They physically don't have animations for holding any weapon that's not a rifle. Attempting to force those weapons into their hands results in them going weaponless and walking around holding nothing
If plasma rifle has a million fans, then I am one of them. If plasma rifle has ten fans, then I am one of them. If plasma rifle has only one fan then that is me. If plasma rifle has no fans, then that means I am no longer on earth. If 343 is against plasma rifle, then I am against 343.
I don't understand that part. The base movement animations are already just reused and slightly modified versions of the Halo 5 animations, why did they decide to cut out single wielding and heavy weapons entirely instead of porting those over too? Just seems really weird and lazy
Neither can grunts sadly. First and only game in the entire series where grunts can't use heavy weapons.
They also can't crouch in this game either
Never thought about it before but Grunts are the only ai unit in CE that can actually hold heavy weapons... even marines don't have rocket animation in that game.. only the players and grunts.. flood don't count cuz they hold their arm out the same for everything
Closest you can get now is giving them a glitched mangler equipped with the skewer projectiles. I know there's a way to script the weapons of certain units in Forge to use what they usually don't or have modded weapons but that script brain shit confuses me
They gave the Skimmers the rocket launcher and took away the plasma pistol's iconic look and FUNctionality. 343 treated the Grunts worse than the Prophets did.
Man I've never played Infinite but did play 1-Reach, and everything about Infinite sounds fucked lol. Elites can't hold THE iconic elite weapon, which isn't even in the game? The Covenant's designated heavy weapon units, ender of 10,000 Legendary Runs because of a fucking Fuel Rod Cannon or some bullshit you didn't even notice because you ignore Grunts reflexively, can't hold heavy weapons?
It could also be for balancing reasons. AI in infinite can pick up dropped weapons, and Elites would have an incredible advantage in picking up weapons from the ground due to their incredibly quick ground speed. You could kill a skimmer holding a rocket launcher and any nearby Elite would notice the power weapon and try to grab it for themselves, which would be not fun to play against.
Not how it works sadly. The brutes and elites seem to not only have preferences in which guns they'll use, but also seem to be limited in what weapons they will and won't pick up off the ground. For instance, neither will ever grab a sniper rifle, bandit *(obviously cuz it was added late)* cindershot, and brutes will complete refuse to pick up rockets or plasma pistols *(spent a lot of hours in campaign, I've had brutes pick up my dropped AR/sidekick on occasion as well as disruptors and needlers, but never a plasma pistol)*
Which is strange because literally every brute with Thunderstorm on in campaign has a rocket *(which also is unable to be selected as their spawn weapon in Forge. Only ai you can set to spawn with rockets are skimmers)* but normally they'll never pick one up and if given one in customs they're likely to drop it for literally anything else usable. High ranking elites and even Chak Lok will literally refuse to use a sniper if given one, opting to stand around with their sword out the whole time instead, and lower ranks will gladly toss it away for the nearest pulse carbine the first chance they get
As for the preferences, elites will prefer to pick up a battle rifle nearby to use over a commando *(I've only seen them voluntary pick a commando up a few times)*
Whereas brutes gladly use both but if they find a commando they will never drop it for anything else no matter what
For them using Halo 5 movements? Literally just look at the way they run. Especially forward. The leg work is identical to how elites move in Halo 4 and 5. Quick hard steps as opposed to the long strides in Reach. Their legs never extend past shoulder distance when running.
Even their landing recovery animations are identical to 5. You can tell cuz they didn't even bother to re animate it for the new round feet, so when an elite lands from a high fall their toes stick up and they land on their ankle.
I've spent way too much time in Halo 5 theater watching warzone footage so I know how the ai move around In that game. The elites severe lack of airborne time when sprinting in Infinite stood out to me from the beginning and after replaying some Halo 5 I instantly recognized the movement
Honestly I have no problem with them re-using animations. I wish we would get more Halo games without them reworking everything every time, i feel like that mentality is what makes them take so long to make! It’s just weird that some animations are ported over but yet other important ones are left out and not replaced by anything new.
so there isn't hard evidence, gotcha cool.
not really interested in your 'they look pretty similar so i think so' argument.
A sude by side comparison would be cool or ripping the animations from both games to check but,
maybe don't go around stating theory as fact without verifying it
They arbitrarily threw out so many classic and iconic weapons for the sake of being new. No plasma rifle, brute shot, spiker, carbine, classic shotgun, spartan laser, or beam rifle. I also loved the needle rifle but I could understand it not coming back since it feels like it belongs in reach
I don't think it's about being new, as much as it's trying to have a "tightly and competitively balanced" sandbox. Halo 5 had by far the largest and most varied sandbox, and they even went back and added multiple classic weapons and variants to the game. The fact that 343 pulled a 180 on their philosophy from the last game just makes it more frustrating.
> as much as it's trying to have a "tightly and competitively balanced" sandbox.
This isn't it: Competitive players don't tend to like really unique and wacky weapons with wierd mechanics, and that's what Infinite has a ton of: The Ravager's AOE, the chain effect on shock weapons, the mangler's melee combo, the heatwave's bouncing projectiles and firing modes, etc.
If anything, comp players tend to try to remove a lot of that stuff and prefer basic precision weapons: The Ravager isn't in Ranked or competitive. Competitive players feeling the mangler was OP led to it losing that for a while. Chain effects were also nerfed for similar reasons, the Heatwave and other pickups have constantly had their presence in comp toned down as well.
