Not to suggest you're wrong, but what console aspects are you referring to?
Modern FPS control scheme
Before Halo, FPS was on the back burner as a genre... After Halo, FPS was king.
What Halo did: Like we said in the intro, Halo obviously didn't invent multiplayer. But the first console game to incorporate local system-link in addition to split screen competition? Halo did that. The first console game to inspire friends to lug their monitors and rigs to each other's houses for nightly LAN parties? Halo did that too. The first console game to make online matchmaking a breeze? Halo (well, technically Halo 2) did that. And the first game to introduce us to foul-mouthed, trash-talking, teabagging 12 year-olds? Hey, we never promised every influence would be good. Just important.
What the industry has done since: There's no denying Halo's role in pioneering and popularizing modern console multiplayer the kind that enables you to compete with people across the globe, not merely across your living room carpet. Gears of War, Killzone, Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell and many more online shooters are indebted to Bungie for blazing the way. The trend Halo ignited has reached outside the basic shooter, too. Would games such as Dead Space 2, BioShock 2 and Uncharted 2 still feel the need to add multiplayer if not for Master Chief? I say
nay.
What Halo did: Once upon a time, there was the kingdom of shooters and the kingdom of car games, and never the twain did meet. Since sticking to first-person view while driving a car and trying to shoot would be an exercise in futility, it seemed like there wasn't a way to marry them in an effective way, or even a desire to do so. If you absolutely
needed a vehicle, a prop usually did the trick - think the shuttle from Half-Life. Then Halo rolled into town and introduced vehicles like the ghost, the Scorpion tank, and the beloved Warthog, seamlessly shifting players into a third-person driving/shooting whenever they accessed them. The vehicles may have controlled like garbage early on, but Halo deserves all the credit in the world for getting the concept to work.
What the industry has done since: Turns out players
really like controlling vehicles, or at least having some way to move around faster than the speed of sprint, so these modes of transportation have become nearly ubiquitous in first-person shooters. Whether its the sparrows in Destiny, Battlefield's helicopters, or a stray runner in Borderlands, they're all touched by Halo. The industry has admittedly adjusted over time, creating more games where you
stay in first-person mode while zipping around (Far Cry 4 and BioShock Infinite come to mind), and that's great. It means the industry is evolving even more from that base that Halo began.
What Halo did: Remember health packs? Those were fun, weren't they? And pretty damn common in the shooters of yore like Doom, Wolfenstein, and Duke Nukem, where you had to depend on those packs to keep your single health bar filled. A few games tried out a regenerating health system, like
MIDI Maze and Faceball 2000, but they weren't popular enough to bring the concept to mainstream attention. This is where Halo: CE comes in, but not with a straight-regenerating health system as some people falsely remember: Halo: CE had a regenerating shield that created a layer over your health bar as a primary means of defense. That's a bit of a
well actually point though; Halo: CE's system paved the way for Halo 2 to go full-regeneration, and even if the series has bounced back and forth between the two setups several times, the basic idea is still there: crouch in the corner for a while and everything will be okay.
What the industry has done since: Name one first-person shooter made in the last five years that doesn't use something like this system. Call of Duty does it, Battlefield does it, Destiny, Gears of War, and Deus Ex all do it. While they vary on whether they take the Halo: CE or 2 approach, it's nonetheless clear how Halo brought both into the public conscience.
What Halo did: Back in the day, first-person shooters felt like the Wild West of gaming. There were no standards for how they should control when it came to console, forcing you to learn a new (usually clunky) setup every time you got a new game. That confusion kept the FPS from thriving on console and made it a genre beholden to the PC. And then came Halo. Suddenly you had two weapons max to work with at any given time, grenades were controlled with the trigger buttons, and you had to get good at using two joysticks to handle your character or spend most of your time running into walls. Halo may not have invented most of these ideas, instead pulling from a slew of other games like a digital Alexander the Great, but it made a call and stuck to those guns through the entire series.
What the industry has done since: These days the weapon-wheel is virtually a novelty for first-person shooters, and any FPS that controls with a single joystick is almost inherently retro. Halo's scheme worked so well that the industry has long since adopted it as a standard, creating the console world's true answer to the mouse and keyboard. While it
took some time to catch on, in 2015 you'll feel Halo's influence every time you pick up a controller and aim your in-game gun.
That's just the tip of the iceberg.
