3. Modern Gameplay Ideas
Here's a line that's going to make every Halo fan come running to kill me: Halo gameplay was getting kind of old. Yep. The ideas were great in 2001, when Combat Evolved came out, but the gameplay had little changes up until even Reach, released a full 9 years afterward. Fans expect changes and improvements over time, and although little things like dual wielding and revised controls were brought in over time, the core remained the same. While you could argue that it was what made Halo, well, Halo, and this is a valid arguement, some things were caveman compared to other shooters. It took Bungie 9 years to bring sprinting into the game. Really? We were forced to slowly jog out way through every game, and even then, sprinting was just an armour ability that took away jetpacks and armour lock. Halo 4 has a sprint function. From the E3 demo, we can see the Chief interacting with this enemies, in a sort of cutscene hidden in the gameplay. These modern sensibilities mixed with the ideas that made Halo so great will likely mean a wining formula for developer 343i. However, some fans met negatively with the sprinting change. They say it was too Call of Duty-like and dumbed the game down. I really don't see how this is a negative change, the function was in Reach, only in a more limited form. Apparently, there is also a join game during session function now as well, something desperately missing from all previous games.