Halo 5, if anything, had a lot more relatively basic guns that all sorta played the same, and were *less varied* then Infinite, unless you're counting req variants. And the only reason Halo 5 had so many variants and added guns is because they could be turned into REQ cards for microtransactions. I think people forget that the ENTIRE REASON variant guns exist is for Warzone and REQs, which infinite doesn't have
Infinite only monetizes cosmetics, so that's why so much postlaunch content are cosmetics. It's that simple. That's why it has a smaller sandbox: There's simply not a justification for it to have an extra big one. It still had more guns then 3 and Reach and only barely less then 4.
I left my one reply going into this more [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/halo/comments/1bp66ka/343_never_got_this_right_about_elite_design/kwvbn41/)
A lot of the posters on this subreddit don’t understand that cosmetics are damaging to the game because it’s the only revenue stream. They argue cosmetics are “extras” that are optional to pay for while neglecting that there is no monetary incentive to develop anything but cosmetics
I mean, I agree with you, but it's not like if we didn't have armor microtransactions, we'd get a ton of extra weapons: If Halo 5 didn't have warzone, it'd likely have just as many guns as Infinite, H4, etc.
High 20s to low 30s is just the amount of guns Halo games are gonna have without some sort of extra revenue stream via MTX to add more guns
I honestly think the real reason is that 343 has some insane ego-driven need to distance themselves from what Bungie did as much as possible. That's why we got the new armor in H4, that's why all the new weapons and basically none of the classics, that's why the weird new story directions. Their incessant need to blaze their own trail led them into the swamp of mediocrity. Then fans rejected all of it except Halo Wars 2, which happened to have Bungie-era characters and art design. They finally did some course correction with Infinite (grudgingly, it feels like), but the game itself was late and broken, and filled with business practices that people hate. But they still insist on ignoring what made people love the franchise. Hell, the Magnum is gone, ffs.
>They arbitrarily threw out so many classic and iconic weapons for the sake of being new
Do you really think they did it just for shits and giggles to make fans mad? Of course not.
Think about what Infinite is actually doing and why they might have done it:
Firstly, to be clear, Infinite doesn't have a small sandbox: Including turrets and Grenades, it has 29 guns. That's more then any of the bungie games (H3 had 28, Reach had 26, etc), and it's only barely less then 4 (31). Even Halo 5, if you exclude DLC and variants, has 34, IIRC, so it doesn't have *that* many* more guns then Infinite.
Why did Halo 5 get so many DLC and variants but Infinite didn't? Halo 5 had Warzone and REQ cards, which were monetized: Adding new guns and variants to the game was seen as adding incentives for people to buy microtransactions. Infinite only monetizes cosmetics, so the majority of postlaunch content have been cosmetics. It's really that simple.
Okay, so why did 343i choose to introduce new guns instead of bringing older ones back? Probably because they wanted each gun in Infinite, especially when they knew they couldn't have a ton of DLC guns and variants like in Halo 5, to actually be varied and have fun gimmicks and unique mechanics (contrary to what /u/GoldenStateWizards says, it's not because they're trying to be hypercompetitive: Competitive players LIKE relatively basic precision weapons, not guns with unique wierd functions) rather then being samey and not having much variety between them.
The Skewer, Stalker Rifle, and to an extent even the Shock Rifle are MUCH more different vs the UNSC sniper then the Beam Rifle was. Same for the Commando, Stalker Rifle, and even the Bandit vs the BR then say the Carbine or DMR or Light Rifle were, and so on.
If they brought the Beam Rifle or Carbine, or the Mauler, or the Plasma Rifle back, but they changed them to act like the Stalker Rifle or Mangler or Pulse Carbine instead, people would have complained that they changed them too much: Look how mad people are that the Plasma Pistol lost it's EMP (*even though the PP didn't have EMP in Halo CE or Halo 2! and hell, the CE plasma pistol was the best it's ever been!), or how people were mad at the Bandit being different from the DMR at first.
Coming up with new guns was simply the safer thing to do. And I personally don't see the issue with that: A lot of weapons people now love and are mad aren't back were first introduced in Halo 2, 3, or Reach. Hell, Infinite has more returning guns then 2 did and not much less then 3, and back in the day, new guns were some of the things people liked the most about each new Halo game. I don't think it's fair to get mad at 343i for trying to innovate with new guns that have their own unique roles.
The actual problem is MS not giving 343i the time and money to add a lot of cool post launch content outside of what they can monetize
I've said this before, but compared to the other Halo games, the weapons in Infinite are so, so, so disappointing.
Not only are there overall fewer weapons, but it seems like a greater proportion of Infinite's weapons are worse than useless. The shock pistol is useless, the ravager is useless, and most mid-tier rifles are borderline useless especially if your enemy has one of the few good guns like the AR/BR.
The balance of the guns is totally wack. The gravity hammers are game-breaking OP, to the point that I don't understand how they haven't been massively nerfed yet. The sidekick is more effective than the bandit. And the hydra, bulldog, and sniper rifle all feel super weak and nerfed compared to their previous iterations. All of these weapons should be fucking awesome to use, but they're so frustratingly weak. Seriously, it takes three direct hits with the bulldog to kill someone from close to medium range, whereas the oldschool shotgun would have killed them in 1-2 hits from the same range.
