When I first heard about Halo 2 (well over a year ago), they said to expect a late 2003 release. Then they thought it might be out in time for Christmas. Then I believe they said early 2004. Then they told me April. Now it's pushed back all the way to "Late 2004" and with the tease date of September 15th. Since E3 last May, the only thing released that shed any light on Halo 2 was Eric Nylund's book, First Strike, but we really haven't seen a whole lot of new info. I think we should kill ourselves one by one in Bungie's parking lot until they let us watch some new stuff or something.

Well, if you haven't already read any of my previous blog entries then you should likely not care about this one either, but just in case you were interested you can read parts 01, 02, 03 and 04 at your leisure. That being said I will continue with part 05. The focus of this final installment will be possible plot connections to the Halo storyline.

Marathon, er.. Halo Connections:

Taking into account all of the possible unknowns regarding the Halo storyline I feel that the only true suitable scenario for a mod such as this would regard the time directly after the Covenant discover (or vice-versa possibly) humans along the outlying colonies. In this manner there would be less reliance upon Spartans and upper echelon Covenant soldiers.

So far my favorite scenario would entail a small interplanetary group of civil and military humans exploring a few of the outer worlds in search of more habitable environments. In their searching they come across a small moon (one of se7en?) orbiting above a gaseous planet. As they set out to explore the moon they uncover the remains of a civilization. Without the proper means to decipher or interpret what happened to the now abandoned settlement the group decides to gather what information and artifacts they can and take them back to their colony after completing their survey mission(s).

Back upon their ship, one of the crew accidently(?) activiates one of the artifacts, which begins to transmit a subspace signal to an unknown source. As the crew frantically attempts to shut down or at least determine what the signal is transmitting, they decide it would be best to return the artifact to the planet and report directly back to their colony. With little to no mishap the crew reports back to their colony and decides to continue with their survey mission after a short hiatus.

Continuing on Parts 01, 02 and 03, Part 04 will discuss the workings of the Covenant class structure and how it relates to the Human/Spartan Combat Model.

Covenant Class Structures:

Although creating a formal class structure would be nice, it is only possible to create classes within the guidelines provided by Halo's storyline and within the balance limits of a multiplayer match. What this means is that specific sub-races of the Covenant, such as Grunts may not be well suited for multiplayer matches (at least not within their current format). The result is that the number of classes used will be quite limited overall; mainly to the Jackal, Elite and Hunter.

The Jackal may be the most interesting multiplayer class in general provided that they meet a few key restrictions. First, they can never drop their shield; and second, they can only equip one-handed weapons (maybe even only the plasma pistol). The key strength of this class would be their shields. The Jackal shield is very resilient and is quite possibly more useful than the Spartan's energy shield due to the fact that it can resist all types of human ballistic weapons.

Another key feature to the Jackal would be the block feature. Whenever the Jackal uses the crouch funtion they hold up their shield allowing them to become defensive in nature. While in this position they can still overcharge their pistols but cannot fire them until they stand upright. As always, an overcharged plasma pistol shot will render their shield ineffective for a time so this would be a major weakness to this class.

The Elite would likely be the most similar class to the Spartan. Ideally this class would be broken down into three smaller classes: Elites, Gold Elites and Cloaked Elites. If possible it would be nice to seperate each Elite subclass as its own class provided that they have enough differences.

Hopefully you have read my notes on the Human/Spartan Combat Model (H/SCM) previously blogged(?) in Parts 01 and 02, if not you might get a little bit lost when reading this entry. Regardless, my topic for this blog will be possible gameplay scenarios and their implementation.

Gameplay Scenarios:

The first and most obvious would be Human/Spartan teams engaged against other Human/Spartan teams. Weapon and vehicle sets could be restricted as required. So basically we have a basic yet diversified blend of players all fighting to be the few lucky Spartans, right? Maybe. The trick here is to allow each server to run with its own server restrictions. That way you could restrict access to the Spartan players in any number of ways. The most obvious being first-come, first-serve based upon the total number of players each team can support (server max / 2). Secondary means may include a max number of Spartans per team or even 1 Spartan per every X human counterparts. You might even see a few human-only servers up and running.

Which brings us to the next possible setup: human versus human. Sure it would be nice to have a few Spartan buddies to take hits for you while attacking the enemy base, but if people are going to fight over it, why not forbid the use of Spartans altogether. Besides, if you want all Spartan combat, play Halo and not this mod!

Human versus human combat would be what this mod is designed to exploit. Imagine a team of 10 human soldiers, all with various and diversified skill levels simultaneously switching roles on a continual basis in order to compensate for or assist their fellow teammates. Neat huh? (If it works.) The prime motivator would be powering up your player's proficiencies and gaining as many or very high skill levels as quickly as possible. The secondary motivator would be to actually play as a team. Sounds somewhat backwards, right? So how do you encourage teamplay above and beyond everything else? If there was a simple answer to this then clans would never exist.

Hopefully you have read Part 01 of the Human/Spartan Combat Model (H/SCM), if not please read up. The topic of this next blog will be how gameplay will be affected via this free-form class structure.

Proficiency Based Gameplay:

Ultimately the goal of this mod is to provide players a chance to jump into combat with little to no previous experience of Halo and end up with a character customized to meet their own strengths. Weapons, vehicles, maps and gametypes will all have their own balancing factors. The bonuses that players get from these items only helps to improve their own individual characteristics when using them. What this translates to is that if a player does not use a given weapon/vehicle, expect a player that does to be much better when using it.

Unlike most Role-Playing Games (RPGs) these skills will build up rather quickly. Considering that most matches last 20-30 minutes, you would expect players to gain a proficient level when using a single weapon after a very limited time. This is not to say that higher levels would be easy to attain, but only that shorter periods of time are needed to gain the most basic upgrades.

Example: A player begins the game with a pistol and proceeds to gain a few quick kills. If the requirement for the first pistol proficiency upgrade was 5 kills using that weapon, a player could easily attain it at a rather quick pace. Note that only the killing shot must be from the pistol, so feel free to use any other weapon to weaken your opponent first. After reaching 5 kills the player goes from skill 0 (zero) to skill 1 with the pistol and a bonus, such as an extra clip of ammunition is added to the pistol every time the player picks one up. Keep in mind that these bonuses are quite arbitrary at this point and only the general concept is important.

As a player's proficiency increases with a given item, it would be easier for them to gain that next skill level when using that item. Of course, the curve for attaining the top levels will be much harder than the more basic ones, so the rewards or benefits will be much better as well.