Firefight

Firefight in Halo 3: ODST.

"Welcome to the last day of the rest of your life."

— The announcer (Halo: Reach)

Firefight is a single or cooperative wave defense mode featured in multiple Halo games. The mode debuted in Halo 3: ODST in 2009 and has since gone on to become a series staple, with most of the following games having a variation on the concept of some sort. In traditional Firefight, up to four players can co-operate with one another via System Link or Xbox LIVE to fight off waves of attacking enemies, though some variations of Firefight allow for more players and player-versus-player gameplay.

Since its debut in Halo 3: ODST, Firefight has been featured in Halo: Reach, Halo 5: Guardians, Halo Wars 2, and Halo Infinite - each putting their own spin on the concept. Halo 4 did not feature Firefight, but did feature Spartan Ops, which filled a similar niche for that game.

Overview

Halo 3: ODST

A game of Firefight in Halo 3: ODST on the map Lost Platoon.

Main article: Firefight (Halo 3: ODST)

Firefight debuted in Halo 3: ODST as a survival-focused wave defense mode in which the player(s) have one objective: survive for as long as possible. This early iteration of Firefight has no limited to how many Waves of enemies can spawn, and continues until the squad has completely run out of lives. There are five Waves in a Round, and three Rounds in a Set. At the end of each Round, new skulls are activated, increasing the difficulty further. At the end of each Set is a Bonus Round, in which infinite Grunts spawn for a period of 90 seconds. During the Bonus Round, players cannot respawn and multiple skulls are activated, with the score modifier increased, allowing players to gain thousands of points in a short timeframe. Each enemy killed is worth a number of points, with the score multiplier increasing as the game goes on and more skulls are enabled.

Upon ODST's original 2009 launch, stats and leaderboards for Firefight were hosted on Bungie.net, though these were discontinued after Bungie disconnected Halo web services in 2012. The mode was not included with the 2015 port of ODST's campaign into Halo: The Master Chief Collection, and was instead added to the collection alongside ODST's port to PC in mid-2020. The port to The Master Chief Collection saw the mode expanded with the ability to play Firefight in matchmaking (a feature unavailable in the original game), create customised gametypes, access to enemies, weapons and vehicles previously unavailable in the original release, an increased playercount, and other miscellaneous quality-of-life improvements detailed here.

Halo: Reach

A player using the jetpack and a target locator in Firefight.

Main article: Firefight (Halo: Reach)

"It’s official. Firefight is back and better than ever. To get your drool on, go ahead and salivate over a Firefight that’s fully integrated into Halo: Reach’s matchmaking and topped off with an insane side of complete player customization, right down to each Set, Round, and Wave. And that’s just the beginning of the control you have over the experience."

— Bungie.net description

Firefight returned in Halo: Reach with a new and expanded featureset, referred to as "Firefight 2.0" by Bungie. The major focus of Firefight 2.0 was the introduction of custom gametypes, allowing players to customise the composition of each Wave of enemies throughout the game, the traits of the player characters, and the hazards and obstacles present on the map. For Reach, Firefight was also integrated into the game's matchmaking, allowing players to search for Firefight games online. These features shifted Firefight away from ODST's pure survival focus toward more arcade-styled custom gametypes, with the default Firefight experience in matchmaking capped at one round (though the traditional ODST-style mode is preserved as the Firefight Classic gametype). As such, players have access to all of the weapons and equipment in Firefight that they may have in normal Firefight including armor abilities, as well as access to features not found in regular multiplayer such as the target locator.

Among the changes introduced in Reach was the concept of Firefight Versus; players are able to play as Elites and fight alongside the Covenant enemies to attack and kill the Spartan players. The Generator Defense mode was also added to Firefight, shifting the game focus away from pure survival towards the defense of a number of fusion generators dotted across the map.

When Halo: Reach was added to The Master Chief Collection in 2019, its iteration of Firefight recieved many of the same improvements afforded to ODST Firefight, including an increased player cap, more custom game options, and online quality-of-life improvements (detailed here).

Halo 5: Guardians

A Mythic variant of the Warden Eternal boss in Warzone Firefight.

Main article: Warzone Firefight

Firefight was not included in Halo 4, though a similar mode, Spartan Ops, was included in its place. The mode was also not included in Halo 5: Guardians at launch, though a post-launch update released in mid-2016 provided a major spin on the traditional Firefight experience in the form of Warzone Firefight. Unlike previous Firefight experiences, Warzone Firefight is less focused on wave survival and instead on the completion of specific objectives in a multiplayer PvE context based on the standard Warzone mode. The mode can only be played in matchmaking and features no customisation, though can be played with up to eight players.

In Warzone Firefight, players are tasked with completing five rounds of increasing difficulty: each round features a new randomly chosen objective including defense missions and boss battles. Players do not have limited lives as in earlier Firefight iterations, but each round instead adds time to the respawn timer. If a round's objective is not completed before the round timer counts down, the match ends. Due to Warzone Firefight's foundations on the existing Warzone mode, it heavily relies on Halo 5's requisition system for its gameplay. Players have access to their entire REQ card library and can call in power weapons and vehicles at any time.

Halo Wars 2

Main articles: Blitz Firefight, Terminus Firefight

Firefight made its debut in the real-time strategy genre in Halo Wars 2. At launch, Halo Wars 2 included Blitz Firefight, a variation on the regular Blitz multiplayer mode. Blitz Firefight plays similarly to regular Blitz, with up to three players tasked with defending three control points on the map from increasingly-difficult waves of AI-controlled units of both Banished and UNSC variety. The mode can only be played on the map The Proving Grounds. Similar to the original ODST Firefight, Blitz Firefight is an endless mode, and only ends when the AI gets 200 points by controlling a majority of the map's control points. Due