Lead to Halo on PC: What the Hell Happened?

So now we are at the end of the line, all the mainline Halo games have played and now the wait begins for Infinite and the MCC port on PC. A wait that honestly is taking longer than expected, but I can wait, I'm a patient lil sausage. But there is a path here, one I've seen over my journey through Halo, one that in my opinion can perfectly explain what the hell happened here and we can find out jsut what the hell happened to cause the rise and fall of Halo.

In my opinion and in terms of single player, what made Halo stand out from games like DOOM, Quake, and Duke Nukem was it's ability to flawlessly switch from hallway style linear shooting to big outdoor arenas with lots of vehicles and weapons, all of which encouraged experimentation and approaching things how you want to. It also had a sense of humor about itself, the stakes were big, epic, and serious, but the tone of at least the human characters indicated that they were having a bit of fun with the whole proceedings, a bit of tongue in cheekness to the whole thing that added a lot of character. And of course the multiplayer, while dated compared to later games, is still a fun bop, even if the warthog's collision is bugged.

But in my opinion the ingredients for Halo's fall started half way through Halo CE as Bungie started getting away from this freedom. 343 Guilty Spark was a more horror flavored change of pace which worked as you frantically ran down hallways trying to escape an underground facility. But then the entire second half of the game happens and it falls apart with repeated areas, more corridors than you could shake a starship at, and the Flood forcing you to carry a shotgun and assault rifle at all times and focus on desperate defense all the time. Also all the side marine character are gone, taking the fun and charm with them. Though I'll always defend the Maw, that final part is too cool to hate.

Sadly the issues from Halo CE's second half occur again in Halo 2, with maybe 3 levels out of 12 giving you that freedom from the first half of 1 back. But the most of the time, even in a vehicle, you're being led in a straight line and told what to shoot. Granted plot, character, and world building improvements helped ease that issue, especially with the marines returning joined by the man, myth, and legend Sergeant Avery Johnson. But those issues that pauged Halo 1 are still here. In my opinion the Arbiter's second third and fourth levels are emblamatic of everything wrong with bad Halo games, hallways and repetitve battles for days. I cannot stand the Flood portions and when you do get a vehicle it doesn't really help with the hall way issues. Granted the actual game play was tightened up and buttoned up to a pretty good level with better handling of weapons and added marksmen weapons creating a more diverse weapon sand box. But the level design drags the whole thing down in my opinion with the only saving grace being the impact it's multiplayer had.

Multiplayer in Halo 1 was a popular arena game to play locally but Xbox Live took Halo 2 to the next level with online which, combined with the tighter gameplay, rank system that rewarded skill and punished defeat, resulted in one of the best multiplayer experiences of all time and something that in my opinion laid the groundwork for the golden age of Halo. The only problem being that, design wise, there isn't much difference in Halo 2 multiplayer vs Halo 1 multiplayer. Of course this would be fixed with the launch of Halo 3 on the Xbox 360. Multiplayer added armor customization, custom games, map editors, and a theater mode which resulted in the franchises golden age as more and more creative players flocked to Halo 3 creating games like Fat Kid, Jenga, Duck Hunt, Grifball, and so much mroe that it's insane. Matchmaking was largely the same as in Halo 2 but with all the new things added for custom games, did it really matter? Halo 3 sparked the creativity of map makers, film makers, pro gamers, and so many others to lose so much time into it. Heck, even the campaign, while not strong story wise, fixed a lot of the design issues and it felt like a more action oritned take on Halo 1.

But while Halo 3 and it's spinoff, ODST, were largely beloved, there was one thing added, one thing that would spark the downfall of the franchise; equipment. Equipment was intended as a "new pillar" of gameplay with things like Bubble Shields, Power Drains, and Regen Fields being addeed. These were okay but frankly no one used them and no one really felt this "new pillar" was needed. Unfortunately Bungie stopped at "no one used them" and decided that the next game, Halo Reach, would cram them down players throats as armor abilities. To their credit Jetpack, Hologram, Drop Shield, and Active Camo weren't that bad. But sprint kind of broke map design as maps weren't designed for it, and armor lock broke weapon balance as even a Rocket Launcher was made useless against it. Guess which abilities were used the most in game?

To be fair everything else got better though, campaign was as tight as 3's, firefight from ODST was made more arcade-like to great effect, Forge became Forge World which was just a massive open world allowing more customization, and armor customization was made much better. But armor abilities left a bad stink in the air and sadly it would only get worse as Halo moved from Bungie to 343 Industries.

