There's so many things that I think need to change. The list is fairly extensive. My article "Building the Ultimate Halo Game" outlines many of the things I'd like to see in a future Halo game, but I'll summarize some of those things here, plus address some Halo 4-specific things that aren't mentioned in my article.

GENERAL GAMEPLAY

1) Weapon Balance and Variety. Make sure there's no "one gun to rule them all" situations. The mid-range rifles should not dominate at all ranges. Automatics should own them up close. Minimize weapon redundancy; bring back the needle rifle and focus rifle. If the Prometheans return, give them something unique this time; "shotgun firing orange pellets" or "AR firing orange rounds" don't cut it. If you can't think of something original and distinct, don't bother. Oh, and bring back the classic plasma rifle, the flamethrower, the grenade launcher, fire grenades, and the silenced SMG.

2) Heads-up Display. The HUD needs to have a health bar, a secondary weapon indicator, and a compass. Because some information I just need to know.

3) Controls. The number of layouts needs to expand beyond the half-dozen or so we typically get. At the very least we need an additional layout similar to the default layouts from Halo 1 & 2, i.e., something like this:

4) Fall damage should be a bigger factor. It was perfect in Reach.

CAMPAIGN

1) Story & Characters. Where we go from here is anybody's guess. Halo 4 did set up plenty of story threads. Halsey is the captive of Jul Mdama. This needs to be explored in detail. Jul should be one of the primary antagonists of Halo 5. Let the Didact sit this one; with Requiem, the Composer, and his ship destroyed, which means he may have no means of replenishing his Promethean forces, and he's probably too injured to do much of anything. John should probably be Consider bringing ONI in as a new antagonist. Sarah Palmer and her hand-picked S-IVs could be tasked by ONI with bringing down the "renegade" Chief and Halsey; having her make a face-heel turn would give us the satisfaction of killing her ourselves in an awesome fight against other Spartans. The lack of human enemies in the Halo series has been surprising, considering that the potential for them is there. Bring back the Arbiter and Half-Jaw. Considering having the surviving S-IIs actually be in the game.

2) Level design. You could have made a drinking game out of how often the phrase "open world" was mentioned out of E3 (in fact, if you did, there would probably be no survivors). Now, I'm not saying that Halo should go Far Cry on us. I still think it should stick to discrete levels with definite beginning and end points. However, they need to be bigger and more expansive, with plenty of room for exploration. Other devs seem to be all about using the power of next-gen to bring us bigger worlds. The stages need to have far more playable area than in recent games. There should be no invisible walls or other artificial barriers to exploration; sheer rock walls and cliffs are acceptable, but if I see a place that looks like I can get to, yet I'm stopped by a "RTB" soft-kill barrier or an invisible, well, that's just bad design. If somebody wants to go out of bounds in Campaign, let 'em. Don't be afraid that they might see something that's untextured or whatnot. Also, no "on-rails" sequences (e.g., the Falcon sequences in Reach, the "trench run" in Halo 4). Halo 4 was perhaps the most linear and constrained levels in the series to date, and is exactly how you should not design Halo levels. We're talking about a series whose first title brought us sprawling levels like Assault on the Control, and that was back in 2001. With all the computer power that 343I has at their disposal with the XBO, there's no excuse to not have levels at least that big and open. In fact, they should go beyond even AotCR. Think Crysis 1. Think Leviathan's level design concepts from Shield & Sword. Anything that takes place outdoors needs to give you a ton of space.

3) Artificial Intelligence. 343I should also be using the power of the XBO to make some stellar AI. Enemies, particularly Elites, should use good tactics, make good use of cover, etc. It should at the very least be as good as it was in Reach. Allies should likewise not be complete idiots this time. They should know how to fight and how to frickin' drive. If making them smart makes them too good, then bump down their damage output or how many friendlies you have at any given time.

4) Quick-time Events. Don't have 'em. Plain and simple.

5) Enemies. Bring back the Brutes, the Drones, and Engineers. Unless they can be reworked to be an enemy that is interesting and fun to fight, then scrap the Prometheans; say they were all wiped out when Requiem was destroyed.

6) Bring back Campaign scoring.

7) Have skulls be items you have to find.

