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Fourteen years ago, Ian Proulx wasn’t happy. He’d just bought Halo Reach and, when confronted with the new spread of abilities available to Spartans, was worried that them sprinting all over the place and evade-rolling was taking away from the spirit of good old fashioned Halo. Fast forward to today, and in a twist of fate, he’s now a co-founder and CEO of a video game development company, and his peers at 1047 Games have found themselves adding abilities and (gasp) factions to Splitgate 2. How the tables have turned.
The original Splitgate was absolutely an homage to those halcyon days of old school Halo, albeit with a portal and momentum twist that enraptured FPS fans back when it dropped in 2019. While the series began as the work of 25 people in a dorm, its sequel Splitgate 2 is a far bigger and better funded product. While many things are changing, Proulx told me last month at Gamescom that a core spread of Splitgate fundamentals had to stay the same. Gunplay, portals, and a distinct fun vibe. But still, something had to change.
“A big [weakness] was meaningful variety with a purpose,” Proulx explains. “In Splitgate, everyone is exactly the same. There are 20 different game modes, but they’re all different flavours of the same thing. It was super fun, but what we saw were players would come in, have a great time for three or four weeks, and then they’d run out of things to do.”
The solution to that player retention and variety problem that 1047 Games has decided to inject in? A faction system. There are three different factions that cater to different playstyles, and which feature abilities that Proulx hopes will keep things fresh. There’s also an overall increase in quality that I felt myself trying the game out at the show. You can certainly feel the influx of more money into Splitgate, but also a slight change in direction, thanks in large part to these factions and the boons they bring.
Proulx elaborates on the feeling moving into Splitgate 2, and the added pressures of following up on a prior success. “With Splitgate 1 there was no expectation, so there was no comparison point. With Splitgate 2, every decision you make someone will be like ‘I like the old approach better’. I remember I was one of those people! I remember playing Halo Reach and being like ‘What the heck, why did they add abilities?’ Same with Halo 4, right? Same feeling.”
“I’m definitely mindful of that, and it’s very important to us to preserve that Splitgate 1 feel. That’s why we’ve retained that emphasis on gunplay, portals, and movement just like the first one. So you’ll notice all the factions in the game – they all have the same movement, health, and time-to-kill. These new abilities add an extra layer on the cake, but it still comes down to the fundamentals of portals and shooting.”
But surely the presence of a one-way barrier you can shoot through, a one-time health boost, and a brief wall hack that shows enemies behind walls would have a big impact? Is Proulx, who was sceptical of the inclusion of powerful abilities in the Halo series over a decade ago, conscious he’s in the same shoes as the Bungie and later 343 employees who made those controversial choices years and years ago? Does it worry him?
“It does and it doesn’t,” the developer says, “The reason I’m not overly worried is because we’ve played the game internally for a while, we’ve had external playtesters and now that we’ve opened it up for new players we’ve seen a lot of initial concerns to rest. Players who were worried it would turn into an ability-based shooter realised it was still tied to shooting and movement.”
So what’s the trick to avoiding the Halo Reach problem? In Proulx’s view, you can’t dodge it completely, but you can strike a balance. “No matter what you do, you can’t avoid it 100%. You can’t please everyone. If all we wanted to do was please everyone, we’d make the same game with better graphics and call it a day. But I don’t think that game would take us to the scale we’d want to get to, and I don’t think it would have the longevity it could have. So it’s a balance of, how do you make a game that leans into its strengths, but also open it up to more variety and ways to play.”
Inevitably, some people will play Splitgate 2 and want to return to the classic experience, but to me at least it’s a little funny, and certainly heartwarming, to see FPS-obsessed folks make the journey from fan to lead developer, and tackle the same big decisions as those responsible for the games they love. It’s how real innovation happens, at least in my opinion, when a new generation takes that leap and reckons they can do better than those before them. So can Splitgate 2 avoid the Halo Reach problem? Probably not entirely, but the folks behind it will certainly try in unique, and ultimately entertaining, ways.