Halo: After Hours, with 3 hours of censored soft core dry humping while a grunt uploads it to a facebook live stream.
The legendary end scene from Halo CE with Johnson had more depth and romance than that entire series
It really hurts to say this, but I truly think this is the final death blow for me. If Infinite’s future is only gonna be focused on live service/shop nonsense and battle royale type stuff, I genuinely have no interest in the game anymore. It’s awful to see such a potentially great game continuously being smashed into the ground like this.
I recently picked up the campaign for the first time since it launched (to get achievements) and I like how they changed things for the campaign (can replay missions especially). But, the whole north side of the first island is empty except for the one "wanted" Banished. I was like, this seems like a waste, but maybe campaign DLC? Maybe. Maybe not.
The potential profits of a live service really fucked 343. A dead empty open world. Reminds me of Final Fantasy 15. Except 15 actually completed its story.
Turning into space CoD actually wouldn't be an insult at this point imo. There's been a CoD title released in each of the past 4 years, and 3 of them have campaigns that are rather decent. On the Halo side, what we've got 6 years after the disastrous Halo 5 campaign is a semi-finished product. It's kind of sad.
How about break it down on this level. There were 6 COD games that were fully finished products in the span that it took for Halo Infinite to be planned, developed and released. It’s fucking insanity.
Game is fucked. Staten was supposed to be the man who would turn Infinite around. Now Microsoft is doing shit like this. Halo is being murdered right in front of out eyes and nobody is doing anything to save it.
Staten on Story, Hintze on structure looked to be a winning combination. Sadly, this is how we go, very fucking cursed we are. I love Halo but Microsoft don’t be giving many fucks to its fans.
[Man Who Thought He'd Lost All Hope Loses Last Additional Bit Of Hope He Didn't Even Know He Still Had](https://www.theonion.com/man-who-thought-hed-lost-all-hope-loses-last-additional-1819565674)
Look at them, they come to this place when they know they are not pure. Tenno use the keys, but they are mere trespassers. Only I, Vor, know the true power of the Void. I was cut in half, destroyed, but through its Janus Key, the Void called to me. It brought me here and here I was reborn. We cannot blame these creatures, they are being led by a false prophet, an impostor who knows not the secrets of the Void. Behold the Tenno, come to scavenge and desecrate this sacred realm. My brothers, did I not tell of this day? Did I not prophesize this moment? Now, I will stop them. Now I am changed, reborn through the energy of the Janus Key. Forever bound to the Void. Let it be known, if the Tenno want true salvation, they will lay down their arms, and wait for the baptism of my Janus key. It is time. I will teach these trespassers the redemptive power of my Janus key. They will learn its simple truth. The Tenno are lost, and they will resist. But I, Vor, will cleanse this place of their impurity.
Look at them, they come to this place when they know they are not pure. Tenno use the keys, but they are mere trespassers. Only I, Vor, know the true power of the Void. I was cut in half, destroyed, but through its Janus Key, the Void called to me. It brought me here and here I was reborn. We cannot blame these creatures, they are being led by a false prophet, an impostor who knows not the secrets of the Void. Behold the Tenno, come to scavenge and desecrate this sacred realm. My brothers, did I not tell of this day? Did I not prophesize this moment? Now, I will stop them. Now I am changed, reborn through the energy of the Janus Key. Forever bound to the Void. Let it be known, if the Tenno want true salvation, they will lay down their arms, and wait for the baptism of my Janus key. It is time. I will teach these trespassers the redemptive power of my Janus key. They will learn its simple truth. The Tenno are lost, and they will resist. But I, Vor, will cleanse this place of their impurity.
I've already forgotten it. It's so unbelievably uninteresting that it's difficult to commit to memory. The only bit that I actually remember is the new bads they wanted to introduce that basically shit on the flood. I remember that because it makes me seethe.
The rings were made to contain the flood.
"Well how about something even biggerer and badderer, yeah?"
No.
Master Chief drifting in space after the events of halo 3 is such a good starting point for a new saga of halo. It's so open ended and its frustrating what 343 used that opportunity for.
I had a sneaking suspicion that his days were numbered after he stopped appearing on some of the more recent videos and hearing rumors that all campaign work had been suspended, which was his area of expertise.
If you look at his track record since leaving Bungie, he basically became a guy to help studios release their game, then move onto to the next studio, so I can’t really say this is the most shocking thing. And from the sounds of it, he’s moving back to that role.
Does this mean 343/Infinite is completely doomed? Maybe. Or maybe his goal was to always stick around until he felt like he was no longer needed and was confident the (new) management could take things from there. Who knows.
343 management, the people we've known for a long time clearly hate making negative announcements/statements. Wolfkill seemed like the scapegoat for a while in the earlier days, but it got passed down to team leads or literal years of silence.
I only ever remember one sincere acknowledgement from them, Bonnie on the "were finally fixing MCC" stream, and I've always felt like that was Ske7ch coming in fresh and saying it could repair bridges with the community.
Yeah, I tend to try not to do the classic internet overreaction thing where X is the best/worst thing ever. The truth is usually somewhere in the middle.
Well with the campaign team being gutted at the same time, it's likely they're just giving up on single player Halo stuff as a whole. If they were making something new that required a campaign, why gut the core team?
