So what do you guys do when you are hyped to play Halo 5?
I am always checking the forums to see if anything new pops up as well as Game Informer, IGN and Reddit. I’ve got the soundtrack to Halo 4 blasting in my ears (right now my favorite tracks are Legacy, Revival, Wreckage). I’m thinking about how crazy this game is going to be. I find myself daydreaming about how the story will go, what the characters will say to each other.
I’m absolutely pumped to see this new gamemode from E3. I’ve also heard there will be space battles in the Campaign? This is nuts and the only space battle I’ve seen in a video game that was truly epic was Shepard’s Fleet vs the Reapers in Mass Effect 3. I hope Halo 5’s can top it or at least stack up to something like that.
Halo 5 really is shaping up to be the definitive sci-fi shooter. It’s also keeping up the tradition of being a game that has soul and character. This is really the edge that Halo will always have over anything more generic. Never have I seen a series as well known for both its campaign and its multiplayer, save for Gears of War and even then, Halo has proved itself to have much more. To be honest, looking back at the campaigns of the old trilogy, they did well for their time. But for me, personally, I find those games to be very weak in the story telling and character development department by today’s standards. Halo 4 got me back to loving Halo, the story was just right for me. It also got me looking at game mechanics and taking a huge interest in game design. There is so much to be learned from any game.
To see changes like the Revive mechanic and squad ordering, along with a brand new massive MP mode, it really tells me that they are serious about crafting a brand new experience. The series really has never gotten this much love and attention before. It’s like if your dad passed on his favorite car to you after he passed away, he might have taken pretty good care of it and it will always have meaning to him, but to you, it’s a relic. You would guard it with your life. It’s almost more important to you now because of its legacy, what it meant to another person and what that person meant to you makes this object mean so much more to you.
It can be almost impossible to create something legendary and truly amazing out of thin air, just look at Destiny. But when you have the ground-work laid out for you, when the blueprint is in front of you and you have something to build off of that people already love, that’s when the real magic happens.
Look at things like Batman. Batman was always a huge deal but the recent “Dark Knight” take on the character has completely reinvented the phenomenon and taken it to the next level. The Avengers used to just be a comic as well, lots of people knew who they were, but now they are more popular than ever before.
The same thing will happen with Halo. Sure, Halo 5 will not be the perfect game, it will have it’s flaws, as any game does. But it will be Halo taken to the next level, it will be one of the increasingly rare triple-A shooters to have a soul of it’s own. It’s a game that I can honestly say interests me with all of its offerings.
What other game can I play that has such iconic characters, memorable story moments with a huge expanded universe and on the other side of the coin, a rich and deep multiplayer experience that thousands of other people, including myself, love?