Why Halo 3 Needs a Single-shot Battle Rifle

One can easily trace the multi-player balance and game play development of the Halo series by following the features of the mid-range weapon of each game. The mid-range weapon of the game seems to always serve as central to the game’s weapon balance, and a change to the mid-range weapon affects every other aspect of the game.

In Halo 1 (or CE, as the fanboys love to call it) it was the Pistol.

The Pistol gave spawning players a way to defend themselves, and proved to be a very skilled weapon, serving as the backbone of all intermediate to expert competitive play. In the end, it was labeled by the mainstream as "overpowered", and justifiably so, for a few reasons…

In Halo 2, the mid-range role was served by the Battle Rifle. This served the immediate purpose of solving problem #2 of the Halo 1 Pistol. The weapon now acted like a rifle AND looked like a rifle. However, the Battle Rifle had it’s own weaknesses.

Fortunately, there is a solution to all this…

I’ve been saying this for a long time and usually found myself alone in supporting the idea, but now even kids on the Bungie forums are starting to think of it on their own. A semi-automatic Battle Rifle would solve almost all of the issues with both Halo 1’s Pistol and Halo 2’s BR. However, there are specific ways this would have to be implemented to get things right…