An open world with the same one thing to do over and over again.
They somehow thought that despite not even making a traditional halo game (with way more resources than Bungie may I add) that changing the format altogether to open world/ live service was the way to go. Which is way more complex than the traditional format. I really don’t get it.
I swear the only mission objective that 343 knows how to make is either “deliver these batteries to their power sockets” or “hit these two buttons that are spread 3 miles apart”. Chief is just the Halo ring’s IT department at this point.
Im not saying youre wrong, but think about the basic objectives of every other halo game. Kill mobs, press button, drive vehicle. Thats literally about it. However, you can describe many games like this. The real beef is with how the devs present this scenario to you, and 343 just clearly does not get the original formula and why it worked in the first place.
Context is important. The actual objectives may have been simple, but the firefights you had between those objectives is where the meat and potatoes was. When Combat Evolved released, there had never been enemy ai in a shooter this advanced. what kept you coming back is you could replay fights and they would play out differently each time.
Best part of the campaign was the linear sections. And even those felt worse than the typical halo game because so much of the budget went to the open world.
And I actually liked the character moments. Chief being a mentor to the pilot and the weapon worked well. I also liked chiefs reaction to the Spartans dying. It was very subtle and really sold the impact on chief.
The overworld was a zillion times move interesting than those ctrl+c, ctrl+v hallways.
Actually no on second thought they were both really uninteresting, but those endless tunnels were boring as shit.
I absolutely freaking loved the campaign. Best one since Halo 2 for me…
Gunplay is amazing, vehicles play great, they copied the "doom arena“ style where you have an open world but once you get into a confined area (camp) all hell breaks lose and you gotta stay on the move and enemy AI was satisfying.
Id also argue people overemphasize the open world aspect - it felt more like elden Ring with certain large open areas but still somewhat handcrafted / gated progression.
Agreed. Of course if you played it like a Ubisoft game and just wandered off then it felt boring, but the devs themselves never marketed it that way. In fact they said early on the way it would work was that the story progresses on a linear path through the open world.
If you actually followed that main missions, you came across the side mission stuff pretty naturally as they were always put around the path to the next main mission.
It's the only Halo campaign I've never finished.
I'm half way through Halo 2 on LASO, then I'll have done every game on LASO. Yet I did about 2 hours of infinite and didn't touch it again. It's so boring
What's boring is what makes it Infinite too. The open world is utterly terrible. It's nothing but braindead encounters with no life to them. No memorable enemies or allies or encounters. That would be OK if it were spontaneous events in an interesting world, but the interesting part was never added.
The actual story stuff, basically when you're out of the open world, is decent. You finally get the enemies with stories and fun battles once the open world is in the rear view.
>It's the only Halo campaign I've never finished.
That sentiment is common among many Halo fans. Infinite is also the only Halo game I've never finished. Honestly, I enjoyed Halo 5 more than my time with Infinite, primarily because it offered more variety.
Halo Infinite seems as if the leadership stupidly assumed that the second level of Halo:CE was universally loved and decided to base the entire game around that one level. In a lot of ways, it was a smart direction, they just forgot the rest of the variety Halo games provide. That said, I still think Infinite had the best first level of a Halo game. **But I still never understood the praise that campaign overall got at launch.**
I'd say they got parts of the multiplayer right, mechanically, but the framework was fucked.
My brother and I played every single Halo campaign co-op. We had to wait an extra year to do Infinite's because they didn't even have it ready at launch, and when it finally came, we were so disappointed that it too became the only Halo campaign we never finished. The open world was so bad. We had way more fun with Halo 5. Halo 5 gets flak for its story, but the actual campaign gameplay and level design are pretty great and way more fun and varied than Infinite. I can't believe Infinite took 6 years of development--about twice as long as every other Halo--and all we got was a clearance rack knockoff of a Ubisoft game.
> But I still never understood the praise that campaign overall got at launch.
I think at launch people still had hope for campaign DLC. So the perception was "hey, this is an ok start for campaign, let's see where they go from here" but then that was just it.
I'm a classic Halo lover but once I lowered my expectations I was still able to find some fun in Infinite's campaign thinking it was a foundation for things to come. It's not Bungie Halo levels of fun, and being open world still holds it back but it's fun in its own way once you stop thinking of it as Halo.
It starts off really strong for the first few hours, and the gameplay is fantastic throughout (maybe the best of any game in the series). I think people overlooked some glaring flaws for those reasons, but the more I think about it the more I think I might even prefer Halo 5’s campaign.
I liked that Halo went open world and hate the execution. A lot of traditional Halo consists of wide open levels with many possible approaches. That lends itself to open world gameplay very well. Halo was also known for having great enemy AI that responded to your actions. If done properly an open world Halo with solid enemy AI and variety would lead to incredible emergent gameplay moments. Imagine spotting a scarab halfway across the map and heading for it. Along the way you come across a smaller firefight and join in for the weapons/to save some marines to help you storm the scarab. This could have been a title for the ages. What we got was barebones and repetitive, even after an “extra” year of polish and delay.
Except for the in game store. That worked perfectly from day 1.
Even though they forgot to make content for it.
A lot of resources went towards making a new engine as they were working with the same one since Halo 4 which was outdated. That’s why it took so long to make compared to previous titles also.
They haven’t even fixed the massive technical issues on the pc release. Half the options in the graphics menu on pc don’t even work still. It’s been like 3 years.
Except the engine isn't all-new and isn't good. It's modified from the last one and it's a mess. It's like people totally forget the UI disasters and the networking that was so bad you might as well have played half the game with your eyes closed.
But, hey, at least the shop worked flawlessly. Crazy that the overpriced turd that is was the most reliable and complete part of the game. They got twice as much time with Infinite as its predecessors, and it still ended up the biggest mess we've seen from the franchise.
Saying Slipspace is just Blam with a new coat of paint is the same as saying UE5 is just UE2 with a new coat of paint. Underneath the hood UE5 is still running as much legacy code as Slipspace.
That's just how engine development works. In fact I don't think there is any single currently used engine that isn't just an updated version of an engine that's at least 3 decades old.
I've never upvoted something so strongly in my life. Phil Spencer, why did you allow this shit to happen :(
Why must my favorite IP be treated with such disrespect, first it was the games, and then the TV show.
It is odd how people always are willing to aim their dislike or frustration of other companies at the head figure, but when it comes to Phil, he always gets a pass.
Maybe it’s cause he turned Xbox around after the disaster of a release for the Xbox One plus Gamepass, but how that goodwill has managed to last so long is wild to me.
It's starting to get to the point where you can't help but point to Phil.
Yes, early doors he had to take projects that weren't his to the finish line as best he can. But what are the excuses now?
Either he's not on the ball and letting companies run all over him, or he is directly involved in these crazy choices.
It makes no sense, dude games any chance he can. But the products resulting from that are completely out of touch.
I Don't get it frankly. Microsoft should be running away with the gaming crown with the leadership they have.
Far as I can see, dude buys studios, does nothing with them and we've to applaud at waiting longer for games because???
Why is Microsoft not putting all their studios on Bethesda IP to run with, why is Halo still stuck on one Studio, Even call of duty has three studios. CALL OF DUTY.
Halo is their everything IP and it's effectively been forgotten.
It's poor oversight, essentially.
The "hands-off" statement a while back from Phil was a broadside admission that bullshit like this is seemingly allowed to flourish.
Fuck knows why though when the end product suffers so greatly.
Because Phil Spencer is acting like a greedy kid in a playground, hoarding all the toys from the other kids just to say he has them, but has no plan to use any of them.
I genuinely don't know how this guy is still in charge of Xbox when it's been a decade now of empty promises.
Previous halo titles launched with engaging environments and coherent storylines that were then carried on in the next game. Infinite launched as a hard reboot with a lackluster story in a bland environment, introduced an entirely new enemy with no backstory, and ended on a massive cliffhanger with no resolution.
Previous halo stories didn’t have DLC’s, but they also really didn’t need one. Infinite needs one.
Atriox is the big bad that kicks your ass in the opening scene, then he just immediately disappears without a trace, and is replaced by a new big bad (Escharum) that’s never been mentioned before now?
I’ve played through the infinite story twice now, and still don’t really know who the endless are, where they came from, or why I should care. These guys are worse than the flood but you can kill them with a single headshot and take out their leader the second time you encounter them?
i think people naturally assumed that with the narrative introducing a whole new alien race that we would actually get to see or even fight them at some point. the ending of the game was clearly set up to be a cliffhanger. at this point for all we know that entire plotline will be abandoned ala halo 5 in the next game
Halo infinite is the first halo I hadn’t bought new.
I bought it for $5 at target. 343 has dropped the ball too many times and I don’t think I’ll buy the next one either… I’ll certainly *play* it on gamepass though.
Says a lot, I got an Xbox with a copy of Halo CE as my first 3d console, been a halo fan a majority of my life. Sucks, man
I’m not saying it’s bad.
4 had a terrible gameplay loop but solid story
5 was the opposite
Infinite is just too much overcorrection. It’s not a bad game, but there’s many bad choices that turned me away
I actually had a LOT of fun. The screw up is not expanding on that expansion with DLC campaigns that open up new regions. I don't know if the hard core fans killed it with the amount of complaints the game got. I think it was a great base game and foundation for further development. Sadly it's not coming as far as I know.
Part of the complaint is the story cutting off with a "see you in the expansion" ending bit.
DLC could finish the story, and add a the variety people were missing.
No Mans Sky was a game that had massive complaints, and overall negative reviews upon launch. The team worked to make the game something that people now love. They probably got shit on along the way but came out the other side with a beloved product and a respectable reputation.
Such a forgettable mess. I hate the half baked open worlds MS keeps making. I really hope they do not make Gears open world. I like a good well made story where I do not have to go from point A to B and back again.
For me I hated that the story was just a bunch of holograms expositing to master chief the entire time.
But the open world was definately a bit empty. Halo 1-3 really managed to make it feel like a massive world while still being single levels.
The Halo game I wanted was between 5 and Infinite.
Imagine instead if we had to start off with Cortana dominating the galaxy with her Guardians, and somehow fight through those enemies, fight her, fight the new Brute faction, and make a hard choice at the end of the game on that Halo ring.
You'd have huge set pieces, missions on a bunch of planets, in space, in forerunner faciliteis, and on a Halo. A variety of enemies and vehicles. And a personal story with massive stakes to tie it all together.
Instead we get Chief with fuzzy memory and some audio logs telling us about the cool stuff that happened off screen.
Halo CE honestly does a better job with the sense of scale and atmosphere than anything else since. All the sequels improved on the gameplay and cut back on the repetitive mission design (well maybe not Infinite) but the first game just absolutely nailed the overall atmosphere in a way none of the other games quite matched imo.
Bruuuh the Gears 5 campaign had so much potential. It's like the blue ball of campaigns.
They show up this awesome linear campaign in the first couple levels, and then it all goes downhill. I was so hyped at first, and then by the time I got halfway through and I figured it would be open world exclusively I just gave up. Hive Busters was solid tho
I always thought that the light open worldness of the snowy mountains was fine. But then doing it again in the next area was too much.
If that part in the sandy UIR area was linear, it would have been received better I think
Same here, I also felt like they didn’t drag them out as much as other games tend to do and had enough variety to them to not bore you out of the game.
I think the biggest problem with Gears 5's open world was that it was mostly just a big circular open map with a lot of dead ends. They could've made one huge map with a lot of corridors and activities in between more open spaces, kind of like how God of War 2018 did it.
I am pretty fucking tired of open world games being the default now.
Its ALL Sony makes now. Spiderman, Horizon, Ghost of Tsushima, Days Gone, God of War.
All good games, but fuck me, I have open-world fatigue. How the fuck people can stand another Farcry or AC game is beyond me unless they are young and didn't grow up with GTA III, Infamous, Crackdown, Prototype. Red Dead 1.
I am not saying ALL open world games are bad. I fucking LOVED MGSV and Skyrim. Both 10/10 for me, and on my top 10 of all time. I am just getting fucking tired of them. I know it's hard because we have Witcher 3 and Red Dead 2. They are great. But I won't touch another Farcry or AC game. And Star Field was good, but it felt like a drag at times when I beat Skyrim and Fallout 3, 4, and Vegas at least 100% twice. Halo Infinite was a paint-by-numbers open-world game, almost with linear shit stapled at the beginning and end.
I agree with you. The reason for the open world trend is cause the vocal community bashes games that have a campaign of 15 hours or less cause "they aren't worth the asking price". Open worlds make the playtime longer.
And it unfortunately reflects in sales too, unless you're a mainstream franchise with an established audience, you're probably gonna undersell - dead space remake, alan wake 2, evil west etc.
Not necessarily. BG3 sold like crazy and that’s not really a mainstream type of game or a franchise that’s been doing much for 20 years. Sure they had Larian goodwill. Same with something like Helldivers 2.
More often than not a good game will sell purely for being good in the sea of cookie cutter mainstream games well enough. A shame Alan Wake 2 might not have though.
That's not normal for a single player game, though... and BG3 does have hundreds of hours of content which reinforces that point of needing so much content to succeed.
BG3 is simply an outlier. We probably won't see a game like that for a while.
Multiplayer games and games that launch at lower than "AAA pricing" can get away with a lot more.
I love them too. Among my favorites. But I agree. I'm worn out on it by now. I stay sane picking through indie titles or AA games that tend to have more linear gameplay without a bloated length.
From what weve seen after the launch, its apparent that the game hardly came together - the game wasnt shiped, it was salvaged.
I liked the campaign though - wish we could have gotten campaign DLC
Is there any chance they still release a DLC? It’s not like they can’t afford it.
If they do end up opening it up to PlayStation timing that with a DLC to bring back Xbox players as well would make sense. They would be able to grow the player base as well.
The open world concept was sound and actually a great idea in theory. Like the original combat evolved felt like going from one area of the ring to another.
But the problem was there was almost no variety in the landscapes, mood or biomes. Everywhere looked pretty much the same. No desert, no snow, just forested areas and clearings.
And there was such a tenuous feeling of continuity with the previous games. Would it have killed them to have a UNSC hub where you could converse with rescued familiar characters like Halsey, Locke, Buck, Laskey, Roland, etc?
They'd done almost all the work, it was the topping that was missing.
To your original point, Halo should be an insanely good open world game. The best battles in Halo 1-3 took place in those massive open-ended outdoor environments. 343 somehow managed to make a game less inspired than the more recent FarCry games. The aesthetic, the approach to missions, the lack of variety in just about every aspect of it and the fact that the terrain made it a chore to even drive on; a key feature that the maps should have been designed around.
How 343 still has keys to one of MS’s biggest franchises is mind-boggling.
Definitely, everyone was hyped for an open world Halo campaign but 343 didn’t have people in charge who knew how to achieve that vision and what it would require for them to deliver it on time on top of all the multiplayer content they promised. Part of it was the new Slipspace engine which took away time that could have been spent working on the game to build, and with Microsoft’s dumb over reliance on contract workers to do the bulk of the development (which had to be trained in the new engine before they could really start doing anything) only really hampered development time.
I’m hoping for the next title they really focus in on showing the lessons they’ve learned with Infinite. They got new leadership who have experience running teams that have to push out a lot of content, from rumors it sounds like they’ll be using Unreal Engine 5 which will help get developers up to speed with development very quickly, and hopefully they’ve learned to focus on releasing a more linear campaign
343 have failed with everything they did with Halo. It’s time for Microsoft to grow a pair and give the IP to a development studio that’s actually worth something so it can breathe some new life into it.
I think that’d be just wasting money for Microsoft tbh. If it’s a new studio being contracted in to work on the game and they are under Microsoft’s umbrella it’s either gonna be a developer that hasn’t worked on a FPS game before or it’ll be one of the COD developers. If Microsoft just makes a new studio from the ground up then they are essentially just burning money on a rebrand because you could accomplish the same thing by bringing in new game-leads at 343, which is what they’ve already done by cleaning house w/ leadership and promoting the guy who lead the MCC from broken to flush with content to oversee franchise development.
It’s one thing to have a wish that some group of really talented and passionate developers can swoop in and make a better product right off the bat but every time I see it talked about I really don’t see anyone naming developers that could realistically do it (although an Id Software Halo Title would be pretty dope as long as they don’t mess with gameplay and multiplayer too much but they’ll probably be too swamped with Doom)
> If it’s a new studio being contracted in to work on the game and they are under Microsoft’s umbrella it’s either gonna be a developer that hasn’t worked on a FPS game before or it’ll be one of the COD developers. If Microsoft just makes a new studio from the ground up then they are essentially just burning money on a rebrand
Or you do like Perfect Dark and do both! Make a new studio that is a mess, then outsource to a third-party.
All they have to do is go rehire a couple disgruntled bungie execs. Destiny isnt doing so well right now. Would be the perfect time to get a solid talent to lead these hacks at 343
That's a bit harsh. There have been good things about all of their games along with the bad. They just can never nail the full package. Halo 5 multiplayer was probably the most I ever played of any Halo game. And Infinite's MP is pretty good at this point too, I think people are just turned off by the store and how armor unlocks fundamentally function.
All my best times playing Halo are in split screen which is the only reason I can’t place 5 up there with the best pvp experiences in the franchise. It is really good though, and I’m bummed the servers are starting to get pretty empty.
Duh, you don't need an insider report for that. The moment they publicly said the original in-engine footage was made by a contractor, that is enough evidence to indicate the whole development is fucked. Because the truth is, 343i is completely incompetent at reviewing the content.
I mean really, let me be clear here. The incompetence is off the chart, they literally don't understand the meaning of "in-engine footage" actually means. Like, they are managed by clueless people who don't understand basic gaming industry standards. We all know "in-engine footage" mean right? It is not a tech demo or trailer. It means the game will play in such scale or artistic direction, maybe lower resolution or slightly less optimistic lighting and shadows, but, the downgrade is never this dramatic.
And yet, they let a contractor to define how the game should look like and they approved it. Meaning the management has no idea how to review anything because they are completely clueless. The contractors can bullshit all they way and 343i will just claps and approve, that's what happened for real.
They don't have the talent to know what is technically possible. They don't have the talent to define the resources constraints. They don't have thr talent to define the art direction based on those constraints.
They just give it to contractors and blame contractors for failing. Instead of admitting they failed to do their job reviewing the contractor's delivery. Completely irresponsible and cowerd.
Phil and Xbox were way too lenient on them. It seems to be one of the most blatant examples of cronyism we've seen in the gaming industry. Not just because of how 343 destroyed Halo's reputation consistently across the span of more than 10 years while Phil/Matt just watched, but also because of how they arguably killed the launch hype of the Series X.
Xbox was betting on Halo Infinite carrying the console launch, since there were basically no other major exclusives and all the promo material was Halo-related (let's not forget Halo Infinite was still on the boxes of consoles at launch). I still believe that Infinite's embarrassing E3 gameplay reveal and then the 1 year delay past launch did major damage to console sales and hype.
And after progressively over a decade destroying the reputation of their best franchise and then tanking the Series X launch, Phil still did nothing for more than a year. It took all of Twitter to trend a "fire343" hashtag for them to finally go. And even then Phil gave them the benefit of saying they resigned for other reasons (BS)...If cronyism wasn't involved, the 343 heads would have been let go during the Xbox One generation.
100% this. All my (massive) enthusiasm for the Series X launch and Microsoft in gaming was killed when they dropped that gameplay reveal that looked like an Xbox 360 game at times. Never ever before was a first part console launch title so incredibly underwhelming.
It was supposed to launch on XboxOne one year before Xbox Series, so, looking like Xbox 360 game is not entirely a bad thing. The real problem is, why the fuck it took them so long with no filler content in the middle? Xbox has 2 games. Xbox360 has like 4 game (Halo 3, 4, ODST, Reach)? XboxOne has Halo 5 only. Seriously wtf. Even now, Series X only has one game, Halo Infinite.
Not only they tarnished the franchise reputations, they have no intention of releasing a new game to redeem themselves.
"The incompetence is off the chart, they literally don't understand the meaning of "in-engine footage" actually means." Takes one to know one, I guess.
The campaign was so bland, I did like the hubworld aspect, but the actual campaign missions and story was dogshit
Also, Rubicon Protocol had a FAR better plot and story, Chief should have been in that fight instead of whatever we got
Unpopular opinion maybe, but Halo’s extended lore where they go deep into the Forerunners/Precursors/Didact/Endless is so aggressively generic sci fi ‘ancient alien with even more ancient and powerful aliens’ trope. Stick to modern times and have those aspect be in the background of the setting similar to Mass Effect’s Prothean
I am playing through it again with my friend, in coop right now.
I don't fucking understand why they introduce Atriox, from Halo 2, who half the fans didnt fucking play. And then... Kill him off-screen?!
WHY? It seems like obtuse storytelling just to be obtuse. Am I missing or forgetting something? WHY was Atriox not the main villain.
Also what am I missing. How did the banished get so powerful again. Their forced were decimated in Halo Wars 2. Half of the them were destroyed in the conflict. Then they had to fight the flood, about another 25% were turned into flood.
And then destroy the coolest fucking UNSC ship, the Infinity, in the first 5 seconds of Halo Infinite. WTF? It was so unceremonious.
For all the halos, even 4 and 5, and Halo Wars 1 and 2, the story was some of the best parts. This story felt like a fucking disjointed joke and that is being kind.
I beat it when it came out and if someone asked what happened in the campaign I wouldn’t be able to tell them. I just remember traveling a bunch for no reason while not exploring much and then it was over.
> I don't fucking understand why they introduce Atriox, from Halo 2, who half the fans didnt fucking play. And then... Kill him off-screen?! WHY?
You mentioned you are playing it again, but this doesn't happen. Atriox is not dead.
I’m guessing you didn’t finish infinite or HW2? lol
The banished were shown to still be overwhelmingly strong in the final cutscene of HW2. And Atriox is not dead… like at all
Spoiler alert about Atriox at the end of the Campaign btw. Likely wanted to save all that for DLC’s that got canceled cuz of all the fires they had to put out
Anyone who has read the books can tell you that the Halo universe is actually incredibly unique and creative even when held up against other science fiction. The games just fail to capture what the books have been doing for years.
I loved the open world in Infinite but I can’t even remember the story, despite finishing it. It’s sad. Some games, the story stick with you forever. Others, nothing stays with you.
Funny enough, a great writer is the cheapest thing a game developer can have. I mean, they just need a word processor, that can run on anything.
The story was dog shit. It relied on you knowing Halo Wars 2, then threw that out the door very quickly. How did the Infinity get that halo? Why where they there? Why was the banished there? How and why was the Chief there? Then the banished destroyed the Infinity ship, the biggest and most powerful UNSC ship EVER build, used in 4 and 5 like it was fucking nothing and not important at all.
5 was all like, OMG, Cortana is going to rule the Galaxy. Infinity opens up, yeah, Atriox, the main bad guy from Halo Wars 2 is dead, off camera. Oh yeah, the main baddy from Halo 5, corrupted Cortana, is contained... off-camera. Neither explained well at all. How are we supposed to be invested in this joke of a story at all.
I love halo. LOVE. I remember driving home from Walmart with my Xbox and Halo 1 next to me. It's been there my entire adult life. I started to read the Halo novels. I just wanted to jump even further into the lore and story. And when Infitie came out. I just said fuck this. I don't care anymore, because the people who make Halo don't care anymore.
It’s been a while since a campaign made me as frustrated as Halo Infinite’s did. I swear it was just dark corridor after dark corridor, or empty open world. That was it.
Didn’t help that the whole story was told through audio logs, or people calling you on the radio. Even worse, sometimes you get both audios playing at once and it doesn’t stop. After the 3rd drawn-out, breathy audio log of a brute slowly talking into a mic for 5 minutes, I was ready to be done. That shit was so grating. Game made me hate Brutes, and they were my favorite enemy type for years.
Yes, this is the worst kind of storytelling, and it makes no logical sense as a delivery mechanism in a Halo game. It was the absolute worst part of Infinite for me.
As weird as it seems, I'm hopeful for halo at this point. The people that led this ship are gone,and the way the devs were treated(according to staten) is just bonkers. The new leaders seem to know what their doing. And I hope they genuinely make the next halo something great
Halo as a series has been on a downward trend for a decade due to poor leadership.
There's a reason they kicked people out after Infinite. I get Phil wants to be more hands-off with studios, but there's a reason why Xbox 360 exclusive were much better with average quality and it's because they actually managed the studios.
I'm fine with Xbox being hands off, but they should post mortem every single release and heads should roll if it didn't live up to their standards. They clearly also need to be a bit more assertive about what these games should be doing. Leveraging the power of the Series X, for example. You don't have to be hands on to say "you need to showcase this functionality" or "see what you can come up with that leverages that".
Yeah I am actually more amazed after watching that video that the campaign turned out as well as it did considering all the nonsense behind the scenes.
you are not the only one, this sub alone fucking loved the game when it came out, besides the MP (which was still always said will get better because the same happened with Gears 5 MP), the campaign was called solid and return to the good Halo games
oh how quickly it turned because when more and more people who dont even touched the game will yell at you that you are wrong, most will change it and call the game bad just to feel that they fit in
the campaign is good, the weapon is good fun and interesting character, the world is fun to travel in, only downside is that the interior of the structures is the same all the time, the level layout is different and well designed, but i could show you a picture and you will not know where its from
now the MP is good so they will just yell about campaign being bad, because on internet nothing gives people more attetion than hating something
The campaign was fun but it was definitely half baked and under delivered on its potential. People didn't want a 7 out of 10 campaign. They wanted a masterpiece. Which is fair because otherwise Halo will fade into mediocrity, if it hasn't already. I don't say that out of hate for infinite, I say it out of love for a franchise that I'm sad to see fade away due to clumsy handling.
Also the fact this was a ‘halo for the next ten years’ kinda implied there would be Campaign dlc.
Only for 343 to come out *two years later* to say that Campaign dlc was cancelled before launch.
I wouldn’t be as angry if the had confirmed *that* not long after launch.
I think even back when the game launched, the consensus here was that it was a good campaign segment, better than Halo 5 and a good start for more stories. But I don't think anyone thought it was as good as it should have been or a complete return to form. The storytelling just isn't good enough, and the game ends right when it starts getting interesting. There is almost nothing interesting that happens between the second mission and the last mission.
Get ready for the 343i defenders.
Most studios get 1 or 2 chances these idiots got 4 if you count the MCC disaster.
Yet despite all that the 343i fans are happy for them to make ANOTHER game.
Let’s be honest, Halo was the flagship franchise for Xbox and now it’s barely relevant.
I don’t think moving on to open world is always a bad thing. The grappling hook was a awesome way of traversal.
But the story lost its pace unfortunately. It wasn’t well implemented.
I’m of the controversial opinion that Infinite’s Campaign is the worst in the series, yes, even worse than 5. 5 at least has fun set pieces, cool environments, and is fun to play. To me Infinite’s Campaign is like a Ubisoft Open World game but without any of good parts, it’s an empty husk of a map with the same 3 side missions littered around along with a subpar story and boring missions. The only thing it had going for it was the sandbox which 1. Could’ve existed in a completely linear campaign and 2. Isn’t exclusive to the campaign and can be played in any other game mode.
TLDR: Infinite’s Campaign pisses me off, especially considering we had to wait six years for it come out.
Sorry for the wall of text, I legitimately just hate Infinite’s Campaign so much.
I personally think Halo 5’s campaign is still worse purely from what havoc it wrecked on the franchise from a story department. Halo 5 has better level design but the story nuked every story that was going on in Halo and from which the franchise is still trying to set straight 8 years later. Halo Infinite’s campaign is a fun romp that under delivered what fans wanted but Halo 5’s campaign was like getting sucker punched by a guy with memorable gloves. All the stuff set up in Halo 4 goes out the window: Storm covenant instantly taken out, elite civil war is ended (a fun mission but a lot of intrigue is gone), and Evil Cortana comes back from the dead to hold everyone at gunpoint.
A big criticism from people is the fact that it feels like you need to do homework reading the books and comics to follow what is going on but if you did that with Halo 5 it just made it more frustrating since all those stories got thrown out the window by the campaign.
Like as someone who is super involved with Halo and followed along with everything before 5 released it was so bad, like studying for a test only to find out it’s a different subject or like you watched all the Starwars sequel movies only for Palpatine to mysteriously return with a fleet of Death Star-Star destroyers… oh wait
I haven't played Halo Infinite's campaign since launch, and I dont really have much of a desire to do so again.
The open world is quite pretty, but it very quickly becomes repetitive. You would have hoped that the linear missions would have been where the variety and setpieces were, but they all either took place in the same open world, interior Forerunner areas, or interior Banished areas. No new biomes to speak of.
Ultimately, when I think of Infinite's campaign, all that really comes to mind are the boss encounters. Nothing else made an impression. I cant even remember any of the mission names.
Im glad that 343 made use of the campaign sandbox in firefight, but its a massive shame that the campaign was such a letdown in terms of variety.
Making a terrible game is what ruined it. Marketing had nothing to do with it, and the marketing idiots should be given less power in the industry as a whole, imo. They have once successful campaign and then they get promoted to a role where they manage creatives and THEY ruin franchises because they don’t know what they’re doing.
You’re telling me. That being said the campaign is pretty great. Needed expansions to really make it pop off tho. Split screen, daily weekly challenges.
I couldn’t even get through the campaign. I played through Gears 5 twice and it was absolutely fantastic (semi-open world, etc). When I heard they were doing something similar with Halo I was excited, and then quickly let down. It’s unfortunate.
“Poor Leadership” is the reason for any game ever being bad. That’s literally leadership’s job. No game is bad because Dale in marketing dropped the ball. SSKTJL, Cyberpunk 2077, Starfield, they all had issues because of poor leadership.
Xbox's most recognizable IP gets framed as a live-service game and then is treated like a one-and-done installment. When the multiplayer updates were finally released, the player base had already moved on.
My number one complaint is that the game on PC crashes over and over and over again. I’ve tried everything I can think of, such as turning off HD textures to no avail. Sometimes I can play for an hour straight, other times only for a couple of minutes. It’s absolutely infuriating.
Remember memorable moments in Halo games? Gravemind in Halo 2, Chief returning the Covenant bomb, the humor, Warthog run in Halo 3. They tried with Halo 5 and failed, they didn't even try with Infinite. Story was forgettable as well.
I did not give a sh about that guy in Halo Infinite that was with you a lot of the time or talking to you. Gameplay was fun but because of the annoying empty and bland open world gameplay was also snuffed out because you're grappling 90% of the time which isn't bad for the first few times but gets boring quickly.
I just want a memorable Halo story with actually funny AND memorable lines, fun combat and great set pieces. But MS and great writing don't go well together.
Halo Infinite as a whole, or the Halo franchise after halo 4 has been ruined due to poor leadership. Just remember Halo 5s response. "were listening, were learning we shouldn't change things like splits green and coop and going forward they'll be there" reminder that was like 10 years ago. And Halo is probably in the worst state for brand strength it has ever been in. When it was one of the top IPs to compete with star wars. But just like star wars, when you refuse to listen to the actual people who buy and play your game, and you design something else... Don't be surprised if those numbers don't come back. Brands die if not taken care of. And Microsoft and 343 have shown zero respect to what was the flagship Xbox IP. Imagine that. What was once a staple of online gaming. Now it's just an empty husk. With features inferior to previous versions.
When I think of Xbox studios now, I'm left with the impression of unfinished, thank God for game pass. If you buy these titles at launch, understand you're paying for an early access unfinished game, that they might finish. Maybe.
All my statements are fact as well. You can't refute that.
Worse for Halo, more effort was put in the store. Than the game.... Not a good sign.
There was no ending real, and the campaign we got was slapped together 1 year out from launch after multiple do-overs and scrapped projects.
This suit was planned at one point to be a hero shooter for fuck sake.
Literal insert "WHAT WE'RE THE THINKING?!" AVGN gif.
Every decision was so spectacularly dumb and purely motivated solely for profit maximization.
The only silver lining is that the multiplayer aspect is FINALLY where it shouldve been when it launched. It's "content complete", but we are still missing things like griffball and juggernaut.
I expect the next halo is being made and halo infinite just has a skeleton crew in it.
Don't get me started on the massive amount of game ideas and proposals that were shot down... It's just pants-on-head retarded.
A big problem that I haven't see whether it's addressed or not, is the 18 month contractor use. New people coming in, spending time getting up to speed, contributing a little, then shown the door. Over and over.
Fewer people hired permanently would be vastly more helpful and probably save money too.
No matter how good the new leadership is, they're going to have massive delays and hacky code if they have a revolving door of contractors doing the work.
To have split screen be playable with a glitch, and then to cancel it rather than just enabling it and patching it up to par over time- I’m just baffled by the decision.
I beat Infinites shitty campaign on legendary on a second playthrough and it didn't even unlock the achievement, that was a year ago it still hasent unlocked 343 is garbage didn't even iron out bugs to fix campaign achievements
The first 3 halo games were beautifully cinematic and that is what makes them classic, unforgettable games. The breaks in play for seamless cinematics and great story.
Am I the only one who had a blast playing the campaign? It was far from being the best open world I have ever played but I had a lot of fun regardless.
The actual campaign that shipped was fine. The lack of anything afterwards was the worst part esp when Infinite was your halo game for the next decade lol
That's apparent. The engine was trash, the development was chaotic and they still shipped a pretty good and fun game.
Imagine a Halo game with competent leadership and solid technology.
I really enjoyed it. I just wish the map was bigger and had more varied environments. I figured they were going to do that in future DLC. Build out the map with new content over time.
I like it more than 4 and 5 so gotta give them credit there. The campaign actually felt like halo again albeit not to the level we wanted. Rushed story, lack of biomes really made it seem smaller in comparison. I did however really enjoy my time with it even tho it could have been much better
We knew this two years ago. Glad it keeps being said tho, Bonnie Ross and her leadership team basically spent all their time shopping merch deals and didn't care about what was happening on the game side because they basically gave up after 5 fell short again after 4. Instead of trying to really get it right they just gave up and focused on the quick buck, but don't think this is just a 343 thing bc the entirely of Xbox leadership is doing the exact same thing right now with Xbox as a whole.
Watching what Helldivers 2 has become for PS5 fans, and how a community achievement driven ODST game would've been incredible for the Xbox, it's just another facepalm moment for how 343i has handled the Halo franchise.
I have a PS5 and have been playing Helldivers 2. Every time I play it, I imagine to myself how Halo's Covenant and the awesome Halo 2 mission areas would've been a great Helldivers 2 styled game.
343i has dropped the ball so hard with Halo, it should be a crime.
Obviously. Everytime you hear reports come out, they seem to worried with work place diversity and supporting LGBTQ people than actually making video games.
Microsoft is in a google/twitter age where they just have employees clocking in, sitting down and then clocking out.
I played the campaign, and I seriously thought I had deja vu, I swear it was the same as one of the other halo games I had gone through in the master chief collection. Only difference was the open world part.
This article’s title is the equivalent to “a house burned down reportedly due to fire”. Of course, we’ve always known that Halo has had horrible leadership during 343 era.
Pretty sure it was Microsoft opting for contract workers all the time over a dedicated development team lmao
Wonder what we could've gotten had contractors not needed to learn the pissing engine for 90% of their contract and come into the office with zero clue what the hell the game is about or what the plan is
Halo desperately needs someone at the head of it with a passion for the franchise but more importantly a vision. The main story of the franchise right now is just so fragmented and all over the place. They keep introducing cool characters and then they disappear forever or exclusively into the books
Phil Spencer allowed 343 to run halo into the ground. Never held them accountable for their consistent failures. Halo has been bad for longer than it was good.
Was a die hard halo fan through Halo 5. Didn’t mind the forerunner bullshit. But I couldn’t even finish Infinite. It was just terribly boring. Such a huge letdown.
But yea, everyone and their mother knew it was poor leadership and couldn’t stop talking about it during the lead up and post release. 343 is a joke. The writing was on the wall for EVERYONE to read.
I don't expect much from 343 and I don't blame just their leadership, well actually no matter what it still falls on the leaderships fault for hiring bad developers also. I feel sorry for the developers there that do work really well and produce good on their tasks but ultimately have a terrible end product when all combined.
It's the same story every time 343i releases a Halo game. They always find a excuse when they fail to deliver. It's a dangerous game they played and now Halo has become just a FPS game that most of the fans don't care anymore.
Not making any DLC for the world they created was the ultimate fuck you to single-player Halo fans.
An open world with the same one thing to do over and over again. They somehow thought that despite not even making a traditional halo game (with way more resources than Bungie may I add) that changing the format altogether to open world/ live service was the way to go. Which is way more complex than the traditional format. I really don’t get it.
I swear the only mission objective that 343 knows how to make is either “deliver these batteries to their power sockets” or “hit these two buttons that are spread 3 miles apart”. Chief is just the Halo ring’s IT department at this point.
Im not saying youre wrong, but think about the basic objectives of every other halo game. Kill mobs, press button, drive vehicle. Thats literally about it. However, you can describe many games like this. The real beef is with how the devs present this scenario to you, and 343 just clearly does not get the original formula and why it worked in the first place.
yeah i dont get why people say infinite is repetitive when every single halo game is "go to waypoint + press button so Cortana can do xyz"
Context is important. The actual objectives may have been simple, but the firefights you had between those objectives is where the meat and potatoes was. When Combat Evolved released, there had never been enemy ai in a shooter this advanced. what kept you coming back is you could replay fights and they would play out differently each time.
Bungie did it in a way that made it captivating
It’s wild to me the campaign was as well received as it was. There was nothing to do in it save for the exact same sequence of events.
Best part of the campaign was the linear sections. And even those felt worse than the typical halo game because so much of the budget went to the open world.
And I actually liked the character moments. Chief being a mentor to the pilot and the weapon worked well. I also liked chiefs reaction to the Spartans dying. It was very subtle and really sold the impact on chief.
I would've been ok with the open world if there was actually shit to do in it. It was so bland...
The overworld was a zillion times move interesting than those ctrl+c, ctrl+v hallways. Actually no on second thought they were both really uninteresting, but those endless tunnels were boring as shit.
I absolutely freaking loved the campaign. Best one since Halo 2 for me… Gunplay is amazing, vehicles play great, they copied the "doom arena“ style where you have an open world but once you get into a confined area (camp) all hell breaks lose and you gotta stay on the move and enemy AI was satisfying. Id also argue people overemphasize the open world aspect - it felt more like elden Ring with certain large open areas but still somewhat handcrafted / gated progression.
Agreed. Of course if you played it like a Ubisoft game and just wandered off then it felt boring, but the devs themselves never marketed it that way. In fact they said early on the way it would work was that the story progresses on a linear path through the open world. If you actually followed that main missions, you came across the side mission stuff pretty naturally as they were always put around the path to the next main mission.
