One upon a time there was a game called Halo, but it wasn't always the gun-toting action fest it is today. Before it evolved into the excellent Halo 5: Guardians, Master Chief's debut was so ambitious it even echoed Bungie's future Destiny. "It was a huge world,” reveals art director Marcus Lehto, "comprised of a block of islands that you could travel to. It was a top-down, ‘lead your troops from the sky’ type of thing."
Halo 5: Guardians lead concept artist Darren Bacon explains that the game's marketing was completely seperate to the game's development.
The marketing wasn't the issue, it just felt 343 were so bothered about getting Halo away from being known as a Bungie franchise that they tried to introduce so many changes to counter this.
It felt like they were trying to replace Chief as a character thus the big push on Agent Locke (he even got his own mini series). Chief was even in less missions in comparison.
Introduced squads which forced single player gamers to be paired up with 3 AI players over drop in / drop out co-op.
Cortana was butchered, ruining that relationship between Chief and Cortana we all liked. Would have been fine if the twist was the Didact was secretly controlling her or something but nothing. Did she come back in Infinite? Nope. Killed off screen in a sudden 180 to her villainous turn and replaced by a copy since they knew they screwed up.
Expected you to have read all the novels and the like to understand who Blue Team were and their relationship to Chief, had no build up to the characters and it felt like they expected you to like them without it being earned.
Everything they did felt like change for the sake of change, to mark it was a 343 game not a Bungie one and it's hilarious as they tried to f*** around with the multiplayer in Halo 4 to make it their own before reverting things in Guardians.
I didnt mind the switching off between John and Locke... it reminded me of Halo 2 and having the Arbiter levels to trade off to.
The story was okay for me. They had to do something different as the first three games were done and there needed to be new story going in a new direction. I get the die hard fans may not have liked it, but playing it for what it is... its perfectly fine. Its a continuation of halo 4, which itself was a nice original take on the formula.
Now bring on the disagrees.
It reminded me of Halo 2 and I honestly dislike the switching in 2 and 5. The devs should of just had cuts scenes for the Arbiter and for Locke.
Booting the ur-Didact from the games was one of the greatest narrative mistakes they made (after bringing back a logic-plagued Cortana, of course). Even if you had to read the Forerunner novels to understand his history, he was one of the most complex characters in the series, and he should have remained as an enduring part of the universe.
I'm happy that he at least got a send-off in Halo: Epitaph, but it shouldn't have gotten to that point.
No issues it's just wasn't good story at least my friend it wasn't well written.
Yeah it says a lot about the management of 343 at the time that they could have a marketing campaign be so disconnected in tone and story from the game it's supposed to be about.
I'd imagine it would be frustrating for the developers that the marketing beats seemed far cooler than what you were stuck making. Maybe it would've been better if 343 just continued the story from their previous game but nooo they couldn't be bothered to do that even once
You are off your damn rocker if you think Infinite's story is worse than 5's. Just by cleaning up 5's worse elements off-screen makes it a default improvement.
Campaign wise Halo infinite was better due to setting. (Open world, different approaches, setting and mission tasks)
story wise Halo 5 was better. Infinite was literally all over the place. It's like they scrapped the OG story and tried to piece some sht together. They unalived important ppl off screen!!! (Spoiler free) Ruining the main plot of Halo 5 and infinite like wth!!! That alone made the "story" worse than 5. They have to reboot the series now or pull some story where these characters are still alive. (I believe the end reveals 1 is.)
@Beans i disagree with that last statement doing it off screen when that was the main plot and a huge deal is the wrong move. We legit should've got a boss battle that did that. It seem so unsatisfying and anticlimactic. We were suppose to get an IRobot/terminator type of ending and instead we get some off screen sht 😒 We couldve had Halo 4 level emotion, instead it was done as filler
@Coolbeans and @phillydonjawn
Infinites story was so disjointed due to the level design. It wasn't and in my opinion still not replay able. It felt worse then the ending to Starfield.
I'm saying this as a person who's still going through playing the MCC to finish out playlists, and has Ten's of Thousands of hours in Halo since CE.
The literal ending to Starfield or the closing missions? Because some of those missions were actually pretty great in my opinion. Especially Entangled.