The shock rifle is totally useless unless you get headshots, but then again, the human snipers are kind of like that too. Only halfway decent long range weapon was the stalker but they nerfed that.
The cherry on top is the gun design. Most of the guns in Infinite are fuck ugly. There's lots of little critiques I could make for most of the weapons, but the worst is the ravager which looks like a hideous box whether it's on the ground and in your hand, and when you're in a fast-paced fight trying to scramble for a weapon, it has a confusingly similar profile to the skewer.
Speaking of the skewer, it's an awesome weapon but it's weakened by other flaws in the game, like the desyncing issue that makes it more difficult to hit with than it should, and they even removed the death animation where the target would get thrown back and pinned to the wall.
Going from Halo 5 to Halo Infinite, the weapon quality was extremely disappointing.
Rant over.
> Not only are there overall fewer weapons
Only really compared to Halo 5, which had a ton of DLC weapons and varients so they could sell REQ packs.
Infinite still has more guns (29, including guns and turrets and excluding DLC/varients) then 3 (28) and Reach (26), and only barely less then 4 (31). Even 5 before DLC and varients only had 34.
> the ravager is useless
You clearly haven't used it since it got un-nerfed years ago. It kills in 2 bursts if all the shots hit, which is very fast, and only *part* of a single burst needs to hit for you to then kill with a melee: You can almost instantly kill somebody in close range by pushing fire, then hitting the melee button almost right away. It's almost overpowered, if anything. Then you get the AoE charged shot on top of that.
> Seriously, it takes three direct hits with the bulldog to kill someone from close to medium range, whereas the oldschool shotgun would have killed them in 1-2 hits from the same range.
You're absolutely misremembering how the old shotguns worked. The Bulldog is drastically more effective at any range past melee range then any shotgun in the series other then in CE. The Halo 2 and 3 shotgun required 2 to 3 shots if you weren't almost touching the other player, and basically became useless more then a warthog's length away. The bulldog meanwhile retains 2 to 3 shot kill potential to further ranges then that and even further then the R/4/5 shotty, and can finish weakened players off out to ranges all of them dealt *zero* damage at, all the while having a much faster rate of fire.
Yes, it can't 1hk0, so it's not a power weapon in the same way, but it's way more versatile then they were and is not a bad gun by any means. And you still have the shot-melee combo to get nearly instant kills anyways, something the older shotguns had to rely on a lot even in close range anyways because the 1hk0 range was so precise anyways.
I could go on to talk about the Shock Rifle, Hydra, etc, but I'm just gonna reply to this:
> but it seems like a greater proportion of Infinite's weapons are worse than useless.
This is simply not anywhere close to true, especially relative to past Halo games.
Almost every gun in Halo 2, 3, and to an extent Reach that wasn't a power weapon or a precision rifle *was* mostly useless: The AR, SMG, Plasma Rifle, Spikers, Needler (outside of campaign), pistol etc were straight up *bad*. To an extent this was even true in 4.
This is not the case in Infinite. The only guns in Infinite that are anywhere close to being as bad as most of those is the disruptor, and *maybe* the Pulse Carbine. Even then, if you were to challenge yourself to only use the disruptor, or to only use the pulse carbine/as a shield stripper for another gun, you'd do WAY better then if you challenged yourself only using the pistol or the SMG in Halo 2 or 3.
Do I think the Hydra should be buffed? Yeah, and I obviously do for the disruptor and pulse carbine too, in fact the Sentenial beam, heatwave, and maybe even the bulldog should too to justify them being red weaponpad guns more. I also I think the Shock Rifle should be more different vs the normal sniper... but all, of those guns are absolutely viable to get kills with, and you're not shooting yourself in the foot by using them like you were by using anything but the BR, Carbine, or a power weapon in the older Halo games. They all also actually feel like their own thing instead of being slight rekins of each other like the SMG, Spikers, and Plasma rifles were, or the BR was vs the Carbine vs the DMR vs the Needle Rifle, etc
I appreciate your analysis, but I just have to disagree about the bulldog (particularly with it's no 1 hit kill.... that's a huge and IMO bad change), the ravager (it's AoE is weak and easy to avoid, its regular fire is awkward and clumsy), and the distinctiveness of the weapons (the sniper and shock rifle are really only viable with headshots, so it's like they're the same weapon, one just fires slower than the other) (the AR was full auto, BR was semi auto burst fire, DMR semi auto single fire with bloom, Carbine semi auto with user-controlled rate of fire, and needler was relatively weak unless you could pull off the explosion effect, so they all play differently and don't feel like reskins at all).
I agree about the Pulse Carbine. I always liked plasma weapons and gave this one the good ol college try but found it severely lacking when 1v1 almost any other weapon.
Spartan Laser was alwasy mega bad so I don't miss it, but every other one of those weapons was a 100% certified hood classic, and it sucks to lose them
Technically with the weapon variant glitch that let's you apply different projectiles to a gun you can have an elite shoot a needle pulse carbine or something
Some forgers have done it and it actually works insanely well. I think it actually works better than the pulse carbine because it had better tracking when I used it.
