The Halo Kicker

They made the same game, but by changing genres, they made it completely different.


In Halo, you play as part of the human army, representing the entire united planet of Earth. You battle with two enemies, The covenant, a deeply spiritual alliance of alien beings with advanced plasma based technologies, and the flood, a breed of infectious parasites that function as a hive minded being. It was a very well made first person shooter for it's time, with few to no glitches, an intriguing individual based story centered on a very small band of characters.

Now, let's rewind for a minute.

In Blizzard's "Starcraft" you play as one of three races, the Terrans, representing a united Earth, the Protoss, a spiritually fanatical race with advanced Psionic technologies, or the Zerg, a race that is discovered to be a biological weapon and relies on mutation and parasite-like attacks. It is a well made real time strategy game that echoed it's predecessor "Warcraft" in play style, centered on resource gathering, construction, and combat. It also contains a story involving numerous characters from each race, and defines objectives that relate to the story.

Perhaps this is pertinent to Halo's success, as I am in no way criticizing anyone. Bungie was able to take an existing concept, rewrite it in a way that was original, and discovered that the mechanics would work even better as a shooter.

I simply say this out of the creeping sense of deja vu, and admiration for two games that are so similar, and so powerfully different.

 

But wasn't the whole halo thing originally from Marathon? The Mjolnir Battle Armor, Spartans, UESC etc etc? ...

 

You wrote all that and didn't think of AvP?

Tell me this doesn't remind you of the first marine encounter with aliens in Aliens (well, ignore the power armour, nuke and a couple of other bits )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqqEh-rWy_s&feature=related

yes yes they all take stuff from each other, but it's all goooood, and not really a direct ripoff!

 

While many of the names and references are likely pertaining to marathon, I am simply speaking on game design.

"Halo, like most of Bungie's games, began a long time before it was unveiled, and in a remarkably different form. The first vision of Halo was basically Myth in a sci-fi universe. There even exist builds of the game, where you control marauding marines in a real time tactical 3D environment, complete with vehicles that would come to be known as Ghosts and Warthogs. It actually looked kind of fun."

"Bungie Studios later stated an even earlier development build of the game centered on real-time strategy and was "basically Myth in a sci-fi universe.""

I believe what made Halo so drastically different was that it had it's foundations in real time strategy.

Certainly gaming gets it's inspiration from movies as well. I am simply noting similarities of game design, yet drastic differences therein as well.

 

...but it wasn't drastically different.

Not a single thing in Halo was new or original in any way. All Bungie did was do things that had been done before but they did them very well. Oh and being one of the only launch titles for the most powerful console of its generation kinda helps

 

I beg to differ. I can think of no other shooter titles whose groundwork was made with real times strategy mechanics. The story lines were very similar, yes, but the game play was different. Bungie did for shooters with Halo what Gary Gygax did for roleplaying with Dungeons and Dragons.

This is not to deify them. Let's face it, a lot of the concepts from the first iterations of these games got trashed and for good reason (Who remembers digging for medpacks in Halo one?)

What they did was not necessarily drastically BETTER. Their respective fields benefited from the new paths, for sure, but the games themselves were not flawless jewels of creation. They were good games, but they were DIFFERENT.
First person Shooters are not made from real time strategy games, and no one had heard of a "party gathering at a tavern"; before, they played great huge army scale battles.

Change is neither good nor bad, it is simply different.

 

I think id and 3d realms would beg to differ with that.

 

I'm pretty certain that we could pick a hundred different stories, where there are 3 clear factions.

Fairy tales are based on groups of 3 (witches, bears, blind mice), and most good stories have a triangle of some sort, such as love triangles... or hate triangles?

 

The fact still remains that the developers enjoyed playing Halo more when using the debug 1st person mode, rather than it's originally designed RTS view/controls. The only thing that remains in Halo from its RTS roots is improved AI, and thats nothing original or new, it's simply progress (arguably progress which Half-life had already made on the PC). They employed all the usual tricks in the FPS level design book and they didn't have huge army battles, if I remember correctly they were limited to around 20 characters active at any one time - go look at some of the old Doom levels...they sometimes had 5x that many characters active at any one time.

I'd disagree, and I'm sure many people from companies like iD or 3DRealms would also disagree. Thats not to say Halo wasn't a great game, but Bungie just took what PC gamers had had for years and did a better job at making it accessible to console gamers than previous ports from PC had, it was nothing earth shatteringly ground breaking like the first time E1M1 loaded (oh and you heard this).

 

Look guys, I don't want any trouble

When I started this thread, I only did so to point out the similarities of Halo and Starcraft, not get down to intrinsic design. I'm not speculating Halo as an earth-shattering ground-breaking second-coming-of-the-messiah game, I am simply stating some of it's good qualities in my personal opinion. I'd just as soon NOT start a flame war, or a fevered argument about "what game is better" or "who's right or wrong".

Halo had some good qualities, Halo had some bad qualities. Halo was different, and Halo was the same.

Thanks to everyone for the insight as to other games that have similar qualities, and some of the segues to other collections. I'm a big fan of design, and interested in finding what works for games and what doesn't.

 

Woah, there's no trouble, just debate

 

Right! We'z just havin' a nice, civil, little chat here, eh?

 

I was

 

I figured. I just wanted to nip any flame wars in the bud. People are generally understanding, but give them anonymity and a keyboard, and sometimes some real monsters come out.