In terms of game development, was the Xbox ahead of its time?

[Xprimentyl]

and so Halo removed:

*Console tailored controls
*non-linear level design
*All weapons being held at once
*Dual wielding
*Different objectives for each difficulty
*Multiplayer maps tailored to 4 players or less
*Emphasis on stealth (for the most part)
*Location specific damage on enemies, who react accordingly
*Secondary functions
*Down to 5 multiplayer modes again
*Multiplayer bots of any kind
*A lot of the multiplayer customisation as seen in Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Timesplitters, and The World Is Not Enough
*Counter operative mode
*Singleplayer and multiplayer challenges

I?m not refuting anything you?re saying, but a lot of these ?removals? you?ve listed seem pretty subjective, i.e.: features Bungie simply chose not to include as opposed to fundamental functionalities they omitted, intentionally or otherwise. Some (like myself) appreciated those choices as additional layers of complexity.

DISLCAIMER: What follows are my OPINIONS:

*Console tailored controls - ? Not even sure what this means. I had no problem picking up Halo: CE?s controls with the original ?Duke? or the more ergonomic controller that would inevitably supplant it as the generic ?comes with? Xbox controller.

*non-linear level design ? I preferred the wide-open spaces; it allowed me to approach each level in myriad ways; felt more like a battlefield as opposed to a corridor.

*All weapons being held at once ? I LOVED this choice. Foregoing that I always found it absurd that my characters in other FPSs were running around with every weapon under the sun ranging from a sidearm to rocket launcher, limiting me to two weapons made me think tactically about what I carried with me as well as forced me to experiment with the weapons around me at a given time, guerilla tactics I?d expect from a lone space marine on an alien ringworld light years away from a readily available human armory.

*Dual wielding ? a choice made befitting the style of gameplay they were going for? It?s addition in Halo 2 was nice, but not a game-changer.

*Different objectives for each difficulty ? Well, Chief?s objectives were pretty straightforward; not sure what additional objectives he really needed/would have fit with the narrative, but I do know the higher difficulties demanded enough more of the skillset established on lower difficulties that additional objectives would?ve felt largely unnecessary and/or like sadistic padding.

*Emphasis on stealth (for the most part) ? A design choice befitting the game they were creating; I don?t fault Splinter Cell for not being ?shooty-shooty, bang-bang? enough. Out of curiosity, what FPSs exactly make you think ?emphasis on stealth? was prolific throughout the genre until Halo?

*Secondary functions ? A design choice. I feel Halo: CE really was trying to set itself apart from the more pure fantasy FPSs that went full on, no holds barred sci-fi; feels wrong to say it, but Halo: CE felt more ?grown up.? Also, going back to ?all weapons [not] being held at once,? secondary functions to weapons would water down the guerilla/survival aspect. And what situations in Halo: CE do you think required or would have benefitted from additional weapon functions?

*Multiplayer bots of any kind ? I?ll agree a part of me misses the omission of bots in multiplayer, but what Halo taught me is that no bot ever really compares to the challenge of another human while still being fair/fun challenge. Given Halo: CE?s shield and life system and generally sprawling and asymmetrical maps, any bots that offered any challenge would have to be the unfair ones like Quake 3 Arena?s bots on Nightmare? (fuck you, Xaero.)

As to the other points, I can understand missing them, but I don?t think Halo: CE can be blamed squarely and solely for trend-setting and [largely] phasing them out. Halo: CE was a great game at its time and it was its own thing, eschewing a lot of the tropes and ?out of the box? functionalities the industry had come to expect to set itself apart as something different.

 

[Squilookle]

You're wrong, this could never have been an interesting conversation. Its probably the stupidest debate I've been involved with online. This is literally a nothing debate over the stupidest shit.

And yet here you are again, back for more. Your masochism is honestly quite impressive.

And neither had the super weapon type weapon as showed up in doom which had a port on console before hand. There fore both are now regressive bad games. You still have no point here and its a really dumb argument.

Not that it really matters, but Goldeneye did indeed have a super-weapon. It was called Goldeneye.

You don't get to use [the entire point of your argument] as an argument since you're already bringing up stuff that literally doesn't matter.

I believe it's important enough to talk about. If you think otherwise then Why. Are. You. Still. Here? All this shows is that you somehow, after all this back and forth- still don't get how genres of media change and evolve over time.

And call of duty has more guns then all of them, having more guns means nothing. What is your point?