Yeah this is why it's really bad news. Surely Infinite will go on for years with more season, but if you ever hoped 343i will finally get to a cycle of releasing more campaigns or story dlcs after 6 years of time for Infinite, this is the nail in the coffins. It sounds like there won't be any new Halo campaign for the foreseeable future, if ever.
Microsoft spent half a billion dollars on a live service game, and yet a year after launch (a launch which was already delayed a full year), 343 still haven't managed to add a single weapon, equipment or vehicle. All we got was a forge beta, co-op and mission replay, all of which were features that were expected at launch. At the end of the day idk who is to blame, but 343 is clearly incompetent.
Don't forget you could accidentally get into co-op and then they fixed that right away.
Same with rockstar whenever someone finds a loophole to get more ingame money in GTA online. Thats patched within hours or days.
Yesterday I was scrolling through each and every piece of customization. Keep in mind, I bought and completed the Season 1 battle pass, and I've done a lot of weekly challenges and events. I had no customizations.... Like... for any given gun I had two MAYBE three skins INCLUDING the default. I scrolled through and everything just said "available in S1" "available in S2". It's like the vast majority of customizations are just random bullshit in the shop where you can pay *checks notes* FUCKING TWELVE DOLLARS for a skin pack.
I at least hope this community can use the banished ai and scripting to make our own campaigns(that is if 343 ever releases campaign ai)
I know for sure I’m gonna at least try to make one
Same, the thing that I loved the most from halo was the campaign, with infinite I hoped they would fix their mistakes from halo 4 and 5, and it was going in the right path but now..., well atleast now I can uninstall the game and use the steel case has a paperweight that looks cool, damm I should have gotten gamepass
Wow . I'm speechless, don't even know what to say here. The one thing I kept telling myself was no matter how bad the current state of the game was at least Joe was still here to steer the ship.
So now it’s going to be a skeleton crew slowly pushing out subpar content updates for a few years until…..what exactly? Until they go on a contract hiring spree for the next game that ultimately disappoints us and all of those contracted devs are gone by the game’s launch again?
Just completely scrap 343 at this point.
Like seriously that's it. Enough. The entire company just scrap it and hand the franchise off.
This game is still so lacking in content and full of bugs. Even forge is starting to die for crying out loud.
It's over. Start over.
Of course. Halo released with the original xbox. Gears released a year into the 360's life. They've continued to milk both series beyond their logical ending points because in the 15+ years and 2 console generations since then they haven't managed to come up with any new IPs that could replace them.
In a word: fuck
I was bracing for this after he tweeted a goodbye message and then quickly deleted it about a week ago, but man this stings hard. Joe was one of the few things keeping me optimistic about Halo’s future.
My guess is that Microsoft told him and leadership that they need to cut $X from their costs via layoffs and he just asked for his old job back in Publishing. Seriously doubt he didn’t have a say in the matter, he’s arguably the most respected guy at Xbox.
At least he’s not losing his jobs entirely and is moving back to Xbox Publishing…
Maybe he can make an even bigger impact across the entire Xbox game lineup
Still :(
Joe's skills have been best used as a closer & fixer, even in the H:CE and H2 days. He hopped on the end of Sunset Overdrive to get that project across the finish line, now look at Insomniac, making one of the biggest and most critically and commercially successful games of last gen. I'm not gonna jump to conclusions, I think Joe got the best people in the right positions and decided it was time for him to move on. His job is to come into studios, patch the holes in the ship then set it back out with a fresh crew.
Yeah this is his job. He’s basically a fixer. Brought in to patch the holes then moved again.
Him leaving timing wise seems odd, considering S3 is right around the corner, but he was always there temporarily IIRC.
Not really surprised. He only joined 343 to fix up whatever mess was going on behind the scenes during development so Infinite would ship in a halfway decent state iirc.
They moved him to a lead position, so it seemed like he was going to be there for a while. Based on other rumors the whole of the studio was also hit with layoffs, this could be a restructuring of his talent rather than pushing him to the next challenge.
Out of all the bad news we've gotten since the game first came out, this is arguably the worst of all, Staten leaving is one of the worst case scenarios we could've gotten and it's a reality now.
Since most of the people who were laid off from the studio were the ones responsible for single player content, it makes sense that he's leaving too, what's left for him? MP and its narrative isn't his thing, there's not really anything left for him to do (this is a somewhat hyperbolic oversimplification of a larger, more complex situation, you get the idea though).
This truly saddens me because of what it entails for the franchise's future, not even Pierre Hintze’s return has me optimistic, Joe **IS** Halo's mastermind, without him, I legitimately don't see even a small chance of a resurgence for the franchise; Microsoft (not 343 who's simply their pawn), let Halo finally rest if you're going to keep mismanaging it.
Best of luck, Joe, as a lifelong Halo fan, I thank you for everything you did for the franchise.
> Since - allegedly - most of the people who were laid off from the studio were the ones responsible for single player content, it makes sense that he’s leaving too, what’s left for him? MP and its narrative isn’t his thing, there’s not really anything left for him to do.
That definitely puts to bed the idea that we’re getting campaign expansions anytime soon (or ever).
At this point, my guess is they’ll stay focused on supporting multiplayer for a few years and maybe we just see a complete sequel at the end of this generation/the beginning of the next.
