Evolution of Halo Armor Customization in Multiplayer

one of the coolest things about Halo is the customization that always went into making your Spartan or elite look the way that you wanted them to look and with Halo almost 18 years old we thought it would be interesting to take a look back at the different types of customizations that halo has provided over the years in this video that being said let's get into it going back to 2001 in the initial launch of Halo back in the day there wasn't actually too much customization available that you could do in the original Halo you could change your color based off of what team you're on and other than that that was about it still though I remember as a kid I always wanted to be a red Spartan so whenever I played multiplayer I made sure to be red moving forward to at halo 2 as the arbiter was a major new addition to the storytelling experience they added in elites as playable characters in the multiplayer so for the first time ever players could choose whether they wanted to be represented as a Spartan or an elite I think more people still chose Spartans just because the hitbox on the elite was slightly different making it a little bit easier for certain head shots but I don't know I really enjoyed rocking the elite armor instead of the Spartan armor just to be a little bit different by the time he lutherie rolled around armor permutation became an actual thing in Halo and this is where kind of the birth of customization in Halo truly came out and halo 3 had some really awesome armor back in the day of course there was the basic mark 6 helmet and you kid it color your character whichever way you want it as always except you could not be Master Chief green no matter how badly you wanted but the game also let you choose between a CQB helmet just in case you wanted to do things a little bit different I always liked the CQB chestplate more than the mark six chest plate just because I had a knife and I always like to thank my Spartan would one day stab someone even though that wasn't a feature in the game the cool thing about Halo 3 though was that armor was always unlocked based off of what you did in game and it gave people more reason to go back and play different things and different features in Halo to get new armor a VA was a really popular helmet that a ton of people ran back in the day and while I personally was never huge fan of it it just kind of look like a giant fishbowl helmet there were a lot of people who really just liked the armor the shoulders and the chest piece is pretty cool and back in the day to get the armor you had to play through the entire campaign so it was a cool reward the EOD and scout armors were also really cool in their own ways and we're kind of a representation of a larger achievement if you had any EOD armor it meant that you played through certain levels or played through the whole game on legendary difficulty and the Scout armor meant that you got certain achievements that were typically pretty hard to get especially the shoulders which you could only get if you had Mon you SMO down which was a pretty hard achievement to get the ODST mark 5 and rogue helmets were all unlocked by reaching a certain rank in online matchmaking and then there was the security helmet which was always my favorite helmet because while it did also look like a fishbowl it was the right type of fishbowl for me plus to get this armor you had to unlock a thousand gamerscore in Halo which was essentially completing the game 100% or at least 100% before they added DLC I was really proud of this armor because it took a lot of time to actually unlock it and then there was Hayabusa which was definitely one of the most popular armor permutations in the entire game pretty much to get all of the armor for this you just had to go and get all of the skulls that were hidden in the campaign and well it wasn't necessarily hard it was kind of a fun treasure hunt type thing to go and unlock but what really got people hyped was the Hayabusa katana which you could only unlock along with the security armor by getting a thousand gamer score in the game so if you had the sword you definitely showed off that you had put a lot of work into Halo as a whole but halo 3 didn't stop there they also had specific armor permutations for the elites as well letting people change out their helmets armor and shoulder which halo 3 is the only one that really let you customize all of those features this one had the combat and assault forms available from the very beginning but you could unlock the flight armor while completing your legendary campaign run and the aesthetic and commando armors were a little bit harder to get you had to get some of these multi-player achievements but some of you guys were able to grind them out and get lucky enough to land all of the armor permutations for these elites now of course we can't talk about armor in Halo 3 without talking about though recon helmet which at the very beginning of the launch of the game was exclusive just for people who worked at Bungie or for people who were awarded it by Bungie staff usually if you did something cool like have a game or map featured in Bungie favorites or like you had to win a contest or something however after the release of ODST they made a pathway to legitimately unlock the recon helmet and this is probably one of the coolest unlocks for Halo as a whole because it was such a sought-after helmet and the grind you had to put in to unlock this was really intense ok let's go through everything you needed to get the Recon helmet real quick first you had to get vid Master annual which is an achievement where you beat the last level of Halo 3 on legendary