- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Bungie tried to follow their old weapons formula for Marathon in Halo. As much as I love Marathon, I think the old formula should be dispensed with for Halo 2. Think about it:
* The pistol = strong and accurate, a staple of your arsenal. In Marathon 2, the sprite for the pistol had a scope, I firmly believe that the Halo pistol is simply the next iteration of the .44 Magnum Mega Class. =)
* The AR = individual rounds are weak and inaccurate, but has a substantial clip and high rate of fire. The AR in the Marathons and in early designs of Halo had a grenade launcher attached to its underside. I think Bungie's choice to make grenades hand-thrown rather than launched from a particular weapon was genius.
* The Fusion/Plasma pistol = In Marathon it was the Zeus class Fusion Pistol, in Halo it was the Plasma Pistol. Average damage on the weak rounds, but use the overcharge and you get a healthy blast of energy.
* The SPNKR = The name didn't change between the two games and neither did the format. Twin barrels, shoulder-fired rockets with lots of impact and splash damage.
The arsenal similarties go on, but I digress. I listed these because they are examples in my argument that the old Marathon weapons formula made its way into Halo, and that it does not apply for Halo 2, given changes to the overall arsenal in Halo.
I think that Bungie was finally able to make the pistol as badass as they had always wanted in Halo. They kept the traits the same as in Marathon, and finally made use of the scope that appeared on it in Marathon 2. However, Marathon was, for the most part, all about creeping around dark corridors on a starship or alien ruins; not fighting in a lot of open areas ala Halo.
Granted, the Pistol in Marathon also doubled as your sniper weapon, since there was no sniper rifle in the game, but this only serves to build on my point further: The problem, IMO is that in the pistol, you got a weapon that filled two niches in the arsenal: a close-quarters handgun with high stopping power AND a bullet-based sniper weapon.
The point is, the pistol served those two purposes and that gave it an advantage over all the other weapons once it made its way into Halo, because of the addition of the scope and location-based damage gave you a much greater effective range with a high rate of fire and a healthy amount of damage. Not to mention a weak spot (the head) to be exploited. When a weapon is able to fill more than one niche particularly well, you have the beginnings of an overpowered weapon. A well rounded weapon is a good idea and in many cases necessary, but when you have a weapon that actually excels at several things, you have a superlative by definition, don't you?
I spoke to the esteemed Louis Wu, headman over at HBO, at a lanfest this past winter about this very subject. He enlightened me to the fact that the pistol's damage is beefed up in multiplayer. I can't go in-depth on his explanations as I've honestly forgotten most of them, but I bought all the reasons he gave me for it and it all made sense why. I believe that, given the circumstances, it was the right thing to do to keep the pistol in the realm of useful weapons in multiplayer. That said, I still think it is too powerful and it must be changed if it is to be included in Halo 2.
Long story short, this is what IMHO should be done with the pistol, and to a degree sounds a little like the newer pistols in First Strike:
Don't tone down the damage on the pistol, increase it. Yep. Take off the scope, shorten the clip by 4 rounds, lower the firing rate. There could even be a slight amount of inaccuracy thrown in, but that might be a bit much. Even with Dual wield, you'd have 16 shots and a lot of stopping power. The scope doesn't matter much, I've found, a lot of the better players I've seen don't even use it, they know where to keep their crosshairs and have little need of it. Besides, the sniper rifle and battle rifle will be sniping weapons anyway, not to mention there may be covenant sniper weapons.
In closing, I think that the BR may fill the niche that the pistol had in Halo, I just hope it's damage is toned down enough to keep every match from becoming a BR snipefest, just as a lot of Halo matches now become pistol wars. I'd really love to see the covenant weapons be able to match the human ones, most people seem to prefer human weapon sets and generally ignore the covenant ones as it is. I think the beefed-up needler, the covenant carbine, and the brute weapon are well on the way to making a strong case for alien weaponry.
What do the rest of you guys think?