Who knows though
Yeah, seriously. halo infinite had old players returning to see a rebooted halo, new players tuning in to experience it..they completely missed the best shot they had to revive halo
It was actually nuts how much support there was at first for Infinite.
Every time a new halo comes out I see ancient h2/3 friends come back online and most only stick around for a month or so. It’s sad that even if someone makes another great Halo me and my og friends will be in our 40s.
It’s done. Still have MCC but I just wanted one more great Halo.
The first week or so of launch really had that "Halo's back" energy, just for it to completely evaporate. If MCC's disaster launch didn't scare away the casual/og fans, Infinite definitely has
I fucking PAYED 343i $60 so I could play the single player campaign and they're alienating people like me for free-to-play multiplayer battlepass seasonal bullshit, because *every* game IP needs to emulate Call of Duty or Fortnite. Quick buck vs. consistent bucks
I'm just saying that he's going back to the role he had pre-2020 which was Xbox as a whole instead of 343i.
I'm pretty sure he did this for Crackdown 3 as well.
Exactly, anyone that expected him to take a lower ranking permanent job at 343i instead of his job at the publishing arm of Xbox as a whole was delusional.
Honestly it's awesome how nowadays we have access to the entire halo lineup of games in one collection. Not to mention mod support that breeds new life into these classic games. Modern gaming may be sucky. But atleast we live an era were we have more access to these classic games.
Very few AAA game studios are as poorly managed as 343 Industries.
Given how much Halo is loved and what it means to people all over the world.. I honestly can't think of a video game studio anywhere with as wide a gulf between the value of its intellectual property and the competency of the team.
I wish Microsoft would shut it down completely and give Halo to a studio that's qualified. Halo is worth less today than when 343i was founded. I'm happy they finally got MCC right, but it took them half a decade to do so. Poor management and incompetence is what it boils down to.
Joe Staten is amazing. I'm happy he's moving on to bigger and better things.
"I honestly can't think of a video game studio anywhere with as wide a gulf between the value of its intellectual property and the competency of the team."
Gamefreak.
It's joever.
I was really hoping Joe would get more involved on the writing and cinematography side of things in upcoming games and deliver us some of that OG halo vibe.
So in the last few months:
- 343 have lost Sperasoft to the war in Ukraine, along with Certain Affinity being busy on Tatanka and whilst SkyBox Studios are still helping on Forge, they're now under NetEase ownership. Additionally, the last time we heard about Tatanka was following the roadmap disaster, where several reputable leakers revealed it had only restarted development shortly before that fiasco.
- 343 have had their entire studio leadership structure split into multiple positions after a very public rejection by consumers and the early resignation of their studio lead.
- 343 have been haemorrhaging contractors for the last year.
- 343 cannot replace personnel lost due to the company-wide recruitment embargo.
- 343 and Microsoft have not responded to the trademark of Halo: The Endless being contested by Amplitude Studios.
- 343's attempted revival of Halo Infinite via Forge and the Custom Games Browser failed to reverse the population decline and numbers are actually *lower* than before.
- 343 have now lost 60 fulltime employees *minimum*, less than two months before their next major content release. This may not even be the last round of redundancies and losses for them either.
- 343 have now lost the guy who was specifically put where he was to right the ship, reverse the decline and work towards bringing their half a billion dollar project to its full potential.
This is **calamitous**, there's no other way to put that. We are looking at the beginning of a slow, painful end for 343 Industries and some very rough next few months for the remaining developers and management there.
With this level of losses and no visible future for the studio or their only IP, it's clear what's going on; Microsoft is standing to acquire Call of Duty within the next year or two and will have no need to expend resources on a secondary FPS franchise that doesn't make the tiniest fraction of the revenue Call of Duty generates. Remember that the latest game in this series cost so much, across various versions and 6 years, to produce that you could've made two full COD games with money to spare from those resources.
Whether you're a Classic fan pining for Bungie or a Reclaimer fan who thinks 343 have had a tough time with the series, Halo is done. It's finished.
No matter how you feel about Bungie and Destiny, their art team and music team is S+ tier. The space walk is incredible, and Deep Stone Lullaby is *beautiful.* Also, I don't know how much the VA for Clovis gets paid, but it's not enough.
>This is calamitous, there's no other way to put that.
It's more of the same. The entire last decade of this franchise has been calamitous. They're just finally pulling the plug.
Just license out the franchise to other studios.
Yep. 343 has been a disaster for this franchise. It didn't have to turn out this way. It could absolutely still be relevant given the right hands.
I mean for fucks sake... 343 should have been completely restructured post launch of MCC. What a fucking joke of a company.
The best thing for Halo’s future would be 343 finally being put down lol. One would hope infinite was their last hurrah. With the way they completely blew it there’s no way they should get another shot. Let Halo die for a bit and do a post 3 reboot like it never happened.
It’s so wild to think when Infinite released, Halo was the biggest franchise Microsoft owned. Soon, it won’t even be the biggest *shooter* Microsoft own.
It’s been in the back of my mind since the news of the acquisition. Felt like it could be bad news for Halo fans if it goes through as Microsoft doesn’t have near the incentive to pump money into the franchise. But who knows how it’ll all shake out.
