Hey, another question came to mind about Halo 5. Would you guys want Spartan Ops back or just take back Firefight?
Of course I don’t mean that Spartan Ops should be like it was in Halo 4, but I think designing Spartan Ops like “raids” for an MMO would be a better solution. In which case I’ll present a scenario.
Spartan Ops would still be five chapters per episode, but each chapter features different objectives on uniquely constructed maps for Ops, instead of recycled multiplayer. For each chapter we get different objectives… perhaps infiltration, assault, rescue, defense and vehicle based. Now say you have a story for each episode, and at the end of each you get to fight this massive boss… which could be a Scarab or even that War Machine from the Halo 5 Teaser Trailer. Though there could also a boss battle that could be in the form of Tartarus from Halo 2’s ending.
Outrise doesn’t have much development and has gone dark for months but the concept of teaming up with friends to fight this giant thing is a good idea. Imagine getting into a huge battle with your team, and perhaps 3 other fireteams, to conquer this humongous enemy AI. I bet 343 could create some great rewards for accomplishing such a feat.
Let me know what you guys think. See you around Spartans.
Firefight please. More customization would be great although I know that topping Reach’s Firefight would be a task and a half. Also, if I really want to go crazy, add the AI tags to forge and let us set up custom Firefight/missions with triggers, events and custom paths. Please lol.
Depends. If there’s another go at Spartan Ops I’d rather they put less effort into “let’s have this many missions in this many episodes released over this amount of time” and instead just released 10 well made missions on disc as a second, smaller, co-op aimed (but still single player capable) campaign.
Otherwise just bring back Firefight.
I would like to see them do more with Firefight to be honest, mostly in terms of maps. By all means, keep taking them from the campaign, but mix some others in as well. Given the whole War Games simulation set up, I think it’d be cool to have some maps based on locations from each of the previous games, with matching enemy types.
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> Depends. If there’s another go at Spartan Ops I’d rather they put less effort into “let’s have this many missions in this many episodes released over this amount of time” and instead just released 10 well made missions on disc as a second, smaller, co-op aimed (but still single player capable) campaign.
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> Otherwise just bring back Firefight.
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> I would like to see them do more with Firefight to be honest, mostly in terms of maps. By all means, keep taking them from the campaign, but mix some others in as well. Given the whole War Games simulation set up, I think it’d be cool to have some maps based on locations from each of the previous games, with matching enemy types.
Your take on Spartan Ops’ approach is smart… well said.
What if Firefight releases with the game and 343 creates Spartan Ops 2.0 as “DLC” to give us content in between Halo games.
So we’d have Halo 5 release, with Firefight 3.0, and a few months after release and all the bugs are patched then a separate team at 343 gets to work on some Spartan Ops DLC that has missions released whenever they’re ready.
I really want to fight a scarab again though… it’s those big fights in Halo that are so close to my heart. I remember always riding a mongoose on “The Ark” in Halo 3 and driving it up that big central structure with a Gravity Lift just before the edge… I used the mongoose and gravity lift to get enough air to fly over the Scarab’s main deck. Then I’d jump out the Scarab, kill the enemies and blow the thing to hell. So much fun and it never got old.
I’d be happy with either of them if they get a major fix.
In Reach, firefight became an arcade mode essentially. It completely let go of its Survival roots by giving infinite lives, nearly infinite ammo caches, a time and round cap as well as mostly ridiculous gametypes (Rocket/Jetpack, overshields, infinite ammo snipers and so on). I don’t want that kind of Firefight, ever. That said, if they manage to find a way to return to ODST’s survival mode and evolve it in a reasonable way, I’m all for it.
Spartan Ops… I loved the premise- episodic co-op centric campaign content every week alongside an awesome CGI episode that propels the story. The latter worked out just fine, and even (in my opinion) managed to redeem Spartan Ops. But the missions themselves were bad- as in really bad. There was no penalty for death (everyone respawns), the maps and objectives were extremely repetitive, and unfortunately that also destroyed any chance of good writing (because the excuses they had to make up to take us back to the same maps again and again were just terrible, and seemed to be disconnected from what was happening in the episodes). There is, however, a simple fix: instead of five short missions every week, shrink that number down to one- one solid mission on a new map every week, with unique objectives (a sniper stealth mission, a huge vehicle mission, a Covenanf ship mission, unique boss battles…). This would also allow each mission to be tied to the story in the cutscenes. Add some sort of challenge system to it, with unique challenges per mission (finish the mission without being spotted, kill all Elite commandos before they escape etc) and collectibles for replayability- and you’ve got yourself an awesome mode.
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> I’d be happy with either of them if they get a major fix.
>
> In Reach, firefight became an arcade mode essentially. It completely let go of its Survival roots by giving infinite lives, nearly infinite ammo caches, a time and round cap as well as mostly ridiculous gametypes (Rocket/Jetpack, overshields, infinite ammo snipers and so on). I don’t want that kind of Firefight, ever. That said, if they manage to find a way to return to ODST’s survival mode and evolve it in a reasonable way, I’m all for it.
