When Bungie announced that it would no longer be developing the Halo franchise and Microsoft passed the reins to 343 Industries, a studio founded specifically for the purpose of keeping the IP alive, the big question on everyone's mind was whether or not Halo could work without Bungie. Microsoft and 343 are beginning to try to answer that question at this year's E3 by showcasing Spartan Ops, a new cooperative multiplayer mode with integrated, weekly episodic story content. It's being touted as part of Halo's history of innovation in multiplayer, but at first glance it seems more like an addition that simply keeps up with existing trends in the first-person shooter market.

Spartan Ops plays off the lives of the men and women aboard the UNSC Infinity, a gigantic human capital ship built five years after the end of the Human-Covenant War in Halo 3. If you saw Microsoft's E3 press conference on Monday morning, the Infinity was the ship that flew over Master Chief's head before crashing into the planet Requiem. Ostensibly, Spartan Ops takes place before the Infinity takes its nose dive, as the co-op players take the roles of Spartan soldiers deployed from the ship.

Each week's selection of five cooperative Spartan Ops missions will be introduced by a short computer-generated animation that 343 promises will be of the same quality as those found in Halo Wars. We only saw a placeholder, hand-drawn animatic at the E3 demo, a scene that wove in a general mission briefing with some basic characterizations and a lot of lingering shots on the Iron Man-style method soldiers use to get into their Spartan armor.

343 is touting Spartan Ops as a way to tie Halo 4's campaign and multiplayer modes together, with missions that would have an effect on the single-player storyline. The weekly episodes will be tightly scripted well ahead of time, however, so player actions in Spartan Ops won't actually be able to change the way the campaign unfolds. Instead, it seems it will serve as a sort of playable backstory.

New enemies, abilities, and weapons

The demo mission we saw focused on an effort to recover a piece of Forerunner technology before the Covenant got to it, and thus involved cutting through some familiar Covenant enemies like Grunts and Elites at the start. Fans of the lore might wonder why those two species are working together again, but 343 wasn't discussing any story details.

But the Covenant was just a warmup for the enemies that are new to Halo 4, the Prometheans, which look like something straight out of Tron. Watcher drones spawned four-legged Crawlers that organized to attack in packs, while bipedal Knights used ranged weapons and teleported around the battlefield. The only new weapon of note we saw in the demo was a Scattershot, a kind of Forerunner shotgun which fires pellets that ricochet off objects.

The competitive multiplayer in Halo 4 is being couched as a "war game" simulation that takes place within the Infinity, and any unlocks earned through multiplayer will also be available in Spartan Ops. In our demo we saw Spartans customizing their co-op loadouts using Support Packages like the ability to carry extra ammunition, Tactical Packages like being able to carry two rifles, and Armor Abilities like a handheld shield.

Every Spartan Ops mission can be completed solo, but the missions are designed for teams of up to four players. The challenge level doesn't scale up or down depending on the number of players, but can be set manually just like in a traditional Halo campaign.

343 Industries says that each Spartan Ops mission takes at least 15 minutes to complete, and that taken in total the Spartan Ops season that launches with Halo 4 will be of equivalent length to the campaign. There will be Achievements tied to the first free season, which will run over several months, and future seasons will probably be offered as DLC for an additional cost, we were told.

True innovation?

Mission-based co-op modes in first-person shooters are common nowadays, showing up in franchises like Call of Duty, Battlefield 3, The Darkness, and Syndicate. Spartan Ops feels a bit like it's simply keeping up with the Joneses against that backdrop.

Then again, it's nice to see a cooperative mode that isn't tuned for wave-based survival, which is also becoming a bit of a cliché in the first-person shooter genre. And the gameplay we saw did show the potential for some interesting team-based tactics, such as having two players hold off the waves of Crawlers while their teammates took down the Watchers that were spawning them.

The key to really setting Spartan Ops apart will be those weekly CG story scenes, which could be interesting if they introduce more narrative content than just a simple mission briefing. They'll likely be worth checking out for the eye candy alone, based on the quality of live-action and CG Halo shorts that have come before. For Halo fans who need something to do after the campaign but have no tolerance for teabagging, Spartan Ops will probably be an attractive option.

Dennis Scimeca is a freelance writer from Boston, Massachusetts. You can enjoy his random excitations on Twitter: @DennisScimeca.