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> I’m utterly devastated by this turn of events, so please excuse the following outpouring. I’d not realised this was actually a legitimate development (or rather non-development) in the run up to Halo 5s release!! I’ve played Halo since CE on the Xbox with my brother, side by side. My friends without Xbox’s or the financial means to purchase them also played with us and I clocked up so many runs on CE co-op that it is more than I can count. Everyone in my social, bar none, enjoyed the communal experience of split-screen co-op and when that was done we would naturally all pile into multiplayer. 4 player split-screen was a total thrill and my best mate, his younger sisters and I, along with many others would play through the day and long into the night to experience such unbridled social joy that we had not had on a console since Quake III on the Dreamcast. To see this legacy feature taken out to pasture and shot like a lame horse puts nails into the coffin of my youth.
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> Fast forward to Halo 2. We were lucky enough in our house to be early adopters of broadband and so I was able to experience the birth of Xbox Live in its early days. Sure, the experience of playing against people from all over the world was phenomenal. Nothing can take that away from the Halo 2 experience, but it was local multi-player, and local co-op that cemented the game experience for us all. Once again, side by side with my brother and our mates we went through the campaign together and followed the tale of the Chief and the Arbiter and everything was as it should be. Heck, I was hospitalised for a considerable time in 2005 and brought my Xbox into hospital with me. It may sound far-fetched but I am sure the experience of playing co-op \ multi with people near me - friends, family, fellow hospitalee’s - as opposed to in isolation aided my recovery and I am sure others will have similar heartwarming moments to recount. Taking away local co-op and limiting multi is an insult to the importance that local play can have on so many levels. Its not just about being able to play WITH SOMEONE but being able to PLAY TOGETHER!!
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> Many people here have spoken passionately about Halo Night. This is still a thing for many people. Before COD, before dude-bros and screaming 13 year olds and the like that people vociferously castigate when complaining about the state of online communities these days there was Halo Night. Pure. unadulterated, multiplayer, split screen, madness. Again, the experience of 4, or later 8, then 12 and EVEN SIXTEEN people on 4 consoles with 4 controllers apiece was something you simply did not get with any other game. We didn’t all have the luxury of broadband, and even those that did couldn’t guarantee that we could all meet up online at the same time. But you MADE TIME for Halo Night, for the experience of being in the same room (or, the entire floor space of my mates flat with more tangled ethernet, power and controller cables than logistics or indeed common fire-safety principles would have thought possible) and sharing food and drink and camaraderie. This sort of thing categorically cannot be found online as the experience is sterilised. Can I congratulate my mate on a great head-shot kill out of nowhere with a physical high five or clap on the shoulder when he’s in one place and I another? NO. Can I punch him for spending the remainder of the same match camped in the same one spot I just can’t quite reach and sniping me in similar fashion repeatedly? NO.
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> Halo 3, ODST, Reach and even Halo 4 expanded on these brilliant times with beautiful and memorable experiences that I won’t lengthen this post yet further recounting. Co-op through all of these campaigns was ALWAYS the first thing we did. Heck, I didn’t even play Halo 3 solo for about 2 years after I bought it because the co-op and multi was so strong in my opinion!! Firefight was a tremendous feature - and we admittedly got more play time out of it on Reach than on ODST- but specifically when played locally with people you could immediately communicate with and strategise with. Fair enough, with broadband infrastructure becoming more widespread and affordable during these times I found that more and more of our time was spent playing on Live but it was nigh-on always split screen multi with brothers, friends, family and the like. We got so used to the size of 2,3,4 screen splits that on the rare occasion we logged in solo it threw off our game!!
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> Halo has always been a communal experience. Far more so than many of the other shooter franchises out there. Its legacy is in 2 people taking on the Covenant together. God knows, it made going through levels such as The Library bearable!! Its legacy is in those four people huddled round a CRT screen clutching their controllers and playing round after round of multiplayer. Sure, Xbox Live laid the foundations for what online console multiplayer, whether on Halo or otherwise, has become but in its roots surely lies the necessity for REAL FRIENDS not just ‘‘People I play online with and profess to like’’. Not that I’m saying people don’t have real friends online and or don’t play with them but I am talking about a tangibly real physical, emotional connection. Halo is about many things, but one of those that is most important to me is that Halo is about bonding. The more bonding elements that are removed from Halo the more shallow the experience will become until Halo is reduced to a generic shooter that has nothing to set it apart from the other shelf-fillers.
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> Prior to writing this post my brother and I have been going right back to the beginning of the saga and endeavouring to complete the Master Chief Collection in its entirety in preparation for the launch of Halo 5, secure in the knowledge that once we have managed it we will once again be able to pick up our weapons of choice and battle through whatever may face us in Guardians. Now it appears this may not happen and I am left feeling strangely empty, saddened, bereft. Thinking of not being able to play Halo as we have always played Halo is a very alien feeling.
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> I appreciate many peoples opinions in not regretting the loss of split-screen co-op or multi. I understand the logistical implications for developing Halo 5 without such features. However all those reasons seem, to me, to fly in the face of the core foundations that Halo was built on. Sure, more people play online these days but what of those that don’t or can’t? What of people who can’t afford a new console, a new TV, a new copy of Halo or don’t even have the space (certainly given that at least in the UK the average house ‘‘footprint’’ is significantly less than that in the US) to facilitate such extravagant expenditure? It seems counter-intuitive from a financial standpoint to not be trying to make a game that is viable for as many people as possible. Sure, many people here have and will undoubtedly continue to say ‘‘Yeah, it doesn’t affect me so meh’’. That attitude flies only so far however. What happens if Halo 5 tanks? What if we don’t get Halo 6 or it is further castrated? At what point will it begin to affect you?
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Wow,you put a lot of passion and effort into writing this. I think you should post it to one of 343 employees, its a long shot but since you put a lot of effort into this they might actually listen.
Thank you based 343.