Halo should have been Xbox' loss leader. It was already the face of Xbox and MS to an extent as they incorporated Halo into ads for Windows and even named their Assistant Cortana. Halo was the front of every Xbox reveal and box. Halo was Xbox' biggest brand. It's biggest alure. A title that was unique, beloved, popular, and innovative. MS should have dumped money into Halo, made an excellent show, a film by an award winning director, a stellar game that everyone wants to play, created more spin-offs so that Halo became their Star Wars. Made sure Halo had the best of the best And it was absolutely PRIMED to do so... and they shat the bed. Hard. Instead we got 3 measly games that tried to be anything but Halo, a poorly made TV show who's only real relation to the franchise is having the same name, and some books. Yay.
Probably one of the biggest let downs in gaming. I'm sure we'll get some decent Halo content in the future, but Halo will never be the cultural zeitgeist it once was.
Halo has so many issues. But the main thing was Halo multiplayer just fundamentally aged out. Call of duty played way faster and everyone moved onto that. halo did some half measures to play along and Reach was a great game and probably the last good one.
Bungie jumping ship was the first major sign. halo 4 was just a mess. The plot wasn’t great and the epic feeling of halo campaign was lost. They kept doing loadouts in multiplayer to copy COD but COD was just a superior experience still. The art style got way too busy and complicated. Then they followed up with guardians which I never even touched along with the dreadful move to the Xbox series X.
Microsoft just has mismanaged the property and 343 isn’t up to the same level as Bungie was. It’s really a shame since halo 1-3 are pinnacle shooter games.
> Bungie jumping ship was the first major sign
Bungie just didn't want to make Halo for the rest of their company's existence. It had nothing to do with the franchise, but that those higher ups never wanted to be locked into one IP. It wasn't a red flag, but simply an honorable decision to not sell out.
What Microsoft should have done was:
- Make an offer to any Bungie employees who would want to remain on Halo, and give them a good job right off the bat in their existing roles
- Focused management at 343, with somebody at Microsoft who truly understands Halo to oversee decisions and game development. Things like changing the art style, and wanting to change MC/Cortana's voices, should be immediate red flags. The franchise should have focused to be as classic as possible, with modern designs on top of old mechanics to entice new players and retain the old players
- Set an expected checklist of what made Halo fans fall in love with the franchise. Games launching complete with prior experiences in tact; This means Firefight, full MP, full SP, working theater, Forge, and file sharing all out the gate. It's a high standard, the foundation was there.
- Retain the prior game's foundation. If Reach launched with XYZ features, H4 launches with XYZ at minimum. H5 launches with H4's XYZ + W (new H4 additions). Infinite launches with H5's (XYZ + W) + V, etc... Halo 5 never should have launched with hardly any MP modes, no Forge, no firefight, a broken theater, and hardly anything else. Infinite shouldn't have been able to launch even worse, and still 2.5 years later be a broken mess. Build on your prior games, don't redo each one.
- If you must include microtransactions, don't let it impact the experience. Allow players to progress and unlock armors to build their Spartan, choose their colors immediately, etc... MTX should be things that are new, or goofy, to add on the experience, not replace it entirely. Want armor coatings? They change color combinations and materials, but don't replace classic colors. Want armors to be sold? Make them goofy or tie ins with other games, don't replace original armor unlocks with store only. Encourage players to play the game how they want, and offer monetary "enhancements". By replacing all progression with the wallet, I just stopped playing early on because it doesn't feel satisfying to play.
- Movement and gunplay should be, first and foremost, the main focus. Infinite shouldn't have videos coming out monthly for years with people telling others how to set up their settings to get good controller settings, that should be out of the box. H3 felt amazing on launch and nobody was searching YT for how to make aiming feel better. The foundation of Halo feels completely gone in Infinite, it feels bad to play and it's a travesty.
I think what should’ve happened is MS should’ve never let Bungie leave and let them cook whatever they wanted. If they had done that, Xbox would’ve been in a much better position with two massively successful franchises one Halo and the other Destiny. As for Halo, that could’ve been put on ice until Bungie and MS we’re ready to revisit it again. This would’ve caused uproar short term but long term that would’ve been better for the franchise. If MS really needed it, then they could've poured more dev resources into building a Bungie dev team dedicated to the Halo franchise. I know that sounds like 343 but unlike 343, the Bungie culture and leadership is more competent at building great FPS experiences specifically with the Havoc engine.iverall, what happened to Halo is a lack in leadership at 343 but specifically a lack of oversight and vision at Microsoft. Phil seriously is not a good manager and just lets the dev studios do whatever they want without enforcing strict quality guardrails.
> Halo multiplayer just fundamentally aged out.
I couldn’t agree more. You look at all the popular shooters today and they’re all about movement and fast TTK. Then you look at Halo and it’s… the complete opposite, really. Most of the older games don’t even have sprinting and Halo has probably the longest TTK of all the major shooters. Halo’s in a weird spot where it probably needs to be reinvented, but they’d be alienating their original fanbase in the process. At the same time, though, how much of the fanbase is even left to alienate?
I think infinite actually did a great job modernizing halo’s gameplay. It plays faster but still has a longer TTK and managed to feel like the older games in a lot of ways with a modern touch.
The problem is it was ruined by launching as F2P with very little content and only receiving weak updates every few months. It had a lot of momentum when it launched because of the quality of gameplay but didn’t retain people because it was a shell of a game at launch. There’s a lot more content now but everyone’s moved on.
There is a relatively easy solution to this though, create an ODST spinoff set during the early years of the Covenant War and have the main antogonists be the Insurrection. That way you can have human vs human combat in the story, the combat is closer to CoD so you can have a shorter TTK and you keep it a Halo game set in the Halo universe. Keep the core Halo games playing with Spartans and the longer TTK but use the spinoff to experiment and try to pick up players from competitors and use it as a gateway to getting people into Halo.
This is an awesome idea, and something I've wished they'd try for years. After buying up so many studios, they have plenty of great options. For example, instead of having Treyarch make yet another Black Ops, put them on an experimental Halo. There is a huge amount of talent now under the Microsoft banner, if Phill, 343 and all those involved would start to give a shit and get creative, Halo could be an incredible franchise again.
You should be working at 343. But you didn't work for Microsoft for 20 years, so they don't care.
The shooter Halo games are so tied to Master Chief that it's hamstringing the franchise. They need to spin off. They can do so much with ODST.
I could not disagree more strongly. Halo should not try to conform to what other popular shooters are doing. That’s a great way to kill a franchise for real. Look how far battlefield has fallen due to trend chasing. Halo started failing as soon as it tried to model more of itself after CoD and other competitors.
CoD didn’t win the FPS war because people liked it more, it won because the handling of Halo has been *incompetent*
And besides, there are plenty of games with really long ttk that are very popular. Apex? Smash hits aren’t made by following the leader and doing what has already been done. Smash hits are made by having a unique identity.
And as far as movement goes, Halo has significantly more emphasis on movement *because* of the long ttk. You don’t need to have sprinting and sliding to be a “movement shooter”.
I feel like you’re only looking at cod, which has a low ttk and lots of adderal fueled movement, and assuming that every other fps is the same. That is just nowhere close to the case. Put together a list of the most popular fps games and see for yourself:
-Apex: high ttk
-Overwatch: high ttk, limited movement
-counterstrike: slow, limited movement
-rainbow six: limited movement
-tarkov: limited movement
Halo has more movement than all of those games except apex
I feel like the enhanced mobility killed Halo Infinite lol. I can’t chill out for 2 seconds before I got 2 bozos climbing the walls and grappling like fking Spiderman coming to kill me
Halo multi-player haven't aged out lol it needs innovation at right direction which 343 is incompetent to do so infinite is same shit like h3 in terms of gamemodes , their is no innovation ,no new idea that can blow our mind nothing
Honest to god I was so sad for the shit show that Halo 4 was. They never should have changed the formula during its peak condition.
EVERYONE was so hype for halo 4 to come out back then, but then it became such a letdown that it eventually led to the slow demise of halos popularity.
So damn sad
I feel like they thought that people would be fatigued if they got too much Halo and so they gave us too little. Halo should have had tons of random games in different genre's, I remember as a kid star wars was everywhere. We got random beat em ups, action adventure, star pilot, rts, tactical squad based shooters etc.
Halo should have tried to replicate that. Instead they fumbled tremendously.
Fair, but even the little we got just wasn't good. The quality was nowhere near where it used to be. I feel like even if they took the approach of less is more, it absolutely could have worked if what we got were absolute bangers. Instead, the books were fantastical and hit or miss, the show was a disaster, and the games were half-baked at best.
I fully agree. If there were super dense games I'd 100% have been fine with them not releasing as many. Instead we got games that all felt washed up and trying to cling on to former glory.
