So the majority of the discussions seem to be focused on multiplayer, understandable, but lets focus on the newly announced Spartan Ops. Yes, it feels like a rip-off of CODs Spec Ops at first glance; but the way they present it sounds interesting.
Info we have about the mode:
- Think of them as away missions from the UNSC Infinity Josh Holmes.
- Built to be played with your Spartan 4 from multiplayer.
- The mode lets up to four players work together on a evolving episodic campaign, comparable in scope and size to the single-player storyline.
- It is structured like a TV season, each week players get a CG movie that shows the story behind the UNSC Infinity.
- Along with story, five objective-based cooperative missions will be released
- The missions being released are new content, offering unseen events, locations, and challenges.
- You earn Spartan points during these missions.
- Like the campaign, you can set the difficulty to your liking and re-play them as often as you want.
- They are not paid DLC packs they are an integral part of Halo 4s story and will be played out in several months of content.
- The mode was made to bridge the gap between SP and MP fans.
- Lead Designer on Spartan Ops is Chris Haluke (previously from Guerilla Games, worked on the Killzone Franchise).
My thoughts:
Sounds like every ambitious undertaking, episodic content always starts out promising but in most cases always fizzles in the execution half way. And lets be honest, this sounds way to good to be true; not DLC? Free content for months? Surprising to say the least. Sounds like something typical for a season pass.
So, as most of you already know that Firefight is not coming back as a dedicated mode; which means it will not be there when you boot up Halo 4. People have however seen Spartan Ops as a replacement/evolution for Firefight which makes sense to some degree. What I hope though is that we get to customize Spartan Ops as much as we could Firefight. This mean tinkering with every aspect, such as waves, skulls etc. Usually we can count on Halo modes to be highly customizable, but none of those options where mentioned in the article. Then again, first time experiments are often limited in customizability (Firefight in ODST was bare bone, but great). Hope 343 clarifies this in the future.
I wonder how new this content really is, because usually these types of modes recycle tons of single player spaces. Unseen moments could be stuff looking from different perspectives, nothing wrong with that; but I would hardly call that new content. Yes, that sounds very knee-jerk reaction-age. There bound to be new stuff added to the mix, new voice work, going further then campaign etc. The again there is also promise of new locations, which sounds awesome and makes me wonder how further back they might go with the story. I personally hope they go out as make the Spartans as great as the ones in Reach and give them enough personality; Kat, Emile, Carter etc where all fantastic for the limited time we got to be with them in Reach.
Dont get me wrong, I might sound too pessimistic but Im all for new experiments in the Halo universe. Your thoughts?
P.S.: Change the name of the gamemode, Sparten Ops sounds corny.