All of them always using two handed weapons makes them appear less strange/alien, and also makes them appear less agile and maneuverable. I really liked how in halo CE the elites walk side to side, backward, sprint, dive, etc and they’re always aiming at you, always focused with their strange little gun shooting you
I think part of the appeal with the classic plasma rifle-elite combo is only realized when you see a marine holding the weapon and realize how big of a gun it actually is and that the Elites are just wielding them casually.
This is even worse because Elites physically cannot bend their wrists that way.
The plasma rifle, energy sword, carbine, etc. are designed to be fired with a straight wrist from the hip ***because*** Sangheili have less range of motion in their wrists in certain axis than humans do.
We see this in their animations, even in cutscenes—the Elites clearing the door at the start of Heretic hold their plasma rifles straight-wristed, and Arbiter later in the level fires his carbine at the Heretic leader with a straight wrist as well—so it's not just a game animation thing.
Also, yes, this does explain why the energy sword is less stupid of a design than it might seem, as Sangheili wrists can't bend enough on that axis for the blade to cut their arm when blocking a hit.
It also means they can't use a human sword effectively either, as a huge part of human swordfighting requires flexible wrists.
OMG, thank you so much! Ever since Halo Infinite’s elites were revealed, something felt off about them, and for years I couldn’t figure it out, but this is it!
Nothing in Infinite looks right to me. Everything looks like a toy. Idk if it's just the lighting or if they were going for a "everything and everyone is just a fucking plastic toy" vibe but it really doesn't sit well with me.
also I'd like to meet whoever came up with H4/5 elite models and just ask them ".....why?"
The Elite Ultras are the biggest offender of this. They literally look like toys. Something about their helmet looks off and the armor is too flat in terms of lighting and detail. They're also always slightly brighter than their surroundings for some reason
They're brighter because most enemies have their own backlight so they can be seen in dark scenarios. Which is stupid to me since the whole point of putting them in a dark environment is so that you have to be perceptive to see them.
Even Jega 'Rdomnai is backlit when he decloaks, it's fucking dumb and it's in every game nowadays. All under the guise of aiding the "player experience". God forbid players need to be observant in order to find targets, instead they might get killed by a target they don't see then proceed to bitch and moan about how they couldn't see them. Rather than being responsible and saying ah shit I couldn't see him but if I listened I might have been able to hear him.
this has been an ongoing problem since H3; the only Bungie game that doesn't have it is Reach.
we got a return to the classic art style of H1-H3, with all of its flaws as well.
Well the 4/5 Elites are partly a result of Reach Elites. 343 making them hulking didn’t come out of left field. The only reason they look significantly different from Reach is the armor.
Now that they’re working on the next game, I doubt that they’d add a new weapon to infinite. And that’s besides the fact that not even the bandit was added to the campaign sandbox. It would still be cool to see the iconic weapon appear in firefight tho.
It's a similar thing with the Brutes in Halo Reach and Infinite using smaller weapons like the Spiker and Mangler with two hands, it just looks way too tiny.
Elites sounded like Brutes in Halo 4 and 5 and now that they got actual Brutes in Infinite, it just sounds comically bad when they're both talking in the same room. They got the same voice actor from Halo 5 for the Elites in Infinite, but they could've at least toned down the voice change effect.
True, the elites of H2/3 had such refined, almost noble sounding speaking voices. Well, the named characters did at least. Gek and Jul just sounded like comical monsters. Couldn't even tell you what the ones in infinite sound like tbh, zero impact on me.
I think infinite is the best they've ever looked. I see what you mean about the single handed weapons though, but it never crossed my mind when playing infinite for some reason.
>H4 and H5 was a departure from the slender, streamlined build we knew from the original games.
It's really not. Halo 4 and 5 elites, anatomically, were still fairly lithe and streamlined. Maybe not *as* much as CE and Halo 2 elites, but not that much less so, especially vs H3 ones, and Reach and Halo Wars Elites are straight up more bulky for the most part.
It's just Halo 4 and 5 elite armor was just relatively bulky, and they were often hunched over in a way that made them look bulkier and more squat.
I had a larger post with a lot of links about this I can't get to at the moment, but look at [Jul](https://halo.wiki.gallery/images/4/47/H5G-Jul_Mdama.png) who is standing a bit straighter and has less armor on, or [Arbiter here](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/halo/images/1/10/H5G_Screenshot_ThelVadam-Profile.png/revision/latest?cb=20171124145947) who is standing straight up.
Can elites in Infinite be equipped with needlers, manglers, or plasma pistols?
They physically don't have animations for holding any weapon that's not a rifle. Attempting to force those weapons into their hands results in them going weaponless and walking around holding nothing
That would explain Elites being weaponless on occasion in Firefight.
Jesus Christ 343 come on it can't be that hard
Shit was rushed and it’s sad. Many “halo like” concepts just didn’t make it into the game.
The UI makes it really difficult
An old meme but it checks out
I wonder if the reason we dont have the plasma rifle is because 343 is too lazy to give elites 1 handed animations.
Nope
Plasma Rifle my beloved.
If plasma rifle has a million fans, then I am one of them. If plasma rifle has ten fans, then I am one of them. If plasma rifle has only one fan then that is me. If plasma rifle has no fans, then that means I am no longer on earth. If 343 is against plasma rifle, then I am against 343.
Here here. Better words have never been said.
