[0cf8612b2e1e]

I have had tons of fun with Halo, but I am fixated on this “innovative” classification. It feels more like right place right time. Had Golden Eye been LAN play, would it have been termed as most innovative?

Edit: I should also give a shout out to Tribes for hitting a lot of those same notes

[kipchak]

Halo 2 was basically synonymous with Xbox Live and everything that came with it when it launched (for better or worse). For example popularizing voice chat (including proximity!), rapid matchmaking, persistent parties between matches and gamemodes and player ranks and levels. They talk it about it a bit in the second half of this video.

https://youtu.be/YGSuPZVgxLg?si=cQZRaXJGaGFaKuL-&t=172

[coldpie]

Halo 2's online multiplayer introduced (or popularized?) party-based matchmaking. So instead of having to coordinate all your buddies joining the same pre-existing server, you'd join up as a party and then drop into a matchmaking queue, which would set up a game against opponents, optionally taking a skill-based ranking into account. They even did a bunch of marketing around this, since it was a new concept at the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGSuPZVgxLg