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

[The-Nastiest]

Here's my post about it when someone else made that claim which made me curious about how Gears has done after it was taken over by The Coalition.

MS's monetisation model for GP *spawn

https://www.trueachievements.com/n52676/obsidian-xbox-game-pass-microsoft?fbclid=IwAR1_4XwESpKuMmkqQggB7P0XN0yUqafWWSgQut6Rf6Sd8OKFrfOb3vBvtIQ While the team has the flexibility and budget to continue making large worlds, Urquhart says that the metric for success has changed slightly due to...

forum.beyond3d.com

Regards,
SB

Thank you.

I didn't realize I had to follow a breadcrumb trail of articles and about us pages...then infer from there to figure out some sales numbers and general franchise performance. Good job with your recon.

 

[Subtlesnake]

OTOH - 343i went on a tangent and attempted to change it into something that wasn't Halo and sales have trended down since they took over.

Regards,
SB

Maybe that's true for Halo 4/5, but I don't see how it's true for Infinite.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Maybe that's true for Halo 4/5, but I don't see how it's true for Infinite.

Yeah, Infinite was more of a return to past Halo, but 4 and especially 5 already lost so many players that Halo: Infinite was facing an uphill battle. I personally really liked Halo: Infinite.

Regards,
SB

 

[Johnny Awesome]

It would be silly to scrap Halo. They just need to make better games and a new engine will help a lot with that. It reminds me of how Tomb Raider started sucking a bit and then they put out a couple good TR games in a row. Big franchises can be revitalized.

 

[Nesh]

Yeah, Infinite was more of a return to past Halo, but 4 and especially 5 already lost so many players that Halo: Infinite was facing an uphill battle. I personally really liked Halo: Infinite.

Regards,
SB

I think their biggest mistake was to put so many Halo's too soon.

On the 360 alone we got Halo3, ODST, Reach and 4. Before people could digest the lore and build anticipation, we were bombarded with Halo after Halo. It is more difficult to create depth and expand when you have the task to release too many games at short intervals with a captivating story.

Not counting also the strategy game Halo Wars and Halo Combat Evolved remake, thats 6 games in one generation using the franchise.

On the OG XBOX, the game was more focused technically, artistically and in terms of story telling. It was a technical showcase that built anticipation. A perfectly polished game that pushed the visuals to another level. Halo 3 nailed everything except the visual fidelity. I wasnt as impressed visually as much as I would have hoped based on how the previous two games were cream of the crop. But it was still great and I enjoyed it. The games that followed later were more or less on a similar visual level, and gave a spin off vipe.

Thats where 343i had a bigger challenge to face. 4 was visually more pleasing I believe, but how do you keep people's interest and expand the story in a captivating and original way after so many games?

There wasn't much left to develop on without tiring their users with the same themes, so they tried to expand the game differently with 4. On One we got a re-release of all the main games, infested with technical issues. The challenge was even bigger now. 5 had to continue from 4 and maintain interest. They heard their users and wanted to go back to the roots with Infinite. I dont think the team were left with a good enough legacy to continue from, and based on some reports, they probably had too much pressure from the upper management to deliver.

Halo used to be a system seller, but at some point it became just another game.

 

[Karamazov]

Halo 3, ODST and Reach were really great though.
Only 4 disappointed on X360.

 

[Nesh]

Halo 3, ODST and Reach were really great though.
Only 4 disappointed on X360.

Yeah they were, but how many games can you push in one generation without thinning it out? What exactly disappointed you with 4?

 

[Karamazov]

Yeah they were, but how many games can you push in one generation without thinning it out? What exactly disappointed you with 4?

I guess bungie was better at telling stories in that universe so it was not boring to play

 

[Cynicalking]

Yeah they were, but how many games can you push in one generation without thinning it out? What exactly disappointed you with 4?

Halo 4 and 5 didn't "feel" like Halo. Destiny felt more like Halo than anything from 343. I haven't played Infinite yet, so I cannot comment on it.

 

[mr magoo]

IMO 4 and 5 were not a bad games. The problem is that the new enemy type prometheans messed up whole gameplay mechanics. That’s why halo didn’t felt like halo anymore.
They tried something new but they failed to balance game around it.
Halo infinite was a step in the right direction. I really enjoyed it, gunplay and combat mechanics were right on spot.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Yeah they were, but how many games can you push in one generation without thinning it out? What exactly disappointed you with 4?

The biggest thing that disappointed me were the cuts to gameplay that they made in order to have better graphics.

For example, the biggest annoyance that was CONSTANTLY in your face was weapons disappearing off of the ground after either X amount of time or when you crossed over an invisible boundary. When one of the major cornerstones of the Halo games gameplay loop - limited ammo and the ability to only carry 2 weapons at a time means weapon prioritization and ammo management grow in importance as the difficulty ramps up. Those weapons on the ground represent valuable resources during a battle, if you cross over an invisible boundary and suddenly all the weapons on the ground disappear, you've suddenly lost out on valuable tactical assets.

And why did that occur? Likely because graphics were prioritized over gameplay, everything on the ground has to be tracked and takes up some amount of memory. 343i decided that memory could be better used on graphics and as a result gameplay suffered significantly.

That's just ONE thing out of many where 343i's questionable decision making during development makes you wonder why they were making a Halo game. The aesthetics also took a turn for the worse when they hired on the Spawn creator (or was it artist, I can't remember his name) to lead the art direction for the game. The story also took a massive shit on the entire series.

AAAAUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHH. The bigger question is what did Halo 4 actually get right? I guess neon lights? It was utter trash, IMO. And Halo 5 was even worse.

It says something that I've purchased every single Halo game that was made (including the RTS game as well as Halo Spartan) and Halo 5 is the only one I've never purchased and Halo 4 is the only one I've regretted buying.

Bungie knew the correct way to go about things. Focus on the gameplay first, then do what you can with the graphics.

Halo 4 and 5, in addition to a questionable change in direction for storytelling did everything a developer shouldn't do in a game. Focus on the graphics first and then figure out the gameplay after.

I'll give credit to Halo: Infinite that the people internally who wanted gameplay over graphics and a return to a more Halo-like story (versus the abominations that was the story for 4 and 5) won out over the people there that greenlit 4 and 5. However, 343i was a mess by then between what I assume was heated confrontations between the faction (upper management at 343i) that wanted to take Halo in a "new" direction and the engineers that stayed when Bungie left MS that wanted to continue making real Halo games, that Halo: Infinite was destined to be a bit of a technical mess.

Regards,
SB

 

[Karamazov]

and theater mode was gone in halo 4 too, that was an awesome feature in the bungie Halo.

 

[BRiT]

The biggest thing that disappointed me were the cuts to gameplay that they made in order to have better graphics.

For example, the biggest annoyance that was CONSTANTLY in your face was weapons disappearing off of the ground after either X amount of time or when you crossed over an invisible boundary. When one of the major cornerstones of the Halo games gameplay loop - limited ammo and the ability to only carry 2 weapons at a time means weapon prioritization and ammo management grow in importance as the difficulty ramps up. Those weapons on the ground represent valuable resources during a battle, if you cross over an invisible boundary and suddenly all the weapons on the ground disappear, you've suddenly lost out on valuable tactical assets.

This. So much this. I even had the Wraith I was driving up and disappear on me as soon as I crossed some invisible zone boundary causing the game to cleanup items from the previous zone.

 

[Scott_Arm]

The reason games like Tomb Raider and God of War were able to reinvent themselves was they changed the core gameplay. Maybe Halo could do the same thing, but I have a feeling its core audience would blow a gasket. They should probably forget about the core and do it anyway, but I'm not they'd take the risk.

Halo has had at least 8 games without drastically changing the core gameplay, the setting or anything. At least with Call of Duty they change time periods and add/remove mechanics depending on the time period. It's probably the only super over-saturated franchise I can think of that's survived, even though a lot of people play it as a love hate thing because they have fomo about not playing with their friends.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I dunno, Gran Turismo is up to it's 8th game not counting the concepts, prologues, etc. Including those it's up to around 15 or 16 games. All in the racing genre.

Gears is up to 6 games in TPS, a tactics game and a mobile game.

Halo has 7 games in the FPS genre, 2 in the RTS genre, and 2 in the top down twin stick shooter genre.

Halo is actually more varied than the Gears series and yet it's also doing worse. A big part of that is that Gears has for the most part stayed faithful to the series where Halo deviated significantly for 4 and 5. So is it surprising that the Halo series dropped massively in popularity when they went a different direction with Halo and refused to give its fans more of what they want while Gears continued with strong sales while staying faithful to the series and giving its fans more of what they want?

