There are so many threads talking about what is NOT Halo. Armor abilities are not Halo, Iron Sights are not Halo, Bloom is not Halo, classes are not Halo. There are always these arguments going on every day on this forum. I wanted to make a thread that instead of explaining what isn’t Halo, give an overview of Halo’s basics and what halo is at its core.
First of all, Halo is a competitive shooter. Everyone starts on equal terms and there is no way of having an upper hand on your opinion unless you are just better. Weapons spawn on the map, adding a dynamic of map control. A player has more health than a typical shooter and they do not die instantly, giving them a chance to fight back and make a good play.
It is because of this things such as a class system can not exist in Halo. There is a thread pulling for a class system in Halo 4 right now, and I can tell you why its bad. Adding a class system is not only a completely generic multiplayer system that has been copied by nearly every multiplayer game of the past 4 years, but it would also disrupt the Halo formula. A class system allows the player to choose there own weapons and equipment. This means players start with different equipment meaning some people are better suited for specific encounters. This causes imbalances and makes the game situational. This violates the competitive nature of halo. Also, with a typical class system, you spawn with all your weapons and equipment and weapons are not located on the map. This means map control is less important and causes problems with power weapons. It would completely go against the Halo system which has stayed strong for a decade now.
Secondly, Halo is fast paced. Compared to other games, you move quicker, jump higher, switch weapons faster, grenades are thrown nearly instantly, and everything happens extremely fast. Games like Battlefield and Killzone feel very clunky and slow. Strafing is nearly useless, and command inputs have a longer delay. Halo is for the most part incredibly responsive and intuitive. It has a simple, yet flawless control scheme that matches the players reactions to actions on the screen. It is because of Halo’s fast paced nature things like iron sights can not be added. When iron sights are activated in the game your movement is slowed and you enter a state of aiming. In Halo, everything happens at full speed. Shooting, throwing grenades, and switching weapons all flow effortlessly along with the movement system. In Halo you are shooting, bouncing nades, jumping and strafing at a very quick pace. In Cod or battlefield, everything you do means you can’t do something else. For example to shoot someone at a distance you must first enter iron sights mode, greatly slowing your speed. You shoot and then need to throw a grenade. You must exit iron sights mode, press the nade button, that takes a few seconds to activate, you throw it, there is another delay, and then you are back to your standard phase. While things like switching weapons, throwing nades, and using equipment are all things you do outside of being fired upon, in Halo they can all be used in combat, quickly and responsively. ( I hope that made sense, tried to explain that as best I could.)
Thirdly, the game is balanced. The weapons all have a specific roll and work good for different situations. The shotgun is good in close quarters, the sniper at long range, the BR at mid range, etc. Now when I say balanced I do not mean every weapon is as good as one another. Obviously a Rocket is more powerful than a pistol and so on. But a Rocket is less available making its power a coveted trait, while a pistol is far weaker but also much more available.
Fourthly, randomness is at a minimum. Things like Bloom go against this notion by adding randomness to your shots. A Halo weapon needs to be reliable and less prone to failing you do to randomness and things that don’t really make a lot of sense. In a typical multiplayer shooter, killing someone is very random. You can spray a few shots at a guy and clip him nearly instantly, or sometimes you could shoot a guy and it takes a full clip. Halo is not like this. In halo you basically know exactly how weak your opponent is and what you need to do to finish them off. For example, when an enemy is injured there will be a visual cue on there armor of their shields flaring up. The more vivid and encasing the shield flare is, the closer it is to “popping”. When your opponent has his shields bright and covering most of his or her body, you know they are about to pop and that tells you that one shot will pop the shield and a headshot will be a kill. Because the game is not random, there are reliable systems a good player can track and recognize that they can use to their advantage. For example, a headshot on a shieldless opponent always ends in a kill. In Reach’s case, 4 shots anywhere with the DMR pop your enemies shields. A Sniper Rifle is always one shot to the head, or two shots to the body. Halo has, in my opinion, the best sniping out there. It is rewarding, and has a flawless system. If you hit there head, they die, if you hit there body, they are one shot. In Cod you can snipe someone in the chest and they will die, then you can snipe someone else in the same place and they will live. It is completely random and makes no sense.
Finally, Halo is simple. It doesn’t need a million unlocks or 80,000 different ranks to be fun, it just is. Reach strayed away from the Halo formula and in my opinion, is barely Halo at all. Now I am not saying that Halo can not experiment. Things like Armor Abilities, and loadouts may have a place somewhere. But there needs to always be a place where the core of Halo remains. No gimmicks, no bloom, no randomess. Just you, your guns, your nades, and good aim. A place where map control is necessary and teamwork is the key to winning. I’m all for adding new things, but there must always be a place where people can go, to just simply play good old fashion Halo.
Those are my thoughts. No TL;DR. What do you think Halo is?