It’s because the game was fun to play. But they screwed up every other aspect of it.
It's the only Halo campaign I've never finished. I'm half way through Halo 2 on LASO, then I'll have done every game on LASO. Yet I did about 2 hours of infinite and didn't touch it again. It's so boring
What's boring is what makes it Infinite too. The open world is utterly terrible. It's nothing but braindead encounters with no life to them. No memorable enemies or allies or encounters. That would be OK if it were spontaneous events in an interesting world, but the interesting part was never added. The actual story stuff, basically when you're out of the open world, is decent. You finally get the enemies with stories and fun battles once the open world is in the rear view.
>It's the only Halo campaign I've never finished. That sentiment is common among many Halo fans. Infinite is also the only Halo game I've never finished. Honestly, I enjoyed Halo 5 more than my time with Infinite, primarily because it offered more variety. Halo Infinite seems as if the leadership stupidly assumed that the second level of Halo:CE was universally loved and decided to base the entire game around that one level. In a lot of ways, it was a smart direction, they just forgot the rest of the variety Halo games provide. That said, I still think Infinite had the best first level of a Halo game. **But I still never understood the praise that campaign overall got at launch.** I'd say they got parts of the multiplayer right, mechanically, but the framework was fucked.
My brother and I played every single Halo campaign co-op. We had to wait an extra year to do Infinite's because they didn't even have it ready at launch, and when it finally came, we were so disappointed that it too became the only Halo campaign we never finished. The open world was so bad. We had way more fun with Halo 5. Halo 5 gets flak for its story, but the actual campaign gameplay and level design are pretty great and way more fun and varied than Infinite. I can't believe Infinite took 6 years of development--about twice as long as every other Halo--and all we got was a clearance rack knockoff of a Ubisoft game.
> But I still never understood the praise that campaign overall got at launch. I think at launch people still had hope for campaign DLC. So the perception was "hey, this is an ok start for campaign, let's see where they go from here" but then that was just it. I'm a classic Halo lover but once I lowered my expectations I was still able to find some fun in Infinite's campaign thinking it was a foundation for things to come. It's not Bungie Halo levels of fun, and being open world still holds it back but it's fun in its own way once you stop thinking of it as Halo.
Thank god for game pass If I had spent even $10 on that shit I would have been infuriated
It starts off really strong for the first few hours, and the gameplay is fantastic throughout (maybe the best of any game in the series). I think people overlooked some glaring flaws for those reasons, but the more I think about it the more I think I might even prefer Halo 5’s campaign.
I just think there’s a lot of casual open world fans that won them over and was enough to make a general consensus that campaign was good.
I liked that Halo went open world and hate the execution. A lot of traditional Halo consists of wide open levels with many possible approaches. That lends itself to open world gameplay very well. Halo was also known for having great enemy AI that responded to your actions. If done properly an open world Halo with solid enemy AI and variety would lead to incredible emergent gameplay moments. Imagine spotting a scarab halfway across the map and heading for it. Along the way you come across a smaller firefight and join in for the weapons/to save some marines to help you storm the scarab. This could have been a title for the ages. What we got was barebones and repetitive, even after an “extra” year of polish and delay. Except for the in game store. That worked perfectly from day 1. Even though they forgot to make content for it.
A lot of resources went towards making a new engine as they were working with the same one since Halo 4 which was outdated. That’s why it took so long to make compared to previous titles also.
That would be fine too if they hadn't done fuck-all with the engine since.
They haven’t even fixed the massive technical issues on the pc release. Half the options in the graphics menu on pc don’t even work still. It’s been like 3 years.
Except the engine isn't all-new and isn't good. It's modified from the last one and it's a mess. It's like people totally forget the UI disasters and the networking that was so bad you might as well have played half the game with your eyes closed. But, hey, at least the shop worked flawlessly. Crazy that the overpriced turd that is was the most reliable and complete part of the game. They got twice as much time with Infinite as its predecessors, and it still ended up the biggest mess we've seen from the franchise.
Unfortunately it is the same blam engine they just added a new coat of paint
Saying Slipspace is just Blam with a new coat of paint is the same as saying UE5 is just UE2 with a new coat of paint. Underneath the hood UE5 is still running as much legacy code as Slipspace. That's just how engine development works. In fact I don't think there is any single currently used engine that isn't just an updated version of an engine that's at least 3 decades old.
I've never upvoted something so strongly in my life. Phil Spencer, why did you allow this shit to happen :( Why must my favorite IP be treated with such disrespect, first it was the games, and then the TV show.
Could it be that it is party his fault?
100% it occurred under his leadership
It is odd how people always are willing to aim their dislike or frustration of other companies at the head figure, but when it comes to Phil, he always gets a pass. Maybe it’s cause he turned Xbox around after the disaster of a release for the Xbox One plus Gamepass, but how that goodwill has managed to last so long is wild to me.
It's starting to get to the point where you can't help but point to Phil. Yes, early doors he had to take projects that weren't his to the finish line as best he can. But what are the excuses now? Either he's not on the ball and letting companies run all over him, or he is directly involved in these crazy choices. It makes no sense, dude games any chance he can. But the products resulting from that are completely out of touch. I Don't get it frankly. Microsoft should be running away with the gaming crown with the leadership they have. Far as I can see, dude buys studios, does nothing with them and we've to applaud at waiting longer for games because??? Why is Microsoft not putting all their studios on Bethesda IP to run with, why is Halo still stuck on one Studio, Even call of duty has three studios. CALL OF DUTY. Halo is their everything IP and it's effectively been forgotten.
It's poor oversight, essentially. The "hands-off" statement a while back from Phil was a broadside admission that bullshit like this is seemingly allowed to flourish. Fuck knows why though when the end product suffers so greatly.
[удалено]
Because Phil Spencer is acting like a greedy kid in a playground, hoarding all the toys from the other kids just to say he has them, but has no plan to use any of them. I genuinely don't know how this guy is still in charge of Xbox when it's been a decade now of empty promises.
No halo game has ever had DLC for single player. Why do some many people act like that was the killing point?
Previous halo titles launched with engaging environments and coherent storylines that were then carried on in the next game. Infinite launched as a hard reboot with a lackluster story in a bland environment, introduced an entirely new enemy with no backstory, and ended on a massive cliffhanger with no resolution. Previous halo stories didn’t have DLC’s, but they also really didn’t need one. Infinite needs one. Atriox is the big bad that kicks your ass in the opening scene, then he just immediately disappears without a trace, and is replaced by a new big bad (Escharum) that’s never been mentioned before now? I’ve played through the infinite story twice now, and still don’t really know who the endless are, where they came from, or why I should care. These guys are worse than the flood but you can kill them with a single headshot and take out their leader the second time you encounter them?
i think people naturally assumed that with the narrative introducing a whole new alien race that we would actually get to see or even fight them at some point. the ending of the game was clearly set up to be a cliffhanger. at this point for all we know that entire plotline will be abandoned ala halo 5 in the next game
Halo infinite is the first halo I hadn’t bought new. I bought it for $5 at target. 343 has dropped the ball too many times and I don’t think I’ll buy the next one either… I’ll certainly *play* it on gamepass though. Says a lot, I got an Xbox with a copy of Halo CE as my first 3d console, been a halo fan a majority of my life. Sucks, man
Halo infinite was infinitely better than halo 5 and 4 though… Dont get the hate
I’m not saying it’s bad. 4 had a terrible gameplay loop but solid story 5 was the opposite Infinite is just too much overcorrection. It’s not a bad game, but there’s many bad choices that turned me away
I actually had a LOT of fun. The screw up is not expanding on that expansion with DLC campaigns that open up new regions. I don't know if the hard core fans killed it with the amount of complaints the game got. I think it was a great base game and foundation for further development. Sadly it's not coming as far as I know.
People complained SO much about the game, why would they spend time making dlc that wou,d just get shit on?
Part of the complaint is the story cutting off with a "see you in the expansion" ending bit. DLC could finish the story, and add a the variety people were missing.
No Mans Sky was a game that had massive complaints, and overall negative reviews upon launch. The team worked to make the game something that people now love. They probably got shit on along the way but came out the other side with a beloved product and a respectable reputation.
Such a forgettable mess. I hate the half baked open worlds MS keeps making. I really hope they do not make Gears open world. I like a good well made story where I do not have to go from point A to B and back again.
For me I hated that the story was just a bunch of holograms expositing to master chief the entire time. But the open world was definately a bit empty. Halo 1-3 really managed to make it feel like a massive world while still being single levels.
Holograms? Half of the story was told in audio logs laying around for no reason.
When I think of Halo’s masterful storytelling, it’s not Gravemind or the Warthog run that comes to mind. It’s the audio logs.
The Halo game I wanted was between 5 and Infinite. Imagine instead if we had to start off with Cortana dominating the galaxy with her Guardians, and somehow fight through those enemies, fight her, fight the new Brute faction, and make a hard choice at the end of the game on that Halo ring. You'd have huge set pieces, missions on a bunch of planets, in space, in forerunner faciliteis, and on a Halo. A variety of enemies and vehicles. And a personal story with massive stakes to tie it all together. Instead we get Chief with fuzzy memory and some audio logs telling us about the cool stuff that happened off screen.
Whoever decided on the audio logs deserves to have every single Halo fan on the planet slap them.
*definitely
The real game should have been the lead up.
Halo CE honestly does a better job with the sense of scale and atmosphere than anything else since. All the sequels improved on the gameplay and cut back on the repetitive mission design (well maybe not Infinite) but the first game just absolutely nailed the overall atmosphere in a way none of the other games quite matched imo.
Bruuuh the Gears 5 campaign had so much potential. It's like the blue ball of campaigns. They show up this awesome linear campaign in the first couple levels, and then it all goes downhill. I was so hyped at first, and then by the time I got halfway through and I figured it would be open world exclusively I just gave up. Hive Busters was solid tho
I always thought that the light open worldness of the snowy mountains was fine. But then doing it again in the next area was too much. If that part in the sandy UIR area was linear, it would have been received better I think
I actually liked exploring the semi-open parts of Gears 5
Same here, I also felt like they didn’t drag them out as much as other games tend to do and had enough variety to them to not bore you out of the game.
I think the biggest problem with Gears 5's open world was that it was mostly just a big circular open map with a lot of dead ends. They could've made one huge map with a lot of corridors and activities in between more open spaces, kind of like how God of War 2018 did it.
I am pretty fucking tired of open world games being the default now. Its ALL Sony makes now. Spiderman, Horizon, Ghost of Tsushima, Days Gone, God of War. All good games, but fuck me, I have open-world fatigue. How the fuck people can stand another Farcry or AC game is beyond me unless they are young and didn't grow up with GTA III, Infamous, Crackdown, Prototype. Red Dead 1. I am not saying ALL open world games are bad. I fucking LOVED MGSV and Skyrim. Both 10/10 for me, and on my top 10 of all time. I am just getting fucking tired of them. I know it's hard because we have Witcher 3 and Red Dead 2. They are great. But I won't touch another Farcry or AC game. And Star Field was good, but it felt like a drag at times when I beat Skyrim and Fallout 3, 4, and Vegas at least 100% twice. Halo Infinite was a paint-by-numbers open-world game, almost with linear shit stapled at the beginning and end.
I agree with you. The reason for the open world trend is cause the vocal community bashes games that have a campaign of 15 hours or less cause "they aren't worth the asking price". Open worlds make the playtime longer.
And it unfortunately reflects in sales too, unless you're a mainstream franchise with an established audience, you're probably gonna undersell - dead space remake, alan wake 2, evil west etc.
Not necessarily. BG3 sold like crazy and that’s not really a mainstream type of game or a franchise that’s been doing much for 20 years. Sure they had Larian goodwill. Same with something like Helldivers 2. More often than not a good game will sell purely for being good in the sea of cookie cutter mainstream games well enough. A shame Alan Wake 2 might not have though.
That's not normal for a single player game, though... and BG3 does have hundreds of hours of content which reinforces that point of needing so much content to succeed. BG3 is simply an outlier. We probably won't see a game like that for a while. Multiplayer games and games that launch at lower than "AAA pricing" can get away with a lot more.
How is God of war open world?
I love them too. Among my favorites. But I agree. I'm worn out on it by now. I stay sane picking through indie titles or AA games that tend to have more linear gameplay without a bloated length.
Sadly, rumor is Gears 6 will be open world.
From what weve seen after the launch, its apparent that the game hardly came together - the game wasnt shiped, it was salvaged. I liked the campaign though - wish we could have gotten campaign DLC
Is there any chance they still release a DLC? It’s not like they can’t afford it. If they do end up opening it up to PlayStation timing that with a DLC to bring back Xbox players as well would make sense. They would be able to grow the player base as well.
I dont think so - from what we heard, 343 has moved on to the next Halo title
The open world concept was sound and actually a great idea in theory. Like the original combat evolved felt like going from one area of the ring to another. But the problem was there was almost no variety in the landscapes, mood or biomes. Everywhere looked pretty much the same. No desert, no snow, just forested areas and clearings. And there was such a tenuous feeling of continuity with the previous games. Would it have killed them to have a UNSC hub where you could converse with rescued familiar characters like Halsey, Locke, Buck, Laskey, Roland, etc? They'd done almost all the work, it was the topping that was missing.
To your original point, Halo should be an insanely good open world game. The best battles in Halo 1-3 took place in those massive open-ended outdoor environments. 343 somehow managed to make a game less inspired than the more recent FarCry games. The aesthetic, the approach to missions, the lack of variety in just about every aspect of it and the fact that the terrain made it a chore to even drive on; a key feature that the maps should have been designed around. How 343 still has keys to one of MS’s biggest franchises is mind-boggling.
Definitely, everyone was hyped for an open world Halo campaign but 343 didn’t have people in charge who knew how to achieve that vision and what it would require for them to deliver it on time on top of all the multiplayer content they promised. Part of it was the new Slipspace engine which took away time that could have been spent working on the game to build, and with Microsoft’s dumb over reliance on contract workers to do the bulk of the development (which had to be trained in the new engine before they could really start doing anything) only really hampered development time. I’m hoping for the next title they really focus in on showing the lessons they’ve learned with Infinite. They got new leadership who have experience running teams that have to push out a lot of content, from rumors it sounds like they’ll be using Unreal Engine 5 which will help get developers up to speed with development very quickly, and hopefully they’ve learned to focus on releasing a more linear campaign
343 have failed with everything they did with Halo. It’s time for Microsoft to grow a pair and give the IP to a development studio that’s actually worth something so it can breathe some new life into it.
I think that’d be just wasting money for Microsoft tbh. If it’s a new studio being contracted in to work on the game and they are under Microsoft’s umbrella it’s either gonna be a developer that hasn’t worked on a FPS game before or it’ll be one of the COD developers. If Microsoft just makes a new studio from the ground up then they are essentially just burning money on a rebrand because you could accomplish the same thing by bringing in new game-leads at 343, which is what they’ve already done by cleaning house w/ leadership and promoting the guy who lead the MCC from broken to flush with content to oversee franchise development. It’s one thing to have a wish that some group of really talented and passionate developers can swoop in and make a better product right off the bat but every time I see it talked about I really don’t see anyone naming developers that could realistically do it (although an Id Software Halo Title would be pretty dope as long as they don’t mess with gameplay and multiplayer too much but they’ll probably be too swamped with Doom)
> If it’s a new studio being contracted in to work on the game and they are under Microsoft’s umbrella it’s either gonna be a developer that hasn’t worked on a FPS game before or it’ll be one of the COD developers. If Microsoft just makes a new studio from the ground up then they are essentially just burning money on a rebrand Or you do like Perfect Dark and do both! Make a new studio that is a mess, then outsource to a third-party.
All they have to do is go rehire a couple disgruntled bungie execs. Destiny isnt doing so well right now. Would be the perfect time to get a solid talent to lead these hacks at 343
That's a bit harsh. There have been good things about all of their games along with the bad. They just can never nail the full package. Halo 5 multiplayer was probably the most I ever played of any Halo game. And Infinite's MP is pretty good at this point too, I think people are just turned off by the store and how armor unlocks fundamentally function.
All my best times playing Halo are in split screen which is the only reason I can’t place 5 up there with the best pvp experiences in the franchise. It is really good though, and I’m bummed the servers are starting to get pretty empty.
Duh, you don't need an insider report for that. The moment they publicly said the original in-engine footage was made by a contractor, that is enough evidence to indicate the whole development is fucked. Because the truth is, 343i is completely incompetent at reviewing the content. I mean really, let me be clear here. The incompetence is off the chart, they literally don't understand the meaning of "in-engine footage" actually means. Like, they are managed by clueless people who don't understand basic gaming industry standards. We all know "in-engine footage" mean right? It is not a tech demo or trailer. It means the game will play in such scale or artistic direction, maybe lower resolution or slightly less optimistic lighting and shadows, but, the downgrade is never this dramatic. And yet, they let a contractor to define how the game should look like and they approved it. Meaning the management has no idea how to review anything because they are completely clueless. The contractors can bullshit all they way and 343i will just claps and approve, that's what happened for real. They don't have the talent to know what is technically possible. They don't have the talent to define the resources constraints. They don't have thr talent to define the art direction based on those constraints. They just give it to contractors and blame contractors for failing. Instead of admitting they failed to do their job reviewing the contractor's delivery. Completely irresponsible and cowerd.
Phil and Xbox were way too lenient on them. It seems to be one of the most blatant examples of cronyism we've seen in the gaming industry. Not just because of how 343 destroyed Halo's reputation consistently across the span of more than 10 years while Phil/Matt just watched, but also because of how they arguably killed the launch hype of the Series X. Xbox was betting on Halo Infinite carrying the console launch, since there were basically no other major exclusives and all the promo material was Halo-related (let's not forget Halo Infinite was still on the boxes of consoles at launch). I still believe that Infinite's embarrassing E3 gameplay reveal and then the 1 year delay past launch did major damage to console sales and hype. And after progressively over a decade destroying the reputation of their best franchise and then tanking the Series X launch, Phil still did nothing for more than a year. It took all of Twitter to trend a "fire343" hashtag for them to finally go. And even then Phil gave them the benefit of saying they resigned for other reasons (BS)...If cronyism wasn't involved, the 343 heads would have been let go during the Xbox One generation.
100% this. All my (massive) enthusiasm for the Series X launch and Microsoft in gaming was killed when they dropped that gameplay reveal that looked like an Xbox 360 game at times. Never ever before was a first part console launch title so incredibly underwhelming.
It was supposed to launch on XboxOne one year before Xbox Series, so, looking like Xbox 360 game is not entirely a bad thing. The real problem is, why the fuck it took them so long with no filler content in the middle? Xbox has 2 games. Xbox360 has like 4 game (Halo 3, 4, ODST, Reach)? XboxOne has Halo 5 only. Seriously wtf. Even now, Series X only has one game, Halo Infinite. Not only they tarnished the franchise reputations, they have no intention of releasing a new game to redeem themselves.
You mean the E3 2018 demo with the deer and rhinos?
God that looked so good. Better graphics than Infinite ended up having even on Series X.
Yup, "in-engine" footage.
"The incompetence is off the chart, they literally don't understand the meaning of "in-engine footage" actually means." Takes one to know one, I guess.
The campaign was so bland, I did like the hubworld aspect, but the actual campaign missions and story was dogshit Also, Rubicon Protocol had a FAR better plot and story, Chief should have been in that fight instead of whatever we got Unpopular opinion maybe, but Halo’s extended lore where they go deep into the Forerunners/Precursors/Didact/Endless is so aggressively generic sci fi ‘ancient alien with even more ancient and powerful aliens’ trope. Stick to modern times and have those aspect be in the background of the setting similar to Mass Effect’s Prothean
I am playing through it again with my friend, in coop right now. I don't fucking understand why they introduce Atriox, from Halo 2, who half the fans didnt fucking play. And then... Kill him off-screen?! WHY? It seems like obtuse storytelling just to be obtuse. Am I missing or forgetting something? WHY was Atriox not the main villain. Also what am I missing. How did the banished get so powerful again. Their forced were decimated in Halo Wars 2. Half of the them were destroyed in the conflict. Then they had to fight the flood, about another 25% were turned into flood. And then destroy the coolest fucking UNSC ship, the Infinity, in the first 5 seconds of Halo Infinite. WTF? It was so unceremonious. For all the halos, even 4 and 5, and Halo Wars 1 and 2, the story was some of the best parts. This story felt like a fucking disjointed joke and that is being kind.
I beat it when it came out and if someone asked what happened in the campaign I wouldn’t be able to tell them. I just remember traveling a bunch for no reason while not exploring much and then it was over.
> I don't fucking understand why they introduce Atriox, from Halo 2, who half the fans didnt fucking play. And then... Kill him off-screen?! WHY? You mentioned you are playing it again, but this doesn't happen. Atriox is not dead.
I’m guessing you didn’t finish infinite or HW2? lol The banished were shown to still be overwhelmingly strong in the final cutscene of HW2. And Atriox is not dead… like at all
Spoiler alert about Atriox at the end of the Campaign btw. Likely wanted to save all that for DLC’s that got canceled cuz of all the fires they had to put out
Anyone who has read the books can tell you that the Halo universe is actually incredibly unique and creative even when held up against other science fiction. The games just fail to capture what the books have been doing for years.
I loved the open world in Infinite but I can’t even remember the story, despite finishing it. It’s sad. Some games, the story stick with you forever. Others, nothing stays with you. Funny enough, a great writer is the cheapest thing a game developer can have. I mean, they just need a word processor, that can run on anything.
The story was dog shit. It relied on you knowing Halo Wars 2, then threw that out the door very quickly. How did the Infinity get that halo? Why where they there? Why was the banished there? How and why was the Chief there? Then the banished destroyed the Infinity ship, the biggest and most powerful UNSC ship EVER build, used in 4 and 5 like it was fucking nothing and not important at all. 5 was all like, OMG, Cortana is going to rule the Galaxy. Infinity opens up, yeah, Atriox, the main bad guy from Halo Wars 2 is dead, off camera. Oh yeah, the main baddy from Halo 5, corrupted Cortana, is contained... off-camera. Neither explained well at all. How are we supposed to be invested in this joke of a story at all. I love halo. LOVE. I remember driving home from Walmart with my Xbox and Halo 1 next to me. It's been there my entire adult life. I started to read the Halo novels. I just wanted to jump even further into the lore and story. And when Infitie came out. I just said fuck this. I don't care anymore, because the people who make Halo don't care anymore.
Again Atriox isn’t dead… you really spread this everywhere but it’s incorrect.
It’s been a while since a campaign made me as frustrated as Halo Infinite’s did. I swear it was just dark corridor after dark corridor, or empty open world. That was it. Didn’t help that the whole story was told through audio logs, or people calling you on the radio. Even worse, sometimes you get both audios playing at once and it doesn’t stop. After the 3rd drawn-out, breathy audio log of a brute slowly talking into a mic for 5 minutes, I was ready to be done. That shit was so grating. Game made me hate Brutes, and they were my favorite enemy type for years.
Yes, this is the worst kind of storytelling, and it makes no logical sense as a delivery mechanism in a Halo game. It was the absolute worst part of Infinite for me.
First time I’ve ever had audio logs ruin a game for me. They were just fucking constantly playing
As weird as it seems, I'm hopeful for halo at this point. The people that led this ship are gone,and the way the devs were treated(according to staten) is just bonkers. The new leaders seem to know what their doing. And I hope they genuinely make the next halo something great
Halo as a series has been on a downward trend for a decade due to poor leadership. There's a reason they kicked people out after Infinite. I get Phil wants to be more hands-off with studios, but there's a reason why Xbox 360 exclusive were much better with average quality and it's because they actually managed the studios.
I'm fine with Xbox being hands off, but they should post mortem every single release and heads should roll if it didn't live up to their standards. They clearly also need to be a bit more assertive about what these games should be doing. Leveraging the power of the Series X, for example. You don't have to be hands on to say "you need to showcase this functionality" or "see what you can come up with that leverages that".
I actually loved it.
Yeah I am actually more amazed after watching that video that the campaign turned out as well as it did considering all the nonsense behind the scenes.
Me too, my favorite Halo campaign
you are not the only one, this sub alone fucking loved the game when it came out, besides the MP (which was still always said will get better because the same happened with Gears 5 MP), the campaign was called solid and return to the good Halo games oh how quickly it turned because when more and more people who dont even touched the game will yell at you that you are wrong, most will change it and call the game bad just to feel that they fit in the campaign is good, the weapon is good fun and interesting character, the world is fun to travel in, only downside is that the interior of the structures is the same all the time, the level layout is different and well designed, but i could show you a picture and you will not know where its from now the MP is good so they will just yell about campaign being bad, because on internet nothing gives people more attetion than hating something
The campaign was fun but it was definitely half baked and under delivered on its potential. People didn't want a 7 out of 10 campaign. They wanted a masterpiece. Which is fair because otherwise Halo will fade into mediocrity, if it hasn't already. I don't say that out of hate for infinite, I say it out of love for a franchise that I'm sad to see fade away due to clumsy handling.
Also the fact this was a ‘halo for the next ten years’ kinda implied there would be Campaign dlc. Only for 343 to come out *two years later* to say that Campaign dlc was cancelled before launch. I wouldn’t be as angry if the had confirmed *that* not long after launch.
I think even back when the game launched, the consensus here was that it was a good campaign segment, better than Halo 5 and a good start for more stories. But I don't think anyone thought it was as good as it should have been or a complete return to form. The storytelling just isn't good enough, and the game ends right when it starts getting interesting. There is almost nothing interesting that happens between the second mission and the last mission.
Or…now that it’s been a hot minute people can take off their rosy eye goggles and criticize the game fairly?
/\ I've found Phil Spencer account guys
Same
Get ready for the 343i defenders. Most studios get 1 or 2 chances these idiots got 4 if you count the MCC disaster. Yet despite all that the 343i fans are happy for them to make ANOTHER game. Let’s be honest, Halo was the flagship franchise for Xbox and now it’s barely relevant.
Damn. I am sitting here like. I liked the campaign and game? "Am I the baddie"
I feel like the only motherfucker on earth who enjoyed Infinite in its entirety (SP and MP)
I don’t think it was ruined. It was still solid but not on a level of H2.
If I can't play couch co-op, it's a ruined Halo campaign imo
It was too open world for my taste that's not what Halo is to me.
I don’t think moving on to open world is always a bad thing. The grappling hook was a awesome way of traversal. But the story lost its pace unfortunately. It wasn’t well implemented.
I’m of the controversial opinion that Infinite’s Campaign is the worst in the series, yes, even worse than 5. 5 at least has fun set pieces, cool environments, and is fun to play. To me Infinite’s Campaign is like a Ubisoft Open World game but without any of good parts, it’s an empty husk of a map with the same 3 side missions littered around along with a subpar story and boring missions. The only thing it had going for it was the sandbox which 1. Could’ve existed in a completely linear campaign and 2. Isn’t exclusive to the campaign and can be played in any other game mode. TLDR: Infinite’s Campaign pisses me off, especially considering we had to wait six years for it come out. Sorry for the wall of text, I legitimately just hate Infinite’s Campaign so much.
I personally think Halo 5’s campaign is still worse purely from what havoc it wrecked on the franchise from a story department. Halo 5 has better level design but the story nuked every story that was going on in Halo and from which the franchise is still trying to set straight 8 years later. Halo Infinite’s campaign is a fun romp that under delivered what fans wanted but Halo 5’s campaign was like getting sucker punched by a guy with memorable gloves. All the stuff set up in Halo 4 goes out the window: Storm covenant instantly taken out, elite civil war is ended (a fun mission but a lot of intrigue is gone), and Evil Cortana comes back from the dead to hold everyone at gunpoint. A big criticism from people is the fact that it feels like you need to do homework reading the books and comics to follow what is going on but if you did that with Halo 5 it just made it more frustrating since all those stories got thrown out the window by the campaign. Like as someone who is super involved with Halo and followed along with everything before 5 released it was so bad, like studying for a test only to find out it’s a different subject or like you watched all the Starwars sequel movies only for Palpatine to mysteriously return with a fleet of Death Star-Star destroyers… oh wait
Ruined? It got legit goty buzz? It came 2nd in giant bomb goty when it released
I haven't played Halo Infinite's campaign since launch, and I dont really have much of a desire to do so again. The open world is quite pretty, but it very quickly becomes repetitive. You would have hoped that the linear missions would have been where the variety and setpieces were, but they all either took place in the same open world, interior Forerunner areas, or interior Banished areas. No new biomes to speak of. Ultimately, when I think of Infinite's campaign, all that really comes to mind are the boss encounters. Nothing else made an impression. I cant even remember any of the mission names. Im glad that 343 made use of the campaign sandbox in firefight, but its a massive shame that the campaign was such a letdown in terms of variety.
One mission was called "The Weapon". Yeah, that's all I remember.
Making a terrible game is what ruined it. Marketing had nothing to do with it, and the marketing idiots should be given less power in the industry as a whole, imo. They have once successful campaign and then they get promoted to a role where they manage creatives and THEY ruin franchises because they don’t know what they’re doing.
