:

: This is the reason why it was removed : Halo 4 could have had a stasis gun.
: Or a "grapple harpoon." But these weapons were taken out in an
: effort to make the game more accessible and less sci-fi.

: Franchise creative director Josh Holmes told GDC audiences that "when we
: started out, I was really pushing the team to go in a very sci-fi
: direction. I wanted to embrace the sci-fi nature of the enemies and
: explore concepts that were outside the box for Halo, things that you'd
: never seen before in the Halo sandbox."

: Unfortunately, the more sci-fi concepts didn't resonate with players.
: "What we found as we were testing these weapons with players, the
: really deep sci-fi approach wasn't relatable. As a result, they weren't
: really gravitating to these weapons."

: "It really sucks when you're making new weapons and no one wants to use
: them," Holmes added.

: Eventually, 343 Industries had to make sure that all the weapons in the game
: could be understood by players immediately. For example, the scattershot
: is "at it's core, a shotgun," even if it does disintegrate
: enemies. The other weapons that made Halo 4's final roster all have
: immediately understandable real-world counterparts, like a sniper rifle or
: an assault rifle.

: "One of the barriers to entry with Halo is that it is sci-fi,"
: Holmes pointed out. "It's had a very steep learning curve that's
: turned off a lot of players."

: So....thoughts?

I kind of understand why they did it, because I do feel like the larger player base of Halo just isn't that interested in unique weapons like the stasis gun, but from a story telling perspective I feel like the Forerunner sandbox really suffered from being composed of nothing but variant weapons.