OG Halo CE dev reacts to the remake's new sprint: "If you make a game mechanic optional you have abandoned your post, thrown up your hands and admitted you have no vision"
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Scott McCrae
2025-10-28
Former Halo lead Jaime Griesemer has commented on the debate about whether Halo should have a sprint function after it was retroactively added into Combat Evolved's upcoming remake.
Halo: Campaign Evolved was announced last week, joining 2025's Gears of War: Reloaded in returning to a beloved Xbox series. However, Campaign Evolved is not an exact remake, as the game adds things like sprinting and changes to the level design. Former Halo lead Jaime Griesemer is wary of some of the changes, including the removal of some rocks that were intentionally placed so that you couldn't destroy your enemies from the safety of a Warthog, calling Campaign Evolved "like the dance remix of a classic song that skips the intro and the bridge and just thumps the chorus over and over."
The Halo remake will reignite the debate that's plagued the series for 15 years, because "you can sprint now"
OG Halo: CE dev says the remake's changes are "like the dance remix of a classic song that skips the intro and the bridge and just thumps the chorus over and over"
Halo co-creator says Campaign Evolved "looks and feels genuine": "It's gorgeous in a way I wish we could have built it originally back in 2001"
Griesemer elaborates, "No mechanic makes a game unequivocally "better" because games are systems and changing a system is always a trade-off between positive and negative consequences." He then explains some of these in his view, saying that a positive aspect of sprinting is that it "allows players to get where they want to go in less time," and that "impatient" players want it for tasks like "back-tracking or they've played before."
But Griesemer adds that "sprinting breaks mission pacing and the sense of exploring a mysterious environment", and it "makes vehicles less useful and important." He cites playtests where "players complete an entire vehicle mission on foot because sprint makes it less obvious they are doing the wrong thing."
However, he doesn't believe that giving players the option to turn sprint off – the way Campaign Evolved will – is a good compromise, saying, "If you make a game mechanic optional you have abandoned your post, thrown up your hands and admitted you have no vision and that someone else should design the game. In this case, everyone else should design the game."
Halo co-creator says Campaign Evolved "looks and feels genuine": "It's gorgeous in a way I wish we could have built it originally back in 2001"
lostInWiFi
Oct 28, 03:14 PM
your mileage may vary Unusually slow.
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