The drought of Infinite information continues to plague us and many of my waking hours are spent ruminating on what is in store for us when the dam breaks and we’re flooded with all things Halo once again. Starved of anything yet, my mind has been conjuring up the wildest of fantasies, most recently was my vision for the return of Spartan Ops.
I jumped on board the Halo 4 bandwagon late, hadn’t experienced any of the hype in its lead up and wasn’t actually aware of its existence until a few months after its release when I walked into a GAME store and saw it on the shelf. Mostly I was confused, I never thought we’d get a Halo 4. I bought the game there and then and rushed home to play it. I loaded up the campaign straight away and played it all the way through. It certainly felt different gameplay-wise, but I loved the story and the way it was told. Upon completion of the campaign I found Spartan Ops, I was thrilled at the prospect of more story content and as a long time fan of Halo’s expanded universe of lore it was something I couldn’t have dreamed of. The reality of course didn’t quite live up to my expectations, the story was competent and the cinematic were great but again it was let down on the gameplay front. Rather than being a testbed for new ideas within the sandbox, it was simply a map full of enemies, sometimes there were objectives but it almost always devolved into clearing the map of all those enemies. Halo is fun enough to keep playing that scenario a few times, but without any real depth it becomes incredibly tedious very quickly.
In my mind Spartan Ops could and should have been more. I was sad to see that it wouldn’t be returning in Halo 5 and I think that it could return in Halo Infinite, however what I envision for it would make it nigh unrecognisable from the original Spartan Ops.
First of all, what I am proposing would not be free episodic content but in fact paid content and Spartan Ops would simply be a name that groups this content together or would potentially be the name of a ‘Season Pass’ style of package. We’ve seen that 343 are open to making story dlc, as they did for Halo Wars 2, and that that content can be made to a high standard, which makes me feel encouraged in my speculation.
The return of Spartan Ops could be an opportunity for 343 to create the first story dlc for a mainline Halo game and this dlc could guide 343 in its future endeavours.
The crux of my idea, is that this story dlc could be an opportunity to find out what each of the Spartans and Spartan Fireteams are up to, taking place anywhere from post-Halo 5 all the way to post-Infinite (if infinite’s story allows for it). Each piece of dlc could focus on a different Fireteam/Spartan and each one could experiment with different themes, gameplay mechanics or genres within the Halo universe.
A number of the ideas that I’ve had are as follows:
A campaign following Blue Team minus the Master Chief, with at least one playable mission for Fred, Kelly and Linda. It would give a chance to develop these fan favourite characters for people who are only fans of the games. Each of the three would play differently and would have their signature weapon, Fred is kind of an all-rounder in the canon but is also known for being an expert with knives when attacking with melee he could always use one of his knives rather than bashing an enemy with the weapon he has in hand, Kelly would have increased movement speed and carry Oathsworn and Linda would carry Nornfang and have overall increased range and accuracy.
A campaign following Fireteam Osiris with Gabriel Thorne swapped out for Buck. It would be an opportunity to expand and improve upon the squad mechanics from Halo 5, which frankly existed in name only, take far more inspiration from Star Wars Republic Commando. You would only play as Locke, commanding a squad of competent AI companions just as you do in Republic Commando with a similar set of commands and ways to interact with the world (door breaches and the like) these could also be instigated by you. Co-op functionality could act as it does in Halo 5 and the host could continue to direct the squad but then it would be a question of whether your co-op squadmates listen or not (classic halo co-op fun could abound). Again it would be a chance to flesh out Fireteam Osiris’ members in a meaningful way.
A campaign following Alpha-Nine post Bad Blood, reminiscent of Halo 3: ODST. The drop pod sequence and opening mission could be from Buck’s point of view, then you would be let out into a large open map to find the rest of the squad, with a linear mission to meet up with each member; Mickey, Romeo, Dutch and Gretchen, then a final mission with the squad fighting together. There could be secrets to find in the large open map.
A campaign following Kilo-Five where you play as Naomi. In this we could have the ability to fully customise weapons and loadouts as this is known to be Naomi’s particular talent. We could see some RPG-lite mechanics with the customisation of armour too, not necessarily in its appearance but it’s abilities which could open different options for gameplay. There would be an opportunity for some classic ‘solo spartan fighting alongside marine’ moments as Naomi fights alongside Mal and Vaz.
A campaign following Tom and Lucy. Despite being trainers for the new Spartan IV’s, the events of Halo 5 would likely have catapulted them back into the action and personally I would love to see what the two are up to. While they would likely have upgraded to the Mjolnir Mark 2 platform, it would be great to have them equipped in SPI armour (it being the first appearance of the armour in the games to my knowledge) and have a more stealth based experience, with a heavier focus on stealth than the half baked stealth mechanics that existed in Halo 3: ODST, with silenced weapons allowing for completely stealthy encounters. They could even be leading a group of Spartans from Gamma Comapny.
Some of the other Spartan Fireteams we could follow are - Red Team on the Ark, Omega Team, Grey Team, the real Spartan Team Black (who turn out to not be dead and have had their deaths faked), any number of Gamma Company Spartan-III’s (which could open interesting gameplay with their mutagens, maybe even adding an interesting mechanic with smoothers and having to find/take them, potential for some interesting story stuff here too) or Spartan-IV’s, maybe even a campaign for our multiplayer Spartan to canonically take part in (just as they do in the original Spartan Ops), we could see Ash, Olivia and Mark and have some gameplay/story of Spartans outside of armour.
These story expansions could be a great place for 343 to test concepts for spin-off games or just try something new and it would be a great way to introduce fans of the games to some of the other awesome Spartans out there in the universe. It could even be the place to try some new genres like a first-person survival horror, maybe even fighting the one-eyed forerunner construct from the early Promethean Knight concept work. Maybe even a place to fight in one location against one singular race of enemies and introduce some of the units from other media, such as battling on Bahalo against Grunt Goblins and Methane wagons.
I believe that if the content is of high quality, something like this would actually sell very well and story expansions like this would certainly help extend the life of the game.
Thanks for reading, let me know what you think.