Halo Infinite

Playable flashbacks let a fixed story sit inside a freely explored city. ODST pairs a free-roaming, night-time New Mombasa with short flashback missions that trigger when you find objects like Dare's helmet or Romeo's sniper rifle. Mark Brown calls making those flashbacks playable "a stroke of genius."

The flashbacks are greatest-hits Halo: sniping, turret defense, Banshee dogfights, a Scarab boss. The first two missions come first, the next four can be played in any order, then two more finish the game. Breath of the Wild later used the same fix, telling its story in flashbacks so the order of events stops mattering, a problem Miyamoto described with open-ended Zelda in 1992.

A missing crew and scattered clues pull players through the city. Each mission carries the tension of not knowing what happened to a squad member, such as how Romeo's rifle ended up dangling from a telephone wire, so you play the mission to find out. Audio logs following a civilian named Sadie tell the civilian side of the invasion.

Playing out of order raises questions other flashbacks answer, like why Romeo is injured at Kikowani Station. Quote: "there's a prevailing sense of mystery in the game, which is a great way of keeping players engaged."

Clues should change meaning when combined, which ODST rarely does. Few of ODST's flashbacks recontextualise each other; Romeo's Kikowani injury, explained in the NMPD HQ mission, is one of the few. Her Story is the contrast, where every clip shifts meaning when paired with another.

Possible reasons given: ODST has only four freely ordered missions to work with, and interlocking clues need very clever writing.

Hidden non-linear options mean players just follow the default order. After each stage ODST drops a compass waypoint to the next mission in story order; changing it means opening the map and switching waypoints by hand. Some mission starts also sit past another mission's start.

Breath of the Wild instead shows all four Divine Beast waypoints at once, spread across the map's corners. Quote: "You have to be quite stubborn to break the game's default sequence."

New Mombasa punishes exploration instead of inviting it. The city is dark, samey, full of dead ends and crawling with enemies. Halo's engine wasn't built for open worlds, so the city is split into hexagonal chunks with blast doors hiding loading screens.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided's hub is cited as one that does call out to be explored. Quote: "This simply isn't a place that's calling out to be explored."

Non-linear levels don't need a flat difficulty curve. Because any mission could come first, ODST keeps every one equally hard and, as far as Brown can tell, never varies enemy numbers or strength by order.

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy secretly swaps its three tower puzzles so your first climb gets the easiest version. Quote: "Games are dynamic things that can change depending on what the player has seen and done."

Keep the link between playable flashbacks and the present loose. A wrecked Warthog shown as Dutch's stays a Warthog even if you finish his mission on a Ghost. Locking choices feels restrictive, while honouring them forces branching futures.

Metal Gear Solid 3 gives a game over if you kill Ocelot because he must live until 2005. The suggested fix is to limit how much flashback events connect to the present.

A spinoff needs new constraints and a cast players care about. ODST swaps Master Chief for fragile troopers who can't dual wield and need med kits, with a noir-jazz mood where sneaking often beats fighting. But they still rip off turrets and flip Warthogs, so the change feels superficial.

Buck, Dare, Romeo, Mickey and Dutch get too little time before the drop for players to care about their fate or tell them apart, which weakens the mystery. Quote: "these chaps are not actually that different from Master Chief."

ODST's flaws trace back to starting as DLC. It grew from DLC into a standalone game without the time or budget of a full Halo entry, released in 2009.

Gone Home, Her Story, Lost Legacy and Breath of the Wild all came years later, so Brown frames Bungie as ahead of its time.

Tougher enemies are perceived as smarter, even with identical AI. Bungie playtested the same AI on two machines: on one aliens died fast and did little damage, on the other they had more health and damage. Players rating enemies "very intelligent" rose from 8 percent to 43 percent.

Make enemy reactions predictable but their outcomes unpredictable. Halo's Grunts always flee when you sneak up on them, but you can't tell where they'll run. Consistent reactions let players form plans that reliably work.

Far Cry 2 designer Clint Hocking calls this intentionality. Quote from tech lead Chris Butcher: "The Grunt will always run away, but you don't necessarily know where he'll run away to."

Bungie tamed the sniper rifle by changing one stat: time between shots. Of clip size, zoom time, reload time and max ammo, Bungie picked the delay between shots, raising it from 0.5 to 0.7 seconds.

The sniper rifle versus shotgun choice is also cited as better than balancing two near-identical assault rifles, since big differences make choices more exciting.

Halo Infinite's battle pass never expires, easing fear of missing out. Players can work toward its unlocks for as long as it takes, removing pressure to rush or drop other games.

Quote: "Halo Infinite's battle pass doesn't expire, so you can keep working towards its unlocks for as long as it takes."

Halo Infinite added prosthetics to its character creator. It was noted among 2021's games for carrying many accessibility features, including prosthetic options for player characters.

Halo's linear set pieces are the template other series lose themselves copying. Metroid Prime 3's linear corridors and defend-the-flying-bomb fight are faulted for feeling like Halo; the verdict is that if you want to play Halo, just play Halo.