RedStarRocket91

Truthfully, I don't really see the Flood returning. It's a particular shame for me as, while I know I'm in the minority, I really enjoy fighting them. I find them to be a great change of tactics and pace from the Covenant, and if there's one thing I'm really worried about for Halo 6, it's how repetitive the Prometheans are to fight. This is probably a little weird, but I actually don't feel that how the Flood return, if they do, matters all that much compared to the fact of their return. Accidental release, Cortana playing God one step too far, a jar of ancient misery powder on a derelict ship, whatever. What matters is that they're there, and it's something which can't be ignored because it's such a terrifying threat. Something I'd really like to see might be, the Flood consuming a world which doesn't have any actual technology on it - what happens then? We know it can infest things, but can it create enough of its own technology to break atmosphere? And if not - what happens if you give a Flood world a few thousand years of isolation to develop? Does it develop a more symbiotic relationship with local fauna? Does it start actually evolving the creatures it assimilates? Do Pure Forms become dominant - and if so, does it even continue to produce Infection Forms? This could be really fun stuff. Think a whole mission on a Mammoth, searching for answers on a Flood hive world, with Spartans the only ones allowed down there because the atmosphere is just so utterly dangerous and contaminated. Heck, even an Elephant would be really cool. One Spartan to drive, two to operate the guns, a third dealing with anything which does manage to get aboard. As for how we get them into the story - there's any number of ways. They've taken over a Halo ring, a sample got loose on a planet and the Covenant just ran instead of fighting them, we find an ancient, drifting human ship and board it in search of answers only to find that it's infested, and then have all the panic of it getting onto Infinity. Think Space Hulk, Halo Edition, and you'll have a rough idea of what I have in mind.

Another really great question! I may well be in the minority here, but I'm actually of the opinion that the current fluid movement system doesn't actually go far enough. For the past few years I've been playing a lot of Warframe, which has one of the fastest, most fluid movement systems I've ever experienced. The total freedom of movement it offers is just incredible, and so I'm in the odd position that when I go back to Halo 5, it actually feels outright clunky by comparison. Even sprinting at full speed feels really slow, like the game is only trying to give you the illusion of speed rather than actually letting you go fast. I think a lot of that's probably down to map design, but in combination with accurate, hitscan weapons and how painfully slow the base movement speed is, to me Halo 5 just feels like the closest it's ever been to a cover shooter, as players just can't move fast enough to cover ground in the open. Just to stress, I don't necessarily want players to move faster - that brings its own advantages and disadvantages. But I'd like for the movement system to focus a bit more on, well, movement, rather than gimmicks. Take clambering, for example. It's nice and all but it's not particularly fast to perform, and completely kills your momentum - if you're sprinting at full speed, for example, you end up back at normal walking pace on completion. Instead, if you're sprinting just let it drop you into a slide, so if you want you can immediately stand back up and continue with no loss of pace. Speaking of the slide - it's damn cool, but it doesn't really have any practical use. Part of this is because the friction slows you far too quickly - instead, give players a period of one second or so after entering slide before they start losing speed, and have it take longer before they come to a stop. That makes it a bit more fun to use, and a bit less impractical, but we can still do more. Tie the rate of deceleration to the angle of the ground beneath the player, so that if you start sliding down a slope, you actually start going faster. And that's just the base mechanic - what would improve it even more is adding proper crouch ducts to maps, so that sliding has a real, practical use, allowing players to keep the pace up when going under low barriers rather than completely sacrificing their momentum. And of course, there's the mid-air stabilisation thrusters. Right now, they're hopelessly impractical, since if you want actual manual control over them the button combination to activate them is incredibly clunky, and if you leave it on automatic they have a tendency to activate when you don't want them. Quite why they aren't just mapped to the jump key is beyond me. They also have the same issue as slide as, while it looks pretty cool, it's generally quite impractical, and it also completely kills your momentum. So, I'd propose a couple of changes - first, let them be activated at any time, just by holding the jump button. Next, let them have no effect on momentum, so they they feel like a natural, smooth part of the movement system. And thirdly, treat them more like the slide, so that for the first second of use the player doesn't lose any height, succumbing to the normal effects of gravity over the next second after that. Lastly, I'd like to un-nerf Sprint. Not being able to regenerate your shields or health while sprinting is already enough of a punishment without making the control scheme unreliable as well. As is, it just feels incredibly awkward when you try to start sprinting while under attack and the game just stops the controls from responding. We don't inhibit a player's ability to jump when they're under attack, so there's no reason to do it for sprint, and right now it's incredibly inconsistent since it affects you differently depending on whether you're sprinting before or after you come under fire. I know a lot of people enjoy the movement in the older Halos, and that's fine. but there's no denying at this point that it feels very dated, and very slow. Improving the overall fluidity of the movement system would open up new combat tactics and so increase the skill gap, turn what are currently gimmicks into a real part of the core gameplay, eliminate some of the 'clunkiness' of combat, and most importantly, make moving around maps feel more fun.

