10.) Bring Back Split-Screen Gaming: Part 1

       Halo 5 lost one of its defining features out of the secries; local split-screen multiplayer. It infuriated me when it was announced that this generation of Halos wouldn't allow for friends to sit in the same room and play the same Halo. The original Halo launched a full year before Xbox Live and it was still able to build a robust multiplayer experience on the back of split-screen, making playing along one side of your friends in the living room one of the most integral parts of the Halo experience. What's even more frustrating is when I hear gamers say things like, "It's 2015, who uses split-screen anyways? Its all about online play now." What's funny with this statement is that they either don't realize or forgot that Halo 3 combined both. You could play split-screen offline or online in Halo 3 both cooperatively or in multiplayer. Borderlands 2 for instance offered online co-op up to 4 players, offline co-op up to two players and System Link up to 4 players.


So why doesn't Halo 5 offer split-screen?

       343 tried to explain in terms of hardware, split-screen mode wouldn't be feasible with Halo 5. They said they are attempting to reach a 60 frame-per-second benchmark that competitive gamers especially those who play first-person shooters demand.

"Realistically, for Halo 5, it's not something we can just throw in a patch. It's just not feasible with the way the engine works."

-- Frank O'Connor

       As with many videogame upsets, there are petitions to bring back split-screen co-op to Halo 5. Frank however did go on to say while Halo 5 might not have split-screen, we might see this feature implemented in Halo 6.

"Splitscreen is fun for me too. It's not something that I object to, and we would've loved to put it in. We'll talk about it for the next game, and we'll talk about it for the future."

-- Frank O'Connor

Frank went on to saying that all the physics calculations in the game are tied to the frame-rate. So if they drop down the frame-rate to accommodate for additional screens, it would "crud" up the gameplay and timing of everything in the game. 

Here's why I feel 343's reason is completely BOGUS!

       Below is a video of Halo 4 - The Master Chief Collection running on Xbox One at 60 frame-per-second. Notice the consistent frame-rate no matter how heated the battle. It drops slightly split seconds at a time when there are lots of particle effects and explosions occurring on-screen. In all honesty, we wouldn't have noticed these slight dips in frame-rate if it weren't for the FPS number display at the bottom. It dropped to 46fps for a second. On the Xbox 360, Halo ran at 30 frames-per-second. Here is a detailed article which explains more on how Halo 4 got the most out of the "old" Xbox 360: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vs-halo-4.

Halo 5 is running on next-gen hardware. So is the Xbox One's hardware not good enough?

       As an independent developer, I understand that the Halo games for the most part are fully capable of 60 frames-per-second on the Xbox One. The random drops in frames happen for a few seconds because these games are ports from Xbo 360's architecture which was hard to work with and severely different to the current architecture used in next-gen consoles. Contrary to popular belief, it is not impossible to properly optimize these titles for the current architecture. I've come across gamers with an 8 core PC that can run Diablo 1 and 2 with no problems. The FPS drops are simply lag spikes that happen as the Xbox One renders objects into the world that were originally coded for a completely different architecture. As for Halo 2 in the Master Chief Collection, the lag spikes occur because two engines are essentially running at the same time. The Xbox One has to emulate the original engine.

       This is part of the reason why we are seeing Xbox One's backwards compatibility only support so many Xbox 360 game titles at a time. Due to the demands of emulation for some Xbox 360 titles, this is why we are seeing some of these games completely remade on a brand new game engine built for next-gen hardware specifically. To conclude, if Halo 4 ran this smooth on Xbox One, and it also supported split-screen coop, how is it that the physics calculations in Halo 5 hurt the frame-rate so vast when they are no different from the physics in Halo 4? I can't go into too much information as to why physics are tied to the framerate in games with this blog post, but if you would like to see why, check out this article here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3aq9we/why_do_video_game_devs_tie_physics_to_framerate/.

I know 60 frames per second is a standard this day in age. From gamer to gamer, I have to ask... should a feature like split-screen be removed from your game just to achieve 60 frames per second? Instead of being able to play the game in the company of a friend, cooperatively through a mission, you are both forced to play it online on separate consoles? After all, Halo 4 on Xbox 360 supported split-screen and the entire game was running at 30 frames per second.

 What are your thoughts on split-screen? Is it a relic of the past? Or does it still play a role in games now and in the future? Please comment and share your thoughts below.