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> I’m always trying to look at this from the point of view of “It this had been released as an immediate follow-up (in this case to CE), would I have recognized it as such?”. Because if something claims to be X, it better have some similarity to the thing that defined X in the first place. That’s not the definitive correct way to the problem (otherwise there would be one correct answer to the Ship of Theseus as well) but it is the way I approach the problem.
> This can make for some very controverse debates, specifically in the realm of video games: Is GTA5 a GTA game? Is Zelda II even a Zelda game?
> Is H5G a Halo game? Me, personally, for the first time in the franchise, I’m saying no. With both run’n’gun and weapon consistency removed, it’s the first game in the main series (not counting spinoffs such as Wars) that it has more dissimilarities from the original than similarities. While prior games already changed the movement mechanics, at least the shooting was (somewhat) faithful to the franchise’s roots so I could recognize the overall game as part thereof. With H5G that is no longer the case and as such I refuse to call it by its full name to validate its claim of affiliation.
>
> So in the end, both of you are right, depending on which philosophy you follow. Are the 343 games Halo games? Sure: They were released under the official brand name by the legal IP owner. Their content gradually grew from each consecutive title in the series. And nope: They do not follow the design principles the franchise was based upon and look, sound and play nothing like the original. And plenty of in-between-answers are correct as well, depending on how and where you draw the line. It doesn’t help that different people already have different perceptions of what “Halo” is, even if they started at the same time with the same game, it only gets worse if you factor in those who came in later and are basing their opinion on a different baseline entirely.
Yeah I was aware this is at least similar to a ship of Theseus argument. But here, rather than each plank being replaced, and me claiming that it’s the same ship, a few planks on the starboard side of the bow have been replaced, a few other planks have been polished, and the ships been painted another colour.
It’s still a boat that’s intended to go across water. It shares most of it’s design with it’s former self, and most parts are actually the same. Not to mention, Theseus is standing next to the boat holding a sign that points to the boat, and says “this is my boat”.
I may’ve taken that analogy too far, but ultimately, new movement or old, Halo 5 shares most of the weapons from Halo CE, it shares motifs and imagery, it shares characters, and it shares vehicles. It shares a story, it shares a genre and it shares a campaign structure for the most part. I think an argument that “Halo 5 is not Halo” must either be a disguise placed on a weaker sounding but more honest statement of emotion, or really thoroughly contextualized. To make a claim that some specific variation on something has crossed the line to make it something else, when by most accounts majority has stayed the same, you really should provide the empirical formula upon which you’re forming that judgement, or sparing that, just the angle you’re going at it from.
I fundamentally don’t understand how it’s useful for me to say “Halo 2, Halo Reach and Halo 5 are not Halo games” without adding that my objective method of judging this is “For a game to be a Halo game, one must be in control of Master Chief the whole time”. Giving that context allows other people to agree or disagree based on an actual understanding of what the argument entails, and makes it go from a thinly veiled emotional statement to an argument that can be challenged.
What recourse does someone even have when someone else says “Halo X is not a Halo game”? The argument can only really go two ways - one is “I think Halo X is a Halo game because it’s got X,Y and Z” to which, the original commenter replies “Yeah but it doesn’t have W, which is a crucial feature in a Halo game”, at which point saying that at the start would have saved both people time; and the other is just a useless shouting match.
It’s just a bad argument. I can say “Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo Reach and Halo 4 are not Halo games” with about as much merit as someone would argue the same about Halo 5.
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> CE is objectively more balanced than H5G.
Also I wasn’t claiming Halo 5 was balanced, just that CE was unbalanced, and that Halo 3 (and I would argue Halo 4 without loadouts and armour abilities) were much more balanced games, at least in 4v4 / 8v8 settings. I would also say that the CE Magnum being as powerful as it was, and 4v4/8v8 spawns being so broken meant that, even compared to Halo 5, CE is a pretty unballanced game.