8) Difficulty tuning. Ever since Halo 2, it's been the trend to make enemies as overwhelmingly powerful as possible on Legendary. However, it's a design decision I disagree with. It considerably reduces the amount of viable tactics available to the player, essentially shoehorning them into a very specific play style — usually one that discourages aggressive movement and that’s heavily cover-based —, one that if deviated from will result in repeated death due to the extreme fragility of the player. Most of the challenge of facing an individual enemy should come from things like quality AI rather than brute force (no pun intended). As the saying goes, fight smarter, not harder. That should apply not just to the player but to the NPCs as well. If the enemies are sufficiently intelligent then they wouldn't need to inflict absurd amounts of damage; in fact, if they were really smart and inflicted as much damage as they did in Halo 2 or 3, it would result in the game being rather cheap on higher difficulties (refer again to Reach). There are plenty of other factors that go into a game’s challenge, including but not limited to:

• Overall resilience of the enemy (i.e., shield and health levels).
• The performance of the enemy AI.
• The presence, number, and general effectiveness of friendly AI.
• Overall effectiveness/performance of the player’s weapons (damage, accuracy, etc.).
• Whether or not the player has regenerating health.
• Level design, which affects the flow of combat.
• Encounter design, i.e., number, placement, and rank distribution of the enemies, and presence/absence of multi-sided battles.
• Availability of ammo, weapons, and other supplies.
• The weapons and other gear the enemies are equipped with.

Quality enemy AI, coupled with good encounter & objective design and proper utilization of the other aforementioned difficulty-altering factors would result in a challenge that legitimately tests the player's skills rather than just their patience. Despite the enemies inflicting less damage in Halo 1, the game is to me still as challenging as Halo 3, Reach, and Halo 4 (if we go by total number of deaths) but it was balanced in a way that made its challenge fun instead of frustrating. If it were up to me, I would reduce the base damage output of the enemies back to Halo 1 levels and would focus on those other, better ways to enhance the difficulty.

MULTIPLAYER

1) Get back to basics. No more perks, no more weapon unlocks, no more custom loadouts, no more care packages personal ordnance. That belongs in games like COD, not Halo. Put everybody back on a level playing field, which means everybody starts with the same gear and same abilities. Armor abilities should, as a rule, be items you have to pick up off the battlefield. If they exist, loadouts should not be the norm (restrict them to gametypes like Invasion), and when they are enabled, they should be presets.

2) Bring back every single gametype ever, including subtypes. That includes Race, Invasion, One-flag CTF, Assault, Headhunter, classic Infection, Juggernaut, and so on. I want options, options, options.

3) Forge needs to be something far beyond what it has been thus far. I'm not talking about slight improvements. I'm talking new tools, vastly expanded budgets, a proper successor to Forge World, and, well, everything here.

4) Have a damn beta this time. That way, all the little kinks and everything are ironed out before release so there doesn't need to be constant fixes and balance tweaks every several months. I might even get an XBO before I planned on doing so if there's a beta.

OTHER STUFF

1) Art Design. Ditch those freakish mutants that the art team thought were good designs for the Jackals and Grunts. I don't mind new armor designs to mark a new faction, but to radically change alien physiologies in a manner that defies all sense and reason just shatters immersion. It's already too late to salvage the changes to the Dawn and the Chief's armor, but at least there's still a chance we can get aliens that look like they used to.

2) User Interface. Get rid of that horrid UI from Halo 4 and just reuse the one from Reach.

3) Theater mode. Even though the XBO will have a "game DVR" feature, I still want saved films to return. And I don't mean just for MP, either. I mean for all modes, including Campaign.

4) DLC. Stop charging for MP map packs. With premium map packs, you either you make the maps mandatory, in which case those who don't want them are screwed by being limited to select playlists, or you don't make them mandatory, in which case the people who paid good money for maps have no guarantee they'll be able to play those maps in matchmaking with any degree of regularity unless they restrict themselves to a single DLC playlists. If MS needs to generate revenue, then do micro-transactions instead. A variety of armor sets, emblems, and other things for player customization should be released concurrently with each map packs. Charge $1 or $2 for an armor set or 50¢ for an emblem or armor/weapon skin. People will probably spend just as much money tricking out their Spartans as they would buying map packs, and by having those things be the paid content and the map packs be free, we have a situation that doesn't affect anyone's play experience.

5) And for the love of God, have an actual, real, full-color, full-length, made-of-paper instruction manual. These former mainstays are starting to become an endangered species, and that makes me a sad panda.

And I think that covers all the main bases.