343 Industries made a terrific impression with their first dip into the franchise, but with a lackluster campaign and multiplayer that still needs tuning, Halo 5: Guardians makes them look like one-hit wonders.
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.
According to a Halo Studios dev, a PC port of Halo 5 was being considered but was ultimately scrapped due to technical issues.
Still no Halo 5, Fable 2, Gears 2 & 3 on PC.
I like when we get whole franchise collection on PC ... instead of partial ones, disregarding how yucky the missed one(s) are.
We've got Fable, Fable Remastered, Fable III on PC but the best one, Fable II is stll missing.
Same with Gears 1, Gears 2 Remastered, Gears 4 & Gears 5 ... but no Gears 2, 3 or judgement on PC.
If not for MCC, PC would've been stuck with Halo 1 & 2 and then straight to Infinite.
Fix this MS.
You forgot all the games for windows pc games that are dead because they are looking for servers that do not exist. Fable 3 on pc still is doa do too a server check the xbox version without internet still is busted no internet no fable.
https://youtu.be/QZYy9KzFT2...
Oh also lets all remind our-self every game made for xbox was made with direct x and a windows os version this should be a easy port job for the creator of everything even pc operating system but all what you listed had/have major issues.
Be it the gears pc games just went though those on max graphics they work but sometimes be like well 20fps is gone or halo mcc taking years to work games having no audio. console/pc same issues
I mean shall we talk about forza games being desisted the last one being so broken at launch finishing a lap was impossible to this day there are still game crashing bugs.
https://www.youtube.com/wat...
https://www.youtube.com/wat...
Why is that unfortunate?
If a company cares that little about game preservation they cannot be surprised when people explore alternatives and people donate to the emulation developer.
They're making money doing the work the actual developers couldn't be bothered to do. Sounds like an opportunity to me.
This but don't open donate companies always try to find someway to shutdown all those sites and emulators. Heck Nintendo this week was caught using a emulator (rumor project64) in there museum ha ha but the creator can not take any action.
Fitting score.
Wow, approved in seconds I see to put the game down. Its not a 5.5 out of 10. Its an 8+ scoring game. 343 should be commended on what they achieved. I never liked multiplayer in Halo series and this game has made me like it. The single player is fun, but the multiplayer is a blast. I have not laughed and had so much fun playing a game since MW. I get creamed in some multiplayer games, but I have fun. That is what is missing in the newer games today..fun factor.
Article clickbait.
The "high" point of the game is hoarding Mantis REQ packs to go mech crazy. This is virtually impossible: 1) Mantises are quite rare. 2) You have to wait until level 8 at a minimum, which is about 75-80% through the match, if it gets there at all. 3) No chance in hell you get to spawn more than one in a match if they take your first one out.
Sounds like the guy didn't actually play Warzone at all.
Article also starts out by saying "I don't play Halo for its story" then proceeds to rip into the story.
Good job.
Bias is real