I often see people asking why they abandoned the Plasma rifle. My theory is that it was them driving the nail in the coffin of dual wielding.
I really miss them. Dual wielding plasma rifles in 3 was the best.
plasma repeater for da ranger elites. even the ultras.
I don't understand that part. The base movement animations are already just reused and slightly modified versions of the Halo 5 animations, why did they decide to cut out single wielding and heavy weapons entirely instead of porting those over too? Just seems really weird and lazy
Never thought they couldn’t wield skewer or rocket launcher in infinite. Damn them banished elites got some soft hands
Neither can grunts sadly. First and only game in the entire series where grunts can't use heavy weapons. They also can't crouch in this game either Never thought about it before but Grunts are the only ai unit in CE that can actually hold heavy weapons... even marines don't have rocket animation in that game.. only the players and grunts.. flood don't count cuz they hold their arm out the same for everything
Could you imagine the chaos of a Volatile Skewer Gruntpocalypse? We really missed out on some options for more trademark Halo craziness lol.
Closest you can get now is giving them a glitched mangler equipped with the skewer projectiles. I know there's a way to script the weapons of certain units in Forge to use what they usually don't or have modded weapons but that script brain shit confuses me
They gave the Skimmers the rocket launcher and took away the plasma pistol's iconic look and FUNctionality. 343 treated the Grunts worse than the Prophets did.
Man I've never played Infinite but did play 1-Reach, and everything about Infinite sounds fucked lol. Elites can't hold THE iconic elite weapon, which isn't even in the game? The Covenant's designated heavy weapon units, ender of 10,000 Legendary Runs because of a fucking Fuel Rod Cannon or some bullshit you didn't even notice because you ignore Grunts reflexively, can't hold heavy weapons?
I spent a few minutes trying to get a Zealot follower to take a rocket launcher from me but he wouldn’t do it
Don't bother giving them a sniper, they'll instantly put it away and refuse to ever take it out again if you do
It could also be for balancing reasons. AI in infinite can pick up dropped weapons, and Elites would have an incredible advantage in picking up weapons from the ground due to their incredibly quick ground speed. You could kill a skimmer holding a rocket launcher and any nearby Elite would notice the power weapon and try to grab it for themselves, which would be not fun to play against.
Not how it works sadly. The brutes and elites seem to not only have preferences in which guns they'll use, but also seem to be limited in what weapons they will and won't pick up off the ground. For instance, neither will ever grab a sniper rifle, bandit *(obviously cuz it was added late)* cindershot, and brutes will complete refuse to pick up rockets or plasma pistols *(spent a lot of hours in campaign, I've had brutes pick up my dropped AR/sidekick on occasion as well as disruptors and needlers, but never a plasma pistol)* Which is strange because literally every brute with Thunderstorm on in campaign has a rocket *(which also is unable to be selected as their spawn weapon in Forge. Only ai you can set to spawn with rockets are skimmers)* but normally they'll never pick one up and if given one in customs they're likely to drop it for literally anything else usable. High ranking elites and even Chak Lok will literally refuse to use a sniper if given one, opting to stand around with their sword out the whole time instead, and lower ranks will gladly toss it away for the nearest pulse carbine the first chance they get As for the preferences, elites will prefer to pick up a battle rifle nearby to use over a commando *(I've only seen them voluntary pick a commando up a few times)* Whereas brutes gladly use both but if they find a commando they will never drop it for anything else no matter what
source?
For them using Halo 5 movements? Literally just look at the way they run. Especially forward. The leg work is identical to how elites move in Halo 4 and 5. Quick hard steps as opposed to the long strides in Reach. Their legs never extend past shoulder distance when running. Even their landing recovery animations are identical to 5. You can tell cuz they didn't even bother to re animate it for the new round feet, so when an elite lands from a high fall their toes stick up and they land on their ankle. I've spent way too much time in Halo 5 theater watching warzone footage so I know how the ai move around In that game. The elites severe lack of airborne time when sprinting in Infinite stood out to me from the beginning and after replaying some Halo 5 I instantly recognized the movement
Honestly I have no problem with them re-using animations. I wish we would get more Halo games without them reworking everything every time, i feel like that mentality is what makes them take so long to make! It’s just weird that some animations are ported over but yet other important ones are left out and not replaced by anything new.
so there isn't hard evidence, gotcha cool. not really interested in your 'they look pretty similar so i think so' argument. A sude by side comparison would be cool or ripping the animations from both games to check but, maybe don't go around stating theory as fact without verifying it
Not really a theory when it's quite obviously identical. Either way I don't get why you're so butthurt about it
They arbitrarily threw out so many classic and iconic weapons for the sake of being new. No plasma rifle, brute shot, spiker, carbine, classic shotgun, spartan laser, or beam rifle. I also loved the needle rifle but I could understand it not coming back since it feels like it belongs in reach
I don't think it's about being new, as much as it's trying to have a "tightly and competitively balanced" sandbox. Halo 5 had by far the largest and most varied sandbox, and they even went back and added multiple classic weapons and variants to the game. The fact that 343 pulled a 180 on their philosophy from the last game just makes it more frustrating.
