Bungies raising the bar, but is it high enough?

With footage coming in from the recently finished Comic-Con 2010, Halo fans have squealed with joy with what they’ve seen. Space combat, an epic campaign, and some cool new firefight customizable features. Speaking of customizable, all these things are a nice blast from the past, but what really took the spot light is what Bungie took to a whole new level in terms of player creation content. I speak of forge mode of course! And while right about now you may be saying “this guys a noob, halo 3 had forge and I could make lots of stuff” I’ll be glad to fill you in on what you don’t know. In halo 3 forge was created to players to fidget around with levels and customize them to the hearts desire, but what they didn’t expect was for people to change the levels so drastically that they no longer retained the essence of origin. This was done through complicated methods which took hours upon hours of stressful work, where one mistake meant it all coming down. Bungie saw the potential and released a map where you were practically given a blank slate, and while this made it easier to make what you wanted, the methods were still too hard and complicated for anything mainstream.
So now with Halo: Reach, the epic climax to the Halo saga, Bungie is going out of its way to make player created content on forge much easier. To start things off they’ve created two maps made especially for creating new maps. One is literally a blank slate, a clean slot of land where to can build anything you wish, and the other is an old favorite. Remember back to that old game called halo combat evolved where there was an old map called blood gulch that you would argue too play on…o wait, no you wouldn’t because everyone wanted to play on it. Well its back, and whilst I wouldn’t quite call it better yet, it would be an understatement to call it bigger. That’s right its bigger and its gained a few aesthetic overhauls so that it looks perty. With the blood gulch section being only a part of the entire map you can overhaul it to pretty much be anything, hell you could turn it into a Fort Brad military base with a blood gulch right in the middle if that what you’ve always dreamed about.
So Bungie has nailed the making maps part, especially with all the options such as the ability to section of parts of the map, limiting where players may go, but are they really going far enough with this being their last halo game. After all there are already many games out there that offer such an advanced level of customization. The most advanced being the mod adopted by valve, Garry’s mod, which is basically forge advanced on a scale by 100, some of others being the more popular, Little Big Planet, and Spore. To start this discussion off I’ll delve into one of the biggest problems with Forge. It holds no to very little appeal to those without an xboxlive subscription as they can’t play their created content online with anyone else other than split screen with a friend, but really how much fun is a huge map if it takes a half an hour to find the other guy. This could be easily fixed with the addition of being able to place in AI enemies and allies. This could include being able to place covenant and marines from the campaign and being able to give them simple customization options such as if they are allied and way points of where to go after they have spawned. Games like Garrys mod and little big planet allow you to place such adversaries where you wish, adding both flavor to the game and joy for those without internet. Another subject that Bungie has yet to talk about is a combination of both firefight and forge. You may be able to select how a firefight plays out, but you’re unable to change the playing ground in which its fought, meaning that it will eventually become stale. This could be fixed by adding one firefight map where it is more of a blank slate and your given the options of where the enemies spawn from, and where they will go to attack. These are but a few features that they could include to make a better game. If you too, have cool ideas about what should be included leave and discuses them in the comment section below.
-Josh Miller