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.