I was in attendance that Monday morning at E3 2013 when Microsoft was dropping trailer after trailer for what would be their game lineup of 2014. Among them was the first teaser of the next Halo game with a 2014 date to keep me impatiently waiting. Needless to say, I got chills down my spine when that duststorm blew the hood off Master Chief’s head to reveal his helmet. Halo is more than a game to me, it was essentially the “hangout spot” for me and my friends in our high school days. But to be completely honest, it has lost a bit of it’s flare with me with each installment, and this was happening even before 343 Industries took over development duties.
Like a fanatic to any sort of media, I feel I have the “answers” to rejuvenating the Halo series and giving it that grand spectacle feel it had when it would approach an impending release. These are a few changes that 343 Industries could implement to make Halo 5 once again reign supreme over the FPS genre.
Ending Master Chief’s Storyline
Fellow writer Gary Swaby used this point for his Uncharted 4 article, and was criticized by me and people in the comments. This point is way more suitable for a game like Halo where the story isn’t so personal to a character like Master Chief. For one, he’s a man of few words unlike the mouthy Nathan Drake. Secondly, we’ve already had a taste of what a Halo game would be like without the Chief, and those turned out fine. At the end of Halo 4, Master Chief essentially lost the closest person to him in Cortana. Seeing as how we got a small glimpse of Master Chief without his helmet, I’m hoping Halo 5 will be his most personal story to date and hopefully wrap up his story in a pleasing way to fans.
New Enemy Type
Let me start by saying, The Prometheans suck. They weren’t all that fun to kill and were sort of a hassle to kill. Can’t tell you how many time the Promethean Knight pissed me off, on Legendary difficulty might I add. I’m not asking for the Prometheans to be scrapped for good, but many give a better sense of what their end goal is. What if we got to play as one in the campaign like when we played as the Arbiter in Halo 2? Just an idea.
Taking Halo Multiplayer Back to the Basics
Gamers seem to dwell on nostalgia. I don’t mean that in a bad way, I mean we love where we come from in terms of gaming but sometimes it’s good to go back to the basic fundamentals of a series. Like other FPS nowadays, Halo has adopted some Call of Duty multiplayer elements with classes and abilities. That needs to go away, asap.
What I would like to see happen is a focus on bringing back the Halo 2 multiplayer feel. After COD took over the competitive nature of multiplayer games became diminished. I blame this on the “everyone wins no matter what” motto that games have been implementing. People don’t care if they win a match in Call of Duty as long as they pwned every noob in the match and their K/D ratio is high. Back in my Halo 2 days I would yell at the top of my lungs telling my teammates to “touch the flag before it resets” because winning mattered. Ranked matches need to make a serious comeback and I don’t mean that Arena system they had in Halo 4.
Another misstep the series has been making is focusing on having some grand epic battle mode. Halo Reach did this with Generator Defense and Halo 4 was guilty of this with Invasion. Both modes weren’t all that great and even caused other modes to suffer because of it. One complaint I had with Halo 4 was that there were only about six maps that supported 4v4 at launch. WHY ony six? I know we just had the whole “outrage” over Titanfall supporting 6v6 matches but Halo multiplayer was built of 4v4. If anything just give us Big Team Battle for our massive battle fix, but please stop taking away from your crown jewel.
What Would You Like To See In Halo 5?
There are a few other minor changes or additions I would like to see but I pretty much covered the major ones. I know how vocal you Halo fans are, so leave a comment and let me know what you want to see in Halo 5.
