I haven’t played COD games much; at least not since they moved past WW2; so I’m not all the way sure what they’re up to over there.
But what did game informer show us/tell us so far?
Campaign - Master Chief, Cortana. Have some -Yoink- to deal with, character development could be cool. Will be interesting to see how the writing team does (not sure if it’s lots of people from bungie, but even if so…they didn’t need to write a ton of dialogue/stuff before, which it sounds like it might be different this time). New enemy, cool. So far good stuff there, not seeing any COD invasion.
Spartan Ops. up to 4 person co-op, trying to accomplish missions. Which have a story behind them, and 5 new missions are released each week for a few months. Free. Sounds pretty cool. Reminds me of Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, which was/is fun. I think this will be a step up from firefight; keeping it more interesting than defeating waves of predictable enemies. Again, if anything…this mode is drawing on Mass Effect rather than COD.
Multiplayer. Lots of stuff in here. Sprint for everybody. I don’t think this is necessarily COD, but has been a trend in shooters for a while. Shooters tend to be most enjoyable when in the middle of the action, in the firefights; and increasing movement speed lets you get there faster. It increases the pacing of the game and probably makes it more enjoyable. Sprint was an armor ability in reach, optional; and was often superior to some of the weird other abilities. When given a choice, I’d likely go with sprint which is useful in most cases rather than an ability that is less versatile. With everybody getting sprint, you can experiment more with the other abilities and have more varied gameplay. Some influence from COD? Sure, but also from just about every other shooter currently out there.
Spartan points? Just another name for the progression mechanic. Credits → cR, spartan points → SP. Doesn’t matter much what you call it. “Points” sounds kind of silly, but maybe they’ll work it into the multiplayer training exercises storyline. Your spartan shows up as a new recruit for the program, and must prove him/herself before he/she is trusted with the more advanced loadouts/abilities/weapons/things. That’s fair…you wouldn’t want the new guy to get a jetpack right away and get himself killed with it, flying too far over an empty pit on a map like the Cage.
Customizable loadouts…being able to select primary/secondary weapons, armor ability, and an additional modification; all of which you buy with your spartan points, does seem like a COD feature. Halo has always been about a fairly level playing field at spawn, and you would win/lose a match based on your skill/experience/luck. Now, if you’re able to spawn with superior weapons/armor abilities right away, that seems like it’d take away that core fairness. But we don’t know much if anything about how those things will be implemented. Perhaps the initial core loadouts will be open to everybody, and well balanced. You’d just be able to use, say, a plasma rifle instead of an AR as your secondary if you unlock it. Or something that remains mostly fair. Or they could have gametypes force loadouts on people, and override whatever they pre-set (in an arena/mlg/ranked/classic playlist, for example).
Press “x” to respawn: will destroy objective gametypes, but I beleieve 343 is smarter than that and will not apply it to all playlists/gametypes. And even in slayer games, to make it not break everything; they’ll need to be careful with spawn placement and respawning mechanics so the recently slain foe doesn’t respawn right behind you and finish you off before your shields come back. Both things, I’m sure they are aware of and can balance sufficiently. With those taken care of, faster spawns only increase the pace and the time spent in battle, arguably the more interesting/fun part of multiplayer. More fun time would be a good thing, yes?
So, it seems like there are enough ways for them to include this progression and spawning system without making the game suck, or become a COD clone. Halo 1, 2, or 3 were not halo simply because you couldn’t sprint, or didn’t have loadouts. Halo is not going to turn into COD because it’s integrating a few things available in many shooters. Hell, Starsiege: Tribes had a few different loadout options you can pick on spawn, and click to spawn, and it came out in the late 90s.
Conclusion: Halo can still be halo. Some cool steps forward in campaign and cooperative multiplayer modes. Buying loadout gear/options is worrisome, but can be okay depending on the implementation. Hopefully we’ll get clarification someday “soon” (with a regular person’s interpretation of “soon”, rather than the version that some other people might like to use). Would like more information on custom game configuration options, and forge/theater too; but for now I think the good outweighs the potentially bad parts of the recent news.