The feel of playing as a "superhuman"

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

Okay so just a few moments ago I downloaded Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon (thx black friday promos) and the first thing that surprised me is how the game delivers the fact that you are playing a cyborg: fast running, super jump, climbing stuff, all of this goes smoothly.

And this made me think, why the MC or Spartans can’t give us the same feeling, so far I’ve never felt I was playing some kind of super soldier, but more like your average videogame soldier or even like a 3rd age person, so sloooooooow.

So, here’s my suggestion, please 343, make our playable characters feel powerful, that is all.

2

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is an amazing expansion. I think I had more fun with it than the actual Far Cry. Though the power it grants the player is over the top for a reason as it’s a reflection of 80s action heroes.

Though I guarantee that if you played like that for an extended period of time, especially in Halo, the novelty will degrade and soon you’ll be wanting something more substantial. A challenge.

Far out, in Blood Dragon you carry by default:

C4, Molotov, Grenades, Mines,

…and can choose to carry 4 from:

Quadruple barrelled shotgun, burst fire pistol, phase plasma rifle, bow, sniper rifle with explosive rounds, flamethrower, chaingun and the almighty Killstar which kills instantly.

In Halo 4 I think, as far as feeling like you’re in a spartan suit, 343 did a good job. The heavy metal-on-metal footsteps, melee sound, the huge crunch when you take a heavy landing and helmet bobbing certainly set it apart from Halo 3 in terms of immersion.

As far as giving more power to the player is concerned, you need to preserve the challenge and I think Halo is easier if anything.

What I think would be cool is if they added a kick mechanic along with the standard melee. You’d see your spartan kick in perhaps the same manner you do in Dead Island. Perhaps the action could be bound to double tapping B, or whatever the melee button happens to be.

I’d imagine caving in the skull of a grunt with Chief’s boot or sending a piece of scenery across the floor with a mere kick would do wonders for immersion and sense of power.

3

I don’t think Halo should go that far with the superhuman.

4

> I don’t think Halo should go that far with the superhuman.

I agree. Feel it would cause more problems :-/

5

Well, In Halo I can jump higher than my own height and kill a man with a punch… Not to mention lift him up off the ground while running a sword through his back. So I feel pretty super.

6

Yeah totally! 'Cause liek u know, nuthin in any of da campayns dat Cheef did wuz evr supr hooman…

7

> Yeah totally! 'Cause liek u know, nuthin in any of da campayns dat Cheef did wuz evr supr hooman…

Is that why nobody praised that aspect of the franchise?

Why I don’t remember any of it, maybe because his “badass” moments were lackluster?
Just saying, who knows, maybe in H5 we’ll still see grandpa MC doing his 5 second sprint to melee punch a grunt…

8

Like Grandpa Solid Snake in MGS4 doing CQC against a bunch of armed guards?

I can dig it.

In all seriousness, I wouldn’t mind little touches to make at least John feel different than my multiplayer Spartan. I’d like him to at least have the ability to sprint indefinitely, and carry a turret with his maximum movement speed. Stuff like that.

I don’t want it to go TOO crazy, though. Halo Wars (though I love it!) did it pretty crazily with Spartans jumping up HIGH to board flying vehicles.

Most of what Dragnet said I agree with, minus the kicking thing.

9

I’ve always hated the way that some games handle superhuman movement. Sure, it’s cool, but it’s impractical with Halo’s strategic and thoughtful gameplay because it’s not as fluid. Given the choice to be either gimmicked or unhindered, I’ll choose unhindered every time.

10

Games today often add features solely for the sake of immersion, such as sprint, climbing, sliding, obstacle vaulting, ledge-shimmying, etc.

Instead of letting me do something, it’s “oh hey, watch your character do this, pretty cool right?”.

Immersion means things to different people. For some, it’s feeling like every action their character does is realistic and meaningful. For me, it’s being able to just play the game without interruption from tedious mechanics.

Imagine if, in Quake, every time I rocket jumped I had to watch my character pull out a rocket launcher, prepare to jump, shoot it at his feet, and get a 3rd person view of him flying with his arms at his sides. I’d rather just rocket jump and be able to shoot while doing it.

Ok, that off-topic rant aside, no more gimmicks. I would however be fine with enemy’s flying back when melee’d, with much faster movement, being able to wall jump while still in combat, having loud footsteps, jumping high, etc. Things that subtly increase immersion without the necessity of game-slowing mechanics and animations everywhere.