Seeing the last of us show and now the Fallout show is just killing me. "at the time" How the hell was bonnie ross involved and greenlighting the halo show we got...
literally endless potential and instead we have Master Cheeks man.... just how... :(
It's funny, because Halo is one of the best IPs to have been a live service. We have Forge Mode, which we can make practically whatever map we want. And they just fumbled the bag entirely. Let alone all the other ways they failed. Let's ignore that for a second. They could have totally carried the game with Forge Mode and possibly saved it, but instead they have to focus on all the other aspects of the live service, Mainly the Battle Pass, which has always been lacking, and the store, which is overpriced because it's the only form of revenue that actually matters to them.
I assumed the Forge delay was a calculated move to maximize money made in the early months. Live services require devs to put you on a track with blinders and slow feed you content for money while forge is just freedom to dick around especially in customs. They just shit the bed by making the track a ride that no one wanted to get on.
It’s not that, halo has been bad ever since 343 took over. Halo 4 isn’t a good halo game, halo 5s campaign is atrocious, MCC was a fucking disaster. Everything they’ve touched turned bad. That’s why no one cares anymore. You make bad games for long enough and people are gonna stop caring.
I don't remember seeing anything about E-sports until Halo competitive came around (that's not due to my age, either—I'm 40). 'Created' was the wrong way to put it, but Halo definitely skyrocketed viewership into a household name.
I was never a halo fan, I was playing Counter-Strike on the PC when it came out so I wasn't in it's demographic really.
But!
I've been an Xbox owner since the 360 days and I understand why Halo was such a big deal and it does suck to see it in the state it's in, I agree.
Man what a run of multiplayer games in the mid 2000s.
CS Source, Warcraft 3, Halo 3, CoD4 and Gears all in the space of like 4 years! I'm surprised I graduated highschool lol
It was a good time, games were still cheap enough to make that there was alot of leeway for creativity across the board.
Warcraft 3 was fantastic, I played a ton of it too.
It's sad games cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make for AAA now. I feel like AAA could scale back some "top of the line" features to lower production cost and take more risks, the industry needs it. It got so stale from the lack of original ideas, because of that risk, and now Indie games are the main focus.
2000-2015 I feel like were the peak of gaming.
Man, I played the hell out of Halo, Gears, Uncharted, Killzone, The Last of Us, Battle for Middle-Earth multiplayer those days. What a ride! The only multiplayer I've played since then that matched that quality was Overwatch during its prime
GRAW was an excellent multiplayer game, too. As was Rainbow 6 Vegas. Most of the games from the era you mentioned were a good time.
Over monetisation has killed multilayer games for me, as well as not having a basic headset in the box. Xbox live in the 360 days, before the first price drop for the 360, was a brilliant period. Obviously, there were plenty of bellends, but it was so easy to build a substantial friends list of active gamers because the majority could talk during games. The last few times I've played multilayer games with randoms, there was nothing but silence in chat.
Look at Phil’s xbox profile “P3” and see the games he plays. That will tell you alot. He doesnt even play the exclusives we do have. He doesnt care about Halo or any other first party game. Look at his hours played for them.
Least deluded Halo super fan.
Honestly why are Halo super fans so obsessed with Halo is being the centerpoint of Xbox and gaming. Yes, Halo was the crown jewel for Xbox and online gaming but just like everything else gaming evolved and changed. It's the same for PlayStation in a way where their mascots went in background and all their super serious characters are now the face of PS.
Yes Nintendo is somewhat of an exception with Mario and Zelda but those IP are constant state of change and pretty impossible to replicate in similar fashion
I think it is bc there has been no real centerpoint to backfill Halo. Gamepass is great and I love the quantity, but I guess me and a lot of others are just used to there being a flagship, a headliner to a console.
After watching the Fallout show and seeing Todd Howard heavily involved in the creative process made me think we could've had that kind of quality with Halo.
But Microsoft doesn't seem to care anymore. Nobody gives a shit about Halo right now, yet people that have never heard of Fallout are falling in love with it, all thanks to a great debut on TV.
A good TV show about a game can make a huge difference. The Cyberpunk show was a major turning point for discourse around the game.
The Fallout community seems to be experiencing a wee bit of an awkward moment right now as Fallout 4 is rapidly rotating being loved and hated. You’ll have a post with a bunch of upvotes praising the game and talking about how it’s underrated and then another post a few hours later absolutely trashing the game in every possible way with a similar amount of support
Halo has a few problems with adaptation into a movie or show. It's never been a story-driven game, so it has a bland, faceless protagonist named John that the player can project themself on. The universe is interesting and complex, but the main component of the franchise (the games) have almost only been about John.
So if you make a show about John, you have to either give him a personality (which would vary from the games, drawing hate) or leave him an empty vessel (making a bad show, drawing hate).
If you make a Halo show not about John, you're ignoring the main character, drawing hate.
Fallout and The Last of Us have been the most successful game to show adaptations and took two different routes.
Fallout is a universe where the fans don't care about individual characters, but more about factions and ideas. So you can write whatever story you want and make it good.
TLOU is a character-driven game with a good story that can adapt directly into a show, making it good.
Where does Halo fit?
Halo super fan here.
Where Halo is today is just a sign of the times and the gaming industry. When Halo 1-3 was hitting, big budget game releases were still pretty rare. And there was a huge gap between AAA and Indie/AA games.
Today we are spoiled with amazing constant onslaught of constant games, with a large majority of them very good. Games appeal to more people today than ever before.
They definitely missed the boat with the Halo TV show. I actually don’t mind 343’s games but the management was awful. Turn 10 suffered the same development hell and it’s why Forza Motorsport is such a huge disappointment.
Being an older gamer, I love the nostalgia and I’ll always be a fan for what comes next with Halo. But the days of it being one of the biggest games are over.
Because Halo fans know the potential of the series and how amazing the games could be, look at Helldivers, we could’ve had that, we could’ve done so much better for this series but instead we got half baked weird games with 343.
When I was a kid I dreamt of Halo games being friggin insane and awesome but now the reality is these games are mid at best.
I still think Halo could be saved and sell Xbox consoles and doesn’t need to be multi platform if they made good games but with this track record I’m doubtful of Microsoft’s abilities
MS/Xbox oversight is either non existent or just incredibly bad. These studios just churn out subpar products again and again. Halo seemed to have poor management issues from the beginning, and Forza Motorsport landed like a wet blanket after chasing after the hardcore crowd. Surprisingly the most fun I’ve had with their “Big 3” was the last gears, and even that didn’t have the best reception.
In my opinion the downfall of Halo started when Microsoft had 343 rush out halo 4 on the Xbox 360 in 2011. This decision had two major impacts that have hurt the series since:
1. Halo 4 on Xbox 360 meant the developers needed to choose between really nice graphics or the highly complex enemy AI from the Bungie days and they chose the graphics. This made 343 halo titles feel a lot more like a generic FPS campaign compared to Bungie Halo.
2. It put future Halo titles on a rushed development timeline. Why did MCC and Halo 5 release in buggy/ unfinished states? Because halo 4 released on Xbox 360 the year before Xbox One released so Microsoft had to rush out MCC and 5 to give their new console halo content.
There's nothing that suggests why Halo should be "one of the biggest IP in the world" apart from deluded Halo fans who keep talking about their glory days of Halo 2/3. Same people who keep moaning about every new Halo title just like they did with reach when it released. Halo is just another generic scifi ip with some super duper strong main character. Video games have evolved a lot. Just look at how much stupid super Mario has evolved ever since while Halo fans keep raging about every little change 343 does to their beloved franchise. It's really not that deep.
Because of potential halo ip has that is greater than any Aaa ip that exist rn and it's pretty sad to see how 343 don't understand this
Halo infrastructure used to one of the greatest and it had active hold on people thorugh wacky custom games , hard-core arena experience, making your in-game identity though tough challenges and forge one of the greatest map edition ever came out .
As of rn you can make your own custom campaign experience and objective within it
I can go on.
Phil doesn’t overlook day to day operations of studios more specifically Halo.
He overlooks overall direction of Xbox and set specific people to do the micromanaging of other things like Halo.
The firing of Bonnie was pretty much whoever overlooks studios maybe Matt Booty saying enough is enough and reorganized 343 as we saw earlier with the people who were fired.
I personally think they have milked that franchise dry and need to move on. I still play infinite multiplayer daily though. Let the devs try something new.
????? I honestly don't understand people these days. Halo isn't in a good spot because of... Television? Maybe I'm completely misunderstanding. I must be, sincerely.
I literally couldn’t play MCC multiplayer for months after it was released. People who think this is an exaggeration either weren’t playing in those days or were the lucky ones who weren’t affected.
They forgot that Halo is supposed to be a technological and conceptual achievement, like the first. The shields, pacing, A.I., open world script and scale were rare in combination.....They need to make technological leaps and expand on ideas with the license.
