The Xbox version of Halo has been honored for the way it controls (after some practice), but obviously it can’t achieve the fidelity of the mouse-keyboard format. To help, Xbox Halo has six different subtle targeting aids that allowed the levels to be designed with vertical options such as targeting an enemy high in a tower through a sniper scope. (Other console FPS titles have had to “flatten” the environments to make them gamepad-friendly.) On the PC, looking around with the mouse-keyboard combo is as instinctive as it is intuitive, and so most of these aids will be removed. “When we do this, it also impacts the balance of the game [e.g. head shots], and we have to compensate for these effects in the damage model,” says Chu.
(Chu is Hamilton Chu, Halo’s producer.) Can you tell this was written by a PC gamer? Bias aside, the removal of aiming aids should be welcomed by the hardcore who feel like their control has been taken away from them. We’ll bring you a scan of this article as soon as the issue is off the shelves.