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Jereel Hunter on 23 April 2009
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Reasonable said:
Jereel Hunter said:
Reasonable said:

Halo didn't add as much as you imply really. The title did bring some nice ideas but those started out headed to PC (as Halo was intended as a PC title until MS saw the potential to make it a core title for the Xbox and purchased Bungie and diverted development to the Xbox). So in fact the new ideas came directly from ongoing PC development, they just got diverted to another platform.

Where it was intended for is irrelevant. The point being that it showed that this could all be done on a console. A mouse and keyboard gives you unlimited flexibility, but to include everything by way of a controller was new.

Split screen could easily be done on a PC (and some games did so) however it clearly suits a console environment better than a PC (not technically of course, more down to sitting on couch with a buddy vs squeezing around a monitor). In fact, if I wanted to get prissy I could point out a PC can do anything a console game could technically and things a console couldn't (remembering a PC can be extended anyway you want, consoles cant).

Split screen can be, but it is impractical and basically terrible on a PC. That was my point. PC's advantage (mouse/keyboard) is also comes at the price of generally being on a smaller monitor. "Technically" doesn't make it an actually viable option.

Vehicles were arriving in general in FPS at that time and beacame the 'next big thing' for a while as a result. But Halo did not invent that mechanic.

I am not suggesting that Halo invented it, but that is brought it, in a balanced and usable form to console FPSs.

I'm not knocking Halo, but anyone who is console centric and thinking it totally took FPS to a new level or invented a whole new set of mechanics simply isn't aware of the PC FPS legacy of the genre and the far bigger impact titlels like Half Life and Battlefied 1942 made on the genre both offline and online.

It took console FPS to a new level, that's the point. PC is a whole seperate platform with it's own advantages and even a few disadvantages.

Again, you're listing that Halo did things on a console. The post refers to FPS genre - not console specific. The only thing Halo added that was console specific was coop. Everything else had been done at least as well somewhere else, and therefore didn't add to the FPS genre.

As I've said in all my posts in this thread Halo did a lot for FPS on console, but not that much for FPS. FPS is a gaming genre, even today most titles follow the FPS mechanics defined way back on PC (and with Goldeneye on console, too I'd argue) more than they following something Halo introduced.

You can't talk about FPS genre then suddnely narrow it down to just on a console to suit an arguement.

Halo forced console FPSs to start including more aspects that were in PC FPSs. Doing something first isn't the only way to add a lot to a genre. Doing something with greater polish, or forcing it to become more mainstream is more of an influence on a genre. For instance, technically speaking the Beatles or Nirvana didn't *technically* do anything new for music... However they were very influential to others. It doesn't matter if Halo was a direct copy of another game, if that other game left view without notice, and then Halo came on the scene and made a splash - Halo was the influence. Now, this is not the case here. The finished product that was Halo was not an experience you could get elsewhere. You could have most of the options, but not sit on a couch and play on a big TV with 4 buddies. Or you could play a game with splitscreen that was an infinitely inferior experience. Sometimes things you add to a genre are a high level of play that forces everyone to be BETTER. When Halo came out, how many times did every other game take a backseat while you and your friends played for hours? New games came out and still were's as good and thus didn't get as much notice.

You can list all these things that were "done before." But the complete experience (and it MUST include split screen, as that was the true genesis of Halo's popularity.) was not available elsewhere. If you only want to sit alone infront of a monitor, then sure, PC gaming had what you wanted pre-2001. But if you wanted that experience with your friends playing with you, Halo was a leap - it improved vastly on what 007 was for consoles, and gave flexibility that the PC didn't.