With the opening cinematic for Halo 5 filtering through Teh Interwebs I thought the time was right to weigh in on one of my favourite
gaming franchises. Quick history lesson; Halo 2 was the first shooter I was ever any
good at and, like many, was the first to make me enjoy multiplayer for the sake
of winning the game (see: modern day shooters that have progressive unlocks as
the primary incentive to keep playing). Halo was also a forge for friendships and
in many ways the benchmark for other games; Halo 3 being the definitive multiplayer
experience and Halo 3: ODST as a contender for my all-time favourite game. Halo
has helped to define the all-in-one shooter game from Halo 2 launching Xbox
Live to its beautifully scored and engaging campaigns.
Halo 5 is right around the corner and with
my Halo 5 controller on pre-order (don’t pre-order kids, it’s ruining the
industry) I’m ready to share a few thoughts on what we have seen so far.
Despite taking away “couch co-op” the Halo 5 campaign is focusing on a co-op platform
that can be played individually. This is a reversal of the standard template
where well-formed campaigns could also be taken further with co-op. Franchise Development
Director Frank O'Connor has stated that this co-op centric approach will
provide extra replayability as well as the meat of “length” of the campaign
(insert: meat length joke).
Opening Cinematic
E3 Gameplay
The opening cinematic and gameplay videos show
off how Guardians differs from previous iterations. Fireteam Osiris and the ability to give squad orders set
Halo 5 apart as you are no longer a towering giant amongst a group of useless Marines. Locke (and presumably Chief with Blue Team) issues flanking, attack and
revive orders in a similar way to Ghost Recon / Rainbow Six. As long as the AI
are intelligent enough to act out these basic instructions I think this is a
welcome edition to the franchise and will help to mix-up the traditional combat
style of hoping to kill everything quickly before everything kills you.
The Spartans actually seem like Spartans as
well. In Halo 4 there was a moment I thought this moment would come sooner. In
the cutscene introducing Palmer and Lasky they are flanked by Spartan-4s and,
for but a fleeting moment, I hoped we were to be joined by an AI ally that was
capable of living up to expectations. Nope; just Marines AI in a new skin. The videos suggest there may finally be some worthy of the
title.
Something I’m on the fence about though is
back-peddling on the Prometheans. The mix of these new enemies in Halo 4 was certainly
new and different. I have to commend this bold step in a franchise that typically
does not try to mess with the system (see: Brute combat not actually being different
from Elite combat; plasma, headshot, rinse, repeat). It wasn’t that fun though;
Knights were a bit too damage spongey, Watchers were a bit too run-away-y and it
seemed impossible to master the Crawler headshot sweet-spot.
343 were at a
crossroads gameplay wise when making Guardians. They could either re-use the Promethean enemies
and try to change the combat dynamic or they could create new Promethean
enemies and create a new combat dynamic. The latter seems to have been the path
taken. The problem I have with this is not a gameplay one (After all gameplay
is key) but a continuity one. Halo 4 set a precedent that the Prometheans we saw were the Promethean army directed by the Didact. There
were no Promethean Soldiers or Captains as in the Halo 5 E3 gameplay video, only Knights.
As pedantic as it is I just wish a little more planning or testing of the
Prometheans was done by 343 so that they didn’t need to change the enemies one
game into their new saga. However, as I said, as long as these new enemies are
fun and challenging to fight then the
point is moot.
-Norris
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