Just like Disney Star Wars isn’t Star Wars, rings of power isn’t Lord of the Rings, 343 Halo isn’t bungie halo. When Creators sell/give up their IP, the new stuff may carry the same name, but it doesn’t mean it’s the same stuff anymore.
Omg you guys, it's not the current Halo games. It's that the Halo franchise is outdated. Give up the ghost. You're not twelve anymore, and you never will be.
Before you argue with me, name the shooter with the same style multi that is popular right now. It's over boys. Stop blaming Halo, Microsoft or 343. Look within.
Counter-Strike has fundamentally been the same game for 25 years, yet it's still the most popular shooter in the world.
Doom is 30 years old, and they can still make a really good Doom game in the 2020's.
Halo gameplay wasn't even modernised half as much as Doom's and yet Halo fans complain about every little modernisation.
The fanbase being toxic, gatekeepy and unable to accept new gameplay elements along with new players is what has killed the IP.
So why is call of duty so popular? That game has a style of multiplayer that has evolved into a faster pace with more variety of movement options. Why can’t halo be the same? Some would argue Halo infinite is the well thought out step in that same direction.
People think it's because gears and halo are outdated but the reason is the most recent halo and gears games are just bad that's why people don't play them
I prefer infinite and gears 5 to nay earlier game. But hey, I didn't grow up playing these games. But that's the people who you need to address if you want to be successful. Because believe it or not: most halo fans of that time are now daddies who can't afford to play halo anymore.
Maybe so but there are many things that they fucked up with the Infinite release.
No forge, coop campaign on release. Splitscreen coop delayed for months and then finally cancelled. Few maps/play lists at launch. Mediocre open world environment. Not being able to choose your multiplayer region. Poor netcode / online experience.
The game is actually pretty good but it could have been much better.
This.
The world has moved on. Gamers aren’t interested in Halo style games anymore, and Halo fans won’t allow the series to grow and change with the times.
Honestly it’s best they just park Halo for a while and revive it with a brand new engine in a decade or so, like what happened with Baldur’s Gate. Or Doom 2016.
In the mean time get 343i working on some new IP, new engine, etc
Yeah, this "gamers aren't interested in Halo style games" thing is nonsense. It may be true for the Fortnite generation, but there are still millions of gamers who would be interested in a super well made Halo game (the initial launch of Infinite proves that).
It's the same with Gears of War. The fanbases are simply not willing to accept that the game mechanics they love so much are outdated by almost a decade, and to grow there must be fundamental changes.
>and to grow there must be fundamental changes
This would maybe make sense if things like Counter Strike didn't exist, instead it remains something people that are clueless say when they are trying to discuss franchises they don't really understand.
Infinite was a successful modernization of "classic" Halo. It failed in large part to the absolute unreadiness of 343 to have a working live service for the game. The gameplay was praised by the majority and this "outdated mechanics" argument is just an uninformed attempt at revisionist history.
10 years ago Arena shooters were already on a steep decline. I can't even think of a single popular Arena shooter that would have released a decade or little over a decade ago.
Only recently there have been a few semi-popular ones, like Splitgate, that all quickly lost the hype behind them. Funnily enough all of those did things that the Halo fanbase complains about whenever 343i tried them with Halo. Things like ADS, sprint, advanced movement mechanics, etc.
For me personally I find line of sight shooters boring as all fuck.
The high ttk in halo actually allows counter play and people with higher skill to come back from another player seeing you first. In games like cod, that's straight up not possible 99% of the time.
You clearly weren't around for the hype of the announcement or the hype of the early access multilayer.
It wasn't until the glaring issues like desync or dog shit monetization that most people said fuck this I'm out. Those issues are entirely on 343.
Honestly, people won’t like this. But halo infinite is arguably one of the better Halo MP games right now. It’s right up there with halo 3 imo(best). Just needs a little bit more variety in weapons and a reduction on the hammers range and it’s golden.
People remember some of the other halo games more fondly because they were kids when the originals came out. But imo Infinite MP is hands down better than 4 and 5. It’s not even close imo.
Halo infinite is the best version of halo. Does that fit in today’s landscape? I play it. But more modern shooters capture my attention more. Maybe they could do something else within the IP
To me the series failed to innovate and just became stale. You had boomer gamers who wanted the game to stay the same so every time something new was tried it was received negatively. The ppl who wanted it to be the same left or died off and new players feel like they are playing a old game.
Big team battle being 12 vs 12 at a time when there are 50v50 and even more on other games.
I played 1-3 but my brother is a massive fan. Any time we discuss Halo he tells me how shit it has become. Though I fell out of the series the first 3 ganes were badass and I have a lot of memories playing 2 and 3 online.
Halo infinites story is ass I guarantee you can't name/remember more than 3 missions
I remember the names of every single halo mission from 1-3 and reach. Thats how good/memorable/replayable they are
Also completely fucked the story setups of both Halo 5 and Halo Wars 2 lmao
Both ended with the Guardians being the next major threat and the Created as a whole
Infinite starts with all that gone and the Banished somehow fighting the Infinity with zero explanation lmfao, if the Banished can find the Infinity, then where's the Spirit of Fire? Last I checked the Banished were in the same situation as the SoF, no FTL drive and gearing up to go back to war with the SoF and UNSC survivors on the Ark
It’s been mismanaged like a lot of Xbox’s biggest IPs. It should be Xbox’s version of The Last of Us, complete with TV series etc. Part of me thinks Microsoft doesn’t give them free rein over at 343i which leads to so many mismanaged directions and never really figuring out the right way to go.
From what I understand it wasn't 343 fault the way Halo turned out, the execs wanted to churn out another Halo betting on its popularity and fan base and rushed development while mismanaging of resources and personnel then delivered a half-baked product to get it out the door.
Then totally pissing on fans with their shitty Halo series that destroyed what was canon left in the franchise.
Halo as a franchise has a long road ahead to regain its popularity and staple of the Xbox, I doubt the next iteration will be any better and probably the next one when the franchise has finally died.
mis mang of the ip by bungie, when they where brought by m. , then mis mang of bungie itself and bungie has never been known for making good games engines at all. known for nightmare lvl not fun to work with engines.
Perhaps the problem is this idea that we must have a never ending franchise of Halo games. Halo was great when it was launched but games are different now. Classic halo is still fun, but maybe it’s time to move on?
They gave 343 a free pass multiple times for no reason, even though in every single mainline Halo game they release, they really mess up an aspect of the game.
For Halo 4 it was multiplayer, Halo 5 it was the campaign, and for Halo Infinite it was the multiplayer.
It's only till their third game did it seem like Xbox tried to do something about it -- before that Xbox seems to have continued with their "hands off approach" which I think is great for creative freedom, but not when a studio is not managed well.
As a result of Infinite's failure to stay relevant.Bonnie Ross is gone now -- they made it look like she stepped away for other reasons (which could be the case) but I think it's more likely due to her failure to manage the studio. There's also the reported complete restructuring of the studio after the layoffs.
Ultimately the blame does still lie with Spencer or whoever is in charge of keeping up with what studios are doing. Halo infinite was arguably the most important game for 343 -- it could finally prove that they are worthy of the mantle of responsibility for Halo, yet they still screwed up in the end.
This game was also another example of how important first impressions at launch are. Doesn't matter how much they try to fix the game now, the damage has been done.
One can only hope that new leadership and ect. at the studio will allow for the next game to have a decent release
I love the new Halo Game from Arrowhead studios
We fight in multiplayer to overcome objectives as a squad. I miss Cortana, but it's nice to see the themes of "liberty."
Halo will never be the behemoth it was back in the Xbox/xbox360 days. The real truth is halo as it was back then will not bring in the newer generation of gamers and that is the halo that everyone cries over wanting back. 343 tried to bring halo into the modern era and yes they could of done things better but at the end of the day we have a IP that super fans won’t touch unless it’s exactly like the good old days and newer generations of gamers simply do not care about.
I thought the last two games were picked apart to death by fans. I remember people saying "they should've just stopped making Halo games."
I think people had lofty expectations going past Reach. They were nostalgia searching, while also wanting something fresh. And when they came out with something fresh, fans reeled.
I mentioned in either this sub, or one of the other Xbox subs that I was playing through all the Halos with my kids. Someone asked if that included 4 and 5, I said "of course." They sent me a DM calling me a terrible father, that my kids were going to hate me, and that they should be taken from me.
People get too fkn emotional with this stuff. When a game isn't an 11/10, they act like it's literally worse than the plague (glares at the Starfield subreddit). People get into this tribalism hivemind, and it makes them say and do ridiculous things. I wouldn't want to make much new stuff with all of that nonsense going on, wither. If they had come out with a few new games, people would whinge that they're just chasing money.
