Cliffside - Reach Firefight Overhaul Preview

Cliffside

Cliffside is a preview of a larger mod I'd like to make at some point in the future which would overhaul every Firefight map however I would like to make the weapons, vehicles, equipment and enemies more varied and visually interesting before releasing the full mod. This was also my foray into figuring out the mechanics of what makes a Reach Firefight map tick so I could understand how to bring Firefight to other maps.

The first thing you will likely notice when spawning into the map is that the old Reach ammo boxes are gone - these have been replaced by the armory shelves seen in ODST's Firefight, with one notable difference: Weapons in the shelves will be randomly replenished each round from a pool of UNSC weapons including several new variants and additions. There's also equipment boxes which spawn on the map which spawn a random pair of equipment at the start of each new round so that you have more options than what your loadout gives you.

The second thing you're likely to see is the marine allies who are also tracked by your HUD which I've changed to try to match some of the beta screenshots shown off by Bungie way back when. Much like on Installation 04, your marine allies will follow you around and jump in your vehicle or any spares if there aren't enough seats in yours. Should any die, a falcon will arrive the next round to drop off some reinforcements for you.

The Target Laser functions differently in this mod to how it does in regular Firefight. It will not drop from weapon pods, instead spawning in a case atop the player's main spawn area. It starts with one charge and gains more with every round, resetting at the beginning of a new set. The reason for it being moved from weapon drop pods is so that now players will always get two random power weapons from the drop pods rather than one should they have lost the Target Laser.

As enemies spawn into the level, this Firefight map and eventually all of my maps will feature both Phantoms and Spirits flying in to drop off troops. I discovered that at one point it appeared Bungie had planned to either have both or give the player the option in the menus to choose the type of dropship and I thought it was a neat idea so I reimplemented it for this mod.

As waves progress and tougher enemies spawn, you may eventually find variant weapons which perform differently to their base counterparts.

These have been inspired by the weapons featured in Halo Online, Halo 5's Warzone and Halo Infinite and I would like to add more in future iterations of the mod as well as new enemy vehicles and equipment. I recommend playing the map on Heroic or Legendary, as higher difficulties will allow more enemies with variant weapons to spawn.

A full (or near enough) list of features is below:

Current Features:

New Weapons: