What Spartan Ops could have been, and what could be in future games

[SpaceWolf4]

Spartan Ops to me, has a lot of potential. But it falls short in many ways. Not only is it pretty easy to complete even on harder difficulties, but it seems to lack in storytelling too. To me, it just doesn't seem to get anywhere. It's a shame really, because like I said before, it has a lot of potential to be a gateway to other stories across the Halo universe, at any point. The only two things holding it back at the moment is that it's trying to serve as a side story AND a Firefight style gametype at the same time and that it's for the time being restricted to Crimson, Infinity and Requiem.

 

In my opinion, Spartan Ops in the future needs to stop being a replacement for Firefight and become its own thing, and 343i need to bring normal Firefight back. If they want to add some more objectives and the like to Firefight, then they should just create new gametypes for it (sort of like what Reach did with Generator Defense and Spartans vs Elites, as well as enabling customization for FF).

 

When I say Spartan Ops should "become its own thing", I mean it should be a bunch of side stories worthy of the Halo name. The Halo universe is huge. There are lots of stories that 343i could tell in that universe, whether it's the Covenant war, the Insurrectionists and even secret wars that "never happened" thanks to ONI's cover ups. The way I see it, Spartan Ops being all about Crimson and the Infinity travelling back to Requiem is what's holding it back (as well as it trying to serve as a Firefight replacement as well, as I mentioned before). If 343i hadn't placed such a massive restriction on Spartan Ops, they could have done literally anything they wanted with each episode: ODSTs, Spartan-IIs, Spartan-IIIs, marines, hell even Covenant. Each episode could have been completely different to the previous episode and it would have helped to keep things fresh.

 

It's not too late. 343i can still do these things, whether it's for Season 2 or for future Halo games. If they did do something like this, then I'd certainly buy seasons as I'd be getting something new each time. Even if it meant waiting longer to get new episodes, I still think that this is a better alternative than just being stuck to the same planet that we've already explored in the main story. What do you guys think?