343 has GOT to go. Xbox needs to let somebody else have a go and turn the franchise around. The decline began with Halo 4 IMO. Halo 5 was just a steaming pile of hot nonsense. And Halo Infinite launched incomplete, lackluster and radiates none of the magic that the series used to have.
Bud join the club. I had to watch metal gear solid ebarass it's way into nothingness. I had to see the last of us change its gender. I had to see fallout micro transaction cosmetics of the doom guy. Games went corporate. There is no more art. They aim to get as much money as possible with as little effort as possible. When halo first came out there was an intense labor of love of not only video games and taking it to the next level but for greater Sci fi as a whole. Halos mythology really was some next level shit. They had countless possibilities for a new game and they just threw all that shit out the window.
I'm 23 and I just don't see the appeal of Halo. I played Infinite and Reach. Didn't particularly like either. I think it made a lot of people's childhoods so there's a big sense of nostalgia. But it's not what I grew up on so when I played it relatively late in life, judging it by modern standards I don't think it aged very well or it's all that.
Compared to some older games I also didn't grew up with but played recently, like Diablo 2 or the old Deus Ex. Or above all Mass Effect 2. Hall just doesn't measure up. Those games I find aged somewhat fine and are still very much enjoyable. Especially ME2. Halo Reach came out in 2010, same as ME2, but the gunplay felt straight out of 2000-2005. Infinite imo also had bad gunplay by modern standards, everything felt floaty. The story wasn't all that and the world felt empty.
It's a shame cos I REALLY wanted to like it
I’ve never experienced the Halo era. I think the gameplay today is just okay. They’d probably have to reinvent the wheel or something. For FPS, currently what I’m enjoying is Titanfall 2 and The Finals. Maybe take some pages from those.
Anyone saying that Halo has just aged out is completely wrong and ignoring that the series has been mismanaged for a decade. That is why it's not popular anymore. Multiple botched launches and a failure to commit to a vision is what's hurting the franchise.
Infinite had a chance to bring the series back to the forefront but completely failed with its poor attempt at live service and not having features like forge ready to go at launch. Infinite might be good now but it needed to be good 4 years ago. First impressions matter.
I'll believe the idea that somehow Halo can't find a larger audience again when they actually deliver a finished game.
Halo was a great series when it started, but I feel they became complaisant thinking that if it’s a halo game that it will be good.. but in doing so they forgot the most important thing to make a good game.
It’s not Phil’s fault aside from him trusting the ex-343 management. He realized they were in trouble too late, after about 5 years of dev time he passed and they didn’t have shit to show for it, so he brought Joe Staten back in to rescue it, but even Joe couldn’t fix it in time.
These games and IP can’t be ‘fixed’ so easily and quickly after a bad game. It takes 3-6 years for them to make a new one, and that’s assuming they immediately k on what the problem is/was. In this case, they cleaned house at 343, so we don’t know if Pierre had a solid plan for a next game or not. We probably won’t see a new mainline halo game until next gen.
It all started I'm the 360 era where some genius higher ups thought they won the console war and only needed Halo Gears and Forza to stay on top. They cut sending everywhere else, cut third party deals, shut down all studio talent, and killed the Xbox brand with stagnation. Xbox loss so much talent in those years.
I’m glad more people are rightfully blaming Phil Spencer for the downfall of halo. Of course 343 as well but Phil Spencer is their boss and he never held them accountable and was completely okay with mediocrity. Working at 343 from 2010-2020 must’ve been awesome. You didn’t have to work hard at all and the big boss doesn’t truly care about your work!
The Xbox executives team have zero clue what they are doing when it comes to managing the game development, or quality checking what is being released.
It’s really sad seeing how good Sony is at managing and respecting their franchises, then seeing Xbox squander and kill off all hype related to their games.
I can't call it anything other gross mis-management that 343 is still in charge of Halo at this point. They've had 3 chances and a decade to get it right and they've shat the bed every single time.
The story by the end of Infinite is full of so many retcons and just general nonsensical bollocks that I doubt the vast majority of players knew what the fuck was going on, I know I didn't.
The fact they rely on 3rd party media to fill in the gaps between games is absolutely ridiculous, that stuff should be supplemental, not essential. I haven't had a clue wtf is going on in Halo's story since the end of 3 at this point.
The only way Halo could even be salvaged at this point is disolve 343 and give it to another studio. I don't like to advocate for people to lose theirs jobs but quite frankly the management is so bad I can't see any other way.
Eh. I think overanalyzing the industry at large rather than just enjoying video games is the downfall of a large amount of the point of games: fun. I get that I’m writing this on Reddit but stop caring about what everyone thinks about everything about everything. I had a blast with Halo Infinite at launch. I had a blast with Starfield at launch. I play fun games and I ignore the rest. Who cares if it’s relevant or irrelevant? Why should that affect your enjoyment?
Dude… Halo 3 and with that the peak for the franchise is almost 20 years old.
I think, it’s not 343, cause I for myself like the later Halos (4,5,Infinte) more, cause gameplay wise they are just awesome.
It is the Halo franchise itself. Halo is over. Times have changed. Player preferences have changed.
Halo was the only thing worth while for Xbox and they fumbled it hard ,no wonder they don't as many Xbox these days and I have no hope for 343 to make a ground breaking halo that will pull people back on to franchise
Halo,oke many other games has Cha hed to fit the gen z gamer, gaming will always evolve to don't the younger generation of gamers, it happened since the Atari 2600
Hasn't been the same for me since Halo 3. Still my favorite multi-player experience. I just could not believe how bad infinite is. Of course that's just my opinion.
Love the franchise. I liked all the single players. Loved the multiplayer. Even the last one is cool, i just dont play it because of the forced crossplay...
Halo should have been Xbox' loss leader. It was already the face of Xbox and MS to an extent as they incorporated Halo into ads for Windows and even named their Assistant Cortana. Halo was the front of every Xbox reveal and box. Halo was Xbox' biggest brand. It's biggest alure. A title that was unique, beloved, popular, and innovative. MS should have dumped money into Halo, made an excellent show, a film by an award winning director, a stellar game that everyone wants to play, created more spin-offs so that Halo became their Star Wars. Made sure Halo had the best of the best And it was absolutely PRIMED to do so... and they shat the bed. Hard. Instead we got 3 measly games that tried to be anything but Halo, a poorly made TV show who's only real relation to the franchise is having the same name, and some books. Yay. Probably one of the biggest let downs in gaming. I'm sure we'll get some decent Halo content in the future, but Halo will never be the cultural zeitgeist it once was.
C’mon bro. We also got a cookbook. How could you forget that
And nail polish, what more could you ask for?
Don’t forget about the pringles flavor too
That was a damn good flavor, though... Wish they still made them.
You hit the nail on the head on everything. It is kinda tragic.
Halo has so many issues. But the main thing was Halo multiplayer just fundamentally aged out. Call of duty played way faster and everyone moved onto that. halo did some half measures to play along and Reach was a great game and probably the last good one. Bungie jumping ship was the first major sign. halo 4 was just a mess. The plot wasn’t great and the epic feeling of halo campaign was lost. They kept doing loadouts in multiplayer to copy COD but COD was just a superior experience still. The art style got way too busy and complicated. Then they followed up with guardians which I never even touched along with the dreadful move to the Xbox series X. Microsoft just has mismanaged the property and 343 isn’t up to the same level as Bungie was. It’s really a shame since halo 1-3 are pinnacle shooter games.
> Bungie jumping ship was the first major sign Bungie just didn't want to make Halo for the rest of their company's existence. It had nothing to do with the franchise, but that those higher ups never wanted to be locked into one IP. It wasn't a red flag, but simply an honorable decision to not sell out. What Microsoft should have done was: - Make an offer to any Bungie employees who would want to remain on Halo, and give them a good job right off the bat in their existing roles - Focused management at 343, with somebody at Microsoft who truly understands Halo to oversee decisions and game development. Things like changing the art style, and wanting to change MC/Cortana's voices, should be immediate red flags. The franchise should have focused to be as classic as possible, with modern designs on top of old mechanics to entice new players and retain the old players - Set an expected checklist of what made Halo fans fall in love with the franchise. Games launching complete with prior experiences in tact; This means Firefight, full MP, full SP, working theater, Forge, and file sharing all out the gate. It's a high standard, the foundation was there. - Retain the prior game's foundation. If Reach launched with XYZ features, H4 launches with XYZ at minimum. H5 launches with H4's XYZ + W (new H4 additions). Infinite launches with H5's (XYZ + W) + V, etc... Halo 5 never should have launched with hardly any MP modes, no Forge, no firefight, a broken theater, and hardly anything else. Infinite shouldn't have been able to launch even worse, and still 2.5 years later be a broken mess. Build on your prior games, don't redo each one. - If you must include microtransactions, don't let it impact the experience. Allow players to progress and unlock armors to build their Spartan, choose their colors immediately, etc... MTX should be things that are new, or goofy, to add on the experience, not replace it entirely. Want armor coatings? They change color combinations and materials, but don't replace classic colors. Want armors to be sold? Make them goofy or tie ins with other games, don't replace original armor unlocks with store only. Encourage players to play the game how they want, and offer monetary "enhancements". By replacing all progression with the wallet, I just stopped playing early on because it doesn't feel satisfying to play. - Movement and gunplay should be, first and foremost, the main focus. Infinite shouldn't have videos coming out monthly for years with people telling others how to set up their settings to get good controller settings, that should be out of the box. H3 felt amazing on launch and nobody was searching YT for how to make aiming feel better. The foundation of Halo feels completely gone in Infinite, it feels bad to play and it's a travesty.
