Hey guys,
I’m sure this has been posted about but I wanted to get my two cents out there, though I realize H6 is most likely too far along in development for this to make a difference. First, some background. I’ve been playing since 05, could have played before but I didn’t have access to an xbox. My best memories were stomping around Delta Halo with ODSTs, and I still remember my first match on xbox live. Back then not everyone had xbl, and you would run the gauntlet of competing with all of your neighbors to see who was the best Halo player. The chance to test my skills against other people across the world was fricken mind blowing. So needless to say, I’m not new to this series, and I guess I’m kind of old school when it comes to this community. But…
I say that to set a precedence before I tell you this: I think Halo 5 has the best multiplayer out of all of them. I know what you’re thinking, sacrilege, but seriously…with the exception of spartan charge and ground pound(which in my opinion need to go, as there is no hard counter, thus they inherently detract from competitive gameplay) H5 has the silkiest, smoothest, and most intuitive gameplay I think I’ve seen(excluding the weapon tuning update which I think ruined the BR). The enhanced mobility, excluding the two abilities I just mentioned, feels like a natural evolution of the gameplay. The ability to duck and strafe adds new depth to gun battles, and the motion tracker is now tuned to be useful but not overpowered. The grenades go exactly where you feel like they should go, and the hitscan means no random BR spread, thank God. That being said, I think there are obviously some things they can do to make this experience better overall.
First of all firefight, or warzone or whatever you want to call it, is absolutely terrible. It’s a great idea, take your friends and go roleplay as spartans on missions. That’s a great idea on paper, however when it comes to execution you end up with the mess that is mythic warzone firefight. Absolutely atrocious in every way. Enemies spawing behind you, or deep in a corner so dense you cant get to the bosses they are protecting(especially since they activate iron skull and you die in 5 hits from a grunt plasma pistol). It’s terrible. I’ll say the same thing here I said in the Ghost Recon forum on Reddit, the way to make things fun and add difficulty at the same time, is not to add enemies that cheat. That is literally the laziest thing you could possibly do as a game dev. I played 8 games of mythic firefight today and lost every single one, because nobody could get to the stupid elder hunters in the back of Escape from ARC. That’s not difficulty 343, that’s a broken game mode.
Second, obviously the art style from the original games needs to come back. That doesn’t mean get rid of the armors we have, though I hate them. Keep seeker for those weirdos that like that crap, but give us more of the stuff we love. Halo has a tone, like Blade Runner or Star Wars. You can’t just walk in and change the BR and Pelican. Like, seriously? What were you guys thinking? Also the old enemies looked better.
Third, again with weapon tuning, you guys need to look at what EA is doing with BFV, and what Ubisoft is doing with Siege. The live service model fits perfectly with this franchise. This gives you the opportunity to test and roll out seamless updates on balancing and bug fixes, while giving the community time to test said implementations. In addition, Warzone should not be a scripted rinse and repeat game mode, but instead should be a sandbox that can be tweaked and made to fit different scenarios. The idea is to keep gameplay fresh, so use it as a tool to think up new adventures which can be changed before they get too stale. This could also be an interesting way to implement what you failed to do with Spartan ops. Think of the Special Operations that Ghost Recon is doing, they just added a mission with Sam Fisher, and it was awesome. Imagine the stories from the Halo universe that could be represented in such an open game mode. This also opens doors for community involvement but that’s a topic for a different time.
And fourth, though I don’t think it really needs to be said at this point, Campaign. Firstly, can I just say how lame the Prometheans are. Every enemy in Halo used to have a weakness. Elites were tough to hit and would hide behind cover, but if you flank them or use grenades you could catch them with their shields down. Or use a sniper rifle or plasma pistol to drop their shields and leave them exposed. Compare this to the gameplay loop for Promethean soldiers. You shoot at them, they dont seem to be affected. You throw a grenade. They teleport away. Finally after 2 boring minutes, you kill them, only to be swarmed by the worlds most infuriating enemy. Crawlers. Yes, crawlers, the things that are invincible unless you shoot them in the face. Or maybe we could even look at knights. You shoot them, they fire back with some ridiculous overpowered weapon, eventually you break through their armor, they charge you and kill you in one melee hit regardless of your health…it’s just boring and cheap. They aren’t fun to fight. The covenant were fun. The flood were challenging but fun. Prometheans are lame, cheating, badly programmed excuses for enemies.
Also, you guys need to seriously hire some writers that know what they’re doing. Despite what the publishers want you to believe, story matters in games. Writing matters. What you did with H4 and Cortana had real emotional value. All of that was lost on H5. Take inspiration from literature if you have to, but appeal to our emotions here. Tell a story that shows character growth and for God’s sake don’t sacrifice the reputation of an established character to show that a new one is bad -Yoink-. Use cinematography techniques from movies, your cutscenes are great, they just need to tell a story that actually invests the players. Then do all of that, have the main character shut the hell up during the gameplay sequences, and bring back that 30 second gameplay loop that got us all hooked, all in a compelling, action packed return to the franchise that honors the original DNA of Halo and doesn’t try to be something it isn’t. It’s that easy.
And on a side note, please never bring back the reticule being in the lower third of the screen. Again I love Halo but I always hated how Bungie decided to do that. It’s so awkward. It’s great where it is in H5. Thanks for reading, and hopefully H6 doesn’t break my heart like Battlefield 5 did.
Jon A045