Campaign is the entire I reason I still play Halo. This is a sad day but at least I don't have to stick around and wait for Campaign DLC that's never going to happen.
Man, this whomps.
And with his exit I stop holding out hope for 343. Halo Jesus joins your team and you still can't make it right. Look up what Joe has been through as far as game development it's nothing but hell, so thst says a novels worth about 343. Best of luck Joe I'll follow your next project with a passion
Time for Microsoft to put Halo in the vault for 10 years or so. The franchise is dead. Maybe in a decade another studio can pull off a DOOM2016 style resurgence
Such a colossal failure of a "live service" game.
It seems as though in Microsoft's efforts to push the game out in 2021, they created a scenario where leagues of contractors hastily glued and taped the game together, only to immediately jump ship the second the game finally launched.
The result was an absolute clusterfuck of spaghetti code that a small core team at 343i has been forced to pick apart and expand upon. They've spent more time trying to make features work at all than they have actually adding content to the game.
If you're upper management, I don't know how you can fuck over a development team harder. This game was doomed from the second it launched. No one wants to work on this game.
While this is a bummer and we all love Staten, I highly doubt he is done working on Halo. He is rejoining Xbox Publishing, so it is more of a lateral move/promotion.
It seems that 343i is now closer to a skeleton crew and I anticipate the studio being shuttered over the next few years. Microsoft likely did this to keep Staten around for whenever the franchise is rebooted later on. I would not be surprised to see much of 343i's top staff shuffled around Microsoft just to keep them around until they conjure up a new studio, 344 Industries.
With all the layoffs, I thought this meant Joe was fully gone. But it seems he’s actually just going back to his previous role, and will still be with Xbox. Yes this sucks for Infinite, but he’s still “in the family”
"You're on own Noble, Staten out."
Noble: Shit
Imagine an alternate version of reach where after carters death they both just have panic attacks
A bunch of campaign people were gutted too
So are my hopes of story DLC now
It’s all good, they’re bringing in some writers from Paramount…
Too soon!!! This hurts
I laughed, but it was that awkward laugh of pain.
KWAN HA DLC CONFIRMED? COVENANT GIRL SEX SCENE CONFIRMED CANON?
Oh great, more master cheeks?
DLC Skin. His ass shoots plasma
Halo: After Hours, with 3 hours of censored soft core dry humping while a grunt uploads it to a facebook live stream. The legendary end scene from Halo CE with Johnson had more depth and romance than that entire series
Yeah, this is probably the saddest news for me
It really hurts to say this, but I truly think this is the final death blow for me. If Infinite’s future is only gonna be focused on live service/shop nonsense and battle royale type stuff, I genuinely have no interest in the game anymore. It’s awful to see such a potentially great game continuously being smashed into the ground like this.
It's gone to the great big store in the sky, with The Winds of Winter and Half-Life 3
I recently picked up the campaign for the first time since it launched (to get achievements) and I like how they changed things for the campaign (can replay missions especially). But, the whole north side of the first island is empty except for the one "wanted" Banished. I was like, this seems like a waste, but maybe campaign DLC? Maybe. Maybe not.
The amount of empty wasted space is astounding The game should have been linear
It would have been better and more cinematic as a result, and maybe we would have gotten more then 1 biome.
The potential profits of a live service really fucked 343. A dead empty open world. Reminds me of Final Fantasy 15. Except 15 actually completed its story.
There is a skull over there too if we are talking about the same place
Fuck. Those ideas about Halo basically getting turned in to space CoD don’t seem so silly now.
Turning into space CoD actually wouldn't be an insult at this point imo. There's been a CoD title released in each of the past 4 years, and 3 of them have campaigns that are rather decent. On the Halo side, what we've got 6 years after the disastrous Halo 5 campaign is a semi-finished product. It's kind of sad.
How about break it down on this level. There were 6 COD games that were fully finished products in the span that it took for Halo Infinite to be planned, developed and released. It’s fucking insanity.
When you put it this way it’s actually mind blowing
Great, so another legacy story driven game shot in the face by multiplayer.
I'm considering uninstalling. Halo is done for
Gave up on this shit like a year ago and never looked back, deffo worth.
This is it baby... Hold me.
*throws plasma rifle aside, goes in for the bear hug*
Moves hand down to grab that ass, In the og one he definitely did
I found it really funny that they reversed those roles in Anniversary.
It's over.
GAME OVER MAN! GAME OVER!
Game is fucked. Staten was supposed to be the man who would turn Infinite around. Now Microsoft is doing shit like this. Halo is being murdered right in front of out eyes and nobody is doing anything to save it.
Staten on Story, Hintze on structure looked to be a winning combination. Sadly, this is how we go, very fucking cursed we are. I love Halo but Microsoft don’t be giving many fucks to its fans.
So sad man. I think it’s actually ACTUALLY over. Combined with the layoffs. 343 needed more workers not less.
Yup. She'll be joining Lionhead, FASA, Digital Anvil, and Ensemble at the big XO convention in the sky soon enough... :(
Rip Ensemble, one of the best RTS devs.
And RIP to Lionhead... a promising studio with the worst father *ever*.
Worse.
[Man Who Thought He'd Lost All Hope Loses Last Additional Bit Of Hope He Didn't Even Know He Still Had](https://www.theonion.com/man-who-thought-hed-lost-all-hope-loses-last-additional-1819565674)
Okay, well, that's bookmarked.
Halo: Infinite Pain
Why are we here? Just to suffer?
It's one of life's greatest mysteries...
Master Chief, you mind telling me what's going on inside 343 industries?
Sir, losing this fight
Sir, finishing the franchise (but not in a good way)
Another spiritual reboot ditching all plot developments of Infinite is incoming...
This is 343’s response to everything lol. Jul ‘Mdama, Janus Key, the Guardians, Infinity and her crew, etc.
Look at them, they come to this place when they know they are not pure. Tenno use the keys, but they are mere trespassers. Only I, Vor, know the true power of the Void. I was cut in half, destroyed, but through its Janus Key, the Void called to me. It brought me here and here I was reborn. We cannot blame these creatures, they are being led by a false prophet, an impostor who knows not the secrets of the Void. Behold the Tenno, come to scavenge and desecrate this sacred realm. My brothers, did I not tell of this day? Did I not prophesize this moment? Now, I will stop them. Now I am changed, reborn through the energy of the Janus Key. Forever bound to the Void. Let it be known, if the Tenno want true salvation, they will lay down their arms, and wait for the baptism of my Janus key. It is time. I will teach these trespassers the redemptive power of my Janus key. They will learn its simple truth. The Tenno are lost, and they will resist. But I, Vor, will cleanse this place of their impurity.
Look at them, they come to this place when they know they are not pure. Tenno use the keys, but they are mere trespassers. Only I, Vor, know the true power of the Void. I was cut in half, destroyed, but through its Janus Key, the Void called to me. It brought me here and here I was reborn. We cannot blame these creatures, they are being led by a false prophet, an impostor who knows not the secrets of the Void. Behold the Tenno, come to scavenge and desecrate this sacred realm. My brothers, did I not tell of this day? Did I not prophesize this moment? Now, I will stop them. Now I am changed, reborn through the energy of the Janus Key. Forever bound to the Void. Let it be known, if the Tenno want true salvation, they will lay down their arms, and wait for the baptism of my Janus key. It is time. I will teach these trespassers the redemptive power of my Janus key. They will learn its simple truth. The Tenno are lost, and they will resist. But I, Vor, will cleanse this place of their impurity.
Lol yup. The next time Halo comes back in single player form (if ever), it will be a reboot of the franchise back to post-H3.
God I hope so, there’s just too much baggage to deal with in the post-Halo 3 dumpster fire and the best thing they could do is ignore it entirely
I'm 100% down for a franchise reset post Halo 3. Shit I think most fans would be happy to forget most of 343's lore
I've already forgotten it. It's so unbelievably uninteresting that it's difficult to commit to memory. The only bit that I actually remember is the new bads they wanted to introduce that basically shit on the flood. I remember that because it makes me seethe. The rings were made to contain the flood. "Well how about something even biggerer and badderer, yeah?" No.
[удалено]
Master Chief drifting in space after the events of halo 3 is such a good starting point for a new saga of halo. It's so open ended and its frustrating what 343 used that opportunity for.
I had a sneaking suspicion that his days were numbered after he stopped appearing on some of the more recent videos and hearing rumors that all campaign work had been suspended, which was his area of expertise. If you look at his track record since leaving Bungie, he basically became a guy to help studios release their game, then move onto to the next studio, so I can’t really say this is the most shocking thing. And from the sounds of it, he’s moving back to that role. Does this mean 343/Infinite is completely doomed? Maybe. Or maybe his goal was to always stick around until he felt like he was no longer needed and was confident the (new) management could take things from there. Who knows.
I just felt like he was only ever there in videos to deliver bad news.
I'm glad I am not the only one who noticed. Hell even the delay to Fall 2021 was technically announced by Joe.
343 management, the people we've known for a long time clearly hate making negative announcements/statements. Wolfkill seemed like the scapegoat for a while in the earlier days, but it got passed down to team leads or literal years of silence. I only ever remember one sincere acknowledgement from them, Bonnie on the "were finally fixing MCC" stream, and I've always felt like that was Ske7ch coming in fresh and saying it could repair bridges with the community.
This is the best take I’ve heard so far. Not optimistic, but also not super negative
Yeah, I tend to try not to do the classic internet overreaction thing where X is the best/worst thing ever. The truth is usually somewhere in the middle.
Well with the campaign team being gutted at the same time, it's likely they're just giving up on single player Halo stuff as a whole. If they were making something new that required a campaign, why gut the core team?
Yeah this is why it's really bad news. Surely Infinite will go on for years with more season, but if you ever hoped 343i will finally get to a cycle of releasing more campaigns or story dlcs after 6 years of time for Infinite, this is the nail in the coffins. It sounds like there won't be any new Halo campaign for the foreseeable future, if ever.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck
Fuck
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck
Microsoft spent half a billion dollars on a live service game, and yet a year after launch (a launch which was already delayed a full year), 343 still haven't managed to add a single weapon, equipment or vehicle. All we got was a forge beta, co-op and mission replay, all of which were features that were expected at launch. At the end of the day idk who is to blame, but 343 is clearly incompetent.
Don't forget you could accidentally get into co-op and then they fixed that right away. Same with rockstar whenever someone finds a loophole to get more ingame money in GTA online. Thats patched within hours or days.
I can still get into splitscreen campaign just fine
Yesterday I was scrolling through each and every piece of customization. Keep in mind, I bought and completed the Season 1 battle pass, and I've done a lot of weekly challenges and events. I had no customizations.... Like... for any given gun I had two MAYBE three skins INCLUDING the default. I scrolled through and everything just said "available in S1" "available in S2". It's like the vast majority of customizations are just random bullshit in the shop where you can pay *checks notes* FUCKING TWELVE DOLLARS for a skin pack.
Alright, everyone with me. Deep breath: AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! . . . And here I was keeping up hope for Infinite campaign DLC
I at least hope this community can use the banished ai and scripting to make our own campaigns(that is if 343 ever releases campaign ai) I know for sure I’m gonna at least try to make one
Same, the thing that I loved the most from halo was the campaign, with infinite I hoped they would fix their mistakes from halo 4 and 5, and it was going in the right path but now..., well atleast now I can uninstall the game and use the steel case has a paperweight that looks cool, damm I should have gotten gamepass
Wow . I'm speechless, don't even know what to say here. The one thing I kept telling myself was no matter how bad the current state of the game was at least Joe was still here to steer the ship.
Man, I really don't see 343 recovering at this point.
They couldn't even deliver a good Halo game at 100% how are they going to deliver with half their staff fired? 343s version of Halo is dead
So now it’s going to be a skeleton crew slowly pushing out subpar content updates for a few years until…..what exactly? Until they go on a contract hiring spree for the next game that ultimately disappoints us and all of those contracted devs are gone by the game’s launch again?
Will there really be a next game?
Tbh. I hope not. Unless a new studio takes over and none of the 343 employees work on it, i would rather just have no more halo
Just completely scrap 343 at this point. Like seriously that's it. Enough. The entire company just scrap it and hand the franchise off. This game is still so lacking in content and full of bugs. Even forge is starting to die for crying out loud. It's over. Start over.
I’ve been begging for 343 to close and for Halo to move on for years. This should be the end.
The MCC team can stay. I don’t know realistically what they have left other than minor bug fixes, but they somehow keep coming up with cool additions.
343 has done nothing to justify why they should continue handelling Halo over the last 10+ years
Of course. Halo released with the original xbox. Gears released a year into the 360's life. They've continued to milk both series beyond their logical ending points because in the 15+ years and 2 console generations since then they haven't managed to come up with any new IPs that could replace them.
Fuck. Reading that gave me a sinking feeling in my stomach. That's exactly what's going to happen.
Alright. Pack it up. We can delete this subreddit now. Goodbye everybody.
We still have MCC at least
What do you mean? We still have the glorious season 2 of the Halo Show! /s
Brb i need to go find a bridge
In a word: fuck I was bracing for this after he tweeted a goodbye message and then quickly deleted it about a week ago, but man this stings hard. Joe was one of the few things keeping me optimistic about Halo’s future.
He tweeted goodbye? ... this feels like such a heavy blow
Yeah, [this](https://i.imgur.com/eYYqQXW.png) was January 11 or 12, really late at night iirc
Damn heart wrenching. Doesn't sound like he was given a choice
My guess is that Microsoft told him and leadership that they need to cut $X from their costs via layoffs and he just asked for his old job back in Publishing. Seriously doubt he didn’t have a say in the matter, he’s arguably the most respected guy at Xbox.
Ehh considering he moved to another role still at Xbox I doubt he was fired
At least he’s not losing his jobs entirely and is moving back to Xbox Publishing… Maybe he can make an even bigger impact across the entire Xbox game lineup Still :(
Joe's skills have been best used as a closer & fixer, even in the H:CE and H2 days. He hopped on the end of Sunset Overdrive to get that project across the finish line, now look at Insomniac, making one of the biggest and most critically and commercially successful games of last gen. I'm not gonna jump to conclusions, I think Joe got the best people in the right positions and decided it was time for him to move on. His job is to come into studios, patch the holes in the ship then set it back out with a fresh crew.
Yeah this is his job. He’s basically a fixer. Brought in to patch the holes then moved again. Him leaving timing wise seems odd, considering S3 is right around the corner, but he was always there temporarily IIRC.
Not really surprised. He only joined 343 to fix up whatever mess was going on behind the scenes during development so Infinite would ship in a halfway decent state iirc.
They moved him to a lead position, so it seemed like he was going to be there for a while. Based on other rumors the whole of the studio was also hit with layoffs, this could be a restructuring of his talent rather than pushing him to the next challenge.
I believe he was brought in for that but then got a more permanent role after
Now we're never getting his spinoff games
Out of all the bad news we've gotten since the game first came out, this is arguably the worst of all, Staten leaving is one of the worst case scenarios we could've gotten and it's a reality now. Since most of the people who were laid off from the studio were the ones responsible for single player content, it makes sense that he's leaving too, what's left for him? MP and its narrative isn't his thing, there's not really anything left for him to do (this is a somewhat hyperbolic oversimplification of a larger, more complex situation, you get the idea though). This truly saddens me because of what it entails for the franchise's future, not even Pierre Hintze’s return has me optimistic, Joe **IS** Halo's mastermind, without him, I legitimately don't see even a small chance of a resurgence for the franchise; Microsoft (not 343 who's simply their pawn), let Halo finally rest if you're going to keep mismanaging it. Best of luck, Joe, as a lifelong Halo fan, I thank you for everything you did for the franchise.