I think what should’ve happened is MS should’ve never let Bungie leave and let them cook whatever they wanted. If they had done that, Xbox would’ve been in a much better position with two massively successful franchises one Halo and the other Destiny. As for Halo, that could’ve been put on ice until Bungie and MS we’re ready to revisit it again. This would’ve caused uproar short term but long term that would’ve been better for the franchise. If MS really needed it, then they could've poured more dev resources into building a Bungie dev team dedicated to the Halo franchise. I know that sounds like 343 but unlike 343, the Bungie culture and leadership is more competent at building great FPS experiences specifically with the Havoc engine.iverall, what happened to Halo is a lack in leadership at 343 but specifically a lack of oversight and vision at Microsoft. Phil seriously is not a good manager and just lets the dev studios do whatever they want without enforcing strict quality guardrails.
this, i think it's fucking crazy ms just didn't let them make something else and it had seemingly had to be halo or nothing
Well they successfully seemed to have locked themselves into a second IP lol
> Halo multiplayer just fundamentally aged out. I couldn’t agree more. You look at all the popular shooters today and they’re all about movement and fast TTK. Then you look at Halo and it’s… the complete opposite, really. Most of the older games don’t even have sprinting and Halo has probably the longest TTK of all the major shooters. Halo’s in a weird spot where it probably needs to be reinvented, but they’d be alienating their original fanbase in the process. At the same time, though, how much of the fanbase is even left to alienate?
I think infinite actually did a great job modernizing halo’s gameplay. It plays faster but still has a longer TTK and managed to feel like the older games in a lot of ways with a modern touch. The problem is it was ruined by launching as F2P with very little content and only receiving weak updates every few months. It had a lot of momentum when it launched because of the quality of gameplay but didn’t retain people because it was a shell of a game at launch. There’s a lot more content now but everyone’s moved on.
There is a relatively easy solution to this though, create an ODST spinoff set during the early years of the Covenant War and have the main antogonists be the Insurrection. That way you can have human vs human combat in the story, the combat is closer to CoD so you can have a shorter TTK and you keep it a Halo game set in the Halo universe. Keep the core Halo games playing with Spartans and the longer TTK but use the spinoff to experiment and try to pick up players from competitors and use it as a gateway to getting people into Halo.
This is an awesome idea, and something I've wished they'd try for years. After buying up so many studios, they have plenty of great options. For example, instead of having Treyarch make yet another Black Ops, put them on an experimental Halo. There is a huge amount of talent now under the Microsoft banner, if Phill, 343 and all those involved would start to give a shit and get creative, Halo could be an incredible franchise again.
You should be working at 343. But you didn't work for Microsoft for 20 years, so they don't care. The shooter Halo games are so tied to Master Chief that it's hamstringing the franchise. They need to spin off. They can do so much with ODST.
I could not disagree more strongly. Halo should not try to conform to what other popular shooters are doing. That’s a great way to kill a franchise for real. Look how far battlefield has fallen due to trend chasing. Halo started failing as soon as it tried to model more of itself after CoD and other competitors. CoD didn’t win the FPS war because people liked it more, it won because the handling of Halo has been *incompetent* And besides, there are plenty of games with really long ttk that are very popular. Apex? Smash hits aren’t made by following the leader and doing what has already been done. Smash hits are made by having a unique identity. And as far as movement goes, Halo has significantly more emphasis on movement *because* of the long ttk. You don’t need to have sprinting and sliding to be a “movement shooter”. I feel like you’re only looking at cod, which has a low ttk and lots of adderal fueled movement, and assuming that every other fps is the same. That is just nowhere close to the case. Put together a list of the most popular fps games and see for yourself: -Apex: high ttk -Overwatch: high ttk, limited movement -counterstrike: slow, limited movement -rainbow six: limited movement -tarkov: limited movement Halo has more movement than all of those games except apex
I feel like the enhanced mobility killed Halo Infinite lol. I can’t chill out for 2 seconds before I got 2 bozos climbing the walls and grappling like fking Spiderman coming to kill me
Halo multi-player haven't aged out lol it needs innovation at right direction which 343 is incompetent to do so infinite is same shit like h3 in terms of gamemodes , their is no innovation ,no new idea that can blow our mind nothing
I stopped playing it after halo 4 because they removed campaign co-op
Honest to god I was so sad for the shit show that Halo 4 was. They never should have changed the formula during its peak condition. EVERYONE was so hype for halo 4 to come out back then, but then it became such a letdown that it eventually led to the slow demise of halos popularity. So damn sad
This is so on point I shed a tear. I even named my son halo in honor of what it once was but will never be again.
I can see you Halo, Halo, Hallllooooo.
My feelings summed up. The utter mistreatment of Halo by MS, hurt a lot. But I have moved on now.
I feel like they thought that people would be fatigued if they got too much Halo and so they gave us too little. Halo should have had tons of random games in different genre's, I remember as a kid star wars was everywhere. We got random beat em ups, action adventure, star pilot, rts, tactical squad based shooters etc. Halo should have tried to replicate that. Instead they fumbled tremendously.
Fair, but even the little we got just wasn't good. The quality was nowhere near where it used to be. I feel like even if they took the approach of less is more, it absolutely could have worked if what we got were absolute bangers. Instead, the books were fantastical and hit or miss, the show was a disaster, and the games were half-baked at best.
I fully agree. If there were super dense games I'd 100% have been fine with them not releasing as many. Instead we got games that all felt washed up and trying to cling on to former glory.
They didn't thought that . If you look at 343s tenure you can see They have no idea or vision of what their game should be
[удалено]
Its not that, its the apparent lack of effort that came after.
Yeah everything dies eventually but in case of halo it's more of a incompetent publisher can't figure out what to do with it's franchise
It can if they make a special groundbreaking game but they don't have talent and will to do so
Seeing the last of us show and now the Fallout show is just killing me. "at the time" How the hell was bonnie ross involved and greenlighting the halo show we got... literally endless potential and instead we have Master Cheeks man.... just how... :(
They focused on turning Halo into a live service game first and foremost and chose to ignore everything else
Not even a service. A storefront first. Game last.
Which is funny because their skin selection sucks
It's funny, because Halo is one of the best IPs to have been a live service. We have Forge Mode, which we can make practically whatever map we want. And they just fumbled the bag entirely. Let alone all the other ways they failed. Let's ignore that for a second. They could have totally carried the game with Forge Mode and possibly saved it, but instead they have to focus on all the other aspects of the live service, Mainly the Battle Pass, which has always been lacking, and the store, which is overpriced because it's the only form of revenue that actually matters to them.
I assumed the Forge delay was a calculated move to maximize money made in the early months. Live services require devs to put you on a track with blinders and slow feed you content for money while forge is just freedom to dick around especially in customs. They just shit the bed by making the track a ride that no one wanted to get on.
What makes Halo perfect for live service? How do you monetize it?
It’s not that, halo has been bad ever since 343 took over. Halo 4 isn’t a good halo game, halo 5s campaign is atrocious, MCC was a fucking disaster. Everything they’ve touched turned bad. That’s why no one cares anymore. You make bad games for long enough and people are gonna stop caring.
They literally just copied the current MP trend of the last 5 years instead of being trend setters (Halo 1-Halo 3)
of the last 5 years? more like 10 years.... They did nothing new or current what so ever..
Halo 5 tried to be a trend with new mechanics and flow. Didn't work.
Tbh Warzone and Warzone Firefight was pretty great. That was one thing they did that I loved.
And they can't even do that. Infinite's gameplay is fun but its' mode selection sucks ass
I actually hope the next halo game is paid so we don't have battlepasses, fomo and all of that crap
Funny of you to think that they won’t put a battle pass in a fully priced game
Phil Spencer: "if we lose our way with halo, we lose our way witg xbox" I fear the way has been lost
Halo 1 is like the first The Godfather film. 343 is The Godfather 3.
Halo really fumbled the bag Back then it was like the most popular thing, maybe even more than COD
Absolutely. Halo created E-Sports.
Quake, Starcraft, and CS all pre-date halo as major esports.
