Commanders in Chief

There is certainly no denying that one of the most successful franchises of all time is that of Halo.  And I don't just mean video games.  I mean as an entire franchise.  Halo has become royalty among other legendary video game franchises, just like Mario or Zelda.  It's instantly recognizable, instantly playable by any gamer of this day, and for the most part, gamers love it.  The Halo franchise has always been one where gamers have always been satisfied with the product.  After the initial trilogy that started it all ended in late 2007, Bungie became an independent studio, wanting to have more liberty to create new IP's when the time came.  The next year and a half resulted in a spinoff title, Halo 3: ODST, and a new and final game will be arriving this fall entitled Halo: Reach.  Bungie is dedicated all they have to this last title, throwing every single thing they can think of at it.  But after Reach, Bungie will be done with Halo.

That is actually a very hard thing to imagine if you think about it.  Gamers of this day and age not only know Halo super well, but they know Bungie super well.  Where there was Halo, there was Bungie.  Many gamers grew up with Halo, and it is going to be very interesting seeing a company like Bungie go on to bigger and (hopefully) better things.  One thing is for sure, however: Halo is nowhere near an end.  The franchise is not only continually appealing, but the universe of Halo is a gigantic and interweaving one.  The Halo universe has expanded to several best-selling books, a very successful comic book series, and an animated movie collection, with a new book and a new comic series ahead.  There is a lot of story left, and Microsoft has already made plans to continue with their greatest gaming franchise ever.

In 2009, Microsoft formed an internal studio dedicated to the continuation of the Halo franchise when Bungie is finished, named 343 Industries.  This studio, lead by former Bungie employee Frank O'Connor, will handle all things Halo for the foreseeable future. Now, this could be anywhere from next year to a couple of years from now.  Halo: Reach is poised to be the greatest Halo game ever, and a couple years for leg room makes sense.  But 343 Industries will make another game in the franchise, and this leaves a lot of options.  What will they do with the franchise?  How will they make it better?  What types of genres will they explore.  Well, I aim to speculate.  Here is where I think the Halo franchise may go in the future.

An actual sequel to the original trilogy: Bungie has definitely done a great job expanding it's original trilogy.  Halo 3: ODST showed a completely new perspective and brought new gameplay and a deeper insight into the story while the main hero, Master Chief, was gone to space.  It's new game Halo: Reach will be a prequel for the series, showing the fateful events that started the human-covenant war. But sooner or later that very mysterious ending to Halo 3 must be adressed.  What was the planet Master Chief and Cortana were headed towards? Spinoffs and prequels are great, but after a good break has been taken, the franchise needs to pick up again.  343 Industries can do so much here.  A new trilogy of games could be such a great place for a graphical update, updates to the gameplay, and just too much to state here.  But the one thing I can say is that I doubt any game of this nature will come until the next generation of consoles, or at least at the end of this generation.  The perfect way to start up the Halo franchise again would be to make it a flagship title for MS's next console, much like Halo did for the original Xbox.

A more tactical take on the franchise: Halo has always been an FPS for the trigger-happy.  Although it does take some smarts to actually succeed in a game of Halo, it takes even more shear ability to shoot a gun.  More often than not, Halo has given gamers an arcade-y feel, which is great but sometimes can fall behind other more calculated shooters.  More and more the FPS genre is going towards tactical smarts rather than running and gunning.  And while I don't what the good ole' run n' gun to go away, I think it might highly benefit a franchise like Halo to include some type of game that emphasizes tactical gameplay.  The story could easily fit this also.  Several stories in the universe describe spec-ops Spartan units.  The game could star a spec-ops unit like this.  The story could be more of a "behind the scenes" type of game, and could include things like team commands, cloaking and stealth mechanics, silent killing, and even multiple ways to achieve goals ala Deus Ex. 

A jump into other genres: Halo has taken only one brief skip into another genre beside that of the first-person shooter, and that was with Ensemble Studios' Halo Wars.  While the game was a good game with critics and praised for the simplistic gameplay, no more risks were taken to expand the Halo universe to other genres.  Halo is a story of a massive war that spans the entire universe on several planets.  There are so many ways Halo could be implemented in other genres.  I would love a sequel to Halo Wars, or even another RTS Halo.  Games set in conflicts naturally fit with the RTS genre.  Halo: Reach is going to have a level of space combat, a first for the series.  Why not make this an entire game?  The Halo lore has many rich space conflicts.  Making a game dedicated to these conflicts makes sense.  It could also be interesting to see Halo expand to the third-person genres.  Halo is too big to just stay comfortable in first-person.]

A game with a marine perspective: The original trilogy put us in the shoes of the last Spartan-II.  Halo 3:ODST put us in the story of an orbital drop shock trooper.  Halo: Reach is going to show us the perspective of SPARTAN-III's. But the one thing we haven't seen yet are marines.  We've seen them get killed.  A lot.  But never have we been put in the shoes of one.  How does it feel to be the pawns in a war with weapons on feet like the Spartans or the ODST's?  A game dedicated to a marine's point of view could be a refreshing perspective on the Halo story.  It could also serve as more of a large team conflict rather than the one versus many situations of most Halo games.  A game with marines could also benefit from a more emotional perspective.  How does it feel to be just another soldier in a conflict against the covenant?  Many marines die in Halo.  A game like this could show the real loss of those marines and how they affect the player's character.

A multi-player only title: This is actually a very possible thing.  In 2008, it was announced that there were plans to make a Halo MMO, but the project was cancelled because of monetary problems.  No, I don't think we're headed for World of Halocraft, but a cleverly developed MMO could work.  Halo has shown that the multiplayer has some pretty powerful legs.  To this day Halo 3 has millions of players online at a time.  It's multiplayer component is almost an MMO already.  The community support and the several tools that Halo does provide show some great potential for an MMO outing of the series.  Custom maps with the strong Forge mode could be expanded, and the custom games could be used for great battles in an MMO.  With the gaming world becoming more and more online multiplayer focused, this certainly is possible.

Only time will tell what is next for the Halo franchise.  I for one am very excited to see what is in store for it in the future.  Until then we can all enjoy the next game in the franchise, Halo: Reach, this September.