Halo 1 is the reason the original Halo trilogy was so successful and its multiplayer is massively understood and under appreciated by the masses of halo fans. The success in numbers that h2 and h3 accomplished is not directly correlated to the quality of those games
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Halo was objectively at its peak from halo1 to halo3 (highest peak) and declined during the reach era.
It didn’t get to this point because of the amazing campaign or storyline. It got here because of the multiplayer that halo 1 built and halo 2 popularized...
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Halo 1 was not revolutionary because of its campaign (even though its campaign is regarded as one of the best of the series). It was revolutionary because it was the first console shooter that had controls that were intuitive and easy to pick up...
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Halo1 made it so it wasn’t frustrating to shoot and move and aim at the same time, which is unprecedented. Think of goldeneye007’s movement and you’ll notice how big of an improvement halo1 made to the FPS world (which uses the same controls, roughly, till this day)
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This absolute shift in gaming is what propelled halo 1 and Xbox onto the map. The success of halo doesn’t come from the campaign itself, it comes from how the game was implemented. They made a game that had a very low skill floor which allowed for a lot of new players
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Halo 1 unfortunately wasn’t created in the Xbox live era, so unfortunately the multiplayer aspect of the game went massively unnoticed. When halo2 dropped, it basically exploded because players wanted the halo 1 experience but could play on Xbox live now w friends
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This made the h2 population charts go sky high because this was the first time in the console gaming industry you could play halo with friends and against people, and h2 was riding on the shoulders of halo1 which was massively successful and easy to play.
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Whether h2 was a good game or not doesn’t matter in terms of how many people were going to buy and play this game. Online multiplayer and an easy to play FPS you can play with your friends for the first time will sell no matter what. The game could’ve been hot garbage
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When h2 dropped, many halo 1 pros absolutely hated and criticized the game for deviating so far from what made h1 successful in terms of multiplayer. Unfortunately Xbox live and the halo name were too strong of a selling point to stop people from playing the game.
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Many halo fans dont realize how much h2 differed from halo1 in all aspects of multiplayer: lack of static powerup/weapons timer, a less balanced sandbox, competitive play catered to 4v4, a complete change of the spawn system, and so many others that lower the skill ceiling
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In many cases, a lot of die hard halo 1 fans didn’t even bother playing halo2 for more than a month because it was a completely different and less rewarding game in many aspects. Xbox live and the ranking system on h2 were new and fresh and kept the success of the franchise alive

H3 was basically a polished version of h2 with not nearly as many changes compared to how much h2 differed to h1. This was the peak of halo in terms of active players but not to the credit of the gameplay, but to the success of h1 and the hype around h2 due to XBL
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If halo 1 launched with XBL and a ranking system, there might’ve been a lot more players that would’ve understood and appreciated h1’s multiplayer, and many would’ve done the same as the h1 pros and not even bothered playing h2 because it offered a less rewarding experience

The goal of this thread is to get some modern halo fans to look at h1 differently. Competitive h1 players often say that h1 is the only real halo because every other halo in the trilogy massively differs from it and so few people actually understand the intricacies of h1 MP