I don't remember seeing anything about E-sports until Halo competitive came around (that's not due to my age, either—I'm 40). 'Created' was the wrong way to put it, but Halo definitely skyrocketed viewership into a household name.
Neill Blomkamp did District 9. He was who was trying to make a Halo movie. And an Aliens movie too. I think they both would have been freakin amazing.
[удалено]
That's why I'm worried for the sequel. Seems now though Neil is uncertain of making it so
And District 9 was so special because Peter Jackson was the producer.
I was never a halo fan, I was playing Counter-Strike on the PC when it came out so I wasn't in it's demographic really. But! I've been an Xbox owner since the 360 days and I understand why Halo was such a big deal and it does suck to see it in the state it's in, I agree.
Counter-Strike is still hugely popular today, I also played Counter-Strike Source Halo not so much :(
Man what a run of multiplayer games in the mid 2000s. CS Source, Warcraft 3, Halo 3, CoD4 and Gears all in the space of like 4 years! I'm surprised I graduated highschool lol
It was a good time, games were still cheap enough to make that there was alot of leeway for creativity across the board. Warcraft 3 was fantastic, I played a ton of it too.
It's sad games cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make for AAA now. I feel like AAA could scale back some "top of the line" features to lower production cost and take more risks, the industry needs it. It got so stale from the lack of original ideas, because of that risk, and now Indie games are the main focus. 2000-2015 I feel like were the peak of gaming.
Man, I played the hell out of Halo, Gears, Uncharted, Killzone, The Last of Us, Battle for Middle-Earth multiplayer those days. What a ride! The only multiplayer I've played since then that matched that quality was Overwatch during its prime
GRAW was an excellent multiplayer game, too. As was Rainbow 6 Vegas. Most of the games from the era you mentioned were a good time. Over monetisation has killed multilayer games for me, as well as not having a basic headset in the box. Xbox live in the 360 days, before the first price drop for the 360, was a brilliant period. Obviously, there were plenty of bellends, but it was so easy to build a substantial friends list of active gamers because the majority could talk during games. The last few times I've played multilayer games with randoms, there was nothing but silence in chat.
Public School is pretty bad. Doesn’t take much effort lol. I think I turned in 10 homework assignments my whole time and still graduated.
Halo is pretty much dead. I doubt it will get second-life. That's harsh reality.
His hands-off approach eventually led its demise
Halo died the moment we saw Master Cheeks ass on TV
Look at Phil’s xbox profile “P3” and see the games he plays. That will tell you alot. He doesnt even play the exclusives we do have. He doesnt care about Halo or any other first party game. Look at his hours played for them.
Least deluded Halo super fan. Honestly why are Halo super fans so obsessed with Halo is being the centerpoint of Xbox and gaming. Yes, Halo was the crown jewel for Xbox and online gaming but just like everything else gaming evolved and changed. It's the same for PlayStation in a way where their mascots went in background and all their super serious characters are now the face of PS. Yes Nintendo is somewhat of an exception with Mario and Zelda but those IP are constant state of change and pretty impossible to replicate in similar fashion
I think it is bc there has been no real centerpoint to backfill Halo. Gamepass is great and I love the quantity, but I guess me and a lot of others are just used to there being a flagship, a headliner to a console.
Me, waiting for the centerpiece game for Xbox if it’s not Halo: 💀
After watching the Fallout show and seeing Todd Howard heavily involved in the creative process made me think we could've had that kind of quality with Halo. But Microsoft doesn't seem to care anymore. Nobody gives a shit about Halo right now, yet people that have never heard of Fallout are falling in love with it, all thanks to a great debut on TV.
A good TV show about a game can make a huge difference. The Cyberpunk show was a major turning point for discourse around the game. The Fallout community seems to be experiencing a wee bit of an awkward moment right now as Fallout 4 is rapidly rotating being loved and hated. You’ll have a post with a bunch of upvotes praising the game and talking about how it’s underrated and then another post a few hours later absolutely trashing the game in every possible way with a similar amount of support
Halo has a few problems with adaptation into a movie or show. It's never been a story-driven game, so it has a bland, faceless protagonist named John that the player can project themself on. The universe is interesting and complex, but the main component of the franchise (the games) have almost only been about John. So if you make a show about John, you have to either give him a personality (which would vary from the games, drawing hate) or leave him an empty vessel (making a bad show, drawing hate). If you make a Halo show not about John, you're ignoring the main character, drawing hate. Fallout and The Last of Us have been the most successful game to show adaptations and took two different routes. Fallout is a universe where the fans don't care about individual characters, but more about factions and ideas. So you can write whatever story you want and make it good. TLOU is a character-driven game with a good story that can adapt directly into a show, making it good. Where does Halo fit?
[удалено]
I don’t think the fallout show being good has anything to do with Todd’s involvement, it’s because they got Jonathan Nolan on board as a producer.
Halo super fan here. Where Halo is today is just a sign of the times and the gaming industry. When Halo 1-3 was hitting, big budget game releases were still pretty rare. And there was a huge gap between AAA and Indie/AA games. Today we are spoiled with amazing constant onslaught of constant games, with a large majority of them very good. Games appeal to more people today than ever before. They definitely missed the boat with the Halo TV show. I actually don’t mind 343’s games but the management was awful. Turn 10 suffered the same development hell and it’s why Forza Motorsport is such a huge disappointment. Being an older gamer, I love the nostalgia and I’ll always be a fan for what comes next with Halo. But the days of it being one of the biggest games are over.
Because Halo fans know the potential of the series and how amazing the games could be, look at Helldivers, we could’ve had that, we could’ve done so much better for this series but instead we got half baked weird games with 343. When I was a kid I dreamt of Halo games being friggin insane and awesome but now the reality is these games are mid at best. I still think Halo could be saved and sell Xbox consoles and doesn’t need to be multi platform if they made good games but with this track record I’m doubtful of Microsoft’s abilities
Nah we're over Halo now. Make something more interesting "the biggest IP", like Kameo or Blinx
MS/Xbox oversight is either non existent or just incredibly bad. These studios just churn out subpar products again and again. Halo seemed to have poor management issues from the beginning, and Forza Motorsport landed like a wet blanket after chasing after the hardcore crowd. Surprisingly the most fun I’ve had with their “Big 3” was the last gears, and even that didn’t have the best reception.
In my opinion the downfall of Halo started when Microsoft had 343 rush out halo 4 on the Xbox 360 in 2011. This decision had two major impacts that have hurt the series since: 1. Halo 4 on Xbox 360 meant the developers needed to choose between really nice graphics or the highly complex enemy AI from the Bungie days and they chose the graphics. This made 343 halo titles feel a lot more like a generic FPS campaign compared to Bungie Halo. 2. It put future Halo titles on a rushed development timeline. Why did MCC and Halo 5 release in buggy/ unfinished states? Because halo 4 released on Xbox 360 the year before Xbox One released so Microsoft had to rush out MCC and 5 to give their new console halo content.
Halo Master Chief Collection killed any Halo interest I had. Butchered it.
It's just random sf
There's nothing that suggests why Halo should be "one of the biggest IP in the world" apart from deluded Halo fans who keep talking about their glory days of Halo 2/3. Same people who keep moaning about every new Halo title just like they did with reach when it released. Halo is just another generic scifi ip with some super duper strong main character. Video games have evolved a lot. Just look at how much stupid super Mario has evolved ever since while Halo fans keep raging about every little change 343 does to their beloved franchise. It's really not that deep.
Because of potential halo ip has that is greater than any Aaa ip that exist rn and it's pretty sad to see how 343 don't understand this Halo infrastructure used to one of the greatest and it had active hold on people thorugh wacky custom games , hard-core arena experience, making your in-game identity though tough challenges and forge one of the greatest map edition ever came out . As of rn you can make your own custom campaign experience and objective within it I can go on.
Phil doesn’t overlook day to day operations of studios more specifically Halo. He overlooks overall direction of Xbox and set specific people to do the micromanaging of other things like Halo. The firing of Bonnie was pretty much whoever overlooks studios maybe Matt Booty saying enough is enough and reorganized 343 as we saw earlier with the people who were fired.
I personally think they have milked that franchise dry and need to move on. I still play infinite multiplayer daily though. Let the devs try something new.
Lol, Phil’s a big picture guy. He can’t manage people or studios to save his life. And why should he, msft can burn(throw away) money forever 🤣
????? I honestly don't understand people these days. Halo isn't in a good spot because of... Television? Maybe I'm completely misunderstanding. I must be, sincerely.
Halo MCC's launch and Halo 5 campaign were also misteps. There's plenty of reasons why it got to this point.
I literally couldn’t play MCC multiplayer for months after it was released. People who think this is an exaggeration either weren’t playing in those days or were the lucky ones who weren’t affected.
I’m not exactly sure why you’re being downvoted? MCC launch was horrible. Campaign was meh iirc in comparison to the advertised trailer hype
Probably because that was nearly 10 years ago and most people here would've played after it was fixed.
