Halo Doesn't Need A Battle Royale

I’ve been slowly getting into Halo recently with the Master Chief Collection, finally being able to play multiplayer ever since I played Halo: Combat Evolved on the original Xbox. It’s fun and I’m slowly getting better at it, although teammates and opponents quitting before matches are over is quite the disheartening experience.

Complete your matches you damn cowards. Lose with honour or fight for a hard fought victory.

Actually, fun fact about Halo: CE’s title. It was originally called just Halo, with “combat evolved” just being the tagline. It was introducing mechanics like regenerating health and limited weapons, so PR thought it was appropriate. However, if you look at the box art, it looks more like the subtitle than the tagline, so people began calling it that. Eventually, to differentiate it from the Halo franchise, it was officially called Halo: CE.

Sometimes you just can't beat the classics.

Anyways, I’ve begun to get into the community and I’ve noticed something that some people in the Halo community want.

A battle royale mode in Halo Infinite.

I'm sure they have various good reasons, having also played Halo back in the day and why it's a good idea but let me sum up my stance on the matter. 

It doesn’t need it.

We already have Chief in Fortnite, do not do this for the love of god and the Arbiter.

I...I don’t know why I swore to the Arbiter but Keith David is awesome so I’m sticking with it.

The only BR we're interested in is the Battle Rifle.

Now 343 Industries has already denied that Halo will be getting a battle royale mode late last year. As I quote from Jeff Easterling: "The only BR we're interested in is the Battle Rifle." And the Battle Rifle is generally really good in Halo games so I approve of this. Battle royale, while popular, doesn’t appeal to everyone and especially not fans of Halo. I mean, doing nothing for 10 minutes other than running away from the murder wall while collecting weapons and armour, only to die in a 10-second firefight is not everyone’s cup of tea. Halo has a vastly different audience from games like Apex Legends or PUBG - if they weren't interested in Halo in the first place, I don't think a battle royale would win them over.

Say what you will about 343 Industries, but I respect it as a developer. It is not without fault, having made many mistakes with Halo in previous years, only just recently began to win back fans as it tries to bring Halo back into a more classic style while still adding its own flair to it. There is no doubt that what 343 can do is amazing. It actually managed to make an Xbox One game, Halo 4, on the Xbox 360 a year before it was released. The artstyle may not be everyone’s favourite but you cannot deny the attention to detail and textures the game has. If they just cleaned up the weapon balance, it would’ve been on an equal level of other Halo games. I honestly enjoyed Halo 4, but I could see that’s where problems started, which only got worse with Halo 5. Just going through the MCC made me like the developer that has been supporting the game with more customisation options and even new maps. You can’t say 343 doesn’t love Halo, it’s just that it didn’t know what made Halo great for a while.

Took this accidentaly but I do like the art style of Halo: CE Anniversary

Plus, chasing trends has bitten Halo in the ass before. With Halo 4, it introduced loadouts and ordinance drops/kill streak rewards - something borrowed from Call of Duty back in the day. In the older games, weapons were balanced for being found in the middle of the match. However, with loadouts you can spawn with whatever you want plus other special abilities like faster shield recharges, infinite sprint and your own chosen armour abilities. It made many game modes that allow loadouts to just be chaotic kill fests rather than strategic control of power weapons and areas. It’s fun, but becomes stale pretty quickly when I barely have to try to get kills. And I suck at Halo multiplayer; it’s only recently that I started getting a positive K/D in matches. And let’s not forget the controversy made from Halo 5 adding in aiming down sights, changing a weapon’s range and accuracy in an instant and making weapons more unpredictable to fight against.

It’s what drove people to stop playing Halo. Eventually, the competitive scene just died out. A franchise that used to have officially sanctioned national tournaments and crowds cheering, is now relegated to smaller communities that need to organise their own matches. Passionate, no question, but it’s really sad to see that a once beloved franchise become barely a blip on anyone’s motion trackers.

And I believe that the battle royale trend is now in its recession.

They added this to Reach! It looks like the beta helmet from the Apple reveal AND Mister Chief! All you have to do is assassinate an Elite from the air to survive a fall to get it.

When was the last time Fortnite made the news other than character skins and new seasons? Or has Apex Legends done something that warrants being talked about in the mainstream? When was the last time a battle royale was made a huge announcement for a game?

Don’t get me wrong, battle royale will still have its fans and will still be in the top ten of Twitch’s most viewed games but I think people have had their fill and want to move on to something new. Heck, with the rise of V-tubers and watching anime girls swear like sailors, I can say that it’s going to be sticking around for quite some time but it’s safe to say that its height has passed.

What Halo Infinite needs is a good multiplayer at launch. To be a fun arena shooter that doesn’t try and reinvent the wheel, but improves it with new material but not changing its fundamentals. It is what put Halo on the map in the first place. Chasing trends like battle royale would be a mistake, ones that have already been made in Halo 5 with aiming down sights, loadouts and faster times-to-kill. Plus, the loot boxes didn’t help improve public opinion. It can be added later down the line - it’s more content that I would be willing to try out and I can easily imagine it working for the game, but don’t put the resources in until Halo Infinite is out and being actively enjoyed. A game mode like that is not easy to implement, especially when its supposed to release this year. This is 343 Industries’ last chance for many fans. Halo Infinite could be the third strike that ultimately kills Halo all together. But from what I’ve seen, I’m hopeful.

Give Halo what it needs before you give what you want.

Halo doesn’t need a battle royale. It needs its fans back and willing to shout how good the game is, and how 343 Industries has started a new golden age of the franchise.

And hopefully Craig the Brute in some sort of easter egg. That is something that cannot be passed up.