Halo Infinite [Fall 2021] [XO, XBSX|S, PC, XGP]

[orangpelupa]

Pulling off a good looking cartoony 3d game that doesn't look bland or way too colorful and barf inducing is quite hard.

Most are from Nintendo. few other dev/pub able to achieve it.

At least from my taste....

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Yeah, I get that... But the truth is, in the end Halo was a game played by teens and adults, and xbox itself is not really a console largelly played by children. I'm all for keeping the games PG and accessible. But there are ways to do it tastefully. Just because you don't have blood and gore, does not mean you gotta have midgets with helium-gas voices running around at every corner. They certainly need to have som level of camp and light comedy tostay true to the franchise, but the more extreme parts of it could still be toned down in my opinion. The midgets are just plain anoying after the second or third encounter. The game has an almost meditative feel to it once you settle into its flow, untill alf the ET or barney the dinosaur pop up and take me out of it

Oh no, it's not targeted at children, although lots of kids play it. Back just before PS4/XBO launched one of my friends kids (about 8 or 9 years old at the time) played Halo 3 (single player) and Zelda non-stop.

No, like I said, it pulls at the kid that exists in all of us. But it doesn't do so blatently. I mean what kid hasn't had an imaginary friend that's always there for them (Cortana, although in game lore she isn't imaginary, but that's kind of what she represents) through thick and thin. What kid hasn't wanted to just be the Hero and save the galaxy?

All of this was a deliberate choice on Bungie's part. One of their previous games that I absolutely loved, Myth: The Fallen Lords, was absolutely realistic bloody GORY with tons of gibbing and dismemberment set in a very Grim-Dark world. It was a digital homage to Glen Cook's "The Black Company" series of books and it was fantastic in all the right dysfunctional ways.

So for Bungie, Halo was a lighthearted Sci-Fi romp after something like that. And I really like it.

And other people did as well. Think about it. This was a first person shooter that came out during a time when first person shooters were more closely associated with Doom or Quake where gore, gibbing and dismemberment were expected if you wanted your FPS game to become REALLY popular. ...Or so the thinking went. Bungie went another direction and drew in a lot of people who had never played FPS games before (in addition to people who already liked FPS games).

Think of it another way. Before 343i took over. Halo used to compete with COD for highest FPS games sales in NPD and Halo was only a single platform game.

I get that its aesthetic isn't for everyone, but I genuinely like it. And while the 343i did some good things graphically with their versions of Halo, I dislike some of the more realistic touches that they put into the games. For me, personally, as a long time Halo player, I felt like the direction they were taking with Halo: Infinite was 343i's take on a more traditional Halo look, which I appreciated. It is notable that the most vociferous voices that objected to how Halo: Infinite looks are people who are solidly PlayStation owners and likely don't play or were never fans of the series. Not to say that there aren't Halo fans that would like a more realistic presentation. But at least from what I've noticed most of the people I've seen complain about the look haven't been people that have played and enjoyed all the Bungie Halos.

I completely skipped the last Halo both because of the art direction as well as the gameplay and storytelling direction that 343i took the series in. For me, I'm just hoping that 343i has given up on the changes they've kind of forced onto the series and have decided to go back to something closer to Bungie's vision of the Halo games.

Regards,
SB

 

[iroboto]

I completely skipped the last Halo both because of the art direction as well as the gameplay and storytelling direction that 343i took the series in. For me, I'm just hoping that 343i has given up on the changes they've kind of forced onto the series and have decided to go back to something closer to Bungie's vision of the Halo games.

I would disagree here. Halo needs a revamp badly. It's dying because they are stuck in limbo between what Halo was and what FPS games are today. If they are reach the apex of FPS games again, they must innovate.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I would disagree here. Halo needs a revamp badly. It's dying because they are stuck in limbo between what Halo was and what FPS games are today. If they are reach the apex of FPS games again, they must innovate.

I'm not sure I'd go with that. It's certainly possible. But it's also no surprise that the series took a sharp nosedive with the Halo 5 after Halo players got to see the direction they were going with Halo 4.

