General Halo Discussion

In commemoration of all this, Crowbcat made a new Halo video

Showcasing all the various times 343 fucked up with the games

So the Master Chief Collection is on steam right now. Is it a good pick? Should I play with controller or mouse + keyboard?

Edited by RAlexa21th on Jan 21st 2023 at 5:43:22 AM

1. Yes.

2. Whichever works—controller for the authentic experience, but you'll probably have a better time with mouse/keyboard if you're more used to that.

MCC is worth it on Steam. It’s arguably better than on Xbox because you don’t have to pay for Live. I play with controller.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Jan 22nd 2023 at 5:39:09 AM

Did 343 really mess up that badly? I was rarely interested in the multi-player side of Halo. That video seemed like it was about mostly the missing multi-player features and 343's head making bad promises.

Yes, absolutely.

Besides the fact you can't set aside the multiplayer, Infinite was supposed to be a live service game. The campaign was never meant to be a standalone. As is typical of live service games there was always an intent to make more single player content, which they have yet to do and likely won't given the removal of so many developers.

So they're doing quite poorly, regardless of which side of the game one focuses on.

Huh, I thought Infinite was very well-received at launch. I've seen people getting super hyped for it.

Right, but this is besides the point. It's called live service for a reason. What matters is how they handle post-release content.

The reception at launch is relevant only in it demonstrates how much 343 has dropped the ball.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jan 22nd 2023 at 10:00:44 AM

I get that it's dropping the ball but pitching continued single player content was bad from the jump. Was the campaign acceptable? Was the game fun? Is the multi-player in a playable state now?

It sounds like people signed up for/fed a bad developer practice then got mad when they realized it was a bad practice to begin with.

Halo 1 through 5 weren't live service far as I know. No additional single player content.

Edited by FOFD on Jan 22nd 2023 at 3:31:36 PM

Even if it is bad practice it's what was promised.

Failure is failure, 343 set out to create a game that would be continuously updated and expanded over the years. They dropped the ball thoroughly.

Even stranger is how they STILL haven't added in online campaign co-op, despite a modder figuring out that it's in a "mostly" playable state already.

Hmm. That's too bad.

https://twitter.com/Halo/status/1616918614254157828?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1616918614254157828%7Ctwgr%5E35c3d0d6bd73b4d7291ecc1182c2141622bc3627%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fkotaku.com%2Fembed%2Finset%2Fiframe%3Fid%3Dtwitter-1616918614254157828autosize%3D1

Here is an official tweet stating that the franchise will not be leaving 343 Industries. The message came from studio head Pierre Hintze. The tweet was released a couple of days ago. So the reports about Microsoft taking Halo away from 343 was just rumors.

Considering the....... problems plaguing 343's tenure leading to the current mess with Infinite, maybe they should go with a different studio?

I'm not sure really sure its worth sticking with 343 at this point.

I mean, I bought the game for the single player with the promise of expansions like Destiny and Destiny 2.

I wanted to fight Atriox.

The current layoffs appear to be across the board for Microsoft and the tech industry and not specifically for the problems with Infinite, though it likely didn't help. This is still a big deal and we don't know the exact fate of Infinite, rumors of an outside studio creating Halo content has been around for about a year now but this might be Infinite DLC rather than a separate game.

Funny thing though is that Halo 4's Spartan Ops was basically a live service game before that really became a thing. The idea was also fun and ambitious even if the execution was lacking.

There had better not be a cancellation of any single player add ons. Many Halo fans came into the series and stayed with the series because of the single player campaigns. I’m one of them.

If they want to focus solely on multiplayer, they stand to lose a lot of people who have reliably bought Halo games for 20+ years.

I know exactly how you feel but unfortunately that ship has long since sailed, with Staten and other developers gone there's no one who would make it.

And honestly it's been clear for a while that it wasn't going to happen. When a studio deliberately refuses to mention a type of previously promised content then that's always a good sign that it's dead.

I can't imagine 343 saying "yes we're miserable failures who are being deprived of the franchise our organization was to steward".

Not only is it a horrible loss of face but it would almost certainly be a major breach of presumed ND As.

I've expressed my skepticism about that rumor before but I don't think this statement is worth the 1s and 0s it's printed on.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jan 23rd 2023 at 10:32:36 AM

343 has mucked up with this new trilogy pretty badly anyway. They keep swapping between antagonists rather than doing a cohesive narrative, among other things.

Seriously, 4 we fought the Covenant Remnants and the Didact, 5 we fought Cortana, now in Infinite we're fighting Atriox? WHAT IS THE STORY HERE, 343?! ARE WE FIGHTING COVENANT REMNANTS, FORERUNNERS, ROGUE AI, OR WHAT?!

Edited by theLibrarian on Jan 23rd 2023 at 2:49:34 PM

You don't even fight Atriox. At the start of the game they really hype up how awesome Atriox is, but then after a brief cutscene fight, there's a timeskip, and afterwards, Atriox is dead, and you spend the whole game fighting Escharum. The number of times Atriax was addressed by name despite being dead is very high. At the very end of the game, the stinger shows that Atriox is alive after all.

Edited by WillKeaton on Jan 23rd 2023 at 4:40:18 AM

And that is why game developer studios should not keep switching writers between franchise installments and giving each and every single one of them a free hand in deciding where to go with the plot.

It's going to be a fucking mess by the end.

Should I play Reach first or the trilogy first?

And to think depending on if the Infinite single-player expansions are cancelled or not, this might not be followed up either

Trilogy first. Playing reach first doesn't add much imo.

Halo 5 was really where everything went sideways, not necessarily because of the broad story points but because of a lot of gameplay shifts and unfocused narrative drive. Star Wars ended up emulating a lot of the same problems a few years later where the support media was well received and generated a lot of hype then the "core" media flounders with a story that is unrelated to what was being set up.

Hindsight and everything, but Halo 4 going with a Forerunner faction and Big Bad as a replacement for the Flood was probably a bit too obvious and they needed to be a bit more creative. That's where Halo Infinite felt like it really found its footing, with an anti-Covenant faction in the Banished and another secret hidden by the Forerunners helps to retain the otherworldliness of the Halo, as spelling out the Forerunner / Flood war in detail can't help but ruin a little bit of the awe and wonder. The Created War had potential, but I think people were just not engaged with the Prometheans and this promised to be more of that.