This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about: To belittle a game, you compare it to one that released 6 years later, by saying it had more weapons (barely five more, as it turns out). You don't see me ragging on Halo 1 for not having Xbox Live or the Forge, do you?

Almost every fps game has separate health and armor since Doom. In fact, you could carry a health kit in Heretic and Duke, which means that GE regressed from those 2 games, in fact, it also regressed since it didn't have the level of interactivity of Duke, or the amount of level destruction Duke had.

That's more like it. While as I said, GE and PD did have separate health systems, they didn't have Duke's interactivity. Then again, Duke's particular interactive gameplay wasn't adopted by the industry as a whole at the time, it remained more a novelty for that one particular series. Dual wielding, zoomable snipers, location damage, bots... these all became widespread features before Halo, across the genre. That said, you could very well make the point that Goldeneye didn't have the level destructibility of Duke Nukem. It did, however have full destructibility of in-game objects wherever you went, and Perfect Dark did have the level destructibility you mentioned. Still before 2001. What's Halo's excuse?

You are forgetting rule four of stupid as shit internet arguments. Just cause a post wasn't directed at you doesn't mean it won't be brought up. We both know this stupid shit doesn't end till one of us gets suspended.

I never knew there were written rules of 'stupid as shit internet arguments' as you call them, though I'm not surprised that you're familiar with them. If you want to see this as a 'stupid as shit internet argument' and get belligerent enough to earn a suspension, that's your prerogative. Meantime I intend to stick to the facts at hand, thanks. Now enjoy this vid of dual wielding in all its glory:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDg0FCh61AU

Articulate, well reasoned argument

Thankyou.

I completely agree the missing/changed features in Halo were a design choice (except for the bots- pretty sure I read somewhere they tried them but didn't think their AI was good enough). I'm not disputing the why, just the lasting effect. It's all just my opinion as well, but with the overwhelming evidence of follow-the-leader games adopting both regen health, and the 2-weapon limit, and ditching various elements Halo didn't bother with immediately following the release of Halo 1, it's hard to deny the kind of impact Halo had on console shooter design, even if none of that was intended by Bungie during development itself. It still rolled the technology backwards, and it never really recovered because as Lufia Erim said, gaming hit mainstream around the 6th gen of consoles and mainstream dudebros were on the whole content with what Halo delivered, not having experienced what games had to offer before it came along.

 

[Worgen]

You're wrong, this could never have been an interesting conversation. Its probably the stupidest debate I've been involved with online. This is literally a nothing debate over the stupidest shit.

And yet here you are again, back for more. Your masochism is honestly quite impressive.

Because your not making good points.

And neither had the super weapon type weapon as showed up in doom which had a port on console before hand. There fore both are now regressive bad games. You still have no point here and its a really dumb argument.

Not that it really matters, but Goldeneye did indeed have a super-weapon. It was called Goldeneye.[/quote]

You know what I mean, something the player actually uses. Which, I really don't think you use in the game, aside from maybe flipping a switch, its been like 15 years since I last really played it.

You don't get to use [the entire point of your argument] as an argument since you're already bringing up stuff that literally doesn't matter.

I believe it's important enough to talk about. If you think otherwise then Why. Are. You. Still. Here? All this shows is that you somehow, after all this back and forth- still don't get how genres of media change and evolve over time.[/quote]

So has every movie regressed by not having the higher frame rate of the Hobbit movies? Actually, I'll do you one stupider, everything is better with dinosaurs, and we got good dinosaurs in Jurassic park, but most movies after Jurassic park didn't have dinosaurs, therefore every movie since Jurassic park has regressed.

And call of duty has more guns then all of them, having more guns means nothing. What is your point?

This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about: To belittle a game, you compare it to one that released 6 years later, by saying it had more weapons (barely five more, as it turns out). You don't see me ragging on Halo 1 for not having Xbox Live or the Forge, do you?[/quote]

Ugh, my point is that just having more weapons doesn't make an fps better. It just means it has more weapons.

Almost every fps game has separate health and armor since Doom. In fact, you could carry a health kit in Heretic and Duke, which means that GE regressed from those 2 games, in fact, it also regressed since it didn't have the level of interactivity of Duke, or the amount of level destruction Duke had.

