At first, the talk of a mode that incorporates all aspects of the Halo sandbox was pretty damn exciting.
My imagination blew up.
After E3, Warzone did seem pretty fun… but then we found out about the whole no Firefight and no Spartan Ops…
Aw man, 343i, you really know how to drain the hype out of me after you injected it.
And I’ll tell ya why I say this… It’s because Warzone isn’t quite a replacement for the Firefight and Spartan Ops mode.
But keep in mind as you read this, I am NOT saying Warzone is ‘bad’ or whatever… in fact, it looks pretty fun.
So why don’t I consider Warzone to be a ‘valid’ replacement for Firefight?
Alrighty, well…
- The AI does nothing. This is, in my mind, the biggest point to be said.
- In Warzone,* the AI seemingly does nothing besides defend bases and spawn at locations to do nothing besides gasp defend that spot they were spawned at.
- In Firefight,* the AI does more than sit around waiting for enemies to come up. They’re out to kill you as one would expect, Firefight is a Survival mode.
- In Spartan Ops,* the AI’s behavior varied depending on the mission. Sometimes they did nothing until they were alerted, other times they were out to get you. Even other times they were scripted, as I’m pretty sure there is a mission where you chase Jul’Mdama.
So why does the AI doing seemingly nothing seem to be a big deal?
Spartan Ops and Firefight were AI heavy modes. They had to be, they were your only enemy.
Warzone? Nope. The AI is just a side thing for points, sometimes heavy points to put your team in the lead.
Consider this… What if the AI ‘bosses’ were replaced with some other thing to gain points with? Say, for example, it was an object spawned in the field that yielded points to the team that captured it like one would do with a flag… Would Warzone still be the same? I’d argue yes. Still a 12v12 battle, fighting for bases, fighting for points and with varying loadouts and vehicles to spawn with.
So now I say… What if the AI did more than just defend their bases and spawn points?
Imagine if your team could set conditions where they could get, oh I don’t know… ODST reinforcements dropping in? Perhaps a Phantom from the Swords of Sanghelios dropping in Elites with YOUR team color? Since a main part of the mode is to capture bases, what if these AI reinforcements HELPED to capture bases? And even attack the enemy core when it gets vulnerable?
And what about the hostile neutral AI?
What if every time a “boss” spawned, they spawned waves to attack bases to capture them back to ‘Neutral’?
It would really be a “WARZONE” then, yeah? Certainly would give the boss mobs a lot more to them than just be a sitting doing nothing until attacked thing.
Man… 3 years to make this and all the AI does is nothing makes it seem like all that effort was wasted. I think I’d rather see other things to make the gameplay more interesting in Warzone, like my neutral flag-like-object capturing to secure extra points example.
This is undoubtedly the part that disappoints me about Warzone. I know I haven’t played the gamemode, but just look at the videos posted online of playing Warzone and tell me the AI did something else than just sit on its -Yoink- and do nothing besides defend their spot. If you find a video where the AI doesn’t just sit on its -Yoink-, please post a link if you can, because I would actually love that.
343i, if Warzone was supposed to be your Firefight… I REALLY hope your E3 Warzone build wasn’t everything you want us to see. I REALLY hope the other maps have AI that actually contribute to the Warzone.
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Some minor points:*
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It’s a PvPvE experience. I know a number of people who don’t play online PvP stuff, especially shooters… But Campaign? PvE modes? They’ll all in for that. I myself have a heavy leaning towards PvE modes while still enjoying the rare (for me) PvP match made game. But I feel for those who just simply want a PvE mode.
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Warzone is an online-only experience. Which means you need to be subscribed to Xbox Live Gold to ever play it. Admittedly, its a small thing if you’re paying for Gold anyway to play online, but consider the people I’ve already spoke about in my above example. They probably don’t have nor want Xbox Live Gold and the only thing that is here to ‘replace’ Firefight is requiring them to do so. Now I already know Spartan Ops required Gold to play it (Which I thought was -Yoinking!- -Yoink- and made me pay for Gold for two months so I could play it…) but no one really liked the fact Spartan Ops was also entirely online on the 360, at least those of us who don’t play match making.