"So what of Halo 4 without the coding might of Bungie? 343 have delivered a superb game. The greatest compliment
Promethean: not to be underestimated
perhaps being you would not have noticed that Bungie had not developed this if you hadn’t been told; the transition has been smooth and impressive."
Pure Xbox writes: "Microsoft has appointed Alan Hartman as the new Head of Xbox Game Studios. If you're not familiar with Hartman, he's been part of Forza Motorsport team at Turn 10 Studios since 2005.
Over the past couple of years he's led as Corporate Vice President of Forza and Fable, and before this was the Forza Studio Head at Turn 10."
Seems like a solid choice considering Forza and FH have been the only high quality studio, consistently for Microsoft.
*Forza and FH are the most consistent high quality and this guy ran Turn 10. Playground did FH but still high quality. Let's see if he can get some quality production out of the rest
He´s been doing an excellent job ahead of both Forza franchises integrating those studios to work together by sharing knowledge, technology and manpower.
The new ForzaTech is amazing and I can´t wait to see what it can do for the new Fable.
Phil Spencer has been promoting a huge shake up at Xbox with new leadership hopefully full of fresh ideas!
I hope Alan Hartman as head of XGS to keep the focus on single player games and RPGs. Fable looks absolutely stunning, so we can expect Forza Horizon´s level of excellence for Playground´s first RPG.
I can´t wait!
What a nice reward for the latest Forza, which is probably the most mediocre of the lot so far.
@redgrave not an excuse an explanation for why this game has less features. Not my problem you don't understand how game development works or development in general. When you move to a knew platform some things need to be rebuilt from the ground up.
I am currently migrating one of our services we provide to our customers to the cloud version and having to rebuild a lot of the add-ons we had built for them over the years.
But go ahead and keep criticizing devs when no one here has any clue what it actually takes.
Still think Rod Fergusson would have been a good shout. He's got a track record of fixing stuff and I assume he's still at Blizzard.
Not heard of this guy but I feel like anyone is better than Matt Booty
I thought Dan Greenawalt was head of Turn10 though (although I noticed he didn't do the on stage stuff at e3 this year). Is he not there anymore?
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! This is the best news I've heard since the last piece of xbox news!
Go team xbox! Xbox will rule the world!
He's over overlooked The Forza games which have been consistently good through our the years. Hopefully he has the same eye for quality for the rest if the studios going forward.
How can anyone deny that Forza has been a quality franchise for almost two decades?
“How can anyone deny that Forza has been a quality franchise for almost two decades?“
Forza Motorsport declined after FM4. And this release was one of the worst in the series.
In Halo 4, 5, and Infinite, Master Chief became a more nuanced, human character.
In spite of the Halo series’ struggles, 343 deserves praise for adding nuance and characterisation to the ever-beating heart of Halo - The Master Chief. Playing through Infinite, it's abundantly clear that the events of the current and previous trilogies have irrevocably changed the iconic hero. He’s no longer the ‘blank slate’ that was previously presented by Bungie. He’s a fatigued, damaged and fallible protagonist, and one who is meandering through currents of grief, while reveling in his newfound agency. Giving the Chief a compelling and meaningful voice was no small feat, and 343 should be proud of that victory.
This article completely misses part of the appeal of the original iteration of character in the original game trilogy. It was the Chief and Cortana vs an entire alien collective. The blank slate Bungie displayed in their games was genius, he was an mysterious hero a wide audience could identify with because he wasn't as clearly defined as most characters.
The books added a lot of lore and backstory but most Halo players just want a fun game with exposition that doesn't get in the way of gameplay, it's why the Cortana level in Halo 3 was derided.
Not every character has to be a damaged soyboy, a soldier has to suck it up and do his duty.
A lot of people give the 343 version of Master Chief a lot of slack.
But Fundamentally he is still the same character, he just has a couple more dialogues. He has not changed in terms of attitude.
"Not every character has to be a damaged soyboy, a soldier has to suck it up and do his duty."
And that's what he has done at the end of the day, he did his duty. Watch his partner die, and was ready to destroy the weapon in Halo infinite....he is still the same soilder that everyone remembers
Halo Infintes one was a nice balance between both.
The 343i Master Chief has is based on the books. However, in Halo 4-Infinite, the Master Chief overtime become. gradually becomes more willing to show some emotion.
"However, in Halo 4-Infinite, the Master Chief overtime become. gradually becomes more willing to show some emotion."
Which is awesome! I love how Master Chief become more John and less soldier.
It’s a law of nature that eventually, every long-running game franchise will have a particular entry that gets dinged for straying too far from what made it so fun in the first place. Your Super Mario Sunshine, your Dragon Age II, Assassin’s Creed III, and so on. Whether or not that opinion changes more favorably over time, the initial specter of negativity will forever hover it. Microsoft’s Halo is no exception, except that negative specter hasn’t hovered over one particular game, but one whole studio.
Just finished it on heroic. No matter what ppl can come up with to suggest improvement, it's one of the best campaigns ive played. Lots of little amazing things are overlooked, brilliant pacing, satisfying set pieces, best vehicle battles (except from the scarab battles in halo 3), and possibly the best last mission ever. It not about unnecessary in-game set pieces or crazy destruction everywhere, it the way they designed the last battles with prometheans, soo freakin tactical and satisfying on heroic.
Agree, yeah. Best campaign I've played in ages.