Did Halo kill the first person shooter genre? (Halo General)

[Vergil]

A common topic that I see online is that there was a golden age of FPS games before Halo came along and consolized the genre throwing it into a massive slump until the relatively recent arrival of throw back shooters like the newer Doom games and indies. Personally I highly disagree with this view point and think that if anything Halo did something unique and interesting with what was a pretty stale genre. Most games that tried to copy Halo failed to understand what made it good and a lot of the things detractors have to say about Halo itself make it sound like they've never played it themselves. There's a pretty good video on this that made me curious to get the RPGHQ take on this topic since there seems to be a good mix of geriatrics and zoomers here.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The consolization of videogame design was inevitable. If it wasn't one game, it'd have been another. Most people don't want to spend countless hours research GPUs and clock speeds and updating their drivers and fiddling around with emulators or Nvidia settings or looking for fan patches and so on. They just want a machine that they can insert a cartridge/disc into and it works, and that's what consoles do. Even when playing on a computer, I find controllers to be usually more comfortable for my fingers so game designers are going to try to design for that, and so on.

[rusty_shackleford]

Halo didn't, developers/publishers chasing the Halo customer base did.

Halo and WoW are the only two games I'm aware of where games made in their style were termed x-killers rather than x-likes.

[KnightoftheWind]

Bungie/Halo is not responsible for other devs copying their ideas and doing it wrong. I'd wager Half-Life was the bigger culprit because it introduced scripted "cinematic" elements to the genre, which was followed up by Medal of Honor and ultimately Call of Duty. Which were explicitly trying to be like Saving Private Ryan in video game form. This is why those games boil down to linear shooting galleries with dumb, cookie-cutter enemies. Halo had dynamic AI, an imaginative world, and required actual skill to play. None of the enemies are of the hitscan variety either, except for the sniper jackals in Halo 2.

[Vergil]

They just want a machine that they can insert a cartridge/disc into and it works, and that's what consoles do.

More like that's what consoles did. The moment I had to install a game after putting the disc in or it wouldn't work was the moment I knew console gaming was on the way out.

[1998]

Halo was just the logical next step. Even before there were already attempts to make games more accessible aka ****** console friendly. No way without Halo we would have gotten more arena/boomer shooters. It's true though, that Microsoft was one of the leading parties pushing that agenda. But they are not to blame for games becoming more popular, that was inevitable.

[wndrbr]

The downfall of FPS genre wasn't a discrete thing that happened at once, it was a continuous decline.

Doom - pure unadulterated gameplay;
Quake - pure gameplay is now diluted by a higher level of detail, lower amount of enemies that can attack you at once due to computers of that time;
Build engine shooters - higher focus on the realistic environments, no longer you can make abstract and "gamey" areas - the levels must look like real places;
Sin, Half-Life - continuation of build-engine style of trying to recreate real-life locations, bigger focus on storyfaggotry, lots of NPCs and cinematic scripted sequences;
Medal of Honor PCX - the first major console-focused FPS game, pathetic movement and aiming systems due to gamepad controls, low enemy/weapons variety due to the WW2 theme;
Soldier of Fortune, RTCW, NOLF - continuation of the "cinematic shooter" theme, most of the enemies are humans with different guns, levels are even more linear, next to no key hunting;
Halo - two weapons limit, streamlined resource management (automatic regeneration of shields), autoaim.
CoD - an unholy child of Medal of Honor and Halo.

[logincrash]

More like Gaylo, amirite?

[Element]

Mjolnir was engineered for coordination, speed and ruggedness, neuralinked to MC to react at the speed of light, and yet the gameplay never reflected that. There's a good reason that Halo became known as a slow cover shooter - the design choices made people gravitate towards that approach. The marines carry most of the same weapons as you do. You don't have the mobility or the speed to trivially close the distance with the enemy, and when you do you're not an unstoppable killing machine if you're up against the elites or the brutes. So tossing a grenade and then picking them off at a distance is the easier choice. You can chance it, but you need to be more skillful to pull it off in comparison to Doom.

There's a reason that the games included so many vehicle sections to break up the gunfights.

[Oyster Sauce]

I wish Halo had more gameplay influence. When's the last time an FPS came out with a vehicle as cool as a banshee, ghost, or even the warthog? It's the ******** map voting/matchmaking system that would go on to kill shooters for me. Console games used to have server browsers that worked just fine.

Doom is boring. You don't even have to aim, you just vaguely look in the direction of enemies and shoot.

[Element]

Just to clarify - I don't dislike Halo, and I don't think it bears much responsibility for the genre's slump in the mid 00s. But I don't see how the specific criticisms leveled against its design aren't warranted.

[Vlajdimir Ermenović]

The shooter genre died because devs knew they couldn't top Serious Sam.

[Decline]

Halo didn't, developers/publishers chasing the Halo customer base did.

Developers chasing Microsoft money did.

streamlined resource management

Does that even exist in today's games? I don't know any. At best you have cooldown-based button mashers.

[J1M]

Halo didn't, developers/publishers chasing the Halo customer base did.

Halo and WoW are the only two games I'm aware of where games made in their style were termed x-killers rather than x-likes.

Diablo.

[bloodedhunter]

*clickbait garbage in the OP

ngmi

[bloodedhunter]

Mjolnir was engineered for coordination, speed and ruggedness, neuralinked to MC to react at the speed of light, and yet the gameplay never reflected that. There's a good reason that Halo became known as a slow cover shooter - the design choices made people gravitate towards that approach. The marines carry most of the same weapons as you do. You don't have the mobility or the speed to trivially close the distance with the enemy, and when you do you're not an unstoppable killing machine if you're up against the elites or the brutes. So tossing a grenade and then picking them off at a distance is the easier choice. You can chance it, but you need to be more skillful to pull it off in comparison to Doom.