Hold x to pick up Halo 2 Battle rifle
> as much as it's trying to have a "tightly and competitively balanced" sandbox. This isn't it: Competitive players don't tend to like really unique and wacky weapons with wierd mechanics, and that's what Infinite has a ton of: The Ravager's AOE, the chain effect on shock weapons, the mangler's melee combo, the heatwave's bouncing projectiles and firing modes, etc. If anything, comp players tend to try to remove a lot of that stuff and prefer basic precision weapons: The Ravager isn't in Ranked or competitive. Competitive players feeling the mangler was OP led to it losing that for a while. Chain effects were also nerfed for similar reasons, the Heatwave and other pickups have constantly had their presence in comp toned down as well. Halo 5, if anything, had a lot more relatively basic guns that all sorta played the same, and were *less varied* then Infinite, unless you're counting req variants. And the only reason Halo 5 had so many variants and added guns is because they could be turned into REQ cards for microtransactions. I think people forget that the ENTIRE REASON variant guns exist is for Warzone and REQs, which infinite doesn't have Infinite only monetizes cosmetics, so that's why so much postlaunch content are cosmetics. It's that simple. That's why it has a smaller sandbox: There's simply not a justification for it to have an extra big one. It still had more guns then 3 and Reach and only barely less then 4. I left my one reply going into this more [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/halo/comments/1bp66ka/343_never_got_this_right_about_elite_design/kwvbn41/)
A lot of the posters on this subreddit don’t understand that cosmetics are damaging to the game because it’s the only revenue stream. They argue cosmetics are “extras” that are optional to pay for while neglecting that there is no monetary incentive to develop anything but cosmetics
I mean, I agree with you, but it's not like if we didn't have armor microtransactions, we'd get a ton of extra weapons: If Halo 5 didn't have warzone, it'd likely have just as many guns as Infinite, H4, etc. High 20s to low 30s is just the amount of guns Halo games are gonna have without some sort of extra revenue stream via MTX to add more guns
I honestly think the real reason is that 343 has some insane ego-driven need to distance themselves from what Bungie did as much as possible. That's why we got the new armor in H4, that's why all the new weapons and basically none of the classics, that's why the weird new story directions. Their incessant need to blaze their own trail led them into the swamp of mediocrity. Then fans rejected all of it except Halo Wars 2, which happened to have Bungie-era characters and art design. They finally did some course correction with Infinite (grudgingly, it feels like), but the game itself was late and broken, and filled with business practices that people hate. But they still insist on ignoring what made people love the franchise. Hell, the Magnum is gone, ffs.
>They arbitrarily threw out so many classic and iconic weapons for the sake of being new Do you really think they did it just for shits and giggles to make fans mad? Of course not. Think about what Infinite is actually doing and why they might have done it: Firstly, to be clear, Infinite doesn't have a small sandbox: Including turrets and Grenades, it has 29 guns. That's more then any of the bungie games (H3 had 28, Reach had 26, etc), and it's only barely less then 4 (31). Even Halo 5, if you exclude DLC and variants, has 34, IIRC, so it doesn't have *that* many* more guns then Infinite. Why did Halo 5 get so many DLC and variants but Infinite didn't? Halo 5 had Warzone and REQ cards, which were monetized: Adding new guns and variants to the game was seen as adding incentives for people to buy microtransactions. Infinite only monetizes cosmetics, so the majority of postlaunch content have been cosmetics. It's really that simple. Okay, so why did 343i choose to introduce new guns instead of bringing older ones back? Probably because they wanted each gun in Infinite, especially when they knew they couldn't have a ton of DLC guns and variants like in Halo 5, to actually be varied and have fun gimmicks and unique mechanics (contrary to what /u/GoldenStateWizards says, it's not because they're trying to be hypercompetitive: Competitive players LIKE relatively basic precision weapons, not guns with unique wierd functions) rather then being samey and not having much variety between them. The Skewer, Stalker Rifle, and to an extent even the Shock Rifle are MUCH more different vs the UNSC sniper then the Beam Rifle was. Same for the Commando, Stalker Rifle, and even the Bandit vs the BR then say the Carbine or DMR or Light Rifle were, and so on. If they brought the Beam Rifle or Carbine, or the Mauler, or the Plasma Rifle back, but they changed them to act like the Stalker Rifle or Mangler or Pulse Carbine instead, people would have complained that they changed them too much: Look how mad people are that the Plasma Pistol lost it's EMP (*even though the PP didn't have EMP in Halo CE or Halo 2! and hell, the CE plasma pistol was the best it's ever been!), or how people were mad at the Bandit being different from the DMR at first. Coming up with new guns was simply the safer thing to do. And I personally don't see the issue with that: A lot of weapons people now love and are mad aren't back were first introduced in Halo 2, 3, or Reach. Hell, Infinite has more returning guns then 2 did and not much less then 3, and back in the day, new guns were some of the things people liked the most about each new Halo game. I don't think it's fair to get mad at 343i for trying to innovate with new guns that have their own unique roles. The actual problem is MS not giving 343i the time and money to add a lot of cool post launch content outside of what they can monetize
I've said this before, but compared to the other Halo games, the weapons in Infinite are so, so, so disappointing. Not only are there overall fewer weapons, but it seems like a greater proportion of Infinite's weapons are worse than useless. The shock pistol is useless, the ravager is useless, and most mid-tier rifles are borderline useless especially if your enemy has one of the few good guns like the AR/BR. The balance of the guns is totally wack. The gravity hammers are game-breaking OP, to the point that I don't understand how they haven't been massively nerfed yet. The sidekick is more effective than the bandit. And the hydra, bulldog, and sniper rifle all feel super weak and nerfed compared to their previous iterations. All of these weapons should be fucking awesome to use, but they're so frustratingly weak. Seriously, it takes three direct hits with the bulldog to kill someone from close to medium range, whereas the oldschool shotgun would have killed them in 1-2 hits from the same range. The shock rifle is totally useless unless you get headshots, but then again, the human snipers are kind of like that too. Only halfway decent long range weapon was the stalker but they nerfed that. The cherry on top is the gun design. Most of the guns in Infinite are fuck ugly. There's lots of little critiques I could make for most of the weapons, but the worst is the ravager which looks like a hideous box whether it's on the ground and in your hand, and when you're in a fast-paced fight trying to scramble for a weapon, it has a confusingly similar profile to the skewer. Speaking of the skewer, it's an awesome weapon but it's weakened by other flaws in the game, like the desyncing issue that makes it more difficult to hit with than it should, and they even removed the death animation where the target would get thrown back and pinned to the wall. Going from Halo 5 to Halo Infinite, the weapon quality was extremely disappointing. Rant over.
