For years (basically two decades) a common and overused argument was the sandbox “purity” argument. Why is Halo 3 not the best Halo? because its sandbox has too much redundancy. Why is Halo 4/5 not good? Again, too much redundancy. Now we go to 2021 and 343i have made the least redundant sandbox in Halo history, yes, even less redundant in my opinion than CE was.
Yet I don’t hear anyone praising this game for this…
Sandbox purity at its core is a solid concept, however, there is ZERO evidence that it does anything besides hurt a game. Infinite looks awesome, but honestly its a bit boring/unfun compared to Halo 5’s crazy amount of weaponry. Often sandbox “purity” is just used as an excuse to hate on any Halo that isn’t CE, ignoring the fact that Halo has always had tons of redundancy and that the most popular Halo (Halo 3) was no exception to this.
Another example of people needing to be careful what they wish for… Halo Infinite could’ve been unbelievable in terms of its sandbox, boasting all the cool weapons/vehicles from 5 plus the new banished stuff, now we are just left with a sandbox that lacks depth and replayability.
Too few weapons is better than too much, because it’s easy to solve. I really hated how un-creative weapons in H4/5 were. H4’s Forerunner weapons were just glowing orange human guns. Halo 5 had too much weapons, and they all were uninteresting.
Infinite sandbox is way better, because each weapon really feels unique. And apart from the classic Shotgun, Fuel Rod Gun and CE’s Plasma Rifle, I think the game has a complete arsenal right now.
As for vehicles, only the Wasp sucks, like everything from Halo 5. It’s just a UNSC Banshee, instead of the muli-seats Hornet and Falcon that felt more unique.
@Thee_Bluejay See what you did??? You brought them into the picture. Now I have to listen to people making sense when I don’t want them to. In all seriousness the lack of guns in this game is disturbing and the new ones are horrible. Can we please go back to the over-inflated sandbox now?
I do think they did an excellent job with weapon balancing. I want to see some of the old weapons like shotgun and plasma rifle come back, but I do think the weapon sandbox is pretty great.
If you play competitive (Ranked) its not a big deal, as we are used to having very few weapons there, but in BTB/Campaign its a huge disappointment. I want to use a wider array of weapons to melt my enemies with. I want more enemy variety then what we have seen so far (Prometheans were cool, though overdone)
Having redundant/useless weapon just made the game fun. And worse of all it’s negatively affect the campaign, we don’t have the spiker nor brute shot because of it. There not a single plasma rifle alternative for the banish to use nor a traditional sniper rifle which will make the campaign sandbox especially small and boring imo
It’s harder to delete weapons because people will complain, but adding more weapons down the line is a better choice because you have more time and feedback. Quality over quantity.
The Hydra isn’t very interesting. It’s just a mix of a shotgun and a rocket/grenade launcher. All the Forerunner worked like human weapons. Halo 5 was quantity over quality.
You don’t have arguments so you just try to make fun of me.
The Wasp is just a human Banshee: they’re both aircrafts usable by a single person with high fire power and mobility. But UNSC vehicles are supposed to be more about teamwork, hence why the Warthog, the Scorpion, the Mongoose, the Hornet and the Falcon are all capable of having passengers.
The Chopper and the Ghost are actually different. The Ghost is more mobile, it’s faster and can turn quickly. The Chopper is heavier and slower, it’s harder to turn but to compensate its weapon is a bit stronger and it can ram vehicles.
Okay, I’ll admit that I always preferred H4’s Sticky Detonator to Reach’s Grenade Launcher.
Honestly, the only good thing about a small weapon sandbox is that it’s easier to balance. I don’t think for a second 343 doesn’t plan on bringing back a ton of weapons and adding completely new ones. I think the real goal is to get this small pool of weapons balanced properly, and then add more later.
