Am I the only one that just doesn’t buy into the open world genre?
If I’m honest I was super skeptical about a open world Halo and when I played infinite it’s honestly a pleasant surprise. I think it was about as good as it could have been. However I have a hankering to replay the MCC campaigns, but I doubt I will ever play infinite’s campaign for a long time if ever.
Does anyone really want a open world halo?
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It was sort of already done in halo 3 odst.
It is impressive what they did and having the linear maps built in should still allow them to make it work.
Issue is other Open World games are so much bigger and more impressive. If it was as huge as Assassins Creed Odyssey or something like that.
Whilst you can’t replay the single player missions and many of them are still a little too copy paste. So once you do campaign there’s a limit to what you can do.
But I think it’s an excellent proof of concept.
Sort of, and I’ve always said that’s as close as I’d want Halo to go to being open-world. ODST did have New Mombasa to explore, but it wasn’t the entire game. There was the day missions with Buck and Micky; the safari zoo with Dutch; the ONI site with Dutch and Micky; the NMPD HQ rooftops with Romeo and Buck; Kikowani station with Buck and the squad; the subsections under the city with the Rookie and Dare, and the highway with the Rookie, Buck, and Dare. We had variety.
Infinite is just north-west USA, and grey Forerunner buildings. I’ve only replayed Infinite’s Campaign for the achievements, and the lack of mission replay is even further discouraging.
So, for DLC, I would like more variety. Infinite really can just feel like going from room to room, and just taking out all hostiles inside. The best part of the Campaign, for me, was The Road. Driving the Scorpion in that area really felt like a Halo vehicle mission.
I think the fact that a good chunk of the game is in fact linear is what saved it for me. However traversing the open world map doing samey side missions is exactly why I can’t be bothered starting this game up again.
Open World in general ain’t the problem. It’s what you make out of it.
The linear missions were helping. And overall it kina suits the World of Halo to run around the ring freely.
However: I think there is still way more potential to make this an outstanding Open World Experience.
Question though… out of all your favorite open world games. How often do you play them more than once?
I guess my memories of halo goes all the way back to Halo CE where I made terrible mistakes and struggled through maps like two betrayals on normal difficulty having problems with ammo etc. To replaying to the point of mastery on legendary.
I have no desire to master halo infinite… nor do I have a desire to speed run levels etc. It was a decent halo game. And now I’m done.
Same goes for Gears 5 and all the other games that attempt the open / linear hybrid. The open world is just not fun the second time round.
I loved Assassins creed. And the first two open world iterations were ok, but I just can’t finish valhalla… Now I wonder if gaming just isn’t for me anymore.
Depends on the game. Witcher 3 was 2 playthroughs and then a 3rd when the DLC Blood and Wine dropped. Elden Ring, I’m on my 3rd run and already plan a 4th, I could list more games too.
Open world is not Halo Infinites issue imo. Removing and limiting customisation, selling colours at ridiculous prices, forced crossplay, d sync and a general lack of content seem to be the main issues.
These are all multiplayer related items. Would you really replay the whole campaign just because the armour is different. If so this explains a lot as to why I don’t relate to where the gaming industry is headed.
Halo CE through Halo 5 never let you customize your Master Chief character in the campaign and I can’t say I feel like it’s a missing feature.
I think I don’t disagree with the premise. An open world game CAN be good. I just feel like the amount of effort / money / time required to make it good is much more. Whereas I would much rather go back to my 3 year cycle of good linear halo game releases than wait for another 6 years for another infinite.
Or worse if they try to expand the halo story inside the existing infinite open world like so many other games do in DLC… like ghost recon.
I think the main campaign issue is not enough to do (lack of content) and nothing worthwhile to unlock, depending on the player as it’s subjective imo.
If Halo Infinites campaign had more side quests with meaningful rewards (multiplayer armour) for example, replayable levels and an arcade style score system it might be more fun.
Yesterday I put DOOM 2016 in and did some leaderboard attempts in arcade. If Halo Infinite did similar it would be great. It needs more content imo.
Both campaign and multiplayer.
Agreed that the open world content was pretty mediocre. Finding the easter eggs was a decent addition. However I agree that there was not a lot of reward there. Honestly I found it more fun doing glitches and speed run tactics in the older halos than just exploring an open world.
A leaderboard concept could be fun as you say. But a leaderboard system only really works for the linear parts of the game.
It definitely needs more to do. That’s why some open world games get replayed. Halo Infinite didn’t offer much that way. I’m playing Elden Ring again, this time for an ending.
My 4th playthrough will be for power. Elden Ring is open world with reasons to replay, content, endings, meaningful exploration. Halo Infinite does not imo. That’s the issue imo.
It came down to presentation. All the music and ambience really does carry that open world element.
You’re right though. I want both.
Would you really want them to turn halo into an RPG though? Obviously things like multiple endings just aren’t possible.
Like with Gears 5. They tried to add that concept of choice at the end of the game. But in reality you know that to continue the storyline of the game in Gears 6 that it means that both of those endings have to be made canon. So really it means that you didn’t get a choice at all. It just seems shallow and empty storytelling to me.
I guess my overall point is that some games work well with open world games. I think games which have story lines spanning through multiple games don’t.
Ie games like GTA don’t follow on from each other. They have their own unique characters, story and world to explore. Halo has a sequential story which literally handcuffs the storytelling in an open world… which just makes the open world not interesting.
Sure exploring a halo ring is something that people have wanted for ages. But now that you have…was it worth it?
I agree it could have been done better.
But now they have opened it up (he he) - there is so much they can do in the future.
it does feel like all the campaign is only one-three levels long.
level 4 coming soon! it’s all the grass and trees, way too much of the same scenary.
when we thought about exploring the ring, we were thinking it was going to be like halo ce.
different landscapes…but all we got is one. it’s like we’re stuck on the second level of halo ce, pasted over and over.
Don’t know what you are talking about… think about all those marine squads there were to save. Some quality content and story addition there.
Capturing FOBs, collecting spartan cores and random scattered armour crates. Does it get any better than that?
the real problem is that they needed more marine squads to rescue. That would have made the game feel more full I’m sure.
Sarcasm aside something in the open world that I legitimately enjoyed were the grunt propaganda towers… But again 5 towers in and I’m over it.
I think the big test will be how the next main DLC works. If that adds, essentially another one of these open world segments and a multi mission campaign. Then yes I think the content will scale up and that will start to get pretty impressive pretty quickly.
If it’s an area smaller than the main zone and mostly just a few Banished bases (nothing wrong with that as a smaller update to base map) but I think that might be a misstep.
I like the open world - I prefer that it be smaller, especially compared to a typical Ubisoft game, since I think it’s important to keep things flowing. I very much enjoy that they kept linear story missions at the same time, though. I think overall there are improvements that could be made to the open world areas, but it really just reminded me of a reconfigured and expanded H3 ODST. The linear levels also worked almost exactly the same way they did in ODST, as did unlocking larger parts of the overworld by completing the linear levels.
For the future, I’d like to see more integration of the Marines and the greater battle against the Banished, story wise, into the open world. I’d like to see where the front lines are and have operations set up to deny the Banished assets, to take important Forerunner systems from them (or defend them from the Banished), and things like that. Things that move the story of the war along, while saving the story of the Endless for the linear missions.
I never really liked open world games, and the only games in the genre I could get into were the Zelda games. Infinite was fun but I probably won’t be replaying the campaign for a while.