What Call of Duty and Halo Have Learned From Each Other

What's going on guys, I'm back with another awesome gaming post for you! I was thinking that I should do something a little out-of-the-ordinary today, so I'll be discussing the topic of Halo and Call of Duty co-existing with each other. Ever since Call of Duty surfaced in 2003, 2 years after Halo in 2001, they have been without a doubt the most popular franchises ever. Halo was popular back in the day because it was the first real FPS game and brought something radically new to the table. Halo also got gamers to think wider than just PC gaming and embrace the idea of a separate gaming console that can be played with a controller instead of the traditional keyboard and mouse. I think it's safe to say that if Halo had never been made, then the Xbox and all other consoles to this day would never have gotten off the ground. Halo also had a believable story and fantastic multiplayer, and an awesome and captivating sci-fi setting. Call of Duty showed that although Halo is a great game, there could be others that can improve and diversify from its classic gameplay. Call of Duty arguably has the most UI changes and new gamemodes in every new version, such as the perks system that was introduced in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and the points/scorestreaks system in Black Ops 2. Despite all this, both of these games would never have got to the point they are at without the constant competition and rivalry between each other. Here's what the two franchises learned from the other that improved them-

What Call of Duty Has Learned From Halo

It's Existence

Okay, let's face it: like I've said before, since Halo opened up the genre and showed promise in the new consoles 14 years ago, Call of Duty probably owes about 90% of its current fanbase to Halo's huge leap. Without Halo, Call of Duty might have never been developed at all. Shooter games were unheard of back 14 years ago, and Halo showed gamers that there is more to gaming than the keyboard and mouse. Call of Duty followed suit shortly after, and I have to believe that consoles are the very reason that it was even popular and yielded fruit in the first place.

Many Gameplay features in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and A Few in Black Ops 2

Because Halo had the futuristic setting first, it seems only natural that in Advanced Warfare, the developers would have adapted some of the weapons and whatnot for their own use. Some things that originated in halo have been used in the black ops 2 single player campaign as well.

The stuff that has been used is cloaking, railguns, jet packs, lasers, plasma weapons, and so much more. This was obviously copied and pasted over from halo, with the exo abilities in Advanced Warfare probably inspired by the armor abilities that were introduced in halo reach.

Even some gamemodes have been taken from halo and put into call of duty. For example, there was a gamemode called ricochet in Halo 4 that required you to pick up a ball and throw it into the enemy team's goal to score while avoiding the enemies that are trying to stop you before you can succeed. With Uplink in Advanced Warfare, it feels pretty much like a carbon copy of ricochet, where you throw a ball into a goal. Pretty much no creativity there.

If you haven't gotten the picture already, the point is that instead of making something radically new and different, the devs of cod just look at what other games that are actually innovating, like Halo and Titanfall, are doing and just steal the stuff that looks cool.

What Halo has learned from Call of Duty

Even though Halo came first, recently it has been adapting a few of the good systems in Call of Duty for its own use. 

For example, Call of Duty had always had a scoring system where it actually categorized you on the leaderboard based on how many kills, deaths, and assists you get. Up until Halo 4, all the Halo games just had a system that ranked you for your number of kills, not even taking the other aspects of play into consideration, which was pretty lacking. However, because of the scorestreaks system in Black Ops 2 where you earn points towards your scorestreak by destroying equipment and other scorestreaks and getting assists in addition to regular kills. In Halo 4, 343 Industries probably looked to Black Ops 2 and the previous Call of Duty games for some gameplay improvements. 

Personal Ordnance is one such example of how something that started in Cod has rubbed off on the Halo franchise. By getting kills and performing various actions, in Halo 4 you can earn personal ordnance, which chooses three random items such as a machine gun (SAW) or an overshield that increases your shield capacity. You can also get points for assists and destroying vehicles, which was obviously inspired by the score system in Black Ops 2.

Even sprint in Halo 4 was inspired by Call of Duty!

You can aim down the attached laser sight on this battle rifle.

What will come in the future of Halo that was inspired by Cod

And it's not just about what Halo has learned from Call of Duty in the past, there is also what the series will do differently in the future. In Halo 5 Guardians, gameplay footage that I've watched (I don't have an xbox one), there is boost jumping, sliding, and auto mantle, that was obviously taken from Call of Duty Advanced Warfare. From the gameplay, I also saw the ability to aim down the sights with the SMG (yay, it's back!), Assault rifle, and Battle Rifle, with the traditional trigger scoping from Cod. It used to be cumbersome to scope with snipers and impossible to aim at longer ranges with rifles, but thanks to Call of Duty Xbox One owners can enjoy all of these awesome features in Halo 5 that will be released in December this year. 

Well, I hope you guys enjoyed this blog post, and please +1 and follow for more awesome game stuff in the future!