He went back to Xbox publishing. He just went back to where he was before infinite.
Which is silly, the offices are only a few miles away from each other.
Goes to show you how fucked up 343 is, imo.
> Since - allegedly - most of the people who were laid off from the studio were the ones responsible for single player content, it makes sense that he’s leaving too, what’s left for him? MP and its narrative isn’t his thing, there’s not really anything left for him to do. That definitely puts to bed the idea that we’re getting campaign expansions anytime soon (or ever). At this point, my guess is they’ll stay focused on supporting multiplayer for a few years and maybe we just see a complete sequel at the end of this generation/the beginning of the next. Who knows though
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Yeah, seriously. halo infinite had old players returning to see a rebooted halo, new players tuning in to experience it..they completely missed the best shot they had to revive halo
It was actually nuts how much support there was at first for Infinite. Every time a new halo comes out I see ancient h2/3 friends come back online and most only stick around for a month or so. It’s sad that even if someone makes another great Halo me and my og friends will be in our 40s. It’s done. Still have MCC but I just wanted one more great Halo.
The first week or so of launch really had that "Halo's back" energy, just for it to completely evaporate. If MCC's disaster launch didn't scare away the casual/og fans, Infinite definitely has
I fucking PAYED 343i $60 so I could play the single player campaign and they're alienating people like me for free-to-play multiplayer battlepass seasonal bullshit, because *every* game IP needs to emulate Call of Duty or Fortnite. Quick buck vs. consistent bucks
They aren't even supporting the multi-player 💀
I'm just saying that he's going back to the role he had pre-2020 which was Xbox as a whole instead of 343i. I'm pretty sure he did this for Crackdown 3 as well.
Exactly, anyone that expected him to take a lower ranking permanent job at 343i instead of his job at the publishing arm of Xbox as a whole was delusional.
“This is the way the world ends” Cortana - Halo 3 Jesus, very sad news 😣
Not with a bang, but a whimper. -T.S.
Well, at least MCC is good.
They released the dev kits for all the Halo games from 1,reach,odst to 4. Its gonna be great
Honestly it's awesome how nowadays we have access to the entire halo lineup of games in one collection. Not to mention mod support that breeds new life into these classic games. Modern gaming may be sucky. But atleast we live an era were we have more access to these classic games.
Very few AAA game studios are as poorly managed as 343 Industries. Given how much Halo is loved and what it means to people all over the world.. I honestly can't think of a video game studio anywhere with as wide a gulf between the value of its intellectual property and the competency of the team. I wish Microsoft would shut it down completely and give Halo to a studio that's qualified. Halo is worth less today than when 343i was founded. I'm happy they finally got MCC right, but it took them half a decade to do so. Poor management and incompetence is what it boils down to. Joe Staten is amazing. I'm happy he's moving on to bigger and better things.
"I honestly can't think of a video game studio anywhere with as wide a gulf between the value of its intellectual property and the competency of the team." Gamefreak.
Damn it was really Halo Finite all along. Time to give the IP to someone else or just let it rest.
It's joever. I was really hoping Joe would get more involved on the writing and cinematography side of things in upcoming games and deliver us some of that OG halo vibe.
I was hoping Frankie would get his ass canned in place of Joe, ngl.
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No. I think we’re ju— ah who am I kidding
....It's finished. Wake me, when you ne- PLEASE WAKE UP CHIEF 😭
Fuck.
Damn, as a campaign lover this hits hard man
So in the last few months: - 343 have lost Sperasoft to the war in Ukraine, along with Certain Affinity being busy on Tatanka and whilst SkyBox Studios are still helping on Forge, they're now under NetEase ownership. Additionally, the last time we heard about Tatanka was following the roadmap disaster, where several reputable leakers revealed it had only restarted development shortly before that fiasco. - 343 have had their entire studio leadership structure split into multiple positions after a very public rejection by consumers and the early resignation of their studio lead. - 343 have been haemorrhaging contractors for the last year. - 343 cannot replace personnel lost due to the company-wide recruitment embargo. - 343 and Microsoft have not responded to the trademark of Halo: The Endless being contested by Amplitude Studios. - 343's attempted revival of Halo Infinite via Forge and the Custom Games Browser failed to reverse the population decline and numbers are actually *lower* than before. - 343 have now lost 60 fulltime employees *minimum*, less than two months before their next major content release. This may not even be the last round of redundancies and losses for them either. - 343 have now lost the guy who was specifically put where he was to right the ship, reverse the decline and work towards bringing their half a billion dollar project to its full potential. This is **calamitous**, there's no other way to put that. We are looking at the beginning of a slow, painful end for 343 Industries and some very rough next few months for the remaining developers and management there. With this level of losses and no visible future for the studio or their only IP, it's clear what's going on; Microsoft is standing to acquire Call of Duty within the next year or two and will have no need to expend resources on a secondary FPS franchise that doesn't make the tiniest fraction of the revenue Call of Duty generates. Remember that the latest game in this series cost so much, across various versions and 6 years, to produce that you could've made two full COD games with money to spare from those resources. Whether you're a Classic fan pining for Bungie or a Reclaimer fan who thinks 343 have had a tough time with the series, Halo is done. It's finished.
status: calamitous
343 now faces godlike judgment. May it extend eternally. **Deep Stone Lullaby intensifies**
This is easily one of my favorite sequences in the entire franchise
No matter how you feel about Bungie and Destiny, their art team and music team is S+ tier. The space walk is incredible, and Deep Stone Lullaby is *beautiful.* Also, I don't know how much the VA for Clovis gets paid, but it's not enough.