Basically Halo 4 sold well because people expected a Halo game. When they failed to get a Halo game, and saw what 343i intended for Halo 5, most like me and my circle of friends just decided to give Halo 5 a pass.

Basically we don't know if Halo isn't selling well because Halo didn't change enough, or because it deviated so much from the established Halo IP.

It also doesn't help that 343i completely changed the dynamics of competitive Halo multiplayer. On Twitch Streams, a lot of previous diehard competitive Halo streamers talked about how competitive multiplayer basically died with Halo 4 (fewer players playing it) because they changed it so much. Halo 5 somewhat revived Halo competitive multiplayer by making it closer to what Bungie competitive Halo multiplayer was like. If anything this would be evidence what what is needed is a return to Halo's roots rather than a deviation from it ... at least for competitive Halo multiplayer gamers which constituted a large portion of the player base.

More often than not I see IPs die because the developers change the IP to modernize it than I do IPs die because they don't change it. Dragon Age series. Overlord series. Destiny IP. I could go on and on with IPs that died because they wanted to change and modernize the playing experience when all the players just wanted what they had in the first game. Even Mass Effect saw this. It initially gained sales because FPS is more popular than RPG. But once they had their FPS base, they changed the IP too much and it died.

COD, for example, almost died because they tried to change it. It regained popularity and is bigger than ever now that they've gone back to how COD used to be.

Even if we look at something like God of War. It gained because they changed the genre from one that was less popular (top down action game) to a genre that was more popular (3rd person action game). So in the few cases where change has resulted in greater popularity it's often because the entire genre of the IP was changed rather than because of changes to the game within the existing genre.

Others like AC, were revived as much by just taking a break from making them as it was from changes to the formula. Taking a break relieved the IP fatigue that set in with yearly installments of a single player game that were all so similar. Would that fatigue have set in if the games came out every 4-5 years? Doubtful.

Regards,
SB

 

[iroboto]

I'm not sure I'd go with that. It's certainly possible. But it's also no surprise that the series took a sharp nosedive with the Halo 5 after Halo players got to see the direction they were going with Halo 4.

Basically Halo 4 sold well because people expected a Halo game. When they failed to get a Halo game, and saw what 343i intended for Halo 5, most like me and my circle of friends just decided to give Halo 5 a pass.

Basically we don't know if Halo isn't selling well because Halo didn't change enough, or because it deviated so much from the established Halo IP.

It also doesn't help that 343i completely changed the dynamics of competitive Halo multiplayer. On Twitch Streams, a lot of previous diehard competitive Halo streamers talked about how competitive multiplayer basically died with Halo 4 (fewer players playing it) because they changed it so much. Halo 5 somewhat revived Halo competitive multiplayer by making it closer to what Bungie competitive Halo multiplayer was like. If anything this would be evidence what what is needed is a return to Halo's roots rather than a deviation from it ... at least for competitive Halo multiplayer gamers which constituted a large portion of the player base.

More often than not I see IPs die because the developers change the IP to modernize it than I do IPs die because they don't change it. Dragon Age series. Overlord series. Destiny IP. I could go on and on with IPs that died because they wanted to change and modernize the playing experience when all the players just wanted what they had in the first game. Even Mass Effect saw this. It initially gained sales because FPS is more popular than RPG. But once they had their FPS base, they changed the IP too much and it died.

COD, for example, almost died because they tried to change it. It regained popularity and is bigger than ever now that they've gone back to how COD used to be.

Regards,
SB

Just my imo here, arena based game types where the main aspect of the game is map control is largely dead. Hence why Quake and others have struggled to really make a revival not just Halo. People no longer seem interested in Classic Arena. We are at battle royale now and a lot of people are seeing a lot more innovation in that space than anywhere else.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Just my imo here, arena based game types where the main aspect of the game is map control is largely dead. Hence why Quake and others have struggled to really make a revival not just Halo. People no longer seem interested in Classic Arena. We are at battle royale now and a lot of people are seeing a lot more innovation in that space than anywhere else.

I mostly agree here. However, I'd argue that Arena based multiplayer is still alive and fine with the following caveats.