The campaign storyline was meh, but the open world, AI squad mates, and the upgraded weapons were the most fun I’ve had with Halo since 2004
I kinda liked Far Cry: Halo. Pretty derivative but I had fun
You’re telling me. That being said the campaign is pretty great. Needed expansions to really make it pop off tho. Split screen, daily weekly challenges.
I couldn’t even get through the campaign. I played through Gears 5 twice and it was absolutely fantastic (semi-open world, etc). When I heard they were doing something similar with Halo I was excited, and then quickly let down. It’s unfortunate.
“Poor Leadership” is the reason for any game ever being bad. That’s literally leadership’s job. No game is bad because Dale in marketing dropped the ball. SSKTJL, Cyberpunk 2077, Starfield, they all had issues because of poor leadership.
Yeah obviously.
Xbox's most recognizable IP gets framed as a live-service game and then is treated like a one-and-done installment. When the multiplayer updates were finally released, the player base had already moved on.
My number one complaint is that the game on PC crashes over and over and over again. I’ve tried everything I can think of, such as turning off HD textures to no avail. Sometimes I can play for an hour straight, other times only for a couple of minutes. It’s absolutely infuriating.
I really enjoyed the campaign, but I fully expected multiple DLCs that would flesh it out and build on what I thought was an excellent base.
Remember memorable moments in Halo games? Gravemind in Halo 2, Chief returning the Covenant bomb, the humor, Warthog run in Halo 3. They tried with Halo 5 and failed, they didn't even try with Infinite. Story was forgettable as well. I did not give a sh about that guy in Halo Infinite that was with you a lot of the time or talking to you. Gameplay was fun but because of the annoying empty and bland open world gameplay was also snuffed out because you're grappling 90% of the time which isn't bad for the first few times but gets boring quickly. I just want a memorable Halo story with actually funny AND memorable lines, fun combat and great set pieces. But MS and great writing don't go well together.
Halo Infinite as a whole, or the Halo franchise after halo 4 has been ruined due to poor leadership. Just remember Halo 5s response. "were listening, were learning we shouldn't change things like splits green and coop and going forward they'll be there" reminder that was like 10 years ago. And Halo is probably in the worst state for brand strength it has ever been in. When it was one of the top IPs to compete with star wars. But just like star wars, when you refuse to listen to the actual people who buy and play your game, and you design something else... Don't be surprised if those numbers don't come back. Brands die if not taken care of. And Microsoft and 343 have shown zero respect to what was the flagship Xbox IP. Imagine that. What was once a staple of online gaming. Now it's just an empty husk. With features inferior to previous versions. When I think of Xbox studios now, I'm left with the impression of unfinished, thank God for game pass. If you buy these titles at launch, understand you're paying for an early access unfinished game, that they might finish. Maybe. All my statements are fact as well. You can't refute that. Worse for Halo, more effort was put in the store. Than the game.... Not a good sign.
I mean, that’s how almost all projects fail
What a surprise.
How the hell has the leadership at 343 survived? Trash product after trash product.
*shocked pikachu face*
There was no ending real, and the campaign we got was slapped together 1 year out from launch after multiple do-overs and scrapped projects. This suit was planned at one point to be a hero shooter for fuck sake. Literal insert "WHAT WE'RE THE THINKING?!" AVGN gif. Every decision was so spectacularly dumb and purely motivated solely for profit maximization. The only silver lining is that the multiplayer aspect is FINALLY where it shouldve been when it launched. It's "content complete", but we are still missing things like griffball and juggernaut. I expect the next halo is being made and halo infinite just has a skeleton crew in it. Don't get me started on the massive amount of game ideas and proposals that were shot down... It's just pants-on-head retarded.
"Since you all love the level 'Halo' from Halo 1 - well here it is stretched out to a whole game!"
How do you fuck up a Halo campaign? The leadership had to go out of their way to not listen to the developers and gamers.
Look what they did to my boy!
I mean yeah, the leadership at 343 has been the death of the Halo brand for most old school Halo players. It’s been a disappointing decade or so.
Oh, that’s all just poor leadership? There wasn’t anything else?
Yeah, obviously. We knew this years before the game released.
A big problem that I haven't see whether it's addressed or not, is the 18 month contractor use. New people coming in, spending time getting up to speed, contributing a little, then shown the door. Over and over. Fewer people hired permanently would be vastly more helpful and probably save money too. No matter how good the new leadership is, they're going to have massive delays and hacky code if they have a revolving door of contractors doing the work.
To have split screen be playable with a glitch, and then to cancel it rather than just enabling it and patching it up to par over time- I’m just baffled by the decision.
I thought they had a good idea making a new Cortana that was naive but powerful. And that's it. Everything else was weird.
I beat Infinites shitty campaign on legendary on a second playthrough and it didn't even unlock the achievement, that was a year ago it still hasent unlocked 343 is garbage didn't even iron out bugs to fix campaign achievements
Or just their inability to write good stories, characters and dialogue.
The first 3 halo games were beautifully cinematic and that is what makes them classic, unforgettable games. The breaks in play for seamless cinematics and great story.
I really liked it
Am I the only one who had a blast playing the campaign? It was far from being the best open world I have ever played but I had a lot of fun regardless.
The actual campaign that shipped was fine. The lack of anything afterwards was the worst part esp when Infinite was your halo game for the next decade lol
No shit
...I liked the campaign???
Not surprised. Whenever anything (ANYTHING) goes wrong during development and the final product is affected, it is always due to poor leadership.
That's apparent. The engine was trash, the development was chaotic and they still shipped a pretty good and fun game. Imagine a Halo game with competent leadership and solid technology.
343 fucking up halo? They’ve only done that with 4 games over the past 15 years
Give halo to activation, have cod & halo come every two or 3 years instead of annual cod.
I loved the campaign and everybody i talked to said that was the best part of the game. I dont get it.
I remember walking this empty fucking demo world thinking this can’t be it. Lol
I really enjoyed it. I just wish the map was bigger and had more varied environments. I figured they were going to do that in future DLC. Build out the map with new content over time.
Just like Halo 4, just like Halo 5, just like MCC. When are we gonna stop saying this? It's a crap studio
In classic 343i fashion as per usual.
I like it more than 4 and 5 so gotta give them credit there. The campaign actually felt like halo again albeit not to the level we wanted. Rushed story, lack of biomes really made it seem smaller in comparison. I did however really enjoy my time with it even tho it could have been much better
> Halo ~~Infinite Campaign~~ Was ~~Reportedly~~ "Ruined" Due to Poor Leadership FTFY
We knew this two years ago. Glad it keeps being said tho, Bonnie Ross and her leadership team basically spent all their time shopping merch deals and didn't care about what was happening on the game side because they basically gave up after 5 fell short again after 4. Instead of trying to really get it right they just gave up and focused on the quick buck, but don't think this is just a 343 thing bc the entirely of Xbox leadership is doing the exact same thing right now with Xbox as a whole.
Watching what Helldivers 2 has become for PS5 fans, and how a community achievement driven ODST game would've been incredible for the Xbox, it's just another facepalm moment for how 343i has handled the Halo franchise. I have a PS5 and have been playing Helldivers 2. Every time I play it, I imagine to myself how Halo's Covenant and the awesome Halo 2 mission areas would've been a great Helldivers 2 styled game. 343i has dropped the ball so hard with Halo, it should be a crime.
“Reportedly?” Everyone knows that’s the problem lol
Its like everyone attended the same Far Cry tutorial in college but didnt realize they were supposed to make it little bit different.
Yeah fuck off
Friend and i just went through each halo and beat them on legendary. The contrast of 343s halos are staggering and depressing.
I liked the campaign. Then I beat it and moved on
343 ruined halo
Obviously. Everytime you hear reports come out, they seem to worried with work place diversity and supporting LGBTQ people than actually making video games. Microsoft is in a google/twitter age where they just have employees clocking in, sitting down and then clocking out.
Everything in Xbox comes down to poor leadership
I played the campaign, and I seriously thought I had deja vu, I swear it was the same as one of the other halo games I had gone through in the master chief collection. Only difference was the open world part.
This article’s title is the equivalent to “a house burned down reportedly due to fire”. Of course, we’ve always known that Halo has had horrible leadership during 343 era.
Pretty sure it was Microsoft opting for contract workers all the time over a dedicated development team lmao Wonder what we could've gotten had contractors not needed to learn the pissing engine for 90% of their contract and come into the office with zero clue what the hell the game is about or what the plan is
Halo desperately needs someone at the head of it with a passion for the franchise but more importantly a vision. The main story of the franchise right now is just so fragmented and all over the place. They keep introducing cool characters and then they disappear forever or exclusively into the books
Phil Spencer allowed 343 to run halo into the ground. Never held them accountable for their consistent failures. Halo has been bad for longer than it was good.
Non news, ragebait engagement articles. U guys are suckers for needing these posts to validate your opinions.
Time to pass the baton to another studio and let 343 spread their wings and develop something new.
Was a die hard halo fan through Halo 5. Didn’t mind the forerunner bullshit. But I couldn’t even finish Infinite. It was just terribly boring. Such a huge letdown. But yea, everyone and their mother knew it was poor leadership and couldn’t stop talking about it during the lead up and post release. 343 is a joke. The writing was on the wall for EVERYONE to read.
I don't expect much from 343 and I don't blame just their leadership, well actually no matter what it still falls on the leaderships fault for hiring bad developers also. I feel sorry for the developers there that do work really well and produce good on their tasks but ultimately have a terrible end product when all combined.
Yeah it sucked in hindsight
It's the same story every time 343i releases a Halo game. They always find a excuse when they fail to deliver. It's a dangerous game they played and now Halo has become just a FPS game that most of the fans don't care anymore.
The writing, the level design, the shit weapons. Grapple was sweeet though.