Does anyone remember how in Halo 3, meleeing someone could send their body flying across the entire map? I miss that.

11

> Games today often add features solely for the sake of immersion, such as sprint, climbing, sliding, obstacle vaulting, ledge-shimmying, etc.
>
> Instead of letting me do something, it’s “oh hey, watch your character do this, pretty cool right?”.
>
> Immersion means things to different people. For some, it’s feeling like every action their character does is realistic and meaningful. For me, it’s being able to just play the game without interruption from tedious mechanics.
>
> Imagine if, in Quake, every time I rocket jumped I had to watch my character pull out a rocket launcher, prepare to jump, shoot it at his feet, and get a 3rd person view of him flying with his arms at his sides. I’d rather just rocket jump and be able to shoot while doing it.
>
> Ok, that off-topic rant aside, no more gimmicks. I would however be fine with enemy’s flying back when melee’d, with much faster movement, being able to wall jump while still in combat, having loud footsteps, jumping high, etc. Things that subtly increase immersion without the necessity of game-slowing mechanics and animations everywhere.
>
> <mark>Does anyone remember how in Halo 3, meleeing someone could send their body flying across the entire map? I miss that.</mark>

I miss in the Halo Reach beta when you’d punch somebody and they wouldn’t go flying. I like the bodies to not fly and stay put.

Bodies staying put = better.

12

Now I guess I can understand a want for more superhuman actions in campaign. Before Halo 4, I noticed that the cutscenes in past Halos lacked spartans actually doing “super” things. That’s something that definitely changed with Halo 4. For example, Chief flipping the ghost in that cutscene, or the little quick-time event where chief forces open the elevator doors. I know that cutscenes have nothing to do with general gameplay, but I really do enjoy seeing Chief show off his awesomeness just a bit.

13

Part of a major issue I take with the Halo franchise as a whole is that we have hard, canon, capabilities for a Spartan-II and Spartan-III super soldier. Eric Nylund’s books go into great detail as to just what the Chief and company can do, as do some of the scripted events.

In a nutshell:

  1. Baseline “at minimum” reaction times of 20 milliseconds, faster when in armor and working with an A.I. This is in excess of ten times that of a peak level human being. This is in addition to upgraded neural laces and other chemical proceedures that allow a Spartan to think and process information faster than any normal human could ever hope to.

  2. Maintain consistant cross-country speeds around 35-55 KPH, with sprints approaching 100 KPH.

  3. While we never actually see a Spartan II or III flip a tank outside of noncanon game mechanics, there are still things we can go off of (like a 15 year old, un-armored John 117 kicking a roughly half ton suit of power armor with enough force to send it nearly thirty feet through the air, and his older, armored self casually picking up a Warthog in “The Flood”.)

  4. A suit of armor that casually shrugged off extended 30mm autocannon fire (for context, we’re talking about a weapon that each individual shot will impact with nearly a hundred times the stopping power of a 7.62 NATO round used by the MA series assault rifle), and whose later incarnations, as Halo 4 demonstrated, files “uncontrolled atmospheric reentry and subsequent high-speed impact against unforgiving rock” under “mild annoyance”.

Taken together, this more or less means that playing as a Spartan should be an experience that leaves me feeling like I’m some horrific, pants-soiling combination of a Matrix Agent and an Adeptus Astartes Terminator (albiet with a crappier gun).

I do not. I instead feel as though I’m playing as a Marine with a slightly larger health bar and the ability to shoot straight. This is a glaring disconnect, especially when you know that the Chief is supposed to be, in the eyes of the Covenant, this unstopable soul-devouring monster/physical manifestation of the Angel of Death whose mere presence causes their rank and file troops to more or less soil their pants in pure, unadulterated terror. This is made all the worse when there are games out there (Crysis, F.E.A.R., Time-Shift, Warhammer 40K: Space Marine, and even Section 8 (which for all of its many, many problems, did properly capture that “power armored “death on legs” supersoldier” aspect) that do have gameplay aspects that make you feel like you’re playing something beyond human and somehow didn’t wreck the game balance (usually because you were either outnumbered bugger-all to one and/or had to contend with enemies that could match your capabilities (which we canonically know Elites and Brutes are supposed to be able to do).)

