Every Halo title has introduced something new to the feature set. Halo: CE started off with only 2 modes, campaign or multiplayer. Now the two latest iterations have included a wide array of features ranging from an extended campaign to watching multiplayer replays, and even having features that relate to the progression system, such as daily challenges. For future Halo games, this should be expanded to give more features to the player. This article is all about refining returning features and introducing new features, including how they could be incorporated, why they are important, and who they are beneficial to.

Campaign is supposed to tell a story while providing an enjoyable player versus environment scenario that eases players into the gameplay. In Halo: CE and Halo 2, it was just limited to that with 2 player split-screen. Halo 3 added the largest amount to the series with skulls (even though Halo 2 had them, they were tedious to turn on), campaign scoring, 4 player co-op over Live, and terminals. ODST expanded upon the terminals, making them a full secondary story. Sadly, Halo 4 regressed and removed scoring, and terminals were sent to Halo Waypoint to be watched.

Campaign needs to return to the Halo: Reach state, at the very least. For starters, campaign scoring needs to return. Without scoring, there isn’t much incentive to replay the campaign. Cinematic experiences are incredibly difficult to replicate, and replaying them will rarely give the same feeling as the initial impression did, so giving an arcade styled approach for later playthroughs prevents burnout. Scoring is also beneficial to the speed running community. It gives an in-game timer that is accurate to the frames of the game, not to real time which can have errors such as different loading times for different versions of the Xbox console. It would work similar to how it did in Halo: Reach. All medals that are available in the multiplayer portion would also be available in campaign scoring.

Scoring is an important feature to many groups of players.

Reach’s Firefight and Halo 4’s Spartan Ops proved that players can spawn with different weapons in a PvE setting. Some campaign encounters are more fun with certain weapons. A prime example is the Scarab section on the Halo 3 mission, The Storm. The Scarab encounter can be approached as a Mongoose driver, a Mongoose passenger, a crane sniper, or even a Missile Pod hero. The reason it can be approached in so many ways is because it happens in the middle of the mission, so there are a multitude of weapons from prior in the level to choose from. By adding this to the pre-game, initial encounters in missions can be varied up easily. The system to do this would be similar to the Halo: Reach Firefight system. The starting weapons/grenades/equipment could all be customized in the pre-game lobby, similar to how skulls would be activated.

This encounter can be approached in many ways. Adding customization to the mix would expand it tenfold.

Expanding even more upon customization would be great, but ultimately it would be one of the first things to get cut. Reach’s Firefight gave an insane level of customization on how it could play. Setting enemy types and progressions, as well as damage modifiers, and potentially even time limits would add another level of depth to the customization. The reason this would be the first to be cut is because it doesn’t add a ton for the amount of work needed to implement it. If customizable enemy type spawning could be done, it would be done in a way that adds tags to trigger volumes that could be customizable in the UI. Damage modifiers could be present in the player character tag. Time limits could be an end condition to the scoring timer, and “save and quit” at the end timer point.

Firefight options expanded to Campaign.

Terminals/data pads/audio logs need to make a glorious return. They were present in Halo 4, but in order for the player to display the content, they could only be played in Halo Waypoint. An interesting way that they could be implemented is to tell different stories of the UNSC, the Forerunners, and the Covenant depending on what type of hidden item the player found. Essentially this could work like the ODST audio log database, by using the back button to display mission objectives and pressing a bumper to get to the database. An alternative solution would be to have them unlock in the main menu after they’ve been found, essentially creating a database that can be accessed any time afterward. Some could be video, audio, or text, but they need to be consistent for each type. For example, it may be confusing to the player if the first Forerunner terminal is a video and the second one is a text piece. Like with ODST, the player should be able to tap or hold the action button to unlock it or play it, respectively.

These side stories expand upon the universe in a way that adds to the gameplay.