Halo 5 had a worse story I felt than Infinite but I agree on its lack of replayability. The single PNW biome is tiring and everything not green and foresty outside is metallic and reflective inside.
Multiplayer is solid but lags behind 5 too I feel. At least it still does get some new content even as they're openly abandoning Infinite's tech for UE.
Xbox Game Studios and Halo Studios' Halo 5: Guardians had a story roadmap that was abandoned after poor reception from fans.
We didn't have an issue with the story, we just didn't enjoy the missions and the execution.
The story was completely the issue. They made a villain out of Cortana with no context and killed off the main villain of 4 in a comic or book. The marketing painted a different picture versus what we got. 343 had no conviction in what they made for any of 4, 5, and Infinite.
So little conviction they even had to change name to save face.
You right, i had no issue with Cortana being the villain. It made for a good plot. That's basically what I'm trying say they just did everything else horribly and the marketing definitely led us a stray
What they did to Cortana was just...unforgivable, and then to make it worse in Halo Infinite they killed her off screen while saying she sacrificed herself after she realised she was wrong.
They gave us another Cortana to try and wipe the slate clean but that was also the issue, all the development the real Cortana had with Chief was now gone.
They could have saved the original Cortana from rampancy, they could have made an entire game where you find out she was being controlled because of the Didact or something and then she is cured from it. What about merging herself with the new Cortana to cure herself or just give the new Cortana her memories so she's pretty much the same in a way. There's so many ways they could have done it.
343 Studios issue is they keep trying to do things story wise to wipe Bungie's legacy away from the franchise in order for people to remember it as a 343 game. They tried to change the multiplayer in Halo 4, they tried to change the main character to Agent Locke in Halo 5 and then they try to get rid of Cortana.
What's crazy is how decent Halo 4 was. It wasn't amazing, but it was decent. And then it all went downhill.
I agree, I really enjoyed 4, 5 was pretty terrible, Infinite was decent, especially the MP.
Bungie co-founder Alex Seropian predicts platforms like Fortnite and Discord to become even more prominent for independent game devs.
***Gamers are telling studios that they don’t want to download new launchers or big game demos; they just want to click and enjoy with their friends. So, the smart studios will begin to release their demos in Fortnite, possibly skipping Steam or the Microsoft Store altogether.***
Why do I not see this happening at all? It seems illogical and I'm pretty sure everyone already has Steam installed more than Fortnite. You're going to have to download the game data anyway, why wouldn't you use Steam?
Why does this feel like someone pushing something no one wants?
It literally makes no sense. Players don't want to use Steam to download their games? They want to use Fortnite to download their games? What the hell?
The concept is that it is frictionless, interconnected and a familiar experience. It’s a huge trend already, almost an hyperbole of GASS * UGC, heavily supported by favorable metrics and use cases.
As in: if Uncharted was a 2022 game, many people could be playing creative variations of it, inside of it, and Naughty Dog could be making huge safe buck, instead of spending hundreds of millions looking for the next hit.
It’s something real, strongly explored by market leaders in multiple genres (Fortnite, Brawl Stars, Minecraft, Roblox etc.).
Do ya think they're actually this disconnected from reality or they just say these things so that they can try to get the masses to think about it and force such a change? Cause that quote is by far the stupidest thing I've read, and it's way early into the year. Yea let's just uninstall Steam, where we have our whole PC library, download Epic and play everything thru Fortnite. Don't think I could get into words just how stupid that sounds.
It's definitely trying to pre-load a change. Kind of the same way my wife came to me yesterday and asked why every news channel was talking about AI. People in charge want to force a change.
This all reads like some NFT multiverse investor hype vision of the future. Like sure, people are playing and enjoying mods/custom maps/whatever in games, but demos of one game inside another games engine or replacing steam? C'mon! It's not realistic or practical.
I'll postface this with saying there's obviously a market for economies within these things, like within Skyrim, Minecraft, Fortnite and whatever. It's just these economies will come and go. It's been happening since quake (arguably even since doom with custom WADs and whatever) but these things will never be the "steam of the future", just another place to capitalise on if the audience is there.
It was also a TPS when shown at Mac World 1999, replete with ambient wildlife that could become hostile when provoked.