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The last of Halo 4's in-engine cutscenes. You know the one. There's that moment, just where the piano kicks in, which gets me in the gut every time. So much emotion wrapped up in that moment - the slow realisation that this is really it. That after everything they've been through, all the firefights they've won, all the injuries they've endured, all the setbacks they've overcome, Cortana is really going to die and there's nothing he can do about it. The last two games up until that point have been about Chief being willing to sacrifice himself to save Cortana - and then, at the very end, with the end literally in sight just a miles below, it gets flipped on its head and she sacrifices herself for him. The last time he was on Earth, he left to bring Cortana back - and now he's returning without her. Spartans may never die, but it's not so true for the people around them. I love Halo 4's story because it's just so heartbreaking as a player. The antagonist might be the Didact, yeah, but he's not really the story. He's there to give you a reason to shoot things, because that's what the Chief does - he shoots things. But the brilliance of it is, this time he's fighting an enemy you can't just shoot. It's not something you can beat with a well-aimed grenade, or more headshots, or bigger guns. And yet, because he's the best humanity can be, because he loves her, and because he always finds a way, damn it, he really believes right up until the end that he's going to save her. I love this scene. I really, really love this scene. It's a victory that just feels hollow. It's a moment where he's not the Chief, he's John, and he's watching his best friend die within sight of the cure. You can actually hear his voice crack a little as he begs her to wait, the first time we've ever heard the Chief pleading instead of planning, or resolving. And it still doesn't help. He's left there, alone. Whatever Halo 4's other failings as a game - hell, whatever its failings as a story - this moment is just perfect.

I think other replies will cover the bases of art style, balance, and story, so I won't really go into detail on those. Instead, I'm going to start by suggesting something controversial: I'd actually really like to see Armour Abilities and custom loadouts return. Perhaps not so much for competitive play, but definitely as something for campaign, firefight, and as an option in custom games. I think the inclusion of AAs opens up a lot of creative potential for custom maps and gametypes (especially if you look back at some of the ways they were used in Reach), and if done right they can add a lot of depth to PvE game modes, too. Custom loadouts are slightly different (as I firmly believe they provide fairer gameplay in competitive games than fixed weapon spawns), but still really useful for customs and PvE. But mostly? I want to see enemy diversity. Frankly, right now I'm really worried about what Halo 6 is going to look like in terms of the enemy sandbox. The Prometheans are, put simply, not fun to fight in Halo 5. It's not just that they're all bullet sponges with homing weapons (and I'll get to that in a moment) and resistance to headshots, it's that they have almost nothing in the way of enemy variety. Soldiers, Crawlers, Sniper Crawlers which look like regular Crawlers to a glance, rarely Watchers, a couple of type of Knight, and the Phaeton simply are not enough to carry a whole campaign. That's seven enemy types, if we include their vehicle. I was sick of fighting them before we'd left Meridian in Halo 5. If that's all we can hope for in Halo 6, then it's going to be incredibly dull. So whatever happens, the Prometheans need a much, much bigger roster, and ideally one which is more about skilled play as with the redesigned Knights than just bullet sponging and frustration as with Soldiers. For contrast, let's look at Reach. In Reach, you could expect to fight Grunts (in Plasma Pistol, Needler, and Fuel Rod flavours), Shield Jackals, Jackal Snipers, Skirmishers, Drones, Elites (in Plasma Repeater, Concussion Rifle, Needle Rifle, Fuel Rod, and Energy Sword flavours, with optional toppings of jetpacks and stealth cloaks!), shooty Brutes, hammer Brutes, Hunters, Engineers, Ghosts, Wraiths, and Banshees. Even if we condense some of those into similar 'roles' (Pistol/Needle Grunts, Repeater/Concussion/Needle Elites), that's still fifteen types of enemy infantry - over twice the Promethean roster before we even include their vehicles and discounting dropships. Better, they all looked visually distinct and acted in very different ways. And with the end of the Covenant, Halo 6 is losing the last of what was already a very stripped-down alien roster, further weakening its variety. Now to be clear: I don't want the Covenant to come back again. We've been there, fought them and beaten them for almost twenty years, they're finished. Bringing them back yet again, however it's justified, is just uninspired and unimaginative design. However, something like the Banished would make a great spiritual successor, while potentially even bringing back some of the fantastic diversity of Halo 3's vehicle roster. For the same reasons I'd love to see the Flood return, as we're yet to see them in the post-trilogy games and fighting them is very different to the other factions. Heck, let's have something completely new: surely there have to be some people who believe in Cortana's vision, or who've been brainwashed? Enemy marines and militia with ARs and BRs, brainwashed conscripts sprinting around with Shotguns, Spartan-Vs in SPI armour with silenced weaponry to ambush unwary players, whatever. We could have easily the biggest and best sandbox of any Halo game to date, with a ton of replayability through firefight - or we could have the same tired selection of six Prometheans and yet another barebones splinter of the Covenant, yet again. Lastly: if there's one thing I don't want to see in Halo 6, it's homing weapons. Seriously, I don't know what they were thinking when they did this. Half the fun of Halo has always come from plasma strafing: it's not just that it looks cool, feels cool, and is a genuinely effective tactic for reducing incoming DPS, it's also vital for keeping the action moving, ensuring that the player feels like they're progressing, and letting them move around the map aggressively. Without that, Halo 5 ended up basically just being a cover shooter, where players were basically stuck in cover the whole time trading fire at medium range and sitting waiting for shields to recharge rather than actively storming enemy positions, because moving in the open is basically a death sentence on Legendary and only a little better on Heroic due to enemy accuracy. It's part of what contributes to the Prometheans feeling so stale and exhausting to fight, and really ruins the whole feel of being a supersoldier. Great question, as usual!