The terminals would be a start at creating a larger universe, but there needs to be in-game sections that give the feel of a much larger universe. There are enough mainline characters for some divergence from the Master Chief for a while. There are even enough smaller characters or squads that can diverge from the main story. The important thing is that these storylines cannot be left completely open. One of the best examples is of the Hotel Zanzibar ODSTs from Halo 2. In the opening of Outskirts, one Pelican is destroyed, and two other Pelicans are hit by the Scarab and crash land. One of the crashed Pelicans had the Chief and Sergeant Johnson. The other Pelican contained a group of seemingly nameless Marines. Bungie later released a video titled “Another Day at the Beach” which gave a story to these characters. Another great, but more obvious spin-off is Halo 3: ODST, which detailed the events of Earth after Regret’s ship escaped. This greater universe could easily be expanded to single player DLC, and would give rise to the phoenix known as Spartan Ops.

Another Day at the Beach told the story of the second Pelican in Outskirts.

Spartan Ops never quite had a full home. It was part campaign and part Firefight. The biggest issue with Spartan Ops in Halo 4 was the heavy reuse of environments. This was done to keep file sizes down and so 343 Industries didn’t have to push out entirely new play spaces every week. These are acceptable tradeoffs for the content delivery model that Spartan Ops used, but the content model is what made it unique. This model was a good experiment, but it showed that the infrastructure isn’t quite ready for it yet. Even though the model isn’t there yet, it would be a shame to send it to the grave this early. Spartan Ops needs to morph into something that can sustain itself, and the best way to do that in today’s system is to have it be a short downloadable campaign.

By making the universe contain more side stories, the developer can trick the player into thinking that there are even more stories out there. Using this idea, one can craft a small story that makes the player feel like they are affecting something much larger. This story doesn’t need to explain the larger universe in much detail, but focus on what makes it a good story. ODST did this well, by creating a simple story of what happened in Mombasa after Regret left. In the end, the player felt like they contributed to the overarching story of Master Chief through the actions they performed in game. This same idea can be applied to a downloadable story featuring a squad of Spartan-4s as they battle their way to some Forerunner technology that helps the Chief.

Development of a campaign takes a long time, even one that is small in size. Spartan Ops would not be available immediately with the game and development of it would be done largely after launch. This would allow for much greater quality, than if it reused environments. It would be distributed as a piece of single player DLC. Generally speaking, Microsoft has an affinity for making people pay for any sizeable downloadable content. Although, I’m not a fan of season passes, Spartan Ops could be the end item of a season pass that could include multiplayer and Firefight maps. Alternatively it could be sold separately for a slightly higher price around 2400 MS Points.

Firefight is sorely missed in Halo 4. As good as story driven PvE situations can be, there is a need for a free-flowing PvE mode. This mode was created in Halo 3: ODST to supplement the story driven mode. In Halo: Reach, a large amount of customization was added. These levels of customization gave it legs, but poor matchmaking decisions coupled with the inability to make it as difficult as ODST meant it never got at full speed.

ODST and Reach both used maps from Campaign. In order to save resources, this would continue with slight alterations to the maps. Although reuse of the environments is generally a negative factor, it can be very beneficial for the case of Firefight. It allows a player to go through the single player campaign and learn environments. Then they can enter Firefight and play them in a similar manner or fill it with entirely different enemies. It also allows players to practice for a campaign encounter without worrying about checkpoints.

Customization can be expanded upon even further. Players can use the ability to make it as difficult as ODST was or even harder, or they can make it a simple shooting gallery of Grunts. Other levels of customization come in the form of resupplies. Resupply crates in ODST only covered a specific type of weapon and in Reach they were a select few weapons. There should be an option to specify what types of weapons are covered by weapon crates. In order to demote multiple types of ammo crates, they would have channels similar to teleporter nodes in Forge and multiplayer. It would also display a letter indicating what channel it was on. Another way of resupplying can be through the ordnance system that Halo 4 introduced. After a certain point total is reached by a player, they can call down a piece of ordnance. This could include items like an ammo crate, a power weapon, or a vehicle.

Customization to ammo crates adds to the replayability of Firefight.

Single player modes are incredibly important to Halo. They can be story driven or free flowing, but it is in the best interest to include both. Other series have included single player DLC, and now is a perfect time to introduce it to Halo.

Images by Fyrewulff, ExWife, and Karl