I think 343i should remove the “revive” feature from Halo Infinite’s campaign. I’ve played every other campaign dozens of times (damn, that’s the first time I’ve admitted that), and every time I try to get into 5’s I struggle–even with the levels I remember liking*.* I think part of this problem is this revive feature.
When I play, it stops being fun the moment I get downed. It’s like this big stall in the gameplay during which I almost feel like the jeopardy music should be playing. I love being saved on the occassional off-chance by a derpy marine every once in awhile, and I like saving them, but having to rely on those jackwads in Halo 5 is a real letdown (equating 5’s squadmates to regular marines, here). They’re fun in the way pet rocks are fun. They’re goofy when you want’em, but it’d be a real shame if you had to rely on one to save your life.
And it feels like they actually designed levels around the feature. There are a lot of moments through the game where they throw relatively big open spaces at you and a lot of enemies. You tend to die a lot, and it feels like they tried to soften the blow with the revive feature. The problem is, it’s inconsistent. Sometimes, you get saved quick and it’s no big deal. Sometimes, you have to wait a bit. Sometimes you end up chewing your nails watching the bar go down, only to be saved at the last second by a shields-flaring Vale looking defiantly into the green light of life-saving energy that pours from her armor onto yours as she pointedly ignores the bolts of hardlight whizzing magically past her. And sometimes, none of that happens and you just die. It’s cool to be saved, but even when you are saved what really happened was you just sat around for five seconds; it hurts the momentum of the gameplay. And there’s nothing more deflating than coming out of a hot firefight having gone down and having to wait for that silly -Yoink- revive sequence before moving on. I suppose there’s an argument to be made for its “immersive” quality (i.e. being able to be revived by squad mates and such), but frankly, the whole damn thing is so video-gamey it tends to take me more out of the game than a good old-fashioned death and revert to save. Side note: They actually put “revert to save” down the menu list in Halo 5, so it’s harder to do quickly. This is a pain.
All in all, I think the feature should be removed. I think it was included to sort of bolster the “squad-based mechanics” they threw in, as well as the narrative (which takes on the whole Blue team vs. Osiris thing), but I get the sense that they designed the game around you using these features, and they aren’t robust enough to make them worthwhile (and yes, I’m including commands at this point). They come off as feeling both extra and somewhat essential–to the ethos of the game and even the gameplay itself–and to have that dissonance in a Halo campaign (which has traditonally been: Good story, great music, go shoot stuff) is disheartening. Either beef up the feature, or drop it.
But why would they beef up such a feature? This is Halo and not Ghost Recon.
What do you guys think?
tl;dr Revive is to Halo 5’s campaign as armor lock is to Reach’s multiplayer, and the squad-based mechanics in general feel necessary to Halo 5, not that good, and ultimately out of place in a Halo game. Therefore they should drop both.