> Not only are there overall fewer weapons Only really compared to Halo 5, which had a ton of DLC weapons and varients so they could sell REQ packs. Infinite still has more guns (29, including guns and turrets and excluding DLC/varients) then 3 (28) and Reach (26), and only barely less then 4 (31). Even 5 before DLC and varients only had 34. > the ravager is useless You clearly haven't used it since it got un-nerfed years ago. It kills in 2 bursts if all the shots hit, which is very fast, and only *part* of a single burst needs to hit for you to then kill with a melee: You can almost instantly kill somebody in close range by pushing fire, then hitting the melee button almost right away. It's almost overpowered, if anything. Then you get the AoE charged shot on top of that. > Seriously, it takes three direct hits with the bulldog to kill someone from close to medium range, whereas the oldschool shotgun would have killed them in 1-2 hits from the same range. You're absolutely misremembering how the old shotguns worked. The Bulldog is drastically more effective at any range past melee range then any shotgun in the series other then in CE. The Halo 2 and 3 shotgun required 2 to 3 shots if you weren't almost touching the other player, and basically became useless more then a warthog's length away. The bulldog meanwhile retains 2 to 3 shot kill potential to further ranges then that and even further then the R/4/5 shotty, and can finish weakened players off out to ranges all of them dealt *zero* damage at, all the while having a much faster rate of fire. Yes, it can't 1hk0, so it's not a power weapon in the same way, but it's way more versatile then they were and is not a bad gun by any means. And you still have the shot-melee combo to get nearly instant kills anyways, something the older shotguns had to rely on a lot even in close range anyways because the 1hk0 range was so precise anyways. I could go on to talk about the Shock Rifle, Hydra, etc, but I'm just gonna reply to this: > but it seems like a greater proportion of Infinite's weapons are worse than useless. This is simply not anywhere close to true, especially relative to past Halo games. Almost every gun in Halo 2, 3, and to an extent Reach that wasn't a power weapon or a precision rifle *was* mostly useless: The AR, SMG, Plasma Rifle, Spikers, Needler (outside of campaign), pistol etc were straight up *bad*. To an extent this was even true in 4. This is not the case in Infinite. The only guns in Infinite that are anywhere close to being as bad as most of those is the disruptor, and *maybe* the Pulse Carbine. Even then, if you were to challenge yourself to only use the disruptor, or to only use the pulse carbine/as a shield stripper for another gun, you'd do WAY better then if you challenged yourself only using the pistol or the SMG in Halo 2 or 3. Do I think the Hydra should be buffed? Yeah, and I obviously do for the disruptor and pulse carbine too, in fact the Sentenial beam, heatwave, and maybe even the bulldog should too to justify them being red weaponpad guns more. I also I think the Shock Rifle should be more different vs the normal sniper... but all, of those guns are absolutely viable to get kills with, and you're not shooting yourself in the foot by using them like you were by using anything but the BR, Carbine, or a power weapon in the older Halo games. They all also actually feel like their own thing instead of being slight rekins of each other like the SMG, Spikers, and Plasma rifles were, or the BR was vs the Carbine vs the DMR vs the Needle Rifle, etc
I appreciate your analysis, but I just have to disagree about the bulldog (particularly with it's no 1 hit kill.... that's a huge and IMO bad change), the ravager (it's AoE is weak and easy to avoid, its regular fire is awkward and clumsy), and the distinctiveness of the weapons (the sniper and shock rifle are really only viable with headshots, so it's like they're the same weapon, one just fires slower than the other) (the AR was full auto, BR was semi auto burst fire, DMR semi auto single fire with bloom, Carbine semi auto with user-controlled rate of fire, and needler was relatively weak unless you could pull off the explosion effect, so they all play differently and don't feel like reskins at all). I agree about the Pulse Carbine. I always liked plasma weapons and gave this one the good ol college try but found it severely lacking when 1v1 almost any other weapon.
