Halo has a deeply thought-out universe that expands far beyond the games. From the books and comic books to videos, there is a lot of back story and information that can play a part in the story told in the games. While I’ve read the books and love diving deeper into Halo through any medium, I understand that for other people, the most they know of Halo is from the games, and more recently, from the videos such as Forward Unto Dawn (we’ll add Nightfall to the list come November). 343i obviously doesn’t want to punish players for not having read the books and having done their homework outside of games. Yet, they also want to reward the faithful Halo fans also.
So the question becomes, how can 343i give a great Halo story in-game to both the more casual gamer and to the Halo-ite too? 343i has already announced the Halo Channel which seems to be the hub of all things Halo on the Xbox One. Below, I list two additions that Halo 5: Guardians and/or the Halo Channel could implement to further involve and educate the players in Halo cannon.
Have trivia available for each level of Halo 5: Guardians. It’s already been shown that trivia will be present on the Halo Channel, but having specific trivia for each mission (with rewards to incentivize completion) will ensure that key events in the game are retained. A possibility would be to prompt players for an option after every level to take the trivia (dubbed something like “Post-Mission Debriefing”?).
Have in-game access to the Halo Encyclopedia (also available on the Halo Channel). The encyclopedia could follow your progress through the various games, videos, etc. and show the information that you individually have unlocked so as to not spoil story or character progression that might happen later on. This will allow any player that might hear a name or event that is not remembered to look back and find what is needed before progressing further through the story. The personal progression system for the encylopedia could get rather involved, but even just a simplified “here’s all the information we offer” encyclopedia would be a big support to the game’s story.
What do you guys think? Are these good ideas that you’d like to see, or do you think they’d be a waste of 343i’s valuable time? Are there any other ideas you have that you’d like to see implemented that could push the Halo canon deeper for the players?
Not only are trivia and an encyclopedia uncreative, but they would be very ineffective since very, very few people would care enough to read through them.
The story should be revealed through storytelling. All necessary info should be given to the player by watching the plot play out.
My hope is that the Halo Channel will do a decent job of providing details about the expanded universe. Maybe have animated versions of some of the books and comics, like Halo Waypoint had with some of the Evolutions shorts.
> Not only are trivia and an encyclopedia uncreative, but they would be very ineffective since very, very few people would care enough to read through them.
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> The story should be revealed through storytelling. All necessary info should be given to the player by watching the plot play out.
Thanks for the comment.
As a point of clarification, neither tools are meant to be an in-your-face part of the game; they are just that…tools. -Yoink!-. They are meant to help things, not drive things. The story should tell everything the player needs to know about new developments. Both tools have very specific purposes for aiding (not driving) the story.
The encyclopedia is to do on-the-spot study, should the player want it, of things already told in the story. Like I said in the OP, the encyclopedia could evolve with the player’s progress through the Halo games/videos/etc. and divulge just as much information as the player should have already played through. The encyclopedia is meant to be a source of finding those pieces of lore that a player could have overlooked or forgotten. It shouldn’t be a highly-used feature, but it is still a feature that I believe has benefit for that select group of players.
The trivia would again not be a driving point of the game, nor would it have to necessarily be post-mission. Yet I still feel that having a feature (either in the game’s menus or in the Halo Channel’s menus) that rewards players for their understanding of Halo’s lore would be an awesome addition. It would test the players’ abilities to remember what the story had already told, both for pride’s sake, as well as repetition’s sake. The trivia could even be more focused on applying knowledge from one game/source to another. Ultimately, as much as Halo 5: Guardians should tell a well thought-out story that doesn’t make too many assumptions of the player’s prior knowledge of Halo lore, 343i cannot tell the player everything the player needs to know before telling new information. Either the new story suffers from being mondaine, the new story suffers from not covering enough new ground, the player suffers from not having enough previous knowledge, or the game (to fit prior necessary knowledge and new involving story in) becomes tiresomely long.
I’m not stating that my ideas are the only right ways of going about it, but I think as 343i moves forward with Halo, they shouldn’t shy away from Halo lore, but find ways of bringing even more knowledge of all things Halo to the players.