14

> Okay so just a few moments ago I downloaded Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon (thx black friday promos) and the first thing that surprised me is how the game delivers the fact that you are playing a cyborg: fast running, super jump, climbing stuff, all of this goes smoothly.
>
> And this made me think, why the MC or Spartans can’t give us the same feeling, so far I’ve never felt I was playing some kind of super soldier, but more like your average videogame soldier or even like a 3rd age person, so sloooooooow.
>
> So, here’s my suggestion, please 343, make our playable characters feel powerful, that is all.

I don’t know if that would be ideal for Multiplayer, but it’d be great for Campaign (minus the climbing stuff).

There’s no need for huge significant changes to Chief, just a few gameplay adjustments.

Chief needs:
-faster movement acceleration (h1/h2)
-faster vehicle entry/exit times (h1)
-long falling distance/better fall timer (hr/h4)
-minimum/no landing stun (h2/h3)
-less shield recharge wait (h2/h3)
-higher jump (h2/h3)
-fast melees (h2/h4)
-grenade count of 4 (h1/h2)
-flashlight (h1/h2/h3)
-bigger Field of View (h1)
-less autoaim/magnetism
-Campaign exclusive weapons, vehicles, AAs

15

When I think of the “superhuman feeling” I think of parkour, running fast with effort, realistic powerful punches, acrobatics, climbing, quick agility with agility animations, and being able to grab onto objects and swing/hang/throw them.

Long story short, Halo has never really had these mechanics and because we’re a little “too late in the game” for all this stuff, I think it’s best it stays out of Halo for the most part.

16

> > Okay so just a few moments ago I downloaded Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon (thx black friday promos) and the first thing that surprised me is how the game delivers the fact that you are playing a cyborg: fast running, super jump, climbing stuff, all of this goes smoothly.
> >
> > And this made me think, why the MC or Spartans can’t give us the same feeling, so far I’ve never felt I was playing some kind of super soldier, but more like your average videogame soldier or even like a 3rd age person, so sloooooooow.
> >
> > So, here’s my suggestion, please 343, make our playable characters feel powerful, that is all.
>
> I don’t know if that would be ideal for Multiplayer, but it’d be great for Campaign (minus the climbing stuff).
>
> There’s no need for huge significant changes to Chief, just a few gameplay adjustments.
>
> Chief needs:
> -faster movement acceleration (h1/h2)
> -faster vehicle entry/exit times (h1)
> -long falling distance/better fall timer (hr/h4)
> -minimum/no landing stun (h2/h3)
> -less shield recharge wait (h2/h3)
> -higher jump (h2/h3)
> -fast melees (h2/h4)
> -grenade count of 4 (h1/h2)
> -flashlight (h1/h2/h3)
> -bigger Field of View (h1)
> -less autoaim/magnetism
> -Campaign exclusive weapons, vehicles, AAs

I agree with all but the bigger field of view, unless that was universal for everyone.

It would be WAY too jarring to go from two different field of views.

17

> > > Okay so just a few moments ago I downloaded Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon (thx black friday promos) and the first thing that surprised me is how the game delivers the fact that you are playing a cyborg: fast running, super jump, climbing stuff, all of this goes smoothly.
> > >
> > > And this made me think, why the MC or Spartans can’t give us the same feeling, so far I’ve never felt I was playing some kind of super soldier, but more like your average videogame soldier or even like a 3rd age person, so sloooooooow.
> > >
> > > So, here’s my suggestion, please 343, make our playable characters feel powerful, that is all.
> >
> > I don’t know if that would be ideal for Multiplayer, but it’d be great for Campaign (minus the climbing stuff).
> >
> > There’s no need for huge significant changes to Chief, just a few gameplay adjustments.
> >
> > Chief needs:
> > -faster movement acceleration (h1/h2)
> > -faster vehicle entry/exit times (h1)
> > -long falling distance/better fall timer (hr/h4)
> > -minimum/no landing stun (h2/h3)
> > -less shield recharge wait (h2/h3)
> > -higher jump (h2/h3)
> > -fast melees (h2/h4)
> > -grenade count of 4 (h1/h2)
> > -flashlight (h1/h2/h3)
> > -bigger Field of View (h1)
> > -less autoaim/magnetism
> > -Campaign exclusive weapons, vehicles, AAs
>
> I agree with all but the bigger field of view, unless that was universal for everyone.
>
> It would be WAY too jarring to go from two different field of views.

Yeah it would be universal. I imagine the Xbone allowing more rendering, and a large FoV definitely looks better (here’s Halo 4’s Chief with a bigger FoV).