You could also make the argument that Halo adds/removes mechanics (ODST plays differently than the other Halo FPS games) like COD. Halo: Infinite goes open world. Armor/suit abilities were added. Weapons are added, removed, and sometimes changed fairly dramatically. New vehicles are added. And if we look at COD, is it a surprise that them ditching their experimentation with gameplay and going back to their core mid 2000's era style gameplay saw a massive resurgence in the series? Granted cross-play also helped, but it was Activision stopping experimenting too much with the gameplay and going back to what the fans wanted that saw it surge back into the limelight.

Change for changes sake has as much or more of a chance to doom a series (Mass Effect: Adromeda anyone? Battlefield: 2042? COD: IW sunk to new lows) than giving fans what they expect from a series. Sure it's possible to succeed by changing things up massively, God of War and Fallout for example. But that wasn't so much changing things up as completely changing genres leaving a genre that was moribund (tactics for Fallout and top down action spectacle for God of War) and moving them into a more popular genre (open world for Fallout and Story driven action narrative for God of War).

Unlike those examples, FPS isn't dead so there's no reason to shift gears. And yet that's exactly what 343i decided to do with Halo 4, massively shift gears and go in a direction that nobody wanted Halo to go into in the hopes of attracting new players. Instead, they only served to alienate their existing players while failing to attract new players because they'd rather play the older Bungie Halo games rather than the newer 343i Halo games (4 and 5).

Regards,
SB

 

[Nesh]

The reason games like Tomb Raider and God of War were able to reinvent themselves was they changed the core gameplay. Maybe Halo could do the same thing, but I have a feeling its core audience would blow a gasket. They should probably forget about the core and do it anyway, but I'm not they'd take the risk.

Halo has had at least 8 games without drastically changing the core gameplay, the setting or anything. At least with Call of Duty they change time periods and add/remove mechanics depending on the time period. It's probably the only super over-saturated franchise I can think of that's survived, even though a lot of people play it as a love hate thing because they have fomo about not playing with their friends.

I think those games had the room to do so. Not all games have that much luxury. GoW didnt have fans attached to the core mechanics. It was the characters and the epic battles in mythical settings. As long as these are retained the fans are happy and it can attract even more. TR's old formula was outdated and needed to keep with the times. The first games that defined the series were too old to be relevant now. Even as such, the TR reboot even though it was a great trilogy, it didnt retain its charm fully. We are literally treating them as unique games of their own.
Halo's first games and story are still too relevant to abandon. A few generations later and people might be ok with a reboot. But they arent yet

 

[Inuhanyou]

Halo under Bungie was one of the greatest franchises. I think it's pedigree speaks for itself. I wish MS had let 343 make it's own franchise seperate from halo. Atleast then the mystique would have kept and they would not have been forced into unreal expectations between old fans and new fans.

 

[mr magoo]

Halo under Bungie was one of the greatest franchises. I think it's pedigree speaks for itself. I wish MS had let 343 make it's own franchise seperate from halo. Atleast then the mystique would have kept and they would not have been forced into unreal expectations between old fans and new fans.

The problem is that competition got better as well. True Halo under bungie wings was better title, but even when under bungies wings when Cod and cod 2 arrived we had seen major shift in fps popularity. Halo was no longer nr 1 online fps shooter. And despite all criticism about SP campaign, COD is still one of the most impressive single player experience in fps.

 

[Inuhanyou]

The problem is that competition got better as well. True Halo under bungie wings was better title, but even when under bungies wings when Cod and cod 2 arrived we had seen major shift in fps popularity. Halo was no longer nr 1 online fps shooter. And despite all criticism about SP campaign, COD is still one of the most impressive single player experience in fps.

I mean that's true, but halo would have atleast stayed more relevant

 

[iroboto]

The problem is that competition got better as well. True Halo under bungie wings was better title, but even when under bungies wings when Cod and cod 2 arrived we had seen major shift in fps popularity. Halo was no longer nr 1 online fps shooter. And despite all criticism about SP campaign, COD is still one of the most impressive single player experience in fps.

I’d say titanfall 2 is the peak of fps single player. But that’s just me