Combat (Gaming)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Monday, June 12, 2017, 17:30 (2721 days ago) @ electricpirate

It seems nobody has learned from Halo. Not even Bungie.

Going through my notes, I was struck at how several people described the combat in Halo. They liked to think of the encounters as about controlling space, where you jockey for position, pushing the enemy back until they are defeated. Sometimes you get pushed back yourself and are in trouble. Most encounters had kind of a three stage feel to them, with three levels of space control. So, you'd start the encounter, break through and advance, then do so one more time to win. Anyone who has played the beach on Silent Cartographer knows exactly what this means. I can point to this philosophy all the way through Reach when it comes to encounter design.

Even when not in three parts, it still shows up and large parts of the games are designed around this idea. There were efforts to create this dynamically using AI in Destiny, but that was abandoned.

I feel like Destiny lost this feeling completely. You are either holding your ground, or you are just killing enemies and moving on. There is rarely an ebb and flow to the battle like Halo had. The AI doesn't really retreat and advance the same way.

Seeing the little bit of combat here, it seems more of the same Destiny style combat. The type of combat that is loose with roaming groups of enemies. There is what appears to be a sweet ass world, but it's not utilized the way it could be.

Maybe I can't determine that yet, but that's what it seems like. With that suit, I was hoping the combat would have that Platinum touch and depth.