An idea woke in me when I watched this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iil2hGlwdKU) with combination of Doom asymmetrical multiplayer, with Gears of war Escape mode, the Evolve game.
Disclaimer: Do note that this is a wish and any part of this post can be taken and split in half to give birth to new ideas (or none).
The idea is around the principle of the lore in a certain point in Halo history. So far we have played as a Spartan, ODST, Elites and Infected Spartan/flood in different scenarios and we have more minions/skins to play with.
The gametype
The battlefield have concluded in a standoff between the flood, covenant and humans. The humans of course have effective weapons against the flood, the covenant has effective weapons against the humans and the flood just bolster their ranks by the seconds. The flood plays like a hive-mind so that faction plays like a hardcore team-based gameplay or they will be wiped out to survive and conquer to the end game (literally flood over their enemies). Covenant has the superior battle-power but too arrogant of their superior battle-power. Humans are united because of being attacked (the underdog). Side-note, we could add the resistance against the UNSC (the reason why Spartans were created originally, before the discovery of the covenant). Some went crazy, some were ex-spartans; this could bring some of the outside lore (not the games) and explain it in the game in a natural way. Example: The resistance (the people that are against the UNSC) clueless about the flood somehow found a hive and like many humans tried to experiment with it, yada yada an outbreak happens. Often where the flood is, there are also ancient artifacts so the Covenant is attracted while the humans find out by numerous reports about a rebel base. The point is to play as every given race/skin/model the game gives. In contrast Halo 2 multiplayer had elites at a disadvantage with their size, though makes it more “challenging” to play as the elites. This is the main focus, just because you are small, have no shields or use good weapons does not mean others are at a disadvantage. In the battlefield anything goes for a surviver, working together with your enemy to eliminate the bigger threat or take your chances and listen to your commander and believe that you and the army you serve will be victorious. As a player you have a objective given by the game-type but the gameplay changes thanks to the revelation of the flood.
The gameplay
The player joins a faction with a select number of races (their concurrent races per factions). Humans has Spartans and ODST and AIs. Spartans and ODST/Army Soldiers has been touched in previous games. There has to be a way to implement an AI as a gameplay mechanic. The gameplay could be a RTS style of commanding the faction, an AI is most effective with knowledge/information (the more of it the better the calculations is the premise), so the faction feeds information to the AI by entering the battlefield and enter any soldier as a spectator. Starcraft 2 has a dual player for one faction (two player controlling 1 AI), Age of empires 2 you could do that too. Controlling a lot is hard for the common man after all (having a lot of APM consistently is hard). For the AI information is the resource if it’s worth spending men into the battlefield. The bigger the threat the more resources has to be spent for the operation (this is an example, not very thought out). The covenant had a lot of races subjugated into their ranks which makes them a more fun faction to play as, from the grunts to the grand Hunters; there are snipers as Jacklas to Engineers that repairs vehicles and armors (shields). Though I doubt playing as a engineer isn’t THAT fun but an idea could be that the faction can call down a engineer via ability or equipment and gives you a minion. Same with Jacklas and Grunts, they can call out for group of their own because their greatest weakness is a headshot (or area of effect damage/big explosion/granades). The little group moves with you, if you die before any of your group you control someone else of that little group in your control. The covenant always had the premise of groups before getting attacked by the MC. The flood is either a third party or has the feeling of a alien from Alien vs Predator, you can play as a Carrier form and when you explode you start to control one of the spores (your group just as the covenant idea) and if you as a spore gets killed you control another one from the group of spores. The playerbase for the flood is the fewest (two players) that has different levels of threats, from minor to what the makes the flood threatening (a massive army). The flood starts with a hidden base as spores, takes over animals as pray to take over to bring back to base to spread more “flowers” for more spores (basically flood build up resources by gaining more “food” so they spread). And the bigger the flood gets (the home base) the more you see the scenery changes to flood looking environment. The feeling of the flood should be overwhelming after a certain point, the covenant should feel like they have the superior tech, and humans which are the underdog; they tend to strike at the right moments towards their enemies.
The setup (lobby)
- You should be able to disable a faction (any faction) completely, or an option where the AI takes over the faction but the faction may or may not be in the game, the behavior of the AI faction (aggressive or passive) changes per game. The purpose of the faction may be randomly in the game is for the player to look for the faction (the “mystery”).
- The gameplay is can be drastically changed to scenarios thanks to Forge, since a forge master has control of the whole scenario. Imagine a scenario where a couple of covenant minions are trapped in a scarab, all around them are the flood trying to climb up on the scarab, so the scarab is walking towards a ship for them to escape at. A natural environment where the flood can jump on the scarab from the above, while the scarab walks slow which means the flood can climb from the bottom so the covenant tries to survive while the scarab is trying to reach it’s destination. Another scenario, little inspiration little inspiration from the Gears of War Escape mode made in forge mode. Or 2 different covenant and/or human groups are competing, ends up becoming their retrospective bunker home base because of the flood attacking.