18

I personally think that in order to get a super human ish feel and keep immersion there are only a few things that should be in Halo that old games managed to pull off really well.

Gear Enhancements
Spartans are supposedly the top of the line equipment. So why would they be geared up with Flashlights when Nightvision is better for any situation? They had it in Reach.

Actual armor needs to be a thing. When your shields run out why is it that you’re wearing 2,000 lbs of thick full metal armor yet a 7.62 can penetrate it and kill you? I’m not saying you should be invincible, but at least bring back health bars underneath armor. A headshot will still kill you if shieldless, but it makes no sense for normal bullets to ever kill spartans if they hit nonlethal areas.

Abilities/Options
If a Spartan jumps on your car you’re gonna get hijacked and thrown out. But what if that isn’t always the best choice in the situation? What if you know there’s an enemy with a laser watching and waiting? Boarding an enemy vehicle should lead to 5 options. Option 1- Melee and commandeer the enemy vehicle. Option 2- Plant a grenade on the enemy vehicle and drop off. Option 3- Use your weapon and drop off. Option 4- Flip the vehicle. Option 5- Jump to quickly get over the vehicle.

While on a vehicle a lot of your number buttons are out of use. So it’s reasonable to think that melee, jump, grenade, and shoot would remain the same. Why not have another button to flip the vehicle over? If you’re outnumbered and you know the gunner is gonna take you down as soon as you make a move (and you have no grenades) flipping the vehicle over would be the smartest decision. You could give yourself time to escape even… Now you might be thinking, why would I ever want to jump? Well, there are many reasons to want to abandon the vehicle instead of attacking or even damaging it. There could be someone ready to destroy it, you could jump from the driver and “ninja” the gunner. You might even jump, then stick the vehicle with a plasma as a safer means of planting a grenade. Either way it goes, you have added versatility with the board vehicle option.

Flag Running needs to allow the use of a Primary weapon. I understand that the magnum isn’t weak in the right hands, and that CTF is supposed to build teamwork. However, it’s unreasonable to think that Spartans who can stick guns to their backs likely by magnets couldn’t do the same thing with flags.

Oddball throwing- This shouldn’t lead to interceptions to 4 shots. Instead, throwing the ball at an enemy should kill them outright. Or maybe even have a Melee to catch option so you can avoid death. That would also add skill to Oddball passing.

Carrier Sprint- Carrying a ball or flag shouldn’t stop your spartan from Sprinting… I don’t need to explain the reasoning behind that.

19

> > > > Okay so just a few moments ago I downloaded Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon (thx black friday promos) and the first thing that surprised me is how the game delivers the fact that you are playing a cyborg: fast running, super jump, climbing stuff, all of this goes smoothly.
> > > >
> > > > And this made me think, why the MC or Spartans can’t give us the same feeling, so far I’ve never felt I was playing some kind of super soldier, but more like your average videogame soldier or even like a 3rd age person, so sloooooooow.
> > > >
> > > > So, here’s my suggestion, please 343, make our playable characters feel powerful, that is all.
> > >
> > > I don’t know if that would be ideal for Multiplayer, but it’d be great for Campaign (minus the climbing stuff).
> > >
> > > There’s no need for huge significant changes to Chief, just a few gameplay adjustments.
> > >
> > > Chief needs:
> > > -faster movement acceleration (h1/h2)
> > > -faster vehicle entry/exit times (h1)
> > > -long falling distance/better fall timer (hr/h4)
> > > -minimum/no landing stun (h2/h3)
> > > -less shield recharge wait (h2/h3)
> > > -higher jump (h2/h3)
> > > -fast melees (h2/h4)
> > > -grenade count of 4 (h1/h2)
> > > -flashlight (h1/h2/h3)
> > > -bigger Field of View (h1)
> > > -less autoaim/magnetism
> > > -Campaign exclusive weapons, vehicles, AAs
> >
> > I agree with all but the bigger field of view, unless that was universal for everyone.
> >
> > It would be WAY too jarring to go from two different field of views.
>
> Yeah it would be universal. I imagine the Xbone allowing more rendering, and a large FoV definitely looks better (here’s Halo 4’s Chief with a bigger FoV).

Makes the BR look cool, but it’s disorienting as hell.

20

> Makes the BR look cool, but it’s disorienting as hell.

Well, mainly that’s because the level wasn’t designed with that extreme FoV in mind, everything looks disproportionate and silly.

Here’s a bit better example.