343 would move in two very bad directions with Halo 4, in terms of campaign it would go back to the Halo 2 design of being much more corridor based with even the missions that "free you up" still sticking you in corridors a lot of the time. because apparently rivers are toxic to a hovercraft, go figure. And in multiplayer everything got a shocking downgrade, armor abilities, while losing armor lock, made sprint a permanent feature of your character with map design still not compensating for it. And to make it worse, where Reach had kept the Arena style game play that defined the series, 4 chucked it out in favor of classes, which Reach had introduced but only for choosing armors abilities before a match started and in the Invasion mode. In 4 you used classes for every game mode and in Infinity mode, the default mode by the way, you could call in power weapons based on point streaks like in Modern Warfare, specifically the third game. This in turn nuked the race for power weapons and encouraged camping, which, again, map design was not compensated for. Oh, and Spartan Ops is a horrid replacement for Firefight.

That wit and humor from the human characters was also gone (Sarah Palmer going "I thought you would be taller" doesn't count as it still needs to be funny), the more detailed Covenant was replaced by a bunch of generic terrorist aliens, and the main villain is some dickhead and would only stay some dickhead unless you read the books which, while I did do it and I think the story is good, I know a lot of people didn't. The only plus sides I could find were graphics (not talking god awful art sytle), Neil Davidge's amazing soundtrack, and the Chief and Cortana's story.

And it only got worse, in 2014 Halo: The Master Chief Collection was released, collecting all the mainline games and from a gameplay side I think it's excellent, minus some issues with the port of Halo 4. It looks crisper, the 60 fps makes it far smoother, and all of the games have online features... and that's where the problems began as, I'm sure you all know, the MCC was a mess at launch in terms of design, horrendous online, bad playlists for multiplayer, and no real armor customization ruin and otherwise good port. Now these issues were largely fixed (minus the armor bit) over time and Halo ODST was even added and with the promise of a fix to armor and a port of Halo Reach, it's probably the best it's ever gonna be, especially on PC. But at the time it was a disaster and left players hoping Halo 5 would fix things.

It did not.

Now, a lot of the issues from 4 were fixed, namely in terms of design for multiplayer, it's much more arena focused as opposed to Halo 4's class based system. Unfortunately 343 still thought Halo needed a to "evolve" and stuck sprint and thrusters in there alongside aiming down sights for guns that don't need aiming like the Assault Rifle. Luckily Forge is the best version of the mode even compared to 3 and Reach (search your feelings, you know it to be true) and it's massive improvement on 4's Forge which felt lacking. Unfortunately Warzone exists, intended to be Halo 5's big draw, it's essentially a giant microstransaction game designed to suck as much out of your wallet as possible through a slow and meticulous grind for these damned REQ cards. Oh and armor customization still kinda blows as you can only mix helmets and body types as opposed to before with even Halo 4.

Campaign is just as bad, if not worse, the Chief has been replaced by Agent Locker, AKA blandy mcblanderson, his two finger puppets, and Nathan Fillion, who is pretty cool here, reprising his role from Halo ODST as, well Nathan Fillion when you nail it down. Oh the Chief is here, but for only 3 missions of 15 so I hope you didn't like the Chief too much though even here he isn't given much to do. Cortana is also just a villainous bitch now and her sidekick the Warden Eternal can rot in fucking hell. Oh, and with the exception of 1 maybe 2 levels mission design is still the same as 4 and 2, because why not. Granted they wanted to focus on co-op with 5 but would you believe I never did co-op so that was a wash.

So what happened? Well Halo compromised it's identity, that's what. Halo was on top of the world when it was about large scale battles mixed with indoor smaller battles alongside a multiplayer that allowed for both pro 360 no scope MLG types to have just as much fun as the creative go wild people making Duck Hunt and Jenga. When they reduced the campaign to lots of corridors and repetition the single player suffered. And when they added thrusters, armor abilities, and classes the pro players suffered. Sure, Forge saw the creatives come back for a bit with 5 but without the pro players and campaign fans it just wasn't the same and it's an accurate metaphor for the series now, a third of it's greatness.

It reminds me a bit of Metroid, Metroid Prime was actually a really good reinvention of the series, translating it's 2d side scrolling to 3D FPS fairly well while keeping the isolation and exploration from the original games like Super Metroid fairly well. Metroid Other M on the other hand is a bad reinvention, a 2D 3D Action brawler FPS hybrid which is confuising but the style wasn't the problem. The problem is that exploration was replaced by Samus being dumb until some random jerk tells her to use the heat insulated suit in the the lava room of death that's killing her and oh yeah, the isolation was replaced by some random jerks telling you everything to do and Samus monologuing about that damned baby Metroid. Guess what happened? The franchise took a hit and went on break, only returning 7 years later with a more traditional Metroid game and a new Prime game promised sometime before the sun explodes. Sound familiar?


The good news is that Halo once again has hope as the electric response to the news of MCC on PC, alongside the good response to the classic artstyle of Halo Wars 2, shows hope and a picking up of momentum, but it lies on Halo Infinite to prove that this can work. Here's hoping they do, as the Halo legacy deserves better...


(Oh yeah, and is it just me, or has Nintendo effectively replaced Metroid with Fire Emblem in terms of priority? It feels like it at times.)