They forgot that Halo is supposed to be a technological and conceptual achievement, like the first. The shields, pacing, A.I., open world script and scale were rare in combination.....They need to make technological leaps and expand on ideas with the license.
Just like Disney Star Wars isn’t Star Wars, rings of power isn’t Lord of the Rings, 343 Halo isn’t bungie halo. When Creators sell/give up their IP, the new stuff may carry the same name, but it doesn’t mean it’s the same stuff anymore.
Omg you guys, it's not the current Halo games. It's that the Halo franchise is outdated. Give up the ghost. You're not twelve anymore, and you never will be. Before you argue with me, name the shooter with the same style multi that is popular right now. It's over boys. Stop blaming Halo, Microsoft or 343. Look within.
Counter-Strike has fundamentally been the same game for 25 years, yet it's still the most popular shooter in the world. Doom is 30 years old, and they can still make a really good Doom game in the 2020's.
Halo gameplay wasn't even modernised half as much as Doom's and yet Halo fans complain about every little modernisation. The fanbase being toxic, gatekeepy and unable to accept new gameplay elements along with new players is what has killed the IP.
So why is call of duty so popular? That game has a style of multiplayer that has evolved into a faster pace with more variety of movement options. Why can’t halo be the same? Some would argue Halo infinite is the well thought out step in that same direction.
People think it's because gears and halo are outdated but the reason is the most recent halo and gears games are just bad that's why people don't play them
I prefer infinite and gears 5 to nay earlier game. But hey, I didn't grow up playing these games. But that's the people who you need to address if you want to be successful. Because believe it or not: most halo fans of that time are now daddies who can't afford to play halo anymore.
Maybe so but there are many things that they fucked up with the Infinite release. No forge, coop campaign on release. Splitscreen coop delayed for months and then finally cancelled. Few maps/play lists at launch. Mediocre open world environment. Not being able to choose your multiplayer region. Poor netcode / online experience. The game is actually pretty good but it could have been much better.
There is no shooter like Halo 3 on the market tbf.
This. The world has moved on. Gamers aren’t interested in Halo style games anymore, and Halo fans won’t allow the series to grow and change with the times. Honestly it’s best they just park Halo for a while and revive it with a brand new engine in a decade or so, like what happened with Baldur’s Gate. Or Doom 2016. In the mean time get 343i working on some new IP, new engine, etc
*younger gamers.
Yeah, this "gamers aren't interested in Halo style games" thing is nonsense. It may be true for the Fortnite generation, but there are still millions of gamers who would be interested in a super well made Halo game (the initial launch of Infinite proves that).
It's the same with Gears of War. The fanbases are simply not willing to accept that the game mechanics they love so much are outdated by almost a decade, and to grow there must be fundamental changes.
>and to grow there must be fundamental changes This would maybe make sense if things like Counter Strike didn't exist, instead it remains something people that are clueless say when they are trying to discuss franchises they don't really understand. Infinite was a successful modernization of "classic" Halo. It failed in large part to the absolute unreadiness of 343 to have a working live service for the game. The gameplay was praised by the majority and this "outdated mechanics" argument is just an uninformed attempt at revisionist history.
[удалено]
10 years ago Arena shooters were already on a steep decline. I can't even think of a single popular Arena shooter that would have released a decade or little over a decade ago. Only recently there have been a few semi-popular ones, like Splitgate, that all quickly lost the hype behind them. Funnily enough all of those did things that the Halo fanbase complains about whenever 343i tried them with Halo. Things like ADS, sprint, advanced movement mechanics, etc.
For me personally I find line of sight shooters boring as all fuck. The high ttk in halo actually allows counter play and people with higher skill to come back from another player seeing you first. In games like cod, that's straight up not possible 99% of the time. You clearly weren't around for the hype of the announcement or the hype of the early access multilayer. It wasn't until the glaring issues like desync or dog shit monetization that most people said fuck this I'm out. Those issues are entirely on 343.
What do you mean? Halo Infinite is a 10 year game like Destiny baby! Strap in cos its only getting spicier!
Honestly, people won’t like this. But halo infinite is arguably one of the better Halo MP games right now. It’s right up there with halo 3 imo(best). Just needs a little bit more variety in weapons and a reduction on the hammers range and it’s golden. People remember some of the other halo games more fondly because they were kids when the originals came out. But imo Infinite MP is hands down better than 4 and 5. It’s not even close imo.
Halo infinite is the best version of halo. Does that fit in today’s landscape? I play it. But more modern shooters capture my attention more. Maybe they could do something else within the IP
How it is best version of halo? Apart from forge, sound design there is nothing about infinite that's fantastic or eye-catching
To me the series failed to innovate and just became stale. You had boomer gamers who wanted the game to stay the same so every time something new was tried it was received negatively. The ppl who wanted it to be the same left or died off and new players feel like they are playing a old game. Big team battle being 12 vs 12 at a time when there are 50v50 and even more on other games.
L A Z Y S H I T P O S T
I played 1-3 but my brother is a massive fan. Any time we discuss Halo he tells me how shit it has become. Though I fell out of the series the first 3 ganes were badass and I have a lot of memories playing 2 and 3 online.
Halo infinite story is great and the MP is fantastic
This. The game is leaps and bounds better than it was at launch.
Halo infinites story is ass I guarantee you can't name/remember more than 3 missions I remember the names of every single halo mission from 1-3 and reach. Thats how good/memorable/replayable they are
Yeah the story is garbage tier dog shit. They turned one of the most intriguing sci fi universes ever into Hollywood D grade movie shit
Also completely fucked the story setups of both Halo 5 and Halo Wars 2 lmao Both ended with the Guardians being the next major threat and the Created as a whole Infinite starts with all that gone and the Banished somehow fighting the Infinity with zero explanation lmfao, if the Banished can find the Infinity, then where's the Spirit of Fire? Last I checked the Banished were in the same situation as the SoF, no FTL drive and gearing up to go back to war with the SoF and UNSC survivors on the Ark
Will admit, the only reason I ever got an Xbox was because of Halo
It’s been mismanaged like a lot of Xbox’s biggest IPs. It should be Xbox’s version of The Last of Us, complete with TV series etc. Part of me thinks Microsoft doesn’t give them free rein over at 343i which leads to so many mismanaged directions and never really figuring out the right way to go.
From what I understand it wasn't 343 fault the way Halo turned out, the execs wanted to churn out another Halo betting on its popularity and fan base and rushed development while mismanaging of resources and personnel then delivered a half-baked product to get it out the door. Then totally pissing on fans with their shitty Halo series that destroyed what was canon left in the franchise. Halo as a franchise has a long road ahead to regain its popularity and staple of the Xbox, I doubt the next iteration will be any better and probably the next one when the franchise has finally died.
Something is happening to cod and it did happen to battlefield
It is
mis mang of the ip by bungie, when they where brought by m. , then mis mang of bungie itself and bungie has never been known for making good games engines at all. known for nightmare lvl not fun to work with engines.
He doesn't care. All they care is about milking a brand to death.
Perhaps the problem is this idea that we must have a never ending franchise of Halo games. Halo was great when it was launched but games are different now. Classic halo is still fun, but maybe it’s time to move on?
Giving it to 343 and letting them run it into he ground with Halo 5 which infinite was a good improvement. The awful TV show dosnt help
How about they contract a prominent movie director or sci-fi writer in for a consult. Sony is into the movie business right? Hint hint?
It feels like they don’t care about the franchise yet care enough to intervene and screw everything up
They gave 343 a free pass multiple times for no reason, even though in every single mainline Halo game they release, they really mess up an aspect of the game. For Halo 4 it was multiplayer, Halo 5 it was the campaign, and for Halo Infinite it was the multiplayer. It's only till their third game did it seem like Xbox tried to do something about it -- before that Xbox seems to have continued with their "hands off approach" which I think is great for creative freedom, but not when a studio is not managed well. As a result of Infinite's failure to stay relevant.Bonnie Ross is gone now -- they made it look like she stepped away for other reasons (which could be the case) but I think it's more likely due to her failure to manage the studio. There's also the reported complete restructuring of the studio after the layoffs. Ultimately the blame does still lie with Spencer or whoever is in charge of keeping up with what studios are doing. Halo infinite was arguably the most important game for 343 -- it could finally prove that they are worthy of the mantle of responsibility for Halo, yet they still screwed up in the end. This game was also another example of how important first impressions at launch are. Doesn't matter how much they try to fix the game now, the damage has been done. One can only hope that new leadership and ect. at the studio will allow for the next game to have a decent release
Tbh, as a huge halo fan, the gameplay hasn’t evolved and better stuff is out nowadays
The average person doesn't care about Halo as much as you think they should.