• It greatly helps to have an established player base.
  • COD and Counterstrike are still going strong based largely on their arena based multiplayer.
    • Battle Royal style maps in COD have certainly helped it, but it hasn't reduced the popularity of their arena style maps.
  • If you don't have an established player base, then it can be possible to pull players from another existing game that you develop.
    • Example here is Valorant by Riot games, which pulls from it's reputation for League of Legends. It's basically just Counter Strike with MOBA style abilities set in an multiplayer arena.
• If you don't have an established player base for your arena style game? Good luck, you face an uphill battle.
  • However, this is also true for Battle Royale style games. In the past year there have been 10's of BR style multiplayer games and almost none of them have survived.
  • It's hard ... period ... to established a new multiplayer game and have it take off in popularity.
    • Innovation won't necessarily do it. Just look at Quake Champions.
    • The field of dead multiplayer games (BR style or arena style) is littered with innovative and sometimes critically acclaimed games.
• Outside of an established player base to build on the key to making a multiplayer game that takes hold? Luck with a dash of developer reputation.

Regards,
SB

 

[iroboto]

I mostly agree here. However, I'd argue that Arena based multiplayer is still alive and fine with the following caveats.

• It greatly helps to have an established player base.
  • COD and Counterstrike are still going strong based largely on their arena based multiplayer.
    • Battle Royal style maps in COD have certainly helped it, but it hasn't reduced the popularity of their arena style maps.
  • If you don't have an established player base, then it can be possible to pull players from another existing game that you develop.
    • Example here is Valorant by Riot games, which pulls from it's reputation for League of Legends. It's basically just Counter Strike with MOBA style abilities set in an multiplayer arena.
• If you don't have an established player base for your arena style game? Good luck, you face an uphill battle.
  • However, this is also true for Battle Royale style games. In the past year there have been 10's of BR style multiplayer games and almost none of them have survived.
  • It's hard ... period ... to established a new multiplayer game and have it take off in popularity.
    • Innovation won't necessarily do it. Just look at Quake Champions.
    • The field of dead multiplayer games (BR style or arena style) is littered with innovative and sometimes critically acclaimed games.
• Outside of an established player base to build on the key to making a multiplayer game that takes hold? Luck with a dash of developer reputation.

Regards,
SB

I can't disagree with what you've written.
There seems to be a bigger portion of luck or feel or something je ne sais quoi that allows some arena games to make it and others not.

I like halo, but for some reason, I don't get the same joy vs CS or Valorant and those are arguably not arena games granted - but R6S has also made it's name here. But I guess the type of game that is die and respawn, or games with vehicles have really dropped off. Battlefield really suffered some major blows as well. I don't know if people are moving on, people don't like the backdrop, people don't like the game design, or game play, I have no clue why Valorant made it while games like Titan Fall and TF2 have completely failed but Apex Legends completely dominant in the scene.

Still trying to figure this out. Part of it could just be immense competition in the FPS scene, others could be just bad game design. A good example is just looking at TPS shooters for competition, there's not a lot of competition here really, but Gears is not really much of a blip despite being grounded in esports. Fortnite is dominant here by nearly a light year compared to Gears.

 

[eastmen]

I can't disagree with what you've written.
There seems to be a bigger portion of luck or feel or something je ne sais quoi that allows some arena games to make it and others not.

I like halo, but for some reason, I don't get the same joy vs CS or Valorant and those are arguably not arena games granted - but R6S has also made it's name here. But I guess the type of game that is die and respawn, or games with vehicles have really dropped off. Battlefield really suffered some major blows as well. I don't know if people are moving on, people don't like the backdrop, people don't like the game design, or game play, I have no clue why Valorant made it while games like Titan Fall and TF2 have completely failed but Apex Legends completely dominant in the scene.

Still trying to figure this out. Part of it could just be immense competition in the FPS scene, others could be just bad game design. A good example is just looking at TPS shooters for competition, there's not a lot of competition here really, but Gears is not really much of a blip despite being grounded in esports. Fortnite is dominant here by nearly a light year compared to Gears.

everything has its time in the sun.

Gears was very popular with gears 1 and 2 for multiplayer and then started to fall off halo was the same through 3. But remember halo is 20 years old gears of war is almost 15 years old. Fortnite is almost 4 years , Valorant is one year old.

