Reason for not allowing multiplayer Spartans into co-op play is weak. Please reconsider, 343

Games Halo Infinite
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To quote from the latest news update:

In Halo Infinite, everyone is Chief while playing Campaign Co-Op.
This is in support of the goal that Co-Op allows players to play their campaigns together. All progress made is progress kept in the Campaign regardless of it being Solo or Co-Op play, so in both (much like in Halo: CE, Halo 2, and Halo 4), Chief is Chief making his way through Zeta Halo.

This is what I gather from the quote above:
(1) The zeta exploration was done by Chief, and they want to retain that fact.
(2) An essential part of the campaign experience for the player is the player embodying specifically Master Chief.
(3) To save progress on a co-op game, the character (that the player uses) must be the same.

It’s bull to me. It really sounds like a weak excuse for having less work placed on the Dev team. For (1), having co-op and having MULTIPLE Chiefs already violates cannon, or the storyline, or whatever. It actually makes more sense for OTHER Spartans to join Chief than for multiple Chiefs to appear. In any case, (1) remains valid if the lead player remains as Chief - it’s still his mission.

For (2), we can do that anytime. It’s called SINGLE player, and it’s been around for 7 months now. There’s a whole host of other reasons why having our multiplayer Spartans add value to the campaign experience. This was such a cool feature in Reach - having our custom choices appear in campaign. This dev choice genuinely feels like a backslide. If we’re playing with other players, some visual distinction will be awesome.

For (3) - this might be a technicality that is possibly legit. I don’t know enough to comment, but I genuinely don’t think it is impossible to separate the saving of progress, from the character spartan that is loading in. The missions and tasks that a player (and his team) have accomplished is distinct from the character you load in with.

I’m happy with most of the changes to the campaign and to the introduction of co-op. There are even new achievements. BUT the community has repeated time and time again that this should be a feature, and this is how you explain it away? Please explain this choice better, 343. And don’t say the UI can’t support it, even modders have shown it’s possible to put multiplayer cosmetics into Campaign.

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Agree, I was only bothering with the purchase of the first two seasons to make my Spartan look awesome next to Masterchief. It’s called immersive gameplay, if I don’t feel immersed then what’s the point. I actually got my daughter into the game but she is completely turned off to the game if she is stuck playing as Masterchief, she wants to play as the character she’s been building. This means I’ll never get her into the campaign and I can’t play this game with her, which means again this game becomes even more pointless in my life.

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Number 3 makes it seem they’ve painted themselves in a corner somehow.
I mean, logically what we see are meshes and textures, your “character” has nothing to do with that.
Somewhere in the code there’s a segment which loads Chief’s armor when you start up the campaign, are they saying that if they alter the code for the graphics assets being loaded in for the players, that Co-Op suddenly becomes unplayable, or. unsavable?

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Exactly. I’m not a dev, but it doesn’t immediately sound like a technical issue. Anyway - I definitely think 343 needs to explain their choice better.

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Everyone can still be Master Chief with their MP armor. 343i is just making excuses. Reach already did it. Everyone is Noble Six in coop there.

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I’m guessing it was just something they considered to be not worthwhile and they’re putting out the standard “it’s a Master Chief story!” mea culpa. I’m not sure how difficult it would have been to implement MP Spartans as co-op player models, but 343 probably just didn’t think it would be worth the time and work to make that happen. I can live with that, honestly, I just wish they’d take of the vapid PR-spin and be honest in saying that they weighed the benefits against the drawbacks and decided to go with Chief clones.

It’s like the co-op tethering. I cannot imagine how asanine it would have been for someone to suggest that they impose an 800ft tether on co-op partners in an open world game. 10/1 this is a technical limitation, which is fine. They should just say so instead of trying to put a positive spin on it by saying it’s to “encourage teamwork” or whatever.

343 has some of the most obnoxious PR in the industry, IMO. Personally, I would so much prefer they just level with their fans on stuff like this. Just briefly express that some features fans want aren’t technically feasible or worth the amount of time and resources it would take to make them a reality.

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It honestly annoys me that we lost playable elites due to them trying to pull the story card but they refuse to actually go through with it and allow our spartans to show up in the campaign

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My money is on the reason that the UI and engine can’t handle it. We know this game was cobbled together with duct tape and prayers.

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Probably did this to save time.

Wished we had some PvE content for our MP spartans.

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I wouldn’t be surprised if they added it in later that we can play as our Spartans from Mplayer, since it would add value to customizing your Spartans, which would interest more people into buying stuff…

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The thing is it cant be a hard thing to do considering ive seen people playing campaign in 3rd person with there MP spartan on youtube with mods

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I seriously can’t comprehend on why 343 is so obsessed with having the entire story revolve around the Master Chief.

Hell, multiplayer spartans should have just been a toggle option from the menu. If a player really wants a “canon” experience then play solo. The main focus for co-op should be fun.

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Its honestly pathetic with how they didn’t add playable elites to infinite due to it being a “spartan’s story” but whenever the opportunity arrises for them to actually do something story related with our multiplayer Spartans we get jack s### outside of a cutscene or 2

Like if you said its a Spartans story let me play my Spartans story damn it

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It’s obvious isn’t it? So many fans are utterly obsessed with Master Chief. ANY time they make something that isn’t SPECIFICALLY about him, fans lose their -Yoink!- minds.

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To be perfectly honest, I’d rather have my multiplayer spartan in the campaign than be able to save progress from my own separate slot. I’d especially like it if they worked out some way for the MP Spartans to be in the cutscenes. Seeing a Yoroi, or eaglestrike, or heck even one of the Noble team armor sets from season 1 be made so official would be absolutely awesome!
On the other hand, we havn’t seen Dust and Echoes in over a decade, and seeing as how he’s actually mentioned in Infinite, I wouldn’t mind his return.

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I don’t know man, Reach and ODST were very successful and everyone seemed to love them. Reach was by far my favorite Halo. I’d be glad to see Masterchief go to a support character, but you are right in that there is a large base that lose their minds when this is suggested.

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Absolutely, I’m guessing she is referring to H5 where so many were upset about playing as Locke. The big difference I think is the marketing for H5 was extremely misleading, and the story was just garbage in general. It was clear with reach and ODST that you were not going to be chief.

Initially players also lost it in H2, though. When half the campaign was played as Arby. Obviously, that has come full circle and everyone wants more Arby now.

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Yeah I agree with you, I think people thought they were replacing Chief with Locke which meant more blow back. I never minded playing as Arbiter. I thought it was cool that you could go invisible, and that first mission where you cut the cable and the whole station free falls was epic.

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Even though ODST and Reach were hugely successful and beloved by fans?

Also, you seem to misunderstand what I’m talking about. I’m not getting at whether the Chief is the playable character or not but rather that in 343’s Halo games the story revolves solely on the actions of the Master Chief while in Bungie’s games for the vast majority of it the Master Chief was simply an acting part in a bigger operation.

This is why 343’s Halo games always fall flat. Halo is a military sci-fi shooter but 343 always seems to want to focus on the sci-fi part and leave the military aspect in the dust.

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You do know that it’s happened once, twice if you wish to include Halo 2 which was in the end far better received that Halo 5, and the Locke : Chief ratio wasn’t well known until after release. People weren’t happy with how little “screen time” Chief got compared to Locke.