Mommy, There's Linkin Park in my Halo!

Hey

Have you heard the rumors about the Xbox 360? Besides the really good stuff that has been coming down the pipe, like wireless controllers and headsets and better Live options which are all confirmed. I'm talking about Custom Soundtracks. You know? The little-used option of the Xbox that allows you to listen to your own music during games by downloading a playlist to the Xbox Hard Drive. Well, according to the same press conference that brought us the "HD Era", all Xbox 360 games will be required to have custom soundtracks.

Now you must be saying to yourself, that's definitely a good thing. Why not make this feature that was almost never used available on a more widespread basis? That's what I thought too, at least originally. But then I thought about it a little. Think about this scenario that almost all Xbox players have played through.

You just finished the first level of Halo 2. The Master Chief is about to jump into space and give the Covenant back their bomb. Then, as your planting the bomb, you hear... "Cause I'm BREAKING DA HABIT TONIGHT".

Kinda ruins the moment doesn't it. Now I'm sure that this scenario wouldn't happen and big name games like Halo will still have it's wonderful score play as you make your way to destroy Delta Halo in the next game (hopefully). But I wonder how the mandatory thing would work with Halo. Would they have an option to play music during Multiplayer (very distracting if combined with the Team Chat) or maybe just during certain parts of the game (ex. As you pass by a Marine camp, you can faintly hear one of your music tracks playing over a radio). Something like the previous example would be cool, but it would also be a false promise to anyone who would want to play Halo with their own music. It would be a total disaster to have it play your music automatically, but it just seems weird to give the option at all. I mean who doesn't like the wonderful melodies of Halo?

Also, I wonder if smaller 3rd party games wouldn't even bother making a soundtrack. They would just automatically play the music you've downloaded onto the Xbox 360's Hard Drive (which every serious gamer will have). That may be a good idea in some cases (like MechAssult 2's disturbing and distracting alt rock playing during the boss fights. Not that I don't like Alt Rock (fave kind of music) but it seemed a little much for that game.) But, I always thought that the music of a game was key to its enjoyment. Stuff like the themes for Mario, Tetris, and Zelda will never die. So are we missing out on the next classic video game tune so we can listen to our CDs?

Who knows, maybe I'm overreacting. But, It's something to think about.

-Here's to hearing the classic tunes of the Future!
Pudge