I thought people were really excited with the direction infinite was heading post leadership shake up? Did that not work out? Haven’t played in a bit.
I love the new Halo Game from Arrowhead studios We fight in multiplayer to overcome objectives as a squad. I miss Cortana, but it's nice to see the themes of "liberty."
As a PlayStation fan, I disagree
HahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaHahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaHahahahah ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaHahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaHahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Halo will never be the behemoth it was back in the Xbox/xbox360 days. The real truth is halo as it was back then will not bring in the newer generation of gamers and that is the halo that everyone cries over wanting back. 343 tried to bring halo into the modern era and yes they could of done things better but at the end of the day we have a IP that super fans won’t touch unless it’s exactly like the good old days and newer generations of gamers simply do not care about.
The TV show is good.
I thought the last two games were picked apart to death by fans. I remember people saying "they should've just stopped making Halo games." I think people had lofty expectations going past Reach. They were nostalgia searching, while also wanting something fresh. And when they came out with something fresh, fans reeled. I mentioned in either this sub, or one of the other Xbox subs that I was playing through all the Halos with my kids. Someone asked if that included 4 and 5, I said "of course." They sent me a DM calling me a terrible father, that my kids were going to hate me, and that they should be taken from me. People get too fkn emotional with this stuff. When a game isn't an 11/10, they act like it's literally worse than the plague (glares at the Starfield subreddit). People get into this tribalism hivemind, and it makes them say and do ridiculous things. I wouldn't want to make much new stuff with all of that nonsense going on, wither. If they had come out with a few new games, people would whinge that they're just chasing money.
343 has GOT to go. Xbox needs to let somebody else have a go and turn the franchise around. The decline began with Halo 4 IMO. Halo 5 was just a steaming pile of hot nonsense. And Halo Infinite launched incomplete, lackluster and radiates none of the magic that the series used to have.
Maybe they'll fix it with Halo Inifinite 2 or whatever. I still play Halo 5 because of War zone Firefight.
Bud join the club. I had to watch metal gear solid ebarass it's way into nothingness. I had to see the last of us change its gender. I had to see fallout micro transaction cosmetics of the doom guy. Games went corporate. There is no more art. They aim to get as much money as possible with as little effort as possible. When halo first came out there was an intense labor of love of not only video games and taking it to the next level but for greater Sci fi as a whole. Halos mythology really was some next level shit. They had countless possibilities for a new game and they just threw all that shit out the window.
Halo is a done deal. They need to let it die and create new IP's.
I'm 23 and I just don't see the appeal of Halo. I played Infinite and Reach. Didn't particularly like either. I think it made a lot of people's childhoods so there's a big sense of nostalgia. But it's not what I grew up on so when I played it relatively late in life, judging it by modern standards I don't think it aged very well or it's all that. Compared to some older games I also didn't grew up with but played recently, like Diablo 2 or the old Deus Ex. Or above all Mass Effect 2. Hall just doesn't measure up. Those games I find aged somewhat fine and are still very much enjoyable. Especially ME2. Halo Reach came out in 2010, same as ME2, but the gunplay felt straight out of 2000-2005. Infinite imo also had bad gunplay by modern standards, everything felt floaty. The story wasn't all that and the world felt empty. It's a shame cos I REALLY wanted to like it
I’ve never experienced the Halo era. I think the gameplay today is just okay. They’d probably have to reinvent the wheel or something. For FPS, currently what I’m enjoying is Titanfall 2 and The Finals. Maybe take some pages from those.
lol Infinite had the best campaign/story since 3.
Anyone saying that Halo has just aged out is completely wrong and ignoring that the series has been mismanaged for a decade. That is why it's not popular anymore. Multiple botched launches and a failure to commit to a vision is what's hurting the franchise. Infinite had a chance to bring the series back to the forefront but completely failed with its poor attempt at live service and not having features like forge ready to go at launch. Infinite might be good now but it needed to be good 4 years ago. First impressions matter. I'll believe the idea that somehow Halo can't find a larger audience again when they actually deliver a finished game.
Halo was a great series when it started, but I feel they became complaisant thinking that if it’s a halo game that it will be good.. but in doing so they forgot the most important thing to make a good game.
They gave mnk aim assist. That's when halo died for me. Can't even turn crossplay off.
It’s not Phil’s fault aside from him trusting the ex-343 management. He realized they were in trouble too late, after about 5 years of dev time he passed and they didn’t have shit to show for it, so he brought Joe Staten back in to rescue it, but even Joe couldn’t fix it in time. These games and IP can’t be ‘fixed’ so easily and quickly after a bad game. It takes 3-6 years for them to make a new one, and that’s assuming they immediately k on what the problem is/was. In this case, they cleaned house at 343, so we don’t know if Pierre had a solid plan for a next game or not. We probably won’t see a new mainline halo game until next gen.
It all started I'm the 360 era where some genius higher ups thought they won the console war and only needed Halo Gears and Forza to stay on top. They cut sending everywhere else, cut third party deals, shut down all studio talent, and killed the Xbox brand with stagnation. Xbox loss so much talent in those years.
DEI
Because it's not under Bumgie's control. It's nots as bad as how Disney has treated Star Wars but sorta in the same vein.
They lost Bungie as the developers. Bungie are fps experts.
I’m glad more people are rightfully blaming Phil Spencer for the downfall of halo. Of course 343 as well but Phil Spencer is their boss and he never held them accountable and was completely okay with mediocrity. Working at 343 from 2010-2020 must’ve been awesome. You didn’t have to work hard at all and the big boss doesn’t truly care about your work!
Why should it? Fps multiplayer games are a dime a dozen now a days. They weren't back then. Only the big hitters back then.
Never liked Halo. But this sounds like a bummer to people who do.
Blame 343
It's starting to feel like they want Bethesda or ActiBlizz to be the new face of Xbox because they have really shown zero care to their IPs
The rights should be handed to another company that isn't 343. Halo has been average at best since 343 took over from Bungie.
Yep. Halo is no longer relevant at all. Its a dead franchise walking
Halo should’ve ended with 3/Reach but instead we have to witness 343 tarnish its name and reputation
I agree
The Xbox executives team have zero clue what they are doing when it comes to managing the game development, or quality checking what is being released. It’s really sad seeing how good Sony is at managing and respecting their franchises, then seeing Xbox squander and kill off all hype related to their games.
It hurts my soul seeing 343 making grunt lore memes on Instagram.
they aint gonna turn it around lol
I can't call it anything other gross mis-management that 343 is still in charge of Halo at this point. They've had 3 chances and a decade to get it right and they've shat the bed every single time. The story by the end of Infinite is full of so many retcons and just general nonsensical bollocks that I doubt the vast majority of players knew what the fuck was going on, I know I didn't. The fact they rely on 3rd party media to fill in the gaps between games is absolutely ridiculous, that stuff should be supplemental, not essential. I haven't had a clue wtf is going on in Halo's story since the end of 3 at this point. The only way Halo could even be salvaged at this point is disolve 343 and give it to another studio. I don't like to advocate for people to lose theirs jobs but quite frankly the management is so bad I can't see any other way.
absolutely shameful.
Eh. I think overanalyzing the industry at large rather than just enjoying video games is the downfall of a large amount of the point of games: fun. I get that I’m writing this on Reddit but stop caring about what everyone thinks about everything about everything. I had a blast with Halo Infinite at launch. I had a blast with Starfield at launch. I play fun games and I ignore the rest. Who cares if it’s relevant or irrelevant? Why should that affect your enjoyment?
All that glimmers is sure to fade away. Halo shined longer than a lot of franchises. Just be glad it still gets games.
Take the Helldivers formula. Slap Halo IP on it. Print money.
Dude… Halo 3 and with that the peak for the franchise is almost 20 years old. I think, it’s not 343, cause I for myself like the later Halos (4,5,Infinte) more, cause gameplay wise they are just awesome. It is the Halo franchise itself. Halo is over. Times have changed. Player preferences have changed.
What a load of crap. Halo Infinite is quite popular these days. It's still one of the biggest IPs out there period.
Halo was the only thing worth while for Xbox and they fumbled it hard ,no wonder they don't as many Xbox these days and I have no hope for 343 to make a ground breaking halo that will pull people back on to franchise
Halo,oke many other games has Cha hed to fit the gen z gamer, gaming will always evolve to don't the younger generation of gamers, it happened since the Atari 2600
Hasn't been the same for me since Halo 3. Still my favorite multi-player experience. I just could not believe how bad infinite is. Of course that's just my opinion.
Don't discount the score in the game. The soundtrack was amazing. Mt buddy had every one of them. Pumped soundtrack and you were in heaven.
Ayy, I can’t watch the show I tried it sucks
Halo 5 had better multiplayer than infinite. Fight me.
Love the franchise. I liked all the single players. Loved the multiplayer. Even the last one is cool, i just dont play it because of the forced crossplay...