There's a reason that the games included so many vehicle sections to break up the gunfights.

The combined arms warfare and decent player customization in the later entries made it surpass boomer shooters in every way and much that came after it. Assassinations in Halo Reach did glory kills first but they left you exposed for way too long and the Story was servicable but always stayed grounded. Which its imitators never cared to do. "Good vehicle combat? huh?" Vehicle hijacking has also not really been attempted since Halo either.

You never hear of the doom guy using a tank or pulling out some demon from a vehicle in a boarding mechanic even in the bethesda doom titles for how badass he's supposed to be. He just has a gay imitation of Metroid Prime's combat with the constant dodge spam but with a much easier to pull off assassination/glory kill mechanic that just triggers at low HP and can be used at any angle. not the specific "stand behind enemy and hold MELEE BUTTON" implementation of Reach. There isn't any Alt form for doom guy either in the bethesda games and for some reason is supposed to be some justice league capeshit MF by the end of Eternal.

[maidenhaver]

Is Metroid Prime good?

[maidenhaver]

I think Gears did more harm than Halo, you had other genres bending to gow mechanics.

[junior]

Is Metroid Prime good?

yes but not if you're looking for a shooter.

[Vergil]

I wish Halo had more gameplay influence. When's the last time an FPS came out with a vehicle as cool as a banshee, ghost, or even the warthog? It's the ******** map voting/matchmaking system that would go on to kill shooters for me. Console games used to have server browsers that worked just fine.

Doom is boring. You don't even have to aim, you just vaguely look in the direction of enemies and shoot.

It seems everyone heard what Halo haters had to say and thought that was what Halo was so they copied all of those things.

*clickbait garbage in the OP

ngmi

It's actually a good video unlike most youtube slop.

[Oyster Sauce]

Halo haters.

Halo2Sucks.com was the website that taught me to hate video games and set me down this dark path I can never turn back from.

[Xenich]

Consoles did it, but if you want to be more specific... the controller is the real culprit. While consoles did have a major effect on game design as it concerned memory/hardware limitations, the input is what really drove the garbage.

So even though consoles are much like PCs these days in terms of power and the like, the controller is what will continue to make games ********.

[gerey]

It's dumb to blame Halo for what happened after its release, just like it's silly to blame World of Warcraft for the destruction of MMOs.

Nobody put a gun to a publisher's head and order them to make a Halo or WoW "killer", the ******** MBAs in charge simply lacked the necessary acumen to realize that both Halo and WoW had discovered, and subsequently tapped, into their own unique niche, and trying to wedge your way in was never going to work.

Not only were they going against a product that was already well-entrenched, more polished, with more content, with a bigger playerbase, but they were also trying to wrestle the top spot by peddling an inferior product. Back when Halo released on the XBox, it had something unique to offer console gamers, and even to people that were already familiar with the FPS genre.

Instead of trying to find their own niche to profit from, the industry collectively lost their minds and kept ******** out copies of popular titles into an already oversaturated market, for decades, expecting a different outcome each time. And it's not like it was a new phenomenon - back when Tomb Raider was popular, we were subjected to dozens of cheap knockoffs that lacked the quality and polish of the original game(s), and were predictably forgotten as soon as they were released.

No, what ruined the FPS genre, and gaming as a whole, is the unwillingness of those in charge to take risks or innovate, to try and seek out an audience for their ideas. Instead, we're stuck with lobotomized corporate NPCs that all masturbate at the thought of being the next Kotick, being 100% sure their next copycat slop will definitely become a "killer", only that in 2024 they also hedge their bets by sucking Larry Fink's shriveled Jewish **** so they can cash in ESG shekels.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Is Metroid Prime good?

I remember the first one being kinda fun. The third one had a corruption mechanic that was cool.

[asf]

the ******** masses were already ********, that someone would cater to them eventually was unavoidable

[gerey]

I wish Halo had more gameplay influence.

Halo's AI was, for the time it was released in, pretty cool. Different enemies not only behaved differently, but also displayed different levels of skill. Granted, Bungie got lazy and mostly threw recolored Elites at you, but when you met a higher-tier one you did notice, to say nothing of how cool it was to see lesser enemies flee if you managed to kill their commanding officer.

There was also the way the game seamlessly combined big, open levels and vehicular combat with close-quarter gunfights, ramping up to (relatively) massive two- or three-way brawls.

Halo did not get popular by mere chance.

Doom is boring.

Doom is great, doubly so because id nailed so many of the guiding principles of the FPS genre as a whole on their first second third try.

Different enemies and enemy compositions require different approaches, further complicated by map layout, which in turn determines what weapons in your arsenal are the most appropriate for the given situation. All weapons (barring the pistol and knuckles) are useful, even in the later maps. The enemy and weapon designs are so intuitive that you'll effortlessly get into the flow of making split-second decisions on what enemy to prioritize, and with which weapon.

What Doom managed to achieve 30 years ago many FPS games still struggle to do today.

[Segata]

Doom is boring.

Friendship ended with Oyster.
The genre peaked with Doom

[rusty_shackleford]

if you like doom you're a *****

[Segata]

if you like doom you're a *****

Says the guy whose forum is famous for modding (******' main hobby)

[rusty_shackleford]

if you like doom you're a *****

Says the guy whose forum is famous for modding (******' main hobby)

(doom is one of the most modded games of all time)