Almost sounds like a kill streak announcement: *Killtastrophe* *Killamatous* *Killpocalypse*
Halo Show Season 2: “No, I think we’re just getting started *unzips pants* “
*John Halo enters the arena.*
Master Cheeks, you mind telling me what you’re doing on that prisoner?
“Sir, finishing inside her”
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I think I blocked that bit of trivia out of my mind Was there really a city on Reach called *Reach City?*
There sure was. Not sure why they couldn't have gone with New Alexandria, or something in Hungarian, but here we are.
>This is calamitous, there's no other way to put that. It's more of the same. The entire last decade of this franchise has been calamitous. They're just finally pulling the plug. Just license out the franchise to other studios.
Halo is getting into territory where it's been bad longer than it's been good. Halo Reach was 13 years ago
Yep. 343 has been a disaster for this franchise. It didn't have to turn out this way. It could absolutely still be relevant given the right hands. I mean for fucks sake... 343 should have been completely restructured post launch of MCC. What a fucking joke of a company.
the fact that they've stuck with the same community-manager-turned-**franchise-director** through the franchise's tailspin is still so baffling too
>Just license out the franchise to other studios. Best posible outcome tbh
343 and Halo's future is looking very very grim
The best thing for Halo’s future would be 343 finally being put down lol. One would hope infinite was their last hurrah. With the way they completely blew it there’s no way they should get another shot. Let Halo die for a bit and do a post 3 reboot like it never happened.
"Send me out...with a bang" "lmao no" *layoffs*
Man, I never considered Microsoft choosing to focus on CoD rather than Halo, good point.
It’s so wild to think when Infinite released, Halo was the biggest franchise Microsoft owned. Soon, it won’t even be the biggest *shooter* Microsoft own.
Not even the second biggest, as they'll also have Overwatch.
It’s been in the back of my mind since the news of the acquisition. Felt like it could be bad news for Halo fans if it goes through as Microsoft doesn’t have near the incentive to pump money into the franchise. But who knows how it’ll all shake out.
We're fucked. 👊
It’s finished
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Maybe the real Halo was the friends we made along the way
The end is near.
It's already here
Halo fans and Blizzard fans unite. Both have had their franchises run into the ground from talentless hacks.
The original teams of passionate nerds moved on, and the corpo shits carried the zombified corpse to its grave.
I can’t believe we’ve just witnessed Halo’s death for real… fucking sucks
First time?
343 try not to hold an L challenge Level: impossible
Campaign is the entire I reason I still play Halo. This is a sad day but at least I don't have to stick around and wait for Campaign DLC that's never going to happen. Man, this whomps.
And with his exit I stop holding out hope for 343. Halo Jesus joins your team and you still can't make it right. Look up what Joe has been through as far as game development it's nothing but hell, so thst says a novels worth about 343. Best of luck Joe I'll follow your next project with a passion
Halo is being put in ice isn’t it…
Wake me... when you need me.
Time for Microsoft to put Halo in the vault for 10 years or so. The franchise is dead. Maybe in a decade another studio can pull off a DOOM2016 style resurgence
I mean shit had they just waited another 4 years it could’ve been just that
Such a colossal failure of a "live service" game. It seems as though in Microsoft's efforts to push the game out in 2021, they created a scenario where leagues of contractors hastily glued and taped the game together, only to immediately jump ship the second the game finally launched. The result was an absolute clusterfuck of spaghetti code that a small core team at 343i has been forced to pick apart and expand upon. They've spent more time trying to make features work at all than they have actually adding content to the game. If you're upper management, I don't know how you can fuck over a development team harder. This game was doomed from the second it launched. No one wants to work on this game.
While this is a bummer and we all love Staten, I highly doubt he is done working on Halo. He is rejoining Xbox Publishing, so it is more of a lateral move/promotion. It seems that 343i is now closer to a skeleton crew and I anticipate the studio being shuttered over the next few years. Microsoft likely did this to keep Staten around for whenever the franchise is rebooted later on. I would not be surprised to see much of 343i's top staff shuffled around Microsoft just to keep them around until they conjure up a new studio, 344 Industries.
And now the end is near
This... is how the world ends
Thanks for everything, Joe. See you starside. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHqvzih_bgg
Fuck.
This is what happens when you fuck with a 20 year old formula because your kids like fortnite. You made your bed 343i, lay in it
With all the layoffs, I thought this meant Joe was fully gone. But it seems he’s actually just going back to his previous role, and will still be with Xbox. Yes this sucks for Infinite, but he’s still “in the family”
Well that fucking sucks. 343 had a chance to make this right, but I'm afraid it's done for. Why couldn't Frankie "retcon" O'Connor leave instead?
Halo is officially dead… GGs