That's more like it. While as I said, GE and PD did have separate health systems, they didn't have Duke's interactivity. Then again, Duke's particular interactive gameplay wasn't adopted by the industry as a whole at the time, it remained more a novelty for that one particular series. Dual wielding, zoomable snipers, location damage, bots... these all became widespread features before Halo, across the genre. That said, you could very well make the point that Goldeneye didn't have the level destructibility of Duke Nukem. It did, however have full destructibility of in-game objects wherever you went, and Perfect Dark did have the level destructibility you mentioned. Still before 2001. What's Halo's excuse?[/quote]

How are you still not getting this? Its apples to oranges. They are DIFFERENT GAMES. Say it 5 times. Also, stop bringing up weapon zoom, Outlaws did it before GE. The rest of those are just a feature list, its beyond stupid to assume every single game needs every single feature.

You are forgetting rule four of stupid as shit internet arguments. Just cause a post wasn't directed at you doesn't mean it won't be brought up. We both know this stupid shit doesn't end till one of us gets suspended.

I never knew there were written rules of 'stupid as shit internet arguments' as you call them, though I'm not surprised that you're familiar with them. If you want to see this as a 'stupid as shit internet argument' and get belligerent enough to earn a suspension, that's your prerogative. Meantime I intend to stick to the facts at hand, thanks. Now enjoy this vid of dual wielding in all its glory:[/quote]

Cause its easier to call someone stupid then have to go through the time and effort to actually research things and make correct statements on a place were the other person will probably ignore what your saying anyway. Also, dual wielding only looks cool, its actually a really dumb way to shoot a firearm. If games were smart they would have you stabilize one gun with the other hand then swap to the other gun once that one was empty instead of holding two and firing two at the same time.

Articulate, well reasoned argument

Thankyou.

I completely agree the missing/changed features in Halo were a design choice (except for the bots- pretty sure I read somewhere they tried them but didn't think their AI was good enough). I'm not disputing the why, just the lasting effect. It's all just my opinion as well, but with the overwhelming evidence of follow-the-leader games adopting both regen health, and the 2-weapon limit, and ditching various elements Halo didn't bother with immediately following the release of Halo 1, it's hard to deny the kind of impact Halo had on console shooter design, even if none of that was intended by Bungie during development itself. It still rolled the technology backwards, and it never really recovered because as Lufia Erim said, gaming hit mainstream around the 6th gen of consoles and mainstream dudebros were on the whole content with what Halo delivered, not having experienced what games had to offer before it came along.[/quote]

 

[Squilookle]

I'm only 'not making good points' in your mind because by now we're having completely different conversations, by the looks of it. I still don't think wielding a superweapon really matters, but having the ability to fire infinite tank shells out of your face, or dual wield grenade launchers/golden guns, or detonate plastique that turns an entire level into a boiling fireball sure makes you feel powerful, if that's your bag. Your Jurassic Park analogy would have worked if films weren't by that point a medium that has been around for a century. First Person Shooters were still under 10 years old when Halo came out, still finding their feet, molding, forming, innovating in incremental strides from new release to new release. Throughout the 90s critics praised innovation in gameplay every bit as much as graphical polish, because these innovations appeared in a period of such fluid advancement.

In a way, Jurassic Park does count- it introduced a new benchmark for model and CGI work in a motion picture. And whenever a later film failed to live up to that benchmark (like, for example, The Scorpion King) it was called out immediately as the step back that it was. Thank goodness The Scorpion King was not as much of an industry trendsetter as Halo was. I also completely agree that more weapons doesn't automatically make a game better. It was just one dot point on a list of many that Halo fell short on compared to its predecessors. You decided to make a big deal out of that point, not me.

Also no, Outlaws didn't do variable zooming on sniper weapons. It just had a fixed zoom in the eyeglass when the rifle was held up on screen DOOM-style (which has always looked amazing, by the way). being able to tweak the magnification of your rifle's zoom has become a stock-standard feature in all games ' sniper rifles, in both 1st and 3rd person genres. We all owe that to Goldeneye.

its easier to call someone stupid then have to go through the time and effort to actually research things and make correct statements

Ah so THAT'S why you're resorting to just calling me stupid. Well thanks for owning up to it I suppose. That really explains a lot.

By the way- I also agree with you that dual wielding (you're really clinging to this topic aren't you?) only looks cool and is in reality totally impractical. And yet- these are video games we're talking about. Not to mention none of the games either of us have mentioned lean towards the simulation side. Halo may have a grandiose presentation, but it still is, and always has been, just an arcade-shooter through and through.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

If anything it was the beginning of the "glorified PC" trend.