Oh, gosh, so many choices! In terms of the overall sort of aesthetic, I maintain that the more 'classic' armours are the best - especially when they're scaled up to modern standards or rendered in CGI, as with Halo 2: Anniversary and the Halo Wars cutscenes. The Mark IV in particular just looks absolutely gorgeous, and the version found in Halo 5 is one of the only armours in that game which I really like. Overall, it's almost certainly my favourite armour, though I do also have a fondness for the ordinary Mark V variants found in Reach. On the topic of Reach, I have to admit I really didn't like the style of the armours there when it came out, but it's grown on me since then. I still feel the proportions are a tad wonky, as they feel more like soldiers and less like supersoldiers (the male models feel excessively bulky), but the overall style is good, and there are a few really good looking bits. Generally I'm not really fond of the stuff that came afterward, with a few exceptions (The CE:A Mark V armour and its Halo 4 variant, for example), as for the most part they feel more anime than armour. So overall, my absolute favourite armour would probably be something like this: the up-armoured Mark V helmet from Reach, the shoulders from Halo 4's Mark V, and the torso, gauntlets, and greaves from Halo 5's Mark IV, which I've handily rebuilt in XCom 2!

Great question! I'm quite fond of H2A's multiplayer. For all I had a lot of issues with Halo 2, the remaster plays very smoothly, the balance is improved, and the actual aesthetic and design is gorgeous. It's a real pleasure to be able to see what the 'classic' art style looks like with a more modern engine and somewhat better hardware. It was also a really nice surprise to see a few other weapons and items from the classic trilogy available too, like ODST's silenced SMG and the Hornet from Halo 3. The addition of a proper Forge with diverse canvases is also really nice, as is adding Race, given how much fun I had with the racing scene in Reach. The only real issues I have with it are the incredibly low number of maps, the poor quality of the hardware it was released on and the effects that it has on the quality of the graphics, and the fact that bullets don't have travel time (which was expected, really, but is still a disappointment). Overall, my favourite is still Halo 3, though. Halo 3 was always my favourite anyway, and to see it in a modern resolution and framerate with what look to be a few graphical updates is a joy. It's exactly how I remember it, except without the memories being spoiled by graphics worse than I remember as with the actual Halo 3, and in a setting where everyone has the maps, making the map variety even better.