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> Spartan Ops… I loved the premise- episodic co-op centric campaign content every week alongside an awesome CGI episode that propels the story. The latter worked out just fine, and even (in my opinion) managed to redeem Spartan Ops. But the missions themselves were bad- as in really bad. There was no penalty for death (everyone respawns), the maps and objectives were extremely repetitive, and unfortunately that also destroyed any chance of good writing (because the excuses they had to make up to take us back to the same maps again and again were just terrible, and seemed to be disconnected from what was happening in the episodes). There is, however, a simple fix: instead of five short missions every week, shrink that number down to one- one solid mission on a new map every week, with unique objectives (a sniper stealth mission, a huge vehicle mission, a Covenanf ship mission…). This would also allow each mission to be tied to the story in the cutscenes. Add some sort of challenge system to it, with unique challenges per mission (finish the mission without being spotted, kill all Elite commandos before they escape etc) and collectibles for replayability- and you’ve got yourself an awesome mode.
Take my like. Sadly I don’t have much experience with Firefight because I was never able to get Xbox Live (My parents hated video games back then), however playing it in Halo 3 ODST with my cousin was always fun… Didn’t play Reach’s version much, was too busy enjoying Invasion whenever I got Xbox Live’s free 72-hour cards with games.
You make a good point… instead of 10 hit or miss episode with 5 chapters each… 5-7 fantastic mini-campaign missions could be the trick. Hell maybe it could focus on the Brutes since Halo 5’s main campaign seems very focused on the The Arbiter, Chief and Locke. They were recently in the Escalation comics, albeit briefly, so 343 should put that lore to good use.
I’d probably prefer firefight to spartan ops, because I was less than thrilled with the implementation of spartan ops, but I’m willing to give spartan ops another chance if they flesh it out a bit more. It never lived up to the hype it was given pre-launch in my opinion, but I really like the premise.
I would like to see both.
I really enjoyed playing Spartan ops.
So if I had to choose between them I would go with Spartan ops.
I like how you think with this game scenarios: infiltration, assault, rescue, defense and vehicle based.
But boss fight in my opinion isn’t necessary.
I think I would go with Firefight, but only if it was like the ODST version. I appreciated the story of Spartan Ops, but the gameplay incentive just wasn’t there.
I don’t see why both could not return. Firefight could simply use either parts of Spartan Ops missions or mulitplayer maps to save on resources. As for Spartan Ops itself, I still think its a great concept that needed a lot more work.
I would have been perfectly happy with Spartan Ops mission wise if they had cut half the missions. That sounds like a lot but given the number of repeat locations and pointless filler missions, it would have been a much better experience.
It would have been a tighter narrative, with less repetition. I think 343 simply needs to not over promise anything. Just let Spartan Ops evolve naturally instead of committing to an arbitrary 50 missions or whatever the number may be.
Add skull support and a failure state(with checkpoints potentially) and everyone ought to be happy.
Another suggestion would be to make Spartan Ops a bit more friendly to single players and offline players by having players play as a specific team of Spartans such as Majestic. AI controlled teammates are added or removed based on the player count. It would also be better for the narrative since we would not be nameless avatars with no relevance to the main story. If you want a ‘personalized’ co-op experience than that is what Firefight is for.
I would like to see Spartan ops to come back but take a few lessons from bungies “strikes” and “raid” in destiny
have a penalty for entire team dieing, this maybe a bit controversial but have a revive system? or stick to old method get safe and respawn onto you
I only say the revive system as it can lead to quite daring rescues
“no just leave me there 2 sword elites near my body just take out the enemies first” “No!!! we never leave a Spartan down, Jim distract the elites while I get him back up”
this either ends up being badass accomplishing over impossible odds or quite funny going down in a blaze of glory and trying again “damn it Jim I said distract them not paint their swords red”
and possibly add some objectives into the missions but with a halo twist like:
carry the bomb to plant in the stronghold then get to the pelican before the timer blows maybe even on a warthog?
infiltrate the base and steal the core Spartan carrying the core cant shoot but can hit like with the flag
hold out and survive against enemy waves (pretty standard)
hold out and protect certain objects like halo reach firefight
stay in a certain area while something charges (king of the hill)
ok this 1 is pushing it but protect an AI escort? like halo 1 captain keys
and of course standard missions just clear out the enemies
I do think these would workout very well and be very fun to play through
I’d much prefer they spend the energy giving us an expanded version of firefight with more gametype options, maybe even including vehicles in some of the maps as a customization option.
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> It would have been a tighter narrative, with less repetition. I think 343 simply needs to not over promise anything. Just let Spartan Ops evolve naturally instead of committing to an arbitrary 50 missions or whatever the number may be.
But the way Spartan Ops was structured made the narrative inherently loose. It was basically divided between one cast of characters in the FMV cut-scenes who had nothing to do with the floating heads who you actually played as in the missions. No matter how much you try to trim on the mission count number, that doesn’t change the fact that it was an inherently suboptimal way to tell a narrative.
What about just redesigned Invasion, that’s worthy enough to fill the gap of Firefight/Spartan Ops? It would be like a player vs player campaign, with cinematic set pieces, varied objectives, pre-defined class system with starkly defined roles, and perhaps a 12v12 player count for larger encounters.
