If I ran Bungie Studios

What Bungie disciple hasn't daydreamed about how they would tweak or improve the Halo universe if they ran Bungie? I've got a few ideas. Some are impossible to implement, and some would be easy - or would have been - before the game went gold.

This isn't a knock on Halo or Bungie at all, just little things I'd experience in Halo 3 if this was a perfect world.

To misquote a movie -

Gamer - "Is this Heaven?"
Solstice01 - "No, it's Halo 3."

First of all, there are 13 skulls to unlock in the game, and yet there is enough room for three more skulls on the screen. What I would do? Have the three Elite skulls on the Cortana level be unlockable skulls that give you different metagame experiences.



One Elite skull (called "Mirror Mirror") could allow you to play through single player as your Matchmaking SPARTAN/Elite. Sure the cut scenes would stay with ol' 117, but it would be a nice touch to let you play through as "you."

Another Elite skull (called "Goodbye") could give you limited "on tap" active camo like the Arbiter from Halo 2. As a twist it also gives the highest ranked baddies that same ability.

The final Elite skull (called "Retro") would make 117 wear the original Halo armor in the campaign, and fight the old school Elite-soldiered Covenant forces. The Brutes are okay, and fun to take down, but the Elites are a much more unique and interesting character class for the game. It would be an easy switch - all of the brutes would be replaced with Elites of similar rank (with the leaders bearing Energy Swords instead of Gravity Hammers). The drop ships would also revert back to the old "tuning fork' designs.

These three skulls would be relatively simple to implement since the models, textures, and animations are already built in.

Another thing I'd like to see is the ability to "level up" in Social Matchmaking. This would be much more difficult logistically for Bungie to do, but not completely outrageous. You would have a game variant of Big Team Battle called "Progression" one team randomly becomes Covenant and the other team becomes UNSC forces.



Everyone starts at the lowest level. Covie players start as Grunts, and UNSC players start as Marine Footsoldiers. Bear with me here. Each would be balanced as far as abilities go. The Footsoldiers would be faster than the Grunts and could jump higher, but the Grunts would be slightly better armored. Although neither one has powered armor, so you'll die easily.

After you get 2 kills as your starting type, you instantly morph into the next level, which is Jackal (sans energy shield) and Specialist (my name for the Communications guys that wear Oakleys.) Again these would be evenly matched but slightly different.

After 3 more kills you go to the next level. For the Covenant team, this means you are a low level Brute. Non-Powered Armor, SPARTAN-level movement, etc. The UNSC equivalent would be the ODST ("Feet First Into Hell", don'tcha know!) Then 5 kills at that level and you graduate to the top, which would be your usual SPARTAN character for UNSC and the Captain level Brutes for the Covie forces. For a nice twist, the UNSC players that get to this level will randomly be an Elite or a SPARTAN.

You can be killed in between getting the kills you need, but the neat thing is that very quickly there will be many different characters with different abilities fighting each other on the same map. This might seem unbalanced, since someone who is good could outrace everyone to SPARTAN and then mow down the lowly grunts with ease. I'm not sure how to balance that aspect. Maybe once you reach that level if you get killed you revert back to an ODST until you get another kill or something.

A lot of testing would need to go into making it fun, but I'd be okay if my GUI looked the same regardless of what character I was. And for another twist, the one of the two teams could also be randomly turned into the Flood. ("Facehugger" form, then human combat form, then Elite combat form, then Brute Combat form.)

Next are new multiplayer maps I'd like to see. I really like the three new maps, although one of them is very tough to survive on (more on that during my review of the Heroic DLC).

"Ambient Praise" - I'd like to see a Covenant vessel map, similar to the one on Halo 2 but large enough for 5 on 5 or even 8 on 8 Team Slayer. This would be challenging to lay it out, but have two bases be on either side of the vessel and a big open three level hanger as the middle. You could borrow from the previous Halo games for much of the level design.

"Null & Void" - How about a map set in space with zero G? There could be large objects (like the debris of a vessel or parts of a Halo) floating in the background that could can climb on and in. You can kick off from your starting location but can't stop or change direction unless you collide with something or fire your weapon in the opposite direction you want to go. This would be almost impossible to make playable, but very cool if they pulled it off - especially since this type of multiplayer level is rare.

"Key" - A level on board the Forerunner ship would be cool, especially since we never really see much of the inside of it. There could be unique objects or custom power-ups, Guardian "bots" that cause trouble, etc. This would be a small map similar in size to Snowbound.

How about frequent DLC featuring new armor, insignia, and colors? Who wouldn't pay 400 MS points for black armor or some cool new helmet? I was on Heroic DLC today and there were over 17,000 people. That's $170,000 for Bungie. They could charge 400 points for five new colors (Black, Green/Brown Camo, Blue/White Camo, etc) and five new insignia. I know I'd like to see more Elite helmet choices, since there are some really cool ones from Halo 2 that are collecting cyberdust on Bungie's backup HDs.

New vehicles that are really old vehicles can also be offered as DLC. Things like Hogs (the civilian version of a Warthog) could be offered. Buy it and you get it in several colors (matching colors for your SPARTAN/Elite). Maybe it's a little faster than the Warthog, since it's not armed. Civilian versions of the Mongoose could follow suit. Who cares, you wonder? Why bother? Because it's something Bungie could do cheaply and quickly, and there are people out there who would like things like that for custom game types.

There are many other ideas (Dual wielding Energy Swords, anyone?) and this is just a sampling of ideas I've had. I'm 99.99% sure Bungie doesn't know this blog exists, but all I can do is publish it and continue to hope.