"Halo's strengths have always been its deep and engaging combat, powerful bosses, and rich narrative. Building on the success of Halo 5: Guardians, we're therefore excited to announce the release of Halo 5: Warden, a game focusing entirely on Guardians' most enduringly popular new character! Enjoy fifteen to eighteen hours of non-stop boss fights with the Warden Eternal as you seek to uncover the mystery behind his motive, uncover revelations about the Halo universe, and discover secrets about the shadowy force behind Cortana's revival!" More seriously: I suspect it's probably a mobile game, given it's been a while since we had any new additions to the Spartan X series. Halo 5's ongoing development rules out another FPS spinoff, at least for me, especially as it wouldn't provide a cheap alternative access to DLC maps, as with Halo 3's multiplayer on ODST.

Honestly it's like we're just inviting anybody onto the team these days Great to be working with you, H6F!

I'd say no. Master Chief is always going to be a huge part of the Halo universe, and the moment he's written out of it (death, retirement, etc.) I'm going to lose a lot of interest in it because I'm pretty heavily invested in his character and story, but he's not the only thing that matters. Halo 3: ODST showed nearly ten years ago (which is more than half the series' life by now!) that it's possible to have an outstanding Halo game without any mention of the Chief by having a cast of characters who're both well-written and well-acted. Combined with good level design, some interesting gameplay choices, and a very different soundtrack, we ended up with a game that still feels very 'Halo' and has arguably one of the best campaigns to date, even without its main character. Reach I feel much more conflicted about. Partially that's because there were a lot of gameplay changes made that I didn't like, and partially it's because it mucked with existing canon and I'm not a fan of that at all. But it wasn't helped by Noble Team's weakness as characters, especially as by 2010 we were seeing the rise of things like Mass Effect and Bad Company, even Gears of War, who were setting new standards about what you should expect from characters in squad-based shooters, and which therefore made Noble Team look even weaker in contrast. That said, there's still some very good parts to the campaign: Six themselves does the silent protagonist thing well enough, and Jorge in particular is fantastic, especially throughout cutscenes where he just has a ton of character. I guess what I'm saying is, ultimately when there've been problems with Halo games when playing as people other than the Chief, it's generally been because the other characters have been badly-written, rather than just because they aren't the Chief. I don't dislike Osiris just because it means less playtime as John: I dislike them because it means more playtime as badly-written and underdeveloped characters whose story, as a result, I just don't really care about. If they'd been done properly, given some actual personality and depth and even had some internal conflict, they'd have been infinitely better and possibly even likeable. So while it's going to take a very, very good writer to pull the game out of the mess of Halo 5, and I think Osiris should just be ditched completely in favour of some new, better successor characters, I do think the potential is there for Halo to successfully outlive the Chief.

Honestly, yes. I know I beat on 343i a lot, but the fact is that between Halo 4 and Halo 5 they've produced both a really strong campaign with incredibly strong emotional ties, and one of the best multiplayers in the series. I have a lot of concerns about Halo 6, and frankly it's going to be the first time where I've owned an Xbox and not bought it day one because in truth I'm not optimistic and given recent messages from 343i it seems like they're not learning lessons, but the potential for a good game is definitely there. If they can replicate the campaign of Halo 4 in terms of its overall characters and narrative, combine that with the gameplay mechanics and balance of Halo 5, and fix (read: excise) the REQ system, it has the potential to be the best one yet. I don't expect that to happen, but it's very much possible, and I'd far rather be wrong than right.

I have a real soft spot for the old Mark V, and especially the versions from Reach. While I generally wasn't a fan of its art style at the time, in retrospect I actually appreciate it more and more - the armour in Reach tends to look fairly realistic and practical while still being quite stylised and iconic, and while I don't really like the way the shoulder pads were generally done as I find they generally look too separate from the rest of the armour, I think if they'd been better fitted, perhaps slotting into the actual upper arm armour, their aesthetic is just fine. I really liked the way that the customisation worked, too - it was great being able to really create a unique armour, yet one which looks like it's been customised rather than custom-built. Probably my favourite overall aesthetic is the stuff in Halo 3 though, as even though it's not hugely detailed by today's standards (or even was at the time, really) the overall style is so good that I think it still holds up surprisingly well today. In general I really dislike the armour in Halo 5, as in addition to being quite ugly and impractical from a stylistic perspective, I find it's really over-detailed and under-textured. There's no real focal points to the armour - it's just a mess of overlapping lines and contours, and the overall design is just one big mess which blends together rather than emphasising any specific areas. The helmets in particular just look ridiculous, and combined with how oversaturated and glossy the 'hard' parts of the armour are, I just think it looks ridiculous, like the armour is made of a sort of waxy resin rather than metal or composite (though to give credit, Blue Team's own armours are a lot better in that regard). That said, I'm a huge fan of the overall style of the Mark IV armour - if we can get a 'damaged' version of it for Halo 6, and 343i sort their lighting and colouring out so that it looks like it's been made from actual armour, it might just become my favourite outright!

