- Evil Johnny
- |
- Exalted Heroic Member
This is a long post, if you only want to know which direction I think the next Halo game should take, go straight to the last two paragraphs.
We all know 343i are most probably working on a new Halo game. Playing on the new Defiant map pack for Reach, thinking of how Certain Affinity made a great job - better than Bungie for the most part - I began to find more hope for non--blam!- to-be Halo games. And also thinking of all Reach's problems in the campaign, I decided to make a thread to discuss what we'd want to see most in Halo 4 besides playing as the Chief again and continuing the story.
Now, I think one of the main concerns - at leas to me - is for Halo to not take the COD road, as it kind of already did. Halo needs to change. ODST was supposed to play differently, about playing ODSTs and having a relatively fresh gameplay. Yes you are weaker, but that's basically it. Rookie still incredibly plays similarly to the Chief in Halo CE with the "stamina". That was a first missed opportunity - besides not giving us incredibly formulatic missions - their "30 seconds of fun". In fact, I think Bungie's biggest fault was trying to recreate that particular type of encounters. That gave us mini-missions which are nothing more than stripped down Halo 3 ones, which while quite fun, were still streamlined Halo CE missions. Don't get me wrong, the game was good, but it can't compete with Halo CE.
Then came Halo Reach, where they tried to make the ultimate Halo game. But then, we already had FOUR Halo games with practically unchanged gameplay, Bungie NEEDED to up the ante. So they gave us armor abilities and space combat, both which did nothing more than being a bitter tease to the game's potential. The armor abilities changed nothing on the fundamentals of the gameplay. It did spice up some campaign moments, but just looking at the jet-pack platformer bit of Exodus, and it's clear it was way too short. When you start to get a hang of it and finding the encounters fun, it over already. What Bungie needed to do, was doing like any good game when you introduce a new ability; let us get a hang of it, and then make things increasingly more challenging. You should've have jet-packed around more, into more unique level bits.
And comes another of the great problems of Reach, the level design. Instead of making the ultimate Halo, Bungie just made an extremely polished Halo experience with bits of new things, the level design barely doing anything new. Where was the real open ended spaces with different objectives to work on, with different roads to take? You were still taken by the hand. So we keep going through bits we've already been through, having roughly the same experience throughout the game. Space combat was fun, but was too short, tried nothing special and wasn't much more than your usual Halo encounter in space. Take shields off, finish with a headshot and when taking too many hits, hide a bit and then come back. It was the same thing as ground combat or almost. Then you had inside the ship with some low-grav, but it was quite limited and they tried nothing with it. The New Alexandria mission was probably the best thing, but the moment you got off the Falcon it was standard Halo mission fare.
We all like the Halo gameplay, but Bungie's problem was that they tried too much to make Halo gameplay, rather than make good and interesting gameplay. Play Halo CE, play Halo 2 and then play 3, ODST and Reach. Look how the Halo gameplay got standardized, formulated over time, particularly since 3 where they seemed to have found "the way" to make Halo games. Halo 3's game design could've been better, but it was still a bit different than Halo CE's and 2's, but it's with ODST and Reach where they tried nothing to stand out of the now very defined norm.
As much as I like the Halo gameplay, 343 need to at the very least change the way missions are designed almost completely. In fact, I think they also need to change the gameplay. Keep the fundementals - health with shields - but make it play differently. We need some fresh air, or the games will still get increasingly stale, get less good than the last. So encounters have to play differently, levels should be designed differently and FAR, from the "corridor, semi-open space, corridor, semi-open space" that has plagued the Halo series since 3.
And in a way, I think it needs to get back a bit to how Halo CE did some things. Bring back alien worlds - I didn't mind having no alien world, but it would be fun for Halo 4 to go back to some things which helped the game be so good in the first place - bring back LONG missions. Another thing that plagued Reach was how the pacing was all over the place. You were getting into the game, into the environment where you were thrown in, getting immersed and the next moment, you get thrown off somewhere else. In other words, it played too much like a movie. It was as irritating an problematic to the game as the first 30 minutes of The Phantom Menace.
And which makes me think, Halo CE had superior level design to the extremely formulatic one of Reach. Remember The Pillar of Autumn, near the end, you could walk around the corridors, go through shafts, it left space for different approaches despite that part to be brief. Think of Halo, where you were driving in a warthog choosing between 3 places to rescue marines. The Silent Cartographer, which consisted of one island you could drive around getting to one place or the other doing objectives - that's partly what I was talking about when I told of how Halo needs big open spaces with different objectives to do. Or Assault on the Control Room, with the big canyon and bridges that were over it. The level design was very well done here, it intertwined, it made the whole mission, environment feel connected. You could also jump a little segment if you were fast enough to steal a banshee. In the last Halo games, you feel too much as if you always have to go forward, you never really settle a bit somewhere or feel like going through an important place.
Ideally the next Halo game should have semi-sandbox - ie. Far Cry 2 - level design. I said semi, each missions should consist of a relatively big open area, one where you can go from point A to point B in various ways, some more dangerous than others, some longer, shorter, or sometimes there's not much of a difference. Maybe you wouldn't have access to everywhere from the get go, maybe you need to do some things in order to unlock an area. And I think there could be some great dynamic gameplay here. Say you need to go to a certain place; maybe you can take the very long road with nothing special to do, or maybe there's this road with plenty of places you need to unlock, or that one where you have to go over the cliffs, or by the river with a switch or two. Maybe those paths can intertwine, and go from one to the other.
You could also carry items, keycards and such, explosives. They should redefine the Halo gameplay while still making it feel like Halo. I think 343 should also give more subtleties to the gameplay, make the stealth option viable. Make it possible to have Ghost Recon-like encounters where you can get pinned down. So in other words, 343 should make a big change in gameplay, try to do something to bring back life into Halo. Not only that, but make a game that is also different from an FPS point of view. The industry is way too much plagued by copy-cats and developers who don't bother changing things up a bit. I always was more kind to Halo because of the universe and story, but I think Halo has gone past the point where it can stay a good series only by adding to it.
What about you guys?
[Edited on 03.16.2011 10:37 AM PDT]