difficulty with the iron skull on with four players all in ghosts if one person dies everyone's considered dead and you guys have to start all over from the last checkpoint this one's really challenging because everyone had to be in ghosts in the last part of the level is really hard to keep up with plus the flood make it really hard just to stay alive when you're fighting your way through the first part similarly you had to get vid master deja vu which is in Halo 3 ODST where you complete the last level of the game on legendary difficulty with 4 other players also with the iron skull on but you can't get in a tank or a warthog so everyone's in mongooses with rocket launchers and ghosts and it's pretty chaotic then you also had to get vid master challenge light switch which is where you got to the rank of lieutenant and any playlist in the new experience progression system it's pretty much when they overhauled how ranking worked in Halo 3 you had to get up to the rank of lieutenant which was quite a grind and you had to get bid Master Challenge seven-on-seven which wasn't too hard you just had to enter a ranked or social game on the 7th of any month while having 7 experience points so if you had too many experience points you had to purposely D rank yourself just to get to that 7 and then you had to get vid master challenge brain pain which is where you found all the hidden skulls on the mythic Maps these are pretty easy to get except for the one on sandbox where you had to build either a really complicated tunnel all the way to the outskirts of the map just to get the skull or you could try overload and then running out there getting the skull but even after all of that we're still not done yet if you wanted that recon armor you would have to work for it in Halo 3 ODST you had a complete vid master classic which is where you finished any campaign level on legendary solo without shooting or throwing a grenade or power sliding or honking the horn on a vehicle this one was best done on the second level but if you didn't know what you're doing and you didn't know the course of the level it could be pretty challenging and then finally the hardest achievement to get recon helmet vid master endure where you had to survive to the fifth set of any firefight mission with four players on heroic difficulty over Xbox Live this one took two and a half hours typically even if you tried it on any of the levels and since you have shared lives if anyone dies it's detrimental to your entire team I tried this one twice and I made it towards the end both times only to die at the very end and it's pretty soul-crushing this is the only reason I don't have recon in Halo 3 today and of course once they made recon public for everyone else the way Bungie denoted that their Spartans were different and cooler than everyone else's was that they had a flaming helmet which would kind of be a recurring theme when they released Halo Reach two years later Halo 3 ODST did have some limited permutations pretty much had your basic ODST armor that's worn by rookie and you can customize some of these secondary colors but you can't actually change the way that the overall ODST armor looks but you could also unlock the armor of each individual ODST member by completing their unique levels in the campaign and you could also unlock dare who had the Recon helmet for ODST by completing the entire campaign on legendary difficulty and you could also change the color of the helmet so that was kind of neat also if you had pre-ordered the game you would get sergeant Johnson which was the main reason I pre-ordered the game because I wanted to play as sergeant Johnson and ODST it was kind of fun and then we got to Halo Reach which had some of the best armor permutations and customizations we've seen out of the entire Halo franchise now we already did a whole video just looking at Halo Reach customization so you could check that video out but we'll still go through this pretty quickly while helmets shoulders and chest pieces were kind of main customization feature from Halo 3 Halo Reach took it a step further and added customizations for your wrists and extra little utility visor colors knee guards armor effects and firefight voices which were all earned by in-game credits which essentially worked as experience points but then you could use those points to purchase cool armor for your Spartan and on top of the helmets already looking good they also added individual attachments to kind of add just an extra flair and make your Spartan look a little bit different than someone else you might have similar armor most players started off with the typical mark 5 helmet which was just kind of a standard helmet it didn't look great but it definitely didn't look bad by any means it was a pretty decent helmet of course a lot of people unlock to the CQC and ODST helmets relatively quickly just because the amount of credits needed to unlock them weren't that high and that's similar also for the hazop VOD and operator helmets they're kind of just the basic set of helmets that people used in the earlier stages of the game and they had quite a bit of customization which was really nice of course ODST was always a really popular armor choice and finally this game added the full set of ODST armor wear in Halo 3 you could only wear the ODST helmet in reach they gave you the full gear you could really do whatever you wanted with it and you could also kind of customize your visor color to either be blue or silver or if you wanted to do something different you could go with the other colors available in the game too once you started getting into the upper levels of Halo Reach's customization though there