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HALO 3: VITALIZATION Campaign (preview)

This is currently a single mission test level for the Halo 3 overhaul mod I'm working on. This release is only for temporary testing, but I may add another mission or two in the meantime if I am able to. Feedback is highly encouraged and appreciated.

The vision for this overhaul is to create a more engaging and fun Halo 3 experience that is fresh to veteran players and improve on what I consider to be shortcomings or missed opportunities of Halo 3. This includes everything from an entire sandbox overhaul to subtle quality of life updates and visual changes. My philosophy when trying to make the game more engaging is making all weapons useful in some way (not exclusively for killing), making enemy AI more competent and reactive, and altering scenarios to be more varied and unique. My decisions on what content to add or change is done with care not to harm gameplay balance or disrupt the artistic integrity and visual presentation of the game, so you most likely wont see any ported assets from other games or super wacky modded stuff outside of maybe some easter eggs.

This mod is mostly aimed at seasoned Halo players so the overall difficulty is generally harder than vanilla but I tried to make the difficulty fair so that when you die it's clearly apparent that you could've reasonably done something to avoid that death. I have spent the most time working with legendary, but the lower difficulties should still feel appropriately challenging.

General changes:

Increased player health to 70 (same as shields)

Reduced aim assist adhesion slightly

Removed Legendary enemy damage multiplier

Dual wielding no longer reduces weapon damage

Increased crouch walk speed

Slight scenario edits dependent on difficulty

UI updates such as health bar and heat meters attached to reticle

Increased reserve ammo for most weapons

Removed bloom and inaccuracy from all precision weapons

Increased melee damage for bladed weapons


Weapon additions:

M6C Magnum - Lower damage, fast fire rate, can be dual wielded, very fast ready time (Functionally like a combination of the H2 magnum and Halo Infinite sidekick)

Brue Plasma Rifle- Can now ignite enemies with sustained fire providing damage over time, overheats much faster than default plasma rifle


Weapon changes:

Assault rifle - Increased accuracy significantly from vanilla, minor miscellaneous tweaks

Battle rifle - Reduced aim assist, shorter cooldown between bursts

Magnum - Increased damage, increased accuracy, increased rate of fire, added 2x scope, can no longer be dual wielded

Smg - Reduced magazine capacity to 32, increased damage slightly, increased initial accuracy when single wielded

Shotgun - Increased max projectile range, reduced damage drop off over range (similar to CE)

Plasma rifle - Increased projectile speed (similar to CE), increased damage to shields

Plasma pistol - Increased projectile speed (similar to CE), increased damage to shields, overcharge shot now can damage materials other than energy shields, holding overcharge shot no longer drains battery

Carbine - Deals plasma damage, increased magazine capacity to 28 rounds, now has heat buildup that requires pacing shots

Needler - Can now be dual wielded, increased magazine capacity to 28, needles no longer attach to shields, slower initial fire rate

Brute shot - Projectile now bounces like Halo 2

Gravity hammer - Slower swing animation, increased AOE and damage

Spiker - Shoots two spikes at once but reduced individual spike damage, much faster projectile speed, increase in physics impulse, retains decent accuracy when dual wielded

Mauler - Now shoots 3 projectiles with much further range, increased damage per projectile considerably but overall damage per shot is reduced, increased magazine capacity to 9

Frag grenade - Slightly longer fuse time, explosion radius slightly increased

Plasma grenade - Longer fuse time, added emp effect

Spike grenade - Shorter fuse time, increased number of flechetes and their range, decreased explosion damage

Firebomb - No longer explodes on impact, must come to rest to detonate, significantly increased radius of fire, increased length of fire to 10 seconds, now used by brute captain ultras


AI changes:

Brutes:
-AI overhauled significantly
-Brutes are a lot faster, are more aggressive, and move more sporadically
-Brute's armor now breaks more dynamically; their helmet needs to be shot off before you can land a headshot and their body armor will break upon death
-Brute minor ranks no longer have energy shields
-All brutes have increased health. Brute captains have significantly stronger shields dependent on rank
-Rank colors have been altered to make them more distinguishable:


Brute Chieftains - Can no longer be assassinated, more health, energy shields now take less damage from kinetic weapons and also will recharge

Grunts - Reduced health overall. Higher grunt ranks will now sport helmets and energy shields

Jackals - Reduced health overall. Made shields more susceptible to plasma damage. Jackal majors will not flinch as easily as minors

Drones - New ranks:
-Major (slightly more health)
-Ultra (energy shields)

Hunters - Decreased health, increased projectile speed, now featured on Crow's Nest


Mod resource credits and thanks:

Dual wield needler and gravity hammer swing animations - Fluffles
M6C Magnum - Xm
Edited M6C/Automag animations - Fyzure
Faster and restored brute animations - Mindful Moron
Ammo and weapon crates - Spartan Tanner
Grunt armor and colored buggers - Calantorn
Improved brute shader - Ludus Regard VKMT
Halo 2 reticles - Krevil