Well, that's half of the issue right there. I neither have nor want Windows 10, and I'm sure that goes for an awful lot of other PC gamers. There's nothing about the OS which really appeals to me and a lot of things which make me uncomfortable, and especially given that there's a lot of reported compatibility issues with older software (and about half of my game library was published 10+ years ago), I have no intention to upgrade anytime soon. Plus, even if I did, I'd have to play Halo 5, and I don't really enjoy Halo 5 nearly as much I enjoyed the older games.

No Battlestar Galactica yet!? One of those series I could (and indeed, do) watch over and over again. Ending was a bit... eh, but even then it's a matter of taste and I could see where they were going with it. And all of the buildup to it was more than worthy a slightly wonky final half hour. Honourable mentions in no particular order to Buffy, House of Cards, Farscape, Breaking Bad, Torchwood, Blackadder, and Rome.

I think we have a winner!

Not yet. iCuddleU?

>.> <.< >.<

So I'm just gonna say it, I think the ideas behind Halo 5 aren't inherently bad. Was it executed in the most insipid, moronic, incompetent way possible? Well, yes, obviously. But that's not to say that I don't think they couldn't have worked with a decent writer. That said: I just honestly don't see how the story can go on to improve from here. Halo 5 has dug a hole so damn deep with its characters and plot that anything that comes after is going to suffer simply because it's going to have acknowledge not just what happened, but the way that it happened. We can't just pretend the Chief had a big emotional reaction and had his loyalties and identity tested to the limit, because he didn't. We can't pretend that Blue Team were really there for him to help him work through losing Cortana and he eventually chose them over her, because they didn't, and it's not clear that he actually did. We can't pretend that it's even a case of murky perspective in which the 'truth' of what happened depends on whose side a given character was on, because it was a pathetic 'oh it was just a misunderstanding' chick flick level of cop-out that drove the animosity between the teams rather than any actual difference in perspective. Now, if those thing had been done properly - if Chief's loyalty really had been tested, as he was specifically forced to pick between loyalty to the people who abducted him as a child and now see him as a wholly replaceable, obsolete weapon rather than a human being, and the woman who really was the only one there for him through the worst few months of his life and is offering him a chance at happiness and purpose that he damn well knows he's not going to get from the UNSC, that would have been heart-wrenching and been a wonderful fountain of inspiration for what to do with him in Halo 6. Same thing if he and Locke had genuinely been ideologically opposed - Locke very much the UNSC loyalist who thinks the S-IIs are too dangerous to be kept alive and need to be dealt with, Chief who's just starting to feel old and tired and wanting to actually be treated like something more than a machine - then you'd get the same result. If Chief had gone over to Cortana's side, you'd have a wonderful setup for a mature and adversarial campaign in which both sides could be portrayed in shades of grey, and with great potential for boss fights or character deaths to create drama. If he's made the same decision - you'd have two protagonists who're forced to work together, each knowing full well that the moment their common enemy is defeated they're going to wind up drawing guns on one another, which again could make for some good drama. But they weren't and here we are. I always feel weird about the idea of retcons, but honestly, in this case the whole of Halo 5 was just so poorly executed that I can't see any other alternative if the story is going to be anything other than a joke in the future.

Really disappointing to see that Activision are still treating their employees so poorly. Layoffs and redundancies might be necessary if there's poor performance or real concerns over financial solvency, but to report record sales with one hand while wielding the axe so brutally with the other is just ridiculous. Here's hoping those affected can find new, better jobs soon!

...wut? So let me get this straight, people who like competitive first-person shooters and are seeking a greater challenge... are quitting to play MOBAs and MMOs? I can agree that most of the stuff in the REQ system is really bad for competitive gameplay. But to say that they're the only reason why fans of the series are quitting, and that they're quitting in order to go and play completely different types of games on completely different hardware, is just ridiculous.