Halo: Reach Forum
This topic has moved here: Subject: Campaign, Weapon Balance, and Multiplayer Modes
  • Subject: Campaign, Weapon Balance, and Multiplayer Modes
Subject: Campaign, Weapon Balance, and Multiplayer Modes

PLEASE DO NOT REPLY UNTIL THE SECOND POST IS FINISHED, THANK YOU

At this point it's too late for Bungie to do more than tweak what they already have but I'd like to discuss general ideas for the Campaign, the weapons, and the multiplayer of Reach. Before I start I'm going to talk about my impressions each of the previous games and what I felt were their strengths and weaknesses.

This is going to be a long post so sections will have titles for you to skip to what you want to read.

Halo CE
Overview

The original in the series has a sort of mystical status for a lot of fans. There are also a lot of other people that don't see what the big deal is and think fans are insane or mentally deficient. The common criticism is that the game did absolutely nothing new and is totally indistinguishable from any generic sci-fi fps.

The critics are right and wrong. CE did not do a single thing (gameplay wise) that was totally original. However a lack of innovation says nothing about the quality of the game. You can't walk into a Pizzeria and than whine and moan about how all they serve is Pizza. You knew what to expect when you walked in so if you were hungry for Sushi you came to the wrong place. Halo CE (and the games to follow) was always advertised as a straight up fps. Not a squad based tactical shooter. Not a realistic war simulation. If you came in expecting different you have only yourself to blame.

Anyone can tell you that a slice of pizza from their favorite spot is better than one from most (or all) other places. Even though the same basic ingredients get used. That's Halo CE. Bungie took all the basic gameplay elements you might find in any fps and made you an amazing experience.

Campaign

Story wise Halo CE probably had the weakest campaign, if only because the game wasn't nearly as cutscene and dialogue heavy as all the ones to follow. In terms of gameplay though this was far and away the best for me.

Some levels were absolutley massive. Halo, Silent Cartographer, and Assault on the Control Room come to mind immediately. You were given a huge level with tons of enemies and the only real directions you were given were "Have at". You had the freedom of choice to tackle most things in the order you wanted to with whatever weapon set up you were happy with. You were almost never forced to play the game a specific way. This is the key to the fun and replayability of CE's campaign, this sense of freedom of choice lacking in all the games to follow.

Weapons

The only weapon that really fell flat was the Needler. It fired too slowly and was too easily dodged to be a threat if you saw it coming. The only other bit of grief I ever had while playing was seeing the Elites run around with their cool plasma swords and never being able to grab one for myself. The rest of the weapons are a different matter.

At this time there were only two grenade types. Plasma and Frag. You could throw these much further and more accurately than you can in any of the games to come after. Your throw range was close to the pistol's maximum effective range, which was far. Something you can attribute to the Master Chief's super human strength. Two examples:

- If you could throw grenades in Halo 3 as well as you could in Halo CE then in Valhalla you would be able to hit the Spartan Laser on the hill with a grenade if you threw it from behind the man cannon.

- If you could do the same in ODST then you would be able to throw a grenade from one end of almost any firefight map to the other. Possible exceptions include Lost Platoon and Rally Point, but your throw would make it most of the way.

Frag grenades also possessed a reliable and predictable ricochet, allowing you to bounce them off several surfaces to explode where you wanted. Even at the extremes of your throw range.

Every weapon felt powerful in its own right. Each one was the master of a specific scenario whether you're talking close range with the shotgun, long with the sniper, anti-vehicle with the rocket, or anti-shield & sneak attacks with the plasma rifle (plasma slowed your turning speed and left you vulnerable to assassination, it also obliterated overshielding quickly). But the crown jewel, as many fans will agree, was the pistol.

It was an accurate high caliber semi-auto magnum that shot explosive rounds, think a Desert Eagle advanced 500 years into the Halo timeline and such a weapon isn't hard to imagine. On Legendary it was still powerful enough to shoot down a banshee, kill a hunter in a single shot, and destroy a wraith tank if you had full ammo. Which made sense because of the explosive bullets mentioned earlier. In multiplayer games this was the sidearm everyone started with. Meaning that immediately after spawning you were a force to be reckoned with. If you were skilled in it's use then you had a fair chance against anyone, even if they were rocket, sniper, or vehicle whoring. By itself this gun made sure the playing field was always level.

