a hit marker flashes like you clicking in a cookie clicker, a “shink” noise tinks, a damage number flies out of whatever you shot, a floating healthbar decreases, it’s all abstract, a floating single layer of flashing numbers telling you that you did good pulling that lever.
Hit markers also obscure the actual things I would think we appreciate about our violent gore simulators, a massive flashing red X covering up blood spurts and smoke and sparks and everything that only a game can do. I don’t want that extra covering up the actual actions, events, in the game world itself, I want to see my actions having that impact in the environment.
I also tend to find that in some cases stuff like hitmarkers, or as some indie devs have resorted to do where they make enemies flash in a single white color like in an arcade bullet hell game, those are often lazy excuses by the devs in FPS games to then not put in the work to make pain state animations, satisfying hit impact effects with how your projectiles interact with the material itself, something to signal in the game world that the thing got shot, they were hit by a speeding bullet.
I hope I’m not alone in wanting to demand better ingame diegetic representation of events in our games, which don’t prey on our monkey brains to try and trap us into their casino and keep pulling that level to hear the “shink” noises and see the numbers flying. That’s not why I watch Hard Boiled, Die Hard, Aliens or John Wick, I don’t want numbers and flashing X’s covering up the blood and smoke and sparks.
Anyway, that’s my rant/defense for why I want an entirely optional customization feature in the settings menu to disable the flashing hit markers. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
(Also please option to disable Depth of Field completely kthxbye)