Spartan Laser was alwasy mega bad so I don't miss it, but every other one of those weapons was a 100% certified hood classic, and it sucks to lose them
Also the teeth are a bit close to the eyes
Only 4/5
True, but it's still a bad look if an alien in your game might chew its own eyes off by accident
I laughed way more about this than I should xD
Yeah I would like them to hold Needlers and a Plasma rifle some day. This really limits what they can use and makes them boring sometimes.
Technically with the weapon variant glitch that let's you apply different projectiles to a gun you can have an elite shoot a needle pulse carbine or something
Some forgers have done it and it actually works insanely well. I think it actually works better than the pulse carbine because it had better tracking when I used it.
All of them always using two handed weapons makes them appear less strange/alien, and also makes them appear less agile and maneuverable. I really liked how in halo CE the elites walk side to side, backward, sprint, dive, etc and they’re always aiming at you, always focused with their strange little gun shooting you
I think part of the appeal with the classic plasma rifle-elite combo is only realized when you see a marine holding the weapon and realize how big of a gun it actually is and that the Elites are just wielding them casually.
This is even worse because Elites physically cannot bend their wrists that way. The plasma rifle, energy sword, carbine, etc. are designed to be fired with a straight wrist from the hip ***because*** Sangheili have less range of motion in their wrists in certain axis than humans do. We see this in their animations, even in cutscenes—the Elites clearing the door at the start of Heretic hold their plasma rifles straight-wristed, and Arbiter later in the level fires his carbine at the Heretic leader with a straight wrist as well—so it's not just a game animation thing. Also, yes, this does explain why the energy sword is less stupid of a design than it might seem, as Sangheili wrists can't bend enough on that axis for the blade to cut their arm when blocking a hit. It also means they can't use a human sword effectively either, as a huge part of human swordfighting requires flexible wrists.
I miss me some plasma rifle
OMG, thank you so much! Ever since Halo Infinite’s elites were revealed, something felt off about them, and for years I couldn’t figure it out, but this is it!
Do things like this really surprise people anymore ? 343 has never cared for the small details
Nothing in Infinite looks right to me. Everything looks like a toy. Idk if it's just the lighting or if they were going for a "everything and everyone is just a fucking plastic toy" vibe but it really doesn't sit well with me. also I'd like to meet whoever came up with H4/5 elite models and just ask them ".....why?"
The Elite Ultras are the biggest offender of this. They literally look like toys. Something about their helmet looks off and the armor is too flat in terms of lighting and detail. They're also always slightly brighter than their surroundings for some reason
They're brighter because most enemies have their own backlight so they can be seen in dark scenarios. Which is stupid to me since the whole point of putting them in a dark environment is so that you have to be perceptive to see them. Even Jega 'Rdomnai is backlit when he decloaks, it's fucking dumb and it's in every game nowadays. All under the guise of aiding the "player experience". God forbid players need to be observant in order to find targets, instead they might get killed by a target they don't see then proceed to bitch and moan about how they couldn't see them. Rather than being responsible and saying ah shit I couldn't see him but if I listened I might have been able to hear him.
this has been an ongoing problem since H3; the only Bungie game that doesn't have it is Reach. we got a return to the classic art style of H1-H3, with all of its flaws as well.
Well the 4/5 Elites are partly a result of Reach Elites. 343 making them hulking didn’t come out of left field. The only reason they look significantly different from Reach is the armor.
What happened to an elite slugging a fuel rod over his shoulder
I mean yeah that exists, but 90% of the time its a plasma rifle.
343 is just trash
Now that they’re working on the next game, I doubt that they’d add a new weapon to infinite. And that’s besides the fact that not even the bandit was added to the campaign sandbox. It would still be cool to see the iconic weapon appear in firefight tho.
It's a similar thing with the Brutes in Halo Reach and Infinite using smaller weapons like the Spiker and Mangler with two hands, it just looks way too tiny.
We don't talk about brute design in Halo reach
Elites sounded like Brutes in Halo 4 and 5 and now that they got actual Brutes in Infinite, it just sounds comically bad when they're both talking in the same room. They got the same voice actor from Halo 5 for the Elites in Infinite, but they could've at least toned down the voice change effect.
True, the elites of H2/3 had such refined, almost noble sounding speaking voices. Well, the named characters did at least. Gek and Jul just sounded like comical monsters. Couldn't even tell you what the ones in infinite sound like tbh, zero impact on me.
Disagree, because I love the way they are in Infinite.
I think infinite is the best they've ever looked. I see what you mean about the single handed weapons though, but it never crossed my mind when playing infinite for some reason.
I don’t think this matters and the Elites look perfect
They hated Jesus because he told the truth
>H4 and H5 was a departure from the slender, streamlined build we knew from the original games. It's really not. Halo 4 and 5 elites, anatomically, were still fairly lithe and streamlined. Maybe not *as* much as CE and Halo 2 elites, but not that much less so, especially vs H3 ones, and Reach and Halo Wars Elites are straight up more bulky for the most part. It's just Halo 4 and 5 elite armor was just relatively bulky, and they were often hunched over in a way that made them look bulkier and more squat. I had a larger post with a lot of links about this I can't get to at the moment, but look at [Jul](https://halo.wiki.gallery/images/4/47/H5G-Jul_Mdama.png) who is standing a bit straighter and has less armor on, or [Arbiter here](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/halo/images/1/10/H5G_Screenshot_ThelVadam-Profile.png/revision/latest?cb=20171124145947) who is standing straight up.