Stuff like Titanfall didn't take off because it was on a singular platform and its follow up was pushed out between all the other big platforms. I think TF2 would have done extremely well if it launched that spring instead of fall. At some point even Fortnite will decrease in popularity. COD has sold extremely well also. If you take COD4 as the start of its reign its been selling extremely well since 2007. IF you count cod2 that is 2005. IF you want to really get into it. I think Ghost recon ws better than COD4 but for some reason it didn't take off like COD did.

Just gotta get lucky really. I think at some point the older shooters will come back. Just like how side scrollers went away and are now back with the indie rush

 

[Johnny Awesome]

I"m the camp that thinks Halo should have traditional Halo gameplay in it's traditional Halo modes and then do different things with new modes of play like Battle Royale, Zombie Hordes (ie. Flood) etc....

That way the Halo CE crowd can enjoy their capture the skull/flag/king of the hill/vehicle mayhem whatever... and the CoD/Fortnite players can enjoy the Battle Royale/Zombie Hordes ...

That's what I would do. Best of both worlds.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

That's what I would do. Best of both worlds.

Changing things is risky. Adding things and making those additions optional means you can please pretty much everybody except those who are impossible to please.

 

[mr magoo]

I"m the camp that thinks Halo should have traditional Halo gameplay in it's traditional Halo modes and then do different things with new modes of play like Battle Royale, Zombie Hordes (ie. Flood) etc....

That way the Halo CE crowd can enjoy their capture the skull/flag/king of the hill/vehicle mayhem whatever... and the CoD/Fortnite players can enjoy the Battle Royale/Zombie Hordes ...

That's what I would do. Best of both worlds.

I think battle royale would work pretty well in halo. Specially if you could use vehicles etc. and it looks like Halo infinte will have large maps so it will be perfect for BR mode.

 

[iroboto]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/fo...h-game-over-ambitious-cut-content-etc.421451/

A former 343i employee (Skybox Artist) shared some insight on Halo Infinite. (video is in mandarin, so I tried to translate his words into English)

• His overall feeling on Halo Infinite: "In fact, I think the finished product will still be great. The story is a big improvement, and the gameplay is much richer, though the development cycle is too long. Don't expect it to be an epoch-making masterpiece."
• The company executives were overly ambitious. They wanted to make Halo Infinite a semi-open world game, so the engine needed to be changed significantly. They had to make the game and develop the engine at the same time (Due to engine defects, many workflows were not ideal, though they are now much more improved than before).
• Last year's disastrous demo was because many engine features were not fully implemented at that time.
• For a variety of reasons, the game content compared to the original idea has been cut (same for multiplayer). "This has led to some things I've made over the years that no one will probably ever see."
• The team at 343 (especially the low-level employees) works very hard, and many of them have experienced working overtime until the early hours of the morning in the past few years. (Crunch confirmed
• Now he works at Certain Affinity, still doing some HI outsourcing work, and he feels good to be out of 343's baggage.

I believe it. Definitely some development hell in there. Too much ambition and a shitty engine that needed correcting. It does sound like 1 more year from now, they might be able to realize their original vision, but it's so overdue for a cross generation title. It must release. Unfortunately for MS, it sounds like it won't be a GOTY contender

https://twitter.com/x/status/1390309083857760258

He's completely right.
You crunch and fail. You blame crunch and leadership.

You crunch and succeed, you praise crunch and leadership.

or in this case:
You fail, oh man Bungie is so much better at the vision for Halo. Wish they followed Bungie's vision.

They succeed, oh man good thing they didn't follow Bungie, 343 redeemed.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

He's completely right.
You crunch and fail. You blame crunch and leadership.

Cyberpunk 2077.

You crunch and succeed, you praise crunch and leadership.

Witcher 3.

Same team.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Cyberpunk 2077.


Witcher 3.

Same team.

Something interesting to think about as well. Both Witcher 1 and Witcher 2 launched in some pretty rough shape and took a multitude of patches to reach what would be considered decent on console.