definitely was a high demand for the helmets that were featured from characters in the noble team Air Assault scout and commando or some of those unlocks that a lot of people went after but it definitely took a long time to save up to get those helmets evie a was back again and it was pretty popular but to be honest most people were just hyped about Evie AC which was the emil variation that had the skeleton skull on the visor and while they could have stopped there with the armor permutations they actually added a ton of unique helmets that weren't featured by characters in the game I also thought that it was really cool that the helmets that Master Chief wore the mark 5 and mark 6 helmet were kind of these rarer helmets to get and you had to play the game for a long time to unlock them making that armor and that homage to that character kind of a special thing rather than just giving everyone the ability to look like the Master Chief and while for the sake of the length of this video we're not gonna go into all the chess piece shoulders and utilities that were available but there were a lot of really cool customizations in that side of things as well they had some really cool artillery armor chest plates you could wear a bionic arm and while you could unlock the Recon helmet by saving up credits if you pre-ordered the game you also got the Recon helmet which was kind of interesting because right before reach came out recon was the rarest helmet to get and I just had to pay a little bit extra or put your game on a pre-order and you would get the Recon helmet which was kind of funny but they also had a couple of helmet variations that were only available if you did specific achievements and then linked it up with Halo Waypoint the military police and CQB helmets were unlocked through that and we kind of wish that reach had more helmets unlocked through achievements kind of like Halo 3 had and then also have the ability to get him through credits but the system in Halo Reach was still pretty good and of course we can't forget the pilot helmet which was one of the biggest helmets that players were seeking because essentially once you saved up all of your credits and you purchased everything in the store you could get the pilot helmet that had a skull in it and that was kind of the pinnacle of what type of armor you could get of course I still ran the security helmet again you know I like my fishbowl thing but a lot of people really took getting the pilot helmet seriously now pivoting over to the elite side of things Bungie really made it a point to make the elites bulkier and appear as a threat more so in line with what the lore said about the saying healy than what we had seen in multiplayer games in the past no longer could you play as an elite in just regular matchmaking you had to be in a specific game type that allowed for elites to play still there were a few different customization options you could earn for your elites but they weren't really nearly as customizable as they were in Halo 3 or like the customization we saw in Halo Reach also the whole flaming helmet thing made a return the regular flaming helmet being available for those who pre-ordered the special edition of the game and the blue flaming helmets being available just for Bungie employees up until Bungie stopped having control over the game and control of the game was sent over to 343 industries right before Bungie left they made the blue flaming helmet available for all players who signed up on their website and that was kind of it the special effects that went into Halo Reach is Spartans were also really cool they took a lot to save up just to get the cool effects that you wanted to have around your Spartan and the visor colors were also really great we were glad they didn't overload them with having all sorts of different visor colors and having a smaller pool of visor colors was kind of nice sure it was annoying you could never get the same visor color that George had in the campaign but there was definitely the colors bit in line with the art style they were going Within Reach and then we get into Halo 4 and honestly well we've done a lot of criticism about Halo 4 the game the multiplayer the campaign and the art style the armor customization really wasn't that awful most of the time essentially as far as the in-game lore was concerned the matchmaking was now canon which was interesting because they did this wargames simulation type thing for matchmaking so all of the spartans in multiplayer were now spartan force so their armor had to abide to the newer design that the spartans had so while we do see a lot of returning armor from Halo Reach it looks pretty different or better or worse as opposed to doing a standard credit system like Halo Reach had though Halo four focused more on having unlockable characters by reaching specific Spartan ranks however there were certain designs that were only unlockable by doing special commendation challenges or Halo Waypoint goals besides just being able to customize your color you also could get certain types of skins like camouflage patterns for your Spartans which was a new addition in Halo 4 for some reason they decided to make blue the default visor color which always kind of bugged me it just felt non hey LOI like I know that in Halo Reach they didn't have you have the typical gold visor but you had something that at least was reminiscent of the Master Chief or the design we had seen before so for some reason the blue really bugged me but once you got a new visor color unlocked it wasn't really that big of a deal halo 4 felt like the biggest departure though from the standard customization style we'd seen before there were some