Multiplayer

The greatest failing of CE's multiplayer was that it came out before Xbox Live and was therefore not compatible. The only way to play online was through xbox-connect, an unofficial online hub prone to cheat glitches like lag switches. Having friends over or system linking with 16 players at college was the order of the day.

Halo 2

I can't be an unbiased judge of this game. I've loved every Halo game Bungie made, every one except this which I hate with the burning fire of a thousand suns. If you liked this game you should skip this segment, the only kind words I have for it are that I got most of my money back when I sold it off.

Campaign

For story this was stronger than CE. For everything else there's Mastercard, which you could have used to buy a better game. Halo 2 introduced three things CE did not have and CE was a better game because it did not have them.

First is the fan favorite complaint, the Arbiter. People who enjoyed playing as him were few and far between. I for one did not like him because I went from playing as the cool human super soldier Master Chief to playing as an Elite I never heard of before wearing bargain basement armor. I mean, really? With all the cool armors the Elite's had throughout the game I was angry every time I realized the arbiter was dressed more for a Renaissance Faire than for battle.

Next up, Set Pieces. A set piece is a section of scripted gameplay where you are thrown into a situation and must do very specific things to get out of it. "Jackals in the courtyard" is one example, that time you have to chase a scarab and jump aboard is another. Set pieces are high action gameplay moments that might be a lot of fun the first time but because next to nothing changes they are much less fun every time after that. These things destroy replayability and they were all over Halo 2.

Lastly, Boss Battles. In essence a boss battle is really just a Set Piece where your forced to kill one overpowered enemy. These were not fun and felt entirely out of place in my envisioning of the Halo universe after CE's total lack of them.

Weapons

Where to I even start? I don't know what made me more upset. The fact that the pistol was gone completely, replaced with some weak and pathetic gun I refused to use? The fact that the Master Chief's melee attack strength was dropped to that of a regular person and his defense took such a dive that on Heroic any Elite could kill him with a single back slap? The Fact that any weapon capable of giving the chief recoil should have broken a regular marine's arms, yet there you are losing control of your smg like a regular Joe? Or maybe it was the fact that your grenade throw range was shorter than an arthritic girl scout?

After CE there were several fans complaining that the game was too unrealistic. I've always felt that the removal of the pistol and the dramatic lowering of the Master Chief's strength in general was Bungie's way of trying to make those fans happy. I doubt I will ever know for certain. The Halo series is not about realism and I don't believe it should ever pander to cries for such. It's set 500 years in the future staring a man in a super suit fighting aliens in an intergalactic holy war. Trying to go for realism is a joke.

Multiplayer

One of this game's strengths was the fact that it had online multiplayer, a massive step up from CE. Vehicles you couldn't operate in multiplayer (or at all) in the first game were included here along with the new (for Halo) concept of vehicle damage and hijacking.

Halo 3

Campaign

Levels became larger once again, set pieces were cut back, and thankfully you could go through the entire campaign as the Master Chief. Story-wise the game continued to improve, this time offering a good deal of dialogue while you played to cut back on intrusive cut scenes. A bit of a return to freedom in the level design brought some of the replayability Halo 2 was missing. And thankfully there was only the one short boss battle.

Weapons

Various changes to the weapons improve the game on the whole. Melee strength is brought back up so the Chief is no longer being embarrassed. Likewise his throwing arm is a bit improved, though still not to the herculean levels it should be. Most weapons at this point feel about right, though dual wielding (carried over from Halo 2) still over complicates things in a way that's hard to verbalize. I didn't like it and so went without using it.

There is a nod to the CE pistol in the form of a weaker, much less accurate weapon with a crippled range and rate of fire compared to the original. Still likely a victim of a misguided quest to add realism to the game.

Continued next post...

  • 10.14.2009 11:01 AM PDT