Dear Bungie,
Hi, this is Xbox Live Gamer stuffyyo. I have been playing Halo for as long as other people have also been playing Halo. My love for Halo and Master Chief goes so deep that on my back, if you take off my shirt you will see a giant portrait of our God and Savior Sweet Baby John Lord Almighty. Not actually, but if I were to get a tattoo it would be in the running. What I am here to provide though is a fix for the upcoming Halo game, Halo Infinite. Even though I have not technically played the new Halo game in development, and I have only barely seen images or video of the new product, I am fully aware of issues in the game that need fixing. To make this easy on myself as I am only fixing Halo Infinite as a favor, I will be constructing the steps in an unintentionalized list.
One bit of background and credibility enhancing information I should add, as to help you take my thoughts with the proper amount of seriousness as they deserve, I am a Halo fan but everything beyond this sentence that I am writing is purely objective-fact based truth and I am honest to Sweet Baby John Lord Almighty Son of Mother Halsey not allowing any of my biases leak forward.
#1 The first and most crucial tip and or critical guideline that you must follow over at 343 Industries, Xbox, and Microsoft is too, as difficult as this may sound, not stuff this game like Gears 5 and Halo 5 turkey styled with Microtransactions. This may be a tough bullet to swallow but as delicate of a franchise like Halo in it’s current state and the Xbox brand as a whole, this game has hefty heft of heft riding on it’s shoulders. Gamepass is the only current offering from Xbox that is keeping the ecosystem as a whole from being a knee-slapper of a laughing engine that it struggles to distance itself from. Everyone in the world who has ever opened a copy of Windows knows, you guys like to push your products in the face of people. These products like Edge are usually garbage. Maybe this time push Halo and have it be good. Just because you are giving it on Gamepass does not give you a free ticket to Games as a service hell that Gears 5 became. Possibly even scrap the idea of Halo Infinite becoming a free to play and slap a real price tag on it, and provide us the chance to buy a product that is actually worth buying and playing. Gears 5 was an amazing concept and dream for gamers until they opened up Gears 5 through gamepass and saw that they had been duped into believing that Microsoft was including a full featured video game release in their subscription to Gamepass. Instead, Microsoft 360 no-scoped Gears fans and gamers-alike into dropping a free-to-play game on their hard drive with a triple A branding on it. I would happily pay $60 to buy a new Gears of War game that was made with the same heart that the original three were made with. Microtransactions and store fronts are what players received with Gears 5, if you want a 5 different Marcus Fenix aged characters to play as, just slide that credit card babyyy. Same thing with Halo 5, the entire card system is ridiculous and spam.
Imagine if Audi released the R8 super car but rather than allowing their customers to buy it, they only let them drive the car for a monthly fee and limited how much they drove each month. And on top of that Audi threw in all their older prestige models of vehicles as a reward for renting their R8 and allowed you to drive those older cars as much as you wanted without restrictions.
Sell us a $60 full priced video game that has everything unlockable through playing the game and rewards people who play the game more than people who run their credit card the most.
#2 The absolute only reason people play Halo 5 over the other Halos is that the game runs well. It is 60 fps has good input control. People don’t play Call of Duty over Battlefield because they like the lore better, they play it because Call of Duty is the best feeling console shooter out there. If Halo Infinite feels sluggish like the Killzone series and less like Call of Duty Modern Warfare than don’t bother releasing a multiplayer to the game. Doom 2016 was cool but I can count how many people still play that online with 1 hand. They didn’t even bother with a real multiplayer in Eternal. No one is going to want to compete online when it is more of a competition to compete against the controller. You no longer have the same advantage you did back in 2007 of releasing before Modern Warfare. Gamers now have the expectation of sub 50ms input latency from button to pixel and are going to laugh games like Doom Eternal out the room.
If I don’t see an FOV slider,
Deadzone sliders,
button remapping,
toggle adjusters,
quality of life features,
skulls,
single player cheats and goof off modes,
x y sensitivity along with accelleration,
v sync toggle,
post processing toggle,
input based matchmaking,
region based matchmaking,
cheater reporting,
crosshair adjustments,
and if any other game has some neat feature, you better have it as well. You are Microsoft, you built the most used operating system in the entire world.
#3 There’s a lot of arguing about Sprint belonging in Halo or not. I’m not going to say whether or not you’re allowed to have sprint or if you should, but I will say, if there is sprint make sure that Halo still plays like a Halo game. To me Halo is closer to Fortnite than to Call of Duty in regards to the way you confront and fight an enemy. Call of Duty is first one to spot the other wins while Fortnite and Halo have a much longer and complex battle. Halo you have the chance to go all in to get a kill even if that means you will die trying or you can flee and most likely get away. I can beat a person who has not ever played Halo 25-0 on the Pit in 3 but if we did a 1v1 in Rust the score would be much more even. Putting loadouts into Halo is like Tekken locking complex kicks and punches behind levels. Halo is not meant to be Call of Duty. Don’t make stupid decisions just to follow the trends. If you make a loadout system that is actually beneficial to the game and is not meaningless and annoying like Halo 4 than good job, but if you can’t give up and spend time on other things that work.
#4 Let me relax when I play the game. Don’t have the game feel like my computer has a virus with all the notifications about garbage I don’t want to spend money on. If you add a new game mode to MCC I will see it, you don’t need to tell me Griffball, a game mode I will never play has been re-added, with a giant popup that I have to click out of.
#5 Don’t be narcs, give us custom game browsing and let us have fun.
#6 If this game is going open world, look towards Metal Gear Solid 5 and do not dare try to make it a Minecraft survival game or a borderlands/destiny looter shooter. Master Chief better not be collecting berries or be doing quests to bring people scrap metal so they can make tools or blueprints. I will blow a warthog head gasket if I find out that by completing a side quest for some blacksmith lets me upgrade the stats on my BR or increases the shields on my Spartan armor. The most educated and material rich businesses and agencies in the world, who also make space traveling vehicles built the armor, not some guy who has duct tape and a vice grip.