helmets that did still feel in line with what halo was doing like the aviator helmet enforcer ricochet and tracker and even the Recon helmet looked pretty good actually some of the returning helmets did look ok like the mark 6 and ODST helmets however some of the helmets that returned looked really really weird like the new commando helmet or the new UVA helmet and we don't know what they did to the mark 5 armor as a whole we don't remember Master Chief ever looking like that but he looks different and then after all of that there were special Spartan armor that you could only get once you kind of went through a prestige like mode and honestly the armor didn't look that great anyways this is definitely more subjective to the type of person on what type of armor they want to see on their Spartan but none of them really got me excited enough to go ahead and go through the entire prestige system and then there's helmets like a scanner helmet or the Pathfinder helmet or the foetus helmet which possibly is the worst helmet in the entire Halo franchise why any Spartan would need a unicorn horn on the top of his head beats me but it's really it was a really interesting design choice by 343 industries two years later though we saw the release of the Master Chief collection which included a halo 1 through 4 and halo 2 anniversary and while for the most part they kind of removed customization as a whole which was disappointing you still could choose armor sets and change your colors accordingly in halo 2 anniversary for the Master Chief collection they did add three new Spartan sets to make your character look different if you wanted to in the anniversary thing which was kinda nice because halo 2 didn't have any customization than choosing a Spartan or elite and they added three customization sets for elites which was nice to show them some love too even though the elite sets weren't that nice other than the default and then halo 5 Guardians came out and honestly this one we're not gonna go into as much as some of the other ones just because there is so much that they put into this game and it's it's not necessarily always good in Halo 5 it definitely felt like they went for quantity more so than quality because there's just so much in this game and honestly the way that some of these helmets look is just really out of place for the Halo universe it just kind of feels like they just threw polygons together and chiseled it out to look somewhat like a helmet but in other cases they were some helmets that actually looked pretty good but the most frustrating thing about it was the way that you unlocked most of the armor in this game was through the req pack system which essentially is loot boxes in Halo before it used to be cool to have really awesome things on your characters because it showed that you earned them and that you had something to prove for it that was the concept of Halo 3 and some of those armors that you got and in Halo Reach saving up credits showed that you had done something cool even in Halo 4 getting to a certain level to unlock something was the coolest part about it in Halo 5 they just kind of shoved it in where you had to just play the game a ton and grind out a ton of work just to maybe get the chance to get a new helmet let alone a helmet that you actually wanted this was kind of back when loot boxes were still not really a main thing in gaming culture like it is today and honestly it's kind of a shame because while you could unlock req packs fairly easily saving up your req points it definitely encouraged people to purchase a ton of req packs to try to get the armor that they really wanted and it just kind of took away the fun of armor customization and the play and reward system that they had set up and halo 5 Guardians definitely dropped the ball and while like we said some of the armor does look really good like as a fan of the security helmet it looked good in Halo 5 recon looked good and even some of the newer helmets like the enforcer warrior or Argonaut helmets looked fine there still was some stupidity in some of the armors that was in the game but for the most part it felt like the game was pivoting in one way back to what fans wanted and then in other ways they just completely screwed over their fans at the same time still I hate the foetus helmet and the Athlon helmet and the Pathfinder helmet and the venture helmet that's not even that I guess that's a helmet but it definitely seemed like as a whole 343 industries and the way they've handled armor customization over the years just wasn't the same way that Bungie had in their glory days but let us know in the comment section what you think what was your favorite armor from the Halo franchise we'd love to know as you guys know mine security Luke put your favorite armor on the screen now alright guys thanks for watching this video if you like more retrospectives to the glory days of Xbox halo and things like Call of Duty be sure to subscribe with notifications on and we'll see you all next time with a brand new video

Channel: Rocket Sloth

Views: 653,306

Rating: 4.8276801 out of 5

Keywords: rocket sloth, halo, evolution of halo, halo evolution, halo armor, halo customization, halo customizable armors, halo 3 armor unlocks, evolution of halo armor, evolution of halo multiplayer, evolution of halo armor customization, halo reach armor, halo reach customization mcc, halo reach customization, halo armor permutations, halo armor unlocks, halo armor undersuits, all halo reach armor, all halo 4 armor, all halo 5 armor, halo helmets, halo helmet list, all halo 3 armor

Id: EigkE5m-wAA

Length: 20min 43sec (1243 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 15 2019