343’s Halo Game Will Be FPS, Core Mechanics Unchanged

Are you wondering what the next Halo will look like? 343 Industries has been pretty quiet about what they’re planning, but ultimately they will be the ones leading the series that Bungie made great. Some have thought it would be a third-person action game or perhaps a return to the RTS genre. However, in an interview with CVG, Creative Director Frank O’Connor all but confirmed that the next Halo will stick to the traditional first-person mechanics that have defined the series thus far.

“Ultimately the core game mechanic and strength of the universe doesn’t need to be changed, it just needs to be taken deeper,” said O’Connor. “We want to make Halo games—we don’t want to make Call of Duty or Ridge Racer. We want to make Halo games because we understand what’s special about Halo.”

Halo Reach will be a tough game to top (it’s easily the best entry in the series, at least in my opinion), but O’Connor seems confident that 343 will be able to develop an innovative game. “You’ve got to say ‘what can we do to make this better?’ It doesn’t matter if that is a giant innovation or a small tweak, you’ve got to do it all over the board. That’s how Bungie approaches it.”

If there were a safe forecast for the next Halo game, you could compare it to the Call of Duty games between Infinity Ward and Treyarch. They’re almost indistinguishable to the casual fan, but those who have followed the series know there are many subtle differences. O’Connor doesn’t doubt that fans will make similar deductions about the next Halo: “Absolutely. There will be things that they’ll say ‘oh this is better than that’ about but we’ll just have to wait and see. I’ll be watching that stuff, you have to take it seriously because your core fans are also the most educated. But you also have to remember that probably 75% of the audience doesn’t know who makes the games—to them it’s like ‘Xbox makes the games’. Those are a bulk of the audience that you also have to pay close, careful and loving attention to.”

I hope they take their time with the game, though I imagine Microsoft is putting on pressure to keep Halo high-profile. Either way, when Halo Whatever-It-Will-Be-Called finally comes out, you can be sure fans are going to analyze every single change 343 makes. O’Connor and the rest of his team better be ready.