So, over the past year or so, I’ve done some digging into who would like to play co-op on Discord, Instagram and Twitter (but mostly Discord).
I intend to be neutral in addressing the current playerbase, as well as potential customers who may notice your presence on the forums, so please hear me out.
When I was going through the hype cycle through Halo 5 and the marketing discussions died down, one particular review from The Dishonored Wolf on the game where he tackled his many dislikes, but only one of them is particularly relevant: “Forced Co-op”, one of his headers read.
I don’t want to make people dissatisfied with Infinite into pessimistic crybabies like the people who defend the game on a regular basis, nor do I advocate for those who give little to no evidence for Halo not needing co-op, period. (You can thank Avarith Blustone for that talking point, as it was his most relevant stance on the game.), but to go from “We don’t need co-op in this game.” to “Co-op should’ve been in the game at launch. What were you thinking?”, etc, can be argued as hypocritical or simple cognitive dissonance by the hardcore fans, but for the sake of argument, I believe it’s a matter of preference and I will explain why.
For starters, most of the games don’t integrate co-op scenarios into the games’ writing, but are open to interpretation in a non-canonical sense (see the original trilogy, ODST, Reach, both Wars games, 4, and now Infinite), whereas 5 sticks out like a sore thumb in the fact that it chose to make the co-op essential to the canon. This is where I feel the real issue was to be debated, but I never got a definitive middle ground in the situation, where most fans were turned off with the integration to begin with. Even with the books taken into account, I can say for certain Buck and Chief feel like Lone Wolves. It could be argued on Noble Six’s case, as well if you don’t interpret the “That lone wolf stays behind.” line as being a context clue for co-op in the canon, even though it’s actually not.
But, this isn’t limited to Halo, I find. Halo’s rivals have all had similar approaches to co-op, from Call Of Duty to Resistance Fall Of Man (with Resistance 2 being strictly given a single-player campaign with a canon-adjacent co-op mode parallel to that campaign), but none of them really shine out as Halo’s does, split-screen or not. For instance, none of the memes or posts about World At War treat the co-op as being essential to what little there is of a narrative, and Black Ops 3 was no different.
Most people I’ve spoken to have said at least once that the best example of co-op in Halo was Halo 3 implicitly because of its predecessor and Arby being left for dead by the prophets with the rest of his species, but if you look closer like I have, none of them have unique dialogue, are not AI partners, and quite frankly, are given so little spotlight it makes Black Team look more like the center of attention (even if Black Team could’ve had a DLC of their own).
And then there’s the original Titanfall back when Halo 5 and MCC were just to be announced, where the whole campaign (on both sides, no less) was strictly limited to multiplayer matches that had a few distinct characteristics to them, but are more likely to be ignored by the playerbase, anyway. Even though the sequel DOES mention the battle of Demeter in the original, there are no callbacks that I remember from that game, presumably because the writers felt it was too much information and needed prior knowledge in order for you to understand it. (Meanwhile, Gears Of War doesn’t have that problem, as the relevant events are recapped in 2, 3 and 5, with 4 being more implicit in refences beyond the prologue).
And as someone who doesn’t mind the mission replay feature being added into the game, I can say for a fact that as a Saints Row veteran, I never worried about mission replays for the Infinite campaign, since it’d be the scene selection and not the main attraction in my eyes). So, I can understand there’s a lot of nostalgia towards the co-op, truth be told, most, if not all, of those memories only say more about the games themselves than the co-op itself, barring the score attack mode and other such elements. Weapon variety, level design and immersive experiences still carry the story, regardless of how you play the original trilogy, ODST, Reach and 4. Wars and 5, however are where I feel co-op is a touchy subject, as the devs on Creative Assembly, Ensemble, Bungie and 343 want to add co-op to the gameplay without worrying how the canon may be percieved, especially when Gears was built from the ground-up to make co-op mandatory while Halo 5’s was more or less a decision that wasn’t asked for and wasn’t originally intended in any of the prior games.
“But, Infinite is dying without the co-op campaign.” I’d argue Forge was more essential in the community’s outreach towards 343. Co-op, however, doesn’t carry the same effect unless you want to LFG your butt off just to play missions you should usually have no problem playing by yourself (if split-screen isn’t implemented).
“But, Fireteam Osiris are hot garbage, and Cortana ruined the story.”
First of all, I still got a sizable amount of information from both Chief and Locke, despite one character taking more sceentime than the other (a reverse of Halo 2 focusing on Chief and Arbiter’s story was a mere sub-plot, by comparison). “But, Hunter! Why would you say that? Arby’s missions were one of the reasons Halo 2 was great in the first place!” No, it was the writing that carried those missions whereas the gameplay in them isn’t exactly as memorable in my eyes. When Arby’s role was reduced in Halo 3 AFTER all of these seemingly consequential events, it felt like a slap in the face to the community at large, resulting in the “Halo 3 sucks.” discourse we’ve had for 15 years now, despite all of the competition that was gunning for some way to dethrone the game and failing miserably.
Spoilers or no spoilers, co-op isn’t entirely based upon the narrative and the canon which it is in. It’s fun headcanon material, but do be warned that not every game exists to have co-op for the sake of it, even if Halo 5 STILL feels like the co-op was overempthasized and caused members in the community to shake their heads at 343 and Brian Reed’s rather supernatural take on the Forerunners only scratched everyon’e’s heads, myself included. But, despite all of this, I can see where it is possible Halo can survive, in some shape or form, without co-op, collab or no collab. The show, from what I can tell, appears to be more in the direction of Halo being a character-driven single-player story in the form of an AU and caught many off-guard for a number of reasons, one of which being “subversion” of the idea of Fireteam Silver working, well, as a team.
.
So, there’s no right answer to this discussion, and I would be remiss if I suggested that were the case.
)