But they benefitted from launching only on PC (TW2 eventually came to X360 at the same time as the redone PC enhanced edition) where you not only have control over settings (thus can work around some issues) but where gamers are generally far more forgiving for launch issues or just general wonkiness in games. The Witcher 3, while it was a bit wonky at launch it was far better than either TW1 or TW2.

In many ways the launch of CP2077 is more like how TW1 and TW2 launched than TW3. But because it launched on consoles, combined with the massive pre-release hype that had built up over the years ... it was immediately put under a microscope. This doesn't excuse the shape it launched, in, but if you'd been playing their games ever since the first TW1 launched (not played the games years after but actually played them at launch) then CP2077 was kind of what you expected. It was much bigger and better, but just as buggy and wonky.

Regards,
SB

 

[iroboto]

我們需要聊聊關於343的視頻 - 為什麼我那麼生氣_哔哩哔哩 (゜-゜)つロ 干杯~-bilibili

Link of the original developer speaking on 343i above. Upset about the media translation and taking it as though crunch on 343i was normal.
ie. it was taken out of context.

He makes an english video here to clear misinterpretation about Halo Infinite project.
He's calling out resetera here for poorly translating or partially translating the video and then the media went with that.

Ouch. Dude is now suffering for said video and misinterpretation of video.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/fo...o-saying-no-force-crunch.422444/post-64542590

no journalist reached out to him, or even when he reached out to journalist to clarify context, and none would reach out to him. That's crazy bad.

 

[BRiT]

Conclusion snippet from video:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1390999698958397443

 

[orangpelupa]

我們需要聊聊關於343的視頻 - 為什麼我那麼生氣_哔哩哔哩 (゜-゜)つロ 干杯~-bilibili

Link of the original developer speaking on 343i above. Upset about the media translation and taking it as though crunch on 343i was normal.
ie. it was taken out of context.

He makes an english video here to clear misinterpretation about Halo Infinite project.
He's calling out resetera here for poorly translating or partially translating the video and then the media went with that.

Ouch. Dude is now suffering for said video and misinterpretation of video.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/fo...o-saying-no-force-crunch.422444/post-64542590

no journalist reached out to him, or even when he reached out to journalist to clarify context, and none would reach out to him. That's crazy bad.

Nowadays, more and more "journalists" are more likely to be a "parrot".

Not just in video games

 

[Silent_Buddha]

no journalist reached out to him, or even when he reached out to journalist to clarify context, and none would reach out to him. That's crazy bad.

More ad clicks for negative news about MS studios (or probably any studio in general) than positive news.

For Resetera, more feeding of the negative echo chamber around Halo Infinite and reinforcing the majority view there if you ignore any clarifications.

I'm probably overly cynical, but the truth is often far less important that either feeding your audience what it wants to hear, reporting things that reflect your own personal biases, or news that generates more ad-clicks ... regardless of whether that news is being accurately reported.

Regards,
SB

 

[eastmen]

Crunch is part of all fields. It seems silly that its getting harped on so much in video games. I still think Dennis Dyack was right. MS should have never announced Halo infinite when they did. They should have completed the game and announced it at e3 2020 and shipped it holiday 2020. This goes for all games. Get the game done and tested and then announce. Use the time between announcement and release to polish it more and have the main team move on to additional content. That way you don't have a game release and then have 3-4 months (if not more time) till the first expansion. You just have a stream of quality content running the whole time.

 

[see colon]

Crunch is part of all fields. It seems silly that its getting harped on so much in video games.

+1 to this. I mean, I get that this is our hobby so we care about video game crunch, but I have a friend who worked for a 3d animation studio that worked on some big projects. Feature films, superhero movies, fully CG family stuff also. They litterally crunched non-stop. When he were done crunching on his teams projects, they would jump onto other projects that needed to be done. Outside of last year, and special circumstances like that, movies rarely get delayed like games do, so you crunch to get them done. He left the industry after looking around for another studio to work for, only to find out they were pretty much all like that. I think he was working overtime and not getting paid for it to get done the work that was expected of him. And I've never heard anyone complain about, nor read an article about CG animators being in a constant crunch, unless it revolved around games.