This is probably sort of a fringe viewpoint these days, but I’m as old school Halo as you can get, so I wanted to share some basic feelings that reverberate around the Halo CE purist circles.
I was tunnelling my network with Xbox Connect back before Xbox Live even existed, using a classic PC interface to find available games and honest, frank discussion with our hosts on what we wanted to play. Four nerds in a basement, using our brains to play console games on the internet. It was awesome. What made it awesome was the control we had over it. We could find people that didn’t seem like enormous jerkwads, people who were fun to play against, and literally just sit around all night playing against the same four dudes who we had never known previously. Our CTF games on Blood Gulch were endurance trials more than anything - multiple-hour long matches to three points.
Then Halo 2 came along and literally ruined everything. I don’t believe it was the removal of the wildly overpowered pistol or man-eating assault rifle or the stun-inducing plasma rifle (though, let’s be honest, that was pretty awesome) that did it. I realize that Halo CE’s balance was – how to put this gently – questionable (even though, if you consider the O.G. pistol a ‘power weapon’ using today’s parlance, it’s basically like playing a game of Snipers, where every player has a power weapon, giving the whole thing a sense of balance.)
That said, what I’d like from 343i is just to stick true to the fact that Halo 2 is the -Yoink- child of the franchise. As much crying and rage as there is with Reach and as many uneducated children who may fantasize about the old days of ridiculous exploits and carpal-tunal-inducing controller death grips, Halo 2 almost killed the Halo experience for an old vet like me. Broken campaign, crap co-op, and matchmaking felt like a rather severe restriction on what was, at its core, a multiplayer element with limitless potential. What’s the point of having an infinite number of gametype combinations if I’m only ever going to get to play the two standard modes what’s designated by someone else?
I’m not some heretic suggesting you drop matchmaking because it’s suddenly everyone’s favorite thing in the world. (Despite the fact that the ancient ways of the server system have served us well on the PC for decades) I’m suggesting, in the future, you supplement it with something Bungie was calling ‘Recruiting’ for Halo 3.
From a 1UP interview from (Christ) five years ago:
"1UP: There was no way to “search” for a particular gametype in Halo 2 matchmaking. Will there be a way for players to search for a particular map or mode?
Colm Nelson User Interface Designer: We are definitely taking steps to solve the issue of people wanting to play custom games and not having friends online to play with. We’ll have more details on how this is being accomplished in the near future."
That was five years ago. And before the children freak out and flame me, some of us don’t have time to sit around on message boards and coordinate schedules to be able to play games with internet friends, so we’d really like to hop on and just find, specifically, “CTF” games. Don’t care if it’s weird CTF. Don’t care if it’s a custom map. Don’t care about anything. Show me the C-T-F. Eventually, the best version of the game’s settings will be distilled by the player base, just as CTF Pro became the go-to game fro Blood Gulch back in those days of yore (not Coagulation. BG).
Second points of interest are less important, but are confusing notes for me.
Bungie made the choice from Halo 3 to Halo Reach to remove multiplayer theater functionality in favor of the rewind feature. I want to make this perfectly clear: what they said was that they prioritized rewind over multi-person theater lobbies. Since doing that, Call of Duty has thoroughly kicked their -Yoink- in the saved films department. Not only can you watch it with your friends right at that moment, immediately following your game, when the experience was hilarious and awesome enough to warrant everyone watching it, but you can edit clips together and do incredible things. Reach took a definitive step backward with its Theater mode. I just can’t understand the reasoning behind that. So, for me, the future would include the return of multi-person Theater over Live. I like the File Browser just fine in Reach, and recommendations are cool, but that simple lack of friends watching the thing with me was hugely disappointing.
A Sense of Wonder: One of the defining aspects of Halo CE, and, I believe, the reason the franchise truly, truly exploded was the sense of wonder that infused every aspect of the game. Everything was new, different, and strange. Halo 4 has the unique opportunity to embrace this again. So, tell us very nearly nothing before the game comes out. Flesh out an all-new storyline that’s as fascinating and engaging to explore and discover as the first one. Since the original Halo, all we’ve been doing is trying to live up to the promise of Halo 2’s E3 2003 trailer (which only Halo 3: ODST actually did) - huge, epic pitched battles between aliens and humans on a human planet. Turns out that’s not what Halo is really about. Halo, as Voc and Cocopjojo noted on AJ, is really about the mysteries of its universe.
Now, I know those dudes work here now, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for the decision to acquire their talents, but it’s worth reiterating how important that particular aspect is.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand scene. Thanks for the patience in reading what was probably way too much text.